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I made a couple of tweets yesterday after doing my regular check of the progress of A Tortured Soul. Normally, after finishing a chapter I make a note of its word count and add it to a spread sheet with the word count of all the other chapters to keep a running total. This is because the document I’m working on contains more than just the story text, so I can’t just use the global word count feature. The tweets were��

This pretty much sums it up. I’ve now completed 20 chapters of A Tortured Soul and at an average of four and a half thousand words per chapter, that takes the word count up to over ninety-eight thousand words. And given that I’ve still got a good portion of the book to write, and even allowing for an editing process where I’ll add a bunch of stuff and delete a bunch of stuff too, this mean that the book will break the one hundred thousand word mark.

And, for me, that will be a first.

The important thing is though, that we really are “nearly there��. Yes, I’ve got a fair bit of writing to do, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for this book. And no, it’s not an oncoming train.

This is a post I made back in June 2010, three years ago. My how time flies.

I read three blog posts recently that peaked my interest and sparked this post. by Ed Magusson pointed me in the direction of by Jane on Dear Author and finally by Jean on All About Romance. The first two talk about the ‘alpha-male��, Ed in ‘real world�� terms and Jane in terms of the romance novel. Jean then discusses heroines in contemporary romance novels.

It’s the two about the romance novel aspect that I’d like to respond to here, primarily because they both sum up my own thoughts on these topics and discuss aspects of character creation that I strive to avoid. I’d like, if I may, to discuss the points raised in the posts and refer them to characters in my own novels.

Let’s start with the boys.

In the past, I’ve avoided referring to my novels as having ‘heroes��, preferring instead to call them ‘male lead characters�� �� very PC of me, I know. But the point I was trying to make in doing that is that I don’t think that my heroes fit the ‘template�� of a romance hero. I �徱���’t think of them as alphas. Of course, to qualify that, you really have to discuss what the term ‘alpha male�� means. Ed does this very well in his post in terms of real people we might meet every day, and under this definition my guys would all class as alpha. In her piece, Jane discusses what alpha has come to mean in the romance genre, and my guys don’t qualify under this definition at all. Why? Because Jane argues that the alphas you find in many romance novels today are “caricatures instead of characters��. She said,

In recent years, however, this reliance on a concept rather than individual traits, has homogenized the hero experience for the reader. Perhaps in an effort to create diversity, authors have tended to over masculinize the hero to the extent that we have caricatures instead of characters for heroes. In recent years,�� I’ve seen the romance alpha hero morph from tall, strong, and commanding to oversized, monstrous, and overbearing.

She then goes on to define aspects of this over-masculinised alpha-male which I’ll simply list here.


Controlling & Possessive
Physically Overpowering
Sexually Proficient
Contradictory
The Diminution of Women
Heroic

I’d have to say that this definition (apart from the last point) fits my antagonists more than it does my heroes �� yes, I said heroes. I’ve dropped that whole ‘male lead�� nonsense.

If we keep this discussion to my novels rather than my shorts, we have five heroes to discuss �� Matt from Reunion, David from ��󲹰����dzٳٱ�’s Secret, Chris from Lost & Found, Adam from Kissed by a Rose, and finally Will from Eternally & Evermore.

CONTROLLING?

So, are any of these five controlling or possessive? In a word, no. Each one of them is desperately in love with his respective heroine but none of them try to control what she does. Matt has no choice. Kelly is actually more successful than him in her business dealings. If anything, from when they meet up again after the titular reunion, Kelly is the one controlling the relationship.

David is in an odd situation from the outset of ��󲹰����dzٳٱ�’s Secret. He’s married to his heroine’s sister �� a situation which is somewhat out of his control. He does, however, manage to manipulate circumstances to his advantage. But making the best of a situation isn’t the same as being controlling, is it?

In Lost & Found it’s Beth’s father who is the controlling and possessive one, not her hero, Chris. And due to his young age and his heroine’s fame, Adam finds himself sweep along by events in Kissed �� although don’t think this makes him a wimp. It doesn’t.

Finally, there’s Will �� who you won’t have met yet as Eternally isn’t released until August. Will is perhaps the strongest of my heroes. He’s a partner in a law firm. He’s decisive. He knows how to take the lead. But controlling? No. Yes, he ‘rescues�� Amy from her situation, but he doesn’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to. No, that’s John’s role. Who’s John? You’ll have to read the book to find out.

OVERPOWERING?

I’m not even going to bother breaking this down. I tend not to do much physical description beyond hair & eye colour or generalities such as “Tall�� or “Burley�� in any case �� I like for the readers to fill in the blanks �� but in my minds eye, each hero sort of looks a bit like me. Maybe an idealised version of me, but me nonetheless. And I’m not prototypical romantic hero. I’m not ‘six foot ten and built like a brick shithouse��. Now, what my readers project on to my heroes I have no control over, but I’ve certainly never used descriptions such as “Club-like manhood��.

SEXUAL GODS?

Okay, so all my guys are good in bed. They’re romantic heroes, so to some extent they have to be. I mean, would my strong, independent heroines want a man who can’t make them scream his name? But in her post Jane talks about how modern alphas have had multiple partners and ruin virgins for all her future partners (not that she’ll have future partners after bedding the alpha).

In Reunion, Matt’s friend comments that the story Matt tells him of how he �徱���’t make it with Kelly when they were teenagers because his was too shy “doesn’t sound like you�� and he makes reference to Matt’s ‘little black book��. So it’s clearly implied that he’s ‘living the single life to the full��. But it’s also been implied he’s been in love and had his heart broken more than once.

��󲹰����dzٳٱ�’s David is married. And before that he was desperately in love with Charlotte��. Beyond that, there’s no discussion of sexual history. And neither is there any discussion of ���Dz���’s Chris�� history �� mind you, Chris and Beth met in an online forum and carried on as cyber-lovers with an ocean between them for over a year, so read into that what you will about Chris�� sexual exploits in the ‘real world��.

In Kissed, Adam is just nineteen �� so how many partners could he have had? Still, what happens between when he arrives at university and when he first meets Chloe do hint that he’s not led a virginal life. Which brings us back to ���ٱ���Բ�������’s Will, who fell in love with Amy at fourteen, bedded her at eighteen, lost her at nineteen, fell in love and married someone else, got divorced and then�� Oh, wait, am I giving away the plot here?

CONTRADICTORY?

The example that Jane gives is this

if the hero should be heroic, shouldn’t he be honourable? shouldn’t he refrain from leading young women into ruin?�� Shouldn’t he have the strength of character to resist temptation that could involve danger to the heroine? Shouldn’t he have the care to protect her from pregnancy and use a condom?

Essentially she’s saying that if an alpha is overpowering, controlling and has multiple partners in the manner that would have a woman branded a slut, isn’t all this at odds with the very idea of him as a romantic hero. Is that the sort of man our heroine would actually want to spend the rest of her life with? And before someone pipes up and says, “You don’t marry alphas�� let me point out that if a Happily Ever After doesn’t mean for the rest of their lives then we need to change the name. Perhaps ��Happy Until the Alpha gets Bored.

I don’t believe that my heroes are contradictory. Matt scarifies everything for Kelly’s happiness. David moves heaven and earth to be with Charlotte and when her secret is finally revealed�� well, he does the honourable thing. Chris crosses the Atlantic just to comfort Beth in her time of greatest need and Adam�� Well, Adam takes everything that Kissed throws at him and still comes out smiling in the end.

What about Will though? Will is interesting in that he rides that fine line. There are times when you will questions his actions. There’s one particular scene where even his best friend questions the way Will taunts his nemesis. But even then, he’s still doing what he thinks is best for Amy. He still puts Amy’s best interests first. So no, not contradictory at all.

THE DIMINUTION OF WOMEN?

This is an interesting one for me. Why? Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a man. A man that has a certain�� shall we say, fondness for the female of this particular species. I’m not ashamed to say that I’m a great admirer of the female form in all it’s shapes and sizes. Well, maybe not all. But the point is that while I find the very diminutive ���������.

Sorry, what was I talking about? Oh, yes, I remember.

Look, Kylie and Kiera Knightly aside, I much prefer a fuller figure. In short, I like boobs and bums. Now there’s a blogpost all of its own. And because I like my real live ladies to have a bit of shape to them, so too with my fictional ladies. No, they’re not of porn star proportions, but you certainly couldn’t describe Kelly, Charlotte, Beth or Chloe as diminutive. Hell, take this line from Kissed�� in reference to Chloe��

The lads�� magazines worshipped her feminine curves�� they had even voted her Britain’s sexiest starlet ahead of her waif-like rivals.

Of course, there has to be an exception and that exception is Amy from Eternally & Evermore. She is described as being “a little too thin��. When this sentiment is expresses, one of the characters responds with “how can you be too thin?�� but there is a reason for Amy’s diminution and its a reason that is central to the plot of the novel.

HEROES?

All in all, my heroes are just that, Heroes. Each one in his own way and each one in a different way. But while Jane bemoans a trend towards a certain type of hero, I hope that I’m able to offer readers a little diversity. Something a little different. Romantic heroes don’t have to be ultra-masculine. But they do have to be somewhat alpha. It’s just that I’d go with Ed’s definition of alpha over the one Jane described. My heroes are ordinary, everyday men because ordinary everyday men can be heroes too.

In the past, I’ve written about who I’d cast in a film version of my novels. JK Rowling famously put forward her ideas of who should play the adults in the Harry Potter films and by and large got her wish. Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith were her first choices to play Snape and McGonagall for example. And it’s claimed that she had an image of Robbie Coltrane in her head when writing Hagrid.

For my part, I’ve ‘cast�� five of my books in the past. You can see my reasons behind the casting of and . And the casting of , and can be found . You’ll notice I gave the lovely Emma Watson a part. (Which isn’t the only thing I’d like to give her, believe me).

But what about my Tutelam Venit series? Who could possibly take on those roles? Well, this is where things could get a little off track. In looking into writing this post, I realised that the ‘cast�� of the series is pretty big.

Take . There are four characters in the prologue and epilogue which is set in the future, although, admittedly, one of them is in a coffin. Then there are five ‘historic characters�� who could appear in flashbacks (as well as two characters from the present as younger versions of themselves). So we’re up to a ‘cast�� of ten even before we look at the main bulk of the story.

That contains seventeen teenagers, fourteen adults (five of which have made appearances in earlier books) and three members of the football team who are named and a couple of other goons who aren’t.

So that’s thirty-four characters from the present day, two of which may feature in flashbacks as younger versions of themselves and two of which appear in the prologue as older versions of themselves, another one character from the future (although, we don’t actually know her identity yet beyond the fact that she’s “Paul’s Wife��), and then five more characters from the past in flashback.

Shit, how did I end up writing so many damn characters?

As for A Tortured Soul by my current reckoning I’m up to twenty-two new characters, thirteen from the first book plus the voice of another character from A Good Man, and know I’ve missed a couple of the list I’m keeping as a guide while I write, plus, I’ve not finished the book yet, or written the prologue or epilogue.

So how many different actors is that altogether? I’ve lost count, hang on��.

It’s 66. Unless my maths is wrong. Which it might be.

Sixty-bloody-six. Well, sod that for a game of soldiers. There’s no way I’m thinking up people to play all those. Tell you what, if you have any suggestions, why not make them in the comment section below. This could be fun actually. Who do you see playing Paul and Clarissa? Or Emily and Grace? Or the Simms twins? Let me know your thoughts. There must loads of young British actors and actress who’d do a good job, like Nicholas Hoult here.

Keep this in mind though. We need to find a spot for the lovely Jenna Louise Coleman. (My current Doctor Who crush).

You know, after I published A Good Man back at the tail end of 2011, I figured that since that book had ‘only�� taken about 12 months to write and edit, I could get the second book in the series finished by the end of 2012. Well, we’re now approaching the end of June 2013 and I still haven’t finished writing the damn thing, let alone editing and polishing it.

So I’m already six months past my self-imposed “none deadline��. Oh well, life goes on.

Which, of course, is part of the problem. Life does go on. And ‘on�� it has been going at a pretty rapid pace.

But, I’m hopeful that things at work and home will calm down somewhat now and I’ll be able to find the energy to get back at it at the pace I had earlier in the year. We all know what hope does, though don’t we?

(Actually, I wrote that last sentence and then googled it. This is what I found in among all the Bible gumph �� “For there is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its root grow old in the earth, and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put out branches like a young plant.�� So there. Hope does something to trees. Not very relevant.)

Apart from all the ‘life�� stuff going on, the problem I’ve been having is that A Tortured Soul is proving quite emotionally draining to write. Which is why I’m finding I simply don’t have the energy for it after long days at work and long evenings at home. I had hoped that the recent holiday I took with the family would give me a chance to write. After all, I always say that writing is my way of relaxing and isn’t relaxing what holidays are for?

But in the end, which would you choose? Writing something emotionally charged and quite draining, or cuddling up on a sofa with your 15 month old daughter and let her sleep on your chest as you read what someone else has spent all their emotional energy writing?

Actually, I downloaded and read through Suzanne Collins�� The Hunger Games Trilogy during that holiday and I have to say that I enjoyed it �� at first.

The first book was stunning. It grabbed hold of me pretty much immediately and wouldn’t let go. the characters were well defined and grew throughout the book, and the plot was fast paced and different enough from anything I’d read before to hold my interest. And, of course, it was brilliantly imaginative.

The second book, Catching Fire, held the attention that the first had grabbed, expanding the universe of the story somewhat and adding some political elements to the story that made me eager to read the final book. Although, I have to say, I hated the ending of Catching Fire. Damn cliff-hangers.

Now, I’m all for cliff-hangers within a given book �� particularly as an end-of-chapter device �� as long as they are not overly used because then the dramatic effect of them is dampened. But to use one at the end of a book? Hell, if I’d have read Catching Fire when first published and had to wait god knows how long (it was actually the best part of a year) to read what happened next? I’d have been furious.

But, I �徱���’t read it at publication and I was able to carry straight on with Mockingjay and�� I was disappointed. The book held so much promise from the start, through the middle portions, but never really delivered. And the ending was a real let down �� almost a ‘non-ending��. Such a shame to end the series that way. I can understand why Collins ended it the way she did �� I just don’t agree with how she did and would have done it differently myself. But it wasn’t my book.

So, back to my book. I’m making progress. Slow progress, admittedly, but progress nevertheless. I’m in the ‘home straight�� so to speak. I have a number of important things left to happen, then I can look to round of the book in what I hope will be a satisfying way that still leaves you wanting to read the third.

This isn’t a writing related post. In fact, it couldn’t be more unrelated to writing. But this past weekend I visited the local garden centre with my family and we found a display of Bonsai trees on show. Evidently they were there to be judged by the local Bonsai society. Bonsai growing is something I’ve always been interested in, but never had the time to really have a good crack at. I guess it appeals to the meticulous side of me �� the side that might spend hours agonising over using the right word in a sentence or researching something seemingly trivial before putting it into a story.

So, naturally, took some pictures and had a long chat with some of the growers.

A couple if these trees are more than fifty years old. I wanted to ask the owner how much he thought that particular tree would be worth on the open market, but �徱���’t think it would be polite to.

This one is a favourite of mine. I love the way the trunk is split open yet it keep son going, and the fact that it is in flower..

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I’d like to officially deny the rumours that are not whirling around at present. I’m not dead. I’ve not given up writing. I’m not in hospital with some horrific illness or as the result of an epic car crash or some other such tragic accident.

Truth is, and I know this’ll sound like I’m repeating myself, it’s just that my day-to-day life has gotten really busy again and my writing, website and blog has had to take a back seat. Again.

It’s really frustrating actually. Especially when you are ‘on a roll�� with a project in the way that I was with A Tortured Soul. You ‘lose the flow�� to some extent when you’re forced to put it aside for a time and it takes a huge effort to get back into the mentality needed to pick it up again. But, I’m hoping that now the summer is here that’s exactly what I’ll be able to do.

Of course, I’m hoping the British Summer this year will contain some actual sun and not much rain, so that shows how realistic my hopes are, doesn’t it.

It’s a well used cliché that the film or television adaptation is never as good as the book. The images put up there on screen by the film-makers are not a match for your imagination and inevitably things from the book get missed out in the transfer to the screen.

Take Harry Potter, for example. While the majority of the adult casting was pretty much spot on, but can you honestly say that the boy you pictured when you first read the first book was a young Daniel Radcliff? Alan Rickman as Snape? Yeah. Dame Maggie Smith as McGonagall? Pretty good. That CGI thing as Dobby? Not really. And speaking of Dobby (**SPOILER ALERT**) his sacrifice in book seven, which really marks the turning point not just of the book, but of the whole series, is made all the more poignant and hard-hitting because he’d been a loveably annoying little shit in pretty much every book from the second one onwards. And yet, in the film series, his death doesn’t carry the same weight, in my opinion, because we hadn’t seen him in films 3, 4, 5, or 6.

But I digress.

The point of this post is this, on Monday night, while watching episode 4 of series 3 of Game of Thrones, I was not only surprised by the ending to the episode, but also left thinking “How could George RR Martin have possibly delivered that surprise as effectively as they just have on the screen?��

I’m talking, of course, (**SPOLIER ALERT**) about the revelation that Daenerys understood everything that the slave trader had been saying ever since she met him.

Now, I’m not stupid. It was pretty obvious even to me that there was no way that she would just ‘give away�� one of her dragons, and it was pretty obvious that said dragon would turn on the slaver and return to (the very lovely) Dany. But sudden speaking in Old Valyrian was a genuine surprise to me.

It suddenly made sense why the film makers had given us subtitles and a verbal translation by the slave girl. In fact, because of the dual translation, in retrospect, it should of been obvious that she understood the language and was playing ignorant. But maybe I am stupid, because I �徱���’t twig it until that moment of the reveal.

Now, why do I think it would have been hard to keep that a surprise in the book? Well, first off, I haven’t read “A Storm of Swords�� yet, I’m still halfway through “A Clash of Kings��, so maybe what I’m about to say isn’t valid, but up to the point I’ve read, every time the story switches to the goings on across the Narrow Sea, Daenerys has been the chapter’s POV character. So how the hell do you keep the secret that she understands what’s being said and have the revelation that she does be a surprise, if you’re telling the story from her point of view?

I guess the answer would be to use a different POV character. Ser Jorah for example. (Who else thinks Iain Glen is great in GoT, BTW? What a voice!)

I don’t know if this is how GRRM handles it, or even if he doesn’t treat it as a secret/revelation at all, because, like I said, I haven’t read that book yet. Maybe this is just a way for the film-makers to end episode 4 with a bang. Which they certainly did.

I’m not saying that the adaptation is better than the book in this instance, (I only know of one time that’s happened �� The Shawshank Redemption) But I am saying that I just found this particular revelation to be one that film would be capable of handling better than the written word.

Anyway, in case you have no idea what I was talking about, here is the scene, courtesy of You Tube. It’s simply brilliant.

This is not the least bit related to A Tortured Soul, or any of my other writing, but this past weekend I visited the very beautiful in Buckinghamshire with my family. It’s a property, and this was a ‘free�� weekend. It normally would have cost us £30 to get in but because they were having a membership recruitment drive, it was free!

Always good to get something for nothing in my view.

It was a lovely day, quite warm but not too hot. Perfect in fact for wandering around a proper English Garden. Anyway, here are a few of the photos I took.

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On top of the walk around the gardens, my son got very excited because he saw FIVE Ferraris on the journey there/back. Probably due the proximity of the gardens to Silverstone. Hell, we passed Silverstone’s entrance on the way back, which he also got very excited about. However, one of the said Ferraris was blue. Which is just wrong. Ferraris should be red, black or yellow, but never blue. It was a very nice blue, but it’s still wrong.

Whilst I’m not exactly the stat-hound that I once was, I do still take an interest in the number of ‘hits�� my website gets and where those hits are coming from. A couple of weeks ago I saw quite a ‘spike�� in hits and they all seemed to have come from the same place. And that place was a blog posting by a fellow British Author, Bradley Stoke.

And although I’m couple of weeks late in expressing my thanks to Bradley for the he published (for the same reasons stated in Monday’s post), it’s still better late then never, isn’t that what they say?

As I said, Bradley is a fellow Brit and he had work published at Ruthie’s Club. He is also, unusually, a in South Gloucestershire and I think I’ve actually been there once. Mrs Nobbs once lived in Gloucester and I’m sure we went for lunch in a pub in Bradley Stoke once.

I digress.

Bradley has his own and you can find his stories on , his site and on . A couple of Bradley’s more recent works have found their way onto my ‘to read�� list (which is a looong list right now) �� I’m particularly looking forward to reading “No Future�� when he’s finished publishing it. (I never �� okay, very rarely �� read works that are ‘in progress��. I much prefer completed books. I must admit though to not having checked back with “No Future�� in the past few weeks to see if it is complete yet, but I’m hoping it’s soon)

Bradley’s work is a little more ‘out there�� than mine. I suppose you could classify what I write as fairly ‘vanilla�� or ‘straight�� fiction, whereas Bradley’s settings are a little more unusual and ambitious. “No Future�� for example is��

“…a future history of England over the Twenty-First Century and into the next. It is a multi-threaded narrative that travels from place-to-place, succeeds from year-to-year, and passes from one person to another. England’s green and pleasant land is visited by famine, plague, war and pestilence. Governments come and go. The ocean levels inexorably rise. International relations worsen. And the English people stumble through the chaos as best they can.��

Damn! One can only marvel at the ambition of that and the imagination that it would require to write it (not to mention the level of disciple required). Like I said, I’m looking forward to its completion so I can read it.

So, Bradley Stoke, not just a town in the South of England, but an author worth reading too.

Easter was at a funny time this year, I thought, sitting as it did at the end of March. For me, Easter signifies the busiest period of my working year, and this year was no exception. But usually Easter is a break from the madness �� calm before the storm or a chance to relax afterwards �� but this year, not so much.

March 31st is the end of my firm’s financial year, so the week or so prior to it and the couple of weeks after are, as you can imagine, pretty busy for me in the accounts department. The end of March also marks the end of the Payroll year (the tax year actually ends on April 5th, but my firm’s last pay date is March 28th). And that just adds to the general workload.

And, usually, I get a break before this busy period with a early Easter or after it with a late Easter. This year though, Easter came smack bang in the middle of it all, and any chance I had to relax and benefit from the break was nullified.

So, whereas one might have expected the Easter break to be a chance for me to crack on and do some serious writing, instead I’ve done very, very little as all my energies have been used up at work and I’ve been too tired to get my mind in gear in the evenings.

Still, the busy period seems to be over now and I’m looking forward to getting back into the writing groove, so to speak. I just hope it doesn’t take too long to find it again.