Showing category "Writing fiction" (Show all posts)

The King of Infinite Space

Posted by Paul Samael on Friday, October 18, 2013, In : Writing fiction

Just published a new short story on Feedbooks. Stylistically, it's more in the same vein as "Agricultural Production in the Sudan" i.e. quite short, verging on flash fiction - but rather different subject matter.

It was partly prompted by Jonathan Franzen's much ridiculed article in the Guardian last month, where he rails against self-publishers as worthless "yakkers and bloggers", who are wantonly destroying the delicate publishing eco-system (in contrast to highly paid professionals like hi...
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The joy of procrastination

Posted by Paul Samael on Monday, May 13, 2013, In : Writing fiction

As I have no contact details for Martha Deighton, who’s recently penned a quite lengthy review of my novel on Smashwords, I’m going to say “thanks” here. Actually, “thanks” feels a bit inadequate really because she has clearly put a lot of time and careful thought into her review – and although I never expected my novel to have broad appeal, it’s great to know that it worked for her. She has also picked up on all sorts of things which I hoped readers would ...

The Pick Up

Posted by Paul Samael on Sunday, March 24, 2013, In : Writing fiction

Just published “The Pick Up”, a long-ish short story (11,000 words) which is in some respects a companion piece to “The Hardest Word” (although it deals with very different subject matter).

If I’m lucky enough to get much of a response, I will be interested to see how readers react to the incident in the playground which is at the centre of the story. If people don’t believe it could happen, that may mean that I haven’t described it convincingly enough – because it is based o...

Youwriteon - what's it good for?

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, February 27, 2013, In : Writing fiction

UPDATE 3.2020: Youwriteon was due to close in early 2020 but because of coronavirus, it has decided to stay open on a month-to-month basis. This would mean you could still use it for the purpose I highlight in this piece - namely to get feedback on your work (although I understand it will not be running competitions). Prior to this, Youwriteon had said it would close in early 2020 but was raising funds via a kickstarter campaign for a new website. When I checked on 30.3.2020, the kicksta...
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Bankers: too clever for their own good?

Posted by Paul Samael on Friday, December 7, 2012, In : Writing fiction

My thanks (once again) to Bernard Fancher for his recent review of my short story "The Hardest Word", which is about kidnapping a banker. It's always interesting to get people's reactions and in this case it made me wonder if I had got the story a bit wrong by managing to generate a degree of sympathy for my banker character - despite not having set out to make him particularly sympathetic. On the other hand, I plead guilty to having deliberately set out to endow him with certain admirable ...
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In defence of miserable, depressing stories

Posted by Paul Samael on Sunday, August 19, 2012, In : Writing fiction

Well, I always knew it couldn’t last – having been fortunate enough to get five stars from my first few reviews, I now find myself the proud possessor of a 2 star review of my novel (equating to a rather unenthusiastic “it was OK”) on goodreads. This particular reviewer, Juanito, appeared to like one or two aspects of it but overall, he felt that it was too depressing and the protagonist wasn't sympathetic enough. In fairness, he explains that he likes stories which are “redempt...

More reviews!

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, July 4, 2012, In : Writing fiction

Ah, reviews – they’re a bit like London buses, aren’t they? You wait ages and then 3 come along at once. Hot on the heels of this review by Bernard Fancher, fellow Smashwords author Tom Lichtenberg has penned thoughtful and generous reviews of both “In the future this will be necessar y” and “T he Hardest Word” – so my thanks to him as well as to Bernard.

I think I’m quite lucky to have started off with some positive reviews – and I’d better just try to enjoy my current...

A review - at last!

Posted by Paul Samael on Monday, June 18, 2012, In : Writing fiction

My thanks to Bernard Fancher for his generous review of "Agricultural Production in the Sudan" on Smashwords (I would thank him in person but don't have a contact email for him). Sites like Smashwords depend on people like Bernard taking the time to submit reviews in order to help readers work out what might interest them and what's worth downloading in amongst the ever-increasing mass of self-published material. I hope he will not mind me quoting the review in full here:

"I just finished re...
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In the future this will not be necessary

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, June 13, 2012, In : Writing fiction

After much dithering, I have finally taken the plunge and published my novel as an ebook on Smashwords. It's also on Scribd as a PDF. I had been planning to try to get some more reviews from peer review sites before I went ahead, but in the end I decided to just publish the damn thing and see what happens. A Feedbooks edition will be next. I'm also intending to turn my attention back to some reviews of free ebooks by other self-published authors, which I have rather neglected of late - so...
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Who's the Sheikh?

Posted by Paul Samael on Sunday, January 29, 2012, In : Writing fiction

Just published “Agricultural Production in the Sudan”, which is a very short story - at just under 800 words, it’s the closest I’ve come to “flash fiction”. Look away now if you don’t want to know what - or more pertinently, who - the story is about.

It was inspired by the chapters of Lawrence Wright’s book, “The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda’s Road to 9/11” describing Osama Bin Laden’s time in Sudan between 1992 and 1996. While there, Bin Laden acquired large tracts of ...

The Hardest Word

Posted by Paul Samael on Friday, November 25, 2011, In : Writing fiction

Just published a short story, “The Hardest Word” on smashwords.com. Very impressed with how straightforward the whole process was – you just need to be prepared to put in some time formatting the book correctly in MS Word (the smashwords guidelines explain what you need to do and are extremely clear). This was a dry run for making my novel available as an ebook, also via smashwords (the key advantage being that it makes the book available in almost all major ebook formats). If you...
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My 3 biggest mistakes so far

Posted by Paul Samael on Saturday, July 23, 2011, In : Writing fiction

If you’ve read my previous post, you’ll know that I’m not wildly optimistic about the prospects of my novel being a big success. So you may be wondering why I’m bothering with this blog at all. Well, in my more rational moments (that is, the small proportion of each day during which I am not labouring under the delusion that my novel will out-sell all of JK Rowling’s works put together), I’d like to think that this blog might help other people avoid the same mistakes that I mad...
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Novel writing: dangerously futile?

Posted by Paul Samael on Wednesday, July 13, 2011, In : Writing fiction

Hello and welcome to my first ever blog post. My name is Paul Samael and I’ve written a novel. Saying that, I feel as if I should be at some kind of self-help group called “Novelists Anonymous” where people with a similar affliction can unburden themselves with a view to preventing the recurrence of this dangerously futile activity. Why do I regard it as dangerously futile? Let’s look at some facts and figures:

Google estimates there are already about 130 million books in the wor...

PAUL SAMAEL

Showing category "Writing fiction" (Show all posts)

The King of Infinite Space

The joy of procrastination

The Pick Up

Youwriteon - what's it good for?

Bankers: too clever for their own good?

In defence of miserable, depressing stories

More reviews!

A review - at last!

In the future this will not be necessary

Who's the Sheikh?

The Hardest Word

My 3 biggest mistakes so far

Novel writing: dangerously futile?

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