Read my short story that follows Boise Montague, the protagonist in my upcoming book Dark Paradise, on Medium. Originally published in Beyond Imagination Digital Literary Magazine, this quick read will give you a taste of what is to come when Dark Paradise hits shelves on June 25th.
I never understood why they called it a green room. A spider plant stood in one corner, that was it for green. Sprawled in the middle of the brown carpet lay Frank, the dead director of Island Zombies in Paradise. The faint smell of urine hung in the humid island heat. A ceiling fan slowly…
This month’s question on the Insecure Writer’s Support Group sounded good to this writer: What steps have you taken or plan to take to put a schedule in place for your writing and publishing? This is a fun bulleted list (funny that bulleted is underlined in red but appears as the correct verb when I…
I’m not much for seasons, times of day, or anything else for when I write. I don’t have set times for writing. I write whenever I want to or need to write. The need could relate to completing a project on a deadline or be the release valve on an emotional explosion that needs to be defused. I’ve tried to write in a consistent manner all at the same time or about the things that I know best, but none of that matters much to me either. I write what strikes my fancy.
What’s harder for you to come up with, book titles or character names?
For sure the book title is harder. It’s so immediate, so vital as a first impression, akin to the book cover. You can draw a reader in or shoo them away. The names of characters, while important are rarely deal-breakers as far as someone picking up the book or even continuing to read. Interesting and meaningful character names do not necessarily matter in many cases and analyzing why an author named a character yields few results except in obvious cases like Voldemort.
In fact, obscure or everyday names are chosen more often than not to no ill effect. I sometimes
choose names from the credits of a movie or by combining first and last names I’ve heard. Human names are easy to come by and many are unique and interesting or common and easy to remember. Titles that tell you something about the story are rare and give so much of a feel to the entire text, especially before you have a completed cover. It’s hard to overstate the pressure I feel when choosing a book title.
Springtime makes me think about rebirth, and of the rebirth of my connection to the Virgin Islands through writing and publishing my upcoming book, Dark Paradise. I lived in St. Thomas during my formative years and I often revisit the locales, smells, and sounds of my youth in my mind. But youth has a different outlook…
All good stories have strong characters that are the driving force in the narrative. Without well-rounded characters who possess their own agendas, a story lacks the gravitational pull that pulls the reader in for more. My beta-readers for Dark Paradise all comment on the powerful, independent nature of the book’s female characters. Some men seem…