A Quiet Life

March 20, 2011
To some, being a writer might seem rather dull.  While they negotiate the dangers and irritations of the daily commute, battle with angry customers on the phone and struggle to resist the temptation to eat all the biscuits at the afternoon meeting, you are stuck in a chair at home with nothing more exciting to do than stare at a blank screen or chew the end of your pencil.  Wrong!  My work as a writer regularly takes me to foreign lands and strange cultures, where the journey alone is full of adventure and danger.  There are days when the fate of a world relies on my ability to battle marauding hosts or to unravel the mysteries of the ancients.  Not only can writers travel to exotic climes without having to hang around airports, or become world famous opera singers when they are tone deaf, if they're lucky they get paid for it too.
    If that's dull, I'm a bue-eared, bat-faced orc!  What do you mean, you can see the resemblance?

Posted by K. S. Dearsley.

 

The Aliens Among Us

March 13, 2011
If you ever want proof that fact is stranger than fiction, I recommend watching the David Attenborough series about Madagascar.  The wildlife there is far more peculiar than most of the aliens dreamed up by science fiction or fantasy writers - giant lemurs that dance and skip across open spaces on two legs, miniature ones with huge eyes to see in the dark, chameleons, millipedes and more.   All of them are fantastic, but they have all evolved to take advantage of the environment.
    Watch man...
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley. Posted In : Inspiration 

 

Excuses, Excuses

March 6, 2011
I've spent a lot of time this week staring at a blank page.  There can be little more frustrating than knowing what you want to write but not finding the right way to put it on paper.  It doesn't happen when I'm writing non-fiction.  Then, I simply make a start and keep going until it's done.  Luckily, the April issue of Writing and Writers' News dropped through my letterbox, so I had an excuse to procrastinate - until I read the interview with R. J. Ellroy and the article about Robert Louis ...
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley. Posted In : Inspiration 

 

Double Whammy

February 27, 2011
Yippee!  Drollerie Press want to publish my fantasy novel, Discord's Child, under their Kettlestitch imprint.  They contacted me a few weeks ago, but I didn't feel I could let the world know until the contract had been signed.

Discord's Child follows what happens when a young woman's inability to feel the energy within all things, as everyone else in her community can, leads to her family being exiled.  They seek help in the capital city only to find themselves caught up in a life and death st...
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Posted by Karla Sally Dearsley. Posted In : FantasyFiction 

 

Typical!

February 20, 2011
Why is it that when something breaks down or goes wrong, it always happens at night or the weekend when all the professionals such as plumbers, roofers, chiropractors and dentists are closed?

On Friday evening I broke my front tooth.  I'd like to be able to say that I did it battling hordes of ravening orcs or swinging from a vine through the rainforest canopy, but the sad truth is I was eating a sausage.  It was a vegetarian sausage, so I can't even blame biting hard on a piece of bone or gri...
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Posted by Karla Sally Dearsley.

 

Naming Names

February 13, 2011
Shakespeare might have written 'a rose by any other name would smell as sweet', but if he'd called Romeo and Juliet 'Fred and Elsie' would the effect have been the same?  What you call your characters is tremendously important, and can be particularly full of pitfalls for writers of speculative fiction.

Fans of the SF and fantasy genres are used to unusual names and can easily cope with the likes of Obi Wan Kenobi or Galadriel, but if you're sending your story to a competition where the judges...
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Posted by Karla Sally Dearsley. Posted In : FantasyFiction 

 

Tempus Fugit

February 6, 2011
February already!  Christmas seems an age away, but I'm blowed if I know where January went.  Somehow I always think I can fit more in.  I have set up a website and a facebook page and started tweeting (all of which were easier than I thought, despite being instant death to anything involving technology).  I've also had a story highly commended in the Sunpenny Open Short Story Competition, which should be published later this year, and a publisher has expressed interest in my fantasy novel, D...
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Posted by Karla Sally Dearsley.

 

Why Blog?

January 30, 2011
There must be thousands of writers' blogs, so why am I adding to them?  I suppose I could blame the compulsion writers feel to write, whether anyone reads what they put or not.  There's also the desire to share.  Perhaps my experiences as a writer, good and not so good, might inspire, inform or at least make someone else feel they aren't doing so badly.

I aim to include any nuggets and writing tips that might be of interest to other writers, the occasional short piece or extract from my own wo...
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Posted by Karla Sally Dearsley.

 
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About Me


My writing career began as a freelance feature writer for the local press, businesses and organisations. Now a prize-winning playwright and short story writer, my work has appeared in numerous publications on both sides of the Atlantic. I write as K. S. Dearsley because it saves having to keep repeating my forename, and specialise in fantasy and other speculative genres.

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