Project’s End.

This week, I finished the first draft of my latest novel, The Legacy of Lorna Lovelost. Four hundred and thirty-three pages of manuscript written in under seven months—with only three weekdays off during that period—I’ve now, I think it’s fair to say, come down from the creative high with a very definite thud. Post-project lethargy has set in and, consequently, I’m now trying to force myself to take a little time off, anathema to me, as many of you will know.

Part of the problem in this is the sheer number of projects I have planned for the rest of the year. With editorial work to do on Lorna Lovelost, As Morning Shows the Day and In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts (this latter to be the first published through my recently set up micro-publishing company GWM Publications), and with research to do for my next novel, The Wisdom of Closed Worlds, sitting back and taking even a few days off isn’t something that really appeals to me. For me, the pleasure is in the work—one of the many reasons why I find it difficult to understand/tolerate those who bemoan their fates as writers!

Since it hasn’t been mentioned here all that much, over the next few weeks or so I hope to discuss Lorna Lovelost and her legacy. Fair to say, it’s been a fairly all-consuming novel. One of those novels that arrive (in this instance, in the early hours of the morning) almost fully formed, I actually set aside an outline for another novel I was then planning and had the rough outline for Legacy in place within a morning. I had the beginning, the middle and the end. At the point of inception. A rarity, and an opportunity I didn’t plan on wasting.

And I don’t think I have. The Legacy of Lorna Lovelost is, I believe, touching, outrageously funny in places, thought-provoking and just quirky enough to satisfy those of you who especially enjoyed If I Never. I know I’m going to miss Tobias and Lorna Lovelost, Bob Bartholomew and Patsy O’Connor, Katarina Scrimshaw and her left-handed limp. And, yes… I think you will, too.

Drop by later in the week for more on The Legacy of Lorna Lovelost. You never know, you might even get a sneak preview.

Read your free sample of Children of the Resolution, please click here.

To buy from the UK, click here – and American customers can buy here. (Also available on Kindle. UK. US.)

© 2011 Gary William Murning

BBC Tees Radio Interview—BBC iPlayer Link.

For those who missed it live, you can catch my BBC Tees Phil and Amy radio interview here http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p00hrddb Fast forward to 2:40:00.

UPDATE: As this interview is no longer available on iPlayer, I have, with kind permission from BBC Tees, now made the interview segment available here. Please do not repost without prior permission.

BBC Tees (Radio) Update.

All being well, I will be on the Phil and Amy breakfast show on BBC Tees this coming Saturday at around 0835.

You can listen live or catch the show after broadcast using the listen again feature by following this link.

UPDATE: As this interview is no longer available on iPlayer, I have, with kind permission from BBC Tees, now made the interview segment available here. Please do not repost without prior permission.

© 2011 Gary William Murning

Roll up, Roll up…

For a limited time only, I’ve discounted the Kindle version of Children of the Resolution. There are a couple of reasons for my doing this. Firstly, it’s a very tough time for publishing in general. Books are still selling, of course, but sales have slowed. The reason for this is fairly obvious. We are all having to tighten our belts at the moment and book buyers are obviously having to prioritise elsewhere.

Because of this—and because I have full control over pricing on this particular Kindle book—I’ve reduced the price to £1.14 and $1.85 in the states. That, in the case of the UK version, is a 90% saving on the paperback version.

Now, yes, I know some of you non-Kindle types will now be saying “oh, yes, but I’ve got to spend over a hundred quid on the Kindle before I can read it”. But, of course, you don’t. Completely free apps are available for iPhone, iPad, android phones, Windows phones, BlackBerry and PC. Possibly not quite as easy on the eyes as reading off paper or the Kindle itself, but if you’re desperate to read Children of the Resolution but don’t feel you can justify forking out on the paperback, this may be the perfect solution for you. (Incidentally, I use the Windows phone 7 app and it’s far better than you might expect.)

So, to take advantage of this discount, pop along to Amazon post-haste! US readers should click here. (Also, the app for Windows phone 7 isn’t actually listed on the above page but users can find it easily through their phone in their app Marketplace.)

Happy Kindle-ing.

PS—Don’t ask why £1.14!

PPS—Please, please, please spread the word!

Read your free sample of Children of the Resolution, please click here.

© 2011 Gary William Murning

The Wisdom of Closed Worlds.

A decision has been made, arrived at, pounced upon unceremoniously.

As it was with Children of the Resolution, I will, with my next project, The Wisdom of Closed Worlds, log in intimate and intricate detail every aspect of its development on this here much-neglected blog. Every lingering ellipsis and every quivering colon will be given due recognition, studied, interrogated and lauded—and if you’re really lucky (or unlucky, depending on your viewpoint) I may even share considerable chunks of the first draft and, even, the initial outline.

Never let it be said you weren’t given fair warning!

Read your free sample of Children of the Resolution, please click here.

To buy from the UK, click here – and American customers can buy here. (Also available on Kindle. UK. US.)

© 2011 Gary William Murning

Northern Echo Feature.

Today I was featured in the Northern Echo… click on the image to enlarge…

Read your free sample of Children of the Resolution, please click here.

To buy from the UK, click here – and American customers can buy here. (Also available on Kindle. UK. US.)

© 2011 Gary William Murning

Looking Forward, Looking Back.

I haven’t written a great deal about my latest project, The Legacy of Lorna Lovelost, here (though I have tweeted about it considerably). This is, of course, the result of my generally blogging less these days rather than any conscious decision to deny my blog-readers, and, rather ironically, I’m now mentioning it only in passing as I look forward and look back—contemplating my next project and the recently published Children of the Resolution.

As is so often the way, common threads tend to run through some of the projects I write. Lorna Lovelost, for example, has certain connections to my first published novel, If I Never. Similarly, it’s beginning to look as though my next project—tentatively titled The Wisdom of Closed Worlds, is going to have thematic links with Children of the Resolution. (More of this at a later date.) Consequently, today has found me revisiting some of my blog posts from the period during which I was working on Children. And it occurred to me that said posts might be of interest to old and new readers alike.

So, a brief selection of those I still find interesting:

Good to Be Writing Again—my first post upon starting work on the novel itself.
On Writing Child Characters for Adults—addressing some of my concerns; a half decent insight into how I work.
Death Off-Stage—how the most difficult scenes can often be far easier to write than we expect.
The Final Curtain—on leaving behind “old friends”.
The Difficult Questions—looking at how I deal with “bullying” in Children of the Resolution.
Burning Love—a brief, light post on one of Carl Grantham’s childhood heroes (and my own).

Read your free sample of Children of the Resolution, please click here.

To buy from the UK, click here – and American customers can buy here. (Also available on Kindle. UK. US.)

© 2011 Gary William Murning

Newcastle Libraries Interview.

My latest interview with the fantastic people at Newcastle libraries has just gone live. Snippet follows below—but don’t forget to click through; there’s still much, much more to read over there.

What inspired you to write ‘Children of the Resolution?

Children of the Resolution is an unusual novel, for me. Normally, my work is quite removed from my own, personal “story”. The novelist William Boyd once posited the idea that there are, essentially, two kinds of novelists – those who draw heavily from their own experiences, and those who write novels about things they, before researching, know little about. I’d always considered myself to be the latter, even though I do, naturally, use my own emotional experiences etc to breathe life into the characters and stories.

But there had been one particular story – heavily autobiographical – that I’d been trying to write for a number of years that contradicted this. That story, after three attempts, was to become ‘Children of the Resolution’.

The main inspiration was, simply, that there was a story here – more an anthology of experiences, I guess – that needed to be told. In the 1970s, as a child, I’d been among the first disabled children to be integrated into mainstream education in the north-east of England. It had been an exciting time. It had had that revolutionary feel about it. Even as a child, I got a real sense of that. Something new was being tried and, everyone seemed to think, it could only ever end well. Naturally, the initial enthusiasm – somewhat naïve, in many respects – of those implementing the new ideas was, to say the least, challenged.

For a while, I looked around for a written experience of the implementation of integrated education and I wasn’t really surprised to find that there were none. I felt it was a rich and important period. There were many lessons to be learned from those of us who had gone through the system (lessons, sadly, that simply haven’t been learned, in many areas) and, without wishing to sound too grand about it, I felt obliged to write it. Apart from the issues – which, I hasten to add, are not the driving force behind the novel – I very much wanted to give a sense of what it was like, the friends I made, the lessons I learned about life in general. It’s very much a coming-of-age story – rather sad in places but also, I’ve been told, laugh out loud funny.

Read More…

Read your free sample of Children of the Resolution, please click here.

To buy from the UK, click here – and American customers can buy here. (Also available on Kindle. UK. US.)

© 2011 Gary William Murning

Local “Children of the Resolution” Press Coverage.

Today I was featured in the Middlesbrough Evening Gazette. The full article can be read by following the link below.

Gary, 44, said: “My first concern was to entertain, to write a semi-autobiographical novel that wasn’t overly-political and didn’t proselytise. But, more than anything, I think it was about ensuring some of those experiences were on the record. I felt obliged to write it because, to my knowledge, no one else has addressed it in this way.”

Read More

(Please note: the paper version of this article has a caption referring to my childhood in Guisborough. Whilst I was indeed born in Guisborough, I did not actually grow up there—and the novel itself does not reference Guisborough in any meaningful way.)

To read your free sample of Children of the Resolution, please click here.

To buy from the UK, click here – and American customers can buy here. (Also available on Kindle. UK. US.)

© 2011 Gary William Murning

Send a Sample Saturday.

As many of you will already know, I’m always on the lookout for new promotional ideas. The publishing world is more competitive than ever—new start-up independent publishers competing with the growing phalanx of writerpreneurs, as well as the more mainstream “big boys”. Sometimes it gets difficult. Sometimes, with the time commitment of actually writing the novels, one can find oneself stuck for ideas.

Today, however, I seem to have awoken with promotional ideas pulsing through my veins (well, it’s either that or a blood clot—let’s hope the former, then!) And, so, without further ado, I would like to introduce Send a Sample Saturday (#SendASampleSaturday on Twitter).

I’m a firm believer in the concept that if people read samples of my work they will, generally speaking, be far more inclined to splash out the requisite spondoolicks to buy it. I will therefore, every Saturday from now on, be encouraging my friends, readers and followers to download the samples of Children of the Resolution and either e-mail them to friends or, even, print them out and pass them over to those less computer literate. The other, far simpler alternative, of course is to simply share the link to the document itself via Twitter, Facebook etc.

And, so, all that remains is for me to declare Send a Sample Saturday officially open. Do please participate and, where possible, encourage friends to participate. When you forward information on, PLEASE request that, should they actually like it, they in turn forward it on to other people and so on.

Let’s see if we can get Children of the Resolution going viral. Thanks in advance!

Download the sample here.

Sample the link:

To read your free sample of Children of the Resolution, please click here.

To buy from the UK, click here – and American customers can buy here. (Also available on Kindle. UK. US.)

© 2011 Gary William Murning