Books completed.
Due to the amount of work and holidaying lately, my reading has slowed, and I am still reading a time travel book called Timeblink by MJ Mumford, which I found as a recommendation on TikTok.
I am still really enjoying this book, the characters are fantastic, and the plot is really beginning to unfold, making this a real page-turner. Once, I have read this, I shall be reading Flight 444, the second book of Timeblink.
Tiktok Update.
As I mentioned in the last newsletter, BrettishBooks is now on Tiktok.
There are plenty of videos so far, so feel free to pop over there, and follow me 🙂 I am also at 1000 followers now, and will be giving away some panda pom-pom pens to several lucky winners chosen at random. When I reach 1000 followers, Tiktok will unlock the live section on the app, allowing me to broadcast live, and even chat live with other Tiktokers, Booktokers, Writertok users, and Authortokers. This is your chance to tell me what you want me to do in my first live. So please, make your suggestions, and as long as they follow Tiktok guidelines, are book, and author related, I will be glad to host my first live, with the topic of your choice. 🙂
Win a Pen! – Exclusive to email subscribers and Tiktok followers.
As you may know, I am almost at 1000 followers on Tiktok. During my time on Tiktok, I have purchased some panda pompom pens, a very cute fluffy pen, worthy of any writer, or if you like pandas.
All you have to do is follow me on Tiktok, and when I reach 1000 followers, I will be handing out 5 panda pompom pens for free.
Click here for the BrettishBooks Tiktok channel.
If you aren’t on Tiktok, don’t worry, @brettishbooks is also available on …
facebook
twitter
instagram
via email,
and also the website www.brettishbooks.com
This month, my wife surprised me with a small camping holiday for my birthday. We packed the car and headed off to the Church Farm Museum in Skegness, a quirky little place with a whole lot of history.
Karen, and I walked to Skegness town centre, and had a look around. We visited the beach, I went gokarting with my youngest son, we ate ice cream, ended up inside an upside down house, which was really cool, and then went back to the tent.
Inside the grounds we had a look around at the vintage tractors, old woodfired traction engine, and I even milked a fake cow, lol.
One of the 17th century houses is said to be haunted, and even has a manikin in the window that you can see at night-time, lol.
We finished off the day with a trip to the circus, meeting up with more family, then going back to the tent, where they all looked around the creepy gardens of the haunted house. All in all, a fantastic day 🙂
Among my birthday presents, I have also received a guitar, which I aim to start learning to play soon 🙂
Check out this video to see what happened 🙂
Where has the time gone? Last year at this time, I was getting ready for a live youtube, and facebook all at the same time (which didn’t exactly go to plan, but hey, no-ones perfect).
In the last year, I have surpassed my goals of releasing, and half-writing a second book, by releasing two books, and am 20% through the third book (book two of The Time Clones series, woop woop!
This year, I am upping my goal. I want to release book 2, and book 3, and I am aiming for a secret project to be released sometime this year too… watch this space for more information.
Thanks to all who have supported me the past year, and I look forward to another year of fun, laughter, and more words in the next year. 🙂
Have fun, stay safe, and as always, happy writing 🙂
Brett
It’s January 6th, officially the end of Christmas 2021, and the start of the New Year 2022.
Last Year
From what everyone is saying, last year was a bit rubbish, but for me personally, I couldn’t be happier. During 2021, I pulled off so many achievements, I wouldn’t have thought possible,
A new update to Vellum has arrived.
The world famous book formatting software is here.
This morning I managed to format over 30 chapters in an effort to get Our Camino Diary ready for paperback.
This evening, I have am carrying on whilst enjoying a pint 🙂
#ourcaminodiary #amwriting #writingcommunity #writing #writerslife
In this weeks “What’s the latest” you can find out how to get updates on the books I am writing, I write about how this works, and also give a progress report for my latest book Time Clones book 2.
Hi there,
It’s been a busy week. As well as completely decluttering, and tidying the study and my desk, I have also tidied up the website, and released a book! woohoo 🙂
Our Camino Diary is now available for download on Kindle.
Yes folks, the moment you have all been waiting for is finally here.
Our Camino Diary follows the adventures of Brett and Karen, as they walked the pilgrimage of St.James, from St.Jean Pied de Port in France, across the Pyrenees mountains, through the Navarre and Rioja regions, across the Meseta, and through Castille y León, and Galicia into Santiago de Compostela (540+ miles / 800+ km) on the journey of a lifetime, walking every single step of the way.
Decluttered the study and tidied up
Anyone who is a creative knows that tidying and messing come hand in hand. One one hand, a tidy workspace helps declutter your mind, and get stuff done, but on the other, creatives are usually messy people, and from a writers point of view, I tend to have lots of pens, notepaper, and more cluttering my desk. It is with this in mind that I took to Youtube, and watched one or two tidying videos. I have also read the book “How to go clutter free” by Caroline Jones.
The videos I watched gave me some simple tips.
– Empty your desk of stuff, putting them in simple piles. For me, this was paperwork, tech, and stationery.
– Go through each pile, sorting out the papers, then checking all the pens work, and finally declutter all the tech stuff.
– After 3 days, the entire study is done 🙂
The result is now a nice tidy study, but for how long?
Website.
The following changes have now happened.
I have changed the bookstore to shop, and redesigned the book listings, with more information in an easier to read / browse format. You can now see the books I have written, instant links to grab a copy, and more information.
You might also notice that the sidebar is now less cluttered, and contains a new widget. The MyBookProgress widget gives a precise graph of the stage of progress of my latest book.
This widgets shows, The title of the book I am working on, the Phase: I am currently in, The due date that the phase finishes, a percentage or word count for the current phase, a button “Get Book Updates” where you can click and enter your email address for up to date news, and finally a clickable love heart, where you can Spread the love, and send me a small nudge, to help me know that you are still there, supporting me. Wo what are you waiting for? Why not check it out.
The stages are as follows:
– Worldbuilding – Stage 1
At the moment, the widget shows that I am just over 50% into the world-building phase. This is the part where I build the characters, locations, items and more, for the story.
– Outlining – Stage 2
The next section will be outlining, a rough bullet list of how I want the story to pan out, where my characters will be, and what they do.
– Writing – Stage 3
After that, it’s the writing, which usually takes a while, and at roughly 1000 words a day, it can take several months.
– Editing – Stage 4
Editing is next, and this usually involves getting the flow of the story right, ironing out plot holes, and more.
– Proofreading part 1 – Stage 5
Then comes Proofreading, checking for typos and more.
– Formatting – Stage 6
Formatting makes it look pretty in your e-reader, or paperback, and usually take a few days.
– Proofreading Part 2 – Stage 7
After that I check for typos again, and then it’s time to upload.
This whole process takes a few months. This new plugin allows me to show my latest progress, and also gives you the reader to nudge me, and show some love (by clicking on the love heart, and posting something nice 🙂
Why not have a look around the website, see what else you can find 🙂
I am now off to do some more writing. Thanks for reading, and until next time.
Brett Jackson.
Hey folks, hope you are all okay.
Here is the latest “Our Camino Diary” book update: The good news is that the book has now been beta read and passed with flying colours.The bad news is that the book is in a 72 hour loop with Amazon in the publishing phase.
What does this mean? It means that the book publishing process created unnecessary errors and has had me waiting 72 hours to publish since the first of October.
The keen-eyed among you will notice that the Amazon error version of Our Camino Diary is already up in EPUB (kindle version) but not yet available in print.
Please do not buy this version. I would rather wait until Amazon gets it right and issues the correct version, so that you get the best experience of Our Camino Diary.Apologies for any delays, I’m just trying to do the best I can, and I will keep you all up to date when the correct version is available.
Thankyou for your patience.
Peace out
Brett 🙂
Worldbuilding is one of my favourite parts (next to editing) and literally allows you as an author to create the world including physical things such as planets, continents, cities, water, people, animals, trees and more. Delve a little closer, and look around you and you will see… food chains, and monetary systems including banks, and coinage, transport systems, laws and politics, religious or non-religious, monarchy and governments, and much more.
The most important thing about your world is your characters role in it, and what their objective is. Where are they? what are they doing? Where do they want to go? How are they going to get there? What are they going to do when they get there? How will they pay to get there? All of these questions and more can be answered in your worldbuilding bible.
This download https://share.reedsy.com/reedsy_worldbuilding_template.pdf is a good example of what you need to include… but…
You don’t need everything.
Imaging the following. You go out for the day, and end up in a small village you’ve never heard of. Do you know anything about these village? Probably not. Do you need to know everything about this village straight away? Most of us would pull out a mobile phone and have a little search to see where we are, and what’s available. That would / could be the only information we need.
Relating this to worldbuilding and writing.
It is good to create a solid history of your world. Think carefully, and fill out the worldbuilding template above, but…
Don’t use it all in the first chapter of your book.
As in the remote village described earlier in this post, it’s better for you to discover new places, and little snippets of info. Infodumping your reader is probably only going to bore them. Your reader wants to explore the area and find out all about the world, as your character moves through it, but they will only be able to do that if you have properly designed it.
A good way to do this is with a map. There are many different ways to make a map, and most start with a river, and some towns dotted along the bigger parts (because they can fish). Then industry builds around that, the villages expand into towns, and roads appear, then other villages grow along the roads, and plumbing to get the water to those villages. After that more and more happens.
You could just pull out a map from the glove compartment in the car, or do some searching with maps online, and trace your map onto some tracing paper, or print it out.
Your world might not be a “world” though… what happens if your story is just about a guy who drives along a road, and has to go 5000 miles to see his daughter who is sick in hospital. His world would be the road, the motels he stays at, and mostly the car. So worldbuilding would take the form of the car, what fuel it uses, whether the tyres are well looked after (he could get a flat), if the aircon is broken, and he has to have the window open the entire journey (not good in winter)… etc.
Map making links:
https://inkarnate.com
https://ui2.worldspinner.com
Hopefully that’s given you some things to think about. I am now off to Worldbuild as I create book 2 in the Time Clones series.
Until next time, have fun creating 🙂