Category Archives: Cerberus

Updates about Cerberus series of novels, featuring mind reading Detective Paul Calvin

Cerberus

Inspiration comes from odd times and places #WritersBlock


What do you call it when you know where a story has to go, but aren’t quite sure how to get there? My Timelines are great at framing the content of a narrative, but quite often I get stuck on the details.

For example; in ‘A falling of Angels’ my lead character gets tied up rescuing a couple of half wild children while trying to solve a gangland crime no one else seems bothered about. Evidence is in short supply, and even his special abilities are no help. To simply dismiss it and move on leaves a stray storyline. I hate unresolved plot details, and couldn’t leave the loose end hanging. Loose ends annoy me.

Unfortunately at these times, inspiration is so often in short supply, and I end up mooning about trying to prise the narrative loose by force, which rarely works. Nothing shifts the logjam. Weeks go by without significant progress. I find myself rewriting whole sections prior to the story blockage, tidying up sentences, chopping paragraphs and doing general housekeeping on the narrative. It’s like a wall you can peer over and see the end of your tale, but can’t see the vital literary devices in between. The angles are all wrong. Like a map of your destination which doesn’t include directions from the town you’re starting at, it frustrates.

Books on writing style don’t help; they’re too general. Research and experience can only take you so far. The song has stopped, the choir has faltered to an embarrassed silence, and no-one seems sure where to pick up the chorus.

At times like these I usually dig out the cook books, do the chores, walk the dog, stare at the horizon, bake bread (Always a good one), but this time round the break came on Monday when Angie was reading me a piece on story telling and the importance of narrative from one of Daniel H Pinks self help series “Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future”. I don’t generally read self help books myself, they’re too full of stuff I already seem to know. However, Angie likes them. So for the sake of a quiet life I do the old nod and smile. She even let me stop her and illustrate the technique she was telling me about, and how widespread its use is in advertising and marketing. While I was doing this, a stray thought kicked off about how to bodge two plot lines into a seamless whole. Completely out of context, off the wall, but I suddenly had a vision of how difficult it would be to beat up someone who knows exactly where the punch is coming from, and is quick enough to dodge. From there the idea branched back to a couple of other odd story items, and all of a sudden the choir has found the page, and there’s the door in the wall I was looking for. Wide open. Bing! Just like magic.

Now the way is clear, all I have to do is write it.

Cerberus

Old text in new stories #WritersBlock


I’ve been digging through all the odd ideas I’ve jotted down for the Cerberus volume ‘A falling of Angels’ and rediscovered this fragment, ostensibly written on an ageing ThinkPad 600E in 2009. At least that’s what the file creation date originally told me. With the feeling it began life even earlier, I took a deeper look at the content creation details in file properties which gave me an even earlier date. 2006. Good grief.

“You want?” The piercing punctuated pusher was high on her own merchandise, pinpoint pupils and twitchy as a cat on fire.
“Yeah! You got?” In the noise of the crowded bar they both had to shout to hear each other. By gestures she got him to follow her out into the cooler night. He started to sweat as the cool air hit his skin under his leather coat and stab resistant shirt. She beckoned him into a doorways shadow, away from the watchful eyes of CCTV.
“Switch.” He tried to act cool. How was this supposed to go?
“Oo, gonna cost yo’ baby. Cool nineyfivehunnerd.” Her tone was mocking. All of fifteen years of age. He felt suddenly very old.
“What do I get?”
“Y’all see when yo’ git it.” A flash of an urchin grin as she stuck out her new model cred tab. “C’mon hunky, gimme.” She eagerly ran a studded tongue over black tinted lips, iridescent violet hair sparkling in reflected streetlight.
“’kay.” A blue spark of laser light flickered and the deal was done.


It has rhythm, cadence, tension, and although it’s a bit pulp fictionish, the text has a good feel. Now all I have to do is bolt it into the current story structure.

Cerberus

Head of the Beast proof copy arrived today #SelfPublishing


Took a walk down to the post boxes today and found, joy of joys, that the proof paperback copy of Head of the Beast had arrived. 152 pages. 25 chapters. 70,000 words. In real terms looking terribly small, and feeling very light considering its length. My baby. Fruit of my over active imaginings. Head of the beast proof copy
It’s an odd sensation, holding the results of all that hard work and finding the result so small. Overall? I’m very pleased with the starkness of the look, although I might think about textured or matte covers in future as they don’t get quite so easily marred by every sweaty fingerprint. Perfect? No. Reading through, I can see ‘improvements’ to be made, but that’s just me. There has to be a point at which your baby bird has to leave the nest and try to fly.

I’ll proof it over the next few days and see how I feel about approving the distribution then.

Cerberus

Head of the Beast now available for the Nook


Another day, another milestone. Head of the Beast featuring mind reading detective Paul Calvin is now available and listed for the Barnes and Noble Nook.

Two days off from the day job, and I’ll have an explore at getting it listed for the Kobo eBook reader. Just awaiting my proof copy of the paperback to approve for distribution on Amazon and the rest of the mainstream online booksellers.

Cerberus

Head of the Beast is on iBookstore


Am feeling very chipper right this moment. Head of the Beast is now available on iBookstore, although the only way anyone can access it is with an Apple mobile device, I don’t really care. The simple fact that it has successfully leapt all the right hoops for iPads and suchlike is more than enough for me. The Nook version will be ready shortly, as it is still listed as ‘pending’. Had a little celebratory punching of air, and treated myself to a Martini with a twist. Angie said she was ‘very proud’ of me. Nice to have something new in the marketplace. There’s always a little buzz about it.

At work last week, I’d just settled in to an evening shift when my boss walked into the room to introduce one of the new volunteers I’d be working with. Ellen made me laugh when she said to our new volunteer. “This is Martyn – he’s famous.”
“Oh, really?” Said the volunteer as I cracked up laughing.
“I write. I’ve got a new book out.” I explained. “This is the day job.” Then we all had another good laugh about it.

Famous? I think I’d settle for better sales figures, but quite frankly I’m not too worried.

As well as working on ‘A falling of Angels’ the next in the Cerberus series, I’ve just started a new project, which will probably get released as a freebie novella when I’m happy with it. The working title is a bit of a giveaway, but it’s set at the height of the ‘Association’ worlds timeline which follows on from the “Stars” trilogy when that morphs into the next series, which is only in fragmented note form at present, but has the working title “Earth’s Night”.

Cerberus, General musings, Memories

Ploughing on with the next volume


I’m pushing on with the next volume of the Cerberus series, specifically the fallout from a gangland killing from my opening of ‘A falling of Angels’. Getting a volume out in the public domain always leaves me with the need to do more. My attitude is, “Okay, that’s done. What’s next?”

As I was driving in to work, I was going through some of the ideas for ‘falling’, and have been taking a stroll down a rather shadowy memory lane. Well, not so much lane as dark alley. Drawing on my own brush with motorcycle gang culture, back in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Those three or four years were crazy days, and some of the people I rubbed shoulders with back then still provide me with useful material. Not that I’ll ever name names, times, dates and places.

Loyalties, once given, should not be withdrawn without serious provocation or penalty. That was the core of the code I lived by. Betrayal was considered the worst of crimes against your chosen peer group. The rule is that you don’t grass. Ever. What happens doesn’t get discussed outside your group. Exile or death are the penalties. Omerta rules. That was the zeitgeist, and I got to see it up close and personal, enough to understand it well. Observed in the flesh, without any rose tinting of glasses.

At the time I recall reading Hunter S Thompson’s “Hells Angels”, but the reality was never quite as he made it sound. Not that I ever had much first hand contact with real, full patch chapter members, although I had a nodding acquaintance with a couple. Some days were fun. A hell of a lot of fun. The parties were almost legendary. We got stoned, smoked and drank a lot. We built and rebuilt motorcycles. I got the reputation for being ‘mad’, although no-one would ever explain why. I was a positive pussycat compared to most of my contemporaries. Some of whom would beat up on people for a word out of place. Sometimes for no reason at all, just for the hell of it.

In the end I simply walked away from it and kept on walking, but the fascination of ‘the life’ as we referred to it back then, remains with me. The casual, almost blasé attitude to sex, violence and illicit substances, which I never really shared. The heavy metal music which sometimes still touches an amused nerve. The sheer camaraderie and non-judgmental brotherhood of it all. The two minor gang wars witnessed from the sidelines. Eighteen friends and boon companions dead in five short years to drunk driving, accident, one murder, and two suicides. You might say it got a little rough for a while.

A couple of decades ago I toyed with the idea of writing down my experiences, and planned a memoir with the working title “Black leather, red blood”, but in the end decided not to. Time has degraded my memory of the events, and after thirty plus years I don’t trust memory alone except for the broadest of brushstrokes. Most of my notes got burned or lost, and we all have to move on. Perhaps it’s better this way.

Cerberus

Another day, another rejection slip


Over three months after submission, Harper Voyager have finally said a polite ‘No, not our thing’. This was not unexpected, as if a publisher is interested, they’re usually first out of the trap to contact you. To be honest, I saw the missive header as it dropped into my inbox when I logged on, and my reaction was simply ‘Meh’.

In the past I’ve had varying degrees of reaction to rejections, from in my youth that my work is no good and never will be, to nowadays, when my critical skills are a bit more fine tuned, and my reactions more nuanced. It just means they’ve made a commercial decision that it wasn’t right for their marketplace. Wherever that may be. I’d already come to that conclusion, and am moving on, not taking it personally, and generally getting on with life, when previously I’ve curled into a hypersensitive ball to cry. Maybe I’m developing a thick skin in my dotage.

‘Head of the Beast’ is in print and eBook already in self publish format. If I could bring the price down further, I would. However, having spent several years on the project already, I’m not inclined to give my stuff away. The eBook is just over five bucks with tax, or three pounds forty nine in pounds sterling, which I think is fair. The paperback and hardbacks unfortunately are more expensive, but that’s the price of print to order services. I don’t make much more than a buck fifty royalty per item.

Harper vector may not like what I sent them, but honestly speaking, I’ve made a number of revisions since I first submitted the draft manuscript to them, tightened up the prose, and the end result has merit. How much so, is, like so many other things, purely a matter of opinion. Mine may be biased in my favour, which is hardly a surprise.

Cerberus

Head of the Beast now in print


While Angie was watching various episodes of Miss Marple on NetFlix, the later Geraldine McEwan versions with half the current crop of British character actors in the cast, I was checking and setting up files for publication. After six years of development, I’ve finally decided to put the first episode into the public domain. Hopefully the eBook will be ready for download in ePub format by lunchtime tomorrow.

I’ve decided to go with a plain black cover with white lettering in a courier like font called ‘Chandler42’. The overall effect is quite striking. It also saves time messing around with designs that might end up a bit too blurry at the edges, or even fussy. I’m not a photoshop guru. My skill lies in words. First Edition Paperback is here.

Anyway, that’s enough for one night. I’m too tired and it’s time for bed.

Update lunchtime Monday 7th January; The eBook is now up and running. I got the eBook formatting right this time (fingers crossed) Links will be available on the ‘Published works’ page shortly.

Cerberus

Head of the Beast cover notes


I’ve been wondering about what wording I should use as cover blurb for Head of the Beast, first of the Paul Calvin Novels. After much spirited debate with my muse (Angie, my Wife), we agreed on the following:

“The living shouldn’t talk to the dead. We say too much and know too little.” Runs the gospel according to Nick Calvin, ex Uniform Police Inspector.

The problem is, Nick Calvin has been dead for over seven years. Killed in the line of duty.

The other problem is, his son Paul can now hear him quite clearly. Paul can also hear a lot of other dead people, as well as the thoughts of the living. Having your brain rebuilt by a genius in neural stem cell technology can do that to a man. Which should turn him into some kind of super hero. Only he’s neither super nor hero.

Yet his abilities push him into the very front line against an evil plot. One which threatens to spread mayhem and bloody destruction all through the streets of London. He is also now squarely in the sights of a ruthless Swiss consortium, with designs on the impossible to replicate technology between his ears.

With his wife about to divorce him, and professional disgrace in the offing, this is not how Paul saw his life as a career police officer turning out.

Head of the Beast is the first of the bleakly near – comic tales from the Cerberus Conspiracy series of science fantasy novels.

I think it’s got legs. I really do.

Cerberus

That’s about as much as I’m doing with that one…..


Head of the Beast will be available as soon as I’ve got cover art that I’m happy with. The Header issue has proved insurmountable, and may actually interfere with eBook conversion, so I’ve ditched the headers. The page footers and numbering work fine, with none of the unwelcome surprises upon reopening the document after saving or conversion. 188 172 action and horror packed pages laying the groundwork for the next in the series on the most recent reformat.

First Edition Hardback will be ready in a week, and I’m tempted to go for a plain, textured look for the dust cover. Just authors name and title, with a little blurb and text sample on the back. Paperback edition will follow the same route, and I’ll double check the eBook requirements before submitting to iTunes, Barnes and Noble etc.

All this formatting practice is telling me the limitations of OpenOffice and its weak points, so I can concentrate on the story in future, and not waste so much time on what I feel are purely cosmetic issues.

Cerberus

Publishing, formatting and metadata headaches


Head of the Beast, the Manuscript of the first of the Paul Calvin novels, is almost about as ready as I can make it. Nothing from Harper Vector since acknowledgement of receipt 2nd October 2012, so I’m assuming they don’t want to know. Had they been interested I’d have expected them to be in touch long before now. Quite frankly that nails the lid on mainstream publishers as far as I’m concerned. They’re too rude or ignorant to send out a polite or timely emailed notice of (dis)interest, so I’m no longer interested in them. I will submit no more work to mainstream publishers and agents. Three months per submission? I don’t think so. Are they expecting prospective authors to die of old age before they even look at their work? Not playing that game. I’ve played it for too long with very little to show. No more slush pile. No more hanging around, wasting my hope and effort. Back to the self publishing grindstone. At least I only have myself to blame if my business model falls flat or royalties don’t arrive on time.

There are two remaining major manuscript headaches, formatting and metadata. The formatting, because when an error occurs, I can’t strip out all the unwanted codes, which in turn screw up the formatting; I can’t seem to reformat the page to the correct paper size for publishing, and I’ve read the goddamned Openoffice help file and manual back to front, searching for an answer. Chapter headings won’t stay put. OpenOffice 3.3 is just as bad as Microsoft Word in all its appalling iterations. I may have to cut and paste the raw text into a fresh template and go through the tedious business of inserting new headings, italics, paragraph formats. It’s all so Byzantine and unnecessary. A 70,500 word document is a lot of work to reformat. All over one unassailable code error.

I used to be a confirmed WordPerfect fan for one reason; Reveal Codes. That Alt-F3 hotkey was an absolute lifesaver on long, complicated technical documents when one specific piece of code buried in the text was mucking up the format of a manual or report. Especially when other people had been making their own untracked revisions. These untouchable codes can completely screw up your day and important, time sensitive documentation. Specifically when you’re racing deadlines and need stuff ready for meetings. WordPerfect used to make my working life so simple. Search and replace used to be so easy. When formatting is critical, particularly in OpenOffice 3.3 and Microsoft Word (All versions) one hidden code can ruin a weeks work of crucical revisions. As for Macs, I’ve heard the same things about them, too. That and I’m like most relatively unknown writers – broke. So no money for new software. I’d love a copy, but I don’t have the three hundred dollars after my day job pays the bills.

Have finally cracked the metadata issue, so there is going to be a proper eBook release via Barnes and Noble, iTunes etc. with decent heading and document structure to make navigation an absolute snip for the reader. Also I won’t end up tearing my remaining hair out over multiple distribution rejections. So long as I follow the instructions properly. There’s even a handy dandy little video explaining Metadata.

Update: Have had to reformat a whole new document. All twenty five chapter headings are now firmly ensconced in the headers and footers. Just the italicisation to do tomorrow. Late shift on day job tonight, so I’m going to pack in now, grab a snack and see what tomorrow brings.

Cerberus

More Cerberus cover art


Masks background

Still playing with ideas for cover art for the first in the Cerberus series of novels should Harper Vector not respond positively, and ended up with the above collage built from various components. I’ve gone for heavy on the symbolism this time, hinting strongly at story elements within the first MSS. I’ve tried to convey a sense of being haunted, and a couple of other things which I’m not going to let slip. The three heads are of course a direct reference to the three headed dog who guards the entrance to Hades, but the faces behind the masks have their own meanings. I suppose you could call it art.

Sticking to the black and white colour scheme I’ve adopted for the series, which it seems to work. Well, I like it.

Cerberus

Heads of the beast


Still no word from Harper Vector, not even a “No thank you.” for Heads of the Beast, the first of my Cerberus Conspiracy novels. After two months I’m inclined to think that if they were interested they’d have been in touch before now, so I’m making preparations for my own eBook launch. Some of the base MSS formatting needs a little tweaking, and I’m in the process of editing the original MSS to suit. The cover art idea is good and quite distinctive, so I’ll run it past my in house critic and see what she thinks. Because it will be an eBook to start with, I’ll try the iBookstore and Amazon route at something like $2.50, seeing as Amazon is apparently about to kick out a whole lot of 99 cent titles. Two dollars fifty for seventy thousand words seems pretty fair. I may even earn a few pennies if people like it enough.

There’s the Metadata issue of course, and I’m paying particular attention to that. The collar and cuffs will match, and hopefully I won’t be reduced to tearing out what’s left of my hair like last time. All the document headings are consistent, and I’m not going to try and get tricksy with chapter headings like I’ve done with ‘Stars’.

Cerberus, Stars Trilogy

A few thoughts on book covers


Recently I’ve been messing around with cover art. Thinking about creating something eyecatching which makes a strong visual statement, but isn’t too ‘busy’.

At the book fair last weekend, I was watching what other people were doing as far as cover design is concerned. I was also covertly observing the reactions of would be readers to the artwork on show. I caught a few vague nods of approval at the ‘Stars’ covers, despite it being an unpopular genre with the majority of browsers, and barely suppressed looks of veiled horror at the more ‘crowded’ cover work. Conclusion; the most popular covers seemed to be the simplest. Either text only, or a single strong and pertinent image that attracted the eye without distracting from the contents.

Still struggling with the murder scene for ‘a falling of angels’, and trying to rationalise some of my notes from 2005 and embed them into the Cerberus story arc.

Keeping chipping away at ‘Darkness’ at about 500 words per day, but the story needs expanding. There’s an element missing. Not sure what it is, but I think a revision of the counter plot needs to be done. I’ve killed off the original bad guys, but all I’ve got in their stead are a lot of faceless bureaucrats who are hard to nail down. Very unsatisfying.