In Dreams Awake

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

(Henry David Thoreau)

Friday 31 August 2018

Onwards and Upwards

 Self-publishing has changed.

 When I published my first book, back in 2013, people mostly put their books out and talked about them a lot - blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and so on. The aim was to try to create awareness. To some extent it worked, and I sold a couple of hundred copies. I thought that was OK for a debut. Onwards and upwards, things will build from there.

 They haven't - in fact, my sales have fallen away. My latest book, Fanged Fish, is the worst seller I've had so far. That's because online self-publishing is different now. It's not enough to talk a lot on social media, you have to advertise on Facebook and Amazon, buy slots on book promotion sites like Bookbub (good luck with that), and generally spend money. Ironically, I could have done that easily in 2013, but now I've got kids I don't have the money to spare.

 So what to do? I've used GoFundMe and similar sites before, to not much benefit. No help there. My family is a) fractured and b) poor, so that's another dry well. It's frustrating. I've learned a lot about publishing, and improved my writing too I think, and I can't make any serious impact because I don't have money to spend.

 I begin to think that online self-publishing has become as hard to break into as traditional publishing, only the gatekeepers are advertising companies instead of editors.

 To add to the problems, I can't write a novel in a month, as many online authors seem to do. They bang out a book every two or three months - sometimes even less. That seems to work for them, especially in YA. But my work takes too much research, an I want to rewrite and edit too many times, so it doesn't work for me.

 I need to think about what I'm doing, and how to make it productive, because right now I'm not sure I know.

Friday 17 August 2018

Make the Light Last

 A question lots of people seem to want an answer to is, "What makes a great book?"

 Well, it has to fascinate the reader, draw him in, so he reads pages without noticing the clock ticking away. He has to finish the book and wish there was more, while also feeling fulfilled by the end of the story arc. There are lots of things, and they're different for each of us, aren't they? One man's meat is another man's poison. I know many people loved "The da Vinci Code", but I thought it was dull and predictable.

 So the question is meaningless, really. But it can have relevance for an individual.

 Myself, I like "The Lions of al-Rassan", by Guy Gavriel Kay. It's a story set against hatred and coming war, but deals with people who find friendship and love across those dividing lines. It's simultaneously filled with hope and terrible sadness, a grief I felt physically when I re-read the book (for the fifth or sixth time) last week. Kay's novel "Tigana" is excellent too, but not as layered, I think.

 Sheri S Tepper has produced several books that I go back to again and again. "Grass" and "Sideshow" are two of them. The one I iike best though is "The Awakeners", which is about a world of humans and a flying species called the Thraish, living in an uneasy peace after a war long ago. Neither side likes the peace and some people are working to end it, on both sides. There are monstrous secrets, too; the novel is largely a shouted warning against religious extremism. Again it's sad and hopeful at the same time, but here the hope is stronger.

 "It", by Stephen King, is the most brilliant evocation of childhood I've ever read. The recent film is very good, but the book is a hundred times better, full of the aches and uncertainties of the time just before puberty. I've read it ten times or more and it still has the power to unsettle. When we're speaking of great books, isn't that key? The ability to cause an emotional reaction years after it was first read is priceless. Wish I had a tenth of that ability.

This isn't an exhaustive list, but three is enough for now. The books are different but share some themes, notably sadness and joy running side by side. In all of them people have to learn how to make the light last through their dark times. It's a struggle I've had in the past, which is probably why I react to these novels the way I do. Like I said, it's different for each of us, isn't it?

 Writing changes lives. It changes you and me, and it can change a whole culture, on occasion. Or create one, as Tolkien did. Me, I'm just telling stories, and that's enough.

 Pip pip.

Thursday 2 August 2018

Wired in our Bones

 In Britain, the Labour Party is currently tearing itself apart over anti-Semitism within the Party. The British Council of Jews has recommended that none of its members vote Labour. Meanwhile in Italy, the government has announced that it wants to make a census of the Roma in the country - a first step, often, towards persecution.

 It doesn't take much to reawaken hate, does it? A few years of hardship, a bit of struggle, and people start looking for someone to blame. And it's always the outsider they pick on. Jews, Roma, the Huguenots, whoever's convenient. Right now the EU is beginning to fragment and Britain is leaving it, which has brought controversy and pressure to them both. The reaction, among a shameful few, is racist.

 My wife had to tell me that Meghan Markle is mixed race. She also told me that one main character in the children's series "Go Jetters" is black. I honestly didn't notice. Probably this means I'm just not bothered enough about other people to pay attention (my wife's words again, hehe). It certainly means I'm not bothered enough about colour to notice. And how can you tell, by looking, if someone is Jewish? Or Muslim? Or Catholic?

 A few hundred years ago, people almost never left their home villages. The town twenty miles away might as well be on the Moon. Then, people distrusted anyone they didn't know, anyone from Away. They were racist towards folk just like themselves. Sometimes it seems that hate is wired in our bones. Wherever we are, in any society, we'll find someone to look down on, sneer at, belittle and besmirch.

 I try to portray a measure of reality in my worlds. I'll have a character scarred by polio, or someone stunted by a childhood with too little food. I'll even have racism. But I don't think I can plumb the depths of hate I see around me. Anti-Semitism, expel the Roma, Trump's dangerous demeaning of the Latino population. And yet I have to try, because that's a writer's job. I have to show enough of this horror to be realistic, and honest, but not enough to repel the reader.

 So I've found something about writing I don't like. Apologies for the bleakness of this post. Sometimes we need to face up to the ugliness though, because otherwise the ugliness wins.

 Take care.