Tag Archives: trying to be a writer

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.

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.

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.
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.
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.
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.

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.

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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Filed under General Wittering

Tagged as author blog, M T McGuire, Reviews, trying to be a writer, writers

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.

Make the information as interesting and up beat as possible.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

—————————————————————————

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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Filed under Author Updates, General Wittering, Good Advice

Tagged as author blog, comedy fantasy fiction, creative book marketing, M T McGuire, marketing a book, marketing for unpublished writers, trying to be a writer, writer mum, writer parent, writers, writing

5 Oct 2014 · 3:33 pm

Metal detecting, and its relation to my hopes as an #indie #writer

This week, I’m unsure how to go about my blog post. TI have several things to say so bear with me as I try to work out a way to jemmy them all in at once.

Ever in pursuit of the elusive hammered coin or interesting… thing, I went out metal detecting yesterday. I learned three things.

First that no matter how many smashing Saxon artifacts other people are digging up you have to walk over one to find it.
Second, I learned that my waterproofs are not waterproof any more. This lesson delivered as I was the wrong end of a field, about half a mile from the car, in a deluge. More waterproofs required, I think. The manner of my learning this rather sums up my day.
Third, on returning home, after steeping in a hot bath, I learned that basically, I’m doing setting the detector up right, choosing sensible places to detect and doing the right thing. I am finding tiny things as well as big things, I am finding things made out of metals and alloys that mirror the good stuff but unfortunately, they are bits of tractor and modern stuff rather than interesting finds. I’m finding miniscule things the size of a quartered silver coin, but they’re tiny pieces of metal. All are things which, in happier circumstances, could be good stuff. My point is that, for the most part, I’m doing it right, it’s just that the artifact gods are not smiling as benignly upon me as sometimes.

In a sop to my efforts, they (the Small Gods of Lost Things) did throw me this fantastic fossil of half a sea urchin. It holds a level of detail I’ve not seen outside the real thing so my day wasn’t wasted.

That white discolouration on the flat side means it broke in half several million years ago.

Onwards and upwards. There’s another dig next week.

Which kind of brings me onto the second thing. As you know, I’ve been a bit worried about my book sales recently. This is because I’ve been doing that fatal thing, comparing myself to other people. Really I should know better.

In order to feel some semblance of control, and in pursuit of social media savviness, I bought and read two Rayne Hall books: Twitter for Authors, and Why Does My Book Not Sell? 20 Simple Fixes (Writer’s Craft).

OK, if I can go off at a bit of a tangent here… I cannot recommend these books highly enough. I’ve always wondered how to interact with people on Twitter, Rayne Hall gives the answer. If the worst comes to the worst just go to her feed, eavesdrop on some conversations and have a chat. Her advice has definitely worked really well for me. Even in a week I’m having conversations and enjoying Twitter the way I wanted to but hadn’t. She also has what I consider to be an excellent attitude to social media, ie that it is social and that the more social and less of a book seller you are, the more likely you are to achieve book sales. This advice has been borne out by my own experience.

Likewise, while I’d got more of my book production performance in line with Rayne Hall’s there are still plenty of things in Why Does My Book Not Sell? 20 Simple Fixes (Writer’s Craft) that I can apply to my own books.

However, what I have learned from these two books, above all, is that for the most part, and barring a few tweaks, I’m doing the right thing.

My book sales are not lighting up the sky, though. Perhaps, like my efforts at metal detecting, the small percentage of fairy dust required is just absent from that part of my life at present. Perhaps. But if I’ve learned anything from metal detecting, it’s that perseverance pays off. If you keep believing and keep digging you will find interesting things. The law of averages demands it. You can’t find nothing but crap. Sure a big part of your detector finds may be but they can’t all be. And they aren’t. Not even for me.

Which begs a question.

Am I simply lacking fairy dust. Or are my book sales better than I think?

Comparatively I mean.

You see, it may be that for someone who has written a book that is, as a friend who works in magazine publishing put it, “Absolutely wonderful, but a very hard sell. I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole if it was submitted to me,” I’m actually doing better than I think.

Usually, a handful of people download my free book each day. Since it went free, in February, I’ve seen a sudden increase in sales of the second book after which, in June and July, I definitely saw an increase in sales of books 3 and 4. From selling a couple of books a month if I’m lucky and shifting a couple of my, admittedly, dodgy free shorts a month, there are now only a couple of days each month when nobody downloads anything.

Don’t get too excited. I’m not ready to make one of those gushing, “I can’t believe that my book is number one on Amazon!” posts on Kindleboards. I’m not even ready to make one of those “my sales have plummeted! I’m only selling 500 books a month” posts either. Mwah hahahargh! I dream of selling 500 books a month.

However, it’s all relative. This time last year I’d failed to sell a single book in three months straight. This year, to my eternal delight, even Kobo users are buying them. The Amazon stats are showing international sales. For the first time, people in France, Italy, Canada and Australia are buying them. For the first time since 2010 I am achieving monthly book sales that go into double figures.

The free book, Few Are Chosen, K’Barthan Series: Part 1 is even being downloaded from Google books – although I’m not sure what’s happening there because nobody has bought the others, I’m not even sure if Google is selling them or just pointing people to the vendors links on my website, but it’s a start.

And it brings me back to a piece of advice that has probably kept me sane in periods of recovery from my various knee injuries. Nevertheless, despite the fact I’ve been happily doling it out left right and centre this month it’s one I’d forgotten to apply to myself until now. It’s this:

Forget about how far you have to go, instead see how far you’ve come. Trust me. The answer to that question is always going to be, a lot further than you think. Which is kind of where I am about now.

So, am I earning much? No. The people around me, the authors I chat to from day to day, are earning far more.

Am I successful? No. My literary mates are, for the most part, several orders of magnitude more successful then me.

Am I doing better than last year? You bet your arse I am!

See how it works?

Yes, sure, as flat figures, my book sales are risible. But as a percentage increase on previous efforts they are flying. It’s all a question of how you view it. Sure, in the order of publishing species I’m so low on the scale that I’m aspiring to be a molecule – BUT, and here’s the rub, things might be different next year.

Onwards and upwards.

Coming next week… news of my latest story, out November 1st.

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Tagged as author blog, author blogs, book marketing, fantasy fiction, K'Barth, K'Barthan Series, Other Creatives, trying to be a writer, writers, writing

20 Sep 2014 · 2:00 pm

What am I doing here?

Do you ever have the feeling you’ve slipped into a different version of the universe by mistake? Sometime I feel as if I’m living another MTM’s life where the basic essentials are the same but some of the bits around the edges are… not what I thought. I can’t quite explain this but it’s usually at times when I look at the zeitgeist around me and then at what I do and think… ‘ah.’

This cropped up in two respects this week. First, because as a fairly avid reader of Chuck Wendig’s blog (you really should check it out) I read his post about 10 books that had stayed with him and took up his invitation, at the end, to list the ten books that stayed with me. You can check out the post and read everyone’s comments (including mine) here. What interested me was that the books that had stayed with people were all pretty heavyweight, barring one person, who, like I did, listed Green Eggs and Ham. But basically, the mood is academic. And serious. And then I turn up.

Here are ten of the books that have had the biggest effect on me:

THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW, CS Lewis. My parents read all the Narnia books to me and my brother as kids. I thought all books were like that. I didn’t realise there was a special pariah genre for them all.

FAIR STOOD THE WIND FOR FRANCE H E Bates. H E Bates can describe a summers day and just put you right there. This is just a wonderfully uplifting story and I loved it.

THE CHILDREN OF THE NEW FOREST Frederick Mayerat. Another fantastic book which my parents read to me as a kid. It has people with big hats and swords in it. What more could you want?

A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE, Stanley Weyman. More hats and swords, in France this time.

THE THREE MUSKETEERS Alexander Dumas. Cracking historical novel. More Swords and big hats, with the odd heaving bosom thrown in for good measure.

THE ASTERIX BOOKS by Goschinny and Uderzo. Yes. All of them. I first read them when I was about five. After that, each year I grew I got more of the jokes. Multi-layered masterful humour. And silly names.

THE HITCH HIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY Douglas Adams. Because that’s how you do brainy comedy.

GREEN EGGS AND HAM Dr Seuss. The world of Dr Seuss – particularly Tweetle beetles from Fox in Sox has me completely hooked. That’s where my own fantasy world building started. With the weirder offerings of Dr Deuss. But I like green eggs and ham best.

WYRD SISTERS and THE NIGHT WATCH by Terry Pratchett. Because Terry writes the most fantastic stuff and I love it.

ABOUT A BOY Nick Hornby. Poignant, intelligent and laugh out loud funny.

A SPOT OF BOTHER, Mark Haddon. Ditto.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Bill Bryson. Bryson makes a history funny. It’s densely written. You can’t read too much at a time because it’s the literary equivalent of an enormous cream cake. Little and often is the way to read this. But it is absolutely fab. Actually, anything Bryson writes is a scream.

Looking at it now, I missed out, PRACTICALLY EVERYTHING BY GRAHAM GREENE (whose name I can’t remember how to spell) and PRACTICALLY EVERYTHING BY OSCAR WILDE. If I could write one piece of work like The Importance of Being Earnest I would consider my work as an author done.

Looking at my list compared to the books on the others it struck me how very out of step with the popular zeitgeist I am. Lots very serious books by people like Melville, Poe, Atwood, Hosseni… A fair bit of GRRM, CS Lewis, Herbert and King. Nobody mentioned Pratchett as far as I recall although I think someone mentioned Douglas Adams.

Find a forum about books and the authors everyone bangs on about seem to be the likes of Steinback, Hemingway, Poe, King, Herbert, Melville, Hemingway, GRRM…. American authors. Always American. No-one mentions HE Bates, no-one mentions Greene. Perhaps, most Americans – and we have to face it, the English speaking internet has a very strong US bias even though there are more of us, from other nations, than them – haven’t heard of Bates or Greene, or other greats like George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde or Sir John Betjamin, just as I haven’t read Steinback or Melville (yet). But going back to the blog post, the onus of that set of comments does seem to be on cutting edge, horror or high brow.

It made me realise how inept I am at trying to be edgy.

It also highlighted the career decision that lies ahead of me now; heart or head. Let me explain. I started out with a budget that would cover six books. But due to the requirement to edit K’Barthan 1 again and again and the need for a proof edit after the copy edit I’ve blown that budget on four books. I thought six was a good buffer but to be honest I expected to earn enough to produce a low budget book once I’d published two or three. I’ve published four and that may yet happen. It may but it’s not looking too hopeful.

So what now?

The K’Barthan Series was completely self indulgent. I wrote exactly what I wanted to write, and I wrote it with a passion. In an ideal world that’s what I’ll do. But I’m beginning to realise that K’Barth is quite… out there. But… in the wrong way. It’s up front but not edgy enough, it’s weird but not scary enough. It’s not normal. It’s a book syndrome. It’s a bit socially lumpy.

Mwahahahahargh! I’ve produced the literary equivalent of myself!

Then I swing back the other way and convince myself it’s fine. Comfort myself with stories of people like Anne Magill, who studied fine art at Liverpool and then went to London (St Martin’s) where she met solid resistance from her tutors to her style. She stayed true to it, though, and is now a hugely successful painter selling works to people like Russell Crowe.

Nice.

She says (Anne Magill, I mean):

“I ended up going into commercial design because figurative traditional work was frowned upon,” but, she added, “If I’m damned I’m damned. I can only do what’s in my head.”

She followed her heart and now she’s doing OK.

Then there’s Kate Bush. Look at the pop scene in the late 1970s and early 80s. You’ve got punk, two tone, mods doing the usual do and then the odd M.O.R. hangover from the disco era. Where in the name of all that’s holy to you put our Kate Bush among all that? Her output is completely crazy, it’s quirky, her voice is weird, her choices of subject for her songs is esoteric, at best, and at worst barking loola. But people liked it anyway because it’s so honest and genuine, oh and it’s also good.

That’s what I want. For my stuff to be honest and genuine and good. And for me to be right in believing.

But am I? Or am I just being a self-indulgent, jumped-up twat? Someone called me a hack in a review the other day. It was oblique, as in ‘hack habits’ but it smarted. A lot. And the worst thing. It’s probably true.

When I wrote the K’Barthan Series, I wanted to show myself and all the naysayers that I can write like this and succeed. I reasoned that, if I liked it, other people would. And some do. And I am beyond grateful to each and every one of you who has bought it, read it, reviewed it. But it is a hard sell. And I’m realising that all the publishing people who said the names were stupid, the plot too involved, the level of intellect I assumed for my readers too high… I’m realising that unfortunately, if I want to make enough money to pay for another book, they might be right.

That’s probably why the big self publishing sites like Big Al’s Books and Pals and Bookbub won’t touch Few Are Chosen. Because when it comes down to it, even in self published author land, the big fish want the same commercial criteria that publishers want. And it’s all very well trying to prove something actually does work, but for that to happen, readers have to know it’s there. And it’s almost impossible to get it in front of them. Except off line, in the real world, where you need stock that costs money I don’t have. It’s a bit chicken and egg to be honest.

So the nub of it all is that I’m suffering a bit of a conundrum as to what I should write next.

Because I want to write stuff that is honest and true, that is me on paper, which means more stuff like the K’Barthan Series. But if I’m going to write more K’Barthan style madness, I need to do something alongside that sells, to fund it. Or something that will, at least, be mainstream enough for the big indie sites, with thousands of followers, to risk actually putting it in front of them. That’s tricky, because I wouldn’t know what commercial was if it stood up and smacked me in the face with a haddock. Universal appeal, yeh, I can do that, but nobody wants that, it makes selling the books too difficult. They want the next big thing. Before it happens. They want stuff that sells. And I don’t know what that is.

Oh dear.

So it’s back to the brick wall. That’s right, the one I was hoping I could sidestep by self publishing my books and proving to the world… yada, yada, yada.

Because my stuff didn’t fit with publishers, but it doesn’t fit in with the indie gatekeepers either – except for Awesome Indies, who I, therefore, think are awesome.

So here’s my three step plan:

STEP 1: Find out what, exactly, is ‘wrong’ with the K’Barthan Series, somehow. I.E. find out why a publisher would say ‘no’ so I can avoid making the same mistakes in the next book.

STEP 2: Applying what I’ve learned, I need to write the most commercial novel of which I am capable and use it to fund any subsequent pieces of unmarketable whimsy.

STEP 3: Stick £10 a month away in my building society account. For all my hand-to-mouthness (yes I know, I spent everything I had on a car. It’s definitely my fault) I won’t notice it’s gone. I have discalculia, for heaven’s sake! And in a year’s time, when I’ve written my next book, there might be enough cash to publish it at the usual loss and eventually there might be so many books that the sales income they generate can fund another one, anyway.

STEP 4: Write some shorts and experiment with putting 20,000 novellas into things like KDP Select on a rolling basis, which, hopefully, will introduce my work to a whole new bunch of readers who have no access to it now, and who will buy all my other books (and then music will play and there’ll be smeary shots of me dancing, crying with joy, through falling rose petals-) Sorry. Got a bit carried away there.

Held in reserve, steps 5 and 6.

STEP 5: Find a publisher who will make me rewrite and rewrite and rewrite my next piece of unmarketable whimsy until, together, we turn it into something marketable. This is a hugely unappealing prospect because I can’t imagine a publisher thinking any differently about my books from the agents and the big hitter review sites. Which means thousands of pounds on postage and years and years of being told, politely, to fuck off and trying to put a positive spin on it. But I might manage it, and if I do, it will open many closed doors, and I’ll learn a huge amount.

STEP 6: Crowd fund the next book? Eeesh. I guess there’s Unbound, but do I have the time or charisma to undertake the social media activity required to drum up… well any votes? Let alone enough for them to publish a book.

Which brings me back round in a circle to the question ‘how do I make my work commercially viable?’ The biggest problem I face lies my answer to that question: ‘I like it the way it is.’

So that’s the nub of it. Do I attempt to be the Kate Bush of writing and try to make it on my own? Only with rather less talent and no help in the offing from any literary equivalent of David Gilmour. Do I keep on struggling and hope that somehow, one day, my work stands up? That I can find a way to walk the line between being true to myself and bang on the money. Or do I try to sing something more mainstream, in a slightly less squeaky voice, about a bog standard subject to see if the Polydors of the writing world will accept it?

Very tricky question. And one to which, right now, I have no answer.

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3 Sep 2014 · 1:38 pm

I am now, officially hybrid… I think.

That’s right I run on oil AND gas. Sorry, no. What I mean is that the good folks at a small publisher have accepted a short story from me for an anthology. In the process of this they have sent me a publishing contract to sign and there is talk of a small remuneration, depending on sales volume. I think that does officially make me, in the proper sense of the word; with publication pending.

Which brings me neatly onto the other thing. I was looking at Chuck Wendig’s excellent blog today and he was talking about keeping your writing true. Writing who you are rather than what you think people will want. It’s a fantastic post, link to come. The gist is that you can only write for yourself, from your heart because if you write to please anyone else or to follow a trend your writing can lose its conviction. I particularly liked his take on that. Writing a book about something because everyone else has achieved success with it is like being a dog chasing a car.

‘Don’t be the dog, be the car.’

But that made me think because the biggest reason I’m self published is because I write stuff that isn’t really mainstream. I believe it has mainstream appeal but only on an incremental basis with lots of time for people to get used to the idea. And I don’t believe any publisher will take a punt on it until it’s already successful.

That’s not to say I don’t experiment with writing different stuff. My accepted story at Awesome Indies Publishing is one such. And this writing what you, yourself, would like thing, I really have no choice.

Any M T attempt at erotica would be the literary equivalent of this. Thank you http://2makeyoulaugh.blogspot.co.uk

Can I just go off on a tangent here for a minute? Do you ever wonder what writing is like for authors in other genres? I mean, say you write erotica. If you write decent erotica, presumably it turns you on – I mean, that’s what erotica is supposed to do, right? So what do you do about being in a permanent state of arousal, I mean, does it cloud your judgement? Do you end up needing a cold shower to view your work objectively. Or, when you’ve finished a scene do you just have a quick wank, while the cat looks on disapprovingly, and then move onto the next one? It’s not a question that’ll be troubling me. I quite like reading good erotica from time to time, so I did try writing it once. It was one of the funniest things I have ever written but, unfortunately, in absolutely the wrong way.

So for the moment, I’ll carry on writing Bond meets Adams (but without the spies) and see what happens.

Right now, I see what I’m doing as positioning.

It’s as if I’m leaving my stuff, with artful, care on the bank of the mainstream. To start with there’s just one corner in the water. I imagine the paper waving about in the passing current but each papery wave represents a minuscule tug towards the water. Slowly but surely (I hope) the current pulls it down the bank, tiny, tiny nth of an inch at a time. There’ll be more of it floating in the water now, semi submerged, gently slipping further out into the stream as the current draws it in. Then, it’ll be hanging there for a few seconds, with nothing more than a fraction of the corner stuck to the side until… oops yes it’s floating away and everyone’s a bit surprised because although it’s waterlogged and moving a bit slowly, and shouldn’t really be there, it hasn’t sunk.

Er yeh… That’s the way I see my books inveigling themselves into popular culture. But no-one is going to risk picking up my work and chucking it in until at least some of it has been proved to float on its own. So getting the mini-est publishing deal feels as if well… it’s probably not sliding down the bank yet but maybe a couple more pages have gone in.

Sure, one answer to this question might be to write something that has broader appeal. Perhaps one day I’ll manage it. But if I want to write with conviction I have to write what I write. I know there are many multi-genre authors who would regard that as unprofessional of me, so it is a huge relief to find the particular approach I use endorsed by Mr Wendig. You can find his post, which really puts it very well, here.

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8 Jul 2014 · 11:25 pm

Help! Help! It’s the Chaos Fairies… and some other stuff…

First up, I’d like to thank the host of brave souls who have started following this blog recently. I really appreciate it and I apologise that I haven’t been able to pop over and visit everyone back. The spirit is willing but, as those of you who have been reading this blog regularly for a while will know, my life is a bit chaotic.

However, while I freely admit that my general organisational life plan seems to be reactive – as in lurching from one oh-shit-did-I-forget-to-do-that crisis to another – I feel that today there were mitigating circumstances. The Chaos Fairies were with me. I was very organised this morning, I dropped off McMini and put a wash on nice and early. The first inkling that the Chaos Fairies had turned up was when, after about an hour I went back to see if the washing was done and discovered the machine had switched itself off.

Dan dan daaaaaah. It was an old machine and I kind of thought this.

Yeeeeeeek! (Yeh yeh. Eyebomb, therefore eye am.

Luckily it was only the plug. I fixed it. No more harm done than an hour of sunlight and drying time dropped.

A few moments later I returned to my computer to start on my to do list. I managed a couple of things. Booyacka! Then, while my anti-virus programme updated itself I planned the flyers and bookmarks I was going to make.

Or not.

When I tried to open my dtp programme I discovered that my anti-virus had taken the unilateral decision to quarantine the executable file. I couldn’t get it out so I had to reinstall. Then it decided that the latest update of flash was also malware. Then I switched it off file checking and left it to look at e-mails and the internet stuff. I should probably look into that one sometime. In the meantime I’ve managed one book mark and trust me, it was a major achievement.

So I trundled off to collect McMini having pretty much blasted my only day to work this week into nothing. The handlebars had come loose on my bike and were wobbling about. Luckily it was just a case of them moving up or down rather than turning while the wheel stayed pointing straight on but it was… odd.

On the up side. I found the shoes I wanted to wear – which I haven’t been able to find all week – stacked neatly among McOther’s. What the hell was I doing when I put those away? Perhaps the Chaos Fairies felt a little bit guilty and pointed me in the right direction. Or maybe not.

However, it’s probably going some when you come close to forgetting about the launch of your own book. Which is on Saturday by the way. Gulp. Yep, as usual my effort to effect a smooth, ritzy launch is a complete shambles. I’ll be clicking publish on Amazon slightly early, for the ebook, for the simple reason that I will only have patchy access to the internet from Friday morning onwards and it would be a pity if it didn’t appear on the day it was supposed to. If you want to make sure you get your copy it is available to pre-order in all formats pretty much everywhere except in the case of the ebook on Amazon. Phnark.

Never mind. It’s not all shambolic. I do have a signing coming up in Diss, just down the road in Norfolk. Details coming soon.

Right then. For now, here’s a list of the places where you can get hold of an advance copy of Looking For Trouble.

The cover of Looking For Trouble

To preorder multiple formats – as they become available – click on the links.

In ebook format…
Kobo
Smashwords
iBooks
Barnes & Noble (nook)

In print:

The Book Depository.
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon US.
From your local Amazon, if you live outside those two.
Waterstone’s

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25 May 2014 · 3:58 pm

A little light fluff… literally

It’s been a bit too long since I posted anything on my blog. I have a box 010 post owing and heaven knows what else but there may be a bit of a hiatus until after I’ve launched both books… not that I have much time to launch both books.

You know about the old dears; Dad came out of hospital on Friday. And it’s half term this week, so I won’t be doing much writing related stuff for the next few days, either. Just to complicate things we have also adopted a rescue cat. He is just coming up for 10 weeks old as I write and in the words of the vet he is “a bit of a monster”. Not in temperament, he is a poppet, if he sticks his claws in, you just mewl like a kitten in pain and he withdraws them at once. He’s gentle, loving and a real character. In short, well, in his case it’s more like, long, he is great fun but he is absolutely bat-shit crazy. He is also at least a foot long, about 18 inches if I include his head as well, with enormous feet and ears…. which, as the vet explained, he’s going to grow into.

He was already named before we got him: Harrison, after George (his mother was Beatle and his brothers were Lennon and McCartney). He answers to Harrison, as well, so we’re stuck with it. With those ears, we’d quite like to call him Spock but it’s not going to happen. He’s great fun but he also takes up a lot of time. If we want him to be a people cat there has to be lots of interaction from the get go.

So, without more ado, here he is: Harrison. My latest distraction.

Harrison has two settings: On.

or Off.

Obviously, ‘off’ is the easier of the two states to photograph. He moves extremely quickly.

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25 Jan 2014 · 5:39 pm

Fed up with eating snail and tortoise dust? Join us the #slowwriters.

I know this isn’t a glacier. It isn’t even an iceberg. It’s mini icebergs, in the Tweed but it’s the closest I can get.

Ah I was all fired up to write this post, but now I’ve labrynthitis, sinusitis and a temperature and everything’s a bit meh. Then again, that’s probably as good a time as any.

The received wisdom about indie publishing is that if you want to earn money you need to write lots and lots of books. Fast. Or you have to be all over the internet like a rash, but a good rash; a warm snuggley comfort blanket, perhaps, rather than a rash. But you have to be there, working on your soft sell marketing techniques 24/7 so that your book sales soar. Alas, it looks like this is true and it’s only the people with the kind of sales skills that Satan, himself would envy and also time, and lots of it, who make a living from self publishing fiction. And the reason that makes me feel a bit meh?

Well, I am a stay at home mum. I will never have the kind of time required to make it out of the self published pond slime. And if I had the remotest skill at selling anything, I’d have scored myself a trad deal by now because the way forward is hybrid. Even though I am cynical and old enough to know that life is never fair, I am pissed off that indie publishing is not the level playing field I hoped. Hence the meh.

However, I did feel better after reading this fabulous article on Chuck Wendig’s blog in which he talks about how long it takes to become a writer. The basic gist being ‘a sod of a long time’. This quote, in particular, I loved:

‘I have been referred to at times as an overnight success, which is true as long as you define “overnight” as “a pube’s width shy of 20 years.”’

The basic gist of his post was that it takes as long as it takes. And I know he’s right, or I wouldn’t have started on this writing malarky. I want to do it, I have to do it and if I can only do it at a speed that makes glaciers look fast so be it. Sure my ‘overnight’ may be 50 years but it’s better than looking back and thinking ‘what if?’ than never having tried at all. Nine years on, I’m sitting here with 4 books under my belt (although I did make my first attempt at the first one when I was 20). I sell less and less of the two that are published each month but I can’t help living in hope. Such is the hopeless optimism of the artist!

Commenting on another post on Chuck Wendig’s blog I encountered two other stay at home Mums who felt exactly the same way as I did. I got chatting on twitter with one of them, Megan Haskell and we came up with the idea of #slowwriters. A support group for people who are ideas rich and time poor, or for people who take a long time to write a book – because not everyone can churn out a book in a month. Sometimes, quality cannot be rushed.

So, if you’re gnashing your teeth with frustration as the snails and tortoises disappear over the horizon, if you sometimes think that there may be fossils that are formed in less time that it takes you to write a book, take heart. Here’s how Megan described #slowwriters – because she does it much better than I can.

‘We’re time-poor, idea-rich individuals with responsibilities that can’t be pushed aside or down-prioritized. As such, we’ve come up with a brilliant, albeit unformed plan. We’re going to create a support group for slow writers, individuals who feel frustrated with their glacial progress and need someone to point out that progress is progress, even if it’s only inches a year.’

Or that, as Chuck Wendig put it, ‘it takes as long as it takes’.

If you are a writer with other commitments, duties, things you cannot put aside that mean your writing only happens slowly you might feel this way too. Would you be interested in taking part in a group like that?

Because I am really grown up and a very grown up and mature mother and because I can: my lad, as the Baldy Man (that’s my hair).

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10 Jun 2013 · 4:32 pm

I’ve got my inner lumberjack out, and the painters in: Luck is in the eye of the beholder.

We have a tree in our garden. We have several but this one hangs out over the road. About a year ago now, it was hit by a recycling lorry. You know, one of those ones that appears jacked up with a metal box on top that is so dented it isn’t really a box any more, but looks as if it has been distressed, via the medium of carefully lobbing it off Beachy Head, before fitting. They’re big and tall these lorries which is how it hooked the lowest branch of the tree. There was a lot of creaking the branch bent a bit and then, thank heavens, it pinged back into position and the lorry went on it’s way.

“Phew,” we all thought, watching from the kitchen. But it wasn’t ‘phew’. It had cracked the branch without us realising and it hung lower after that, high enough, for the winter, but when the spring came and it was covered in leaves and seeds we could hear it getting lorry dinked more often.

So McOther and I discussed it on the way to my parents this weekend. We’d get it pollarded, we decided. When we got home, the offending branch had a big crack in it and new wood showing. It was hanging even lower, precariously over a small red citroen.

“It’ll fall and crush that,” I said. “We ought to find out who it belongs to and get them to move it.”

“It’ll be fine, said McOther. That branch isn’t coming down any time soon.”

“Hmm…” I said. McOther is a qualified engineer, which makes him think he can comment with knowledge and certainty about pretty much anything. I’m not an engineer, but I am a bumpkin, so I know what a bit of tree that’s about to fall off looks like.

We found a pair of police bollards we borrowed for moving in in – which I was supposed to have taken back to the police station; 4 years ago – and put them hopefully under the branch, or at least in the bits under the branch which weren’t occupied by red citroen and went back indoors.

This morning as I was leaving with McMini a large lorry went past and with a horrible rending and cracking of wood, it removed the branch.

“Fucking hell! Shit! The red citroen!” I shouted, throwing a stressed, “You didn’t hear any of that!” back at McMini as I bounded over to the fence.

Amazingly, the red citroen was unscathed. The lorry had taken the branch with it a little way and deposited it about an inch in front of the bumper.

“Praise the Lord the citroen is unharmed,” I said.

The lorry driver stopped and got out. There wasn’t much either of us could do, except be very, very glad about the citroen’s narrow escape – he’d clonked the branch on the way up too which would definitely have been automotive curtains. I asked him if he thought he could get the branch to the side of the road. I think he was delivering malt to the micro brewery round the corner because he did, without any trouble, and I had to saw it into four pieces. After that there wasn’t much more we could do, we bade each other a cheery goodbye and on he went.

Cursing my luck at yet another thing thrown in my path to the computer and my writing, I returned from the school run put on my baseball cap and checked shirt got the saw, secateurs, big cutters, huge suede bus-driver’s luggage removing guantlets stolen from National Express (which I still use for gardening after all these years) etc out and removed the branch from the road. It was a big fuck off branch and I was proud to have it sawed, broken and chopped into manageable pieces in two hours. I divvied it up into logs, kindling and brown bin fodder and put it away.

What does this have to do with luck?

Well, sure, it was unlucky that the branch fell down but it was very lucky that it didn’t hurt anyone or break someone’s car. I fear it may well have damaged the lorry. I didn’t look and luckily, neither did the guy driving.

On one level, I was unlucky having to remove it today, when I’d wanted to write. On the other, there are certain, hormonally charged days in each month when writing is impossible. Yes, hormones screw us ladies up THAT badly. And there’s nothing like a bit of exercise to help with stomach cramps. So while it could have been bad news, I ended up feeling better sooner than I normally would and seeing as I’d only have been staring at my screen/book/notes/whatever getting steadily more and more pissed off, it was probably a stroke of good luck that I had to get my inner Lumberjack out, when I had the painters in.

On terminally unproductive days it’s hard to walk away from the er hem, terminal. Even if you know it’s the right thing to do. Today, fate made the decision for me.

As I chopped and sawed and pootled around I found myself whistling merrily. It was only after a while that I realised what the tune I was whistling was. And now I am clearly doomed to have it going through my head all day. But it’s not so bad. After all, it’s a cheery tune.

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8 Apr 2013 · 9:00 pm

Treasure hunting. Naval gazing.

It’s the school holidays so work on my book has stopped for a week or two while McMini and I do stuff.

Today was particularly good. We went round to some friends; mine and his. The weather was lovely, we sat on the leeward side of the house, in the warm, out of the wind, and while the kids played together we had a gossip. Then, as their house is 14th Century I thought I’d have a go with my metal detector.

Despite owning it a while, I seem to be taking a terribly long time to get the hang of actual metal detecting. All the permissions etc required take time and so far, I haven’t got round to it. This has made it tricky, well, illegal actually, for me to practise outside my own garden. And therein lies the problem. The detector does several different tones of beep for different metals. However, in my garden it usually gets all the beeps in a single sweep. It makes it rather tricky to pinpoint any of the beeps individually or work out where to dig. Added to my severe lack of experience and you have a recipe for if not disaster then, very slim pickings. All that had come to light, before this morning, was one old nail and I was cock-a-hoop to find that.

However, today I finally felt I might be getting the hang of it. Just like my garden, it was a case, not so much of failing to find anything, as finding too many signals. Three or four different tones on one swing and no obvious indication as to where to dig. The truth dawned that it is not my garden that’s full of rubbish – well it is, I’ve never dug up so much aluminium foil but I digress. Where was I? Ah yes. The truth hit me that metal detecting isn’t walk, walk walk beep, ah yes, dig here, indeed it is clear that my garden is the norm rather than the exception.

So, clearly, I realised, it might be smart to filter out some of the beeps. I played with the settings and chose ‘coins’ because that cut out about half the spectrum including iron, which, frankly, seems to be in most things. I get signals for iron off everything, even the sodding grass. Thinking that there was bound to be the odd coin lying about and at least I’d start to get the hang, not only of finding things, but also of actually digging them out.

The machine reported some coppers – it’s American so it suggested they were 1c pieces but let’s not split hairs. They were pure signals, no interference, so I was able to pinpoint them fairly quickly and dig. So have I found a gold sovereign? Have I been like the blokes at my club who turned up last week with Edward II coins, coins from the reign of King John, Saxon beads and other amazingly ancient things? Am I like the guy who arrived the month before with an Iceni gold coin?

Well… er… no.

After digging two enormous holes in her lawn I came up with well… yes, two coins. They weren’t old, they were pennies, not even pennies, one pence pieces from 1971 and 1979, respectively.

For some reason this caused both of us an insane amount of mirth. Even so, both of us admitted to feeling a slight frisson of excitement that the machine had beeped, that we’d dug and that we’d managed to get something out. Even if it was only 1p.

That’s the thing, isn’t it? Success is relative. If I’d been using a metal detector for the last twenty years I’d be expecting to turn up some pretty good stuff. But I haven’t. This is the third time. I went there hoping that I might learn how to find a metal thing and successfully dig it up. So while today’s er… can I call it a haul? was laughable in most respects, I think I might actually have gained that knowledge. Job done then, right?

Food for thought.

Where does writing come in you ask? Well, here’s a short list of THINGS about my books:

I’ve written two books and I’m writing another one. That’s something I never thought I’d achieve.
There’s a chance they might be good books.
People who have read them often like them. Some people like them a lot.
People like the covers… and the merchandise.
Are people buying the books? Are they buffalo?

What worries me? What do I dwell on the whole time? Number five. Because the other four, they make it look as if the K’Barthan Trilogy is a quality product that should walk off the shelves. But it doesn’t, and it isn’t. I don’t know if that’s my fault or if I’m deluded or whether it’s just a reflection of the difficulty of the market and if I think about any of that stuff I will be undone. That way madness lies.

What the metal detecting thing has taught me is that, actually, I’ve done quite well and that maybe I should concentrate on being happier with things 1-4 and on what I want to do next. In other words, I want to find something a bit more interesting than a one pence piece with my metal detector, but until I’ve gained the skill to locate one of those with a reasonable level of consistency, I probably won’t.

In short, when it comes to selling books, no-one really seems to know what works. So all an author can do is show people where to find them, or tell them – where permitted – and hope someone, somewhere will pick up on them. Because the only thing that’s really going to sell your book, ever is readers, who love it, telling their friends. So, let me leave you with the seven golden rules of happy authordom;

Write, as much as you can. Write, to pick yourself up. Even if you can’t think of anything to write, write something. Because every authorholic needs authorhol, and when you’ve written it, get it edited, honed and primped until it’s the best you can possibly achieve. You owe yourself a decent product.
Avoid checking your sales figures more than once a week it’ll only depress you.
Avoid any places where authors who sell hundreds of books a month hang out, because you may find them complaining that their sales are piss poor almost as often as you do, that’ll make you want to weep. Also avoid the it-can-happen-to-you-too stories. It might but it probably won’t. Accept that and don’t beat yourself up.
Try not to be disheartened if you discover that the only place you can persuade anyone to buy any of your books from is Amazon.
Avoid going to forums to sell your book except in specifically designated areas. Go there to chat. If people like you and you’re lucky, they might buy your book eventually but nothing’s less appealing to them than a hard sell.
Always remember that behind every overnight success are usually several decades of hard work.
Remember that the only thing that will sell your books, ever, is readers who have loved them, banging on and on about them to their friends.

There you go.

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