Guest author blog from Miranda Stock........ Author of new exciting supernatural romance Erin
Erin
Erin is the werewolf
Queen of Athol Castle. She has no memories of the events of a few months ago,
where she believed herself to be a psychologist, and met the enigmatic and
charming Conner...
Filtiarn has taken over
Conner’s body once more, and is relishing being in control. Cruel and sensual,
he decides to work on a plan...to take over humanity. He begins a war...of
werewolves against humans. But unknown to him, Conner is fighting against him
within his own body, to set things right, and to bring Erin back from her own
darkness. He tries to undo a great mistake from long ago, using Erin’s famed
sword, Sioctine, as remnants of his own memory come back to him, opening up the
present he now lives in.
At the same time, another
enemy is using the situation to their advantage, following the werewolves at
every turn, threatening to undo everything that Conner is struggling to
obtain...
But will he be able to
bring Erin back from Filtiarn’s grasp, or is it too late? And will he be able
to stop the war against the humans progressing?
And who is threatening to
take over not only the humans, but the werewolves as well?
How To Recycle A Story
As I’ve been
searching through several cool books on Amazon in the last few days, I’ve been
considering something interesting. How do we writers make our stories so
different from other stories before us? Or are we simply recycling them in some
way?
Don’t get me
wrong, nobody is getting accused of plagiarism, don’t panic! I’m thinking of
something different. I remember being told a long time ago at primary school,
by a lovely English teacher, that a story I wrote was very like one she had
seen somewhere in a children’s book. I was quite upset, and pretty threw a
small tantrum, muttering something under my breath. She laughed and told me not
to worry about it, that it was actually a good thing. By copying parts of it
unconsciously, it meant I had read lots of books, the integral part of being a
successful writer.
While that
made me happy that I was well on the way to being the next Stephen King (I
wish!), it made me worry that no-one would ever find my stories interesting if
they had already read it elsewhere in a different form. Surely, I thought, the
point of writing is to aim for a reach that holy grail of writing, the Original
Idea?
At least it is
for me, and maybe it’s a ridiculous thing to aim for. Every time I see a story
that is even slightly like mine in plotline, I have to change my entire
manuscript. I want to have that single book that no-one has read yet, the one
that they read and gasp, “I didn’t even realise how much I wanted to read
this!” But perhaps my books are always going to be a little similar to others,
especially as it slips neatly into the Paranormal Fantasy/Romance genres,
meaning it must have similarities to other books.
But maybe
that’s a good thing? All writers and readers head towards the end of the novel
with two thoughts; to find out what happens, and the unconscious desire to make
the characters come to life. When a reader hits the last page, and nobody has
leapt out brandishing a sword, or sweeping past the flatscreen in their
crinoline dress, they need that feeling again. So they start another book with
similar characters, hoping this might be the one to jumpstart them out from the
pages.
