Category: Short Stories

New Year … New Projects!

On By TomIn Achievement, General, Insight, Novel, Review, Short Stories15 Comments

HF - 20

A location which will be recreated in my stories for young children.

Many writers enjoy the feeling of a new year, because it feels like a natural time to get fresh projects underway. I am one such writer.
For me, I believe 2014 was a successful year for my writing, so I’m going to push myself harder this year. I’ve already started.

Two days ago I updated the front end (sample pages) of all of my eBooks to give excerpts of recent reviews, so that they are all live and updated for the benefit of prospective readers.

Today, I updated the information on several sections of my author website: http://www.tombensonauthor.com

Although I have a ‘coming-of-age’ novel already well underway, I am intending to write two sequels to other books, and I’d like to compile an anthology of military short stories.

My greatest self-imposed challenge is to create ‘Countryside Tales’, a series of stories for young children. As I write, I have already created the main human and animal characters, plus I’ve drawn a map of their environment. I have three authors in mind for when I require guidance as to whether or not I’ve got it right.

I’m intending to produce my own covers, but for now at least I am not using illustrations. I toyed with the idea of producing my own illustrations, but they are time-consuming to get right and to resize for an e-Reader. Apart from those points, I believe that I am capable of creating sufficient imagery within my words.

I will be making more of an effort to check out my fellow bloggers, so I’ll have to come up with a routine, because sporadic visits don’t seem to work well.
As always, thank you for checking out my scribbled thoughts.

A Taste of Honey – published

On By TomIn Achievement, General, Insight, Novel, Poetry, Review, Short Stories10 Comments

atasteofhoney(1)Having already produced three novels and two collections of short stories, I’ve learned that it takes several drafts and many days and months of work to produce something close to a good story. That is vital to me.

I believe that the most important thing I’ve learned has come from reviews of my work. Judging from sales figures and comments I started to appreciate where my audience wanted to be taken.

In my novel writing, I started with Ten Days in Panama (a romance-based thriller). Next I tried more action with Beyond The Law (a crime-based thriller). My third project was experimental. I aimed to tie together a travel guide and story in Amsterdam Calling (a psychological thriller).

Each of my forays into the thriller genre have led to me tackling different sub-categories and this next one is different again.

A Taste of Honey is essentially a one-woman fight against evil. The evil in question consists of more than one perpetrator, so the heroine has to stay one step ahead of the law. Anyone who has read my novels or short stories will be acquainted with my style and desire to see justice.

Honey dishes out that justice in spades.

The story is set in the USA so it is no accident that I’ve spent many hours attempting to dig out the British English and replace it with a language that our American cousins would feel more at home reading. I don’t believe the reading experience is spoiled for the British reader, but I’ve no doubt I’ll find out soon enough.

From idea to publication has taken four months, so has that time scale created any issues?

It has created issues, if I was to say that I’ve hardly been near this blog, or anybody else’s blog. I devoted my time, day and night to this story. The final version is the sixth draft although I feel sure that I could have spent more time and refined it further. There comes a point when we have to say, okay the job is done.

If you do decide to try my latest novel, please consider leaving a review. I’ve taken the precaution of giving the story the option of a sequel, but a sequel will be dependent on how Honey’s introduction goes with readers.

In 2015 I will be producing a sequel to Beyond The Law.
I am now going to catch up with some blogs before I settle down to my next story. As always, thank you for reading and remember, comments are always welcome.