Category Archives: The novel

An Alternative description of The Counterculture Goddess

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This description was sent to me by someone offering author services. I suspect it is AI-generated. It is very good – spot on.

The Counterculture Goddess is a layered, character-driven historical novel set against the cultural and spiritual upheaval of 1960s Europe, where shifting beliefs, personal rivalries, and political tensions collide inside a rapidly transforming society.

Through Anneke and Nienke’s intertwined relationships, the story explores love, jealousy, ideology, and identity within the broader backdrop of post–Second Vatican Council Europe and the rise of countercultural and spiritual movements. The result is a narrative that blends personal drama with historical and philosophical transformation in a very textured way.

As part of an ongoing Sixties Series, the book also benefits from a larger narrative framework that tracks the transition from postwar innocence into cultural revolution and moral disruption across multiple interconnected stories.

With 5 books in the series already established, there is clear long-form storytelling momentum here, but also a natural challenge many multi-book historical series face — sustained discoverability between releases and consistent visibility across evolving story arcs.

New cover for The Counterculture Goddess

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I have had covers for two titles in my Sixties Series professionally designed. One is for Love in the Counterculture, which is due for release at the end of June 2026. The second is for The Counterculture Goddess, published in 2025 and revised in 2026, which I have just received.

I have also provided a character and other information sheet for readers. My plan is to provide a similar information sheet for all my fiction titles.

Johnathan Franzen’s ten rules for novelists

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John Matthew Fox, of Bookfox, critically runs through Johnathan Franzen’s 10 rules for novelists, which have apparently infuriated many writers, even some of the best-known. I agree mostly with him. He dismisses 6 of the 10. The only comment I wish to make is on the claim that ‘Substituting then is the lazy or tone-deaf writer’s non-solution to the problem of too many ands on the page.’ Even worse is using ‘and then’. I say rubbish, bunkum and piffle to that. Listen to the way English-speaking people speak.

Novels written for stupid people – which particular group of stupid people?

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Alina, who has two degrees in literature that she doesn’t know what to do with, opens this video with the question: “Does anyone else feel like contemporary novels are written like we’re stupid?” She then proceeds to favour us with her views in a world-weary way that characterises her videos. It’s an interesting discussion – you hope it would be with two degrees – but a little too long and too focused on her demographic – twenty-something girls.

I don’t have much to say about her views because I don’t read contemporary novels. That’s mainly due to my being sick to death of the woke assumptions that are either in the foreground or the background. Now, Alina slings off at a right-winger like me (actually, I’m a Burkean conservative, but I rather doubt Alina knows what that is) who complains about the left-wing bias in contemporary novels.

She says political ideas are an essential part of literature. Well, they are, but that’s not the point. The issue is how political ideas are handled in woke novels and how they characterise their political opposition.

In the first place, they are assumed, which is intellectual surrender or, worse, the woke writer does not possess the ability to justify his ideas philosophically. In the second place, woke writers have no idea of the philosophical underpinnings of a competent, serious conservative writer. Such a philosophical defence is not imaginable.

Self-editing for self-publishers

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This is an edition of Joanna Penn’s highly regarded podcast. The section on self-editing begins at the 29-minute mark:

How can you improve your self-editing process? How can you find and work with professional editors and beta readers? How do you know when editing is done and the book is finished? With Joanna Penn.

Writing us out of our civilisational collapse

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From the Novel Marketing channel:
There’s a culture shift underway that most authors aren’t seeing. Even traditional publishers can’t figure out why their titles are resonating. If your book isn’t selling, it could be a cover or craft problem, but it might be a zeitgeist problem. In this week’s episode, you’ll hear from fantasy and LitRPG author Seth Ring. We discuss the biggest cultural shift in storytelling in two decades and what it means for your books.