Hi, welcome to another in my sporadic series of advice about writing. This is something I've read, and been told a few times, so here I am thinking about my response to the advice. As I've said before, not all advice works for all writers.

There are no universal rules. Trust me, as soon as you find one, you'll find someone who's broken it, and written a great story.

BE BRAVE
Be brave. Don't refrain from following a new line in the plot as it emerges. It might prove to be the key element in the story.

I’m a planner when it comes to writing. But even with the chapters all planned out, when I’m writing, a character can say something, do something, suggest something I’d never thought of. My natural inclination is to resist, *must stick to the plan* I realise there’s a place for this, and there’s also a place for a bit of jazz writing, making it up as you go along. So I try to be brave, take that turn the main character’s suggested, work around the fact that the protagonist’s mum isn’t quite how I’d imagined her to be.

Sometimes this is great, and it does lead the story off into an interesting direction.

And I’m not going to lie to you; sometimes it leads it off into a complete blind alley. Sometimes I have found I’m not writing the story I originally intended to write. Which can be difficult if you’re writing for a submission call.

So what do I do in situations like that?

I suppose it depends on if the direction it’s going in - is interesting or not. If it’s interesting and not to the brief or original intention, then I’ll pursue it, see where it leads to and hopefully I can make use of the story somewhere else.

If I find myself writing something in a new direction I don’t find interesting; it’s not pushing my buttons, not about things I’m comfortable writing about, or I don’t enjoy writing it. In that case I’d stop. Pull it back to the original idea.

This may be wrong, and re-reading, and comparing it with the first paragraph, I’ve actually gone against the advice this whole post is about. But you know what, that’s life sometimes isn’t it? I do believe if you don’t enjoy writing something, that will show when it’s read. I watched a documentary about a widely published literary fiction novelist who set herself a challenge of writing a Mills & Boon category romance. It was much harder than she’d imagined, because she was forcing herself to write it *in that genre* rather than her natural inclination towards another genre.

So if you find yourself taken down a different line in the plot, follow it, be brave, enjoy the ride. But if you don’t enjoy the ride, stop it and get off. There’s always other plot lines to follow.

Do you follow this advice? Or do you stick to your plan? Or maybe you don’t plan at all. I’d love to hear what you think of this writing advice?

Until next time

Liam Livings xx

I've added some free samples of my stories on the e-book shelf. All of these are subject to change as they're worked on, but I wanted to give you a bit more than just the short blurb you'd read on the back of the books. I've not included a sample for Best Friends Perfect, as I'm actually editing that at the moment.

The links are here for Christmas Serendipity, Frangipani Kisses, And Then That Happened.

Enjoy, and if you have any questions, do let me know.

Liam Livings

Another MM book I've read, not on holiday, but afterwards - on the tube in fact, but we'll come to that. Maybe I need to revisit my 'I don't read much MM fiction' position...

I met Marie Sexton at the UK Meet 2013 where she did a great talk about not having to apologise for your choices in life, be they paper or plastic bags with your shopping, or what sort of books you read. She wore a fabulous dress, and had a lovely *twang* to her American accent.

SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT

• It is about Matt & Jared and set in Colorado
• A slow burn friendship between them because Matt is straight
• The homophobia was realistic and similar to things I've experienced and do still notice
• The sex was hot and much more than I'm used to and reading on the Tube, and at one point I felt a bit self conscious imagining people were reading over my shoulder - they weren't
• The homophobia in the police and small town attitude were well handled - realistic without becoming too issue driven
• The parts where Matt asks about aspects of being gay (mainly sex) are pretty realistic and exactly the sort of questions I faced at first from my straight friends who knew me before coming out
• The attitude about the bum thing is, it making you less of a man, is realistic and I think still what most people have a problem with
• Great scenes with Matt's homophobic dad - especially at the dinner table
  
• The scenery and surroundings of Colorado were well described and I found interesting as completely alien to my experience - reminded me of going to Astoria a small city in the pacific north west, where people knew each other's business. Astoria had a quilting shop and we were approached by a friendly gay couple in their forties as they spotted the BF and I in a restaurant together. I could imagine things like that happening in the small town where this story is set 
• A great ending where both main characters had grown and changed for the better

Have you read this book? What did you like about it? Do you have any other similar books you think I'd enjoy similar to this one? I'd love to hear from you.

Until next time

Liam Livings xx

I've had a spring clean - although it's autumn - in my website and now have an electronic book shelf of my stories, all in one place.

This includes novels, series, novellas, short stories and works in progress. At the moment they're all what can be described as works in progress. As each of these stories becomes a published story and not just a word document on my laptop, I will update the e-book shelf.

If you have any questions about any of the stories, do ask me, I'd love to hear from you.

Until next time

Liam Livings xx

This is the second post about how my taste in book genres has changed over the years.

After university. I discovered autobiographies – a colleague at work lent me one by  - and I say ‘by’ in the loosest sense of the word – one of the actors from Eastenders. And at that point, I hadn’t watched the soap for years. I dived in and LOVED it. Properly loved it. A proper guilty pleasure. Celebrities, ex soap stars, Spice Girls, I have no shame. There’s something about their every day-ness, their chattiness which appeals to me.

The last five years. I discovered a real love for diaries. Maybe this is linked to the autobiographies, but a bit more high brow? Who knows. I read Jo Orton’s, Kenneth Williams’, Our Hidden Lives by Simon Garfield. Maybe this is something about me keeping my own diary since 1998, every day, what I’ve done, what I thought, who I saw, what they said. It’s all there. Maybe I wanted to see what other people, famous people put in theirs, for inspiration...who knows, but I love a good diary, still. So I trundled along with my chick lit and autobiographies for a few years and felt well settled in my literary groove. This I now know can be a bad thing. You can miss so many other books outside your groove if you always buy more of what you always bought. I also continued with my chick lit, and went a bit retro: I discovered the joy of Lace, by Shirley Conran, and Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susanne. *stands up* my name is Liam Livings and I love a good chick lit book with some good strong heroines. Of course, there are some awful ones too, but you can usually spot those by page 20 or so.

In 2012. I was introduced to the world of MM fiction by Clare London who invited me to the UK Meet. After I wrote my first novel, Best Friends Perfect, she suggested I join her and friends in Brighton. Silly me, I didn’t even know I’d written a MM novel, I’d just written a novel with people and experiences which I recognised, and knew about, which *as a gay man* was mainly with a gay pair of eyes. At the UK Meet, I heard names of authors I’d never heard of, books I’d never seen and this whole new world opened up to me.

Why didn’t I read MM fiction before this?

1. I didn’t know it existed. This comes back to the, you don’t know what you don’t know concept.
2. I didn’t have any ‘problems’ with what I was already reading, so I wasn’t seeking anything else.
3. My life is pretty gay as it is: I live with my boyfriend; I’m out at the day job and since Uni, I always have been; I’m out to my family – close and extended; in fact at last check I was out to pretty much everyone, including builders who come to the house, the supermarket delivery guy, everyone. A large proportion of my friends are gay or lesbian. Of course I have straight friends, and know lots of straight people too. The thing is, I don’t think I was hankering for some *more gay* in my life in the form of fiction.

What about now?

Now, I enjoy reading it, alongside my usual genres, and a few ‘off piste’ ones too, like Gone Girl and The Lovely Bones.  And I have made a concerted effort to read more MM fiction, to really *get amongst it* especially on my last holiday.

Well, that’s me for today, I’ll get me coat!

I’d love to hear what you think about my slightly rambling thoughts on my book genres. Have you changed what you like to read as you’ve aged? Do you ever venture ‘off piste’ from your usual genre and love it? Or did you do that, and it was awful?

Until next time

Liam xx

My life history in book genres.  

This post is about how the book genres I’ve enjoyed have changed as I’ve got older, including

As a child. At first I really enjoyed children’s books, as you’d expect, mainly Roald Dahl, then his young adult books. I loved The Twits, Matilda, The Witches enchanted me. I remember, even as a young child of 6 or 7 thinking how magic it was to read a book and be transported somewhere else entirely, all through just reading words on a page. I have fond memories of family holidays in a static caravan in Dorset, trying to grab every single moment to read through all 800 pages of the collected diaries of Adrian Mole, between family time and TV.

As a teenager. Then for some reason – probably my inner geek – I got massively into science fiction – Aldous Huxley, Arthur C Clarke, John Wyndham. I literally couldn’t get enough of them.  The Day of The Triffids, and The Midwich Cuckoos are two books which I can still remember; their portrayal of a dystopia is brilliant. I think the science fiction was a good antidote to the classics I was forced to read during GCSE and A level English. Dickens, Chaucer, Hardy didn’t really do it for me. I couldn’t bear the pages and pages of description with not an awful lot happening. I remember skim reading Tess of the D’Urbervilles and missing the rape scene because it was so subtly written! We discussed it in class and I was very embarrassed. I didn’t mind Wuthering Heights, or Villette by the Brontes, maybe because there was a good dose of drama, angst and romance.

When I came out at 18. I read a few coming out, gay books, either given to me by helpful female friends in a ‘this is camp, so are you, you’ll love it’ way, or borrowed from various gay youth groups I went to: The Milkman’s On His Way by David Rees; 50 Ways of Saying Fabulous by Graeme Aitken; Sucking Sherbert Lemons  - and its sequels by Michael Carson. And they were fabulous! If you fancy a bit of a retro camp laugh, you could do a lot worse than Aitken or Carson, I can assure you.

At university. When I’d sort of settled into being gay, I really got involved in chick lit. Just before uni, in my gap year, I was at a YHA in Australia flicking through the ‘bring a book, take a book’ section and among all the science fiction I’d already read, and black spy horror books I wouldn’t touch with someone else’s bargepole, I noticed a purple book which caught my eye: the Llama Parlour by Katty Lette. Can I buy a vowel, as the Americans say. But, Oh. My. God. I’d found my people, I’d found my humour, I’d found my fiction. It was a whole new genre I never knew existed, and in fairness it was probably pretty much in its infancy then, compared to now. I went to a book shop clutching this paperback, which I took all the way home from Australia - I still have it, I’m sentimental like that about books - and asked the assistant what other authors like that I should read. And from that moment, there was no stopping me: Marian Keyes, Jane Green, Lisa Jewell, Penny Vincenzi. One of my all time favourite books – and I’ve fought for years with being able to *come out* about this - is Rachel’s Holiday, by Marian Keyes. It’s about a woman who’s admitted into rehab because her family realise she has a really bad drugs and alcohol addiction. Can you spell funny and bittersweet?

Have you changed what you read as you've got older? Or have you stuck with pretty much the same genre through the years? What do you think of 'my' genres here? Love, hate, or meh? I'd love to hear from you.

Until next time

Liam Livings xx

Blurb: What are you thinking, Amy? The question I've asked most often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to the person who could answer. I suppose these questions stormcloud over every marriage: What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?' Just how well can you ever know the person you love? This is the question that Nick Dunne must ask himself on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears.

• This is very much, *not* my usual genre. It’s a crime thriller. I don’t have any books with black covers on my bookshelf, except this one. But I’d heard so much about the book, I thought I had to give it a go.
  
• It took a while to get going until p35 the day Amy went missing. This could have been me getting used to the very different writing style from what I’m used to.But once she went missing, it was off...
  
• I liked Nick's point of view - very male, very realistic
• As it’s a thriller, it had lots of twists and turns and kept me guessing throughout. It was a welcome difference to have the twists and turns so different from what I'm used to in my usual genre 
• It was told from his and her perspectives, mixing present and past tenses between chapters but somehow that didn't jar. Somehow once you knew *what or where* you were at the start of each chapter, it just flowed
  
• The book introduces and then uses some interesting concepts like cool girl - women who pretend to like everything the guy they’re into likes and playing into stereotypes which aren't real
• The concept of Diary Amy - what she presents to the world
• The idea of the nice enoughs -  people who are ‘Nice enough but with a  soul made of plastic - easy to mould, easy to wipe down'
  
• I enjoy books which introduce concepts like this, as I feel as if I'm learning a new vocab of terms and concepts. I often do this in my writing 
• The book gives you a glimpse into the mind of a psychopath - planning and out-smarting police, thinking ahead all the time. I don't tend to do this in my writing ;-)
  
• I had read many reviews which said the ending, *wasn’t* a real ending. This worried me as I approached it. I disagree, I think it was a proper ending, and it didn’t feel rushed, it felt about right. It was a clever ending, actually, something which left me thinking. I won’t spoil it by saying any more, you’ll have to read the book

Have you ever gone completely off piste from your usual genre, like I did here? How did it work out for you? Would you do it again? I'd love to hear from you.

And then he was gone...

Liam xx

I'm on the UK Gay Romance blog today talking about one of my favourite gay British films and why it has a special place in my heart. Over there it's got a trailer, and some pictures. The text is repeated here on my blog.

This is the first in a series of posts I’ve agreed to do about some of my favourite British Gay films. OK, so they may not be as glossy and sweeping as American gay films. They may not have the high budgets, sun-kissed backgrounds and perfect chiselled torsos either. But there’s something so realistic and normal which I love about British films which I love.

Everyone’s heard of Beautiful Thing – a working class, urban fairytale. Don’t worry, I’ll do another post about that. But who’s heard of Get Real? It’s a middle class, suburban fairytale released in 1999?

Get Real is about Steve, a young British geeky guy, from a prep school, as he struggles to come out, and falls in love with John, the Oxford University bound, head boy/sports captain.  OK, this isn’t the only film to tell this story. But Get Real does it with a more realistic, British twist. John does fall in love back, but as it’s set in a rural town in Hampshire, coming out isn’t so easy. Not to mention little complications like John’s designer girlfriend, and Steve’s best friend Linda who’s always ready with a comeback to put most drag queens to shame.

It is in my top ten gay British films, for a number of reasons:

• It’s set and filmed in my home county, Hampshire. I grew up just over half an hour away
• I used to go to a gay youth group in Basingstoke so it has fond memories
• When I saw it, I was about the same age as the main characters, just out of secondary school. The suffocating feeling of not being able to come out at secondary school, and secretly fancying the sports team at school, really resonated with me
• It has some great lines and characters throughout

My favourite line, and one I still say with my friend Adam, whose mum still lives in the town, is ‘Nobody wants to go back to Basingstoke.’ This is from a scene when Steve complains to his best friend Linda how much he wants to return, to see John, his secret Head Boy lover. And trust me, if you’ve ever been there, it’s not a place people often hanker to return to.

When I saw the film I was pleased to recognise such sights as Basingstoke town centre and the cinema where I went to see the film on a double date with my best friend and our boyfriends. I think we were about the only people in the whole cinema. It had a very limited release outside London, and I suppose they thought they’d at least better show it in its home town – for all of a week.

There are some great characters, Linda’s sassiness and quips would give Leah from Beautiful Thing a run for her money.

Steve comes out in assembly in front of the whole school. And this being a British film, and not The Dead Poet’s Society, no one else stands up to join him.

Have you seen this film? What British gay films would you recommend, or like me to include in future blogs? I’d love to hear from you.

Liam Livings xx

I went to the RNA London Chapter at the weekend and heard from Valerie Holmes, who has written 32 novellas, ranging from 30,000 to 50,000 words. Her strap-line for her writing, is ‘love the adventure’ and she’s certainly doing that by publishing her back catalogue to e-book sales.

She explained when she was younger she had three particular qualities, which have come in useful for being a writer:

• Imagination – she was constantly making up stories as a diversion
• Observation – really noticing what was happening around her
• Empathy – understanding well how others felt

One Christmas she was thinking about what gift she could give her long standing best friend which would only cost time and effort. She decided to write her friend a story. This was the start of her journey to being a published writer.

Valerie’s stories were published in serialised magazines such as The People’s Friend, and large print publishers where the books appeared in libraries. Valerie had, for many years, carved an impressive niche in her genre. Then the situation with the publisher changed, so Valerie had to look at other options. She spoke to Freda Lightfoot, who started publishing her back list in 2010.  

Valerie checked that she owned all the electronic rights to her whole back catalogue, as they hadn’t up to that point been published electronically. And she set about preparing them for e-publishing, which included:

Editing, extending some titles, as with e-publishing there are no restrictions in length, so some titles where scenes had to be cut to stick with the original 30,000 word limit, could be extended and allowed to breath more

Formatting and type setting for the various e-book formats – this really isn’t as simple as it seems, and Valerie is lucky to have an IT literate husband to help with this! If only we all had one of those...

Cover design. She has a common theme running across all the covers, which is deliberately different from much of the other books in this genre. The illustrations show accurate representations of the dress and situations within the books, which is much more true to the stories than some previous covers her work had been published with

This process is lengthy and Valerie has been doing it for about the last 12 months. She isn’t due to complete it for all her back catalogue until late 2014.

It was an inspiration to hear her experiences, and shows that if you really want to do something, with determination, time, and help from your friends (and family) you can succeed. Although that may sound like something from a fortune cookie, I really do mean it.

It’ll be many years yet until I have a back catalogue anywhere near like Valerie’s or Freda’s, but it was so good to hear that it is possible.

Have any writers gone through something similar? Are any of you thinking of doing it? Readers, would you indulge in a complete *buy all* spree for an author’s back catalogue if you’d just discovered them? I’d love to hear.

Until next time

Liam Livings xx

Blurb: It’s the glittering eighties and Lucinda Cowper, Elizabeth Beaumont and Flora Fielding feel happy and secure in the power and pleasure of wealth. Nothing could have prepared them for a devastating financial scandal, which turns the boom to bust.

Books by this author are the definition of guilty pleasures. This one was just under 900 pages, or 350,000 words. And I welcomed it, with open arms...

• It was like reading a long trilogy in one book. Because of this, I save these books for holidays, otherwise it would take me more than two months to finish.
• I was introduced to this author by my friend Annabel: she said they were ‘glitzy doorstoppers perfect for holiday read by the pool.’ After trying a few, I ordered almost her whole back catalogue.
• This book has a list of characters at the start – yes, it’s one of those books.
• I learned about the Lloyds Names scandal which I found very interesting. I loved seeing the rich country house, chauffeur driven, children at public school lives slowly disintegrate around the characters as they lost their money.
• The female characters are a joy to read. They were all posh to varying degrees but showed how their on the surface perfect lives actually involve so many compromises: an overbearing mother in law; giving up a career for children, and not being allowed to resume it; marrying a man who’s just a bit too ‘nice’ for his own good.
• People had affairs, someone died, one daughter even decided not to go to uni and became a hairdresser instead! A hairdresser? I could hear the mother’s Lady Bracknell cry at that one.
• Happy and sad bits kept the story bubbling along and me guessing, until an overall happy ever after, with a wedding scene which was enormous fun to read.

I’ve got another one lined up to read on my next holiday, and I’m looking forward to it already!

Have you ever read any books by this author, or similar genres? What did you think of them? I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time

Liam xx