So, what’s been happening in the world of Mike recently then? Well, for a start, I am soon to be moving to sunny Whitstable to be closer to work. I have also enrolled on a part-time MA at Brunel reading English Literature, with a particular focus on Literature and Philosophy, and also the Victorian period.

Away from work and education, I’m still (just about) working on The Darkest Hour. Though it’s taken me far longer than I’d have liked, I’m nearly done with a draft that will be ready for a few beta readers hopefully by the end of the month. The delay has been less about me being motivated to write, and more about my lack of time! I really have been busy of late, and spending 12 hour a day out of the house means I’ve been absolutely shattered, and in no mood to sit at a computer and type up my manuscript amends!

Regular visitors to mjryder.net will also have noticed I am still blogging on Limebirduk. I think I must have written almost a dozen blogs for Limebird now, though as with all things, time is pressing! I am also, while I think about it, trying to find the time to brainstorm some ideas for my next project after TDH. While I am very much interested in making a return to the world of humour writing (I’ll be honest – I’ve missed it!), several friends of mine are pressing me for more children’s books along the lines of A Door to Nowhere. To be honest, I’d love to do more of the same, but until someone discovers me and pays me to write, I am somewhat torn!

Until next time,

Mike

In August I accepted the job working as a Writer / Journalist for EK Communications – a dental PR company based in Whitstable. It’s certainly been a big change from my time spent working the games industry, but it’s been interesting and there is hopefully the chance on the horizon for me to bring more of my technical skills to the table, beyond my general research and writing work which should be good.

The Darkest Hour

A few blogs ago I seem to remember mentioning that I hoped to have the first draft of TDH done by the end of the year. While I was initially on course to easily complete this by October time, I recently had something of an epiphany as far as my new book goes and have made the rather tough decision to cut over 10,000 words from my work-in-progress manuscript and totally change the direction of my central plot arcs. Essentially I decided to cut out the dragons and the overly “emo” bits which I don’t feel quite did my work justice. The result is that while I now have a heck of a lot of work more to do, but the end result will hopefully be a far more focussed, far more powerful book. The first 50% is pretty much done, and I have to say, I’m pretty pleased with it.

Catch-22

The lovely people at Vintage were recently good enough to send me a copy of the new 50^th Anniversary edition of Joseph Heller’s classic Catch-22. If you haven’t read it already I strongly recommend you do. Considered by many to be one of the great books of the 21^st century, Catch-22 is a stinging criticism of military bureaucracy and the madness of war.

Limebird

Among other projects I’ve been busy with these past few weeks, I have agreed to help out on Limebird – a blog site for aspiring writers with the tagline “let your creativity fly”. Though I admit I’ve only just had time to write a short autobiographical article on how I got started writing my hope is Limebird will help inspire me to get motivated with my writing again. To learn more about Limebird, please visit the Limebird blog. 

From the moment you sign up, your entire life will be open to the scrutiny of every single person on your friends list, ranging from your best friend, to your parents, your work colleagues and even that ‘special someone’ you met on a drunken night down the pub.

This means that every single picture you post, every picture you’re tagged in, every note you write and every status you unleash upon the world has a potential audience that in many cases includes some of the most significant people in your everyday life.

Handled well of course, Facebook is undoubtedly a brilliant tool. Event planning suddenly becomes a piece of cake; sharing photos and reliving experiences, a walk in the park.

But there is a darker side to the social media phenomenon; a darker side to the great exposure Facebook and its ilk can offer. While social media may seem like a harmless piece of fun, too many people fail to understand the awesome power it puts at their fingertips.

With great power comes great responsibility…

Your exposure to the online world can at first seem like a liberating experience. Had a bad day at work? Share it with your friends. Did something stupid? Share it with your friends. Fallen out with someone? Share it with your friends.

Of course many people tend to forget that the people that are exposed to the updates they make on Facebook and other forms of social media don’t just include the handful of people they regularly interact with online. These updates are also shared with the silent majority: the people who don’t post regularly on your wall; the people who don’t feel the need to comment on every photo and ‘like’ every status update.

Forget the silent majority and you can potentially find yourself in a whole world of trouble.

The problem of context

If I were to post a status update right now saying ‘Well, that didn’t go very well’, to the average Joe on the street, my update might seem meaningless. If however you happen to know that today I’ve met my mum’s new boyfriend for the first time, or I just had a job interview, or I just got back from court, or perhaps I just got in from work, then suddenly those few innocent words gain a whole world of new meaning.

People who know me, or who may even only vaguely know me, can very easily reach conclusions that they shouldn’t (because it’s wrong) or worse, reach conclusions they shouldn’t because it’s far closer to the truth than they realise!

See the danger here? And to think the ‘context dilemma’ isn’t anything compared to the next problem in personal social media management…

Airing your dirty laundry in public

Social media can be a danger in one respect because it follows you 24/7. The widening use of smart phones with social media apps makes it far easier to upload photos and make status updates in any number of situations from any number of diverse locations, including that most dangerous of places: the pub.

As we all know, alcohol is a drug rarely conducive to smart thinking. In the age of social media where you hold yourself under voluntary surveillance by the world, why is it that whenever we’re drunk the first thing we want to do is post on Facebook?

Alcohol and social media really don’t mix. At a time when we’re often at our most emotionally vulnerable, sharing our innermost feelings with the world is possibly the worst thing we can do.

Ok so deciding to tell our best friend just how much we love them is possibly acceptable in this situation, but telling our worst enemy just how much we hate them? Telling our family or work colleagues just what we think of them?

Facebook is a melting pot for the emotionally vulnerable, and should be avoided at all costs when drunk or in a fragile state of mind. While it may seem like a great place to get something off your chest, the potential damage that making a post in such a condition can have on your social, or indeed your family life can in some cases, be catastrophic.  

The brand of ‘me’

So what’s the solution then, leave Facebook altogether?

Well no. Leaving social media and pretending it doesn’t exist really isn’t a suitable solution in this case. Social media is just too big; it’s just too important to ignore in the modern world, and to avoid it would be silly.

The problem most people have when confronted with dealing with Facebook et al isn’t the social media in itself, it’s the person using it. It is in many cases, what you might call ‘user error’.   

People fail to understand that they themselves are a ‘brand’ when it comes to their online presence. Just as Tesco is a brand, just as Microsoft is a brand, just as Facebook is a brand, how an individual appears online has just as much impact on that individual’s life as how a brand such as Microsoft appears and interacts with its consumer on a much larger scale.

The best way to approach social media then, is to consider yourself as a ‘brand’ — the brand of ‘me’.

Remember: everything you do online is being watched. You may not realise it now, and the significance of this statement may not even seem relevant to you for months, or even years down the line, but it is one of the most important lessons you can learn.

Who you are, what you do and how you convey yourself is just as important on an individual scale, as it is to an international brand such as Google. We are in a sense, each of us, marketing directors of our own lives, and until we all realise that, too many of us will fall into the deadly social media trap.

Until next time,

M.J.Ryder

Sticklers for grammar will no doubt have heard of Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots and Leaves — a book inspired by poor punctuation in a nature article that describes how a panda ‘eats, shoots and leaves’ (i.e. the panda is armed and dangerous!) The lesson to be taken from this example is that a wrongly placed comma can completely change the meaning of a piece of a text. Indeed a poorly used comma is just as bad as a poor use of capitalisation, or that greatest of sins, the badly used apostrophe.

And so it was that my mind was drawn back to Truss’s Eats, Shoots and Leaves as I came to the final page of Feist’s latest paperback. I have reproduced the last three lines exactly as they appear in the text:

‘You’re certain there will be one?’ asked Sandreena.

‘As certain as I am of anything,’ said Pug.

The conversation ceased leaving them in silence.

Spotted the mistake? The conversation ceased leaving them in silence. Conversations, by their very nature, don’t leave their participants in silence. Without a comma, the line is a contradiction that leaves the reader feeling confused. What the line should say of course is: ‘The conversation ceased, leaving them in silence’. Without the comma, the whole effect of the last few paragraphs is lost — the ending simply loses its power and the cliff-hanger is no more.

Such is the impact of this one missing comma, it makes me wonder how no one in the Harper Collins team spotted it. In his acknowledgements page at the start of the book, Feist thanks his four editors, stating ‘rarely does an author get one good editor, let alone four.’ I have to wonder then, is this a case of ‘too many cooks’?

Either way it seems Feist still can’t quite bring his fantasy to an end and I am left once more with the dilemma: do I buy his next book? Given just how much I’ve invested in the series, I am almost duty-bound to follow Feist to the bitter end. I just hope the ending’s worth it…

Until next time,

M.J.Ryder

In terms of other changes you will no doubt have notices the change to the menu navigation bar. After much thought on the subject I’ve decided to go back to my old style of ‘blogging about things that interest me’. While the writing-only blog was useful (and helped me get a good grade in my publishing module at uni), in terms of general interest, it’s only really good for people who know me, or who are interested in how my life as a writer unfolds. As such I’ve created a (hidden) blog page, with the return of tagged blogging which I will add to the menu bar when I have some content ready there, while still keeping the journal you see before you now.  

Naturally I’m not making these changes just for the sake of making changes. This next week sees my final week working as a full-time Content Writer for ChangYou.com as I move to working as a full-time freelancer, still working for ChangYou, but with the time and opportunity to take on other projects in the hope of enhancing my portfolio and my experience. I’ve certainly enjoyed my time at ChangYou, and feel I’ve achieved a lot in my 7 months there, but with life such as it is at the moment, the opportunity to continue as a freelancer gives me the chance to take on new challenges while being nearer my family and out of my current residence in Northfields.

More updates as and when I have them!

M.J.Ryder

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I’m in a strange situation really. I have this burning passion inside me to become an established writer and a published author that every day at the moment I feel like some sort of caged animal constantly tormented by the world passing by outside those bars, yet all the while trapped within that frustrating cage that is life.

I have to say it’s really starting to get me down. Four years I spent writing a total of three books as my ‘writing apprenticeship’, and yet in a way, it seems as it was all for nothing. Spare time — I don’t have any spare time. It’s 10am Saturday morning and what am I doing? I’m sitting at my computer finishing a book review and writing a blog for my website which is becoming increasingly neglected as I spend my weekdays working online as my day job.

Well, there isn’t much more I can say really. While today I have all the usual householdy-type things planned, tomorrow at least is free. I hope — just hope — that tomorrow might bring me an hour or two of that oh-so-sweet freedom in the morning where my mind isn’t clogged up with all the troubles of life and I can actually get down to doing something I really want to do: write. The Darkest Hour has been postponed for too long now, and even as I think about it I remember I still have another 5k+ to type (not happening I’m afraid!), and then I still have to start on this work for Mr Lawrence….

The life of a writer eh!

Dreadfully Ever After

So I’ve finally put my Dreadfully Ever After review up. To go along with my review of what is in all honesty, a pretty good book, PGUK have sent me the link to the following video trailer for the book. I have to say this whole concept of video trailers for books is new to me, but I have to say I’m quite impressed:

Red Bull Reporter

I was recently contacted through my website by a member of the Red Bull Reporter marketing department. Unfortunately, given all that’s going on in life at the moment, I really don’t have the time for this as well as everything else. It is however, a fantastic opportunity for anyone interested in motorsport journalism. I sincerely suggest you give the 2011 Red Bull Reporter competition  a look!

The Small Print

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Considering I started writing this latest book in the middle of last summer, this is remarkably good going. The only downside is that once the first draft is done I know that’s only pretty much half the overall battle. The real work begins when I have to painstakingly draft and re-draft sections, check for plot consistencies, spelling mistakes etc, and then finally, at the end of it all, try and sell it to publishers. It’s not easy I can tell you!

To help me in my task, I’ve just treated myself to a new laser printer.

Yep, you know you’re a writer when you consider buying a new printer not just a ‘treat’, but also an enjoyable experience. Not only is this printer a bit of an upgrade on my last printer, but it also has the option for double-sided printing, which I’m especially excited about, though I may have made a slight miscalculation with the size of the thing – it’s HUGE! Well, huge when you consider just how little space I have in my dark room in Northfields. Either way, now I have a fully operational high-speed laser printer that works I can at last feel like a ‘proper writer’ once more, and stop procrastinating when it comes to the daunting task of actually typing up my hand-written manuscript.

In other writing-related news this week I’ve finally received correct proofs from my printers for the marketing material pack I ordered almost three months ago now. I have to say if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have used the company I’ve used for my book printing. I’m not going to name them – that would be unfair – but unfortunately after the LuLu.com debacle, I was rushed to find a new printing company, and I ultimately wasn’t to know how poor their in-house designers are. My new posters are, I have to say, not great. The thing is, I paid for them, and well, I expect them to arrive at least with the correct material on them. These last few months have been nothing but back-and-forth emails between me and one of their customer service representatives. It’s funny how whenever you feel your emails are being ignored as soon as you say you want your money back,# and that you’d like to lodge an official complaint they’re suddenly more than keen to reply and produce the correct proofs you’ve been waiting for…

Lesson learnt: there are way too many cowboys out there. If I self-publish again (which I’m as-yet undecided on), I’m definitely doing more research.

Anyway, better go. It’s now 9:03am and I have a few things to do before I go for a walk along the canal.

Until next time,

M.J.Ryder

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It’s been a busy few weeks for the Creative Services ‘Army of Two’. After many weeks of hard work we’ve just launched the new updated TLBB Community Website, and I have to say I’m quite pleased with the results. Sure, there are a few tweaks needed here and there, a few extra images and the like, but given what came before it, this new website really is a major step forward.

I think the classes pages are possibly my favourite section. Given what I had to work with, I put a great deal of effort into re-writing descriptions and backgrounds for the 9 classes of TLBB, expanding on the material that was already there and that’s already in the game, while adding a lovely new set of Class Skills tables that look a darn lot better than that was there before. Take a look and see if you agree.

In other news, away from work I’m still hard at work on my new novel. Progress is now up to somewhere around the 54k mark which isn’t bad going considering I only started it in the summer and have of course had uni, work and family issues to content with in the process. If I’m honest my self-publication project has lost an awful lot of steam recently, not least because of my new priorities and the fact the printing company I’m using appear to be a load of jokers. In the next few weeks I hope to write a blog on some of the lessons I’ve learnt from this whole experience so you can all look forward to something of a rant on my part…

Of course I can’t end my latest update without a mention of my reviewing work. Reading-wise I’m about half-way through Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters which I’m reviewing on behalf of PGUK. My film work is also starting to expand. Last week I saw Age of the Dragons, and wrote one of my favourite reviews to date. There really is nothing better than having a good moan! Hopefully I should have S+S+S done by the end of this next week so I can start on what I hope will be the much better Dreadfully Ever After.

I will of course, keep you posted.

Until next time,

M.J.Ryder

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I mentioned in an earlier blog that I recently decided to postpone my studies for an MA. Time and money being rather lacking it seemed the best thing to do. Given how much I’ve achieved since I left, I think it’s fair to say that thus far I’ve been fairly justified in my decision.

First up, we have book reviews. In the past few weeks I’ve put up four new book reviews:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith and Jane Austen

Prospero Burns by Dan Abnett

Night of the Living Trekkies by Kevin David Anderson and Sam Small

Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steve Hockensmith

I’ve also recently started writing for ‘The Film Pilgrim’. Thus far I’ve had three things published, a news item and two reviews:

Sir Christopher Lee news item

Game of Death DVD Review

War DVD Review

But my writing output doesn’t stop just there. With an ever expanding PR role at work I’ve been producing press releases at quite a rate recently among other things, and have also been responsible for creating a series of story-based events that feature players in the story itself. For an example, please see my most recent article:

‘The Spies in Da Li’ at TLBB EU

Next week I hope to bring you news of the other major project I’ve been working on at ChangYou. As it isn’t live yet, I shan’t say any more about it, but sufficed to say, I have to say I’m pretty pleased with the result.

Oh, and did I mention I’ve been working hard on my new book…

I told you I’ve been busy!

Until next time,

M.J.Ryder

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For someone who doesn’t give up on anything lightly, this really has been a big issue for me to contend with. In fact I’d say this decision is up there with my leaving Imperial College and the security of Engineering for my love of English in the first place.

And I guess it’s for English again that I find myself quitting my MA.

Ironic really, when you consider the content of my Masters course, but given the massive time and money commitments I’ve had to make, I really can’t be doing with it anymore, and if I’m honest, it just wasn’t anywhere near as enjoyable as I’d hoped it would be.

And you know what? I have to say I feel liberated. Now I’m in the process of signing off my course I actually feel, quite literally, as if a massive weight has been taken from my shoulders.

I’m leaving my MA course to focus more on my writing, and the first thing I’ve done to celebrate is send an email to apply for work at The Film Pilgrim. More updates naturally, as and when I have them.

Things can only get better.

Until next time,

M.J.Ryder