April | 2015 | Guy Portman's Blog

Work in Progress Blog Hop

Apr 24 2015

I have been nominated for the Work in Progress Blog Hop by author Heather Burnside (heatherburnside.com). Heather is a regular blogger, who likes to share writing tips and information about her books. Heather is currently working on her second novel – a sequel to SLUR, her crime fiction novel, set in 1980s Manchester. Heather has also written a book of short stories called Crime, Conflict & Consequences. Thank you for nominating me Heather.

The blog hop rules are:

Link back to the person who nominated you.
Write a little about and give the first few lines of your first three chapters from your WIP.
Nominate some other writers to do the same.

Here are my nominations:

Andy Lowe – Andy is a poet and author of 4 books. He shares writing excerpts on his blog – andrewlowewriter.wordpress.com

Craig Stone – Craig is the author of 5 humorous novels. He is also something of a Twitter celebrity. Craig shares his unique insights on his blog – http://thoughtscratchings.com

You can find reviews of Heather, Andy and Craig’s books in the review section of my blog.

Here’s a little about my work in progress:

I am currently writing my third novel (Charles Middleworth & Necropolis). It will be an original and suspenseful work of psychological fiction.

This is the opening line:

‘wethiwethi deh klathi nuhnuh – meou klathi bothi iahn’

It’s not even English I hear you say. It is written in a cryptophasia. A cryptophasia is a secret language developed by a set of twins, which only they understand. The word originates from the Latin crypto meaning secret and phasia meaning speech. As you’ve probably guessed by now my book is about twins. Their names are Talulah and Taliah.

Here are the opening lines of my first draft of Chapter 2 and the second paragraph of Chapter 3 (the first contained spoilers).

Chapter 2

Framed watercolours capturing landscapes adorn the white walls of the spacious, brightly lit room, furnished with vivid coloured settees, chairs, polka dotted bean bags and a large glass desk. Spread out on the polished wooden floor in the centre of the room is a large gridded mat with different coloured squares. Taliah is crouched over the mat, each of her feet and hands resting on separate squares. The young psychiatrist, sitting cross-legged beside the mat, says, ‘You ready …’

Chapter 3

As far back as Colin can remember he has been led to believe that ownership of a Ferrari offers the prospect of redemption, but now as he looks down upon its metallic, inanimate form, and its balding proprietor Gerald, heaving his corpulent carcass towards the office entrance, it occurs to Colin that redemption is merely an illusion.

4 Female Writers’ Writing Styles

Apr 17 2015

Every author, myself included, has his/her own distinctive writing style. Earlier this year I dedicated a blog post to 4 famous male writers’ writing styles.

This week’s blog post is dedicated to 4 famous female writers’ writing styles:

Virginia Woolf

(January 25th 1882 – March 28th 1941)

Notable works: To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway, A Room of One’s Own

Novelist and critic Virginia Woolf was an influential interwar writer and one of the foremost modernists of the 20th Century. Woolf embraced an experimental stream of consciousness writing style, in which the subjective impressions of her protagonists formed the narrative. This writing device is in evidence in her novel Mrs Dalloway, in which Woolf parallels a single day in the lives of two people, adeptly portraying their internal emotions. This was a marked shift from the rigid objectivism of 19th Century fiction. Her rhetorical, informal personal style, effective use of metaphors, similes and symbolism continue to endear her to readers to this day.

George Eliot

(22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880)

Notable works: The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda

Mary Ann Evans was an author who used the male pen name George Eliot in order that she be taken seriously by the literary establishment. Her most famous novel, Middlemarch, is widely regarded as one of the greatest English language novels ever written. Her writing style incorporated an unusual style of phrasing, deep psychological insights, sophisticated character portraits, religious themes, highly original use of metaphors, comical elements and realism. Eliot also had a distinctive narrative voice, which some have criticised her for, because it often disrupts the action and casts judgement on the given event, as it is taking place.

Emily Dickinson

(10th December 1830 – 15th May 1886)

The reclusive Emily Dickinson was a prolific American poet, who penned over 1700 poems. Dickinson’s early poetry was fairly conventional, but her writing style became increasingly innovative and idiosyncratic. Her lineation, punctuation, capitalisation and extensive use of dashes were highly unusual. Most of Dickinson’s poems were written in short stanzas, the majority being quatrains, whilst other stanzas employed triplets and pairs of couplets as well as partial rhyming schemes. She also experimented with Iambic rhythms. The flexible and innovative structures of her poems, the conciseness of her language and the blending of different themes, such as the homely and exalted, in addition to her use of metaphors were in stark contrast to the rigid conventions of her era.

Jane Austen

(16th December 1775 – 18th July 1817)

Notable works: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Persuasion

Jane Austen employed an elegant, experimental and innovative writing style. In contrast to other early 19th Century authors, Jane Austen’s novels have considerably more dialogue and much less description and narrative. She adroitly utilised indirect speech, burlesque, parody and realism to critique the portrayal of women in 18th Century literature, in addition to the perceived role of women during her own era. But it is her constant, imaginative use of irony that she is probably best known for. Austen utilised irony to highlight the social hypocrisy of her time, particularly with regards to marriage and social divisions.

7 Authors Who Overcame Adversity

Apr 10 2015

Earlier this week during a break from working on my third novel I took to thinking about famous authors who overcame adversity. Why, I don’t know why. Anyway, I thought it was a topic that would make a worthy addition to my popular famous author series of blog posts. Here are 7 authors who overcame varying degrees of adversity:

Maxim Gorky

(March 28th 1868 – June 18th 1936)

Iconic Russian author Maxim Gorky was brought up in relative poverty by his grandmother after being orphaned at a young age. During this period he suffered abuse from his grandfather. At the age of 12 he ran away from home and travelled across the Russian Empire for 5 years, living as a tramp for much of this time. Gorky went on to become one of Russia’s most popular authors ever and the founder of the Socialist realism literary method.

Click here to read my review of My Childhood

Victor Frankl

(March 26th 1905 – September 2nd 1997)

Austrian Jew Victor Frankl was a psychiatrist, neurologist and writer, who was imprisoned in several concentration camps during the WWII, including Auschwitz. Frankl’s wife, mother and brother died in the camps. The only immediate member of his family to survive the War was his sister Stella. Frankl went on to write a number of books, his most famous, Man’s Search for Meaning, had at the time of his death in 1997 sold 10 million copies and been translated into 24 languages.

Paulo Coelho

(Born: August 24th 1947)

Brazilian songwriter turned novelist Paulo Coelho was committed to a mental institution at the age of 17 by his parents, who were concerned about his introverted, non-conformist behavior. Coelho, who was fed tranquilizers and given electroshock treatments escaped several times before he was finally released at the age of 20. Today Coelho is the best-selling Portuguese language author of all time. His seminal work, The Alchemist, has been translated into 80 languages.

J.K. Rowling

(Born: July 31st 1965)

Listed by Forbes in 2004 as being the first person to become a U.S. dollar billionaire from writing books, the author of the Harry Potter series is one of the best selling authors of all time. Prior to her success Rowling went through a seven-year period that entailed divorcing her first husband, the death of her mother, existing on benefits as a single mother in Edinburgh, suffering from depression, and even considering suicide.

Janet Frame

(August 28th 1924 – January 29th 2004)

Novelist, poet, short story writer and essayist Janet Frame is widely considered to be one of New Zealand’s best ever authors. Frame’s traumatic childhood saw 2 of her sisters drowned. In 1945 she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalised. The author was saved from a lobotomy, when days prior to the procedure, she unexpectedly won a national literary contest. In 1961 her novel Faces in the Water was published. It went on to become a best seller in her native country.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

(March 6th 1806 – June 29th 1861)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of England’s most famous poets during the Victorian era. In addition to producing poetry at a prolific rate, she campaigned for the abolition of slavery and child labour reform. Browning suffered from extremely poor health from an early age. After suffering spinal and head pain aged 15 she was prescribed laudanum (tincture of opium). Browning became a lifelong opium addict, which no doubt contributed to her ongoing health problems.

Jean-Dominique Bauby

(April 23rd 1952 –March 9th 1997)

Jean-Dominique Bauby was a well-known French journalist and editor of the French fashion magazine Elle, who suffered a massive stroke at the age of 43, which left him speechless and paralysed. Bauby went on to write his memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by blinking every time a person reciting the alphabet reached the required letter. Through this painstaking method Bauby successfully created and edited his book one letter at a time.

My Easter Egg Tour

Apr 03 2015

I was going to dedicate this week’s blog post to books about Easter, but after doing a little research I came to the conclusion that this was not a good subject for a post. Most books about Easter are aimed at children and about half of them are about bunnies.

Yesterday afternoon I took a break from working on my third novel and went to the shops, where I came across a dizzying array of Easter Eggs. This inspired me to write this Easter Egg themed blog post.

As sales at Easter time make up 10% of UK chocolate spending for the whole year, it was no surprise that my local supermarket was seething with Easter eggs (see above), each struggling for attention amongst the crowded shelves. Most chocolate brands merely provide their usual chocolate offering shaped as an egg, but now and again a marketing team comes up with an inspired idea like this Lindt Giant Carrot (see below).

Easter eggs are supposed to be an opportunity to indulge oneself after the privations of Lent, or at least that is what I thought prior to coming across these moo free easter eggs, which are dairy free, wheat free, gluten free, egg free and vegan (see below). I call them Lent Continued Easter Eggs. My condolences to any unfortunate children who will be receiving Lent Continued Easter Eggs this Easter. I can only assume from the sickly looking bunny on the box that moo free eggs aren’t particularly appetising.

The Church of England often laments the loss of religious traditions in the face of relentless consumerism. However all is not lost. Below is The Real Easter Egg. These can be found in stores across the UK. Not only is the story of Jesus depicted on the sides and back of the box, but the chocolate is of the fair trade variety and a percentage of sales go to charity.

For those of us emaciated from our Lenten fasts might I suggest a gargantuan Easter egg (see below). If camouflaged with foliage this Easter Egg could masquerade as part of the scenery in an Easter egg hunt. While I am on the subject of Easter Egg hunts, did you know that the World’s biggest Easter egg hunt was in Florida in 2007, when close to 10,000 children set out to find 501,000 Easter Eggs. This I found surprising considering Florida’s large gator population.

For those unwilling to dine on the chocolate of the proletariat there is the Charbonnel et Walker milk chocolate egg with pink mare de champagne truffle (see below).

There’s always one. Not content with being oval, this Ladurée pretentious petal egg (see below) has embraced a postmodern deconstructed look. It is decorated with crystallised rose, jasmine and violet petals, garnished with dark, milk and praline chocolate figurines and bells. Cost: £72.50.

Did you know that the World’s most popular egg-shaped chocolate is Cadbury’s Creme Egg. Workers at the Cadbury factory in Birmingham produce 1.5 million of them everyday. I am a big fan of Cadbury Creme Eggs. Enjoy your Easter Eggs. Happy Easter.