Tag Archives: author

Slips back into the world innocuously…

Leave a reply

Well, it’s been a crazy, relaxing month since I last posted. Forgive me platform-building gods, for once again I have sinned.

November really was a month of contradictions for me. I had just over two weeks where I did nothing other than read amazing books and lie by a pool in wonderful tropical heat. No business books, no personal development, just fiction of all genres. I told myself I didn’t have to do any writing at all, there was no pressure unless something started buzzing into my brain and needed to be let out.

Luckily, I came up with a tonne of creative ideas, which was just a bonus. Most of them writing related, but some not.

The other two weeks of the month were solid writing. I mean, SOLID. In a few days I completed NaNoWriMo at the beginning to get traction on a project I needed to get done. So I was pretty wiped out after that, because 10,000 words per day when you have forty hour day job commitment going is tough. The there was a (lovely) surprise request for a full edited manuscript. A structural and line edit on a 120,000 novel is a tough thing to pull off in ten days but I think I just about squeezed it across the line.

So crazy and relaxing just about sums it up.

So now I have until the New Year off from writing, to concentrate on letting my brain recover and planning for the coming year. I have a couple of business and personal goals I’d like to achieve, so I need to give them the attention they deserve.

Also, I need to begin Christmas shopping. I’ve still got ages though, right? RIGHT?

Restless Wanderer

Leave a reply

It doesn’t matter how good life is, or what else is going on, there are still moments when I get a hankering to just hit the open road. I’ve decided that Instagram is a deadly force when it comes to generating these feelings. All those beautiful sunsets and places to see that I’ve yet to visit. I’m fairly well travelled, but there will always be a part of me that wants to see what the world has to offer.

To close out the year, I’m just going to have to settle for a little bit more Europe. Hardly a burden, I know, and a luxury that I am most definitely grateful for. With NaNoWrimo kicking off this weekend, I’m using it as a serious motivator to get a deadline met. A healthy dose of competition never hurt anyone. But as soon as it’s done, I’m packing a suitcase and going undercover for a couple of weeks. I’m going to escape the grey for the beach.

I need a mini writing sabbatical (given the last one was spent doing last minute editing that was requested and therefore not really what I wanted) to get my brain in gear. To also let it be completely out of gear so I can do some creative free-wheeling for a while.

But first, time to psych myself up for a little bit of crazy writing time. Coffee, chocolate and late nights, here we come!

Life Happens

1 Reply

There has been a dearth of updates recently because, well, life happens.

I know life happens all the time and is generally a poor excuse for not doing any kind of updates or letting things slide. But I’ve had some big life happens moments, so I’m going to allow myself to use it as an excuse.

The biggest one of these is that I got engaged and set a date for the wedding that is significantly less than a year away. Trust me, that has led to lots of celebrations, alongside a healthy dose of mind-numbing fear (always good). It’s also led to a lot of reassessment of what matters, what doesn’t and what really needs to get done today.

I had already made a rough plan of my writing goals and deadlines for 2016. This little piece of good news has caused me to radically rethink that. I know that if I stuck to my original plans, nothing would be achieved to its best potential, and the night before my wedding I didn’t want to get stuck doing last minute edits or cover art reviews. It also means I have to put traditional publishing above indie, which is a bit of a shame. I’m determined to still publish the follow up to Blood Inheritance in 2016 though, as the bulk of the work has already been done.

So, be kind to yourself. Life is about many things and achievement is only one of them. Sometimes there are (good) bumps in the road and they’re just as important as meeting any deadlines.

Goodreads: where the brave fear to tread

Leave a reply

Believe it or not, I’ve never been a member of goodreads. Now I’m signing up at last.

So many of my author friends absolutely loathe the site. I mean they hate it so much, they actually rank it lower than going to Amazon to look at your reviews, which for popular authors is a very special kind of torture. That alone was enough to put me off.

Now I’m increasingly hearing that it is the best way for Indie authors to connect with their readers, as well as finding cool people who are writing the same things you are. My reading list is undergoing something of a review at the moment (too many books in the same genre for far too long) so this seems like a pretty good idea.

I guess I’ll find out in the next few weeks whether or not I’ve been missing out by listening to others. Or it could be a damp squib of a place that is on the decline. I’m going to hold out for the best case scenario: it’s full of awesome people to meet who are passionate about books and can teach me a thing or two.

If you see me on there, feel free to say hi and forgive me if I mess things up (I invariably do) whilst working it out.

Normal Service Resumes

Leave a reply

Last week was just a whirlwind of stuff. Seriously, I felt like I ran flat out through the week with flailing muppet arms. There was no time for playing around on social media, no blogpost time scheduled and definitely no going to the gym.

I was up against a deadline that happened to coincide with an already heavily scheduled calendar. Happily, normal life resumes today as I handed over the story yesterday so now it sits in the laps of the gods*.

I’ve deliberately now given myself two weeks of downtime. I’ll be doing NaNoWriMo again this year and I know I won’t fit in a full length project between now and then. Instead of seeing this as frustrating, I am seeing it a blessing. It will give me a chance to get the business side of life up straight (yay – taxes) as well as work on those smaller pieces that somehow always get pushed onto the back burner.

It will soon be time to think about what to even write for NaNo. Hopefully the downtime will free that creative space back up in my brain and I can come up with something that will engage me to plough through a disciplined 50,000 words before I go on a mini-sabbatical at the end of November.

Now that part of things I am really looking forward to.

 

 

*may be a mild overstatement

I might have to use robots

Leave a reply

Why might I have to use them, I hear you ask? I can say you, because stats indicate that you’re probably alone while you’re reading this.

I’ve been trying a little experiment to push the boundaries of my writing. It’s just to keep my mind feeling fresh while other things – more stressful and demanding things – steal much of my creative energy. So, as always, I have a few little side projects going for fun. One of which is to plan a short story, nothing longer than novella in length, and start writing it. I’m a planner by nature, so I’m cruising along in my comfort zone here. Which is where the robots come in.

I don’t write sci-fi. I don’t read sci-fi. So what better way to force myself to be creative than to throw in a problem I not only don’t know how to solve, but also know very little about.

Hence robots.

Don’t worry, I’ve got no intention of AI infiltrating my urban fantasies or crime stories. No-one is going to be killed by the robot. This isn’t an episode of Castle. But hopefully I’ll have a little bit of fun doing it, maybe learn something new, and then come back to those other projects with a different state of mind.

So ask yourself, do you need robots?

castle

Do LGBT readers expect explicit content?

Leave a reply

It is clear to see when you do a simple search of any LGBT eBook category that the first few pages of book titles include a generous serving of the steamier side of life. Seriously, you only need to look at those covers to know what’s going on between them.

18

Which then led to an interesting conversation with friends: do LGBT readers expect explicit content? Is that what they’re there for, or is it just a given within the genre and no one is at all surprised when it happens?

I have a few thoughts about this, given that my own books don’t contain explicit content (yet it has been requested, so there is obviously a market). I wonder, sometimes, if  actually the assumption is somewhat based on that old stereotyping – that the gay is all about the sex. Gay men certainly suffer from this perception more than lesbians, hence the oft-held belief that they can’t be in a long term relationship and will hump anything that also has a penis.

Are we still in the stages of infancy with the genre so books with gay characters are all about the gayness rather than plot? If so, this automatically leads into somewhat dodgy ground. It is difficult to demand greater visibility but without giving characters same depth and multi-facetedness. Romance is one thing, but other genres?

Let’s face it, sex sells. It doesn’t matter what kind of sex you’re into, it’s still enough of a taboo to  generate intrigue, and the anonymity of eBooks makes for fertile ground. After a perceived drought for LGBT readers it’s no great surprise that explicit content is in high demand.

So, is the LGBT eBook market just moving with the dynamics of supply and demand? Do the readers merely accept the content or are they actively seeking it out? If anyone has the answers then I would genuinely love to know. I’ve tried to make diverse characters who are more than just their sexuality, or their race, or their social background. But I suspect that I’d probably shift more sales if there was a bit more laborious breathing and references to bodily fluids in that first 10% taste you get for free.

Bonus points and apologies if you’ve spotted all the sex puns scattered throughout.

Learning to juggle

Leave a reply

I’m not talking literal juggling, obviously. My hand / eye coordination isn’t good enough for that any more. Fun fact: I actually used to juggle for stress relief at university. I was way ahead of all the personal development gurus on that one.balls

So, there are a couple of exciting things going on at the moment and like many things in life, it is the ones you are not expecting that have the biggest impact. It’s like when you’ve learned to juggle three balls and then someone throws in a fourth just before you feel fully comfortable with what you’re doing. You either have to up your game really quickly or you end up dropping them all.

Writing is like that most of the time for me. I have multiple projects going on in multiple fields. Jumping from one to the other is a brain challenge, as well as being physically exhausting. I know I’m lucky – I’m still in the fledgling stages where I can still make mistakes because I refuse to give up the financial security of a full time paid position. But that does mean when I did some basic calculations earlier in the week, when you include all the time spent on writing (both actual creative stuff and then all the less exciting stuff that goes with it) I average a 70 hour week.

I’m nothing special. It’s not even something just authors go through – all entrepreneurs do at some stage, no matter how much the follow your dream message gets glamorised. Learning to juggle your life is one skill you need to master along the way.

As a result, my planned time for structural edits of the next book following Blood Inheritance have had to go on the back burner. Luckily for me, I’d built in some extra fallback time, so it doesn’t impact yet on my planned 2016 release schedule. Luckily, of all the indie publishing hats I wear, project management comes to me the easiest. After the actual damn writing, of course, but the more you want to write, the less writing you actually do. Oh universe, you’re so funny like that, aren’t you?

 

Promo Time! The Crochet Killer

Leave a reply

To celebrate A Taste To Die For being released and still feeling flush with the joys of vacation, The Crochet Killer is now on offer.

I’m running an Amazon kindle promotion so you can get the first book in the Teddie McKay series at a nicely reduced price. If you’ve noticed A Taste To Die For but haven’t wanted to jump in at the second book, now is the perfect chance to try before you buy!

Crochet Killer CoverStill not convinced? Remember you can download a free sample, but be sure to buy before the price goes back up (I hate forgetting and then ending up with a significantly higher credit card bill than I thought, but even at full price, this is only a couple of dollars for now. Regular pricing resumes in October!)

 

A break is as good as a rest!

Leave a reply

As I begin to wrap up my vacation time, I’ll be sad to leave the holiday feeling behind. Yet I know that it has been as essential as it has been fun.

My notebook has new ideas in it, as well as some amendments to existing projects. Sometimes, physical distance can allow you to see things with new eyes. For example, the Lazarus Hunter series has been fairly well plotted to the end for quite some time now. The first three books are completed and book four is down on the list as one of my next writing projects (I’d love to do it sooner, but I have other commitments which are stopping me). Yet a missing piece of conflict that I needed has been elusive up until now.

With nothing to think about, this piece finally snuck up on me and smacked me between the eyes.

So I will be returning from my break with a renewed sense of enthusiasm. I love writing, but my life is like balancing three full time jobs sometimes. My creativity can stutter if I don’t take a break every now and again. When I do, it is worth every penny, both in literal money and also time.

I’ve not got any C K Martin books planned for the release for the rest of this year. I’ve not tracked the sales of A Taste To Die For while I’ve been on vacation, because I’ve not wanted the time to be about number watching, no matter how addictive it can be.

So I can go into the last third of the year feeling more relaxed about what I still need to do. I know one thing that people have wanted in the Teddie McKay books is a little bit more lovin’ for Teddie. As neither books in the series are romances, it didn’t feel right at any point to put a good sex scene in, not without it feeling entirely gratuitous. So I’m playing around with an idea for a short story to let the woman get a bit of action. It would need to be fun for everyone (including me) to make it work.

So, despite saying there’d be no more publications this year, part of me is already thinking never say never…