Bedlam Cover Exclusive
Posted by Mike in Books and Reviews on July 20, 2010
The Road to Bedlam
I am delighted to be able to give you an advance preview for the cover of THE ROAD TO BEDLAM which is scheduled for release on 2nd September.
There is always a challenge with covers that you want it to identify strongly with its sister titles but also to have a unique feel of its own, and in this case the team at Angry Robot have done a fantastic job. The central image stands out beautifully against the trademark map just visible in the background, while the design picks up the watery theme from the book.
I love the cover of Sixty-One Nails and I think that The Road to Bedlam can now stand alongside it on the bookshelf with pride.
The Road to Bedlam will be released on 2nd September 2010 in the UK and international, and on November 8th in Canada and the United States – in time for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Tools for Writing 6 – yWriter
We’ll be looking at a PC tool in this part of the series, and it’s one that is squarely aimed at the structured approach. yWriter is produced by Spacejock Software, and as you can probably tell from the developer’s moniker, is designed and built by an SF writer, Simon Haynes. Like some other tools that have been reviewed here. yWriter is free to download, but unlike some of the others it is actively being developed and supported. There is an active user community and there are even video walk-throughs to watch on the website. There is an opportunity to donate if you find the software useful.
yWriter Main Screen
The opening screen (shown right) provides an insight into yWriter. You see the main project window with chapters arranged in the left pane and the description associated with those chapters in the panel below. The main panel has a number of tabs showing Scenes, Project Notes, Characters, Locations and Items. Clicking on a chapter in the side-panel shows the scenes, etc. for that chapter in the main panel.
yWriter aims to structure your work into chapters which then comprise multiple scenes. Clicking on a scene shows a preview of that scene in the bottom of the main panel, along with Characters, Description, Locations, Items, Scene Notes and Goals for that scene.
Writers working on multiple projects, or writers with large and complex works will know that it is sometimes hard to keep track of all the information associated with their work-in-progress and yWriter aims to address this by giving you ample opportunity to document what you are doing and build structure around your work. Read the rest of this entry »
Tools for Writing 5 – FreeMind
As part of my series on tools for writing, I wanted to take a look at, not only tools for drafting and editing your work, but also tools to help you plan what you write and structure your thoughts.
In this post we’ll be looking at FreeMind, a mind-mapping tool which allows you to organise and structure your ideas. FreeMind runs on a variety of platforms and is an Open Source project, so it is entirely free. Don’t be put off by the fact that this is not a commercial product – it is well-supported, under continuous development and is downloaded about 6,000 times a day – so it’s a very popular product. I have used it for years and found it to be very reliable. You will need Java runtime on your machine to run it, though, but that is also free and many people will already have it installed.
Basic Mind Map (click to expand)
When you first open FreeMind, this is the screen with which you are presented (this is on a Mac, on Windows it adopts the Microsoft look and feel). There is a menu, a toolbar with usual Save, Print, Copy Paste etc with a vertical toolbar with lots of small icons.
In the centre of the screen is an oval with the word “New Mindmap” in it. If you type at this point it will replace these words with a title of your choosing, usually the subject of this particular map.
If you are familiar with the techniques of mind-mapping then you are going to be right at home, but if you haven’t used this technique are are unfamiliar with it then I would suggest you read the Wikipedia entry on Mind-Mapping, which is agnostic of any tool, or get hold of Tony Buzan’s book Mind Mapping: Kickstart your creativity and transform your life. The claim may be hyperbole but it is an interesting book.
As a very quick introduction for the uninitiated, mind mapping allows you to connect thoughts and ideas to a central concept and then connect and re-organise those ideas in a non-linear manner allowing increasing levels of detail. It’s like an ever-expanding tree of ideas, notes, concepts, reminders and thoughts, specifically arranged around a central concept. Read the rest of this entry »
Tools for Writing 4 – Scrivener
This time in Tools for Writing, I’ll be looking at another Mac product, Scrivener from Literature and Latte.
This is not freeware and costs USD $39.95 at the time of writing, but it’s still within the budget of most writers and it has advantages over the products we have been reviewing like RoughDraft 3 and Jer’s Novel Writer, in that it is both supported and subject to further development. Scrivener is available on a 30 day trial as a download from the website, so you can try it before you decide whether to buy.
Main Window (click to enlarge)
The initial interface presented by Scrivener is relatively simple, showing a rich text editing window together with a structure pane to the left. The name of the item being edited is shown above the editing pane together with forward and back button so that you can skip back and forth between items like a browser.
There is a button bar across the top with view and search options and a status bar at the bottom which controls the viewing scale and shows the word-count and target. This simple interface hides a great deal of functionality, preventing Scrivener from appearing daunting to the novice.
As blocks of text are created in the tool they appear on the left in the outline. How you structure these is up to you, but you can create folders and sub-folders, text files and sub-text files within that structure, allowing you to break up your work into chapters, scenes or whatever makes sense to you. Rearranging your work is then simply a mater of dragging and dropping in the side-bar. Read the rest of this entry »
Tools for Writing 3 – Jer’s Novel Writer
Click to Enlarge
For this post in my series of posts on writing tools, I’m going to have a look at a free tool for the Mac OS-X platform called Jer’s Novel Writer.
The application presents itself with a simple, rich text edit window without formatting menus or clutter. It is focused very much on writing and the minimalist approach reflects this. There is a margin on the left hand side and prominent forward and back button on the toolbar. More of these later.
Much like Roughdraft 3 for the PC, Jer’s Novel Writer is unsupported in that the development of the product has ceased but the product is fully functional. This says more, perhaps, about the ability to make a living from developing your own software than about the quality of the product, which is excellent and stable.
I said in the introduction to this article that the software was free, and it is, but there is an annoying nag feature which will pester you to register every time you start a new project. GIven that Jer no longer develops the project, it is irritating and you wonder whether he might not simply have removed that one ‘feature’, but it is free and for that reason it can be tollerated.
I’ve had a couple of comments about the risks of using unsupported software, and the point is fairly made. There is a risk that an operating system update or patch may make the software unworkable, which is worth thinking about, but at the same time the risk is fairly limited and eminently testable. A quick search on the internet will tell you whether the software runs on your machine and you are free to use it or not.
In contrast, try buying a copy of Microsoft Word and getting any kind of personal support. Unless a general patch is issued for your problem you have no chance that it will be fixed. If you do a risk assessment based on the relative stability of the products, you will have a good idea of which represents the greater risk.
Having said that, there is an additional risk of using JNW (as we’ll refer to it from now on) which is that it has its own file format. I discussed this in a previous post: Before You Hit Save, and here we see that one advantage of an open file format is that you do not risk having your work locked into a file from which you cannot retrieve it. Having said that, JNW does allow you to export to text, RTF, MS Word or XHTML formats.
Buy Sixty-One Nails
Sixty-One Nails may be purchased through most good bookshops or click on the link below to visit Waterstones.com to check stock availability and order direct
...or you can purchase it via Amazon UK, where there are a number of helpful and interesting reviews - click on the cover image below to view them.
Alternatively, If you are not within the British Isles, you can order it through The Book Depository and they will ship free to most counties worldwide.
THE BOOK DEPOSITORY Amazon
