Beside the river Trent, Beeston

Last week I took part in a psychology experiment looking at the impact of the natural world on mood and well being. Each evening I was asked to write down three good things I’d noticed in nature, just one sentence for each.

All I did throughout the week was go to work and back each day. There is a small nature reserve next to my office, and some leafy gardens to pass if I go to the shop. But many of my nature observations occured during my commute, while sitting in traffic jams. I found natural things to enjoy on the motorway, in a carpark, and even in my own car (I have car spiders. No, really).

We were not asked to make any particular effort regarding the quality of the three sentences submitted, but I found that I chose my words very carefully, to distill the essence of a sensation into one sentence. Below are a few of my observations.

Banks of pale purple rhododendrons overflowing a crumbling brick wall.

Tiny fish with two flashes of yellow along the sides, darting through murky water.

Hard rain bouncing off tarmac.

White rosebuds with a creamy, delicate scent.

A small hawk drifting low over the many lanes of M1’s junction 25.

Whether due to this exercise or not, I do seem to have been in a pretty good mood recently. The study has finished now, but I’m going to try and continue it, carrying a little notebook around with me, and jotting down small observations. I think there are several benefits to be had. It will encourage me to go out and get a bit of air at lunch time (instead of just reading a book in the office kitchen). It is an exercise in observation and in communication: how to express a sensation in a clear, succinct way.

If I keep it up for a reasonable period of time it will also serve as a useful record of natural reference throughout the year. Instead of having to ask google, when does wild garlic flower? Do ferns come out at the same time as bluebells? I can check my observations and find my own answers.

I’d be interested to hear if you have any regular writing exercises you like to do? I’ve never got on well with ones I’ve tried to do before because I found them boring, and my attention is easily diverted. But I find this particular exercise pleasing and useful.

As discussed last week, I ran the promotion for three days over the bank holiday weekend: friday to sunday. I submitted details of my free book promotion to 16 sites – almost all of which said in their blurb that they ‘may’ feature your book – or, of course, you could buy guaranteed promotion for a small fee of generally $5-15. I elected not to buy any guaranteed promotion, but to see what I could actually get for free.

Of those 16 sites, as far as I’m aware only FreeBooksy did feature Darklands, and I’m pretty sure I have them to thank for a large percentage of my total downloads.

Friday started fairly slow, but suddenly began to gather pace around 3 o’clock – presumably when FreeBooksy’s email alert came out (I had subscribed to many of the sites I submitted to, but somehow neglected that one. However, I did get an email from them at 4.30 advising me that my book was featured on the site). For the next several hours my download stats jumped by about 100 every hour.

I had intended to keep a close eye on precisely how it all panned out. However, a family emergency saw me instead having to suddenly go spend the weekend with my poorly mum, with only my laptop and intermittant internet access :-/

In any case, there wasn’t much to see after that. At six pm friday my downloads stood at around 300. At 9pm, 600. By 9am the next morning I was very close to 1000. But it all tailed off from there. My tally for the three days is 1135.

The vast majority of that total came from Amazon.com, which I am very pleased about. Although I have several excellent reviews on Amazon.co.uk, I have so far failed to make the slightest impact on the US site. I also had several downloads from other territories which I wouldn’t necessarily have expected to reach at all. Breakdown below:

I estimate that my own efforts via Twitter, Facebook and generally being chatty and personable to anyone I met online over the weekend resulted in between 100-200 downloads.

My conclusion? If I run free days again I will pay for some promotion. I think I was lucky to get the freeBooksy promotion, and without it this would have been a bit of a wash out. It’s a lot of trouble to go to for possibly only 100 downloads. The promotional ads for these sites are not expensive, typically between $5-15. Extrapolating from my miniscule sample size of one, my best guess is that you could expect perhaps 1000 downloads per promotional site feature.

I wonder how many of those downloads will ever get read? I know from my own behaviour that I will often grab a free book while I can, without even reading any reviews or the sample. I will skim the description, and if it sounds even vaguely intriguing, I’ll have it. Then it sits on my kindle untouched until I happen to find myself with some time to kill and no current book. I generally read through a few samples/free books, scrapping them for not being good enough/not being my thing – until either I find one to settle with and read, or just weary of the whole proceses and go do something else.

So I know there’s a good chance that many of those downloads will never be looked at again. But I have no idea how many. From those that do get read I should hopefully get some new reviews. They may not all be good reviews, of course, but that’s all part of the process. I guess it will take weeks or even months to see what I reap from this promotion. All I can tell you right now is that four more people have added Darklands to their lists on Goodreads.

I’d be interested to hear what experiences others have had with their KDP Select free days. Similar to mine, or vastly different? Did you pay for adverts or just try to go it alone? And did you ultimately reap the increased reviews/eventual sales you were hoping for?

I’ve also found quite a few free books to snap up myself while perusing all the free book promotion sites.

One in particular caught my eye because the cover is almost identical to a photo in my collection – in fact I used it on a post about writing blurbs last year! The angle is slightly different, but I’m pretty sure that’s the same tree.

I snapped it on a visit to Yellowstone National Park two years ago, at one of the hot springs. Mammoth, I think. I know its a scenic spot, but what are the odds? Considering I live in Britain, and have visited the US twice in 40 years!

The book is Dead, but not for long, by Matthew Kinney and Lesa Kinney Anders, and it’s about zombies – hurrah!

Dead, but not for long, by Matthew Kinney and Lesa Kinney Anders

Dead tree in Yellowstone National Park

Pro: Increased exposure. Persuade doubtful readers to take a chance. Find new readers shortly before Kikimora‘s release.

Con: I spent three years writing that book. Surely it’s worth more than £0.00? Doesn’t offering free books devalue the whole writing process? Will people take me seriously if I give my hard work away?

I’ve finally decided to give it a go (thanks in part to this excellently reasoned post by Lisa M Lilly), and Darklands will be free on Amazon this weekeend, friday to sunday (though, I believe it works on US Pacific time, so I guess it won’t be free until something o clock friday morning).

Once I had set the free dates, I found as many sites as I could that would promote free books. There are a lot of them out there. Here’s a helpful list to get you started. But what I found was that although most of these sites may promote your free book for free, they also offer guaranteed promotion for a small fee of typically $5-15.

Doesn’t sound like much, does it? Part of me is thinking I probably ought to buy at least one promotion package, to ensure that this whole endeavour isn’t a big waste of time. But I’m holding out in the name of scientific curiosity; to see how effective any of these paid promotions are I first need a control result. I’ll be interested to see whether any genuinely free promotion actually happens. If it doesn’t, never mind. I’ll try again when my next free days roll around.

I’ve submitted details of my free promotion to around 20 sites. I didn’t get around to doing this until sunday/monday, and most of them request at least a week’s notice on your promotion, so that might hamper my effectiveness somewhat.

There was more I could have done, but I had already spent three hours filling in forms with the same details over and over again – apart from the ones that wanted some unique information (in fact, that was probably what took up most of the time), and I was heartily sick and tired of it by then.

What I also found during this process was the amount of other promotional tools out there – there’s a load of stuff on Goodreads that I wasn’t even aware of, although I use it fairly regularly as a reader. So I have also offered free promotional copies to reviewers on a discussion thread for that purpose.

I have discovered that there’s a lot more promotion I could be doing all the time, not just when my book is on offer! The dificulty, of course, is finding the time. For instance, this week I am off work and working hell for leather through a massive redraft of Kikimora. I want to work through all the structural changes in one fell swoop, so that I can keep mentally on top of all the story threads. I’m going to struggle to fit all the necessary work into one week (even with the bank holiday weekend), and resent even an hour of my time taken up with other tasks (like writing blog posts)!

So this free promotion is an experiment. It might be a complete fail. But I’m interested to find out, and I’ll let you know how it goes. What I really want to achieve from it is increased exposure in the US – a market I have so far failed to dent in the slightest – and more reviews, on Amazon US, Amazon UK, Goodreads, or anywhere else.

Who else has used KDP Select free days? Did you find it useful? Gain many new fans? Did you pay for any promotion of the free days, and how many downloads did you get?

When I was young I wanted to be lots of things: a pirate, James Bond, a mad scientist with sticky up white hair, Tarzan, a painter, an explorer… I also kind of liked writing stories. But I remember quite distinctly at the age of 13 realising that writing was the one; the real one. That’s what I was going to do with my life.

And I have, more or less. It doesn’t yet pay the bills, so something else has to, but I have been writing stories on and off for over quarter of a century. It takes me a while, and if something isn’t quite working I set it aside for a year or two. Or ten.

But I got there in the end, publishing my first novel, Darklands, in 2011.

When my old school requested a signed copy it made me think of the time in Mr Hannam’s English class when the idea took hold in my mind that I would be a writer. I don’t recall specifically what sparked it; but I knew that I loved words; I loved stories. And whatever magic made printed words sweep you up and take you on incredible journeys – I wanted to do that.

As an indie author it’s easy to get demoralised and to feel that you’re shouting into a void, but today I’ll take a moment to feel proud. I made a decision at the age of 13; I worked towards it in my spare time, I persevered when I felt discouraged, I made sacrifices of time and earnings – and 25 years later I achieved what I’d set out to. I published my first novel.

Signed copy of Darklands going to Anthony Gell School

Jamie Lee Curtis in Friday 13th. One of the first films to scare the bejeezus out of me.

As a child I didn’t understand the words insomnia or paranoia. I thought it was normal to lie awake for a few hours every night before falling asleep – and to spend the time thinking about all the things in the world that might want to kill me.

During these hours of silent contemplation, I explored rudimentary philosophy (Is the universe infinite? Or does it have an edge? If it does have an edge what comes after it? What would it be like to be god? Wouldn’t it be really boring? What would you do for fun?), and took my first forays into story-telling, in order to keep myself entertained.

But what I also did a lot of was listening for creaking steps, and watching the shadows to make sure they didn’t move. I always wondered what I would do the time that I did hear the step upon the stair; when the shadows did move and form themselves into a long-taloned figure. Where would I go? I began to plan escape routes.

For most children, the answer would probably be that they bolt for their parents bedroom. Due to architectural strangeness, this wasn’t the most obvious option.

Although only a mid-terrace, 18th century mill-workers cottage, my childhood home is an extremely odd shape. It has two separate upstairs, which aren’t joined together. My sisters and I slept up one staircase; our parents and the bathroom were up the other staircase. This was ideal for covert midnight feasts; less good for escaping from psychopaths.

To get from my bedroom to my parents I had to: exit my room, go downstairs, cross the room, go up another flight of stairs, and cross another room. There was far too much scope in that journey for some other thing to get me. So I came up with alternate plans, most of which were some variety of getting out the window.

My bedroom had a sash window, which only opened about six inches – at the top of the window. Even if I could have squeezed out of that space, it wasn’t ideal that I would be on top of three feet of glass. So I thought I would smash the window to escape. But being an old house, the windows are leaded, the panes only about 4x6inches.

I was unsure as a child (and still am) how hard it is to smash lead (a quick google search has revealed nothing remotely relevant. No, I do not want lead-effect double glazing…) I was always unhappy about this area of uncertainty in my escape plan.

When I went to secondary school I became interested in pottery. I was pleased to install several large, hefty home-made pots on my window sill. I felt pretty confident that I could smash my way out of the window with one of those.

Whenever I stayed overnight at other places I looked for escape routes before I could relax sufficiently to sleep. It’s a habit that has never really gone away. I scrutinize the access from and to windows of any bedrooms I stay in. I try to visualise the route I would take in an emergency (not necessarily from axe-wielding maniacs, but perhaps from fire).

I was a little put out therefore to discover recently that one of my current escape routes is not as accessible as I thought.

Last week my partner and I had a key malfunction, and found ourselves locked out of the house. No problem, I though. We’ll borrow next door’s ladder, and I can climb through the little bathroom window. I have often thought that when a psychopath chases me through the house, the best bet would be to run for the bathroom, because it has a lock. That then allows me a few minutes grace to climb out the window before he smashes through the door.

I had never before tested how wide the window actually opens. It turns out, it doesn’t open very far.

I stood up the top of that ladder for a good five minutes, scrutinizing the lay of the land on the other side. I got as far as lifting my foot up through the window. I tried to envisage exactly how it was going to work, and where my weight would be at each moment. I reluctantly came to the conclusion that it was a doomed venture, likely to end in embarrassment, hospital and inability to get to work.

I called the locksmith (and a whole other adventure ensued there. Well, if you call it an adventure to sit on the driveway without any lunch, drink, or toilet for hours, and then some more hours…)

The sensible part of my brain is actually quite relieved to discover how hard it is to break in to our house. But I miss the (entirely unrealistic) comfort of having an escape route in mind. I think I’ll have to install something hefty beside the bedroom door, so that I can block it to buy myself sufficient time to climb out of that window…

I’m curious: is it just me? Or do others have similar preoccupations?

Kikimora is a monster, created for the purpose of terrorising humans. But she has been raised by a natural philosopher type of magician, and so her education is intellectual as well as practical. In order to give a flavour of her peculiar upbringing I wanted to mention some of the obscure texts she is required to read, and the words she doesn’t understand and has to ask to be explained to her.

These texts are largely concerned with the nature of evil, with death, horror and torture. What kind of strange words might she encounter in them?

This has brought me back to a perennial issue of how you decide what age group you are writing for. It’s such a big topic that it deserves a post of its own (and will get one shortly). But for the time being, I’m veering towards the middle-grade camp, (9-12 year olds), rather than young adult.

The Stora Hammars stone from Gotland, demonstrating ‘The blood-eagle’ [Source: Wikipedia]

“Blood-eagle: a method of execution practised by the Norse-men, in which the ribs are severed from the spine, and splayed out like wings, followed by the lungs.”

You might think: that is far too gruesome for children! Are you insane?

But although it was long ago, I kind of remember being ten. What I recall is that although real death and misery upset me greatly (I remember running away from the TV news and locking myself in the bathroom to cry) I was fascinated by abstract horror. I loved visiting medieval castles, and was always most interested in the torture devices.

Of course, that horror was once visited on real people, but at the age of ten, medieval times seemed as far away and as unreal as myths and fairy tales.

Another reason I’m uncertain about it is that it occurs on the first page or so. I wouldn’t want anyone to read that and be put off, thinking the whole book is going to be gruesome and sensationalist.

It is so hard to get the correct balance in the opening pages of your story, and there are so many subtle little ways you can screw it up.

I suspect that the deciding factor in whether or not it’s acceptable is not so much how graphic the description is, but whether it is an abstract idea (like the definition of blood-eagle), or whether it’s an actual event happening in the story.

Thoughts, anyone? What’s the most gruesome thing you’ve read in a children’s book? And did you think it was too much, or was it okay? More importantly did the kids think it was upsetting? Or did they laugh gleefully and tell all their pals?

I’m good at proof-reading, and kind of enjoy it – I think a mild streak of pedantry runs in the family.

Proof-reading implies that the manuscript, paper or whatever is finished and just needs the grammar and spelling checking. But often when I start to proof-read it quickly turns into editing, and sometimes re-writing.

Just last week I destroyed and re-wrote a document my boss had prepared (yeah, I know how to win friends and influence people :-S), as well as eviscerating the marketing department’s output (“This is a fragment, not a sentence … Who are ‘they’? … Talk like Yoda you do…”)

I have learned to be a ruthless editor through painstakingly honing my own writing over the past 25+ years. Even so, I still sometimes baulk at tearing apart weeks-worth of work.

I have known for some time that I needed to rework the opening chapters of Kikimora. They were still pretty much as I wrote them two and a half years ago when I was making my first forays into the story, and didn’t really know where it was going yet. So much about the story has changed since I wrote those opening chapters that they don’t really work any more.

“Kill your darlings,” they say, and I have done many times. But I baulked at this more than most. Perhaps because it was a larger piece than I normally have to cut; because it’s the opening passage; or because I felt that it set the scene so well.

But after all that ruthless editing at work, I felt that it was time to turn the same gimlet eye on my own manuscript. I printed off the opening chapters, sitting down at my table with highlighter, red pen, and much trepidation.

I slashed and burned.

One of the passages I was fond of, but which I grudgingly decided had to go is as follows:

Occasionally, emissaries from distant corners of the world came seeking Anatoly. They called him, Master of Mysterious Arts, Lord Shape-Changer, the Finest Magician the world has ever known. And then they poured gold and jewels at his feet, flattered him some more, and finally asked him to do something for them.

Sometimes Anatoly simply said, “No,” and sent the emissary on his way. Sometimes he asked for more details of the assignment, and then decided it didn’t interest him. Only rarely did he take the gold and accept the commission.

I was fond of that passage, and thought it a nice summation of that character’s set-up. However, in the very next chapter an emissary arrives from a distant land, bringing Anatoly rich gifts, and begs his help in finding a missing princess. You see the problem? In swift succession, I tell what the character does, and then I show what he does.

The opening chapters are vital to hooking your readers. There is no room for sloppiness and redundancy. The above piece had to go.

I was okay slicing through the prose with a red pen, but when it came to stitching back together what was left, I felt lost and bewildered and didn’t know where to start. Yesterday I began the slow and painful process. I produced far less work than I’d hoped to, and was not proud of a single word.

Today I dragged myself back to the keyboard, gritting my teeth to carry on. But… the new scene I grudgingly crow-barred in has begun to settle in and find its feet. New details occurred to me, fleshing out the characters in a similar way to all those lovely first draft passages I had to cut.

It is hard taking the knife to good words, but they have to serve the story, or else they’re pointless. Yesterdays and todays new words will need further polishing, but I know the story will be much stronger by the time I’ve finished. And that makes me happy.

What’s the hardest passage you ever had to cut? And did you ever regret it, or even put it back in later? I’m betting not.

And this morning, at nine a.m. I’m done. It’s only taken two and a half years to reach this point.

There is of course much still to do. I have added so much new material during the second draft that a lot of it is still actually first draft, if you see what I mean. It will need smoothing over with a third draft before it’s ready for some beta readers, but hopefully the remaining changes should be minimal.

Also, I’m still hoping to cut a significant amount of material. The manuscript is currently 124,000 words! That’s 13,000 longer than Darklands, and that was a bit longer than I really wanted it to be. I had always thought that Kikimora would be quite a brief and simple story, but it grew, and it grew, and it grew…

There is certainly a lot less plot than Darklands, but the prose is a little more expansive. I have been writing stories all my life, and I recognised some time ago that the greatest failing of my early work (as with many beginner writers) was a tendency to prosiness. A foray into attempted screen-writing many years ago helped me develop a more stripped back writing style, and I have endeavoured to hold on to that although I gave up on the screen-writing idea.

With Darklands I was very wary of falling into the prosy waffle trap, and I edited it mercilessly, keeping the chapters short and the action coming.*

Having gained a little confidence through my experience of writing and selling Darklands, I have allowed the prose of Kikimora to be a little more free-range – just a little. Also, it is in many ways a smaller story, concerned with character and relationships, rather than ‘we have to save the world!’ The convincing development of those relationships needs space and time to grow.

In On Writing, Stephen King says, “2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%”. I’m aiming to lose at least 12,000 words on the third draft of Kikimora. And although I’m itching to get to it, it is saturday morning, and the sun is shining (for once!), and I think I deserve a little break before launching into the next stage. Also, I’m sure there’s a family around here somewhere that I sometimes like to spend time with…

Path through snowy woods (one of the tentative ideas for Kikimora’s cover)

* If you have only read the prologue of Darklands you might wonder at my judgement on this matter. As it happens, yes, the prologue is deliberately slow and descriptive, building to one awful revelation. But the tone of the rest of the book is much punchier.

Darklands giveaway

The winner of my first blogoversary prize draw is Pete Denton. Congratulations, Pete! A parcel of goodies is winging its way to him as I type.

I had some grand ambitions for how I was going to produce such a gorgeous package that it would be a wonder to all who beheld it… but that didn’t quite pan out. I should have known better. I am a notoriously poor present wrapper :-/

I wanted some nice traditional brown paper and string to wrap it in… But we didn’t have any brown paper. I searched through my bag of random wrapping paper, and all I could find was love hearts, butterflies, or christmas paper. I do also have some great paper with dinosaurs on, but not enough for the book parcel, unfortunately.

Then I found a roll of pleasantly old fashioned flowery wallpaper, and thought that would work quite nicely. I wrote out the address on a piece of hand made paper sent to me by Rachael Pinks, after donating to her campaign to keep the Old Lock Up Studio in Cromford going. However, my sellotape wouldn’t stick to the wallpaper, and I didn’t have much hope for pritt-stick holding the ragged edged hand made paper in place… I had to abandon that idea. I think half an acre of gaffer tape would have slightly marred the effect I was going for.

In the end… bubblewrap and a padded envelope *sigh*

I tried, Pete. Really, I did.

Hopefully the parcel will reach you in good shape, and I hope you enjoy!

Thanks again to everyone who entered the draw, and don’t forget that you can get your copy of Darklands from Scarthin Books in Cromford, or online from Amazon and Waterstones.