A Writer on Holiday

Like my book, I've been on the move again. This week my travels had nothing to do with books, research, signings, sort of promotion, or anything at all to do with books. We were paying some Christmas visits to family and friends. But, as Ionesco said, 'A writer never has a vacation. for a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.' So I took my notebook, and a supply of pens, and wrote two more chapters of my third book while I was away. Once a writer...
(By the way, I've no idea where CUT SHORT was going in this photo. A reader sent it to me.)
Leigh Russell

A Great Christmas For Writers

by Matt Lynn

There is too much doom and gloom around the writing industry. But a glance at the top ten bestsellers for this Christmas should cheer any fiction writer up. The number one book is a thriller (okay, Dan Brown, but still a thriller). Six of the top ten are original works of fiction, compared to only two last year. This year, there are only two celebrity memoirs on the list compared with five last year (and those two take the bottom two slots).

Publishers will notice. They will be less keen to promote ghost-written celebrity books, and investing more in fiction. That surely is good news for writers.

The reason is simple. People love stories, and always have done. And Christmas, certainly the greatest story of all, is always a good time to remember that.

AN AUTHOR'S WORK IS NEVER DONE...

Just heard CUT SHORT is to have its 2nd reprint in 6 months.
My publisher is very pleased (phew). As Matt Lynn says, it's always good to exceed your publisher's expectations... What a wonderful way to end a busy year.
I'm really looking forward to Christmas Day. My children are spending the day with their partners' families so on the 25th December this year we are seeing no one and going nowhere. I can't wait! Reading Matt Lynn's post about fitting in writing with working and book promotion really struck a chord with me. I managed to juggle working and writing, but with promotion thrown into the mix, life is becoming very hectic. Take this week. I visited three schools and colleges to talk to sixth form about CUT SHORT. Then it was up to York for a BBC Radio interview, and book signing at WH Smith's. Back home again and I'm off to Brent Cross tomorrow for another book signing. In the meantime I've been reading Henning Mankell's SIDETRACKED which I need to finish before his appearance on BBC Radio 4's Bookclub with James Naughtie in January when I'm in the invited audience. And of course I'm writing. I've delivered ROAD CLOSED, the second in the Geraldine Steel series, which will be published in 2010. My deadline for the third book isn't looming - yet. But I want to finish the first draft before I start promoting ROAD CLOSED, and the weeks are zipping past.
Still, on Christmas Day I have something very particular to do. I've promised myself. I'm going to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ALL DAY! I can't wait. (Although I'll probably spend the morning writing . . . )

SOUP TO NUTS

By Richard Jay Parker

Sleuthsink - a North American crime writers' website, asked me to write a blog for them this week so, as I've been in traditional Christmas frenzy, I'm reproducing it here. I answered questions during my live blog so you can check them out and discover more about Sleuthsink by visiting them here:

http://sleuthsink.blogspot.com/

They're a thoroughly decent bunch. Until 2010 then - Merry Christmas.

As a writer I've always been interested in articles about the process of getting work out there. This isn’t intended as a How-To piece, however. I hope this will encourage writers who are languishing in any of the 'writing a book/rewriting a book/looking for an agent/seeking a publisher' categories and any sub-purgatory categories in between.

There's no doubt about it--getting a book published is one of the hardest tasks anyone can attempt. I began my writing career by submitting comedy sketch scripts on spec to TV companies. I began getting more involved in the production before becoming a head writer, script editor and eventually producer. It was steady progress across years but a book is something different. You're either published or you're not. For a publisher, it's a large investment of faith and money and nowadays they have to be positive of getting a return on that investment before taking the plunge.

It's taken me a drawer full of manuscripts and ten years to get to this point. I don't ever consider that as wasted time though. If I hadn't written all of those manuscripts I wouldn’t have written STOP ME. I also didn't begin by writing thrillers but discovered how much I enjoyed plotting them along the way. I decided that if I were to become pigeonholed as a writer then thrillers were what I’d be comfortable writing until the cows came home. My then agent’s response: 'Great! But I don't represent thriller writers so you'll have to find another agent.'

I won't bore you with the grim details of trying to find alternative representation. Luckily–and lets not forget what a huge factor that is in the journey–an agent who had previously shown interest in my work was poached to another agency and asked me to submit to him there. I was working on STOP ME at the time. I sent him what I'd written so far--about a third--and waited. By the time he’d read it I'd finished writing the whole manuscript. He read the other two thirds, got a positive in-house reader’s report and submitted to publishers.We got positive feedback but no offers.

There was a common criticism of the manuscript which concerned its plot flashing back to the past too often. I quickly rewrote it and made the story more linear. We then got an offer as well as interest from two other publishers. Eventually we settled on my current publisher.

As an editor I'd been pretty brutal re extraneous writing and had fiercely polished the manuscript so there was little story editing to do before it went to print. There were inconsistencies though and I was very glad of the input I had from my editor, Lara. The publisher politely welcomed my suggestions re the cover but I bowed to their superior knowledge and they came up with something much better than anything I could have envisaged–simple but striking.

And there you might think the work is over but that depends on how successful you want your book to be. Most publishers encourage their authors to be proactive re publicity for the book so my next question was--how do I get a book by a new author noticed?

Firstly I pursued some established writers of the genre for blurbs. One of them read my book and was kind enough to give me a great blurb for my cover. It arrived a day before the book went to print. It's difficult to know just how much a blurb can help but, as a newcomer, associating your work with someone that people recognise has got to be a step in the right direction.

I also followed the usual route of setting up a website. I think this is absolutely vital whether you're published or not. You can post all your details there as well as samples of your work, short stories etc. I did try and make my website as quirky and memorable as possible. You can have a look here. I also got a good friend to compose a simple piece of menacing music to unsettle people as they read about my story. Copyright is obviously always an issue but you can get pictures and music that are copyright free.

I'm lucky enough to have great support at Allison & Busby in the form of Chiara Priorelli who organises blogs, signed books and publicity. She’s proved invaluable in terms of promoting me on the publisher's site and is always happy to get involved in a publicity concept.

Twitter is also a great tool for getting the word out about your book and is how I came to be associated with the friendly people who run Sleuthsink. There are lots of avid readers as well as publishing people who use Twitter and I've found that if you tweet your thoughts about writing you can soon connect with many people who share a similar passion. You can follow me on Twitter @Bookwalter. You can also find our other Curzon members there individually and at @CurzonGroup.

The promotional process is ongoing and although it's difficult to measure just how much impact a lot of your efforts have, you can at least be positive that you’re doing everything you can to make people aware of your work. Soup to nuts – the whole process. And likely to drive you nuts in the process as well. But there’s no doubt that actually getting published is indeed the hardest part. It’s not impossible though even if it does feel that way sometimes. To get there, being positive is the most important part of your armoury. It's a lonely business being a writer and the disappointments don't get any easier.Constructive rejection letters only have a use a couple of days after you’ve received them because initially they just mean REJECTION! Once you’ve surfed the disappointment, however, examine them and take the comments on board. Also remember that opinion is subjective. What won't work for one publisher may be perfect for another. If you have genuine faith in your work then chances are somebody else will. Be your own harshest critic. After you’ve finished your book go back and read it a few months later.

Always start thinking about your next project as soon as you've finished your first. If your current project doesn't get the reception you wanted, by the time you've learned that you'll have something else exciting underway.

I'll finish with a story from 1999. I'd become disillusioned with TV and wanted to concentrate on novel writing. I’d left my TV agent and got a literary agent on the back of my first novel. I was invited to a literary party at the agency and was described in Publishing News as 'soon-to-be-published.’ I thought I'd effortlessly jumped ship. It's now 2009 and I have my first book published. It may even be my last but seeing STOP ME on the shelf definitely made it all worth it.

Amazonian narcissism

I love Amazon. It is a cargo cult. I click around the site and a couple of days latter my self-gifts appear over the horizon and are unloaded. Presents appear at Christmas from them via friends unsummoned.

Amazon is a virtual Santa Claus.

What is even more exciting is watching my novel on the Amazon charts. Like a proto-pop star I’m riveted narcissistically to my own rise and fall.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Armageddon-Trade-Clem-Chambers/dp/1842433105

Suddenly I’ve shot up from 300,000 to 1200 and hit 32 overall in Thrillers. As this is my first book, it is a ‘noob’ pleasure to be flanked by John Le Carre, Oscar Wilde, Lee Childs and Dan Brown.

As Miss Piggy might say "Moi!?!"

Armageddon Trade did hit number 8 in Thrillers in the summer and skimmed the top 100 overall in books. But this was only a few days of delight until Amazon went out of stock and I plummeted from A list to non-entity faster than an X-factor finalist.

Now days from Christmas Im back flying high.

Its strange to have this funny little dream of minor bestseller-dom come true. It was the visualisation of future success that kept me going as a forlorn unpublished author slogging up the mountain that is writing a novel.

Like actual mountain climbing, the view from the top lasts for only moments, so Im going to enjoy it.

A Book A Year...

by Matt Lynn


The end of the year is fast approaching, and I've just realised that I won't have finished a book this year. Not quite anyway. I'm on page 470 of 'Shadow Force', and I reckon it will be about 600 pages on Microsoft Word (double-spaced), so unless I skip Christmas completely it won't be done before the 31st. And that's just the first draft. There are still revisions to be made. And facts to be checked.

That doesn't matter greatly in itself. The book isn't due to be handed in until March, so there is plenty of time.

But one of the things I've discovered from visiting bookshops in support of 'Death Force' this year is that writers need to crack out a book a year to establish themselves in the market. Several booksellers have mentioned that a writer gets going, then a year goes by without a book appearing, and they lose momentum. Indeed, one of the reasons I think Headline liked the idea of taking me on as an author is because they knew from the ghost-writing I'd done that I could be relied upon to deliver a book once every twelve months.

I can see why it's important. Readers need to be seeing you regularly in the shops before they will sample you. Publishers need to feel they will have a supply of fresh product to make it worth promoting you. But I can't help feeling it will get harder as I go on. When you start, you just have the manuscript to worry about. As you progress, however, there is more and more promotional work to take care off. And whilst that's important as well, at a certain point it is going to make the book a year cycle harder to keep up with.

So I guess my New Year's Resolation will be to make sure I start work early on the next book in the series - so that I get it finished by the end of 2010.

Hidden Fears

Picking up on the theme of nostalgia from the previous post, I visited a few local schools and colleges this week and a student asked me which book had had the most impact on me when I was a child. That is such a long time ago! Does anyone read Just William these days? Treasure Island, Heidi, Little Women... There are so many new and exciting contemporary authors writing for the youth market nowadays: Anthony Horowitz, Michael Morpurgo, Phillip Pullman, to name just a few. It makes it all the more dismal that so few children are reading, and even fewer teenagers. There are many other, easier, opportunities to fill their time.

In a different context, I had another 'trip down memory lane' recently. On one of my school visits this week I tried to impress on my young audience how ground breaking Dr Who was when it was first broadcast in the 1960s. From Andy Pandy to daleks was a qualitative leap for an unsophisticated viewing audience. Dr Who was the first television programme to employ special effects and it succeeded in terrifying a generation.

I was intially entertained when a dalek asked me to sign a copy of CUT SHORT the other week. Of course I agreed. What author will refuse a sale? The top (lid?) of the dalek duly lifted up and . . . a hand emerged . . . a human hand! . . . proffering money. Of course I knew it was just a plastic shell in dalek shape concealing a man inside, but I couldn't bring myself to put my own hand inside the dalek. Instead, I handed the change to someone else to deliver to the man-inside-the-plastic-dalek.

How ridiculous! But our early childhood fears run deep. The child we once were lurks inside us all, (I won't say like the man concealed inside the dalek - it's too obvious!)

When I'm writing crime novels, I play with my readers' fears . . . a character wakes at night, alone in the house, and hears a door closing . . . a woman walking along a dark deserted street hears footsteps . . .

I knowingly draw on my own irrational terrors in my writing - but holding back from touching a plastic dalek - that was a surprise even to a scaredycat like me! Surely at the ripe old age of mumble (OK, I was watching daleks in 1964) I should have outgrown my fear of a plastic inverted bucket waving a sink plunger? Especially one who had just bought a copy of my book! Of course, without my irrational fears, my writing would be less scarey, but I wonder if anyone has been caught out by a more ridiculous irrational childhood fear , or do I win the wimpy prize for this one?

Leigh Russell