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• Post #4446051

  #WordWeavers 8 Aug: Which character would survive a zombie apocalypse, and why? It’s not something I’ve really thought about as I’m not particularly fond of the modern take on Zombies. If zombies were to feature in my work they’d have to be the good old-fashioned Zombies from Haitian folklore. There seems to be a trend where they’re pitted against all sorts of different protagonists, usually with a title along the lines of XXX versus zombies or zombies versus XXX, so practitioners of magic...

• Post #2434597

  Does anybody out there in indieauthors.social-land know of any UK bookshops, preferably in the Midlands, which are happy to stock novels by indie authors? I’m thinking of compiling a list of those who are willing to help out those of us who haven’t gone down the route of traditional publishing. #bookstodon #WritersOfMastodon #onthisday #HowtoSucceed… #Author #Novel

• Post #2176657

  #ScribesAndMakers⁩ 24/4: Our next featured creator has a "love/hate affair with common tropes." What's your relationship with tropes? I enjoy playing with tropes and like to subvert them at every opportunity. In the world of my urban fantasy if a magic user starts bleeding it’s more likely to be because they’ve been hit in the face rather than a psychic nosebleed. Similarly, there’s no conflict between magic and technology, so witches are more than likely to store...

• Post #2176656

  Finally got the second edition of How to Succeed as a Supervillain by Following the Evil Overlord List up and published on Amazon and I’ve received an email to confirm it’s now live and available for purchase in the Kindle Store. Although when I checked it’s still showing the first edition even after I’ve unpublished it. Unpublish, what a ghastly word. I’m sure depublished would be a far more suitable term. Now I’ve just got to go back and review the print version to make sure it’s in line with...

• Post #2176655

  #WordWeavers 24 Apr Do your characters have any “tells” when they are lying? My protagonist, Nathan, is a consummate liar, a master of deception, and has a whole string of pseudonyms he uses for when he’s misdirecting some hapless figure. Usually it's an antique dealer he’s in the process of swindling as he searches out magically imbued objects known as artefacts. #bookstodon #WritersOfMastodon #Author #Novel

• Post #2176654

  Which of your books was most challenging to write? I think this was a question addressed to @JessMahler by Walter Thinman but I thought I’d have a go at answering it, too. For me, I think I’d have to conclude writing How to Succeed as a Supervillain by Following the Evil Overlord List was the most challenging. Normally I write a novel of around about 100,000 words over the course of 6 months. Attempting to write a complete 50,000 word story over the course of 30 days was a new kind of challen...

• Post #2176653

  Ah, the perils of being an author: It was on this day in 1667 that the blind and impoverished John Milton sold Paradise Lost to a printer for the princely sum of ten pounds, so it could be entered into the Stationers' Register, a record book which constituted an early form of copyright law. It doesn’t sound like much, especially when you consider how, at the time, it consisted of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse. Curiously, the number ten seems to be something of a recur...

• Post #2176652

  #ScribesAndMakers 27th Apr 2026. Reticent? No, taciturn.

• Post #2176651

  #ScribesAndMakers 4/28. Are you interested in etymology? Is there a word with an origin you find especially interesting? Indeed I am, you could go as far as saying I wrote a book on the subject. My writing career began with me writing articles for aquarium magazines, during which time I wrote more than 200 pieces discussing various aspects of reef aquarium maintenance. I was widely published and, at one time or another , have written for virtually every major English-speaking aquarium magazin...

• Post #2176650

  For some unknown reason it’s proved to be a bit of a struggle to get the 2nd edition of the print version of How to Succeed as a Supervillain by Following the Evil Overlord List up on Amazon. There seemed to be a number of discrepancies between the way the book was formatted in Word and the way it showed up in Kindle preview. No sooner had I successfully resolved the problem than I ran into a number of new discrepancies whilst sorting out the pricing. I’m trying to keep the pricing the same on...

• Post #2176649

  Finally updated both the print and eBook versions of How to Succeed as a Supervillain by Following the Evil Overlord List to the second edition on all the platforms where it’s available. Now I can get back to the business of writing instead of faffing about trying to upload the latest edition and generally being frustrated by the process. Technology’s great when it works the way it’s supposed to, but recent experience leads me to believe it takes great pleasure in messing with the heads of th...

• Post #2168344

  #onthisday Angela Carter was born on this date back in 1940. She was known for revitalising fairytales and infusing them with eroticism, making their passive heroines sexier, smarter and stronger. Carter initially emboldened other literary authors to tackle supernatural themes afresh. Her approach, duly toned down for mass consumption, became a model for the feminist-lite reinvention of other disregarded genres in print and on screen, in adult and children’s fiction – from vampire horror (...

• Post #2007781

  #onthisday Delia Derbyshire was born on this date back in 1937. Her claim to fame is she was the woman who arranged an electronic realisation of Ron Grainer’s theme of the Doctor Who series in 1963. The rest, as they say, is history. Probably one of the most well know television themes to be created and produced entirely with electronics. Grainer attempted to credit her as co-composer but was prevented by the BBC bureaucracy because they preferred that members of the workshop remain anonymou...

• Post #1957109

  #onthisday Alice Lidell was born on this date back in 1852. This was the girl who would find fame as the eponymous heroine of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Check out the acrostic poem from the end of the second book spelling her name out in full: A boat beneath a sunny sky, Lingering onward dreamily In an evening of July— Children three that nestle near, Eager eye and willing ear, Pleased a simple tale to hear— Long has paled that sunny sky: Echoes fa...

• Post #1908453

  Machiavelli was born on this date back in 1469. My anonymous Evil Criminal Mastermind in How to Succeed as a Supervillain by Following the Evil Overlord List considers him to be essential reading for all aspiring villains. He reckons that Machiavelli’s The Art of War, and The Prince, along with General Sun Tzu’s book, also entitled The Art of War, comprise the three erudite Big Books of war, conflict, and dissent. They’re all books which deserve to be added to the Evil Overlord’s required...

• Post #1877369

  On this day, in 1536 – Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, had the book thrown at her. She was arrested and imprisoned on charges of adultery, incest, treason and witchcraft. From a writer’s perspective I believe most commentators have missed one important fact. Recently historians were said to have found a hidden detail in one of her portraits which was a rebuttal of the charges of witchcraft. This centres on the allegation that she’d been polydactylic (from Greek polys, many, and daktylos, finger)...

• Post #1837686

  Happy Beltane, everybody. Today is the third festival celebrated by neopagans and other like-minded people during the Wheel of the Year. Here’re a couple of fun facts you might not be familiar with: Often regarded as a fire festival, people attending walk around or between bonfires and sometimes leap over the flames or embers. At this time, household fires are doused and then relit from the Beltane bonfire. The aos sí (often referred to as spirits or fairies) are thought to be especially acti...

• Post #1802891

  #PennedPossibilities 1001 — Is your MC confident or not? Tell us why. Nathan, my protagonist, was born confident. In some respects you could probably describe him as being a confident trickster rather than a confidence trickster. Vicky, his partner in crime, started off not believing in magic even though she knew her mother was a hereditary witch. When she opens up to the idea in the first book she lacks confidence in her skills and has a tendency to go at like a bull at a gate throwing fire...

• Post #1599480

  Kindle certainly doesn’t like to make it easy for authors using their services. I’m in the process of updating the eBook version of How to Succeed as a Supervillain by Following the Evil Overlord List to the second edition. As I’ve mentioned before, whilst preparing the Amazon print edition I encountered something weird when I was using cover creator. I was forced to create a new cover as the trim size had been changed to bring it line with the Draft2Digital version but try as I might I was un...

• Post #955540

  @gwendolenau@mstdn.social Hey, thanks for that. I've just signed up with Smashwords and managed to get How to Succeed as a Supervillain by Following the Evil Overlord List pubished as an eBook almost immediately. It looks a great choice because of the way it supplies so many different platforms. So, thanks again for bringing it to my attention.

• Post #924629

  I understand it’s considered wise to publish your eBook on a variety of platforms to take into account the reader’s prejudices regarding big tech. What’s the consensus on which platforms one should choose? #bookstodon #WritersOfMastodon #Author #Novel #IndieAuthorsSocial

• Post #908097

  How to Succeed as a Supervillain by Following the Evil Overlord List isn’t the first book I’ve self-published on Amazon. When I retired from being an aquarium writer writing around about nine years ago I published a non-fiction book under the name T M Hayes entitled AQUATICAL•LATIN which examined the etymology (the meaning) of the scientific names of around 950 species of the most common tropical marine fishes in the aquarium hobby. You can find this title at: https://linkly.link/2ZykB UK and ht...

• Post #901060

  #PennedPossibilities 974 — Does your MC become jealous? If so, to what degree? How does their jealousy manifest? Not exactly jealousy, but my deuteragonist, Vick a hereditary witch is extremely over-protective when it comes to her partner, Nathan the protagonist. She’s the Action Girl of the duo who has no qualms about immolating someone stupid enough to point an assault rifle at the love of her life. Nathan, on the other hand is the kind of lovable rogue who sole means of offence is a two-sh...

• Post #879352

  #PennedPossibilities 973 — How do you select the names of your characters? For you, is there a method? I use multiple methods to generate character names including ones based on mythology and popular culture. The head of a law enforcement agency known as the Hounds goes by the name of Drummond. An androgenous character is known as Orlando. I’m fortunate that my urban fantasy involves magic so it’s unwise to use one’s real name, resulting in a number of punny names such as Hounds called Ripley (...