That's great news. I look forward to seeing my second book in a foreign language. Regards, Cam Lavac

Advice for Aspiring Authors on Writing

It would seem there are many, many aspiring writers out there, as I receive emails almost on a daily basis, asking for all sorts of advice on writing and how to get published. So, I decided to put some ideas and words of advice on my blog-site, just in case they may help somebody out there to achieve what I have – to become a publishd novelist. I do believe in karma, and what goes round comes round. I like to give back.

 

I’ve been very lucky, blessed in fact, to be able to finally do that which I truly love, writin fiction for a living. It sure as hel wasn’t easy to start with, but now what a great lifestyle. Let me tell you, it was worth all the initial pain.

 

You must be disciplined if you want to be a writer. You have to write every day, that is the only way the plot will develop fo you.

 My routine goes something like this. Wake up at 5AM, load all 3 dogs into the ute, drive down to the surf and catch a few waves, take the dogs for a walk on the beach, go to the gym, do a workout for one hour, home for
breakfast. Write for 3 hours Load the dogs back into the ute. Back to the beach to give them a run and stretch my own back. Buy lunch. Back home an write till the 6PM news. Time to crack open a bottle of wine.

 

This varies on Wednesda when I only write in the morning as afternoon is golf. And I onl write 5 days a week. Weekends are for my wife and family.

 

Okay, sounds great, right? Yes it is – it sure as hell beat working in an office fo someone else, and being told what to do and when, but make no mistake, writing a novel is not easy, in fact it is very, ver hard, and perseverance is everything.

 

If you want to be a writer, then the best advice I can give you is, just write – and write ever day, even if it’s only a hundre words. Like most things, the more you do it, the better you get at it.

 

Just let yourself go and write whatever and however i comes to you. PC's are marvellous things. Later on, you can cut, delete, paste, or do whatever you like. But don't do any editing or make any changes till you have completed the first draft. And each time you do a rewrite, do it on a copy of the last draft, not the original. In other words, each draft must remain as it was. You'd be amazed how much material you may end up using later on in your current work or at a later date on a new project. Never, ever permanently delet anything you have written. Save everything.

At the end of every session save everything to an external hard drive, print out a hard copy of your work at the end of  every day (and keep it under lock and key), and download your stuff to a program like Sky Drive. Paranoid? You better believe it. Imagine spending a couple of years writing the all time bestseller, only to come home one day and find your house has burned down.

 

If you want to write, your best bet is to just start writing. Don’t get bogged down reading too many, How to Write books, or worrying about outlines or anything fancy like that. Believe me, if you just start writing, it will all fall into place. It never ceases to amaze me as to where and how it all comes from.

 
When I write, I start with a germ of an idea, but generally speaking I have no idea where it will go, and certainly absolutely no idea how it will end. As I get more and more into it, the characters seem to take over and it is they who determine the direction. Having spoken to numerous other professional writers, this seems to be quite a common phenomenon.

It is also good to set a daily goal in terms of number of words you want to write per day. How many is entirely up to you, just so long as it is very achievable. If your goal is unrealistic, it will tend to become demotivating if you start to slip behind. What I do is, I set up a spread sheet on Excel with a daily target, a cumulative target and dates. I can then ascertain almost to the day when I expect to finish the manuscript. This is a big help for the publisher to plan realistically.

The other bit of advice I would give you is not to let anyone see your manuscript before you finish it. The reason for this is, that if others see it, it can
and will stifle yr creativity. You will be writing with fear; the fear of what will he or she think of your work, or worse still what will they think of ME?
By not showing anyone till you are satisfied with the work you free up your creativity. Then, just write, get it down without worrying about punctuation, grammar, syntax, spelling, whatever. That can all be fixed
later. The important thing is to get the flow going. And DO NOT edit as you go. Save that till you've completed the first draft. The DELETE button should become your best friend. Having said that though, when you begin a re-write,
make sure you save each draft and copy that. You then edit the copy, not the original. In other words you always keep everything you have ever written.
You never know when or where you may be able to use previously written and
discarded work.

I have a sign above my desk with a quote by Gustave Flaubert which reads, "Don't worry, no one's going to sneak into the room behind you,
snatch your manuscript off your desk and publish it - TAKE A RISK!"

 

Never go with a publisher who you have to pay, and the same goes for an editor, he/she should be appointed by the publisher after they have issued you with a contract to publish.

 

But one of the first questions a potential agent will ask you is, "Do you have an assessment of your work that we can look at?" It saves them time and if the assessment is positive, it gives them the feeling that your work must be at least worth looking at. I cannot stress th importance of having a professional assessor look at your work and issue a report. That is the one thing you willand should have to pay for. 

 

Generally, this is how assessors work. They ask for a hard copy of the manuscript, with a stamped, self addressed envelope. They then go through it and pencil their comments, suggestions, critique etc in the margins. As well as that, they furnish you with an in-depth, written report outlining their comments on the work which in itself constitutes a constructive review of all that is good and bad. You may not like it, or you may love it - a good assessor pulls no punches, because at the end of the day, it is their job as an assessor, to  realistically advise what you need to do to get published. If your work is brilliant enough (which I doubt, on the first draft) then they will tell you, and you can take that to an agent or publisher. But more than likely, they will point you in the right direction, as to what it will take to polish it to a professional level. On the other hand, they may well say that you should forget it, although this is highly unlikely, as most committed writers really only need some directional advice. 

Just remember though, that an assessor cannot guarantee you get published. But your attitude should not be, if, but rather, when and with whom.

My final word of advice is, RE-WRITE, RE-WRITE, RE-WRITE!

I do about 8 re-writes before I feel my work is polished to a high enough standard to submit to a publisher. It is a huge fallacy to think that your story may be so exciting and original that a publisher will appoint an editor to knock it into shape. Publishers only like to work with professionals. Show them that you ARE one.

 

Good luck and feel free to ask any questions. I guarantee I will respond to you personally.

 

Where did the idea for, "Majestic XII" come from?

When I started writing this book, I had never heard of Majestic XII. The original, working title was, "The Ark and the Lost Temple of Solomon." I usually begin writing with just a germ of an idea, with no real sense of where the book will go, and most certainly no idea of the ending. The germ in this case was a documentary I'd seen, where it was reported that a modern-day camcorder had been found in an ancient burial crypt, suggesting the possibility of time travel. This sparked my imagination, and I began to write, repalcing the camcorder idea with an ancient, 2,000 year old papyrus, written in modern English and addressed to a lady in Albuquerque, USA.

As the book developed, I began to research extraterrestrial phenomena, and to my delight I found the Bible full of references to what I believe to be extraterrestrial contact.

This is from Exodus, when the Jewish people were escaping from the Egyptians.

“…And the Lord went on before, to guide them on their journey; by day in a pillar of cloud, by night in a pillar of fire; he was their guide at all times; every day a pillar of cloud, every night a pillar of fire moved on before the people giving them light."

You see, clouds simply don’t move along in the form of a pillar nor do they have fiery pillars, within them, so what I’m suggesting is that the writers in those days explained what they saw within the limitations of their experience and vocabulary.

The Bible speaks repeatedly of anomalous craft appearing in the sky, with literally dozens and dozens of references to shining clouds, flaming chariots, balls and pillars of fire. In the perception of the ancient authors who contributed to the writings in the Bible, the only objects they would have associated with flying would have been birds or clouds. And they most certainly would have absolutely no concept of a combustible machine.

This next quote is from Exodus, chapter 19, verse 16 onwards:

“Morning broke and all at once thunder was heard, lightning shone out, and the mountain was covered with thick mist; loud rang the trumpet blast, and the people in the camp were dismayed. But Moses brought them out from the camp itself to meet the Lord, and they stood there close by the spurs of the mountain. The whole of Mount Sinai was by now wreathed in smoke, where the Lord had come down with fire about him, so that smoke went up as if from a furnace; it was a mountain full of terrors. Louder yet grew the noise of the trumpet, longer its blast; and then Moses spoke to the Lord, and the Lord’s voice was heard in answer. It was on the very top of Mount Sinai that the Lord had come down, and now he called Moses up to the summit.”

In my opinion, which incidentally is shared by some highly respected minds, including a Nobel Laureate, the above piece is a pretty vivid description of the landing of a rocket powered craft.

Check out this next quote from Genesis, Chapter 6, Verses 1-4 and make of it what you will:

"Time passed and the race of men began to spread over the face of the earth, they and the daughters that were born to them. And now the sons of God (it should be noted that in ancient Sumerian, the term, ‘sons of God’ has the equivalent meaning of, angels) saw how beautiful were these daughters of men, and took them as wives, choosing where they would. The sons of God mated with the daughters of men, and by them had children.”

History books are also filled with references to great heroes in ancient societies being referred to as demigods. The one thing they all seemed to have in common, is the belief that gods were physical beings so similar to men as to make inter-breeding possible. This belief was evident with the Sumerians, the Hebrews and then the Greeks.

Are these the rantings and ravings of lunatics or ancient descriptions of what today would undoubtedly be referred to as, type three, extraterrestrial encounters?

Much of what we know about the past comes from what is referred to as mythology, and it is an indisputable fact that many myths from totally separate races and cultures share an amazing similarity, yet there is no evidence of the possibility of cultural contact between these races.

But one need not go back to writings that are thousands of years old. The following is treated in my previous novel, "Satan's Church," and is a published description of the so-called, "Miracle of the Sun," witnessed by no less than 70,000 people near the small town of Fatima in Portugal in 1917. It follows the so-called appearance of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ to three shepherd children, and has been authenticated by the Vatican as Catholic dogma.

"The clouds parted, reavealing the sun as a giant silver disk shining more intensely than ever before, yet people were able to stare at it without being blinded. Then, as witnessed by the crowd of more than seventy thousand, the great disk began to dance, spinning like a collosal ball of fire, spraying bright flames across the sky. Then abruptly it stopped. The multitude held its breath. The sun started again, this time travelling in the opposite direction. This was repeated three times. it stopped again. the great sphere of light began to quiver and reverberate. Suddenly it plunged, twisting and turning, plummeting on a collision course with the terrified crowd. The miracle lasted a full ten minutes, and then the fiery orb returned to its place in the sky, and was normal again."

Today, we know full well that the sun just does not behave like this. Intersestingly enough, there were no reports of strange solar activity from other parts of the world. So, what did the 70,000 odd witnesses really see?

It was along this line of research that I stumbled across the Roswell cover-up and hence Majestic XII, and so my book developed.

If you would like to order Majestic XII, or Satan's Church, you can do so on http://www.seekbooks.com.au/ and I'd love to get your feedback.

Satan's Church and Cardinal George Pell

I recently ran into the good cardinal at Dymock's book store in George St Sydney. Not being able to resist, I bought a copy of my own book, Satan's Church and presented it to Cardinal Pell with my compliments, and suggested he read it to get in touch with what people are finding wrong with the Catholic Church today. He smiled warily, thanked me for the copy but to date I have yet to receive a response or comment.