The Brevity Problem

I have a problem. I can’t stop overwriting things.

This problem applies to virtually everything I write, but in particular I’m talking about my novels. With the best intentions I set out to write a tidy 100,000 word manuscript, but before I know it, it’s a 190,000 word epic. I can’t help it.

Moreover, I’m not entirely sure why my word count is so high. I don’t write lengthy descriptions of the surroundings every time my main character walks into a new set. I don’t include pages-long odes to the male physical form every time my protagonist’s love interest shows up. I’ve weeded out all those malevolent adverbs, cut back on the sugary adjectives, and my protagonist spends a lot of her time alone, so the dialogue is sparse. I don’t allow her to go off on tangents willy-nilly. As far as I’m concerned, there is very little clutter, and no entire scenes that needn’t be there.


 So what’s going on?

I was recently told that I should divide the book in two, that there is just too much happening for one book. But is my book really a jumble of too many different plot strains, or is it just unconventional for an urban fantasy to be so long, and thus unacceptable? In this day and age, we are all deeply constrained by our genre and we might not even know it. We tend to write what we love to read, so we follow those conventions without even knowing it.

For urban fantasy, there seems to be only really one option lately. A series. Virtually every urban fantasy book becomes a series of five or more books, unless the author or publishers pull the plug. In fact, I’m not sure I have ever read a standalone urban fantasy. Have you?

My book was supposed to be part of a trilogy. This was my first mistake, apparently, because it seems trilogies belong to fantasy or possibly sci-fi. Trying to write an urban fantasy trilogy in this day and age is daring to the point of audacity. This is because trilogies, by nature, are more epic as they have one major overarching story told in three stages, whereas series are often formed of individual stories linked only by the characters and the world they are set in.


As series progress, there are often more loose ends left between each instalment, and they will probably build toward a big finale in the final two or three books.

But the story I want to tell isn’t a series. It isn’t short, separate stories – it is one woman’s journey from good to evil and back again, from loneliness to belonging, from ignorance to knowledge she cannot unlearn. Along the way there are murderers to catch, a revolution, and the Second Coming to deal with, which is why the story breaks down well into three longer books.

So what’s wrong with longer books anyway? Some of my favourite books are in excess of 150,000 words. Three of the Harry Potter books were in excess of 190,000.
The first Book in the A Song of Fire and Ice series, Game of thrones, by George R. R. Martin is 280,000+ words.  Longer books, done well, can consume you in a way that a series of shorter books never will. You can get wonderfully lost in a long book as you immerse yourself in its world and characters.

And isn’t it annoying when a book you find yourself loving ends all too soon? There have been many occasions where I’ve enjoyed a book but felt it was too brief, or found it finished prematurely, the story not really complete, in order to end on a cliff-hanger and entice me to buy the next book.

Brevity can be a bad thing too. It’s in the details that great characters are born and raised, after all. Some writers seem so concerned with a fast pace or the right word count that the plot zips along so breathlessly you barely have time to remember the characters names and before it’s done.

How unsatisfying it is to reach the end of a book and feel it was an opportunity wasted? Good characters, nice ideas, but just not fleshed out enough. Because, after all, when you really love something, you cannot get enough of it. If you love characters or the fictional world they inhabit, you would read an entire book about those characters just doing the laundry, or about a postman’s observations of that world as he goes on his daily rounds.

I think the modern publishing necessity of brevity is linked with the fashion for showing, not telling. Yes, this is a fashion, a trend borne from modernism and cemented in postmodernism I suspect. Telling tends to lead to lengthy exposition, particularly in fantasy, which is why finding novel ways to show the same information often ends up taking fewer words.

There are exceptions, of course. Sometimes writers go to such lengths to show the nature and history of their supernatural creatures, for example, that instead of just including a straight-to-the-point paragraph telling the same information, they end up including entire extra scenes in order to relay it through actions and speech.

Consider the Prologue of The Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Rings. That chapter is so long, it reads like an encyclopaedia entry, and I have to tell you, it was a slog to read. But I’m glad I read it, because it added so much to the story proper. If Tolkien had tried to show all that instead of telling it, he would have had to write another trilogy just to do so.

But I’m not Tolkien. I’m not delusional; I know the limitations of my writing, the strengths and the weaknesses. And I’m not writing fantasy, I’m writing urban fantasy, remember? Part of the appeal of urban fantasy as opposed to traditional fantasy is its accessibility. It isn’t supposed to be so fantastic that it needs so much explanation; it’s supposed to be a least in part ‘urban’, modern, recognisable.

So if I can’t write the epic trilogy I wanted to write, and the story won’t fit into the accepted series format prescribed for urban fantasy, what options are left? I see only one, and for this I incline my head in thanks to Stephenie Meyer for her popular (albeit critically slated) example - the four part saga.

So apparently I’m now writing a four part saga, not a trilogy. Half of me is delighted to have found this happy compromise, but the rest of me is just overwhelmed at the prospect of redrafting and re-planning not one but all three of the original books.

What have I gotten myself into? And why does the word ‘saga’ make me want to cringe?

As always, comments welcome. Follow me @H_Y_Malyk on Twitter

From Buffy to Anita Blake: The Characters Who Inspired My Writing

I’m currently writing urban fantasy about a dysfunctional but powerful woman who must fight demons both literal and figurative in a dystopian future London. I say currently because the epic trilogy is a work in progress, but it’s been progressing for the last decade – which is the entirety of my adult life.

Over the years, my vision of the story I want to tell and the characters who inhabit that world have inevitably been influenced by the fiction I’ve come into contact with. Below I discuss just a few of the most notable examples.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Faith

Chances are you’ve heard of this one. It was a show that captured the imaginations of a generation, combining, for what I believe to be the first time, the high school drama with elements from the horror genre. Who didn’t love the lead character Buffy, a cute and spunky heroine who broke the blonde victim stereotype?

However, it was the character Faith that intrigued me most. The idea of the slayer gone wrong, the anti-heroine, a figure of good corrupted, not by magic, but by insecurities and temptation, was an irresistible source of inspiration for my writing. From the first episode featuring the rebellious slayer, I never wrote a heroine with a clear conscience again.

The character’s descent into ‘evil’ and subsequent journey to redemption that crossed over into the show’s darker counterpart, Angel, captivated me. To this day, I’m drawn to characters who fall from grace and then struggle to atone.

Gaia Moore

This one is slightly less well known. The Fearless series, by Francine Pascal, is a twenty-plus book Young Adult saga that tells the story of a genetically modified teenage girl who can’t feel fear and has enhanced physical abilities. To help her stay safe, her father trains her in martial arts, but then abandons her.

Throughout the series, Gaia Moore becomes embroiled in in the machinations of her murderous uncle, an American spy, and balances an angst-filled social and love life with vigilantism.


 She is strong, reckless and fierce, but socially awkward, riddled with insecurity and the pervasive loneliness of never quite fitting in. Where Faith was always confident, brazen even, Gaia taught me that heroines could be pensive and unsure of themselves too.

Anita Blake

Anita Blake is, in my opinion, the first heroine of modern ‘urban fantasy’. I discovered the books by Laurel K. Hamilton as a teenager and it felt like my eyes had been opened for the first time.


Anita’s world is brutal and often genuinely disturbing, but she weathers any storm she’s thrown into not with (at least in the early books) any special powers, but with good training, experience, and an unflinching trigger finger. In many ways, she is comparable to Lara Croft of the Tomb Raider games, another inspiring female character.

I also really appreciated Anita’s style as a character (again, mostly the early books). Where most TV shows and books had beautiful, glamorous women in lead roles who wore the latest fashions and styled their hair and makeup just so, Anita had wild hair and wore sneakers and t-shirts.

To this day, I prefer a heroine who wears sensible footwear and doesn’t go out to confront the big bad wearing leather and a crop top. There’s something about a female character who not only kicks ass, but does so in designer heels that makes me…well, jealous.

Parrish Plessis

The Parrish Plessis trilogy by Marianne de Pierres (Nylon Angel, Code Noir, Crash Deluxe) will forever stand as some of my favourite fiction.


If you haven’t read the books, they are a blend of harder sci-fi with fantasy in a dystopian Australia, which makes them a little different from most urban fantasy out there. I’m far from a sci-fi fan, but Pierres’ prose is so sparse, yet so evocative, so unique, so hard-hitting, that the books swept me into her world and didn’t release me until the end of the third book.

On the other side, the main character, Parrish, stayed with me. Ballsy to the extreme, she is not a delicate female, being neither slight of build nor very pretty, but she kicks some serious arse (and she does it with an ‘r’ – yes!!). Some of the concepts in the book blew my mind, and since reading them I have always tried to pack more punch into my prose.

Jill Kismet

In my humble opinion, there are no better written urban fantasy books than the Jill Kismet series by Lilith Saintcrow (Night Shift, Hunter’s Prayer, Redemption Alley, Flesh Circus, Heaven’s Spite, & Angel Town).

I love urban fantasy, but some of it can be a bit fluffy, with superficial Mary Sue characters and prose that relies more on snark than thoughtful language choices. The Jill Kismet books break the mould in terms of how dark and gritty the content and characters are as well as in terms of the writing style.

Saintcrow’s prose is lyrical and mesmerising at times, visceral and devastating at others. The main character wrestles with demons and her conscience throughout the series as she helps the local police department fight supernatural crime.


She's gloriously conflicted with a fairly screwed up past, but she always manages to do the right thing, and in the process finds a partner who stands by her through all the horror and gore. And there is a lot of gore. The stories are so vivid, bleak and compelling that I even forgive her the leather pants.

If I could write a book that comes even close to being as stunning as those featuring Jill Kismet I will consider myself very successful.

What all these characters have in common, apart from being physically strong/powerful, is that they are all a somewhat damaged, disturbed even, constantly straddling that fine line between good and evil, right and wrong, and while they always manage to save the day, they cannot always save themselves.

The darkness within us all excites my muse in a way straight-laced heroes like Superman never will. We all know conflict is the driving force of all fiction, but it is inner conflict, complex and unpleasant though it may be, that makes a good story great.

As always, if you liked what you read, why not leave a comment or follow me on Twitter @H_Y_Malyk

Darkness v Light

So I want to talk about the issue of darkness, or bleakness, in writing and the balance of light and shade of tone/content in a novel.

As an urban fantasy fan I have noticed that recent urban fantasy is tending more toward ‘lightness’, as in the books are about healthy, well-adjusted people, usually young attractive women, who manage to overcome hordes of demons/vampires/hybrids/shapeshifters/any other supernatural baddie whilst still looking good and pursuing the hot guy. At the end of the day, despite being somehow haunted/hunted by these life-changing supernatural events, they go back to their day job to crack jokes with their best buddy.

There is nothing wrong with this. I love reading books where people laugh in the face of adversity and find their happy ending. However sometimes, just occasionally, I crave something grittier. Grit is not reserved only for crime dramas and espionage thrillers. There are, of course, examples of gritty, darker urban fantasy. Two series come to mind, the first being the early Anita Blake books, the second being the Jill kismet series by Lilith Saintcrow. Both of these series feature a strong female lead who manages to hold onto her day job despite escalating supernatural hijinks and peril, but the tone is distinctively darker. The ending is rarely happy. Romances aren’t fairy tales and relationships are complex and difficult.

However, there is such a thing as too dark. Go too dark, end in tragedy and have your characters decide there’s no point in it all anyway, and you risk just depressing your readers. On the other hand if you go too light without being deliberately funny you end up with a holiday read that is forgotten quicker than it’s read. So how do you find a balance? 

You would think that a world populated by monsters and magic would lend itself to a dark, bleak story, but we can’t forget that urban fantasy is, at least in part, a reaction to the otherness of traditional fantasy – and most people, fortunately, can’t relate as well to much darkness. Urban fantasy is all about bringing the fantastic to the everyday, and often that means literally combining magic and monsters with characters who live and behave not unlike their authors. So we find a lot of urban fantasy books feature female characters who live alone but for a cat, but rarely is this a cause of concern for them. Rarely do we find these lonely characters suffering from mental illness, for example, despite the reality that loneliness and depression go hand in hand.

For my urban fantasy, I originally gave the protagonist an upbeat sidekick and had her making humorous quips on every other page, but as one draft became another I found I wanted to take her to a darker place. She is a woman with an obsession, having spent her life in pursuit of revenge, and I felt that in order to justify the decisions she makes in the book I would have to write her as more conflicted and disturbed. After all, is it realistic for a character who has suffered tragedy in childhood and spent the rest of her life obsessing about vengeance to be well-adjusted and healthy? I don’t think so.

Often in urban fantasy books characters are put through the most appalling ordeals. They are beaten, tortured, violated, almost sacrificed to the Devil on an altar, and yet, after perhaps a spell in hospital, they appear again at the start of the next book bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. This is perhaps necessary to the continuation of the series, since if a character were to be deeply psychologically scarred at the end of each book, the heroine would soon end up being sectioned or would become just as bad as the bad guys.

This idea is one that appealed to me. The issue of compromised morality is one that both Anita Blake and Jill Kismet were forced to face as they repeatedly made difficult decisions to defeat their enemies. Sure, in some stories the heroine is fortunate enough to be able to kill the villain simply by handing them a mirror, but in more realistic, darker stories, often the villain is not defeated before volumes of blood have been shed. At what point does the woman who kills the monsters become a monster herself? How far can I push that idea before the main character becomes unlikeable? Nowhere have I seen this issue so well explored as in the books and TV series Dexter, where the protagonist is a serial killer but we root for him anyway.

In fact, Dexter was one of my biggest inspirations to make my main character, and therefore my novel, darker. Several years after first watching that show, I now have a final draft of my novel in which my heroine is damaged, fragile, and lonely, and that makes her a real threat in the story, because when pushed to the limits of sanity, she is capable of anything.

Have you ever changed how dark your writing or characters are? Maybe you found it was all getting a bit too dark and had to take steps to lighten things up, Shakespeare style. Have you ever read a book and wished it would lighten up, or groaned at an sickly happy ending?

As always, comments encouraged, all feedback welcome. Follow me @H_Y_Malyk

Excerpt from Vexed To Nightmare

As promised, here is the excerpt from the final draft of Vexed to Nightmare, my dark urban fantasy novel, due out later this year.





I have their blood on my hands.
It’s always the same. Every year, on the anniversary, I do not visit their graves and lay flowers. I do not return to the house we used to call our home, because it stopped being ours the day he took me and it stopped being a home the day I burned it to the ground.
They have probably built a new house there, filled with a new family making new memories. I wouldn’t know. I never went back.
Instead I spend this day trying not to self-destruct. Or perhaps you could say that I am trying to do exactly that, and failing. Because failing is what I do best, isn’t it? After nineteen years, I still have no answers to the questions that I carry with me, like stones sewn into my clothing, drawing me deeper into the dark waters of the unknown with every passing year.
I promised them, the day I came back, that I would find our truth and our vengeance, but almost two decades later, here I am. Still clutching at that bastard of buoys, hope. Hope that next year will be different. Next year I’ll find the vampire who destroyed us. Next year I’ll put an end to this, and I might finally be able to breathe.
That is how the anniversary feels, like a weight on my chest. It’s always there but on this particular day of the year its burden increases tenfold. Or maybe I just become too weak to bear its weight, just for twenty four small hours.
If I fold beneath it for just one day of the year, it’s ok, isn’t it? It’s not like there is anyone to see me fall. So fall I do, and sometimes it’s so quiet, no one hears. Sometimes, it’s a spectacular show, like the year I escaped the confines of the Academy and gave arson a go.
Since I graduated and moved to new London, I’ve learned to sublimate the energy into a different kind of violence.
This year, I tried to find a sparring partner at the agency complex, but no one would come near me. They aren’t as stupid as they look and my story is common knowledge. Everyone knows about the girl who was abducted as a child. The orphan who can’t remember what her abductor did to her. For a long time, I was the grain that fed the rumour mill, until I started breaking teeth in the smiles aimed down on me.
Now I don’t even need to threaten anyone. People, for the most part, just stay as far away from me as possible. Today that meant, in the absence of a co-worker to beat the shit out of, I had to look beyond the Complex limits.
It didn’t take too long. In New London, among the shiny people, the fangs are well concealed behind perfect needle-stung lips, but in the Old city, there are mouldering corners where the immortal skulk in predatory packs. Old London has a ravaged face but the worst of its depravity still hide between the lines. Human police have no hope. Even the agency doesn’t attempt to intercept every illegal blood exchange.
When I arrived, even in broad daylight, there were at least ten humans lying with their clients atop them, tick-like fixed to their throats, sweaty old paper money clutched in their limp, pallid hands.
It didn’t take long. I have never been beaten in hand to hand combat, and I have a way with blades.
On the other side, I know what I did was illegal. Exchanging blood for money is too, but that doesn’t give me the right to kill the vampires willing to pay that bit extra for their next meal straight from the vein instead of from a bottle. The fact that as a soljinn, I am literally born to hunt them is irrelevant. The law is the law. As an agent for the ASM, it’s supposed to be my job to uphold it.
Seeing the stark, languid faces of the blood whores after I gutted their clients, I’m not sure if what I did was wrong. I’m not sure about much anymore.
On the way back to the bunker I call home, no one notices me. In my hooded sleeveless robe, sweatshirt and gloves, my long blue hair is covered, my hands are hidden, and the blades are safely tucked back into their sheaths beneath.
It isn’t until I lock the door within and press my back to it that I feel it. The aftertaste of the rush. It feels like nineteen years of pain and a mouthful of battery acid. Trembling, I vomit copiously into the toilet until I’m empty. Afterwards, when I take off my gloves and wash my hands, the water runs red for a long time. Even with the leather, it always gets inside.
It’s not for me. I’ve told myself a thousand times. It’s for them, for the parents he took from me. I made a promise the day he gave me back to my people, unharmed, but not unchanged. I won’t give up searching for the truth, no matter what the cost.
But as I struggle to meet my own eyes in the shattered remains of the mirror, I have to wonder, what if I never find him? Next year will be the twentieth anniversary. Twenty years, and no answers. How much longer can I go on like this?

First Scene Strife

For my second blog entry I want to discuss the problematic first scene/chapter in a novel. In my debut novel, 'Vexed to Nightmare', I have re-written/edited the first scene at least a dozen times. I have finally reached a point at which I am moderately satisfied with it, but it has been a long road.

For most of us writers, the first scene is probably the first we write. We have our story outline in mind, we have our characters' thoughts jostling alongside our own in our minds, and the first scene just pours out, as natural as can be, the spring from which the river soon flows. It isn't until we have written the end that we return to that first scene to see if it still works. And usually it doesn't.

First there is the probability that somewhere along the way the themes, ideas and tone of the novel shifted slightly from what we initially planned, meaning the first scene no longer quite fits.

Second there is the greater probability that we inadvertently filled the first scene with rather more information than the reader actually needs.

Both of these problems mean that the first scene needs at least a strong edit, at most a total rewrite. I have heard that some writers cut out the first two scenes completely, starting the story instead from the third scene and filtering in any essential info from those cut scenes into the later novel body. Such is the pointless clutter of the first scene in some cases.

However even if you are able to do this and still have a story beginning that makes sense and doesn't confuse/overwhelm the reader, you still then need to consider the third scene, now the first, as a FIRST scene.

What do I mean by this? Well a first scene, be it a whole chapter, a prologue, or a passage within a chapter, must of course do many things. The quantity of things the first scene is supposed to do is precisely the reason writing it is so daunting. We all know that if the first scene isn't right, we risk losing our readers or the agent who holds the future of our published career in his or her hands.

A first scene should grab and hold the reader's attention, which is far easier said than done. It should also introduce the main character/s, establish the direction of the plot and convey any major themes/concepts. It should set the tone of the book and the writing style as well as give an idea of the kind of settings of the book (e.g. a city or a small village). In other words, the first scene is almost a summary of the entire book minus the plot twists, which must absorb and rivet the reader whilst TELLING as little as possible.

When put that way, is it any wonder writing that first scene is so difficult? Despite all this, however, I find I enjoy writing the first scene as much as I enjoy writing the final climactic scenes. As  impossible as perfection is to achieve, there is a pure kind of joy to presenting my beloved characters for the 'first' time again. For those few paragraphs or pages I can almost imagine myself as the reader discovering the story for the first time, and with that comes the old excitement again.

 As thrilling as it is to write the big finales, the true magic of being a writer is in the imagining of our own worlds, in the act of creating stories and characters from the primordial ooze of our minds. When we first put those ideas to paper (or word file), we breathe life into our creation. And that is wonderful.

However I do not think that a reader experiences the first scene in the same way. A reader will usually read the first scene of a new book so quickly and offhandedly that all those salient details you the writer so devotedly and masterfully wove into the pages are at best unconsciously absorbed, at worse entirely overlooked. A reader, in my opinion, when reading a new book by a new author, will be more likely to notice things they don't like rather than things they do like.

So we come to the old dilemma. Do we write for ourselves or do we write for the imagined reader? The sad fact is that if you ever want people to buy your books, self published or traditionally published or otherwise distributed, you will have to consider the reader.

 As much as you may love your seven paragraph long exposition of the social history of your wizard race, you must consider why you love it. You love it because it is your fictional history, and because it is part of the complex world you have been imagining for many months and years. A new reader does not have that established love of your story yet, so lengthy back-stories and explanations will likely be boring in the first scenes.

The aim of the book is, of course, to make your reader fall as much in love with your story as you are. Your first scene is only that first meeting of two strangers who go on the fall in love. There should be attraction, appeal, the promise of excitement, and hopefully nothing too off-putting.

So when writing your first scene make sure it is attractive to your reader. You already know your work is their type. They have it in their hands for a reason. The last thing you want to do is disappoint their expectations. To avoid that, you must anticipate their expectations, and exceed or subvert them.

 If your book is an urban fantasy about vampires, as mine is, the reader will likely already know this when reading the first page. So carefully consider how you present your core ideas, characters, themes in that first scene. Whatever is unique or different about your world/characters/concepts MUST be demonstrated or at least hinted at in the first scene.

Having said all this I'm sure there are many successful novels that don't follow the rules of the first scene, but not following the rules is a risk a new author should take with extreme caution.

Once you're sure you have crammed in all that needs to be in that first scene, then comes the fine editing. Whilst all spelling and punctuation must of course be accurate, don't be tempted to alter grammar and language choices to such an extent that style is compromised.

 I have read many first scenes that have obviously been so over edited that it reads as self-conscious. This is why it is a good idea to at least write the first scene first then make your revisions later, rather than to skip it entirely until the novel is finished. The first scene doesn't have to be too neat and concise or encompass everything the book has to offer. It just has to make leave the reader wanting more.

And there's an understatement if ever I wrote one.

For my next blog entry I will include an extract from the first scene of my upcoming novel, 'Vexed to Nightmare'.

I also intend to examine the first scene issue further with a series of posts analysing the first scenes of well known novels.

As always, you can follow me @H_Y_Malyk on Twitter

Out of My Mind

So I've decided to give this blogging thing a go. I know millions of people have been doing it for years, but as a self-confessed hermit who only joined Twitter last year and doesn't even have a facebook account, this is a big step into the outside (or digital) world for me!

For my first blog I wanted to share my experiences as a writer until now. Brace yourselves for an edge of your seat, action packed adventure...or a slow, meandering non-event as the case may be. For all the success stories out there and writers who seem to churn out new material every month, I'm sure there are just as many stop-starters like me whose writing has remained in the closet and who dream of one day being among the published glitterati.

I started writing at the age of ten after being inspired by that great literary canon, the Sweet Valley series by Francine Pascal. Rarified my tastes in fiction is not, nor ever been, but something about a candy sweet twins high school story got my creative juices flowing. I started writing what was essentially fanfiction in a spare exercise book at school and before I knew it I had filled it. So I began on the next book.

 What I wrote was sheer nonsense, derivative and awful, but creating something had filled me with a sense of purpose I had previously lacked. I was a shy, awkward and unpopular child with only one friend at the time, and what I found in writing was not only an escape from the frustrations and disappointments of reality, but also a sense of self worth. I had a secret hobby, and no matter how people treated me, no one could touch that.

By the time I was eighteen, I had finished a novel of 90,000 words. Never being confident and having shared my writing with few people, I gingerly sent my manuscript to publishers and awaited their response.

Of course, I didn't succeed, because what I had written was total crap. With few life experiences and little knowledge of the writing craft beyond what I had absorbed from regular reading, I had crafted a sloppy, shallow parody of my favourite fiction. I'm grateful that the novel wasn't immortalised by the publishing industry, but the rejection did affect my writing.

So began the ten year journey that lead me here. I started learning my craft, studying texts on writing techniques as well as reading fiction with a more critical eye. At university I took creative writing classes, and I began redesigning my original novel. But I never finished it.

Years went by, my tastes in fiction evolved, my life took me from a small Hertfordshire town to Birmingham, from a student to a wife to a mother, and all the while I kept those characters in my head. They evolved with me, the themes at the core of the story remaining the same while all details of the fantasy world it was set in shifted and mutated.


 When I started writing that book, always intended as the first of a trilogy, I called the genre fantasy horror, modelled on tv series like Buffy and Angel. There was no such thing as urban fantasy then.

Now the market is flooded with this nifty genre that inhabits the spaces between fantasy, horror, action and  adventure. And last year, I finished my novel. Again.

Naively, I believed I could send it to agents unedited and planned to edit it within a couple of days if the agents had any interest. I failed to consider one thing, however, and that is word count. My novel totalled 190,000 words, and it wasn't until after I sent my queries to agents that I researched standard word lengths and realised that my novel was almost double the usual length for first time authors.

Aggrieved as this fact made me, indeed my queries were met with unified rejection, and I can only hope that the reason was the length of my novel. Of course, maybe the book is still just a load of crap. But it's the word count problem I cling to, so I vowed to edit the manuscript down to 110,000 words and try again.

This was last autumn. Predictably, despite hoping word count was the only issue, the rejection still hit me harder than I wanted to admit. I felt defeated, sure I would never be traditionally published, and began investigating the self publishing industry.

In indie publishing, I think I may have found my salvation. I have always kept my writing to myself, not having anyone to share it with let alone a proper 'beta reader'. But the thought of my writing never being read always bothered me, and with self publishing it seemed I had found an answer.

So I took a leap of faith and joined Twitter. I became part of the online writer community, or so I like to think. But there was one thing missing: An actual book.

Fast forward a few months and I am trying again to cut down that book, edit it into shape, and get it out there. Because I think I might have a story some people might like to read. And that's as confident as I can be on the matter for now.

So my message to anyone reading this is one of perseverance: If becoming an author if your dream, then never give up. It's bloody hard, and it can be overwhelming, but you are not alone.


Don't let all those prolific authors daunt you. There are just as many quiet writers with their secret stories, and that's ok. For me, it's time to try to get the stories out of my head and into the world.

If you liked this post, why not follow me on Twitter @H_Y_Malyk