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Animals Can Be Great Writing Inspiration

In my series Chronicle of the 12th Realm, one of the main characters — Aaron Abraham — has a cat. His name is Prince and he’s a Siamese. Now, anyone who knows cats will tell you they all have their own personalities, especially Siamese.

I based Prince on our own Siamese, Baxter, who we inherited from one of our daughters. Baxter has had an interesting life: he has lived in Victoria with our daughter, New South Wales with us when she couldn’t have him at her accommodation, back to our daughter, when she first moved to Queensland, then over to Western Australia and now back to us, where hopefully he will see out his retirement years.

He is well travelled and very personable. He communicates ‘humanlike’ and is a real joy to live with. But there is something I only recently discovered; his breeder named him Prince. Even as a kitten, he exuded a regal air. I had published four books of the series before I found this out!

As with all my characters, Prince is grounded in reality. His reactions and his nature are reflections of his real-life model, Baxter. I looked inwardly when writing the scenes where he and Aaron, his human companion, interacted and pondered:

  • What would Baxter do?
  • What would his reaction be in a given situation?

Those who know Baxter and have read my books, see similar interactions between our “Prince” and the one in the series. Great feedback for any author!

Why have a pet in a space story? For thousands of years, humans have needed the companionship of animals and cats have featured greatly in much of our history. In Australia, I have met many people who travel around the country constantly and their animal companions travel with them. Would travelling in space make any real difference? I don’t believe it would.

If you want to meet Baxter/Prince, check out “Chronicle of the 12th Realm”.

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How to Write that Dreaded Book Blurb

Following on from my first blog, I thought I’d give you an insight into how I write my book blurbs.

  • It is NEVER a simple case of write and forget. To have written 90,000 plus words for the book, and now having to capture the essence of that in less than 300, is a HUGE task.
  •  Remember what the purpose of the blurb is. It’s NOT a condensed version of the book. It is simply a very quick overview that asks the reader to investigate further, and then buy the book.

Summarize

I start by summarizing the story. This may take a while — sometimes a few weeks —and I usually end up with well over 1000 words.

Then I ask myself:

  • what have I missed
  • have I captured the true essence of the story
  • does it ‘hook’ the reader

I work on finding those perfect snippets that say “read me”. I usually now have at least three versions to work with.

Workshop

At this stage I hold a workshop, usually with my wife and son; both are great critics and help immensely. Here the old whiteboard rules; we dissect the various themes I have completed and rearrange until we have something we all agree on.

By the time this process is complete, I have something I am happy to show to my advance team. Some of them will have read the manuscript at this stage and given feedback. Establishing an advance team is something I would strongly advise any indie author to do.

Review

Once I have the replies back, I review the feedback and then go through the editing process again, until I am happy with the result. Although the thought of writing the blurb usually has me finding other more important things to do, this process seems to make everything go much smoother.

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Writing That Dreaded Book Blurb

Blurbs… a silly word that makes so many authors turn into a dribbling mess; me included!

I spend months writing the manuscript.

Wait! I hear some cry, you should write the blurb first, then the book. Well, I tried this and it doesn’t work for me.

I edit, rewrite and do this all again, possibly a number of times until I’m happy with the result. Then I send the manuscript to a group of readers I call my advance team. They read, comment and make suggestions. These come back and, once again I need to go through all this to decide if I will use the suggestions made.

I now have a manuscript I’m happy to send to my editing team. For an indie author, the next step is the layout. I used to have my graphic artist do this but I now have a program, Atticus, that I use. This program is so good that within hours, I can have the book sorted, laid out and all the front and back matter added. This is when I need the blurb.

It should be easy, hell I wrote the book! But I now have to write less than 300 words to summarise a book of around 90,000. I know that less is always better if possible, and I need to give a potential reader an indication of the story and pique their desire to read. OMG!

Usually there are a number of versions before I get one I am happy with. Then I call on others to comment. My wife and son critique as well as the advance team. It may mean a number of calls to workshop the wording and imagery. This can take weeks to achieve the result I want, other times it happens very quickly. I also have a couple of readers check the blurb to see if it would convince them to buy the book. After all, this is the purpose of the blurb.