3 Ways to read like a writer

If you don't have time to read, you don't have time to write.

Read as many books as you can in the genre you want to write.

How often have we heard successful authors like Stephen King say that? And its true.

But, how do you read in a way that helps you to write?

Here's just 3 ways -

Rule no.1
Do you skim any text, or just go past it completely because it doesn't interest you?

If so, learn from it and don't write anything similar in your book, whether its long drawn out description or over flowery language.

Rule no.2
Just as you can learn from what you don't like in a book you can learn from what you do like.

Does the author ensure all their characters stand out because they're so different? I love it when they do without dragging the story down to a snail's pace.

Rule no.3
Think about what makes the main character stand out or be a cliche. In a crowded genre like crime thriller you have to do something different.

I've tried to make Detective Inspector Duncan Waddell in my Detective in a Coma series different by making him doubt his sanity because everyone tells him his friend and colleague Stevie Campbell is a coma, but he's talking to him. This not only gives Waddell something that will make him stand out, it also gives Vile City and the rest of the series a supernatural angle.

Deid Bastards (or my descent into madness)

Zombies in Glasgow? It has already happened.

Last night I had an epiphany, a moment when I realised what I needed to do to to get my as yet unfinished zombie book published.

Out goes my title The Waking Dead - not used to get sales off the back of the TV show The Walking Dead - although I wouldn't mind, but so called because experts dub my creatures that because they are literally dying and then waking up.

In comes Deid Bastards.

Well, what else would they call dead - deid - people who come back to life in Glasgow where the book is set?

Am I mad for the name change? Only time will tell.

I'll keep you posted on my progress, or inevitable retreat to a padded cell wearing an I-love-me-jacket with daily injections from Nurse Ratchet.

The zombies are here. Here is the proof...

They're in Glasgow now, but they could be heading to you.

This is Generation Z, World War Z.

The blurb for Vile City

I'm working on the final edit now and trying to figure out where to send it. But, here's the blurb (here's hoping you'll see something similar on the back of a book soon) -

The women of Glasgow have real reason to be afraid.  A man dubbed ‘the Glasgow Grabber’ is on the loose and they are his prey. 

DI Waddell is the detective called in to save the day.  But, he has problems of his own. 

The paperwork on his desk is piling up faster than the knickers at a porn shoot, he’s a borderline diabetic addicted to Irn Bru, and to top it all, he’s been lumbered with a Hen Broon look-alike with glasses because his finest detective and friend Stevie is languishing in a psychiatric hospital.  And don’t even get him started on his pompous, ex-Army boss and the pain in the bahookie hack who comes round every time she smells the scent of human suffering. 

The last thing Waddell needs is the country’s biggest case to land on his lap. 

Driven by the belief that third victim, the plucky Shelley Craig is still alive Waddell is in a desperate race against time to uncover the truth behind the abductions and to save her.  To do that, he and his team must delve into the seedy underbelly of Scotland’s swingers’ scene and a sick world where women are tricked into the sex trade and traded like cattle.    

Along the way Waddell will discover one thing is true: the female of the species is more deadly than the male.    

Vile City is a tale of criminal skulduggery, set in a city Waddell once loved, but is fast growing to despise because of all the darkness he sees. 

S'now fair

No buses or trains.  People abandoning their cars in freezing weather and trudging down the motorway like refugees, turning the M8 into one giant car park.  ‘It was like The Day After Tomorrow’ my brother told me. 

He spent four hours running around Glasgow trying to find a way home.  Went to the Bus Station.  No buses.  Went to Information,’ What do I know?’ shrugged the man in the booth.  Some information perhaps?

Same story at the train station.  ‘Oh, but there is a train ten miles away from where you really want to go and it leaves in five hours.’  Bloody fantastic info, especially when they tell you AFTER you bought your ticket.

Eventually he got home seven hours after his brother went into get him in a Land Rover.  Something about their gears makes them good in the snow apparently.

Anyway, I’m listening to this and whilst I’m thinking how terrible it is, I’m also thinking wouldn’t it be great to write a zombie novel set in the snow?  Imagine it, survivors walking by and they see a snowman and think,’ how lovely it is that kids are still doing normal things like building snowmen.  Then the thing moves and it’s a blooming zombie!  I can just see folk jumping in their cinema seats when I sell the movie rights to Night of the Killer Snow Zombies!.  

Why Vile City?

My novel is set in Glasgow and begins with a young woman getting off a bus with her boyfriend. They take a short cut down an alley (not a wise thing to do anywhere) and are attacked by an assailant unknown. The boyfriend thinks he's been stabbed, but he's been knocked out cold by a sedative and his girlfriend is abducted. Vile City follows DI Duncan Waddell, who wishes he'd become a history teacher, as he tries to track down three women who have been taken by the beast the press have dubbed 'The Glasgow Grabber.'

The title comes from the fact that DI Waddell is becoming disillusioned by the fair city he once loved thanks to the nasty underbelly he uncovers in the course of his work.

As well as this novel, I am also working on a book of 23,000 words aimed at one imprint in particular, about Kirsty, a one legged barmaid who goes on the run after killing a gangster's goon who got a bit too touchy feely by putting her stiletto through his pug ugly head. You had to have been there to know her violence was justified.