Middle Grade Settings: An Introduction Having photos in front of you can help you write about your settings I’m going to make a confession. Settings are not something I often spend time planning. Perhaps my stories are the poorer for it, but the settings come as I’m writing or editing. The Glass Room, in Taking Wing, is not something I planned before I started writing. Personally, I’m a very visual writer, seeing my characters as though they are a video in my head, and I write what I see. As such, the setting just happens! There are benefits and drawbacks to this. The main benefit is that the writing process is more interesting. Not everything is set, and my story can still give me surprises. The drawback is that, similar to AI, I cannot know that I’m not stealing settings from films and books I’ve seen/read previously. I certainly don’t mean to plagiarise but the concern is a real one! With that in mind, I have started to at least have a vague idea of my settings before I start t...
Happy New Year, Readers!
Because we're in a new year, I'm trying to be super-organised. There are so many things going on, I have to keep tabs on everything! So here's what is planned...
This year for #HistFicThursdays, I am opening up a space every month for a fellow Historical Fiction writer to share a guest post. This opportunity is open on a first-come-first-serve basis, so please get in touch if you are interested in having a guest post.
Each month, there will also be a free historical short story or poem, across a broad range of times and genres. There'll be one or two book tour posts, too, and I'm also aiming to write a post about the inspirations for aspects of different books. So, if it all goes according to plan, it will be a very busy year of #HistFicThursdays!
To start off the inspirational posts, here's a quick introduction to my new release. It's not Historical Fiction, but it is all about the inspiration for the story I wrote in NaNoWriMo last year.
Meet the Stempster Stones!
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| The Stempster Dragon |
While clearing a pile of stones which had been dug out of the garden, I kept one or two aside because they had interesting patterns or shapes on them. After swilling them in water and applying a lot of gentle brushing, shapes began to appear. I contacted Treasure Trove Scotland who, very nicely, told me the human marks on the stone were not enough to suggest it had any real archaeological value. That said, I couldn't stop seeing shapes in them, so Dad suggested I wrote a book encouraging young adventurers to spot these patterns, whether they were ancient marks or nature's artistry.
So that was exactly what I did! Pictures in Stone: Early Artists or Natural Wonders? launched yesterday. It's full of fun and creative challenges and activities for young archaeologists. One of the challenges is to create a story inspired by one of the stones, just like I did in NaNoWriMo. My end product was The Stonemason's Crown, which is the first of what I hope will be a number of books set across the ages and all set right here at Stempster.
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| Who's this saintly chap? |
I'm in the process of creating a complete Here in the Middle of Nowhere brand, based around our house here in Caithness. There are not just stories, but artworks too, including some taken directly from the patterns on these stones. These can be found on my Redbubble shop.
For Christmas, Clemency bought me a metal print of the LiDAR image of our property. There are all sorts of exciting marks around the land! And these are all going to weave their way into my stories too - although possibly not the septic tank!
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| Is it a bear? Is it a dog? |
None of these pictures have been tweaked by the way. I would love to hear about your garden treasure finds, and what - if anything - you have ever unearthed which has inspired you to write a certain piece of work. If you've never thought about this before, I guarantee you will never look at a stone in the same way!
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| A Knight with a Microphone?! |
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