David Thomas-Stone

My mother died of cancer when I was eight. My dad was a wood machinist at a factory in Tottenham, so not the best paid job. He looked after my older sister and me. We got by and didn’t miss out on too much. In those days one parent families weren’t so prevalent as they now. Other kids couldn’t get their heads around my not having a mother, looking at me as though it was my fault. I had friends but things were different. I needed to be able to escape into my own world sometimes. Books allowed it to happen.

Adventure and action was the preference, especially once I got into my teens. I remember reading the western series called ‘Edge’ by George C Gilman, then there was James Herbert, and ‘The Yakuza’ by Leonard Shrader. I never did see the film starring Robert Mitchum. May have to dig that out sometime.

My reading was anything that got me out of the real world for a while.

I don’t think I was unintelligent (other’s views may vary), but I never managed to shine in school. I loved history and did well in English, but everything else left me behind. I take my share of the blame, of course, but the teachers would take the most interesting subjects and suck the life out of them. Perhaps their style of teaching didn’t suit me, but if you got left behind in a subject, that was it. There you languished. I’ve spoken to others who attended my school, including some who did a lot better than me, and there’s agreement the majority of teachers were unimpressive. As I say, I accept my portion of the blame for allowing myself to get left behind.

Has this shaped my journey as a writer? Difficult to say. Old school friends remark that I was always writing stuff that was ‘interesting’. Take that as you may, but it can’t have been too bad as at least one of them has bought my novel!

As in Q.1, it was mostly action and adventure that captured my imagination. In later years, Terry Pratchett has been a massive inspiration. The way he managed to create a fantasy world but was able to weave current issues into it, and do it with humour. He is matchless for that.

Douglas Adams would be close second with the Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy series.

From the classics, Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde are interesting for social commentary. The writing style from the Victorian era can make them difficult reads, largely because description was everything. I’m sure some of their works could have been shorter, but that reflects modern thinking. Perhaps our attention spans are shorter with the advent of technology.

William Shakespeare is perhaps easier to watch than read, but what is interesting is his works show how the English language has evolved over the centuries. Pronunciations have changed so much that some of the rhymes no longer work, or at least not until you hear an expert say the lines how they would have been heard 400 years ago. Of course, our language is still evolving, perhaps not always for the better

Obviously as a soldier, you get your hands on all sorts of exciting kit. My odd fact from this is that I passed my driving test in a 65 ton Chieftain Main Battle Tank a whole year before I got my licence to a drive a car.

Parking was never a problem in a tank.

Hmm, what did I learn? Well, the first thing was that never believe the tutors in a novel writing course when they say the stuff you have submitted is going really well. Especially when they missed so many errors, but concentrated on correcting my “it’s” and “its”. Whilst they were right on that score, the guidance received was, to put it politely, unhelpful. Maybe I was just unlucky with the tutor (you’ll note a theme throughout my education).

With the benefit of hindsight of course, the manuscript looked and read like a first draft. Naturally, agents would look at the submission and not give a second thought before rightly throwing it on the reject pile.

The problem with self-publishing being made so easy is that people rush into it to get their work out there. Being a self-published, or rather an independent author is hard enough to gain any recognition or plaudits, but I’m guessing we’ve all read stuff we really wanted to like, but the story is let down by glaring spelling and other errors. Had self-publishing been a thing when I wrote ‘The Sons of Ra’, I’d have done the same.

I guess, what I’ve learnt, is that you can never check your work too much, and even if you think it’s pretty darn good, if not perfect, get other to check it for you. Be it friends, family, or pro proofreaders.

My published novel, ‘The Witch, The Monk and The IT Guy’ was the eight re-draft, and some 50,000 words shorter than the first draft. I meant cutting stuff I liked, but it was all the better for the surgery.

For the avoidance of doubt, ‘The Sons of Ra,’ is unlikely to see the light of day. It requires too much surgery.

Ah, well, what is a typical writing routine? Probably one where you enthusiastically sit down to write, then find after a couple of hours you’ve dealt with a few emails, checked and updated social media, or found a really interesting article to read that may prove useful for later. The you may write something only to scrap it later.

I mostly write in the afternoon or late evening, which is really bad for restful sleep. There can be quite a lot of notetaking at other times, because you never know when a solution to a knotty problem will suddenly pop into your head.

I have a study on the ground floor of my house (is that the 1st floor in the U.S?) That’s equipped with a whizzy desktop PC and printer etc. However, upstairs is a spare bedroom with a desk, laptop, monitor etc, that I find more comfortable to think and write.

I live near a town called King’s Lynn, in Norfolk, England. It’s had its share of witch troubles in centuries past. Learning about the history of it all, it struck me that in general, witches had a raw deal in the past. Most were on the (for those times) elderly side and cranky with their neighbours, or simply had disputes with people. Often, once the witch hunting craze got really going, they suffered because their neighbours coveted their piece of land, that sort of thing. These ladies were accused of witchcraft, even if they had nothing to do with it.

Lynn also had its brush with the infamous Witchfinder general, when the town paid him to rid it of witchcraft. Naturally, you pay someone handsomely to find witches, then find them he shall. I thought these ladies needed to be showcased, not as baddies, but people just trying to get on with their lives. I mean, OK fine, not all witches were innocent, as my story notes:

You wait ages to meet a 400 year old person, then For Neil Fellows two turn up at the same time, claiming to be from his soul’s previous life. Both are trouble and both need his help. That’s the problem with having an old soul. Old troubles will find you.

A witch and her nemesis, neither can die. Two sides of the same hex. One that didn’t go according to plan.

Neil has to manoeuvre the pair towards a final ritual to remove the hex, unaware that something nasty from the depths of Hell is on the guest list too.

It’s probably not too much of a spoiler alert to say that this is intended as a three story arc. It could be more, but often this leads to the tales going stale and dragged out ad infinitum.

The second tale which is the almost finished WIP deals with the fallout of the IT Guy finale, such as what to do with a portal to hell that didn’t close properly. Add to that, some revenge, foul play, and something else nasty preying on the souls of the really old witches.

They all seem to do their own thing, one way or another. One of the most significant in my first novel was the character of Martha. She began as a minor player simply to kick start the story, but after a couple of redrafts she became quite a powerful witch. When the hero was in a sticky situation and about to do something dangerous, Martha suddenly said to me, “Nope, I can do something better.” And she did.

Everyone has a novel in them, right? Quite possibly, but while few start to write one, even less actually finish it. If you’ve got that far, be proud. It’s an achievement to create something from a blank page. Even fewer will go on to publish it.

What I’m saying is it’s a tough task, one that will leave you frustrated at times, pulling your hair out in others, but so satisfying when you get it done.

So first and, probably most important of all, is you have to enjoy it.

Enjoy all the challenges, trials and tribulations of trying to complete a story, and have it make sense. Literally, if you don’t love what you do, find another pastime.

Some people like to join creative writing groups and find it helps. It’s whatever floats your boat, but at the end of the day, it will still boil down to you sitting alone staring at a computer wondering how you can get your hero or heroine out of a whopping great plot hole you’ve created.

If you’re starting to write and doing it for the money, you’re probably heading for disappointment. OK, yes, a few might make a respectable living, but for most of us independent authors, it’s an expensive hobby. A sad but true fact.

Occasionally, someone like Lee Child comes along, who only started to write because he’d lost his job and needed cash. It could be said, without fear of contradiction, that Mr Child has done OK for himself. But to emulate him, you need to come up with a killer story and the Jack Reacher equivalent in your chosen genre. Good luck with that.

Ha! Well, quite honestly I’m still working on that one.

One shorter tale completed so far is ‘The Shrieking Pit’, which is a stepping stone between the first and second novels (and available for free from my website!) The shorter formats are a tool really, for me to explore some of the background for the characters, where they’ve been enroute to the first novel. It helps me understand them a bit more, fleshes them out so to speak. In the first novel, Grace being 400 years old, mentions that she met Shakespeare once and may inspired him to create the witches in Macbeth. That and other tales will pop up periodically. If there is enough of them in time, they may go into a short story collection.

I’m not sure I’m qualified to give tips to aspiring authors. It is very much a case of what works for you. Some people will storyboard every little detail. Others will wing it, flying by the seat of their pants. I’ve done a bit of both.

Thus far, I like to mark out where it starts and where I want it to end, then flesh out the bits in the middle as I go. I personally wouldn’t stick rigidly to a blow by blow plotline, as I find things develop as you write. Characters don’t stick to the script, so to speak. That to me is exciting, and a pleasurable outcome of sitting in front of a computer every day banging your head on the desk.

My advice is try both heavy duty plotting and winging it, to see which you like and what works for you. Probably a hybrid of both.

As previously mentioned, the second novel WIP is close to completion, though it needs work to be ready to publish early next year. I have yet to decide on a title. I’m mulling over two or three options.

‘Grace: The first time’ is likely the next shorter tale to be ready, which will cover what happened to Grace 400 years ago, after the events in the first novel. Others are still too early in the pipeline, but may include Neil Fellows Army experiences, and possibly the coven of witches.

It has provided a number of classy looking promotional items, and a lot more I need to explore once I get the second novel out of the way. I’m grateful for the stuff the site has done for me on social media etc.