I have the pleasure of a guest post by LD Towers, who answers my question about her writing process.
LDT: My writing process is simple. I sit down and write. I’m not
a person who gets into the whole ‘outline’ and ‘character mapping’ thing. While
I don’t want to judge anyone else’s method, I think that a lot of new writers
get really bogged down in making files and not spending enough time writing. Go
out and write, people!
When I wrote Teufel I was on sick leave, and I made a
concerted effort not to let myself out of the house until I had done 10, 1.5
space, Garamond 12 pt. pages on the days I could write. I suppose that would be
about 5-6000 words. I wrote Teufel in 4 months. It clocked in at 287k words
after the edits, though I think it was only about 250k words the first time
through.
Now, when I’m having a writing day, I try to do 2k words.
That can take anywhere from 1.5 hours to 5, depending on how much research or
thinking I need to do that day. Because I write historical fiction, I try to do
a lot of research into my topics. My Riesa series is almost entirely
documentable, and I’m rather proud of that. There is the odd thing here and
there, but I spend a lot of time looking things up- probably too much time some
days.
In my upcoming work, Curse of the Devourers, which is
was supposed to be a pulp fiction vampire story, I realised I needed back story
and a reason for why vampires existed. I hate the explanation ‘because they
do!’ Suddenly I’m up to my eyeballs in early Christian and Jewish mysticism and
my pulp fiction novel is turning into Bram Stoker meets Dan Brown! I was
explaining it all to my mother and she said, ‘You just can’t make it simple,
can you?’ That would be a ‘nope!’
My favourite place to think is either in the shower or on a
walk. When I was in university, one of my fellow students told me how she liked
to shower with the lights off when she was studying for finals. I tried it and
WOW! It’s like sensory deprivation of a
kind. Nothing to look at, and you can only hear the white noise of the water.
My brain can be anywhere. For the same reason, I also like to write in the dark
at night. Sometimes this isn’t practical, but it gets rid of the world around
me.
Walking 5km with my favourite tunes in can also help me
hammer out a scene. No computer, no distractions, just me and my thoughts. That
is usually when I will pick the song I write too. I always write to music. I
have several playlists of ‘mood’ music of what I’m writing about- sometimes it
is contemporary to what I’m writing and sometimes not. I have a truly obsessive
collection of music from 1898 to 1950. I also have my modern music because
sometimes that’s what you need.
But often I will pick THE song, of either a plot arc, or
the entire book, and I will play that song for hours on repeat while I’m
writing. When I finally heard Adele’s Hello, that became a perfect song
for Curse. It’s been played 73 times on my computer so far. Also high on my
‘obsessively writing through a chapter playlist are… Taylor Swift’s Blank
Space, Rob Dougan’s Clubbed to Death, Hozier’s Take me to Church,
Caro Emerald’s Dr. Wanna do and Guns and Roses’ Sympathy for the
Devil. It’s a bit eclectic… but then so am I!
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by LD Towers
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GENRE: Military fiction
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BLURB:
BLURB FOR New Austrian Order:
:
1938. Germany is
moving faster than Standartenführer Hagen Kohl thought possible. Sent down to
Vienna to investigate a potential threat to Hitler’s plans for Austria, Hagen
is drawn in to an aristocratic world he’s never encountered before.
Without Hauptsturmführer Eugen Friesler at his side, Hagen is in
more danger than he could have imagined as he hunts for a shadowy organization
called the New Austrian Order. Back in Germany, Galiena von Steinberg returns
to Riesa and the von Steinberg Gesellschaft, but
taking over the reins of her Grandfather’s empire comes with many challenges.
Can she protect her family holdings while keeping true to the new sense of self
she has worked so hard to find?
BLURB FOR Teufel
:
Against the politically charged background of Nazi Germany's
police state, Standartenführer Doctor Hagen Kohl is trying to carve out a
profession for himself in the SS. A middle class intellectual with a doctorate
in Literature, Hagen is a an investigator who hunts criminals within the party
apparatus itself. Hagen justifies everything by his personal code and
patriotism, unable to see the flaws of the regime he serves. When he is ordered
to investigate members of the army, he discovers patriotism is entirely a
matter of perspective. His eyes are further opened by exposure to Galiena von
Steinberg; an aristocrat whose own experiences bring him into the entanglements
and intrigues at the highest levels of Third Reich society.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EXCERPT
The
parade ground was large, and all about there were people. The SS men, in their
black uniforms, and the camp guards in their grey seemed drab on the sunny
square. There were so many, trailing behind Himmler like a flock of crows.
Galiena hated that analogy, but it seemed so appropriate. Here and there she
saw people she assumed to be prisoners, in their black and white horizontal
striped suits, and grotesquely shaved heads. They almost reminded her of
larvae, their scalps so pale in the light. One man turned and stared at her,
the bright splash of colour that she was, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.
Then his face dropped back to his toiling in the black earth of the flowerbeds
near the Administration building. The place was so dour. So grey. In her
scarlet, echoed only in the swastika flag on the flag pole, she must look like
a drop of blood on a piece of slate.
Himmler
moved to intercept her, his eyes shining with something she couldn’t define. In
this place he was a thousand feet tall, and his knowledge of his power emanated
from him in waves. The men trailing after him followed his every movement and
gesture. When he smiled, so did they, when he laughed, they echoed, and the
moment he stopped, there was silence behind him. Galiena had never seen this
Himmler. This was the Reichsführer-SS, and his power was consuming. His eyes
met hers, as he clicked his heels and bowed his head before her. When the peak
of his hat came up again, he was smiling; warmly and broadly. More the man of
her acquaintance, but the look in his eyes seemed to mock her. This Himmler was
a predator and he was in his lair with all his sycophants around to admire his
magnificence.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
LD Towers travels the world like a rootless
vagabond! A military historian, she searches out places of conflict to find a
deeper insight to the things she writes about. Presently enjoying the warm
weather and azure seas of Central America, she has lived all over Western
Europe, including 5.5 years in the incomparable Berlin.
Primarily working in Historical and Military Fiction, LD sometimes
sneaks in the odd Dystopian or Modern Thriller piece. Also look for a series of
novellas about the despicable yet intriguing Meinrad von Steinberg from the
Riesa Series, coming in fall 2015.
Twitter: @L_D_Towers
Amazon author page
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