SEAL COVE

The People in My Head

by Scott W Clemens | Oct 20, 2017 | Author's Blog

Reading books allows you to live life through another’s eyes. So does writing books. As a result I’ll never write a story about social injustice, or hopelessness. It would make me too depressed. There are plenty of things in this world that inspire outrage, or anger, or pity, or disgust. If you read a book that centers on any of those themes, you’ll be done with it in a few hours, perhaps unsatisfied, but relatively unscathed. If you write that same book you’ll have to live with those characters and situations for months or years, and that can be very unsettling. My novel With Artistic License is a story about Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. In it the main character is going through a divorce. To write fictional characters you have to put yourself in their place and see the world through their eyes. By the time I’d finished writing the novel I felt like I’d gone through a divorce myself, though I’ve been happily married for 40 years. The characters in my current work-in-progress have their problems, but no one’s situation is hopeless, and there are amusing moments, which keeps this writer happy.

I was hoping to finish by the end of the year, which now seems doubtful, but at least I’ll be spending that time with characters whose company I genuinely enjoy, whose problems are nothing too dire. As usual, I’m covering new ground. To be very successful as a writer (defined by the number of readers one has) it helps to stick to one genre. That way you can build a base of supporters. So far I haven’t covered the same ground twice. With Artistic License is a literary novel leaning toward dark romantic comedy. Time Management, a novel, is part fantasy, part historical adventure. Evelyn Marsh is a novel of psychological suspense. The one thing that ties them together is a wry sense of humor and uplifting endings.

Speaking of Evelyn Marsh, an audible edition will be coming out very soon. More on that in the next post.

Enter to Win a Goodreads Book Giveaway

by Scott W Clemens | Sep 4, 2017 | Author's Blog

In this era of unconstrained publishing, many authors give away their work for free. In principal I’m against the practice. I know of no other profession where the creator is expected to work for free. The average cost of my books runs to less than a penny a page, which I consider a bargain. Nonetheless, when you’re an unknown quantity it’s hard to get anyone to pay attention to creative work; there’s just too much available to winnow out the wheat from the chaff. Brand awareness has become more important than ever.

So in an effort to alert potential readers to my work, in the month of September I’m giving away four copies of Time Management, a novel, and five signed copies of Evelyn Marsh on Goodreads. You can find them here:

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Time Management

by S.W. Clemens

Giveaway ends September 15, 2017.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Evelyn Marsh

by S.W. Clemens

Giveaway ends September 21, 2017.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Beginning a New Tale

by Scott W Clemens | Aug 15, 2017 | Author's Blog

The usual question a stranger will ask after finding out I write fiction is, “Where do you get your stories?” There is no singular answer. Each story has its own genesis. I always see the beginning and the ending clearly. The middle part is always nebulous and takes a while to flesh out.

I wrote a failed novel called Fog Beach several years ago. The kernel of the story was planted fifteen years before that, when my brother was auditing a small oil company and found evidence of a scam involving government subsidies. There were a few good scenes in that book, but it was dense and too complicated to follow.

The bare bones concept of With Artistic License came to me in a dream, scene by scene over the course of a night. I dreamed of a six-year-old boy drawing on a wall and woke up laughing (I often laugh out loud in my sleep, which drives my wife crazy). I kept waking up laughing and jotting down notes before falling asleep and dreaming the next scene. By the morning I had the bones of a screenplay, but decided to explore the characters in more depth by telling it as a novel. The actual writing took three and a half years.

The concept of Time Management, a novel had been with me since I was a kid. I began writing it in my forties, abandoned it, picked it up again in my fifties, and finished it in my sixties. It took me a long time to figure out what the internal and external conflicts were, and once I had those in place it again took three and a half years to write.

Determined to work faster, I decided to write a novella next and kicked around a few ideas with my wife. I was just finishing up Time Management and we were driving through an affluent neighborhood of Santa Barbara looking at stately homes with their well-tended gardens, and imagining the occupants I wondered, “What would drive a normal, mild-mannered, well-educated woman to commit murder?”  I put that idea on the back burner in May of 2015 and didn’t think of it again until I sat down on January first 2016 and began making notes. Evelyn was a short, sweet affair. I started the actual writing on April first and was finished on September first, a total of nine months from start to finish. There was a little editing and tweaking after that, but for all intents and purposes it was done.

For this new book (working title Rum Beach) I want to write an ensemble piece with several characters whose lives intersect in the small town of Rum Beach. I can’t tell you how or why a character springs to mind. They seem to lurk in the background and then step forward and say, “What about me? Tell my story.” I had several characters in mind and left them to simmer for seven or eight months, letting the story coalesce around them.  The goal is to have the first draft written by the end of the year. It’s an ambitious goal, but something to shoot for.