There are two distinct threads to this topic: books that I’ve read and books that I’ve written.
If you’d like to find out more about the kind of books that I read, be aware that this is a pretty broad subject, not least because of the amount of reading matter I’ve managed to get through in my life so far – fiction and non-fiction. I may have to change this if it starts to overtake everything else, but I plan to generate individual posts, categorised under the one heading. See how we get on.
If you’re interested in the books that I’ve written, right click on this link and select “open link in new tab / window” to view bibliography on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/James-Lever/e/B01F9IG4AM
The 3 titles of Magesty appear here because they represent my first serious attempt at creative writing. They were two years in the making before I considered them to be ready for publication.
The primary function of the site is to provide insight and background to my books. They already appear on my Amazon Author Page with marketing blurb and keywords, so I don’t intend to replicate that here. I had fun writing them, spent many hours researching and refining them and I’d like to share some of the background with anybody interested to learn more. But it’s more than that – it also contains a few blogs about what I get up to when I’m not busy beavering away at the keyboard. Writing fiction is hard work and rewarding – even when people are reluctant to give reviews.
When I set toner to paper, a novel is about something I want to create -you may think it’s a selfish act because the books are essentially for me: it’s an expression of what makes me I tick; what interests and amuses me; characters and plots that I create and picture inside my head and develop subsequently; and a focus for acquiring new knowledge in pursuit of accurate background information that I wouldn’t otherwise have. Maybe I’m odd in one respect in that, always constrained by the plot, the story line evolves with the characters, taking me with along with it as I flesh it out – I live the characters.
Something I haven’t had to contend with yet is writer’s block – the keyboard takes on a life of its own as I try to commit to the page as many of the ideas buzzing around inside my head as I can before they become subsumed by new ones. It’s only afterwards when the hard work really begins – the delete key is the one that shows the most wear; and I spend infinitely more man hours editing my books than I do writing them.
So I’ve discovered that writing a Blog is quite an alien concept to me – I have to try and put myself inside other people’s heads (real people, not characters) and try to conjure up a blend of topics that hopefully appeals to others. And, no doubt, I’ll quickly find out if I’ve been successful or not!
The Serpentine Labyrinth is the second trilogy about arcane magic which, although not intended to be a sequel does follow on where Magesty left off. The three books are nothing like as long as those of their predecessor and are crafted as page-turners – thrillers if you like. The setting spans modern-day Earth (UK – the Cotswolds and the US – Pharaoh Lake Wilderness, New York State) and the Five Kingdoms (the same distant planet where Magesty is set).
Little Gems comprises ten short stories with no particular theme except that the storyline or the title is based around gemstones and their crystal lattices. A metallurgist by profession, crystal structure is something of a passion with me and within their pages are horror, intrigue, ghostly happenings, murder, the bizarre, romance and the supernatural. The other thing they all have in common is there is a twist in the tail. Although short stories do not sell very well, I really enjoyed writing them.
Dicing with Death is a spin-off from one of those Little Gems – a longer version of A Girl’s Best Friend. My hairdresser complained that the original story left things hanging (something that many belonging to my generation prefer as it leaves things to one’s own imagination – the very essence of reading a book as opposed to watching a film) and so this version provides multiple endings which the reader decides on the roll of a die.
The Unlock Code is somewhat unique with regard to my usual genres of book. A romantic novella (somewhat explicit in parts) which started out as something of an experiment to test the waters for what kind of book sold the most copies. I enjoyed writing the book (which involved plenty of research) but my hypothesis that it was sex that sold books turned out to be wrong. Mind you, I don’t publicise my work, so maybe one day The Unlock Code will be “discovered”.