…here’s a wee reflective piece, targeted mainly for my Author pals, but many of our dear and invaluable readerships will no doubt understand it, too… one of the weirdest things to grasp as a new scribbler is the sum’time-elusive ‘Author’s Voice’… that quality which seeps into and exudes from yer writing… identifying the Writer by his/her ‘style’… for this ol’ Jurassic, it’s not just the WURDS used, nor a peculiar turn of phrasing… nor even the ‘pace’ or ‘tone’ or recognisable characterisations in the narrative… it’s the all-embracing embodiment of ‘how’ yeez tell yer stories… fr’instance, pick up any book by Dickens, Steinbeck, Austen, Child, Archer, or any of the well-known pensmiths, without looking at the author’s name on the cover… more often as not, yeez wouldn’t be far into the book without being able to tell which author wrote it… that is the ‘Author’s Voice’… however, I think that description’s a bit of a misnomer… a ‘Voice’ is a sound… albeit with an accent, a dialect, a twang… but merely a sound… there’s more to it than that… I’m often asked by readers, ‘…how much of yerself is in yer books…’
…when I first started on this amazing novel-production gig, I felt p’raps a wee bit of me was in there… all these years later, I’ve come to understand I was widely off the mark… oh sure, Mabel, there’s wee snippets of my own life experiences in there, altered to protect the guilty… but these are only little thumb-marks… when I talk with fellow quill-scrapers, I begin to see a common trait… the enthusiasm… the energy… the sweat, blood and midnight tears that pour into their creations… and it dawns on me that most writers give more than just the noise of their ‘Voice’… part of their soul is embedded in the writing… the fears, conscious and otherwise… the loves, the angst, the pride and prejudices… all of it sum’how or other creeps into the pages… and with that thought in mind, as a reader myself, it imparts much more respect and pleasure when I read other folks’ books, the bygone giants of literature, our present day big names, and newbies et al… see if yeez can spot the ‘Author’s Soul’ next time, not just the ‘Voice’… see yeez later…LUV YEEZ!…
SEUMAS GALLACHER escaped from the world of finance seven years ago, after a career spanning three continents and five decades.
As the self-professed ‘oldest computer Jurassic on the planet’, his headlong immersion into the dizzy world of eBook publishing opened his eyes, mind, and pleasure to the joys of self-publishing. As a former businessman, he rapidly understood the concept of a writer’s need to ‘build the platform’, and from a standing start began to develop a social networking outreach, which now tops 22,500 direct contacts.
His ‘Jack Calder’ crime thriller series, THE VIOLIN MAN’S LEGACY, VENGEANCE WEARS BLACK and SAVAGE PAYBACK have blown his mind with more than 80,000 e-link downloads to date. His fourth, KILLER CITY was launched in August 2015.
He started a humorous, informative, self-publishers blog three years ago, never having heard of a ‘blog’ prior to that, was voted ‘Blogger of the Year 2013’ and now has a loyal blog following on his networks. He says the novels contain his ‘Author’s Voice’, while the blog carries his ‘Author’s Brand’. And he’s LUVVIN IT!
Visit his website: http://seumasgallacher.com/
Browse his books: http://viewauthor.at/seumas-gallacher
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