One of my favourite authors wrote crime fiction. He began writing in the 1970s and continued doing so until his death a little over 10 years ago. Some writers have taken up where he left off and continue the series that he was well-known for. As much as I loved this series, I’ve begun to notice some basic problems with his writing. Don’t get me wrong. He was a good writer, but there were times when it didn’t flow as well. Or it didn’t have the same ‘voice’, if you will. It could also be a little repetitive.
When I first began writing, I was only 13 years old. I didn’t really care much about form, rhyme, meter or various grammatical rules. It’s not that I ignored them. I was taught the basic rules of English grammar right from primary school. I didn’t know all the terms for them, such as pronoun modifiers. In some ways I still don’t. Most of those rules are something I automatically follow, without necessarily knowing why. Yes, I do still get some of them wrong from time to time. But I’m learning.
I studied English literature at university. In many of the poems I studied, I had one main question. Did these poets think about the meanings of what they wrote? And were they thinking about structural rules when they were writing? Since these poems were written at least a hundred years before my time, I obviously can’t ask them. I do wonder if they would laugh at each interpretation, saying: “That’s not what I meant!”
I often compare my writing to those literary giants. I wonder if I will ever be considered as good as Shakespeare, or Alexandre Dumas (another favourite author) or even Robert B Parker. For years, when I was writing stories in a particular fandom, I would read other people’s work and wonder if I would ever write as well as them.
Then one day I realised that I needed to stop comparing my writing to someone else’s. Just because I think someone’s writing is good, doesn’t mean mine is bad. We all have different ways of writing. For me, I tend to be a visual writer, in that I picture the action in my mind and write what I see. For instance, I was once given a photograph to write a story on in English class back in high school. I wrote the story in such a way that it stood out to the teacher. Someone else might have taken that photo and done something completely different. Sometimes it all comes down to how we perceive things.
Writing is a lot like playing music. There are musicians who are technically brilliant, can play the notes correctly, but they may not put their heart and soul into it. For a writer, the same thing applies. We can follow all the grammatical rules correctly, make the writing technically brilliant, but we may not have put our heart and soul into it. Like the author mentioned at the beginning of this post. Maybe he wasn’t technically brilliant, but it felt like he enjoyed writing his character.
So, we can continue to compare ourselves to Shakespeare, but at the end of the day, we need to write using our own voices. Write the way you want to write, not the way you perceive others expect you to.
She is about to lose her part-time job in an art gallery.
When her close friend Nick Sloane comes up with the perfect solution to her financial problems, Kate refuses.
His idea? They get married.
But Kate wants love, not what she believes is a marriage of convenience. No matter how she feels about Nick.
Georgia has known Quinn for years and is asked to interview him when he decides to move back home with his now teenaged daughter.
When they meet again, there is a mutual attraction. Yet they’re both gun-shy, for their own reasons.
If they can find a way past their respective issues, they may find love is lovelier the second time around.
The producers of the show are desperate to learn who is behind a number of accidents before the show has even begun and turn to Amanda’s bosses for help.
Just as Amanda gets through her audition, there is another incident and they presume it’s just another accident. Until the victim ends up dead.
This time, it’s murder.
Amanda now must work with Jim to identify the culprit while at the same time dealing with difficulties in her personal life.
This is the second in the Amanda Steele: Private Investigator series.
Then a high school principal hires the firm to investigate stories of drugs within the school. It’s the perfect opportunity for Amanda to go undercover.
Her father chooses one of his own colleagues, a newly-transferred Detective Constable Jim Andersen, to be her liaison. He wants Jim to keep an eye on his daughter and make sure things don’t get out of hand.
Jim considers Amanda to be spoiled and more than a little too big for her boots.
Amanda is no fan of his either. Yet when the case takes a turn for the worse, they are forced to work even more closely together.
Abby is once more rising from the ashes of her old life to start anew. She has a new job, a new life and a relationship with the man she loves.
She is finally able to put Phoenix behind her.
Yet even as Abby and Michael begin working together to bring their enemy to trial, a new threat arises in the form of Raphael’s own employers.
The Mob has been exposed and the New York crime families are out for revenge. Rumours begin to fly as to the nature of that revenge.
They bring in a professional; someone with a link to Phoenix’s past. Someone who has developed a dangerous obsession.
Abby’s own nemesis returns when the life of someone she loves hangs in the balance.
Will her love survive this new test or will she lose herself forever, destroying everything she has worked for?
Abby Smith was just a small-town reporter working for a small daily newspaper. As far as she’s concerned, she has a mediocre career and an even more mundane life.
Then a man in prison begs her to help him clear his name. A week later, the man is dead and she sets out to get justice.
Her quest leads her down a dark and tragic path.
Like the mythical bird, she rose from the ashes of her old life to become Phoenix, a woman bent on destroying the man responsible for taking away everything she loved.
Michael Ryan was a cop, about to lose everything, until he was given the opportunity of a lifetime.
As he rises to the top, he meets Phoenix and falls hard for her, but soon begins to realise she is not what she seems.
Together, Phoenix and Michael work to expose the truth as their relationship deepens.
Even if the eventual cost is more than either of them is prepared to pay.
Michael begins to realise that for Phoenix, the fight is not just for her life. It’s for her sanity.
Can Michael save her … from herself?
As Janet struggles to understand why it happened, she is given journals left by her friend. Hoping to find the answers there, they lead her on an emotional journey into the past and into her friend’s battles with mental illness.
Eventually, Janet’s own struggles toward acceptance begin to interfere with her own life.
She has to find a way to let her friend go.
He’s smart, good-looking and, sure, there are a few red flags, but he claims to love her. The marriage is against her father’s wishes but she’s tired of sacrificing her own desires for her father’s sake.
She slowly begins to realise her husband’s charming exterior hides a monster beneath. She escapes her abusive marriage and falls for another man – her husband’s former best friend.
He’s kind and thoughtful – sure, he may not be as good-looking but he’s a good man and he makes her laugh. She loves him but knows it’s not enough. Ultimately, she must decide if this new love is what she really needs.
She has to move on from the past and learn to love herself.
For some, depression can have devastating consequences.
Over 300 million people in the world have been diagnosed with this illness, yet there are still those out there who have no knowledge or understanding of it and how debilitating it can be.
I have struggled for years with the effects of depression, bullying and emotional abuse. There are others like me who have been through something similar and we are only now coming out the other side.
This book is not just my own journey. It seeks to explain what depression is while dispelling the myths around it and what causes it through research and personal analysis.