Monday, 6 October 2014

Lacey Taylor, Character Blog-hop 2014


Today I am taking part in a character blog-hop that I was tagged in by Sharon Burgess. Sharon loves to read and that is what prompted her to write fiction. When she is not in front of her computer writing or editing, she is comfortably settled in her recliner with a cat on her lap and reading a romance novel. I met Sharon through Linkedin. She is a most wonderful writer, her novel, Simply Irresistible: A Spruce Creek Romance was published in July. The Kindle version is coming soon. You can visit Sharon at her website, www.SharonBurgess.com to get to know her better. I want to thank her for asking me to be a part of this. 

So what is a character blog-hop? 
It is, very simply, a way for you the reader to learn more about a character in one of my books. Through questions and answers, more is revealed about a character. I have chosen, Lacey, the main character in my new novel. So read on to find out a little more and hopefully encourage you to want to read her story. 

What is the name of your character?  Is s/he fictional/historical?
My character's name is Lacey Taylor and she is a fictional person. Auburn haired, she is the youngest of four and had had a strained relationship with her mother all her life. Being the baby, her sisters and brother love her and feel the need to protect her.
When and where is the story set?
The story is set in Ireland and it is a present day setting. Lacey's life takes her on a different path then she had intended or thought it would go and so has to cross the water, to Chester, England for a short visit.
What should we know about your character?
She is a young woman who has never felt loved by her mother. So she searches for love and acceptance. But being young she also has no patience or the wisdom that comes with age. It makes her life's journey difficult and frustrating at times.
What is your character's goal?
To know her true identity, I would think. She battles with a lot of emotions, her family relationships all change and she needs answers to a lot of questions.
What is screwing up your character's life?
What has screwed up her life is her mother's nasty and unloving ways.
What is the title?
The title of the book is My Husband's Sin. When reading the book, the reader shall understand why I called it this.
Is the book published?
Yes, it is published with Tirgearr Publishing. To find it, please follow the link below.

http://tirgearrpublishing.com/authors/Bradford_MaryT/my-husbands-sin.htm

Continuing on this character blog hop next Monday is writer Mary Angland. Mary has had stories successfully published and she also enjoys writing plays. Her play-work has been in rehearsed readings and will be on stage in early 2015. You can find Mary at the following link https://maryangland.wordpress.com/

Thursday, 2 October 2014

Meet Ted, Storyteller Supreme



Courtesy of www.writersofthewest.com
Did you know that western books are the most borrowed genre from libraries? Yep, so put on your Stetsons, pull on those chaps, don't forget the spurs and get ready to read some wonderful writing from top class western writers.I was thrilled when asked to join a group, who are reviving the Western genre and I heartily agreed to become a member. The group are called Writers of the West and more of what this outstanding collection of writers has to offer can be found at the following link  www.writersofthewest.com 

This week I introduce you to Ted Atoka, a man of awesome writing talents. He hails from the US and has written in many genres but it is through the Writers of the West that I first met this wonderful man. His novella, Come Sundown, under the auspices of Writers of the West  is a story about The Horse Trough Saloon, in Oklahoma. The saloon is being threatened by ruthless investors from Las Vegas, but what they haven't bargained for are the local townsfolk giving them a fight to protect what is theirs.
Come Sundown is available in both ebook from Amazon.com and Amazon .co.uk , Lulu and in print from http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/Ted_Atoka

Courtesy of Amazon.com
Ted has many short stories, novellas and books to his credit, he is a natural storyteller and when it comes to writing about everyday relationships, the man is a master. He connects the reader to his characters in a warm and subtle way that makes you the reader a part of the story.

For a more intimate setting why not pop over to https://www.smashwords.com/interview/TedAtoka and see what the man has to say for himself and why not visit his website and connect with this top class writer at http://tedatoka.weebly.com/

“Writers of the West” brings some of the best contemporary penslingers in fiction, offering up western storytelling based on just about every other genre you can imagine......all focusing on the original superheroes—cowboys, cowgirls and people of grit who tamed the wild west, or died trying."
Courtesy of WOW website


Tuesday, 23 September 2014

New Novel from David J. O'Brien



It is with great pleasure that I host fellow writer David J. O'Brien. David is a busy man and I was honoured that he dropped in to tell us about his new book Five Days on Ballyboy Beach. 

Mary Bradford: David welcome to my blog. I am going to hand it all over to you today to tell us about this wonderful second novel.

David O'Brien: Thanks for hosting me today, Mary.

MB: So David, take it away...

DO'B: My second novel Five Days on Ballyboy Beach, is just out and it feels like the rushed second album of a young songwriter, even though this book, like Leaving the Pack, was written a long time ago. When I started it, however, it was as a more experimental effort at literature than my first novella-expanded-into-novel-because-the-characters-demanded-it.
In all drafts up until the second last, even after I signed the contract, the main character was called David. It was, and still is, written in the first person and I decided at the time to use my own name - or it's derivative, Dave.
There were a few reasons. One is that Dave is a common name. More than that, it's a kind of Everyman name, like Jack, or Bill, or Chuck. I wanted the character to be a common or garden bloke, similar to most other men.

Dave is also usually the name of someone nice, someone likeable. I'm not just saying that because I am nice and likeable (though I seriously am), but I've never yet met a real asshole called Dave. Not in real life - David Brent, or David Copperfield (the magician) might be plonkers - even gobshites - but I've never met them: one is fictional, the other a persona. The movie Dave with Kevin Kline, is a great example of the niceness of characters with that name: a nice guy substituting an asshole president. Calling the "hero" such a likeable name allowed me to make the character a bit of a dick without (hopefully!) turning the reader against him - because there are elements of his personality that originally might have made you wonder whether he deserved a happy ending. Using a first person narrator helps make the reader more invested in the character, which also allowed me, as the writer, to let the character do things the reader might dislike him for. He does of course later show that he at least deserves a little happiness, though whether he gets a happy ending is something the reader will have to find out.

In addition, using my own name would make the reader wonder if some of this weren't really my own feelings. I did inject a few anecdotes and opinions that both the character and I share, just to muddy the waters, too. I think that the closer the writer superficially seems to be to the action, the characters, the more he hides real facts that are far from his real life and experience. None of what happens in the novel actually happened to me or to anyone I know. But the ruse was too well done and it read more like a memoir than contemporary fiction - so I changed Dave to another everyman's name - Dave's brother in Only Fools and Horses - Derek. He's still a plonker, sometimes, but ultimately just as worthy of our friendship.

MB: Gosh, David, that is a very thoughful insight into the naming of your character and clever too. So give us a bit on the novel to whet our curiosity. 

DO'B: Well, the Blurb is as follows:
 
A startling revelation - the long-time friend you never viewed romantically is actually the person with whom you want to spend the rest of your life.

But what do you do about it?

For Derek, a laid-back graduate camping with college friends on Ireland's west coast in the summer of 1996, the answer is … absolutely nothing.

Never the proactive one of the group - he's more than happy to watch his friends surf, canoe and scuba-dive from the shore - Derek adopts a wait and see attitude. Acting on his emotional discovery is further hindered by the fact he's currently seeing someone else - and she's coming to join him for the weekend.

As their five days on the beach pass, and there are more revelations, Derek soon realises that to get what he desires, he'll have to take it. Events conspire to push him to the forefront of the group, and, as unexpected sorrow begins to surround him and his friends, Derek grasps his chance at happiness. After all, isn’t life too short to just wait and see?

 MB: Please share some more, this is intriguing.

DO'B: Okay, here is an excerpt, so enjoy.
Excerpt:

The five of us had been friends for about five years. We’d met in first year of our science degree course, during freshman week, and conglomerated together the way people do when they arrive in a new university. I used to cycle there from Deansgrange, where I was still living with my parents. Sarah got the DART from Blackrock, where she had lived with her parents until she graduated. Bill did the same from Howth. Sinéad lived on campus, since she couldn’t be arsed commuting from Naas, where she was from. John shared a flat in Donnybrook, because it was nigh on impossible to commute from Bettystown, Co. Meath, from where he hailed. We’d found ourselves deciding on mostly the same courses, and were in the same classes for nearly all our time there.
I met some people in those first few days of university that I would hate to meet now. Some of them I could safely ignore and would, since our acquaintance didn’t last long before I’d moved on to more fruitful associations. Others I could not ignore, and would thus avoid if at all possible. The individuals I was camping with, however, were people with whom I'd just clicked and stuck with, like Lego.
They liked most of the stuff I liked and that’s why we were such good friends. The major difference between me and them was that they were more inclined to actually do things, whereas I was more content to laze about and do nothing. Not exactly nothing. I mean watch: watch them surfing, watch the waves, watch the clouds travel across the sky. Look at the birds foraging and gliding over the sand and waves, see the rabbits warily leave their warrens and seek out succulent plants among the dry dunes. That was why we were there; to do things and to relax – mostly the former for them and mostly the latter for me. There was a kind of gradient of laziness, to give it a name, though; from me to Sarah, her to Sinéad, then to John and Bill.
We had gone away on weekends and for short holidays together in summer many times since we'd met. This was our first summer in real jobs. Or rather, it was the first summer after we had finished our degrees. I still didn’t have a job. I’d gone back to study English and Spanish. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, I’d discovered a love for the written word, and had decided life would be rewarding even if all you did was read. I was prepared to be poor for this, at least for a few more years—a bit like the narrator of A Prayer for Owen Meany, though there was no way I would cut off my trigger finger for it. Second, I’d decided that Spain was a place that I wanted to become more familiar with, and it was necessary to learn the language in order to do this.
It was Hemmingway who brought the country to my attention. He wrote as if he’d known the language all his life, which of course he didn’t. I never got an idea from his writings when he actually learned it and how much difficulty he’d had in doing so. But I hoped I could also become fluent one day. Third, I hadn’t been sure quite what to do when I finished university. I had gotten used to the quiet life, the one where quality is more important than the standard of living. Time had become more precious to me than money—well, the large amounts of money gotten by working hard for long hours. I didn’t want to give my time to a job I wasn’t really interested in. I’d toyed with the idea of doing a PhD, but had decided against it. The first years might be light on work, but the long year or more of writing up the thesis would be unbearable. I'd only have time to read literature concerning my project, and I'd probably end up no more ready for work or employable than I already was, or would be with a second degree.
The others had real jobs. Sarah worked at Proctor and Gamble, doing statistics of medical experiments and tests. Sinéad worked for an environmental impact consultancy, a recently created company called EnviroSol. John had got a job with the Central Fisheries Board, somewhere a high percentage of Zoology and Environmental Biology graduates ended up, since it was one of the few places where there were any jobs going. Bill worked as a sales rep for a company that sold medical supplies. He liked to say he was a travelling salesman, and I suppose you could call it that, because he did a hell of a lot of travelling, up and down the country week in, week out. Luckily, he liked to drive, and was an expert in living out of a suitcase.
So this was the first time the others had two weeks holiday to spare in the summer, and they’d decided to stay in Ireland for some of it and we’d spend a long weekend on the west coast together.  


 MB:To find out more about this talented writer and to engage with him about his work, you will find David at any of the links below. The links will also take you to where you can purchase this book and find out what happens to Derek. It only remains for me to thank David for joining me today and to wish him all the best with Five Days On Ballyboy Beach, no doubts it will be a great hit with his readers.










Wednesday, 17 September 2014

A Mental Takeover


When you take time off from your daily writing schedule to attend to other hobbies you have, be it gardening, scuba-diving, whatever, do you switch off truthfully from your writing persona?  I have been wondering about this lately because my hobbies outside of my writing are suffering big time. Now that I think of it, it is my writing life that is impacting on my hobbies. It has always been like this I know but ah, it’s got out of hand I tell you.
I walk in the mornings, and it is my chance to think and get my thoughts in order. I plan my day and think about family stuff and then without realising it I am thinking about the story I have not finished and my characters are talking to me. The plan for the day is pushed aside. I sometimes take my mp3 and listen to a mix of music and hey, presto, certain lyrics hit me that would make great titles for a novel. I can’t listen to a song without analysing the words.
Even when I am with friends chatting and having a good laugh, something that is said, gets stored in my head for future use in a story. Or I wonder what if, when I notice another event happening nearby in the café we are sitting in. It’s not that I am not paying attention when I’m with my friends or family, it’s that my head is storing all this information and I cannot allow it to be wasted. 
Going to the cinema, another thing I like to do. Yet I’m sitting there and mentally I am editing the film. Making suggestions to what they should have done, all in my head of course.

So my dear friends, any tips for me on a past-time that I can enjoy without my writing life butting in and jeopardising it?