Caroline Alcock

Mary Dowland is the most ordinary protagonist of any of my books, hence the absence of the word 'psychic' in the title.

However, like all my books, this one came straight from my subconscious. All I had to do was put the flow of images into words.

Notably lacking are violence and sex. The narrative is a mystery with a paranormal twist.

As with previous novels, much of the material is autobiographical, drawn from my own experiences. What might appear as anachronisms, inconsistencies, or errors are no more than lapses of memory.… (more)

I'm Caroline Alcock, the author of Psychic Awakening.

I'll refrain from reviewing my own book. Instead I'll give a brief summary of how Psychic Awakening came to be written.

I'm not conscious of having written Psychic Awakening. I can remember typing away, hour after hour, day after day, but it was nothing like the process for writing non-fiction books, something I've been doing for many years under another name. There was no seminal idea, no framework or outline, no character sketches, and no background research to speak of.

I was convinced that I was incapable of writing a book of fiction. Assured by another author that it was as simple as sitting down in front of a word processor, that's exactly what I did. I sat down, closed my eyes, and waited. The figure of a tall, red-headed woman appeared, standing in a kitchen sipping herbal tea. I began to type.

The figure moved, and I tried keeping up with her. I had no idea she was a psychic. I had no idea who was going to come through her door. The story unwound slowly and steadily while I did my best to stay out of the way and not ask questions.

The process of writing was painless, which sounds infinitely better than delightful, which would be a much more accurate description.

So much did I enjoy recording the adventures of red-haired psychic Megan O'Reilly that I got completely carried away. Like an after-dinner speaker who rambles on and on, unaware that the guests are scrambling for the exits, I wrote and wrote until I realised my word count was over 200,000, enough for two books.

I apologised to Megan and the other characters, drew a firm but arbitrary line, and spent the next few months in the biggest editing project of my life: getting rid of 50,000 words. This is where delight changed to pain, as I had to say goodbye to several characters and several sub-plots.

For my first publisher, I chose Leanpub, a company that not only allows but encourages constant editing and rewriting, recognising that books are living things.

If I were in woo-woo mode (rare but not unknown) I'd say that this book was channeled. Someone else wrote it, a composite entity drawn from several characters in the book. This feeling of disassociation is one of the reasons I decided to use a pseudonym for this and subsequent books such as Psychic Dawn.… (more)

I published this, my second work of fiction, through a company called Leanpub, based in Vancouver, BC. One of the things that attracted me to this company is its lack of strings. I'll leave the details to the Leanpub website. Another attraction was the option of publishing unfinished books. The company's slogan is 'publish early, publish often'. In other words, get your books into the marketplace as soon as possible, then update them with reader feedback.

I wasn't sure how this system worked in practice. Most of the Leanpub catalogue seems to be software manuals, for which the early publication system seems well suited. But for fiction?

This uncertainty was the main reason I waited until my first book, Psychic Awakening, was finished before I hit the Publish button.

Since then I've gone back and rewritten chunks of Psychic Awakening time and again, ever thankful for the flexibility of the system. Readers (buyers who can choose how much or how little they pay for the book) can be notified of changes and can download updates for free.

Another reason that I launched Psychic Dawn before it was finished was personal. When I finished Psychic Awakening I was convinced that my next book would be a continuation of the story, Volume 2 in a series. For reasons unclear to me, my inner muse decided to pick up an old and unfinished fragment of a different story and bring it to completion. That fragment was so vague that it had two or three alternative endings. When I committed myself to publishing Psychic Dawn it still had two endings, with one beginning to edge out the other. Hence the decision to go ahead.

As an author of non-fiction books, my attempts at fiction are both an experiment and an indulgence. I enjoyed writing them. I hope readers enjoy reading them.… (more)