William Knight on 12 Ways in Which Writing is Like #BreakingBad @_William_Knight #WriteTip #AmWriting

Breaking Bad is more than a TV show about a teacher turned rotten, it's a metaphor for the dual personality of the struggling writer. Behold, with a tongue firmly in a cheek, here are a dozen – more or less – reasons why writers are secret repeat offenders in the vein of Walt:

1. It's criminal. Let's face it, writing is so self-indulgent anybody taking part should be arrested and thrown in a dark pit for eternity.
2. You want your customers to be addicts. Your intention is to pound out such a perfect product  that people cannot get enough and keep coming back to buy more. You think one book a year is probably enough, but you'd like to supply more if only you didn't have to make money.
3. You have a secret identity. Like Heisenberg, you have a fake online persona so that readers can't trace the real you. You cultivate this persona to mythical proportions, inventing attitudes and ideas you use in author interviews and at book launches. Sometimes you don't know the persona from the real you because you are so creative.
4. You keep secrets. There are things you think and do that you can't tell your closest friends and family (this is particularly true if you write thrillers or – obviously – erotica.) Your partner is in denial otherwise they would have to leave you.
5. You are hunted: You secretly think everybody is trying to steal from you. You are obsessed with finding your product for download on Pirate Bay or for sale under another name and cover. What if your work is stolen but international digital marketers?
6. No matter how successful you are, the money just slips through your fingers. Bad marketing schemes and poor judgement for suppliers are just a few of the pitfalls you have in common with Walt. All this means any money you do make from writer is gobbled up attempts to make even more.
7. You could murder people who say bad things about you or your product. All reviewers are entitled to their opinion of course, but some are simply wrong and deserve an acid bath.
8. You have an unfailing belief your product is by far the best on the market.
9. An idea you once had has made some other person a millionaire while you slave away in a day job. You'd like to get even.
10. You have a day job that you keep to avoid the suspicion you are really a writer.
11. You wear a stupid hat.
12. You don't try your own product except to check the quality.

A man emerges from the sodden undergrowth, lost, lonely and starving he is mown down by a speeding car on the edge of a remote forest.

Rumours of ghostly apparitions haunt a rural Northumberland community.

A renowned forensic research establishment is troubled by impossible results and unprecedented interference from an influential drug company.

Hendrix 'Aitch' Harrison is a tech-phobic journalist who must link these events together.

Normally side-lined to investigate UFOs and big-beast myths, but thrust into world of cynical corporate motivations, Hendrix is aided by a determined and ambitious entomologist. Together they delve into a grisly world of clinical trials and a viral treatment beyond imagining.

In a chase of escalating dangers, Aitch must battle more than his fear of technology to expose the macabre fate of the drugged victims donated to scientific research.

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Genre – Crime, Thriller, Horror

Rating – R-16

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Website http://www.williamknight.info