Tag Archives: author blog

28 Feb 2015 · 6:51 pm

In search of a prince – or the ups and downs of frog kissing…

This week has been rather busy: recovery from half term, the production of the parish magazine which I now edit for my sins and a visit from McOther’s folks. As a result there hasn’t been time for much.

However, this afternoon, I got out into our garden for a spot of metal detecting. Our garden is a bit hit and miss. The first thing I found in it was a clay pipe head; early because it was small, from the period when tobacco was still expensive. The second thing was this.

IMG_2310Yep, believe it or not, that’s a bead which, upon presentation at my metal detecting club, was deemed to be Saxon. Yeh I was pretty gobsmacked and all.

So, this afternoon, I thought I’d go and have a look outside and see what I could find. One hole was left with the ‘treasure’ in situ because Harrison, our nut bar cat, wee-ed in it. Several other holes were left open so Harrison could dig vigorously in them, gnaw at roots and roll in the diggings, leaving me free to find more shite old nails treasure uninterrupted by the constant signal from the identity disk on his collar.

With a LOT of help from the cat, I finally managed to discover that our lawn appears to have been laid on a large piece of crappy 1970s carpet.

I also managed to dig up this impressive collection of total crap.

IMG_2312The nails range from modern to hand made and a couple of hundred years old. The round blob on the right is a lead thing and is… well I’m hoping it came out of a cannon because that would make it interesting to me even if it’s worth jack all and of no interest to anyone else.

So, in summary, metaphorical frogs kissed: 10. Handsome princes found: none.

Meanwhile sometime in the last two years or so, McOther had found a… um… metal thing in the garden. After a great deal of thought and brain wracking he has come to the conclusion that he probably found it while sieving the stones out of the earth for a flowerbed he made. After a few months of it lying about in his office he got round to showing it to me, just before Christmas.

“Can you show this to your metal detecting club,” he says.

“OK,” I look at it and shrug. It looks like a shite bit of faux old metal, the kind of thing that gets imported from China on pretending-to-be-medieval boxes and the like. “What is it?”

“If I knew I wouldn’t need you to ask them.”

“Fair point. Where did you get it?”

“I can’t remember.”

Then you know how it is, I was ill for the November meet, the Christmas one wasn’t really that kind of meeting, I forgot January and I finally remembered it last night.IMG_2309

“What do you reckon this is?” I ask the chairman of the club, who is pretty knowledgeable.

He perks up at once as I hand it over.

“This looks really old, where did you get it?”

“I’m not sure, McOther found it.”

“Hmm, I think it might be part of a Saxon cruciform broach. It’s a horse’s head. It’s got copper bug eyes, a stylised snout and those round things are it’s nostrils. There’s a line across his head where the browband* goes too.”

“Get away!”

“Show it to the FLO.”

* part of a horse’s bridle, brow band above the eyes, nosemband across the nose.

Shit.

“Right.”

So I join the queue for the FLO, that s, the Finds Liaison Officer which is always good because I get to see some of the amazing stuff my fellow club mates have dug up. In this case, highlight is a bronze age axe head, that another member of the club has dug up and he also has a really cool celtic coin.

“What do you think it is?” the FLO asks me when I present him with McOther’s piece of tat.

“I dunno, the Chairman reckons it could be Saxon, and a horse but I thought it was probably an arts and crafts bracket or some bit of Victorian shite.”

“Hmm… what if I told you the Chairman is right and your bit of old shite was actually over a thousand years old?”

“Fuckorama.”

Yes, so it turns out it’s a bit of a 5th Century Saxon cruciform broach and McOther found it on the surface of the soil, the way I found the bead. Yet when I get the detector out and dig, suddenly, I have a garden full of shite. Except that I know I don’t. The stuff is there and I will find it eventually. I just have to perservere… and find the cat something else to do while I’m going about it.

So how is this relevant to writing?

Well, this week, I discovered that, like the second one, the last two books of the K’Barthan Series have failed dismally to make the cut for the Wishing Shelf Awards. I’ve kind of hoped that they might squeak onto the short list. I’ve kind of hoped that with all three because the first one came third, or second, they said third at the time but they say second now… the point is I was expecting it to come nowhere.

However, try as I might, the kids who voted the first one onto the list have not enjoyed the subsequent ones enough. Or maybe there are just a lot more books around that are way better than mine, or at, a lot more of the books that are miles better than mine are being entered. Or maybe I’ve lost my mojo. Or maybe there was a t in the month and an r in the day and I needed it to be the other way around. Who knows? Whatever it is, I have been unable to repeat the feat. Maybe the current work in progress will be good enough to get onto the 2015 short list… maybe but probably not. The thing is, I’ll enter it anyway. The feedback, alone, is worth the price of entry.

You may be wondering how this ties in with finding Saxon stuff when you’re not trying, and a selection of nails, three milk bottle tops, a lead thing and the head of  pitching wedge when you try really hard. Well, I guess my detectoristic plight reflects two tenuous and slightly contradictory lessons.

First thing: don’t force it. Sometimes, if you just relax and go with the flow you’ll hit gold… or at least second/third, or a Saxon copper horse head.

Second thing: keep trying. Because just as any detectorist will tell you, to find your gold stater you will have to dig up a lot of shite. So whatever it is you’re doing, trying to dig up Saxon stuff, trying to write a book – or at least one that you don’t wish someone else had written – or trying to write a book that’s good enough to get onto an award shortlist, you’re going to have to spend a lot of time trying before you get it right. Or, as any fairy godmother will explain, if you want to find your handsome prince, you are going to have to kiss a lot of frogs.

 

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24 Jan 2015 · 2:00 pm

Goodbye my friend…

If I’ve been a bit absent from the internet this week it’s because I’ve had a fair bit on. An exciting meeting about a new project on Monday, I really can’t wait to get started on it. But as life often is, the high about moving onto the next stage of the project was tempered by the death of a good school friend. He was a strong and noble character and towards the end of his life, he fought with mental health issues and addiction. He withdrew from us all, fell out of contact and then, suddenly, after a long absence, he popped up on facebook. I sent a friend request at once, but then discovered he had suffered a heart attack a few days before. This was all two years ago. The heart attack left him brain damaged and partially paralysed. Oh he was all there but he couldn’t speak – I went to see him just afterwards. Slowly but surely, since then, improved. I kept in touch through his family and I really thought he was going to come back to us. Sadly it was not to be. He died of pneumonia, in his mother’s arms, at 6.35 on 13th January.

I wrote this about him, I sent it to his mum and sister and I’m publishing it here, because it’s all I can do.

Duncan Abbott. 1968 – 2015 R.I.P.

What to say about Duncan? Not so much a case of where to start as where to stop.

Duncan was one of my best mates. He was part of the family scenery for a long time before we actually met as he was in my Dad’s house, at our school and our families had been friends for generations. I would hear his name bandied about (along with others). Our paths crossed many times at school; Duncan and I were cartoonists for the school magazine and he was in my art set. He used to turn up for our art class on Saturday mornings with a full Mohican hairstyle, ready to go to Brighton for the afternoon. As someone who wanted a blue Mohican but never quite had the heart to do it to my parents, I always admired him for this.

It was after I left school, when the two of us were living in London that our friendship really blossomed. The Mohican had gone by that time, “I took it down because no-one would take my intellect seriously.” I think both of us bonded through an eccentricity, and possibly a love of cars, which could make us feel like very square pegs, and the world like an extremely round hole!

This is the internet. I don’t want to go into identifiable detail. So, these are the words that speak of Duncan, to me:

Funny: Duncan was very witty, in an engagingly irreverent way, and not afraid to prick the hide of the pompous. He made me and many others laugh. Lots. Indeed, one of my enduring memories of Duncan is the high guffaw quotient of any time we spent together.

Enthusiasm/Energy: If Duncan was into something, it was impossible not to get carried away with his enthusiasm. I remember visiting him in Sussex just after he’d bought an e-Type. As we drove down a country lane he found a straight and shouted gleefully, “Watch this!” He proceeded to floor the accelerator, guffawing madly as he did so. It was like taking off in a rocket. He was also sensible though, because when I retorted with a, “Go on then! Faster Faster!” He told me there was a bend coming up and slowed down.

Fun: Duncan was effervescent and he knew how to throw a dinner party, which he often did. Usually, after stuffing ourselves with wine and the food he and Lucy had cooked, we’d play a few rounds of the board game, ‘Risk’. Many is the time I remember playing late into the night. Usually we’d give up and go home at about 3 am. We all cheated, decimating the armies of anyone who’d been unwise enough to go to the bathroom by removing half their pieces from the board while they were gone. Nobody ever won because nobody’s bladder was strong enough to achieve world domination.

Generous: Duncan was generous with everything. I remember during my time in London, when I was about to move into a new flat and the deal fell through. I had a month with nowhere to stay. Duncan was one of the most supportive of my friends over that time, letting me store a load of my stuff in his tiny flat – and leave my car parked outside – when he had very little room for either.

Intelligent and a little rebellious: Duncan was very bright – prodigiously intelligent, in fact. I mentioned this to my Dad who said, “Dear Duncan, he was such a naughty boy. It was because he was so intelligent of course! He got bored. If you were teaching Duncan, you needed to engage him. He was one of the brightest lads I ever taught.” Tom Griffiths, our art teacher, also thought similarly.

Kind: Duncan was unfailingly kind to me. Always. I remember in art class, Griffiths saying,

“It’s no good trying to pretend you’re a hard man Abbott, not with those hands, they’re the hands of a pianist not a Hell’s Angel.” This used to make Duncan guffaw both at the time, and when recounting it afterwards. (Griffiths always referred to Duncan as a ‘hell’s angel’. Despite being an art teacher with a goth for a daughter, it seemed he didn’t really understand about punk).

Positive: Duncan had been through some pretty heavy stuff and although it affected him, deeply. One of the things that amazed me, throughout the time I knew him, was the courage and pragmatism with which he attempted to deal with it. He just put his head down and tried to get on with his life.

Sure, he could be mercurial, pig-headed and he didn’t suffer fools gladly! What’s more he could be spiky, difficult and childish (although he was never like that to me). But he was also kind, generous, lively, funny and brim full of energy and joie de vivre. He was a larger than life character and a true and loyal friend. I thought about him or (since his heart attack) prayed for him most days. He was my friend and I loved him. I will miss him.

Wherever he is and whatever he is doing now, one thing is certain: there will be laughter, and lots of it.

Life, like a never ending stream
Bears all its sons away.
They fly forgotten, as a dream,
Dies at the opening day.

Except we won’t forget you mate. Goodbye my friend. Good luck and God bless.

If any of my school friends read this and would like to know the when and where of the funeral,  feel free to leave me a comment or drop me a facebook message.

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14 Jan 2015 · 2:00 pm

Missed the M T #interview on Radio Suffolk? Here’s a link.

Well, the interview went quite well. I probably said about 1,000 words all told and I suspect that at least 500 of them were, ‘um.’ Apart from that it was fun. I hadn’t realised how much harder it would be to do a phone interview than it is to do one face to face.

Lesley Dolphin, the host, clearly liked the books or at least, the bits she’d read and is going to give them away over the next few weeks so, my local peps, keep listening if you’d like to try and bag a free copy courtesy of BBC Radio Suffolk!

You can find the interview here, it starts at 2:08.05 and runs for about 10 minutes.

 

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10 Jan 2015 · 2:00 pm

MTMail: with added incentives. Are you on my mailing list?

Would you like to be? That, my lovely peps, is my question for today. What would get you signing up for MTMail?

You see, I’ve been doing some more navel gazing and the piece of fluff I’ve prepared for us to examine today is my mailing list. I intend to revamp it a bit, ie, actually do something with it. I want to offer interesting bonus things to people who join and I want to make the idea of joining my mailing list sound a bit more interesting.

It’s not just that I want to shower people with mail shots though – lordy me, even if I’m ruthlessly efficient about it my mailing list members are going to be lucky if I can organise more than about three a year. There is an ulterior motive, in that you folks have offered me support, bought my books, left me lovely comments when I was down and humoured me by laughing at my crap jokes. So I’d like to set up some kind of thing where my mailing list and blog peps who are mostly one and the same, anyway, get bonus stuff. Either things nobody else gets or stuff early… that kind of thing.

In addition, I’d like to bribe incentivise folks to join my mailing list list. Not in a Lord Vernon, I-will-murder-each-and-every-one-of-the-people-who-you-hold-dear-until-you-do-my-bidding-and-I’ll-make-you-watch, manner but in a nice way, as outlined above: a touchy-feely, let-me-give-you-gifts kind of approach.

I’ve had a think and come up with some ideas… I was just wondering… if you’re able to give me any feedback, in the comments or on the poll.

Here are some of the things I’ve been mulling over.

First up, would you like a choice between general mailings and just hearing about the books? General mailings would probably take place once a quarter if I really got my finger out and tried hard so it’s not as if I’d be raining folks with spam. Although if I mailed subscribers about interviews and things it might be more often but I doubt I could manage to make it more than once a month: tops.

Second, what kind of free things would appeal? I can give away short stories or secret blog posts and I can also give away versions of my short stories read aloud, by me – this is something that a couple of folks have requested. Unfortunately, I don’t have the budget or equipment to produce audio books properly: I have a cat, a son and I live on a main road for starters – all things that make the recording process … interesting.

Thirdly, I wondered if you’d like to read out takes. Bits that were honed and toned but didn’t make it into the books. They are un-edited; by a professional at any rate.

Finally, if you’d like to sign up to my mailing list anyway, before any bribery incentives are in place, you can sign up from this link.

 

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29 Dec 2014 · 10:51 pm

2014 in review – I’ve never had one of these before! Blog round up from WordPress

For the first time ever… WordPress has given me a lovely blog round up.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,700 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

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26 Dec 2014 · 2:00 pm

All I need is Little Nellie! Learning to love #Christmas (and myself).#scrooge

Christmas. The traditional time of unfulfilled expectations and almost unfailingly the death of a friend or relative. I have to admit that the best bit about Christmas, for me, is the day we get back from whoever we’ve been staying with that year, and I can relax in the knowledge that it’s all over for another 12 months.

It pains me to confess it but I am the original Scrooge, although this year I think I am finally beginning to understand why. If it’s OK, I’d like to share my breakthrough with you (phnark). So let’s have a rummage through my season-specific navel lint.

Warning: this one’s outrageous and fairly lavatorial.

Right then.

Here goes…

When I was a kid, I thought that Christmas would always be a time of fun and light and laughter. Strangely, when I look back over the actual Christmas Days I can remember then 99.9% of the time it is exactly that – even the years people died or got sick.

Yet it hangs leadenly on my spirits and I dread it more with each passing year.

Looking at it, the big thing, for me, has always been that I’d like to ‘do’ Christmas, myself. My Mum always told me that once you have kids you can put your foot down with the grandparents and tell them that from now on, you’ll be having Christmas at home. My Mum did this successfully. However, she was younger when she had my brother and I. Furthermore, both sets of grandparents were hale and hearty and perfectly able to hop in the car and drive to us if they wanted to. They were only about 45 minutes away, anyway.

Our world is different.

Nonetheless, the dream persists of waking up in my own home on Christmas morning. In 20 years. we’ve managed two home Christmases, yes I’ve managed to cook two turkeys (and a goose but that’s another story). Both those Christmases were lordy-never-again style jobs. One because McOther and I were going through a rough patch, I didn’t even know if we’d be together in a few weeks’ time and we had to present a united front to the visiting grandparents for 8 days when I had no idea if, in 20 days, we’d still be an item. McOther was at work the whole time anyway, to the point of spending two hours in a conference call on Christmas day. The next year, the other set of grandparents stayed for less than 24 hours and gave us flu. I spent the turn of the millennium in bed with it. Later, my father’s condition, coupled with the cold temperature of our house, meant that if he visited us in winter he went completely loolah (too cold = not enough blood to the head) so that was out.

In other words; we know Christmas at home doesn’t work. Now that neither set of rellies can actually stay here, we also know that, were we to tell them, “We were having Christmas at home this year,” we would have the most awful time, sitting at home feeling guilty. We’re talking a level of guilt that eating our free range, local butcher’s, locally sourced turkey with actual red meat; that having our boy get his stocking in one hit, because we haven’t had to leave the 3/4 of it that doesn’t fit into the car on his bed at home and pretend Father Christmas delivered here too; that being around to help with the Church flowers etc and even finding a lonely local to invite, would not do anything to assuage.

Why then? Why this endless longing to make Christmas my own instead of bolting onto other people’s? It’s a completely insoluble problem. And yet once I actually get to whichever set of parents house it is, then, even with its strange or too-distant bathroom, the strength sapping levels of vigilance required to take a lively small boy and incredibly clumsy mother somewhere else for a week without their accidentally breaking something precious or spilling something dreadful or eating something they shouldn’t, it’s actually fun.

Yes.

I do enjoy myself. We all do. And it distresses me deeply that I feel this utter misery and curmudgeonliness about going to see people who I actually want to see and love dearly.

Why the dread?

Well I think I’ve finally sussed it out.

It’s the travel. I loathe and detest using the British motorway network. However, at Christmas when there are high winds so the QE Bridge is closed and we have to queue for hours to get through one side of the tunnel. Or when we are driving through six inches of freshly fallen snow for two hours, with an ice covered road beneath and a sheer drop into the River Tweed a few feet from us pretty much all the way and meeting something coming the other way on. Every. Single. Blummin’. Corner. It’s really grim.

In a nutshell, Christmas is an absolutely rubbish time to attempt to travel. It’s not just because every other git in the UK has climbed into his car to clutter up the roads. It’s because the weather can be unremittingly awful and we all get stuck in it.

Borne out of the travel comes the second downer: organising stuff. I am incapable of organising a piss up in a brewery. Lord knows I try but even when McOther organises everything – because he is a control freak who runs like a smoothly oiled machine – I still manage to balls up the few things I’m supposed to be doing. There is always the Eureka moment, as I unpack the stuff in the kitchen at whichever of our victims we’re descending on that year, and I remember about the very important thing I’ve left on the kitchen table at home. Something without which the other five bags of gubbins I’ve brought are completely pointles… you know… something like… the turkey or the pump for McMini’s blow up bed.

Naturally, the reason my organisational skills are so poor is because I actually dislike organising things.

After travel and my piss poor organisational skills we come to the third factor: my social lumpiness. The minefield of staying with other people and trying to adjust your routine to fit in with theirs when what is natural and instinctive to them is less so for you.You know deep eternal questions like these, which are all real:

  • Is there enough hot water/time to wash my hair this morning or do too many other people need the shower for us to a) all shower before we go out or b) for me to spend the prerequisite 10 minutes rinsing my hair?
  • If I don’t have a shower, will I smell (I usually have a cold so can’t tell).
  • Will I manage to get through the whole week without having an IBS attack?
  • Talking about IBS. When’s the time the other members of the household are statistically least likely to follow me into the loo for at least an hour – or to put it another way, can I have a poo now, or will I be asphyxiating a whole succession of subsequent lavatory and/or shower users?
  • How many times can I ask for seconds before it becomes rude?
  • What are those odd noises in the night?
  • Are those really bits of wasp coming out of the cold water tap and is that why the loo cistern won’t fill up? Because the outlet on the header tank is clogged with dead wasps?
  • Will next door invite us all round to drinks and poison us with dodgy pate?
  • Can I make my way to the loo without falling down the stairs?
  • If my knee clicks on the stairs in the dark can I manage to yell quietly?
  • Can I get past the stair lift to go down to the drawing room and retrieve my iPad/Phone/Book without falling and waking the rest of the house?
  • Will I successfully fill up the cistern using the bath tap and the bucket provided, or will I spill a whole load, sending a flood of water through the ceiling onto the lap top at the desk in the room below?
  • Have I remembered my torch?
  • Have I remembered my cough lozenges?
  • Do they have a dog? How much of it’s attention will it give my crotch? A: all of it’s attention. If dogs are the rule of thumb I have the smelliest girl parts in Christendom.
  • Where are McMini’s pyjamas? A: on the kitchen table at home.
  • Should I put this utensil away where I think it’s kept and risk unwittingly hiding it from my hostess forever, or should I ask her for the umpteenth time? Is the least irritating course of action to leave it on the table?
  • If both the taps in the guest bathroom basin bear the letter H, which one is actually the ‘real’ hot?
    It’s the left hand tap*, by the way, if you ever visit my parents.
  • Will I leave my horrible gacky ear plugs under the guest bed?
  • Will I snore loudly enough to keep people in other rooms awake? I am more than capable of this.

This is not a side of me I like. It feels disloyal and mean to dread going to see the grandparents – especially when I love both sets so dearly. They would be horrified to read this!

But at least I’ve spotted the difference between Christmas when I was a child and now; why it was different when we did pretty much the same things. Amazingly, I think I’ve hit on the answer and it is all down to journey time. My family was local. It was 45 minutes to each set of grandparents so even if we weren’t at home on Christmas Day, itself, it wasn’t a big deal because we woke up there and we went to bed that night in our own beds. If we had to be on our best behaviour and not eat too much, not spill anything and help out in a succession of relations’ strange kitchens day after day over the Christmas period it was OK because at supper and breakfast we were in our own.

WE NEVER STAYED THE NIGHT.

And that’s it in a nutshell. None of the worries I have about my social lumpiness are ever going to impact on a day trip, hence it was a breeze as a kid. But on a week long stay, when I’m also responsible for the behaviour of my own child it’s very different. They become monstrous spectres in the days and weeks beforehand. I even have dreams about stuffing it up and letting down smoothly oiled, robotically organised McOther. There’s nothing I can do about it but at least, now that I know what it is, I should be able to deal with it better next year.

Furthermore, if I could find a way to do the two journeys in say, 35 minutes… or maybe an hour… I could pop home to poo, or wash my hair on a morning when everyone else wants to use the shower, or relax about cutting myself shaving without noticing and bleed happily over my own scabby (rather than someone else’s nice guest) towel. Hmm… Flying’s no good, sure it’s 35 minutes in the air, if that, but it’s still two hours each end phaffing about in an airport and an hour in a taxi at the other end.

Snurds may be imaginary right now and a magic thimble is right out. But I think I have the answer.

Yeh. So. If you’re listening, Father Christmas, I’d like a gyrocopter, please.

See that? That’s me that is, nipping home for a poo.

What I want to know is, am I the only person who gets all worried like this? Tell me about your experiences peeps!

* That’s a faucet, if you’re French or American.

 

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19 Dec 2014 · 2:12 pm

A year end Christmas round up thank you thingy!

It’s the end of the year and before I enter the disconnected twilight zone that is trying to use any wi-fi connection with a first gen apple mini (I knew there was a reason why I’m not a first adopter) I thought I would do my version of round up for this year. It does feel a bit like navel gazing but then, blogging often can be. It certainly is the way I do it. Sorry about that. I hope that either you read my posts and think, ah yes, the navel lint of her life is the same as mine, I am not alone, or conversely that I find ways to describe the navel lint of my life that are so weird it seems interesting. Yeh… Moving on.

Before the close up examination of navel lint begins. There’s been a nice little whoop of reviews at the end of this year so I thought I’d share.

First up, Kate, over at roughseasinthemed has reviewed Few Are Chosen… extensively. You can have a look at what she wrote here. Kate wins a special award for being the first reader to use my scary artwork and for openly liking Lord Vernon. She is based in Gibraltar and writes a varied and interesting blog and there’s always lots of chat in the comments. Definitely worth a visit.

12052012068

Very much not rough seas in Shoreham-by-Sea

Next we have Jemima Pett – thank you Jemima for not only writing a lovely review of Few but also for turning up to a book signing I did in her home county of Norfolk. That was awesome! She, too writes a lovely blog! She has lots of giveaways, short stories and fun stuff. Please do pop over and say hello.

There is a definite need to get a page sorted for reviews but in its absence I would like to thank not only these two individuals but also the other lovely folk who have taken the time and effort to review my books. Honourable mention goes to Richard Bunning who has managed to post a review on pretty much every nationality of Amazon I’m privvy to AND Awesome Indies. Above and beyond the call of duty that so a big thank you to him, too.

What else…? Well, I guess two big things happened in the authorly arena this year.

  1. The K’Barthan Trilogy morphed into a Series and then stopped. Yep it’s done. Although there’s at least one more K’Barthan book in me maybe even two – the first of them will be the book after the book after next.
  2. After years of failing dismally at Nano they finally managed one that didn’t include a week of Mumzilladom in half term. This time I won. I have a finished 55,000 novella, or a novel I need to add 30,000 words to. Once it’s rested and I’ve read it again I’ll know if it’s worth bothering to flesh out – there’s definitely a whole strain of political intrigue I could put in and a couple of layers of subtlety. Or I could just leave it as a totally frivolous romp. Or I could, maybe, write it up as a screen play.
  3. With four books out, I took the plunge and made Few Are Chosen, K’Barthan Series: Part 1 perma free. An amazing thing happened. People started buying my books. Don’t get excited, we’re talking about 18 books a month but trust me, that’s about 17 more than my previous monthly totals.
  4. With a finished series, I’ve attempted to do more author events. OK, I did two author events, no wait, three. But they were great fun and more importantly, they earned me cash. I hope to build on that next year.

Hmm. I see I must work on my definition of “two”.

“Right Baldrick. Let’s try again shall we? This is called ‘adding’…”

So if there’s anything I can tell you about 2015 it’s that I’ll be quite busy. I hope to finish the NanoNovel next term and have it edited over Easter and ready to publish for summer. We shall see if I achieve this. There’s a shorter novel for youngsters, I’m thinking 6 to 10 year olds, which is provisionally titled Boldrort the Gargoyle Wrangler, although it might be called Tommy and the Giant, I’m not quite sure yet.

And there’s… a thing… which would be awesome… but I can’t talk about. Unless it happens.

So all that’s really left is to say two things.

First: Thanks.

It’s a very solitary job, being an author. You put your heart and soul into books that you hope people will love and you send them out into the ether. You do what you can to make them perfect and try to make them visible to readers without breaking the bank or behaving like a photocopier salesman. But the best way, by far, to sell books is if other people do it for you.

Therefore, there are no real words to explain how grateful I am to everyone who reads my stuff, enjoys it and then goes on to big it up and enthuse about it and encourage me and… um… ting. I am genuinely humbled by the way people have gone out of their way to help me and to introduce my drivel to new victims er hem, I mean readers. I love you and want to have your babies in a very much about big love and not about wanting to get it on with you kind of way.

Thank you.

Also to those of my fellow authors who support me thank you, too. I owe countless reviews on books I’ve read and countless reads of books I’ve downloaded by authors who have been unstintingly supportive of me in the face of bugger all coming back from this direction. I am very, very aware of this. I will read those books and I will review them but it will take a long, long time. Or I will try to find other ways to help and encourage you, the way you do me.

So the main points again: Reviews, yippee! Thank you, happy Christmas and New Year, and sorry – where applicable.

If I don’t get to blog again before it comes, I wish you a fantastic Christmas and New Year. I wish you the best of health and happiness for 2015. I hope you find your rainbow’s end and your pot of ‘gold’ next year – whatever that may be. I hope I do.

SussexDowns (7)

I leave you with a picture because every blog post should have a picture. But instead of something Christmasy I thought that, in these dark mid winter days, I’d put in some pictures of sunlight and summer and blue sky.

This is Sussex. Where I’m from. A small part of me is always there.

IMG_2137

Oh alright. I guess I’m not THAT much of a Scrooge. ONE Christmasy one then. Happy Christmas!* OK?

* Because yes, in my religion, that’s how you wish someone peace and happiness round about this time of year. I’m assuming that most people are grown up enough to be able to take the spirit of my greeting in the way it is meant. Because what I’m saying is, ‘have a happy and fulfilling religious, or commercial, festival of your choice over the next few days.’ I’m not going to wish you some half baked happy holidays bollocks that is so non specific that it’s hard to tell what holiday I’m actually referring to (for example, until last week, I thought ‘happy holidays’ was a special greeting for Americans pertaining to the mystical and incomprehensible to outsiders – like Guy Fawks Night – holiday of Thanksgiving). I have to say that when someone in Hounslow wished me, a white middle class bird, happy Diwali I was really touched. Maybe I’m just odd though.

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5 Dec 2014 · 2:00 pm

How did it all go? What I learned from doing a #booksigning

A little while back I write this post about my nervousness about taking a stall to flog my books at Bury Christmas Fayre. A week on, let me fill you in on how it went.

Stall with author in situ, yes, I buffed my nose with Mr Sheen.

Stall with author in situ, yes, I buffed my nose with Mr Sheen.

Truth is, I forgot to write down what I sold on day one, going solely on the amount of extra money. Looking back on it that was a Bad Idea. That said, I reckon on it being about 5 copies of book 1, a set of post cards and 4 sets of Christmas cards.

Nuff said, the next day I kept a religious tally of everything I sold: 8 copies of Book 1, 5 Boxed Sets and a copy of books 2, 3 and 4. I also sold 7 lots of art cards which I’d brought along, just in case. On the Sunday morning, one of the people who’d bought a boxed set contacted me by e-mail and bought another one. This netted me total sales of 11 packs of art cards, one pack of post cards and 40 books: enough money to pay for the stall, the banner, the stock and most of my outstanding credit card bill. I just wish I’d done the Sunday, too, and netted a profit!

So what did I learn? Several things. Here they are.

  1. Plan your stall in advance.
    Work out your bulk discounts, special offers, etc and make a price list. Print several copies of the price list, and get them encapsulated if you can, so that customers – or you – can spill coffee on them without fear. A calculator is handy and a cash box and some of those plastic stands you put books on (I got them off ebay too: 10 for £14). Make sure you’ve ordered enough books. Too many is probably better than too few.
  2. Make sure you have everything you need – or at least, the stuff you know you need.
    This can’t be stressed enough. Read the requirements given by the venue. Do they want you to bring your own table and chair? If they provide these remember to bring a table cloth. I used a dark blue cotton single sheet which cost me £7 on ebay. Bring water and some lunch (you will get hungry and thirsty no matter how unlikely it seems with all the adrenaline that is in your system). Write a list of all the things you are taking and tick off each item as you put it in your car.Life saving items for me were: plastic book stands, scissors, sticky tape, blu-tack, food, drink, price lists and a last minute purchase of some wacky sweets (more on that story later).
  3. Pimp your stall.
    Yes, make it pretty, bring a banner print off pictures of your covers so that if you have the good fortune to be in front of a wall you can pin them up – I did this but I didn’t bring enough. Make it striking so people are drawn to come and have a look.
  4. Have something to give away.
    I had two things: bookmarks advertising the series as a whole with blurb and e-mail address, plus sweets. You need the sweets to be wrapped because… well you’ve seen that e-mail that gets sent round every now and again about the wee on the bar nuts, right? So: wrapped sweets are good. It was my extreme good fortune to be in possession of some chocolate brussels sprouts. These were really just those mini chocolate footballs you can get but wrapped in sprouty looking green foil rather than the usual football foil.
  5. Provide something that will make people linger.
    In my case, it was two things. I had a tribble that people could pet – it cost me £10 at LonCon and it’s supposed to squeak but it broke on day two.*
    So I had the tribble for people to pet but what actually worked was the simple premise of providing a bin for the chocolate wrappers – in the form of a K’Barthan Series mug. That meant that the juxtaposition of the words ‘chocolate’ and ‘sprout’ was enough to get most of my potential customers’ attention. They then spent enough time diddling about trying to get the foil wrapper off the sprout for me to bend their ears about my books and cards. I also offered free book marks so if they were interested but not sure they had something to take away. Somebody downloaded a copy of all four books the following day, so I suspect this was one of the ebook users to whom I gave a book mark.Final note: When providing foil wrapped sweets of any description, at least three people an hour will eat the sweet with the foil on.
  6. Bring some bling. I read a post recently which gave excellent counsel against buying too much branded stuff off Vistaprint and the like. So… yes, you will get by on bookmarks and a t-shirt. However, if you do find an offer for reduced fridge magnets, post cards or the like and if your art work is really cool, it’s worth having a few things. One couple were humming and haaing as to whether they should buy the first book or the full set. I had discounted the full set so it was £39.99 instead of £46, which is what it would have been with all the books at full price. I had already added a set of three post cards to make the brown paper parcel more interesting. So I gave them a minute or two and then said, “look, I shouldn’t try to force you one way or another, but if you do buy the full set I’ll throw in a set of fridge magnets worth £3.” They bought the set.
  7. Enjoy yourself. Very important this one. Especially if being yourself, on the stall, is going to give them a sort of mini preview as to what the books are like to read. If you’re smiling and laughing with people and cracking jokes, others will stop to join in or listen. It also helps if you know the people on the tables around you and you can take the rip out of one another or just big up each other’s products.

*Incidentally, despite the fact it broke after two outings the company who sold it to me refused to replace it. Even if I’d used it every day we’re talking about my contacting them in October after purchase in August. Can you believe that? They wouldn’t sell parts for it either. This is another blog post, in itself, but basically, the moral of this story is: avoid giving your custom to http://www.tribbletoys.com or http://www.startrek.com – they are rip off merchants selling shoddy, over priced goods which break straight away and their customer service is piss poor.

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3 Dec 2014 · 2:02 pm

#BookReview of Myrddin’s Heir, Book 1 A Wizard of Dreams by Robin Chambers #rrbc

Cover of Myrddin’s Heir, Book 1 by Robin Chambers

To really enjoy the book, it’s important to understand that it is the beginning of a long series. That puts the style and action in perspective. I forget how long the series is going to be but it’s long enough to reach double figures of books and for the author to express concerns about living to finish it! I hope he does because once you get into the way the story is told it’s fun. Gordon and Zac, his ‘invisible’ friend – or at least, invisible to everyone but Gordon friend – are winning characters and I enjoyed spending time in their company. Indeed, when I had to put the book aside for a while, I missed them and wondered what they are getting up to. That, for me, is a good sign.

The book is laid out more like a text book than a novel – it didn’t surprise me to discover Mr Chambers was an ex teacher. The chapters are short and easy to digest with a glossary of words at the end of each one. What I didn’t realise was that this glossary links to a wealth of explanatory end matter – 20% of the book, no less, which kind of threw me when I got to the end of the story and discovered that the next 20% was… well.. not the story. That was odd and a bit of a surprise but not unduly bothersome.

This book is best read this with an open mind. Trying to construct, second guess or reason why won’t get you anywhere. Just let it carry you along. To be honest it felt like two books, a first instalment up to the point where Gordon and his mum spot a holiday cottage they’d like to go and stay in and a second story of the adventure they have while there. Big plus though, that didn’t bother me either. The writing is easy to read and because Gordon and his imaginary friend, Zac, are likeable and I was soon drawn in.

There are some lovely ideas in the book; the idea of someone existing in different times and places and even being different people all at once is a really interesting one and I look forward to seeing this expanded upon in future books. I love that it’s a take on Arthurian Legend, but so different to the usual.

Two things worried me slightly – first, I’m pretty sure there’s a Beano character called Gordon Bennett, which had me a little nervous, on the author’s behalf, of a writ from D C Comics. Second, there was a slight tendency to give accents to the bad or flawed characters: gossiping old eighteenth century ladies wanting to burn someone as a witch and a young bully in Gordon’s school. The main characters – for ease of reading, I suspect, have no accents. However, the result is an unwitting generalism that a well-spoken middle class boy like Gordon, who drops no aitches = good, while the lad with the strong local accent who beats up his fellows = bad. In a children’s book like this, I could imagine that might cause a few raised eyebrows among British readers. That said, it might just be me as I have to fess up to a certain amount of personal baggage about class (an imaginary concept which should be put into Room 101 and left there to rot).

So to sum up: once you’re used to the style then, if you’re anything like me, you’ll enjoy this book. Minor quibbles aside, I’d definitely recommend it. There is promise of all sorts of adventures for Gordon as the series unfolds and I’ll definitely be following them closely. I hardly ever give a book five stars these days but I think I have to give this one 4.9 at least (so that’s a five as dammit on Goodreads and Amazon). I enjoyed it, I was caught up in it, I thought about the characters when I wasn’t reading and it’s very well written.

Recommended.

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26 Nov 2014 · 1:50 pm

Press and publicity. Could I? Should I? M T’s upcoming stall at #BurySt Edmunds Christmas Fayre.

McMini’s latest, as he looked out at the pouring rain and the dark, sub-aqueous sky this morning.

“Mummy, I think the sun has decided not to get up this morning and it is hiding under the covers with its underpants over its head, refusing to come out.”

Very succinctly put. Naturally a long conversation ensued about the specifications of inter galactic underpants as we discussed size, standard of flame retardancy would be required when constructing (make doesn’t reflect the size of the undertaking) underpants for a star.

To be honest, today, I’m feeling a little bit like the sun, myself. I’m doing an event at the end of the week, so I have been having a go at press stuff. I started yesterday – nice and early natch (not). I’ve got something going that reads a bit like this:

“Hello I’m M T McGuire, an author based in Bury St Edmunds and delighted to be taking part in the Fayre this year at Cornhill Walk Shopping Centre (just behind Moyse’s Hall Museum). Come and visit to see the wonderful crafts and gifts made by local artists and while you’re there, why not say hello to me too? You can pet Bob the voiceless Tribble, pick up a free bookmark, and if you want to sign up for my mailing list, your name will be entered a free draw to win a book related mug (no, I’m not talking about the one behind the table).”

It’s very difficult to market a funny book. It’s difficult to market any book actually and as you know I’d kind of decided to give up on the idea. Indeed, my strategy for all marketing has been this:

Marketing? Pfft, easy. Ignore it until it goes away.

Marketing? Pfft, easy. Ignore it and write books.

However, there are people locally who have actually enjoyed my books and with the Fair, sorry Fayre, looming I thought I should at least make a token effort to tell the local folks I would be there.

In this post, I’m going to give you some advice. I’m also going to share a powerful secret: i.e. the many and varied ways I’ve bollocksed it all up so that you don’t have to.

In theory I’m supposed to be good at this. I was a brand manager for a household name company. But when 98% of the population knows who you are you don’t exactly have to try. Everyone is agog to know what your brand’s view on x, y or z is or what it’s doing next. You are, basically, insanely newsworthy AND not only that, but you have half a million quid to throw at making the 2% of the population living under a rock which is unaware of your brand well… aware.

Interestingly, as the brand manager, representative of the corporate heavyweight, I developed various techniques for putting others at their ease, most of which involved humour. In the bus and coach company, they worked. Unfortunately, public passenger transport is not your usual public relations arena. I found that people wanted you to be able to do your job, but if you could be humorous about it at the same time, they considered this a bonus rather than any lack of professionalism. I remember lengthy conversations with a freelance representative from one magazine about a mythical agency we would found together called “we write shite” you get the picture.

Since then, I have learned – possibly to my detriment – that this is not how the rest of the business world works, indeed, it may be that the transport industry doesn’t work like that any more. It’s been 12 years and one child since; a lot of my brain has gone missing and I couldn’t possibly comment. Coupled with my genuine lack of professionalism (cf 12 years: one child: no brain comment) this has not done me any favours.

Yes people, even if you are marketing a humour book, for God’s sake, don’t try to be funny: not until the interview, anyway, then you can be as funny as you like because you’re talking to your audience. I think, if you are able, it’s worth waiting until there’s some point in the press talking to you, too. Until there’s something in it for them. As a very small time affair, I feel quite arrogant and jumped up approaching them now.

Press coverage will not necessarily win you fans but it will put your name in front of a lot of people. However, if you can win yourself enough fans, it might bring you some press coverage anyway. A lot of fans is reason enough for the press to write about you. And if you have a following, your hopeless ditzyness melds magically from unprofessional conduct to cute eccentricity.

If, like I am this week, you find yourself called upon to abandon your concentrate-on-the-writing-and-wait-until-you’re-established-enough-for-them-to-seek-you press policy, here are a few handy hints.

  1. Make the information as interesting and up beat as possible.
  2. Target it. Use a press guide like Willings (or Pimms Media Guide if it’s still going). You should be able to find one at your library. Obvious suggestions are to try your local press, if you think they will be interested as well as magazines or new sheets aimed at fans of your genre(s). It might also be worth looking into press dealing with any other area in which you have a hook. In my case, magazines for mothers or families might be the way forward because I’m a stay at home mum. If you’ve written a thriller set in the world of competitive hang gliding, then magazines aimed at people who enjoy hang gliding or are fans of hang gliding might be a place to start.
  3. Check it. Make sure all the dates, times etc are correct. If you have discalculia, take extra special care to avoid doing what I did and telling everyone that your event on Friday 28th and Saturday 29th November is on Friday the 29th and Saturday 30th. That doesn’t look cool. However, if you have done that. Accept you’ve stuffed up and move on.
  4. Send it to them. Yes, very obvious this one but you have to be in it to win it. Even if you are pretty sure, in your heart of hearts, that nobody is likely to tell their audience about your event, send in the info because you never know. Let’s face it all they can say is ‘no’… or nothing. But if the information isn’t with them, they can’t magically know about it. Try to imagine ways you can make it useful to them as well as yourself. If they can see an obvious benefit from using it they may be more interested. Avoid doing what I did, though which was suggesting topics I could talk about for a radio interview. I was unsure at the time, because it’s kind of teaching Grandmother to suck eggs, but a day on I am cringing so I reckon it was a bad move. Er hem, there are reasons my publicity for this event hasn’t gone too well and the biggest one, so far is me. Perhaps that could be Thing Five.
  5. Avoid being the thing that holds it back. Ask nicely: be as courteous, cheerful, pleasant and polite about approaching as you can and try not to do anything dumb.
  6. Give them time – I have failed miserably on that score too – remember they plan their stuff in advance and so a couple of weeks’ notice rather then ‘oh tomorrow I am…’ is always going to be more effective.
  7. Be patient. Sure you can follow up (once, possibly twice if they sound interested) but don’t hound them. They’re busy and you are not the centre of their world; they have a lot of other stuff to do, deadlines to meet etc.
  8. Accept their verdict. They know what their audience wants. If they think that news of your stall/book/appearance/existence is unlikely to be of interest, you’re just going to have to suck it up and accept it. They probably have a much better idea of what their audience wants to hear about than you do.
  9. If they do give you some coverage, thank them.

So to sum up:  firstly, if you have an event on, then, obviously, you must tell the local press and anyone else who you think will be interested. After all, all you can do is ask. However, if you’re an obscure nobody, such as myself, accept that your information may not be used.

Secondly, I believe, more and more, is that for obscure and little known writers, our efforts are best put into writing books, good books that people will love. I’m sure there is a tipping point, I’m sure there is a critical mass at which sales suddenly skyrocket and members of the press start calling us. I’m sure that some people hit that tipping point with their first or second book; through luck, hard work, judgement or all three.

However, I’m equally sure that for most of us, that stuff is years in the making. So you and I, how do we go about it? We just keep going. We do stuff, we courteously advise the press it’s happening, we follow up and we carry on. The best products sell themselves, grashopper, but it takes time. And for all the events, appearances, signings and publicity that you do, the place you’ll sell the most copies of your next book is between the pages of your previous one.

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M T McGuire will be at Cornhill Walk Shopping Centre, in Bury St Edmunds, on Friday 28th and Saturday 29th November. That’s the one behind Moyse’s Hall Museum and opposite McDonalds. She will be giving out free book marks and selling copies of books from the K’Barthan Series to anyone who wants to buy them. Should you wish, she can even devalue them by signing them for you. You can also purchase Christmas cards and there’s an alphabet poster on sale. You can pet Bob the voiceless tribble and watch him make a noise like an annoyed lawn mower. If you sign up for the mailing list your name will be entered into a free draw to win a K’Barthan Series mug (not the one who wrote it, obviously, I mean a thing to drink hot bevvies out of).

 

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