Rediscovering the spark

(See end of post for free e-book!)
 
It happens. When the Moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars, or whatever. You have a creative idea and it translates. Verse, music, prose, it's a product of the inspiration that grabs you and makes perfect sense at the time, like a dream that lets the new day dawn with a feeling of elation.

Writing a novel is a lengthy process and completing the manuscript can take anything from a few months to several years. That's a long time to maintain the spark of inspiration that initiated the novel idea. Then editing is required, adding time and over-familiarity. At the end, when the work is ready to publish, an author often just wants to get done and over. Somewhere, deep inside, the ember of inspiration remains but the author has long since moved on to kindle another fire.

I get the impression that mainstream authors birth their creations and only revisit them when forced to do so by interviewers or high profile literary reviewers. Ideally they don't even read the critics' viewpoints and certainly never scour online reviews at Amazon or Goodreads. Not so the independent authors! Reader reviews are a valuable tool for indies to gain exposure and garner referral sales.


My books aren't huge sellers but I've been fortunate to have a generous number of reader reviews. At time of writing there are around seventy online reviews across the four Ruby Barnes titles on Amazon, Goodreads, LibraryThing and review blogs. I monitor those reviews and have learned a lot from them. Readers often very effectively articulate the themes and ideas embedded in a novel. Summarising the novel in a blurb, elevator pitch or one page synopsis is agony for the author but one reader can tell another what it is all about without the fear of inadequacy.

That's exactly what the review below of The Crucible did for me; it summed up what I had intended when that spark first caught.

Ruby Barnes' latest novel is as revealing and surprising as his last. Expecting a military/covert thriller a la Tom Clancy, from my initial skim-over; I was struck by just how insidiously the author has led me into a deep, very moving and highly skeptical look at the effects of post-colonial "colonialism" in the name of aid in Africa. Mr. Barnes has suggested a collusion of terrifying proportion, acting completely outside the realm of governmental intervention. This is a book to make you think, then think again. But don't assume it's not a rousing journey. There are few storytellers as gifted as this author. His story carries you at high-speed. His subject and characters are gripping, fully fleshed and researched with a scholar's thoroughness. I would highly recommend it to readers of Clancy or Le Carre, political science fans, and all those whose views of European and American intervention in Africa, the cradle of human life, need revision. 

How could I have forgotten the six months of research for this novel; all those books on Africa and the detail of the CIA Factbook database? The factories in South Africa where 50% of our employees were HIV positive. The townships across the continent where coffin building was the main growth business.

Africa, the forgotten continent.

As a thank you for signing up to Ruby's News, a free e-copy of The Crucible Part 1 is offered to each subscriber.

Many thanks to Richard Sutton for his inspiring review.

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