Philip’s Comments (group member since Mar 23, 2015)

Philip’s comments from the Bisky's Twitterling's Scribbles! group.

A good tale, well told, that is what I look for in any work of fiction, including fantasy novels. An author who writes with authority, skill and an original voice, I look for. In 1968, when I was sixteen, I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien for the first time. They remain my favourite works of fantasy fiction. They are good tales, well told, written with authority, skill and an original voice. At the time I looked in vain for books that were like them. I enjoyed reading Titus Groan, Gormenghast and Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake, but there were few other fantasy books to read. When I go into a bookshop now, there are shelves of books in the Fantasy section. It amuses me to know that many of those books exist because of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I have tried to read some of them, but they do not read like authentic, genuinely inspired works. The Harry Potter books and His Dark Materials are genuine, original works. They exist because their authors felt compelled to write them, and they wrote them in their own unique voice and style.

Smaug, the dragon in The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, is my favourite fictional dragon. He was inspired by the dragon in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem, Beowulf. The description of the dragon in Beowulf is wonderful. Smaug manages to be comic and dangerous, even terrifying, at the same time. Another dragon I like is Chrysophylax Dives from Farmer Giles of Ham by J.R.R. Tolkien. A cowardly dragon in a light-hearted, comic mock-Medieval tale, I remember him with a smile.

My new book, Still the Dawn: Poems and Ballads, is now available as a Goodreads Giveaway. The Giveaway began on Saturday, 5th, December, 2015 and ends on Saturday, 2nd, January, 2016. It is open to members of Goodreads who live in the United Kingdom, United States, Armenia, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

When I truly considered what it meant that publishers and literary agents are only interested in books that will sell not just hundreds, but thousands of copies, I decided to self publish my books. Waiting for up to six months for the expected rejection letter from a literary agent did not appeal to me, either. I published my first book, Angel War, through a Print On Demand company, called Fast Print Publishing, in April, 2013, and I was very happy with their services. Even my local bookseller was impressed by the way my book had been produced. It was as good as a book published by a traditional publisher, he told me. My second book, Klubbe the Turkle and the Golden Star Coracle, I have self published through Publish Nation, and it will be available soon. I think Print on Demand is a very sensible way of producing paperbacks. When a copy is ordered, it is produced and posted to the customer. Self publishing is making a lot of people happy, including me. It means freedom from rejection from traditional publishers, and the chance to share with others what you have written. I am very pleased with the reviews my first book, Angel War, has got on Goodreads and Amazon. Now I am involved in promoting my second book, Klubbe the Turkle and the Golden Star Coracle, on the Internet. Time is too precious to wait for up to six months for a rejection letter from a literary agent or a traditional publisher. I will never experience that again. I feel very happy as a self published author.

My new book, Klubbe the Turkle and the Golden Star Coracle, will be available soon as a paperback and as an E-book on Amazon and Lulu. Four paperback copies of my book can be won by members in Great Britain, U.S.A. and Canada in a Goodreads Giveaway, which began on Saturday, 21st, March, 2015 and ends on Tuesday, 21st, April, 2015. Details of the Giveaway can be found on my Author Profile Page: http://www.goodreads.com/PHILIPDODD

My new book, Klubbe the Turkle and the Golden Star Coracle, will soon be published by Publish Nation. It was inspired by a tiny toy model of a turtle, made to fit on the end of a pencil, which I found on the floor in a house of bedsits I once lived in. The toy turtle looked unusual to me, as it stood on its hind legs. So I decided it was not a turtle, but a being that only looked like one. As it did look like a turtle, I changed the second t for k to get turkle. I then decided that this particular turkle was called Klubbe, and he lived with his fellow turkles on a planet called Ankor. I wrote the first version of my story in 1995. Basically, it is the biography of an inventor and explorer called Klubbe, a name that rhymes with two words, cube and tube. I decided that there would be no baddies in my story, as turkles would not stand a chance against them, no tension, no battle between good and evil, light and darkness. I finished the final version of my story in January, 2015. A light-hearted science fiction story, I call it. Readers of science fiction who may like a rest from the high seriousness and complexities of modern science fiction may find pleasure in reading the biography of Klubbe, to learn about his inventions, explorations, friends and family.