D L Richardson's debut book, The Bird with the Broken Wing, looks like an amazing read but the cover is what makes the book really stand out!
The Blurb :
Angels may not reveal themselves to mortals...
...but when the mortal Rachael’s watching over is hurting, how can she stay hidden in the shadows?
Guardian angel Rachael becomes trapped with the mortal she’s been assigned to watch over. Unable to watch him suffer, she decides the only way to free him of his inner demons is to break the rules about becoming involved, revealing her true identity, and applying divine intervention. But what choice does she have? Without her help, his soul will be trapped forever. Then a stranger appears, giving Rachael reason to wonder if his is the only soul in need of saving...
Enjoy the guest blog and maybe you will be reading The Bird with the Broken Wing this weekend or sometime in the near future!
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The Devil is in the Detail
By D L Richardson
A writer colleague of mine, Brinda Berry, recently wrote on her blog that people were starting to suggest story ideas to her. Nothing wrong with the concept, but where the problem lies is the lack of detail given to fiction writers.
As creative writers, our ideas pool is not as tiny as the residue of water left on the sink after doing the dishes. Quite the opposite. Our ideas pools are as enormous as dams.
The human brain is thinking every second of the day and even throughout the night while we sleep. There’s the non-creative thinking like breathing, eating and walking. And there’s the creative thinking like what sort of mouth-watering morsel to eat? Or, do I need to walk, saunter, amble, run, sprint, or mosey along? And does the moment call for a dramatic sigh or heavy breathing?
Creative thinking occupies every waking and sleeping minute of a fiction writer’s mind. It also creates a daunting minefield. What can take mere seconds to form in the mind – a brilliant story from start to finish like a mini movie playing in our heads the we feel, hear, smell, and see what the characters are doing - can take months or years of writing and editing to complete, only to have the book read in a few days or weeks and then the process starts all over again. Meanwhile, the ideas have not stopped flowing. In fact, the ideas pool has become even bigger!
As a fiction writer, I’m never short of ideas for novels. Ideas come to me while I’m sleeping, while I’m reading, watching TV, walking the dog, staring out my study window, looking up at the clouds and asking what if? I can’t quite remember, but I think the idea for my first novel “The Bird With The Broken Wing” came from reading a newspaper article on a tragedy and just thinking crazily that if angels were real then why weren’t these people spared? That thought spun into another. OK, so maybe angels aren’t meant to apply divine intervention. And that thought spun into another. So what would be the consequences if a guardian angel did break the rules? A bit of a brainstorming session for the twist at the end, and Voila! 48,000 words and eight months later I had a novel born out of a simple idea.
Ideas come to writers from a large variety of places; however, I’m sorry to say that, for me, story ideas do not come from other people. Not yet anyway. To anyone who has every told me a story you are safe from that story ending up in any of my books. Besides, I like using my imagination. It is a muscle that needs regular flexing.
To be honest, I tend to cringe when someone says to me, “You know what you should write about?” I don’t mean to be rude, but it isn’t as if this person is going to suggest that I “write about girl who teleports between worlds disrupting and changing these other world’s histories till one day she is caught and put on trial for starting a war”, or “write about a boy who can control the minds of animals and he uses this power to escape a forced life as a magician in Las Vegas”. Those, at least, would be worth considering. Instead, what people have suggested that I write are: a book on “fishing statistics” (what the?) and write a story “about man who sits on his front porch and does nothing” (double what the?).
The whole point of any story is that something must happen. A story can twist, turn, and have sub plots, and while readers get hooked in by the detail, so do writers. If you must suggest an idea to a creative writer, make it as irresistible as chocolate. Instead of suggesting we “Write about a bear”, suggest that we “Write about a creature who is human by day and bear by night, and by day the human side of him tracks the bear and by night the bear side of him hunts the human.”
See what I mean about the difference between vague and vivid. If you have an idea that a writer could turn into a novel, you’ll need to come up with a pretty descriptive idea to hook the writer. As they say, the devil is in the detail.
Note - While writing this article the author had a dozen more novel ideas and was still 40 pages off completing the novel she had an idea to write about 8 months ago and by her calculations has enough story ideas to continue writing into the afterlife and probably the one following. Then she read The Hunger Games and threw all her ideas out the window. With a sigh she went back to the ideas pool for a story idea as thought-provoking as powerful as the best selling trilogy by Suzanne Collins.
About the Author:
D L (Deborah Louise) Richardson is an author of Young Adult fiction. She has run a secondhand clothing store and was bass player/lead vocalist in a band she helped form. Today she is a writer. The Bird With The Broken Wing is her debut novel. She lives in Australia on the NSW South Coast with her husband and dog. When she’s not writing or reading she can be found practicing her piano, playing the guitar or walking the dog.
You can check out more about D L Richardson at:
Website
Blog
1 comment:
Great blogpost, thank you! I am looking forward to reading your angel book, I love that cover. The last one I read with an angel coming down to earth to help, was by Annette Blair, and that was an awesome story.
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