Category Archives: News

The Leanpub website now shows that Psychic Dawn, my second work of fiction, is 100% complete, which means that it now has a beginning, a middle, and an end, sandwiched between a Foreword and an Afterword.

What remains is constant reading and re-reading, the never-ending task of finding typographical mistakes, repetitions, and the occasional goof.

Unlike Psychic Awakening, which grew from a vivid mental image of the first scene in the book, Psychic Dawn grew from a vivid mental image that forms the last paragraph of Chapter 6. From this static point, the story grew in two directions: forwards and backwards.

This complication, and the greater one of writing a story set in modern Japan, were the reasons I was hesitant to accept the challenge and procrastinated for several years.

Now that the story is complete, I wonder how much sense it will make to readers unfamiliar with Japan and Japanese culture.

Leaving aside the fictional element, the setting and background of Psychic Dawn are, I believe, accurate and authentic, my only reservation being the element of Japanese police procedure, of which I have no personal experience.

I could have prevailed upon a friend who is a retired MPD official to check my descriptions of Detectives Matsumoto and Washizu but, as with Psychic Awakening, a fear of blocking the creative flow with plodding background research held me back. I suspect that the scenes featuring Emi Washizu would be far more monotonous if I forced them into the straightjacket of realism.

Reading the final draft, I was tempted — very briefly — to use footnotes to clarify references that might be unclear to readers unfamiliar with Japanese current affairs. I resisted the temptation and decided I could use this blog to fulfil the same purpose.

As this blog will now cover the material of two, possibly more, novels, I have added one letter to the title, which is now Psychic Awakenings. This will probably result in a week or two of search engine confusion, but will more accurately reflect the content of the blog.

I have no idea. I suspect that the characters and locations in Psychic Awakening were already there, deep in my subconscious, when I sat down and began writing the novel. It was like drawing back a curtain, looking through the window, and recording the events outside.

I didn’t stop to ask how or why, afraid of disrupting the stream of creative consciousness. There were three exceptions, one of which never made it to the final edition. I remember checking the flight time from London to Prague and the train connections from Watford to Warminster. In the first version of the book, Peter has three passports and I spent hours investigating possible conflicts in citizenship laws. In the end it was easier to give him just two. It also gave me an excuse to cut several pages describing the complex post-War history of Peter’s family.

I’ve a feeling that, way back in Victorian times, the only terraced streets in the Watford area would have been around the station, housing railway labourers. Placing Rochester Street a short bus ride from the station was probably a goof, but one I felt powerless to change.

The same goes for the Prague and Wiltshire locations. I considered other settings that led to fewer complications, but my subconscious refused to cooperate.

As I noted in the Afterword, the book is probably full of egregious goofs, the consequence of my reluctance to spend time on background research. One of the merits of the Leanpub publishing framework is that authors can update their books as often as they like, and readers can download the updates for free.

I’d be grateful if readers could alert me to any goofs they find. My subconscious permitting, I’ll do my best to fix them.

Cynthia was one of the many characters who never made it to the final version of Psychic Awakening.

Like all the other people in the book, she appeared out of nowhere and took on a life of her own.

It was a shame to let her go, but I was determined to slice 50K words from the first draft.

In that draft, when Megan tells Peter that she’d like to look around the Institute where he works, she’s expecting him to give her a personal tour. He doesn’t. He tells her that a young lab assistant called Cynthia has proved so popular with visitors (especially men) that she’s asked to do the tours whenever her work permits.

Reluctantly, Megan sets off on a ramble around the huge building, but in no time she, too, finds herself falling under Cynthia’s spell. By the time they get back to Peter’s office, they’re holding hands and chatting like old friends.

From time to time I’ll introduce other characters who ended up on the cutting room floor, or entire episodes that disappeared into thin air.

Congratulations. You’ve stumbled upon a new blog I created to discuss Psychic Awakening, my first fiction book and my first attempt at self-publishing.

Writing the book was effortless and enjoyable. Deciding what to do with the finished manuscript was not. Most of the authors I know publish through small independent companies that specialise in specific genres.

Judging from the standard of editing and proofreading, these micro-publishers are probably one-woman businesses that do little more than commission a cover, convert the manuscript into digital format, and then feature the new book on their website—for a week or two, until the next batch of new books comes along.

Psychic Awakening has no shape shifters, dragon-slayers, BDSM, or hardcore erotica. It wouldn’t fit into any of the standard micro-publishing niches.

I considered Smashwords, but discovered that, with the exception of romance, they are no longer accepting author submissions, only those from literary agents. That leaves me out.

Kindle Digital Publishing I also investigated. By the time I’d filled in several pages of declarations for the US Tax Office, the system had decided it would have to withhold 30% of my earnings, even though I’m not a US citizen. I presume that 30% is over and above Amazon’s standard 30% royalty. No thank you.

Which is when I discovered a small Vancouver outfit called Leanpub and watched a YouTube video of one of the founders explaining their business model. I liked their ideas, but what clinched the deal was Leanpub’s generous attitude towards authors publishing with other companies.

So far the Leanpub workflow has been smooth and trouble-free. My only reservations are the use of limited markdown that doesn’t give consistent results across different ebook readers, and the dominance of computer textbooks in the Leanpub catalogue.

That’s not likely to change any time soon, so leaving my book with Leanpub is placing it in a niche within a niche. The book has no chance of selling unless I mount an aggressive word-of-mouth campaign, sufficient to lift Psychic Awakening into the Best Selling category, where it will get more exposure.

Psychic Awakening was uploaded to Leanpub about two weeks ago and far from breathing a sigh of relief and moving on to another project, I find myself chipping and polishing away at the text, removing a word here, changing a word there.

This flexibility takes a great weight off an author’s shoulders. I can remember the distress I felt back in the days of typeset paper publishing, when I found a careless mistake after the publisher had run off a few thousand copies.

I’d like to use this blog to update readers on changes I make to Psychic Awakening, and from time to time I’ll introduce some of the characters and episodes that never made it to the super-slim final version.