Rayne Hall

Do you want to create compelling characters about whom the readers care deeply? This book reveals professional technique to invent individuals who are so real that your readers will love or hate, fear or root for them, and so fascinating that your readers will remember them forever.

Professional Techniques for Fiction Authors

Writing Vivid Characters

Xteve Abanto

Jamie Chapman

Creepy, atmospheric, disturbing stories to tingle your spine and send shivers across your skin. You will encounter ghosts, vampires, zombies, dangerous animals and psychopaths. The horror is more eerie and psychological than visceral and gory. However, the stories may not be suitable for young readers without parental guidance. PG 13. This book is a compilation of volumes 1-5 of the Six Scary Tales books. It includes the acclaimed stories Burning and The Bridge Chamber. All stories have been previously published in magazines, ezines, collections and anthologies. British English. Stories in collection include: The Devil You Know, Greywalker, Prophetess, Each Stone A Life, By Your Own Free Will, The Bridge Chamber, Only A Fool, Four Bony Hands, The Black Boar, Double Rainbows, Druid Stones, Burning, Scruples, Seagulls, Night Train, Through the Tunnel, Black Karma, Take Me To St. Roch's, Turkish Night, Never Leave Me, The Colour of Dishonour, Beltane, The Painted Staircase, I Dived The Pandora, Terre Vert and Payne's Grey, They Say, Tuppence Special, Disturbed Sleep, Normal Considering the Weather, Arete. The book contains twenty beautiful story illustrations by artist Jamie Chapman. British English.

Thirty Scary Tales

Cutlass

Pamela Turner

Mark Cassell

Mitch Sebourn

Ten Fantasy Stories by Ten Authors. Of all paranormal creatures, demons are the most dangerous. Intelligent and deceitful, they are masters of disguise and crafty manipulation. They stir evil desires, exploit moral weaknesses, disguise the boundaries between right and wrong, plant convictions in the victim's mind, and persuade humans that they want the thing the demon aims to bring about. Every culture in the world has demons, but their shape, nature and purpose varies so much that it would be impossible to give a single definition. In this anthology, ten authors share their vision of demons, some drawing from their ethnic and cultural backgrounds, others inspired by observations from real life, all blended with the writers' vivid imagination. Their stories span a wide spectrum of styles - scary, funny, disturbing and thought-provoking. 1. THIEF AND DEMON by Jake Elwood A gutter rat gets an offer she can't refuse. 2. DISTURBED by Mark Cassell A deep-rooted evil awakens and the camping trip turns sour. 3. NINE RINGS OF SILVER AND ONE OF BRONZE by Rayne Hall Time has come for Mourad to face his fear and atone for his guilt. 4. DETRITUS AT THE CHURCH FETE by Heide Goody and Iain Grant A demon is sent to earth to disrupt the harmless pleasures of English rural life. 5. NON-DISCLOSURE by Mitch Sebourn An ailing lawyer investigates a potential lawsuit involving a demon of Native American tradition. 6. INNER DEMON by Pamela Turner Desperate to break his curse, a hemophobic serial killer confronts his inner demon. 7. NEREZZA by Debbie Christiana In the end, who's the real demon? 8. THE DEVIL NEVER TAKES A VACATION... AND NEITHER DO I by Douglas Kolacki A man whose profession is all things spiritual, ought to have known... 9. THE TOUCH OF THE TANIWHA by Tracie McBride The Taniwha. Protector? Monster? Or something else entirely? The four perspectives presented in this tale may not bring you any closer to the truth. 10. STONE CITY, OLD AS IMMEASURABLE TIME by Kelda Crich An ancient voice speaks across continents; a mother hears the call."

Ten Tales of Demons - Dark Fantasy Stories

Fiends

Do you write fantasy fiction? This book is a resource for authors. Crammed with information, tips, and plot ideas, it helps you create stories about magic and magicians which are believable and exciting. Learn about power-raising, ritual, training, initiation, love spells, sex magic, costuming, equipment, correspondences, magical weapons, healing, protection, miracles, spells, amulets, talismans, curses, hexes, illusionists, charlatans, natural and ceremonial magic, witchcraft, shamanism, alchemy, necromancy, ethics, conflicts, secrecy and more. Draw up a psychological profile for your magician, invent fictional spells that work, avoid blunders, and create trouble for your characters.

Writing about Magic

Learn how professional authors craft scenes, and apply the techniques to your fiction. This book shows you how to choose the cast of characters and the point-of-view, how to work with plot events and create conflict, how to build tension and conflict, and how to rework a dull scene to make it sparkle. It teaches you professional techniques for specific types of scenes, with a full chapter for each of the following: - novel-beginning scenes - novel-ending scenes - black moment scenes - climax scenes - outdoor scenes - indoor scenes - scary scenes - creepy scenes - love scenes - erotic scenes - chase scenes - confession scenes - fight scenes - duel scenes - battle scenes - night scenes - relationship break-up scenes - argument scenes - travel scenes Whatever kind scene you're writing or revising, this guide can help. Please note: some of the content overlaps with Rayne Hall's other books and articles.

How to Write That Scene

Use your writing talent and your skill with words heal yourself. Author Rayne Hall and psychologist Alexander Draghici show fourteen practical strategies for self-therapy. Do you feel like you're trapped in a dark hole of morass, sinking deeper and deeper, the mud rising to your hips, your chest, your throat? Is despair smothering you like a heavy blanket? Is your own life moving past you like a train, and you are forced to watch and cannot board? Has crippling lethargy wrapped its tentacles around you so tightly that you cannot move, sucking from you all energy and the will to live? If you want to get better, to feel alive again, if you want to step out of this darkness and take control of your recovery, this book can help.

Practical Self-Therapy for Creative Writers

Write Your Way Out of Depression

Use Twitter to improve your writing, network with other authors, meet fans, build a platform, gain exposure, find reviewers and sell books.Rayne Hall has one of the best platforms any writer has on Twitter – with over 50,000 genuine, engaged followers who enjoy her tweets and buy her books. Here she shares practical advice, fun ideas, step-by-strategies for success – and even the embarrassing mistakes she made.This book is a great help to any writer who wants to use Twitter as a professional tool without wasting precious writing time. Suitable for newbies as well as Twitter veterans, it shows you how to spot fake followers, guides you past the dreaded 2,000-follower hurdle, helps you throw a Twitter party and reveals the most powerful ways to promote a book.

Twitter for Writers

Do you want to give your novel a powerful story line? Do you want to power up a draft you've written? This guide shows professional techniques for developing and structuring your fiction book. It solves plot problems such as slow beginnings, sagging middles and flat endings, and guides you to write specific story parts such as the 'Black Moment' and the 'Climax'. The focus of this guide is on plotting full-length novels, but there are also chapters on plotting short stories, series and serials.

Writing Vivid Plots

Do you want your characters to feel such strong emotions that the readers' scalps prickle, their mouths go dry and their hearts thud like they're sharing the experience? Do you want to convey fear or happiness in ways that make the readers feel heat radiating through their chest or cold sweat trickling down their spine rather than the tired 'he was afraid' or 'she felt happy'? Step by step, you'll learn how to express feelings through body language, dialogue, thought, similes, visceral sensations and mood-rich descriptions. The book also guides you through layering emotions and varying their intensity. It shows you how to subtly reveal a character's secret or suppressed emotions. The book also flags mistakes to avoid and reveals tricks used by professional authors. At the end of each chapter, you'll find assignments. If you like, you can use this book as an advanced fiction-writing course. Please note: This book is not suitable for absolute beginners. It assumes that you have mastered the basics of your craft and know how to create characters and write dialogue and are ready to to take your craft skills to the next level. British English.

Writing Vivid Emotions

Do you want your readers to feel like they're really there—in the place where the story happens? Whether you want to enrich stark prose with atmospheric detail, add vibrancy to a dull piece or curb waffling descriptions, this guide can help. Learn how to make your settings intense, realistic, and intriguing. This is the tenth book in Rayne Hall's acclaimed Writer's Craft series.

Writing Vivid Settings

Dahoud is a troubled hero with a dark past. A former siege commander, he atones for his atrocities by hiding his identity and protecting women from war's violence. But he hides a deep secret: demonic possession. How can he shield the woman he loves from the evil inside him? Principled weather magician, Merida, brings rain to a parched desert land. When her magical dance rouses more than storms, she needs to overcome her scruples to escape from danger. Thrust together, Dahoud and Merida must fight for freedom and survival. How can they trust each other when their hearts burn with the hatred of betrayal? Storm Dancer is a dark-epic fantasy novel. It deals with dark issues and is not recommended for readers under 16. The fantasy world is inspired by ancient Middle Eastern cultures - Persians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Hittites. The writing is atmospheric, exciting and intense. It is a big book, offering many hours of reading pleasure. British English.

Dark Epic Fantasy

Storm Dancer

Learn step-by-step how to create fictional fights which leave the reader breathless with excitement. The book gives you a six-part structure to use as blueprint for your scene. It reveals tricks how to combine fighting with dialogue, which senses to use when and how, how to create a sense of realism, and how to stir the reader's emotions. You'll decide how much violence your scene needs, what's the best location, how your heroine can get out of trouble with self-defence and how to adapt your writing style to the fast pace of the action. There are sections on female fighters, male fighters, animals and weres, psychological obstacles, battles, duels, brawls, riots and final showdowns. For the requirements of your genre, there is even advice on how to build erotic tension in a fight scene, how magicians fight, how pirates capture ships and much more. You will learn about different types of weapons, how to use them in fiction, and how to avoid embarrassing blunders. The book uses British English.

Writing Fight Scenes

Learn to write love scenes like a a pro. Two professional authors show step-by-step how to create conflict, depth and intensity, and craft a heart-warming or harrowing scene that readers will never forget. This book shows you step-by-step how to to write about - the first meeting - the first kiss - characters in disguise - confessing a secret - relationship conflicts - breaking up - marriage proposals and much more. Do you want to write 'clean' or 'steamy' love scenes? The choice is yours. This guide shows techniques for - keeping your characters and your writing chaste - implying intimacy without showing it - creating erotic tension without sexual action - seducing the reader with explicit sex. Whatever genre you write, you'll find useful advice for your story: - gay love scenes - lovers belonging to different cultures - love between members of different species - love scenes involving several characters. 'Writing Love Scenes' is intended for intermediate and advanced-level writers and want to learn specialist skills. It is not recommended for absolute beginners. About the authors: Susanne McCarthy is an experienced romance novelist. Rayne Hall is a professional fantasy and horror author, editor of the Ten Tales speculative fiction anthologies, and creator of the Writer's Craft series.

Writing Love Scenes

This book is crammed with fertile seeds for fantasy fiction. Each prompt comes with a wealth of suggestions for how you can develop it to suit the kind of story you want to write. Plant those seeds into the rich ground of your own imagination, and watch them grow.

77 Powerful Ideas to Inspire Your Fiction

Fantasy Writing Prompts

Jonathan Broughton

Three Sussex authors ... Twelve horror stories. Take a terrifying journey to a coastline associated with candyfloss and amusement arcades, and see it stripped to the bone. Whether it's seagulls that prove to be more than a nuisance, the mysterious inhabitants of a forgotten village, or a fisherman whose Easter eggs are not for consumption, the horrors are always there ... and much closer than we care to admit. Stories include: Mark Cassell's - The Rebirth - The Commission - Demon Alcohol - Away in a Mangler Jonathan Broughton's - The Stealth of Spiders - You Have One Message - Furzby Holt - The Pensioner Pirates of Marine Parade Rayne Hall's - Seagulls - Normal, Considering the Weather - Scruples - Double Rainbows

Stories of Coastal Terror & Other Seaside Haunts

Sussex Horrors

This book will help you to write fight scenes that are entertaining as well as realistic, and leave the reader breathless with excitement. The book suggests a six-part structure to use as blueprint for your scene, and reveals tricks how to combine fighting with dialogue, which senses to use when and how, and how to stir the reader's emotions. You'll decide how much violence your scene needs, what's the best location, how your heroine can get out of trouble with self-defence and how to adapt your writing style to the fast pace of the action. There are sections on female fighters, male fighters, animals and weres, psychological obstacles, battles, duels, brawls, riots and final showdowns. For the requirements of your genre, there is even advice on how to build erotic tension in a fight scene, how magicians fight, how pirates capture ships and much more. You will learn about different types of weapons, how to use them in fiction, and how to avoid embarrassing blunders. The book uses British spellings.

Practical Guide for Authors

This book teaches professional techniques for slowing down the pace for emotion and suspense, and for speeding it up for action and excitement Please note: this is an advanced-level book, not suitable for beginner writers.

Professional Techniques for Slow and Fast Pace Effects

Fiction Pacing

Do you want to give the readers such a vivid experience that they feel the events of the story are real and they're right there? Do you want them to forget their own world and worries, and live in the main character's head and heart? This book reveals professional techniques for achieving this step by step.

Writing Deep Point of View

Are your frightening scenes scary enough? Learn practical tricks to turn up the suspense. Make your readers' hearts hammer with suspense, their breaths quicken with excitement, and their skins tingle with goosebumps of delicious fright. This book contains practical suggestions how to structure a scary scene, increase the suspense, make the climax more terrifying, make the reader feel the character's fear. It includes techniques for manipulating the readers' subconscious and creating powerful emotional effects. Use this book to write a new scene, or to add tension and excitement to a draft. You will learn tricks of the trade for "black moment" and "climax" scenes, describing monsters and villains, writing harrowing captivity sections and breathtaking escapes, as well as how to make sure that your hero doesn't come across as a wimp... and much more. This book is recommended for writers of all genres, especially thriller, horror, paranormal romance and urban fantasy. British English.

Rayne Hall

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