Reading Cover2Cover

Shout out to Cover2Cover - a new bookshop in Northwich, Cheshire.

Northwich didn't have any bookshops. I've lived here 30 years and don't ever recall seeing a bookshop. There may have been a few books for sale in the old Woolworths, the supermarkets have a row of best-sellers and WH Smiths as-was (now TG Jones) only sells a curated selection of what it thinks will sell best. But there's never been a shop dedicated to an eclectic mix of books, both old and a new, and happy to embrace both book lovers and writers too. They even have my books IN THE WINDOW. How cool is that?

Richard and Judy and Me

 Richard & Judy. I remember them as the king and queen of daytime television in the year or so of my life with a small baby when daytime television kept me sane. I don’t know when they stopped presenting This Morning, but these days it’s all about books isn’t it? I’ve not done any Googling or other research to write this, but the R&J book selection seems to be everywhere and being selected pretty much guarantees a book a place on the best-seller lists. Are spots for sale or sponsored in any way? I genuinely have no idea of the integrity of the spaces on this list and I’d be interested to know. Read more ...

But Where Will I Put My Books?

I grew up with books. I remember my dad bringing home a Famous Five book every Friday – I used to be ready and waiting for him to come home from work and I’d have finished the book by the end of the weekend. The newsagent would deliver my comic on a Saturday and I’d lie in bed listening for the clink of the letter box; I’d scurry down and take my comic back to bed to read.

Read more ...

Not Getting Rich Quick!

I wrote a post about bookshops (or lack of them) not so long ago. I was re-reading it just now and thinking of today's events...

It's my birthday today. Very cold, freezing fog and a smattering of snow on the ground. So we went out for breakfast - as we often do on a weekend when Andy isn't working - to the Aqueduct Marina, about twenty minutes drive from here. It's a small upmarket marina with a lovely little cafe that does a great breakfast and we can sit and watch the boats. Yes, we're old.

In the reception part of the marina (where they do the boaty admin and sell/rent boats etc), there's a large bookcase stuffed full of paperbacks, with a collection box for a canal restoration charity. So I browsed and grabbed a couple and made a donation. And it struck me that the poor authors got nothing for this secondary sale. But then I suppose if the book had stayed on the original purchaser's shelf, they'd have got nothing more either, so at least more readers would be enjoying their books. And might go on to buy/read more? Small consolation.

So we stopped at Morrisons on the way back home, so I could buy the obligatory bag of cakes to take into work tomorrow, and I'm looking in the magazine and book aisle. And there are paperbacks - recently-published paperbacks, chart paperbacks - for £2. Two pounds? Given that traditional authors generally get a tiny percentage of the profit from a sale, what kind of money are they going to make on a gross sale price of two quid?

Add to that the fact that a great many indie authors I know (myself included) have seen their sales bomb since the advent of Amazon's Kindle Unlimited program in the autumn (Eat-all-you-want books? Fabulous for the reader? Not so good for the author), plus the usual seasonal slump and those of us that have a day job are glad we've still got it ...

Honestly. It's a good job none of us went into this to get rich quick, isn't it?

By Hook or By Book

It seems a long time since I've written a post about reading, as opposed to writing. So since I'm currently mid-way through book 3 of a 4 book series that I only started last Friday ... and I've managed to go to work and have a life, you may conclude that I've been up late at night and am totally smitten by a new author!

Don't you just love it when a book sucks you in completely? When you're not so much reading as living the story, when the real world dissolves and you find yourself obsessed by the characters, the story - everything, really? Or am I just weird that way?

It doesn't happen often to me. And I don't even know what it is that speaks to me from a book, but I do know that it's something to do with the way a particular author writes that resonates with me somehow. Take Matthew Reilly as an example. He writes what can only be described as lad-lit adventure: guns, chases, bigger guns and even bigger guns. As this review says, it's overwritten and utterly implausible with paper-thin characters and action scenes that can out-Bond James himself. The writing itself is not brilliant either - if you check out other reviews, they're completely polarised between love and hate. And yet there's something about his books that has you on the edge of your seat, turning pages (or flipping ereader buttons) desperate to find out how our hero survives. Because we know he will - the good guys always win. But what is it about Reilly as a writer? If I knew what it was, I'd bottle it and make a million....

So what am I obsessing about right now. Faeries. Yep. You got it. Julie Kagawa's Iron Fey series, which I found in our local bargain book shop and about as far away from lad-lit action as you can get! It's labelled as the next Twilight, but that is just so wrong. Twilight made no sense at all to me - the internal logic was wrong and Bella herself was a needy drip of a girl who should have been strangled at birth. This series is so, so much more.

Any book that deals with fantasy (or science fiction, albeit with different rules) has to be consistent within its own environment. There has to be a logic - a structure - and a purpose. You can't invent spells and then conveniently find ways around them a few pages later. You can't solve every problem with magic. As I read somewhere (and if somebody tells me where, I'll edit this and credit the author), magic has to come with a price. Without sacrifice, there is no choice and without choice there is no conflict. That's where so many fantasy novels fall over - when things simply happen to the character, rather than events being driven by the choices the character makes.

In Kagawa's series, the world-building and internal logic is exquisite - everything is true to itself. Parallel worlds make sense, the laws of faerie work, nothing contradicts what has gone before and the characters are resourceful and courageous. And of course our bad-boy faery is drop-dead gorgeous as all heroes have to be. Kagawa stays true to most of the faery mythos but adds her own unique and clever spin on it that is just so awesome, I wish I'd thought of it! It's light-years ahead of Twilight's twaddle.

So I'm hooked. Again it's something in the writing that sings to me, although the genre helps. I admit I'm an easy target when it comes to faeries. I've always longed to believe in alternate realities and parallel worlds. And I so wish I could write like this.

Flashmobbing

Flashmob. Wikipedia says: A flash mob (or flashmob) is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then quickly disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, and artistic expression.

So the modern version of what we all used to do as kids then? Stand in a busy place – a shopping centre (open air, obviously), park, or anywhere that isn’t enclosed – and look up at the sky. Squint a bit and point. If you’re with a friend, exchange a few oohs and aahs. Sooner or later somebody will want to know what you’re looking at, but won’t want to ask so will look up too. It then takes on a life of its own à la Emperor’s New Clothes, as nobody will want to admit they haven’t a clue what’s going on. When you have gathered enough of a crowd, walk away. It works. I’ve done it.

Of course these days with the internet and social media available to everyone everywhere, it’s easy to call up a group of friends instantly if something’s going on. So here’s an idea … take a paperback of your book, or maybe two or three if you can, into your local bookstore. Or any place that sells books, but refuses to stock your book because you’re an indie (read sub-species) and Gardners or whoever won’t deal with you. Hide said books on shelf and leave. Can you get into trouble for putting stuff into a shop, as opposed to stealing it? I don’t know.

Call up your mates. One or two initially. Get them to go into shop and rave loudly about your book. Call some more up. Of course there aren’t enough books to go round. And you’re a local author! Why doesn’t the local bookshop have more of your books?

Of course they won’t be able to pay for them as the books aren’t on the shop’s stock system. Which means they don’t exist as far as the shop is concerned. But with any luck the manager will hear all the fuss and come out, and if there’s an ISBN on the book and it looks professional, he just may be tempted to buy some stock to satisfy these fans who have met you recently at some literary event (be creative…) and want to buy your books.

You might have to persuade your “fans” to come back and actually buy the book later, of course. Or even at the time, if the manager is astute enough to facilitate this. But he might order more. And then you’re on the system aren’t you? You officially exist.

Have I ever done this? No. If you try it, let me know how you get on.

Commercial Activities in Libraries?

So there I am in our local town library. On a Saturday it's often a busy place with art exhibitions in the foyer and the occasional local authors signing (and presumably selling) copies of their books. There's a small annex with computers and internet access, racks of leaflets and plenty of noticeboards advertising local events and activities.

Now I recently had some vistaprint postcards printed up with the new and rather impressive cover of my thriller. I'm not a graphic designer, but these were nice - all glossy and smart with quotes from reviews on the back. I was pleased with the result, which surprised me as vistaprint's last efforts with a business card were disappointing and I threw most of them away.

What better place to leave book postcards than the local library?  But no - it's "too commercial". Eh? A PR postcard for an ebook is too commercial, but it's OK for local authors to sell books and local artists to sell art?  I thought libraries were trying to survive all the cuts - surely embracing and including the community would be a good place to start? I realise that ebooks may be a politically sensitive topic with libraries, given that the big publishers want to sell them "self-destructing" ebooks, to mimic the wear-and-tear (and subsequent need to re-purchase) of a real book, but casually dismissing us indie authors is not going to win us over to their side of the argument, is it?

I'm not naming and shaming here (yet - unless you're one of my facebook friends and you can see it there). I have emailed the council and asked for their opinion and I will let you know their answer.

When Worlds Collide

I'm participating in an authors' promotional event at work on Monday. At Cheshire Police headquarters. In the canteen. There are four or five us involved and I think the others all have actual physical books to display and sell. I have 100 not-very-good cards from Vistaprint (the proof copy printed out way better on my home pc than on their cards). How do you sell an ebook other than online?

But I shall appear on Monday and put my cards on the desk. Maybe stick around and have a chat with the others. Possibly even put in an appearance at lunchtime when it gets busy (the canteen that is, not the queue to look at my cards). Because my jacket cover has been up on posters all week with my name on. And my guilty secret is out. I'm an author. And not only do I write - I write sex and drugs and other unspeakable nasty things. What on earth work colleagues are going to make of it all, I don't know, but I suppose "coming out" was inevitable as soon as I uploaded my book onto kindle. After all I want to sell it and if people don't know it's there, they can't buy it, can they?

Wish me luck!

Guest Blogging Again.

Guest blogging here and here today. My, but I'm getting around a lot at the moment...

The Gaudi Key? Keep the door locked.

The Gaudi Key didn’t unlock any doors for me, I’m afraid. Shame. I like these kind of books and can normally lap up Dan Brown and the conspiracy theorists. And I love Gaudi and the art nouveau movement. But this was truly awful. Maybe it suffers from being a translation from (presumably) Spanish? I simply can’t sit and read huge chunks of exposition and back-story and listen to characters telling each other things they already know just to inform the reader. And while I’m all for multiple points-of-view, you can’t jump into a character’s head and have him/her conveniently forget pertinent plot points because it suits the current scene. The author pushes one-dimensional characters around the board like chess pieces lecturing the reader and nobody has enough depth for me to have a clue whether or not their motivations are genuine. And I don’t really care.

But enough of negatives. There’s a lot of history in here, both real and imagined, though its delivery is pompous and dull at times. Gaudi is linked with the templars (isn’t everybody these days?) and the masons and there’s a real depth in the interpretation of his work, particularly the Sagrada Familia. On that level, the book succeeds. But as a novel, it just didn’t do it for me.

Fallen Star

A rare book review - something I read on authonomy a while back and have championed ever since. Fallen Star by Ian Barker and recently published by Rebel e Publishers, although fortunately there's a dead-tree version as well for those of us who haven't yet embraced the e-reader revolution. I bought this recently from Amazon and I wasn't disappointed. Fallen Star is the story of ex-rock-star Karl and ordinary Irish cafe-worker Lizzie. He's famous; she's a nobody. He's used to getting what he wants; she won't play second fiddle to anyone. And he's the son of a war hero while she's the daughter of a terrorist. Can they ever find any common ground?

But this is more than a love story - it's a bird's-eye view of the "cult of the celebrity" that pervades our lives these days. From auditions for porn films to chat shows to reality tv shows, this book covers what it means to be "famous" in the 21st century. And it does it so well, it's scary.

Barker has a real wit. There are some fabulous one-liners in here that made me laugh out loud (and I committed the ultimate sin of turning page corners so I could find them again). "He turned on the smile again and her resistance caved in so far it would have needed an army of potholers to rescue it."  Fabulous! The audition for the blue movie seemed so realistic I'm wondering how Barker did his research. And when Karl and Lizzie get caught in flagrante delicto by a posse of Girl Guides, I practically wet myself laughing.

The ending was predictable but with a nice twist that I didn't see coming. I did feel that the story stopped quite abruptly and I'd have liked to have known more, but that's probably because I was so caught up in these peoples' lives that I didn't want to stop reading. And without spoilers - I think Barker should patent his idea for a reality tv show before anyone else gets hold of it!

This is indie publishing at its best. Buy it. Buy it NOW.

Sex or porn? When too much is not enough.

Still Missing. A thriller? Misery memoir? Porn? Not read it yet, but will let you know. It does annoy me that industry insiders tell me my sex-and-drugs thriller is not commercial, yet this apparently is? Anything with this amount of pre-publication publicity must be commercial by definition, surely? It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Edited to add: here's a link to an interesting debate on this very topic on HarperCollins authonomy site.

Hmmph.