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How do you make Money

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How do you make money? For years people have said you should write what you know. I don’t know how to murder someone. I have never used a gun, where you stab someone with a knife to kill them eludes me. Poisons are messy chemicals. Though I have met many people who have murdered others. Years ago growing up in Birmingham England there was a very famous murder. A young girl staying at the YWCA was killed. Her body cut up and displayed as though it was in butchers shop. The city went into panic mode until the murderer was caught. I was a friend of the pathologist son and heard all the gory details. The father of a school friend was arrested, tried and convicted of murdering four people. We were both twelve years old. When told he began to shake then bust into tears. His stern, uncompassionate grandfather gave him a backhanded slap. Then told him to grow up he wasn’t a child anymore. He never recovered from that ordeal and became a hermit in the Welsh mountains. Dying a f
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Understand me – I’m a Writer

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Writers have rituals. Charles Dickens would walk around his house, or take long walks at night. Alfred Lord Tennyson would walk with his son saying his latest poem out loud. This is something those who are not creative do not understand. To them the writer is procrastinating, lazy, or worse playing games. That is not true. The creative process just doesn’t happen it takes time for the brain to work out what to put on the paper. Inspiration comes at anytime not when you try to recall it. All writers have had writer’s block. The mind is closed to anything creative. Therefore the frustrated writer must do things that bring the inspiration to the forefront. This is when the writer is misunderstood. As a spouse/partner of the writer it is their job to assist not nag the creative genius. How you may ask? First make sure there are no distractions, such as children, and pets. They make the best reason for a writer to find an excuse not to write. The environment for a writer is important.
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What behind the Picture?

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Sorting through the family photos can be an enjoyable experience. There will be those moments when reflecting on the picture we remember sad moments. After my mothers death I asked for one thing, the family photos. For what reason I never really thought. Maybe to hide the embarrassing ones of me dressed as a little girl called Monica for a fancy dress competition. Don’t think I won. There was one photo I knew on what day it was taken even though it was torn at the edges. June 3 rd 1953, the day the Queen was crowned. Our street had a party for the children inside some one house. Sandwiches, cake, ice cream and jelly would have been the menu. It was after all just after the Second World War and the rationing of food was coming to an end. I look at the picture and wonder what happened to the others who sat down at the tables. I grew up with them, many I played Cowboys and Indians. I think I was always an Indian. Okay, I like the feather hat. With a few of them I played doctors and
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Writer’s Dilemma

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The book is finished and has even been edited by a professional editor. Those who have read it, and some are English academics tell me it is very good. So why hasn’t it sold? Do I need to revisit and re-edit? I took several books off the shelf on ‘editing your work’. They all seem so broad in suggestions as to what I might need to do. Of course there is always the reader critic who also happens to be an editor. The problem like so many today is my lack of cash. This is my dilemma and like all problems I sit and mull over looking for the best solution. I will read again Michael Seidman book “The Complete Guide to Editing Your Fiction.” If my memory serves me well I didn’t really find it helpful the first time because I had already had the book edited and there seem nothing wrong with it. Maybe I should look for over long sentences. My protagonist is a very likable young man; he does have extra baggage with his very large family. The sub plot carries the story along
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Readers Understood

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A presenter must always be aware of the type of people in the audience. Each person listens and learns differently. As writers do we ever consider the reader in the same way? What we write must be of interest to the reader or they won’t bother to read it. How many times have you started to read a book only to put down after a few pages? Never to pick the book up again and to disregard the authors other books. I analyzed three books I started but gave up on and found the writers hadn’t taken into considered the type of person I was. The first type of person we must consider is the ‘what in if for me’. The reader needs to get something out of the book without too much hard work. The writer must give the reader a reason to continue reading. In the mystery writing genre this can be accomplished by holding back a secret only to hint at what it is to the reader. They will continue to turn pages to find out the answer. Remember it has to be something worthwhile rather than a red herr
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Star Struck

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I have never been a star struck person for me they are just human being who have had the luck and in some case the talent to become famous. After all we all started the same way out of the womb of our mothers. Some may have arrived in privileged surroundings but they are no better than you or I. I remember the staff at Goldman Sachs when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger visited the office. Those middle-aged ladies were acting as though they were thirteen and Justin Beiber had arrived. I continued to work ignoring a man who has since left the state of California in a mess. My instinct was right and I still believe he needs acting lessons. So you will be surprised to know I was once star struck. I had just finished the Vogue cover shoot with photographer David Bailey. It was David who in the nineteen sixties made people like Twiggy famous. We had agreed to work on a Japanese advertisement reminiscent of Curt Jurgens in The Blue Angel. I never saw the finished product but I p
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Mythological Agent

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Like so many authors I am in search of an agent. I had one, a brilliant one based in London with the William Morris Agency. Then they closed the agency in London and Steve Kenis started his own agency without a literary department. So my journey began. First I asked friends who write and several came up with good ideas. Willard Hope suggested I looked under a rock then he had just lost his agent in a very nasty divorce. His wife was his agent had run off with a very young ghost-writer from Philadelphia. Other writer friends recommended I send out query letters. So I did and found most went to the black bin filing cabinet beneath the desk. I needed to be creative and catch the attention of an agent who has the same taste as myself. I placed Madama Butterfly by Puccini in the CD player and let the music wash over my tense body. The tension faded and I began to be inspired only it wasn’t for an agent. An idea for a new book fizzled inside my head. I wrote the idea down k
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