Author Archives: Wayne Smallman

About Wayne Smallman

When you're young, you think you know everything and life is indistinguishable from a game. It's only when you get older — when you begin to doubt the authenticity of the event and question the rules — that experience begins to count for something. And to quote the inimitable Forbes Bingley, a recurring character of several novels: "Life makes you stronger, at a price." In a sense, life has been preparation — practice, perhaps — for this wild stab at being an author. After all, how hard can it be, putting one word after another? Of course, like anything else in life, you only get out what you put in. At times, writing is both cathartic and semi autobiographical, where I catch myself looking backwards whimsically, lustily, with regret, a wry smile, a despondent glower or growing doubt. But writing is also a journey, one with no intentional destination, just waypoints I may navigate towards from time to time, at leisure. Though I must admit, it's a journey I would prefer not to make alone.

Life, the ultimate phenomena

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Whatever your thoughts on alien life or paranormal phenomena, there’s no denying that some truly strange things have taken place over the centuries. Question is, what are their origins?

“That is the great question of this age, and, like it or not, its resolution, when it comes, will restate the meaning of man in the universe, and inevitably lead to the collapse of the forces that now oppress and insult the human spirit with their obfuscations and lies.”

Whitely Strieber, like myself, has pondered the imponderable and emerged the other side with a healthy skepticism, but more importantly, perhaps, a wider pair of eyes.

While we’re all so keen and eager to look outwards and beyond, staring wide-eyed across the cosmos, let us not divest ourselves the responsibility of an insular gaze, delegating such tasks to the religious alone and neglect an inward inspection of ourselves.

In the end, life itself, found wherever or whenever, is the ultimate phenomena.

Lulu’s new “eBooks Made Easy” service .. as clear as mud!

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Lulu have today announced partnerships with Apple and Barnes & Noble, so that their customers can publish their books in the epub format to their book stories.

“As part of this initiative, Lulu has secured partnerships with Apple and Barnes and Noble so you can sell your works to millions of readers on devices like the iPad® and NOOK™, not to mention in print on Amazon.com and the Lulu Marketplace.  We’ve even added a new Manage Distribution page that lets you opt-in and opt-out of retail channels for all your titles with the click of a button.”

While this is obviously good news, for those like myself who have already published an ebook, we’re kind of dangling out in fresh air here, wondering what to do next.

I published Earth Day directly as an ebook, with no intention of running a print format version. I’ve had a quick poke around and I just cannot find anything related to their opt-in option.

So maybe I have to re-submit my book and publish again? Again, no guidance. I can only image this “Manage Distribution” option relates to their ISBN product, but again, I’m guessing because there’s just no guidance.

I posted a comment in their release, so hopefully, they will respond and clarify just what the hell is going on.

A game of snakes and actions

Language is just an abstraction; a way of communicating and describing action. Just ask a snake how he snuck up on that insect or rodent they last ate and he’ll just shrug his shoulders. Actions existed long before language. Sadly, snakes don’t have shoulders.

The art and science of my fiction

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While out running yesterday, it occurred to me (for the first time) where I fit into the grand literary scheme of things. While I write science fiction, that theme will permeate but not dominate the novels I write, which will be more near future speculation action thriller than anything else.

Few of you will know about the tetralogy I have lined up, or that I’ve written I first (and very rough) draft of Perditions End, the first of the four, and a more advanced first draft of Ascending Angels, the second in the series.

As a businessman, I’ve learned some of the constants of my trade over the past twelve years, and realise they apply elsewhere in life, too. For instance, people won’t buy from person until they’ve bought into that person. Which is to say: until someone trusts you, they probably won’t buy from you.

The audience can only suspend their disbelief a finite number of times, as their sense of incredulity is itself drawn from a finite source. So the role of the author is to create plausible impossibilities. And if I, as the author, expect you to believe my stories, then you must first believe the characters that populate the imaginary spaces I populate with them.