How are you doing today, you guys? Let that be the first thing you tell me in the comments below!

So this is what I have in store for you today: what I learned from my experience as a first-time author. My debut book was called Philippa. It was a period drama and heavily family-centric, geared toward an all-inclusive audience, published in 2013. It’s been five years since, but I still remember it like it was yesterday. Additional details, summary, blurb, and the cover of my book can be found on my website’s book page here. It’s a quick read; you can head on there and come back to continue with this post in less than 30 seconds. I won’t use up all this space to just repeat all that minutiae again here. Instead, I’m going to utilize it to tell you the things you came here for…

© S.J. Carver

Originally published as ‘1888’ in VETO III (2009).

This is another relatively old piece that kicked around quite a while before someone published it, supposedly because of the colourful language. (I remember one editor telling me it was her policy never to publish anything she wouldn’t want her grandmother to read.) I’m pretty sure it was originally written sometime in 1999. It’s interesting to me as an ancestor of Shark Alley, because it was my first attempt at writing a ‘Victorian’ scene, while you can also already see the preoccupation with nested narration and ghoulish storytelling, the profession of Jack Vincent, the ‘Death Hunter’ hero of the novel.

The nights were drawing in now, and dead leaves were mingling with the shit and the sludge on the streets. The year drew towards a merciful end, marred only by the certain knowledge that 1889 would just be…

This week I am going to be focusing on Articles of speech.

What is an Article? Or a Article?

Well, All the following are articles: the, a, an.

Articles are words that define nouns. What does it mean to define a noun?

Take the following sentences:

At the park, I kicked the football

At a park, I kicked a football.

The use of the and a here give specificity to the situation. ‘The park’ is a specific park whereas

‘a park’ is any park.

There are technical terms for the differences in the two types of article. Definite and Indefinite.

The is the definite article as it makes the noun specific, and yep, you guessed it, a and an are indefinite articles.

‘Which indefinite article do I use? I hear you ask’.

Well, there is a general rule for this, and yes there are exceptions. The rule…

Writing is not an easy endeavor. It requires practicing a skill in order to hone the ability. The key to mastering any art is not to give up! Our brains are in a constant state of learning and gaining experience. It takes time.