A sacrifice for the greater good....

For any of you that have actually read 'Russian Redemption' you may understand when I say that my writing style is somewhat abrasive, it's a bit brutal - not the sort of style that suits children's story's or romance at all!.

The latest review posted (from one of Amazon's Top 500 Reviewers, by the way *smug grin) entitled
"A highly engrossing, though thoroughly disturbing tale" contains the following snippets:

"There are many scenes of very graphic torture, brutality, medical experiment and sexual depravity. Some of them made me physically sick."

And

"I finished the book a month ago, and had to read some escapism books to get this one out of my mind"

I'm not saying that it is a good thing to mentally scar a Top Reviewer, but at least I get points for leaving an impression! By the way, she still gave me 5 out of 5 stars. (full review available here)

My point is that most people that know me would consider me 'emotionally challenged' - it sounds better than 'Emotionally retarded' as I was accused of being last week. I'm really not an emotional person.

'Russian Redemption 2' - or whatever it gets called - has a lot more 'female' interaction than RR1 so the challenge was to soften my writing style in order to better represent the fairer sex - a little more emotion, a little less blood and guts.

This was a huge challenge for me. One that involved opening that Pandora's box where I'd buried emotions (and few other things) many many years ago.

I think this is what is meant by facing your demons. Anyhow, with the usual head down and charge mentality that I am better known for I launched myself into the 'box'. What came out was a short story of just under 10,000 words written in less than a day, a 'romantic tragedy'. The purpose? To get back in touch with a time when I was a different person, where I was young enough to act on emotions, but too young to control them.

Sufficed to say I found it a very uncomfortable experience but I believe I achieved what I set out to do. As I go back to RR2's manuscript I am able to rewrite certain parts better, softer without being 'soft' as neither of the prominent female characters could be deemed as 'soft'.

I suppose the 'learns' out of this will be around always being able to look at your own work critically, and be prepared to improve, no matter what the cost.

I'll probably be releasing the story as an e-book at some point, but it will be under a pen name!