Life In Shadows

Sunday, October 24th, 2010

The cover looks better on Amazon!

After two to three weeks of wrestling with Amazon’s Digital Text Platform, trying to publish my long short story Life In Shadows (more of that later), I’ve finally realised that as with most computer problems I experience the fault was not, in fact, with the technology, but rather with my lack of understanding of the technology. Anyway, paragraphing issues have been sorted, rogue italics ironed out, page breaks inserted and the story is now “In Review”, and should be published in the next few days.

I went for the lowest pricing option available, 99c in the US and 75p in the UK. If it had been possible, as it’s a short story, not a novel, after all.

Or is it?

 Turns out that Life In Shadow’s length puts it into the category of “novelette”. According to dictionary.com, a novelette is “an extended prose narrative story or short novel.”

Wikipedia says a novelette has a word count of between 7,500 and 17,499.

So novelette it is. Which eases my concerns about the price somewhat.

And Life In Shadows? Here’s the product description I painstakingly entered into Amazon:

Set in Thailand, Life In Shadows is a 10,000 word short story [damn, I should have said novelette], about two writers: why they succeed, why they fail, and why sometimes they never even start.

Thirty years ago, Charles Shaw wrote his critically acclaimed first novel. The world is still waiting for his second book. When aspiring writer and freelance journalist Michael Hayes is granted a shock interview with Shaw, he is determined to discover why the author is now a recluse. But Shaw doesn’t give his secrets away easily, and Michael discovers there are reasons why some people remain in shadows, and many more why others, including himself, should come into the light.

One of those reasons might be the beautiful and mysterious Francesca, who Michael meets while waiting to interview Shaw.

Tags: Amazon Kindle, Bangkok, Life In Shadows, Short Story, Thailand
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Great Places To Write (Part Five - In Thailand)

Friday, July 30th, 2010

The inspiration for "Life In Shadows."

I wrote a short story (called Life In Shadows) set almost entirely in the Mandarin Oriental, about a freelance writer’s interview with a reclusive novelist. While exploring the hotel, the freelance writer sees a beautiful, but sad, lady framed between two green shutters.

The Oriental Hotel is an inspiring place, with the famous Bamboo Bar and the view overlooking the Chao Phraya River. And of course, there’s the Author’s Lounge, so named because of all the famous writers - from Jeffrey Archer to Graham Greene - who have stayed in the hotel. In Life In Shadows, Michael, the main character, interviews the reclusive novelist in the Author’s Lounge, and meets the beautiful woman in the Verandah restaurant, pictured above.

The Mandarin Oriental is stunning, then, but so too is Bangkok - a city that’s one of a kind, polluted and crowded, but exciting and beautiful, all at the same time. Perhaps my favourite city in South-East Asia, and certainly in the top five.

Tags: Bangkok, Great Places To Write, Life In Shadows, Oriental, Short Story, Thailand
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