One Minute Writing Workshop: Planning With A Spreadsheet

 Hello and welcome to this little one-minute writing workshop.

This month, I want to have a little chat about something that I do when planning out a piece of fiction. Using a spreadsheet.

Back in the day, I used to be an avid writer and scribbler of notes. They would contain great ideas and wonderful plot points that I was convinced would create a fantastic story. However, my handwriting is atrocious so, when smartphones came along, I quickly jumped ship to typing things up, meaning that I could spend less time deciphering my scrawl and more time actually writing.

Using a spreadsheet for planning was the next logical step for me.

By putting plot points in individual cells, not only could I read my handwriting, but I could then move those cells around, allowing me to manipulate the plot of my story. There was no tedious re-scribbling or rubbing out, no copying a section and trying to locate the correct space to paste it in. I now just pick up a cell and move it. The plotline of a  story can be changed with ease in a matter of seconds, again allowing more time for writing.

Why not have a go? It could revolutionise how you plot out your stories.

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 advanced screenings of my videos and free books.

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

A.S.Chambers.

Short Story: Test Flight

 Hello and welcome to this month’s short story video.

This time around, it is the turn of Test Flight, a short piece of flash fiction from 2015’s anthology All Things Dark and Dangerous.

Test Flight was the second flash piece that I published in an anthology (Extraction being the first, the year previous). I love really short pieces. I find them a challenge and enjoy getting the word count as low as possible. I think this little chap works and I hope that you enjoy it.

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 advanced screenings of my videos and free books.

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

A.S.Chambers.

Spalluccipedia: Sophia

 Greetings and welcome to this monthly dive into characters, places and themes in the ever-expanding world of my paranormal investigator, Sam Spallucci.

This time around, I want to have a little chat about one of the more curious side characters in my books, Sophia.

Dressed in appearance like a prim and proper librarian, Sophia first turns up in Sam’s world in Sam Spallucci: Ghosts From The Past, where she warns Sam that Wallace is involved with the coming of the Divergence and insists that our hero tries to stop his old university acquaintance. Sam being Sam is never one for having his chain jerked one way and then the other and has a decidedly frosty relationship with this entity as he feels that she is constantly looking down on him and seeing him as beneath her, only there to do what she wants “for the greater good”, so to speak. 

Things certainly come to a head in Sam Spallucci: Troubled Souls when it is revealed that Sophia is, in fact, Alec’s mother, the part human/part angel Eloise and possesses the same aptitude for digging into people’s heads with her psychic capabilities.

I hope you enjoy the short video in which I explain a bit about her origins, how I’ve used her and my thoughts for her future.

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.

A.S.Chambers - February Roundup

 Good morning one and all after what seems to have been an incredibly long January.

Well, the mornings and evenings are starting to get lighter so it’s time for me to start thinking about waking up from hibernation and cracking on with more writing. I always find December and January hard to write in as I’m an early riser, normally up with the sun. So, when the sun decides that it doesn’t want to put in an appearance until gone nine in the morning, that makes my creativity plummet. 

Having said that, I have ventured out of my bear cave from time to time to scribble certain things down and, as a result, Sam Spallucci: Lux Æterna is now about three-fifths complete. So far, I have first drafts of the following cases: The Weird Wonderland; The Zealous Zombies and The Argumentative Archaeologist. Last week I started on number four, The Ridiculous Retreat (although the title may change on that one), with The Crying Crucifix standing in the wings, waiting to see the light (see what I did there…?) as number five. 

The biggest challenge with Lux is that it is now in the same time period as Fallen Angel which is already written, albeit not yet published. As a result, I am frantically noting things down on a wall planner and in a diary to make sure that the correct events happen at the correct time. I’ll probably do a special Spalluccipedia video about this micro-management either later this month or in March. I think you’ll find it fascinating to see how all the stories weave together. Archaeologist alone links into about five other stories. 

More imminently, though, for publication is Out Of The Depths. The Kickstarter for this launches at the end of the month and all Seraph members of my Book Club will receive a signed copy of this new material anthology as part of their membership when it publishes in April. If you’re not a Book Club member, make sure that you sign up for notifications regarding the Kickstarter project. You can do that here.

Before that, I’m looking at publishing the second Macabre Collection in late Feb, early March. Look out for its cover reveal later this month.

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. 

One Minute Workshop: Posture

 Hello and welcome to this little one-minute writing workshop.

It’s quite a short one this time as, quite frankly, the video says it all, but it could be the most important thing that you’re ever told about writing.

When we write, we can become so totally absorbed in our work that we lose track of ourselves. As our hero romps off to battle trolls or our antagonist sits plotting their Machiavellian schemes, we can gradually lose track of how we are sitting here in the real world.  And, quite frankly, this can be disastrous. If we’re not aware of our posture, our writing can take a huge toll on our body: our shoulders will ache, our spine will stiffen and even our leg muscles can seize up. As a result, writing can become physically laborious, tiring and downright painful. When this happens, we end up grumpy and out of sorts. We become over-critical of our work due to our bad temper and we see it as something that requires battling with, rather than enjoying. 

So, as your hero or heroine wanders off into the wide, blue yonder, make time to stop, stretch, get up and move around and give your body some love. Straighten yourself up, unkink those muscles and relax into this hobby or job that you love. With good posture comes great writing!

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 advanced screenings of my videos and free books.

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

A.S.Chambers.

Short Story: Needs Must

 Hello and welcome to this month’s short story video.

This time around, it is the turn of Needs Must, a quirky little tale from 2015’s anthology All Things Dark and Dangerous.

Needs Must tells the story of Odd Bod, a solitary troll who lives down the bottom of a well and has a supply problem. He’s run out of food. Human food. Over the years, humans would come to the well to draw water and he would prey on those unsuspecting souls who did not know of his existence. However, the well has now dried up and Odd Bod needs to go and see what has become of his food source. Unfortunately for him, he encounters a small, red-headed girl.

This has been a firm fan favourite and always raises numerous chuckles when I read it at events and book signings. It remains to this day one of my own favourites, too. I feel I capture Odd Bod perfectly on his climb up the well and eventual… well, I’d better not give any more away right now.

I hope you enjoy it.

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 advanced screenings of my videos and free books.

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

A.S.Chambers.

Spalluccipedia: Asherah's Origins

 Greetings and welcome to this monthly dive into characters, places and themes in the ever-expanding world of my paranormal investigator, Sam Spallucci.

This time around, I want to have a little chat about one of my favourite side characters, the fallen angel Asherah. Ash has cropped up, at the time of writing, three times in Sam’s books. We first hear the click of her killer heels in The Case of the Fastidious Phantom, she is the mysterious benefactor of sociopathic Malcolm Wallace in Ghosts From The Past and she is Sam’s love interest in Fury of the Fallen. Not only this but she and her partner in crime, Asmodeus, have appeared in numerous short stories as well as in the Bobby Normal stories, showing that they are still wreaking their own version of chaos long after Kanor has reduced humanity to a remnant.

I first used Ash in my as-yet-unpublished magnum opus, Fallen Angel. We see how she fell from grace and follow her route towards the events of the Divergence as her path entwines with the story's protagonist Abaddon. The keen-eyed readers out there will probably have noted how there are certain things referenced in the Sam books (especially Fury of the Fallen) which will be scenes from Fallen Angel. Indeed the two books are taking place at the same time, hence the cross-overs.

So, I hope you enjoy the video as I explain Asherah’s origins in my stories and how I pulled on the mythological version, expanding and fleshing out the fallen angel to produce the femme fatale of the Spallucciverse.

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.