Current work: Venice book
Listening to: Vivaldi
Reading: Jan Morris, Venice (aka research)
My mate and fellow M&B Maggie Kingsley is a Really Bad Influence. She sent me a link to this site where you can paste in the first few paragraphs of your book and see who you write like. She came out as Margaret Atwood (one of my faves), so I thought I’d see how I did.
French duo book 2 (Champagne with a Celebrity) came out as J D Salinger (cool). French duo book 1 (Red Wine and Her Sexy Ex) came out as William Gibson – not a name I knew, but the Sydney Morning Herald calls him ‘the “noir prophet" of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction’. Considering that my first ever novel (obviously unpublished and unfortunately thrown out more than 35 years ago – yup, I was indeed in single figures age-wise at the time) was SF, that’s quite nice.
OK. Let’s be really smug and see how the award-winning book did. Breakfast at Giovanni’s came out as… um… Dan Brown. (I’m taking that as meaning that I write popular fiction with lots of dialogue and a fast pace. Something that literary snobs really dislike. Yup, that’d be category romance, then. Brown isn’t my thing, but not through literary snobbery; his style isn’t to my taste because I like a tad more humour and a bit more introspection.)
The French duo both have more introspective beginnings than Gio. As does the Venetian book, which – draft version – comes out as Neil Gaiman. Oh, yesss! Fangirl squee here. I like Gaiman’s writing very much - and have been privileged to copyedit some of it. (I should add it was flawless and the only pen I needed to put on the page was to mark it up for the printer re typography – which I can’t say for many authors I’ve copyedited.) Am really looking forward to his Dr Who episode next year. (And if you want to know more about Neil Gaiman, he has a super essay on where he gets his ideas over on his website – I really enjoyed reading this. He comes across as a really nice bloke as well as a good writer.)
OK. So the site’s telling me I’m an SF writer manqué. Given the dreams I’ve been having this week, that’s probably not far off. What about my Medical Romances? Um… the Penhally book I've just had accepted came out as Arthur C. Clarke. (Are you seeing a pattern, here? Dear ed. How about I write some SF Medical romance? Oh, wait. We’ve already had the Regency Doctor conversation recently.)
My blog came out as James Joyce. (Hmm. So is it telling me that I ramble? I know I overuse parentheses and ellipses. Cough. Note to self, remember what annoys you about Joyce and stop doing it.)
Actually (whispers) I think I write like Kate Hardy…
Ha. It’s fun. And you know you want to do it. The link is http://iwl.me. Come back and tell me who you write like!
9 comments:
I got Ian Fleming - very cool. Must be my passion for blowing things up or setting them on fire.
Let's see.
I KNOW I write like Michelle Styles.
Apparently though I write like David Foster Wallace for my Roman Undone (never read or heard of him), Margaret Mitchell for the one I am currently revising , Margaret Atwood for Compromising Miss Milton (seriously do not see that!) and Charles Dickens for Breaking the Governess's Rules.
It is fun but it is also a link to the Thomas Nelson self publishing site -- you know they set up theirs just before Harlequin became involved. So in some ways I think it is a con.
Hi,
Oh lord this piece of software is doing the blogosphere at warp speed!
I trumped James Joyce & Virgina Woolf on two historical samples, and clocked Chuck whatshisname (he of Fight Club fame)& Joanna Trollope on two M/H samples.
But here's the rub! A software writing buddy says it's all a load of cyber twaddle. IT can only decipher binary code so it's not actually reading your writing it's reading code ie; letters, spaces. dots. length of sentence/paragraph and specifics!
How cute is that? Sort of GCHQ cute and "IT" is keyed to select specific coding ie; letters in sequence making specific words! Try it in foreign language!
best
F
Ohhh that was fun! Thanks for the link.
I came out as Mario Puzo for my Roman HM&B. Mario wrote the Godfather - so the links to Italy maybe?
For my blog site I came out (like Michelle) as David Foster Wallace (who I note committed suicide!)
For my short stories I came out as William Shakespeare (how cool is *that*). Have a good weekend. Caroline x
Amusing follow-up:
snatched some text from my blog translated it into German and trumped Edgar Allen Poe.
It's a load of piffle!!!!
;)
It's crazy, I put in en excerpt from 'Runanway Lady, Conquering Lord' and got Charles Dickens...Hmm!
Hi Kate,
you got me hooked!
My first book came out as William Gibson the cyberpunk man.
My second as Anne Rice and my blog as Dan Brown. Phew!
Don't believe a word of it!
Ernest Hemingway for me! It's great fun :)
Looks as if you enjoyed this as much as I did!
I know the coding and algorithms and what have you are bunkum (LOL on the translation, Francine - if you used Babelfish, that would be even funnier) but it was a bit of fun - kind of a Friday thing :o)
Michelle, I didn't realise it was linked to TN. Hmm.
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