The Author's View (May 2024)
Hello and thanks for dropping by! So another month has come and gone - my how times flies when you are having fun!
As usual in this blog I will be giving you guys a quick update on the progress with my current writing projects. I will also include a quick review of one of the books I read during the month before I will witter on a little about scammers in the literary world - I know - shock/horror there are people willing to scam you in any walk of life!
The White Haired Storyteller
The Dark Harvest
By now my regular readers will know all about my self-published adult contemporary thriller. For new readers please check my page on 'Buy My Book' for more information.
I am now entering the 5th month since the launch of my debut novel and it's fair to say that sales have slowed somewhat (none in the last two weeks). One of the major difficulties that face any indie author who self-publishes a book is getting it out there into the world. Marketing is a specialist skill and it's hard work. We have to compete with thousands of other works by better known authors and celebrities. We are constantly vying for attention on the myriad of social media platforms. We scream into the tumbleweed void when all we really want to do is write. A solitary storyteller lost in a world of their own making is one end of the spectrum away from the marketing guru we need to be in order to fund our existence.
But, we keep going, we keep throwing ourselves to the lions, we raise our clenched fist to some fabled god of opportunities, we simply have no choice, our story needs to be told!
The Keyholders Apprentice
Following the recent rewrite I have completed a final edit. It's now a tight 87k word comic fantasy adventure. As I have several other stories ideas that follow this particular story I have decided to pursue the traditional publishing route. The first step down this long and winding road is to get myself an agent. This is easier said than done. I have spent in excess of 20 hours researching literary agents that are open to submissions in my genre. I have looked into what makes a good query letter and how to write a synopsis and book blurb (the bit you get on the book sleeve that tells you about the story).
The main lesson I have learned is that there is no magic formula. Having a great story, well written is not a guarantee of success.
- Agents are busy people, they may not have time.
- Agents are also human beings (mostly!) and have differing tastes, art is after all subjective.
- They are business people, they are not a charity, they have to believe that your work is commercial.
Looking at some of the associated statistics makes for sober reading particularly for someone who has not been traditional published before. Less than 1% of manuscripts pitched to agents get a positive feedback. Even then success is not guaranteed. But...let's not focus on the negative...I am going to do this, I have identified over 40 agents based here in the UK and I am going to contact them and chart my progress. This is a bit of the blurb I am going to send them:
THE KEYHOLDER’S APPRENTICE is an 86k word comic fantasy novel set in a world that is a mirror to a pre-technology Earth. It’s full of fun with popular music and other cultural references. It is a satire on the world of music and the glorification of rock icons, but told through an original story with contemporary and diverse characters. It also satirises societal views on misogyny and diversity.
The Elemental - working title
Orphaned at 16 her life was about to take her in a different and at times violent direction. Unbeknown to her, there is a path she must follow, it is her destiny but there is a price to pay. It is ultimately a tale of maternal love with strong female main characters who have to fight to survive in a male dominated world where violence is common place.
The first draft of this story was completed last month and as usual for me I have left it alone for several weeks before I begin the initial edit and/or rewrite. As a writer we get so immersed in our stories that sometimes we become a bit word blind and introduce spelling and/or grammatical errors. Storytelling is a long process and over the course of the several weeks (or longer) it takes to write we may inadvertently introduce plot holes, inconsistencies with characters etc. This is what editors do for us, they help us develop our work and make it fit for purpose. But if you don't have the budget then you options are limited, you have to be your own editor so I find it best to leave my manuscript alone for a while so I can look at it with a fresh pair of eyes certainly for the initial edit.
Girls Allowed - working title
One of the other reasons for leaving The Elemental alone is that I have started writing another story in my World Of Rock series of books. This story follows the adventures of The Keyholders Apprentice. It's now a year after their arrival and things had begun to settle down but something is amiss. The number of child births the witches have to help with has dropped off, there are more and more ghosts wandering around and Death is having a mid life crisis.
The current word count stands at just over 31k. As I basically makes things up as I go along I have now idea how far 'percentage wise' I am in the story but I would hope to complete this manuscript by the end of the month.
Book Review
SUNSET by Jessie Cave
So the first thing I need to say about Sunset by Jessie Cave is that this is definitely not my normal reading material. Being emotionally stunted as a teenage boy I found my escape in Science Fiction and Fantasy based novels. Not for me the heady mix of raw emotion and real life situations, far easier for me to hide my head beneath my bedcovers and read, by torchlight, stories from the amazingly imaginative mind of Isaac Asimov, JRR Tolkein et al.
However, as someone who professes to be a writer, I feel it would be churlish of me to restrict my diet and so occasionally, very occasionally, I will explore other 'delights' of the literary world (I was 59 before I read Pride and Prejudice for example!). It was on this premise that I picked up the hardcover copy of Jessie Cave’s Sunset. It was clear from the celebrity comments on the back cover allied with the synopsis on the front that as a late middle aged man I am not in Jessie’s target demographic.
Goaded by the female members of my family, and quite determined that I was not going to enjoy reading this book, I decided to give it go. Now - spoiler alert – I did thoroughly enjoy it.
From the outset I was aware of Jessie Cave as an actress and comedian. My daughter had already told me about her role as Lavender Brown in a couple of the Harry Potter films. I had seen her comedic work on a couple of panel shows on UK TV. Secretly, I choose her novel on the basis that it might be more light and fluffy than what I imagined contemporary and female orientated fiction to be. I was given a rude awakening to this impression from the outset.
This novel is essentially an amazing portrayal of a close sibling relationship and the sheer, utter devastation that occurs when this is destroyed. The pain and loss is palpable. Jessie conveys both the torment and reaction to such a loss in both a stark and amusing way. It could be described as a 'bittersweet' story but that implies a sort of candy coating to what is a terrible family tragedy but it is not that. It is a story of resolve, of how something so bad can spark a revival of oneself through the grieving process.
I looked into Jessie’s background and discovered that Jessie has a really close relationship with her own sister but had sadly lost her brother at an early age. I think this experience fuelled her writing, you feel the raw emotion because Jessie herself has endured a similar experience.
Now don’t expect high-brow, intellectualised story telling from Jessie (sorry Jessie). This is not her style. She writes in a real way. By that I mean it’s easy to read. You won’t be reaching for a dictionary every other paragraph to be able to understand what has been said. Furthermore, the language Jessie has chosen for her characters is the kind of language we all use, yes there is profanity, yes there are sexual references and situations. But this novel is about real life, the characters are based on real people. The situations the author puts these characters in are real life situations and Jessie’s writing is an honest reflection of that.
Sunset is a much better book than I expected (or wanted) it to be. I think Jessie Cave should be rightly proud of this story. It is a page turner. When reading this novel there were times when I wanted to cry or to laugh out loud. Sometimes I found myself wanting to shout at the characters to 'do something' and 'pull their socks up'. As a wise woman once told me – if you feel the story then it must be a good story.
Overall there is a gravitas to this story. Yes there are witty and charming moments but, ostensibly, it deals with darker emotions so, as long as you can 'take it on the chin' it is a really good book. Highly recommended - 4.5/5.
The View From Here
As someone who, in a previous life, spent over 30 years working in IT - yes I am that old! I am pretty au fait with technology but Social Media to me is a mystery. I have written tens of thousands of lines of code over the years but trying to get my head around the algorithms these silicon valley behemoths is bewildering. I swear I will never know what makes one of my posts more successful than another.
However one thing I do know for certain is that Social Media is not only a troll heaven but also a scammers paradise. There is little regulation, anonymity is sacrosanct, the ability to clone identities is rife and all this is separate to the bots that fly around the network acting as 'disruptors'.
One scam that was new to me happened just a couple of weeks ago. A young lady contacted me through Instagram, complimenting me on my self published book. She wanted to read my book and advised me that as she had 8.5k followers she would post it to her 'friends' and post reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Now for any author, but especially for self published writers, good, positive reviews are worth their weight in gold. It encourages other readers to want to read your story, it is a complete 'no-brainer'.
I sent her a link to my Amazon shop. She replied saying that the cover looked amazing and was really looking forward to reading it. I'll cut to the chase, it would cost me $50 plus the cost of the book. I said 'no thanks', the price went down to $25 plus the book. I did some more research. It would take at least 3 days to read my book - that is not a good cost model for a business. The photo's on her page were all the same with just the book cover inserted. there was very little engagement on her page. The language she used was not 'quite right'. No invoice would be produced as we were now 'friends'. I was fully aware that this a probable scam from the outset and never had any intention of pursuing it but I could see how easy it would be to fall for it.
And Now The End Is Near
Anyway I have just about finished with my musings for this month. I sincerely hope you found it interesting. I am always happy to hear from any bookworms, so if you have any comments/opinions please drop me a note, I would love to hear from you - my only request is to be civil - oh and to be a real human!
Til next time - take care and stay safe!
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