Category Archives: Humorous Fantasy Author

Easter! What an adventure that was. We had a lovely holiday trundling round France. There was a tense few hours, on our first day at the ski resort when Mum ended up in hospital after a fall with a suspected stroke and I thought I was going to have to fly home. Luckily she was fine, just very stiff and cold because she’d been lying on the floor for two hours. I’m also feeling a little guilty because I just didn’t have the stamina to visit Dad and Mum this week, but on the up side, Mum was in great form. I have just had the new cover designs through for my short story series and for the one I’m going to give away so I showed her those, because she is actually really interested in all things K’Barthan, genuinely too rather than just because she’s my Mum. So I told he all about the batch of short stories I’ve written, and we had a giggle about the plots. Then she and the carer and I discussed titles. And having done that with Mum and Katie (waves at them) now it’s your turn.

Yes, this week, I am going to be talking about my books. That’ll put half of you straight to sleep while the others makes their excuses and leave!

The thing is, despite the picture you may get from my release schedule, and my blog – which is normally about pretty much anything other than my books – I am actually an author – you’ll notice about 99.9% of my posts are labelled, ‘off topic’ if you’re new here, now you know why. I write stuff. And amazingly, after three years in the wilderness, I finally have some work ready for publication. Woot. I’m trying to release it properly this time. I mean, I’m supposed to build a buzz, although, while I’m stoked, I doubt anyone else is particularly excited but I do, at least, have a big enough email list and enough webtastic contacts now to be able to involve my audience in the process. This, again, is hugely exciting for me – probably rather more exciting for me than for them. So at the moment, I’m bouncing around like a rubber ball in a jam jar. We are nearly there. I have the mailing list freebie ready to go, the covers are shaping up beautifully, one story is edited and two more are ready to be sent to the editor. In the meantime, there are conundrums facing me. Three to be precise.

1. The covers.

This is the least conundrumy of the three. When I speced them, it seemed smart to stick with the incredibly cunning plan that I would use the same image and then have different colours – pretty similar to the K’Barthan Series, then, which did that, except book two was set in London so the city was London. Mind you, the city on the other books is London too, although a different bit, but I digress. Also, since drawing is expansive, I want to get the titles, series name and art work finalised first. This stuff costs less if you batch it. I sent the designer various photos and sketches and an outline of what I wanted. This is what he came up with.

New M T McGuire cover; paperback version

New Series, Ebook cover

Naturally, I am completely stoked with these.

OK, so ignore the words on the front, they’re just to give a feel for text type and where it’ll go.

Having read that book covers and adverts with people in them are way, way more effective – if you look at indy book covers you will notice I am not the only person who has read that research – I wanted a figure in the cover, but at the same time, not too much drawing. Since the stories I’ve written are about The Pan of Hamgee’s adventures after he arrives in Ning Dang Po but before the events of the main series begin, it seemed smart to put him on there, complete with trademark hat and cloak, seen from behind because … less drawing and also more scope for ritzy view and a glimpse of the SE2 because … flying cars! The colours will vary so the final item may well be brighter than this. More like the prequel shown below, for example – although this one is still in progress so I’ll probably ask the designer to remove the white outline round the figure.

There’ll be four short stories in this batch, three at around 20k, one at 10k but I’m working on making that one longer so it ties in. There is also a starter at about 12k which I will give away exclusively to people who join my mailing list, or as a free paperback at any events I do. That is one that works equally well as a prequel to both series; the main, K’Barthan Series of of full length books or this one.

So far, feedback on the covers is good but a couple of folks think that although it ties in with the overall M T McGuire brand, these are bordering on a different genre to comedy. There are two ways to fix that. One, change the font or brighten the colours or two make sure the titles are properly comedic. More about this in a minute.

Second thing about the series … I suspect there will be more stories, both about The Pan of Hamgee and possibly about other characters. So this is where the second conundrum comes in.

2. Series Name

To make sure nobody muddles stuff up and that everyone reads everything in the right order, I’ve called the short stories, ‘K’Barthan Shorts’. Clearly, though, since these ones are all about The Pan of Hamgee and others may be about different characters or settings, with different covers, I need to qualify it a bit. I do have ideas for a series of short stories about events at The Parrot and Screwdriver and I’d quite like to write one about that assassination mission Deirdre Arbuthnot goes on when she ends up getting ambushed but manages to escape by blowing up the Grongolian first minister with a lorry full of custard.

So, I was thinking that K’Barthan Shorts would be the umbrella name and then I’d qualify it with a secondary name so it would look like this: K’Barthan Shorts, Misfit Hamgeean: Part 1.

3. Book Names

Bearing in mind the comments on the covers so far, I thought funny titles were probably expedient. Normally, when I name my books I take my cues from Sir Terry since he’s probably the nearest thing to my demographic. He tends to do three things:

1. Snappy phrases that are already in use – or sound as if they are – such as, The Light Fantastic, Lords and Ladies, or Feet of Clay.
2. Two words, for example, Wyrd Sisters, some of which are also short snappy phrases, for example, Interesting Times or Soul Music.
3. One word titles, such as Thud, Nation or Snuff.

With the original K’Barthan Series I went for titles which fell into the first group. Since the stories in this series are shorts I thought I’d also try pithier one or two word titles. They tie in both with the main series and with the free short, Unlucky Dip. In fact they pretty much come between the two. But after some of the comments about the cover, I wonder if I should go the phrases route again, to make the genre clearer. So what we have are the following:

In the one word corner: Jump, Drop, Pastries, Switch/Punched and Flight/Spiced (but spice is a drug here in the UK so I’m a bit ambivalent about using it).

In the two word corner: Night Swimmers, Small Beginnings, Special Delivery, Close Enough, Spice of Life/Blind Flight.

In the three/four word corner: Night Swimming, A Poor Start, Nothing to See Here, A Spot of Bother and Too Good to be True.

What do you think? Your thoughts are hugely appreciated since you are my readers, after all, and what is comfortable, to you, will be fitting to other new, untamed readers who are encountering my books out there in the wild for the first time. To make it easier for anyone who wants to give feedback, I’ve made a quick survey. Which should be embedded, below. If it isn’t, follow this link:

Enjoy!