A.S.Chambers - September Roundup

 Greetings everyone and welcome to this September update.

August was an insanely busy month for me as I was out and about at three conventions (Wigan, Lancaster and York). As a result, I decided to take the month off from writing to give myself time to concentrate on the minutiae of organisational tasks that conventions and signings require. 

Well… when I say, “Take the month off,” that might not be entirely true as I started playing with the first case in next year’s Sam Spallucci: Lux AEterna. It’s going to be a belter of an adventure for Sam and will see him travel through a somewhat trippy Alice in Wonderland experience, escorted by a rather familiar and well-loved guide, meeting his all-time television hero whilst getting dragged off on a quest to find Excalibur in the most unlikely of places and going head to head with none other than Lucifer himself. Sam 8 will take place directly after the events of Fury of the Fallen.

Talking of which…

Next week will see me putting the final touches to this year’s outing for Sam. All that’s needed now is for me to enter the two side-cases that my Kickstarter backers chose for Sam and the name of the poor family that meet their demise at the hands of Asmodeus. Once that is done, I’m on to formatting and then publication. All being well, I’m hoping to have things ready to publish in late September with books and rewards going out in early October, a month ahead of what I had originally planned. Once the book has been published, I shall start uploading the Easter Egg videos to my YouTube channel (You can find that here. Why not have a peek at some older videos?) which will contain the shoutouts for my Patrons and the Kickstarter backers that chose those as rewards. All being well the first one (The Case of the Ghostly Guide) should see the light of day in October, with the other three following in consecutive months. The links for the videos will be posted in the Patreon Book Club and in updates on the Kickstarter project as well as in my monthly newsletter, so make sure you have notifications turned on, if necessary and, if you’ve not already subscribed to my newsletter, you can do so here. 

That’s more or less it for now. If you live in the Sheffield area, pop along and see me at Sheffield Comic Con on the 25th of September. It’s always nice to see familiar and friendly faces.

Don’t forget to visit my website www.aschambers.co.uk for more details about my books. 

You can subscribe to my newsletter here for up-to-date details regarding all my writing and appearances.

You can check out my Patreon Book Club for advance screenings of my videos and free books.

Take care and keep looking out for what lurks in the shadows…

A.S.Chambers.

Writing Workshop: Reviewing

     I want to have a little chat this month about reviewing. Reviewing is a crucial part of the writing process. It’s when we routinely sit down and reread what we have already written and should become a part of your daily writing routine. 

Why is it so important? There are two main reasons.

The first is that it helps refresh our memory as to where a story is going. If, before we start our writing for the day, we read through the scene that we wrote the day previous, it gives us a clarity as to what were thinking and helps us remember where the plot was headed and how we were developing the characters. This stops us from throwing in weird random plot changes or character quirks that readers often find off-putting. There is nothing more frustrating when reading a story where a character’s personality does a sudden u-turn or the plot leaps about all over the place. Reviewing can help nip this in the bud right at the beginning of the creative process.

The second is that reviewing plays a role in a constant editing process and therefore makes any large edit later on so much less of a burden. If we review something we wrote 24 hours previous with fresh eyes, we will pick up weird little typos, phrases that we might be overusing, inconsistencies in spellings of names — all that sort of thing. These are the sorts of mistakes which really slow down that large edit when we’ve finished the story at the end of the first draft. If we clear a lot of these annoyances out of the way as we go along, then that large edit becomes far more enjoyable as we are concerned more with polishing the story than locating masses of hidden errors.

I have a lot more of these videos over on my YouTube channel. I also have an active Facebook Page and a Group as well as the obligatory Twitter and Instagram. Should you want to receive monthly updates about my writings and escapades, then you can sign up to my monthly newsletter here. 

You can find more details and links to just about everything I do over at my website: www.aschambers.co.uk. 

Writing Workshop: Be Flexible

So, hands up if you’ve set out on a path to write a particular story in a particular way. You’ve sat down and planned it all out, right to the smallest detail. You’ve micromanaged the interactions of your characters. You’ve set in stone themes that you know need to be explored. Hell, you’ve even got a title and a cover sorted for your grand project.

Then, horror of horrors, your main character goes and does something expected. They fly off piste and find themselves in a situation for which you hadn’t bargained, experiencing emotions that you didn’t realise that they have, hurtling to a conclusion that you didn’t foresee.

What do you do? It is very tempting to try and drag them back to this Magnum Opus that you had planned, to bring them back to the Light and convert them to the one true religion of the way you see their universe running. You can insert twists and turns that will force them to comply with your intentions, making their life hell until they finally bend to your will as their creator.

The problem is, in the long term, it just won’t work. You end up sitting staring at your screen, gawping at the words you have spent the last month frantically typing, trying to bring your story back on track and you come to the devastating realisation that it is utter garbage. In trying to divert the story back to where you want it to go, you have made up unrealistic scenarios, created over-convoluted plot twists and changed your protagonist into a warped and hideous two-dimensional simulacra of what you actually intended them to be. 

And, this is where the dreaded writer’s block sets in. You have dug yourself into a hole and thrown away the shovel. There is no way out. You just sit there and weep.

However, it is all easily avoided. If your story takes a turn that you did not expect, then explore that twist. Never forget that writing is a creative art form. It is not a precise science where an equation states that if you apply one element, another must automatically follow. Let your characters evolve like letting a child grow into their new experiences. Don’t be afraid to play around with new ideas. Write them up, examine them, see if they work. If they’re absolute pants, then save them somewhere and try again to see what else might happen. 

It is crucial to be flexible. In doing so, you will let your story, and indeed your own writing style, evolve in a much more natural way, producing deeper content and far more believable stories.

www.aschambers.co.uk

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