The Immorality of Immortality: Playing with Reality

So last week I introduced you to my appalling website for the Immorality of Immortality trilogy. If you want to read last week's post click here. I promised I would share with you the only thing I would miss if the website disappeared off the face of the planet: my descriptions of what it was like to write the trilogy. So I thought I'd start of with book one, Playing with Reality which you can now get for your kindle for 77p! Yay! 

If you want a taster, the first three chapters are on Movellas.

Before we go into it be prepared, I wrote the A Lot of Background section when I was sixteen and when I read it over I was shocked to find how juvenile it sounded. I hope you enjoy my enthusiasm and peppiness. 

“Life’s Just a Horror Story”

“A week ago I’d been an average girl.

I hadn’t realised that life could change so quickly, without warning.

And now what?

What do I do next?

My life was turning upside down around me and I couldn’t even explain why.  I was lost in my own body, my own mind.  What was I supposed to do?

And with the thirst growing stronger and more irresistible by the day, life – or should I say ‘death’ – was becoming a nightmare.”

Through Felix’s eyes, Playing with Reality opens your own to discover how wonderful and frightening life can be.

A Lot of Background

'Playing with Reality' was an exploration into what vampires should really be like.  I, personally, though I loved Stephenie Meyer’s ‘Twilight’*, didn’t think her vampire anatomy made sense.  I mean, glittering?  Why?  So I sat myself down and really thought about it.  I created my favourite spider diagram which still to this day has everything that makes my vampires what they are, including hearts beating, sunlight, blood, strength, immortality – all of that and more.

*I was young. Sorry for the Twilight love, don't be distracted. I mean, it doesn't matter what made me write, right? The point is it did make me write. Please read on :) 

So then all I needed was a start, that’s where Felix comes in.  You hear authors say this all the time, but she really did just walk right on into my head, just like that.  She was shortly followed by her sister April and an unnamed vampire who attacks her – who became Elektra.

With all of them safely walking around in my head – yes that’s what it’s like – I began to write and the story came out as though I wasn’t the author, but just the writer.  It was Felix’s story and it was as though she was telling me what happened and I just wrote it down.

I should mention at this point that various characters in PWR are named after my cousins:

Jake – Jacob James Taylor (April’s boyfriend) is named after both my cousin Jacob and my brother James.

Lottie – Charlotte Emmy Ford (A Senate Follower) is named after my twin cousins Charlotte and Emmy.

Emmie – (Evie’s youngest sister) is named after the same Emmy as above to make up for the fact that she was only a middle name.

Now here’s the weird part.  My Auntie had a baby girl and named her Evie, having no idea I’d used that name as one of Felix’s best friends.  So now I had only one cousin I’d missed out, poor Libby.

So then waltzed into my head was the amazing Libby and the plot (still in Sanfolk at this point) really jumped forward and then the Senate came to me.

Shortly after this, Damien and Lucas – always a pair – came knocking on the door to my head and I fell immediately in love with Damien as I hear so do women who read PWR, but not so much men.

That’s how it all happened.  As you can tell, PWR is a character driven novel, not a plot one.  The characters come into my head holding part of the plot in their hands like a gift.  It’s magical, I can assure you of that.

At the very end of December 2011, I published PWR with AuthorHouse and let Felix loose on the world!



So there you have it. That's what it was like to write such an ambitious novel with so little writing experience. If I, like my vampires, only had to sleep for three hours a day, I would definitely go back and re-write PWR. It's a story I love and hold so close to my heart I just want to make it perfect. I was such a new writer when I wrote it that it actually astounds me. I had no idea while I was writing this that it was going to steal every corner of my heart.

Tune in next week for book two, Gambling a Fairytale.

Molly Looby
Author of the Immorality of Immortality trilogy

The Immorality of Immortality: The Blog Posts

As a mere mortal when it comes to technology, I've reached my limit with what I can achieve with my website. It was extremely stressful to make and it's infuriating that I don't think anyone's ever visited it.

Here's the link if you were wondering: http://theimmoralityofimmortalitytrilogy.yolasite.com/

And here's a little screen shot for you to enjoy.

It's so much easier for me to just run my Facebook page instead of the website because I know what I'm doing with Facebook.

Again, here's a link to the Immorality of Immortality Facebook page: http://on.fb.me/1cpMwEc

I don't mind that much because the website doesn't really have much to offer anyone apart from my descriptions of each book in the trilogy and what it was like to write them. I was reading them a few weeks ago and it really is a shame that no one's really read them. I mean, I'd completely forgotten they existed so how would anyone else know?

They're actually really interesting, as hilarious as that is coming from me. But I really can't remember writing Playing with Reality as well as myself in the past can, so it's brilliant that I spent the time to write it down, if only for me to wonder at it a couple of years later.

So, editing them a bit and cutting out the spoilers I seemed to have written in for Chancing the Truth for some reason, I have decided to share them with you on here where, let's face it, not many people come, but it's more than my website by a long shot.

I hope you enjoy the next few weeks of stepping into my writing process and hearing all about what it was like to write a trilogy before the age of eighteen.

Molly Looby

Author of the Immorality of Immortality Trilogy

Shadows - Paula Weston

Blurb

It's been almost a year since the car crash that killed Gaby's twin brother.

Across a crowded bar Gaby sees the man of her dreams, literally. Rafa not only looks exactly like the guy who's been appearing in her dreams, he claims a history with her brother that makes no sense.

Now Gaby is forced to accept that what she thought she knew about herself is just a shadow of the truth - and the truth is more likely to be found in her nightmares.

My Review

Shadows was just what I was looking for. It is a typical teen fiction book that I just fell all over. Realistic, funny characters, a serious plot that's complicated but I can still follow it and a kick-ass protagonist who I fell in love with at once. And to top it all off a supernatural element. Yes please.

First of all, while I was looking through my bookshelf deciding what to read next, my plan was to just read the blurb and the first paragraph. Then based on that I was going to decide which sounded the most exciting and read that. However, I picked up Shadows and the first paragraph wasn't enough. I sat and read the whole first chapter and decided all my other books could wait.

This didn't really change the whole way through the book. I could hardly put the thing down. I read chapter after chapter after chapter, having no desire whatsoever to put it down. It was just so easy to read and so difficult to only read the one chapter. Every character, every line of dialogue, every action intrigued me. I just couldn't get enough of Gaby, who I fell in love with instantly. She was so real and relatable and not at all annoying in any shape or form.

Shadows was a total joy to read. I just connected with this book entirely and had a blast! I hadn't realised how much I missed reading books written in the first person present tense and I think that made the whole thing even more enjoyable. I can't remember the last book I read that was written in this way, and it's one of my favourite styles too!

The only possible thing I have to say about Shadows that is negative is that if you put it down for too long - I put it down for a week while I spent time with my cousins - once you come back to it, there seems to be too many characters and too much gong on that you don't know about. Gaby spends the majority of the book having no idea what's going on or why for most things. This is fine up until you take a break and then have no idea what to think when you come back. I even had to backtrack to remember who some people were and I hate doing that. But even so, I couldn't stop reading.

Evaluation

I give this book an overall 9/10.

Would I recommend it? Yes. It was brilliant and I enjoyed every page.

Would I look up the author? Yes. I'm definitely going to read the other books in the series!

Molly Looby

Author / Ghostwriter / Editor / Blogger / Reviewer / Wrimo / Movellian / ZA Ready

molly.looby@hotmail.com

Anthology 2013 - Chelmsford Writers

A Spoiler Free Bit About The Book

This anthology was put together by the people of Chelmsford Writers' Group, the writing group I belong to. We put it together for Christmas 2013 and it's taken me this long to read it! It's filled with short stories and poems about varying different things. Although for some reason, most of them are very dark.

My Review

It's not fair for me to write a proper review as each story and poem is different. Not to mention that I don't know a thing about poetry and that I myself am a stranger to short story writing as a craft.

But if you want something that's easy to pick up for a few minutes and put down again, this is the book for you. Because there are so many different stories and poems, if you're busy you can just pick it up, read a poem and put it down again in a very non-committing kind of way that I think we need sometimes in a book.

I read it in one day, almost in one sitting. It's great if you have an afternoon or evening you don't know what to do with.

I must mention my favourites because I think it would be rude not to:

Cuck00 - Jerry Beckett

Elizabeth - Paul Ebbs

Through the Looking Glass - Jane Bowers

Old Pals - Raymond Wallace

The Knowing - Dot Gumbi

Would I recommend it? Yes! Of course I would! Support us! I have a story in it as well and if anyone's interested. My entry is called Life's a Game and is very dark indeed.

It's on Amazon for only £4.99

I look forward to next year's! Though I don't have a clue what I'm going to put in . . .

Molly Looby

Author / Ghostwriter / Editor / Blogger / Reviewer / Wrimo / Movellian / ZA Ready

molly.looby@hotmail.com