Time to be honest, cos God hates a coward, right? OK. My publishing career has not been a success.
I'm of a generation which doesn't have an instinctive grasp of the internet. I didn't grow up with it. When I were a lad (thanks Monty Python) the cutting edge of the home PC was the ZX Spectrum, or the Commodore 64. Games came on cassette tapes which screeched for ages and then crashed, so you had to load them again. I was very good at playing Froggit but I'm not great online today.
The result is that I don't know how to market. I miss changes in how indie writing works, the changes come too fast and too quietly. It's like trying to nail smoke to a wall. As soon as I get hold of an idea (which is unusual) it morphs into something else. I think I have a good product. certainly the reviews of my work, few as they are, have been very good. But I haven't been able to translate that into a significant number of sales.
I'm going to try something different.
I'm going to publish chapter by chapter, through an author website. Readers can pay 50 cents, or 10, whatever they want, depending on how much they enjoyed the chapter. Some of that will go to my marketing guru, Josh, who used to run a company doing exactly this. He'll organise the whole commercial side of things, leaving me to write like a bastard.
This means I can rapid release, which is a key facet of indie publishing these days. But I won't have to produce a novel every four or five weeks, as some writers do. I can't help thinking, however talented they are, that such speed must reduce the quality of their work. (See my blog post "You'd have to be Hemingway".) Doing it chapter by chapter gets around the problem. I can release say two chapters a week, working out at a novel every five months or so, and then have a four week break for advertising before the next one makes its debut. Or three chapters a week, if I prefer; it's all good. See what works best.
I like this idea. Josh knows his onions and I know mine. It's very much worth a try.
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
Wednesday, 6 February 2019
Monday, 10 December 2018
Cards in the Dark
Last time I talked about how not having time to actually write has meant lots of new ideas shooting about in my head. And guess what? Got another one.
This time I have a chap named Trist, who left his home city years ago and has since travelled around becoming an expert swordsman and do-gooder. His companion is a phoenix called Feng, who insists he uses minimum force and always tries to do the right thing. He's in the middle of dealing with a drug dealer when his ring glows, which means his old girlfriend is in trouble and he has to keep a promise to go home and help her.
I started writing it! Yes, I've snatched time on my breaks at work, a few minutes when I get home, anything to get words on the page. I'm fed up of not writing, and this idea has caught me the way few do. So I'm suddenly writing longhand, which I haven't done for decades. So far I've got one chapter done and am starting on the second. It's quite weird, because the tone is sort of half noir and half tongue in cheek, which is new for me.
It's also weird because I can't recall ever reading a noir book, so I'm sorta playing cards in the dark here. I'm getting The Big Sleep for Christmas. That should get me in the right place, quite apart from being a bloody good read.
There are interesting themes, too. Homecoming is one of them, parents another. In the book all phoenixes are female and they're born pregnant, though can choose when to let the eggs develop. Of course they immolate themselves to hatch the eggs, so no phoenix ever knows its mother. Trist had a tough childhood and at one point Feng says she sometimes envies humans their parents... and sometimes doesn't.
Writing is fun. I'm so glad to be back.
This time I have a chap named Trist, who left his home city years ago and has since travelled around becoming an expert swordsman and do-gooder. His companion is a phoenix called Feng, who insists he uses minimum force and always tries to do the right thing. He's in the middle of dealing with a drug dealer when his ring glows, which means his old girlfriend is in trouble and he has to keep a promise to go home and help her.
I started writing it! Yes, I've snatched time on my breaks at work, a few minutes when I get home, anything to get words on the page. I'm fed up of not writing, and this idea has caught me the way few do. So I'm suddenly writing longhand, which I haven't done for decades. So far I've got one chapter done and am starting on the second. It's quite weird, because the tone is sort of half noir and half tongue in cheek, which is new for me.
It's also weird because I can't recall ever reading a noir book, so I'm sorta playing cards in the dark here. I'm getting The Big Sleep for Christmas. That should get me in the right place, quite apart from being a bloody good read.
There are interesting themes, too. Homecoming is one of them, parents another. In the book all phoenixes are female and they're born pregnant, though can choose when to let the eggs develop. Of course they immolate themselves to hatch the eggs, so no phoenix ever knows its mother. Trist had a tough childhood and at one point Feng says she sometimes envies humans their parents... and sometimes doesn't.
Writing is fun. I'm so glad to be back.
Wednesday, 27 June 2018
Memory and Myth
I don't have time to write at the moment. It's the first time that's happened to me in my life, and I don't like it.
There's just no way around it. Caz, my wife, works early mornings, and I work late afternoons until midnight. We have one shared day off a week to do all the laundry, clean the house and so on. The rest of the time I'm either looking after the kids, at work, or trying like hell to get enough sleep to last through the next day. There's simply no time to write. Nothing. I could do five minutes here and there, but that's not enough to keep my head in the story. I'm hemmed in and can't find a way out.
I can't write, but I can still think, and read, and I can still research.
Currently I'm going through Hamlet's Mill, an essay on the importance of numbers in ancient myth. The thesis is that myths were stores for information, particularly on the stars. So if myths from Iran, Finland and Mexico all have a hero who rises to heaven without dying, and in all three cases makes his last journey with six companions and a dog, then there must be meaning behind it. For me, the most interesting thing is that the myths must all derive from a common source - an ancient culture that spanned the world. Or a group of such cultures, or maybe just survivors from civilisations that fell. We don't know the details, but there must have been someone watching the stars back then, during the last Ice Age maybe, ten thousand years before the first pharaohs.
Whoever it was measured the movement of stars so accurately that they knew the Earth wobbles on its axis over a 26,000 year cycle. Impressive, eh? But they didn't mine coal, or gold, because we'd have found their pits if they did. They weren't industrial. Their culture was built on different values to ours. Maybe they thought in different ways. They may be as alien to us as dinosaurs.
Isn't that interesting? My wife watches Black-ish, a show that makes it pretty clear that for all the progress society thinks it's made on civil and race rights, for black people the same issues still remain. As a white European man I can't really understand their experiences. So how am I supposed to comprehend a culture lost so long ago that the only relics we have are myths?
Well, I can't do that, either. I can incorporate some of this into my work, whenever I can start working again. Meantime, this ancient culture seems to have flourished without writing anything down. They used memory and myth to record the things they thought were important. They kept every word in their minds, and still created tales that have lasted for thousands of years.
In these days when I have so little time, that's an encouraging thought.
There's just no way around it. Caz, my wife, works early mornings, and I work late afternoons until midnight. We have one shared day off a week to do all the laundry, clean the house and so on. The rest of the time I'm either looking after the kids, at work, or trying like hell to get enough sleep to last through the next day. There's simply no time to write. Nothing. I could do five minutes here and there, but that's not enough to keep my head in the story. I'm hemmed in and can't find a way out.
I can't write, but I can still think, and read, and I can still research.
Currently I'm going through Hamlet's Mill, an essay on the importance of numbers in ancient myth. The thesis is that myths were stores for information, particularly on the stars. So if myths from Iran, Finland and Mexico all have a hero who rises to heaven without dying, and in all three cases makes his last journey with six companions and a dog, then there must be meaning behind it. For me, the most interesting thing is that the myths must all derive from a common source - an ancient culture that spanned the world. Or a group of such cultures, or maybe just survivors from civilisations that fell. We don't know the details, but there must have been someone watching the stars back then, during the last Ice Age maybe, ten thousand years before the first pharaohs.
Whoever it was measured the movement of stars so accurately that they knew the Earth wobbles on its axis over a 26,000 year cycle. Impressive, eh? But they didn't mine coal, or gold, because we'd have found their pits if they did. They weren't industrial. Their culture was built on different values to ours. Maybe they thought in different ways. They may be as alien to us as dinosaurs.
Isn't that interesting? My wife watches Black-ish, a show that makes it pretty clear that for all the progress society thinks it's made on civil and race rights, for black people the same issues still remain. As a white European man I can't really understand their experiences. So how am I supposed to comprehend a culture lost so long ago that the only relics we have are myths?
Well, I can't do that, either. I can incorporate some of this into my work, whenever I can start working again. Meantime, this ancient culture seems to have flourished without writing anything down. They used memory and myth to record the things they thought were important. They kept every word in their minds, and still created tales that have lasted for thousands of years.
In these days when I have so little time, that's an encouraging thought.
Friday, 6 April 2018
Cursed Earworms
I just finished watching Altered Carbon on Netflix, and the first thing to say is - watch it. And Netflix, make another series, please. It's graphic and sometimes brutal, but also brilliant. It reminds me a bit of the Blade Runner films, and there's no higher praise.
The key, as always, is the writing. There were surprises all along, in every episode. In this future world consciousness can be kept in a Stack, an electronic box at the back of the neck, and it's from this that all else flows. The whole society is shaped by what that one idea leads to. I don't want to throw out spoilers, so I'll limit myself to saying that life is cheap for most while the wealthy have achieved immortality. All very topical, eh?
Isaac Asimov once said that when he read a particularly good book he'd get frustrated, and throw it across the room because he hadn't thought of it himself. (He said the same about a bad book, which he threw in disgust. Writers are a funny bunch.) I feel like that about Altered Carbon. It's the best SF series I've ever seen on TV, and there has to be another run. But then, I thought that about Defying Gravity, and that was never renewed. So don't let me down again, and as Homer Simpson said, let me bask in television's warm glowing warming glow.
Speaking of good writing, Netflix has also done a show called The Good Place. I watched both series of that and they were fabulous, funny and creative all along. As different from Altered Carbon as you can imagine, but very nearly as good. Watch that too, if you can. I don't often watch TV as a habit, though these days I seem to see an awful lot of kids shows, and find myself humming the Mister Tumble songs, which are the most cursed earworms ever. But I do watch Netflix some of the time. Some of their shows are original, clever, and well written. By comparison the shows on the BBC or ITV seem pretty tired.
I keep seeing adverts on Facebook urging me to submit writing to Netflix, Amazon et al. They're making a lot of new programming and they need scripts. Could I convert one of my novels to a TV show? It's a tempting thought. I've never written a script before, but as I always say, God hates a coward.
Pip pip.
The key, as always, is the writing. There were surprises all along, in every episode. In this future world consciousness can be kept in a Stack, an electronic box at the back of the neck, and it's from this that all else flows. The whole society is shaped by what that one idea leads to. I don't want to throw out spoilers, so I'll limit myself to saying that life is cheap for most while the wealthy have achieved immortality. All very topical, eh?
Isaac Asimov once said that when he read a particularly good book he'd get frustrated, and throw it across the room because he hadn't thought of it himself. (He said the same about a bad book, which he threw in disgust. Writers are a funny bunch.) I feel like that about Altered Carbon. It's the best SF series I've ever seen on TV, and there has to be another run. But then, I thought that about Defying Gravity, and that was never renewed. So don't let me down again, and as Homer Simpson said, let me bask in television's warm glowing warming glow.
Speaking of good writing, Netflix has also done a show called The Good Place. I watched both series of that and they were fabulous, funny and creative all along. As different from Altered Carbon as you can imagine, but very nearly as good. Watch that too, if you can. I don't often watch TV as a habit, though these days I seem to see an awful lot of kids shows, and find myself humming the Mister Tumble songs, which are the most cursed earworms ever. But I do watch Netflix some of the time. Some of their shows are original, clever, and well written. By comparison the shows on the BBC or ITV seem pretty tired.
I keep seeing adverts on Facebook urging me to submit writing to Netflix, Amazon et al. They're making a lot of new programming and they need scripts. Could I convert one of my novels to a TV show? It's a tempting thought. I've never written a script before, but as I always say, God hates a coward.
Pip pip.
Sunday, 16 July 2017
In Times of Trouble
A bit of personal news first. Caz and my second daughter was born last Sunday, July 9th, and we've named her Evelyn. A pretty annoying mistake by the midwife meant she was back in hospital on Thursday with jaundice, but she's home now and much better. And I, being who I am, dealt with all this by writing.
Well, editing and proofreading, really. A bit of original stuff, but not much. It comes to the same thing though. I was at the PC, immersing myself in the worlds and characters of my stories; in other words, writing.
That's what I do in times of trouble. Sometimes I think I write to escape the mundane world we live in, which is so often bitter and sour, or plain scary. It's a way to shout that no, that's wrong, this is how things ought to be. A lot of it comes down, I think, to people wanting to live as they choose. Alar in Risen King, Calesh in Songs of Sorrow, and almost any of the Ashir in Black Lord of Eagles, are all like that. For them it's about freedom. For me, it's about a need to write my issues out in novels (or blogs, hehe). A book can sometimes be a rooftop we can stand on to yell out a message.
So I get irate when people say "I could write a book, if I had the time."
You do have the time. Even if you have to make it by giving something else up. That's your choice. You have the opportunity, I'm sure you have the talent because most people do. But you obviously don't have the dedication, or the endurance, because if you did you would already have written your book. I might as well say I could be world darts champion, if I had time to practise. Well, I do. I'd have to give up everything else I do, that's all, and I choose not to. Just as these people have chosen not to write.
Hell, I have two daughters under 18 months old, who need games to play, time to cuddle with Daddy, and putting to bed when play is over. They need feeding almost constantly, and produce more laundry each day than I do in a week. I've got a job to keep and a wife who needs to see me now and then. And I still write. Don't tell me you could write if you had time.
Writers aren't people who write. Usually they're people who have to write, whose palms itch when they don't. Like mine do.
Well, editing and proofreading, really. A bit of original stuff, but not much. It comes to the same thing though. I was at the PC, immersing myself in the worlds and characters of my stories; in other words, writing.
That's what I do in times of trouble. Sometimes I think I write to escape the mundane world we live in, which is so often bitter and sour, or plain scary. It's a way to shout that no, that's wrong, this is how things ought to be. A lot of it comes down, I think, to people wanting to live as they choose. Alar in Risen King, Calesh in Songs of Sorrow, and almost any of the Ashir in Black Lord of Eagles, are all like that. For them it's about freedom. For me, it's about a need to write my issues out in novels (or blogs, hehe). A book can sometimes be a rooftop we can stand on to yell out a message.
So I get irate when people say "I could write a book, if I had the time."
You do have the time. Even if you have to make it by giving something else up. That's your choice. You have the opportunity, I'm sure you have the talent because most people do. But you obviously don't have the dedication, or the endurance, because if you did you would already have written your book. I might as well say I could be world darts champion, if I had time to practise. Well, I do. I'd have to give up everything else I do, that's all, and I choose not to. Just as these people have chosen not to write.
Hell, I have two daughters under 18 months old, who need games to play, time to cuddle with Daddy, and putting to bed when play is over. They need feeding almost constantly, and produce more laundry each day than I do in a week. I've got a job to keep and a wife who needs to see me now and then. And I still write. Don't tell me you could write if you had time.
Writers aren't people who write. Usually they're people who have to write, whose palms itch when they don't. Like mine do.
Monday, 17 October 2016
Twitchy Fingers
I hardly ever have time to write these days. It's the first time that's ever happened to me, and it feels weird. I swear my typing fingers twitch in my sleep. Come to that, they twitch when I'm awake, now and then.
The worst part is that my mind is still involved. I come up with story ideas, ways to rewrite a chapter or novel, intriguing little characters, and all the rest. I still watch a stranger doing this or that and think "Nice, I can use that in the book that's seventh on my To Do list." And then I can't find time to sit and write. I have all these thoughts and can't write them out of me. It's enough to make my head explode.
Last week I was off work on annual leave. Time to write! All my family promptly went down with flu so hideous we were vomiting, and poor Bella ended up in hospital til midnight, being drip-fed nutrients through a syringe. So, no time to write. At all.
Bella's fine, by the way. As long as that's true I'll cope with not writing... sorta.
But I've got to write, at least some of the time. I feel like a fish that isn't allowed to swim; what's the point of being a fish at all, if that's true? Something needs to change. A new job with different hours, maybe, to free up more time. But you know, I'm starting to suspect that when you have an 8-month old daughter, you just don't have time for anything else.
I am finding this hard,
The worst part is that my mind is still involved. I come up with story ideas, ways to rewrite a chapter or novel, intriguing little characters, and all the rest. I still watch a stranger doing this or that and think "Nice, I can use that in the book that's seventh on my To Do list." And then I can't find time to sit and write. I have all these thoughts and can't write them out of me. It's enough to make my head explode.
Last week I was off work on annual leave. Time to write! All my family promptly went down with flu so hideous we were vomiting, and poor Bella ended up in hospital til midnight, being drip-fed nutrients through a syringe. So, no time to write. At all.
Bella's fine, by the way. As long as that's true I'll cope with not writing... sorta.
But I've got to write, at least some of the time. I feel like a fish that isn't allowed to swim; what's the point of being a fish at all, if that's true? Something needs to change. A new job with different hours, maybe, to free up more time. But you know, I'm starting to suspect that when you have an 8-month old daughter, you just don't have time for anything else.
I am finding this hard,
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