Opening Salvos by Jan Edwards

I am just coming to the end of the editing marathon for my next crime novel In Her Defence, and nervously awaiting final corrections and comments. As always the section that has been poured over and fretted upon is that first chapter. Yes, the end matters almost as much, but I am very aware, to the point of near paranoia, of the need to start with a hook. Those opening few pages are all important, and increasingly so when so many potential readers will be using the ‘look inside’ feature on Amazon to sample your wares.  

So what constitutes the opening hook? The first page? Two pages? Three?

Taking a quick glance at Kindle books the Amazon Look Inside function varies on how much of a taster you are allowed and depends on the quantity of prelims, but three to five pages of story available to read seems to be the average. When a page is around 300 words on average it’s a scary prospect to realise that the decision to read my many months of work will be judged by the first 1000 words or less. For most people that is sufficient to know if they like the writer’s style, and whether they’ve well and truly gaffed. For me in the final stages of editing hell that is truly terrifying.

Three years ago Misha Herwin and I were trying to promote our books and finding it next to impossible to obtain slots at local libraries in the evenings - when the majority of people would be able to attend.  I am sure most people, writers and readers alike, have been frustrated by this. It is no fault of the librarians themselves however. They are only to happy to help writers of all kinds when they are able, but cuts in government budgets  have forced libraries to axe evening opening hours; or in some cases close their doors entirely.

So what to do? We knew of evening reading cafes in other cities (Birmingham and Manchester for example) but it is not easy to reach those places from here after a day’s work. Anyone who has tried to travel the M6 between 5 and 7 pm will know exactly what I mean! The only answer was to approach Central Library in Hanley and ask if we could run a series of quarterly Reading Cafes. They agreed, but with the stipulations was that we were done and dusted by 8.30pm and that to ensure we finished on time, to limit choices to just six writers, each being allowed six minutes each to strut their stuff – thus 6x6 was born!

What has that to do with my editing jitters you might ask?            

Audience feedback from these events has pretty much confirmed that need for the much-talked of hook. Flash fiction at 6x6 will invariably work well because most writers can get a story across in that permitted 900 (approx.) words. 

As the point of 6x6 has always been to allow authors to promote their current published titles we also receive a lot of opening chapters (or parts thereof) - and of course these still need to fit into that 6 minute (900 word) package - which. About the same space allowed on Amazon's Look Inside feature.  

Do the 6x6 author’s opening salvos – those crucial first three pages (900 words) – entice the listener (reader) to want more? Or have them drooping in their seats and fighting to stay awake?

There is no mistaking the latter at 6x6 by the feet shuffling and Meer cat impersonations as attention drifts and people start looking around the room for a distraction. Six minutes may not sound long but it can feel it. Get the piece right, however, and it flits past in an instant.

Which brings me back to my own edits and that final read through.

I shall tackle it with my 6x6 head on and ask myself that big question. Does it pass the six minute test? Or am I girding loin for the umpty-ninth draft in that unending search for the golden hook? 

Only time and editors can tell.

***

More about Jan Edwards and her work can be found on:
Blog: https://janedwardsblog.wordpress.com/
Facebook: jan.coleborn.edwards
Twitter: @jancoledwards

Titles in print – all available in print and dig formats
As author: Winter Downs; Fables and Fabrications;  Sussex Tales;  Leinster Gardens and Other Subtleties

The award winning Winter Downs is first in the Bunch Courtney Investigates series. Book two, In Her Defence, is coming soon!

When words are not enough

Last month saw the release of my latest book. I put my heart and soul into it, and despite amazing reviews, it's not selling. Why? Because of visibility.

Visibility is the curse of all writers. You can write the best book in the world, but unless it can be seen by others then it will disappear into obscurity. Take Amazon for example, where you are competing with millions of other titles, all seeking that holy grail of appearing in the search results.

I know that I have spent many more hours attempting to market the book than went into writing it. I've done Facebook takeovers, live readings from the book on Facebook, paid for advertising in newsletters on websites and social media sites, paid for Amazon and Facebook adverts. I've posted on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. 

Hour after hour and certainly £ after £ was spent creating eye-catching graphics, video trailers and more. More hours were spent posting on social media, thanking others for sharing and then completing advertising submissions.

The result of all that... very little indeed.

What did I learn? That the art of book marketing is some weird form of alchemy with an ever-changing recipe. What worked six months ago doesn't work now.  By the time I've figured out how something works the algorithm has changed and I'm back where I started. 

I learned that the more money you spend on an advert is no guarantee of success, in my case I got better results from the low-cost adverts that were $10 or less. The two very expensive adverts produced very few results and returned barely a fraction of the investment. These were adverts that had been recommended by other authors. Right now I'm glad I got rejected by Book Bub as the thought of having no sales after spending over $400 on an advert is heartbreaking. That's right, the holy grail that is Book Bub doesn't actually guarantee you a return... I only found this out when I got rejected and bemoaned the fact to some author friends. Lucky escape or missed opportunity? I honestly can't afford to find out.

So what are we to do as Indie authors, how are we to achieve this nirvana of visibility? I'm afraid that's a question I still need to learn the answer to, although I would welcome your input. There seem to be a plethora of specialists out there happy to show me the way, but they all want me to exchange thousands of dollars for the privilege. Whilst I appreciate the old adage you need to speculate to accumulate, I'm already severely out of pocket with no prospect of a change in sales figures going forward. 

With some readers bemoaning the fact they have to pay for our work, and the mass of pirate sites giving our work away for free, I suspect that a lot of writers will quit. Between work and family and just trying to have a life, they cannot spare the time that writing requires, much less the additional time required for marketing. This saddens me as there are some truly amazing indie authors out there who deserve to be seen.

What can you do as a reader? Like and comment when you see their posts on Facebook (liking is no longer enough apparently), follow their author pages on Amazon and Book Bub, buy their books and leave a review. They're all simple things that will help increase the visibility of the book, that the author cannot do for themselves.

So whilst I sit here writing my next book and wondering when I'll have to find a more lucrative occupation, go have a look at what you last read and leave the author a review. It's the little things that count.

Photographs I’ve taken which I have used in books I’ve written, by Elizabeth Kay

Since the advent of digital photography I’ve been an addict – and I’ve used a lot of the photographs I’ve taken in different books. Here are a few, with extracts from the book concerned.

The Divide

I decided to open this book in the most magical place I had ever visited, which was the humming bird garden in Monteverde, Costa Rica.

…the humming birds returned to the sugar-water feeders that were hung around the outside of the Study Centre. They used their beaks as rapiers, fencing in mid-air as they tried to knock one another away from the rim. The ones that won looked smug, and the ones that lost zoomed around the garden pretending they didn’t want a drink after all.

Back to the Divide

Although this description comes from The Divide, lot of the action in the second book is set in the library of my alternative world. I based it on a café in Bristol.

This one was made of wood, with asymmetrical window-frames and doorways. Pear-shaped windows, kidney-shaped windows, twisted beams, sloping walls, an undulating roof. It was almost as though the place had grown there, like a tree. The wood went from cream to chocolate, with every shade of coffee and caramel and butterscotch between. Each piece of timber was as smooth as a polished pebble, though whether it had become like that through craftsmanship or weathering was difficult to say. The structure was very big, although it was only one storey tall.

Jinx on the Divide

The jinx box, the shape-changing villain of the book, takes on the guise of the biggest pitcher plant in the world, which I photographed in Borneo.

“Look at that pitcher, over there,” said Betony. “It’s absolutely enormous.”

Felix looked. It was so huge it had to rest on the ground. “What do you think it eats?” he asked.

Betony looked shocked. “Eats? What do you mean?”

“Pitcher plants are carnivorous. At least, they are in my world. Ours are much smaller than these; they catch flies, which drown and then get digested.”

Betony made a face, which quickly turned into an expression of horror as the implications hit home. “What do you think these ones eat, then?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said Felix. “Some pitcher plants have been known to eat frogs. Perhaps this one’s big enough to tackle small birds?”

“And not necessarily that small,” said Betony, backing away. “I think you’re right about Rhino not being here. Let’s go.”

But Felix was overcome with curiosity. Although physics and chemistry were his favourite subjects at school, biology came a very close third. Insectivorous plants fascinated him, they were just so weird. Despite the lid of the pitcher plant being firmly shut, he couldn’t resist going over to peek inside.

“I wouldn’t,” said Betony, but it was too late.

As Felix lifted the oval green lid a voice said, “Well hello.” It was so sudden and so unexpected that he nearly jumped out of his skin.

Hunted

This wasn’t the biggest elephant I saw in Kenya, but it had attitude…

There, blocking the path, stood the biggest elephant I had ever seen. Its tusks almost swept the ground.

“Out of the way!” yelled Snyman, raising his rifle.

No-one moved.

Snyman made an angry noise, and pushed me out of the way. Because the track  was going uphill the poachers were right in his line of fire. Changa started to take off the heavy backpack. The eyes of the other two stayed fixed on the elephant as, very slowly, they put the tusks on the ground. I was quite sure that the huge grey beast in front of me knew very well how the poachers had got their ivory.

Lost in the Desert

This eleven-year-old Mongolian girl was the best rider I have ever seen, and out to prove she was at least as good as the men.

“My name is Zul,” she said. “What is your name?”

            “Max. How come you speak such good English?”

            “I go to school, of course,” she said. “I love school. We get people from other countries who come to teach us, and then go home again. Chinese. Russian. And for the last three years, English. Can you ride?”

            I realised she had her hand looped through the reins of a grey horse. “Of course I can,” I said. I’d only had a few lessons, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.  

            “Get up behind me, then,” she said.

            She swung herself up into the horse’s saddle. It took me three goes to climb up behind her. The reins were really long, and she whirled them round her head like a lasso to get the goats to go where she wanted. There were about twenty of them, all different colours and sizes. We set off after them, but as soon as the horse started to trot I fell off.

            “I thought you said you could ride?” she said.

Beware of Men with Moustaches

This is the Castle in Prague.

“This is very famous room,” said Svetlana. “When Mongol Hordes bring Black Death to Karetsefia, king and his family leave city and seek refuge here. Then they catch the plague anyway. Mongol Hordes take over castle, but they do everything on horseback, so they build audience hall for men on horses.”

“You mean they rode right into the castle?” said Julie.

“Yes. When Mongol Hordes leave, new king turns it into room for dancing. There is painting of him on wall at end. There are many paintings here, including very famous one of poet being shot by firing squad.”

Ice Feathers

The scenery in Iceland is truly inspirational.

It was Plume who noticed the change in the weather first, prancing sideways and clacking his beak. The blizzard that had reduced visibility to porridge had stopped as abruptly as it had started – and there they were, on the other side of the pass, and their track was about to split into two. The sky was a brilliant cloudless blue, and a delicate patchwork view was laid out below them like a chieftain’s carpet. It took a moment or two for Kura to really grasp what was odd about it, but it was Joeli who put it into words.

“It’s deepest winter out there,” he said, in an incredulous voice. “The colours – they’re all pastel blues and greys and white. There’s nothing but snow and ice. But on our side of the mountains the leaves are still red and gold and only just beginning to fall.”

And last but not least – Grimspite, my favourite character from the Divide Trilogy. Hyenas are terrifying. I once had one padding around outside my tent, and I didn’t dare go outside to the loo until daybreak, when I heard the cooks start to prepare breakfast…

What is with you and those notebooks?

People make fun of me because I keep at least one pocket notebook on my person at all times. Most times, it’s at least two, one in each back pocket. And I have at least two pens with me, one blue, one black. The easy answer to the question “Why?” is, “Hey, I’m a writer.”

That usually gets one of those “Ohhhhh…” comments and a nod, one of those nods like you get when you trip for no reason, but look back at the ground for the non-existent object you trip over.

Truth be told, I keep the notebooks because I constantly have little ideas, bits of dialogue, and the like just pop into my head. Driving around, I see things, people on the street, almost anything can throw the switch on the proverbial “light bulb” of an idea, and I HATE having a really good idea pop into my head and losing it three minutes later.

I have two file folders in my desk drawer that are full of napkins, receipts, back covers of old paperback books, you name it, if you can write on it, I have at least one of them in those folders. I would buy notebooks, mind you, but I never remembered to actually put them in my pocket. Somewhere in the clutter of my writing room closet, there are probably boxes full of pocket notebooks that have one page used and nothing else in them.

Look, there’s no shame in keeping notebooks, or even those file folders full of assorted paper with ideas on them. Every writer seems to have that desk drawer or file cabinet that has dozens of unfinished stories, half-a-novels, opening paragraphs of works that petered out after those first sentences. Some might tell you to throw all those things out, keep everything fresh, never look back, pick your pithy saying. And that might be a good way for some people to work.

I can’t, though.

Every morning, when I start my writing time, I spend an hour or so just free writing. Think of it like unloading all the baggage so you can restock the shelves. Just start writing, pure stream-of-consciousness, whatever pops into your brain, put it on the paper. Type it onto the monitor screen. It doesn’t have to be complete sentences – I mean, let’s face it. If you are honest with yourself, nobody really thinks in complete sentences. But the point is, just let the words fall out of your brain. Then, when your shelves are empty, start filling them again with whatever project you are working on.

But, instead of discarding that baggage, save it. Stash it on your desktop or tuck the papers off to the side. When you are done writing for the day, go back, and just read through all the things you filled those pages with. You might be surprised to find that, while you thought you were just getting rid of excess garbage, you uncovered a gem or two amidst the rubbish. Those gems are the ones you save. You get enough gems, you have a treasure.

I keep a print of a photo of Walt Disney on one of the walls of my office. It’s a familiar photo, one of a young Disney in a doorway, and on the wall beside him is the shadow of his most famous idea, Mickey Mouse. The phrase he loved to tell people the most – “We must never forget, it all started with a mouse…” – is written in that beloved Disney font in one corner. I keep that print where I can see it because it’s a true statement, one that inspires me to keep those notebooks, those napkins and book covers and receipts, and all those pages of free writing. All Disney started with was one very simple idea, a cartoon of a mouse.

If you think one idea can’t change the course of your life, your career, or even the way the world sees things, just think about that mouse.

It was just one idea.

In and Out Images -- Jay Sennett

I’m working on a novel and mostly working on understanding what the heck I’ve gotten myself into. Long a nonfiction author, I had believed the shift no more challenging than moving from an essay to a book. 

Fiction requirements like plot points, story arcs and character development do exist in nonfiction, I knew, so hard could it be, really? (I will wait for all the fiction writers to wipe the tears from their eyes.)

Having written screenplays in the past I understand plotting fairly well and loving mysteries and thrillers as I do makes plotting easier, for me at least.

The biggest bugaboo has been character development. 

The best thrillers possess great character arcs, too. "Silence of the Lambs" ranks as one of my personal favorites and combes both a great plot and a great character arc. 

But again and again character development and character change has left me scratching my head. I’ve written outline upon outline, character sketches, mini-drafts, and stream of consciousness documents. I had no hook through around which I could understand character development and change.

Then, as if the Muse and her minions took pity on me, I read within two days Blake Snyder’s “Save the Cat” and a series of blog posts on the In and Out by Steven Pressfield. 

Here is Pressfield, in his first post, What’s The In? What’s The Out?:

In the movie biz, there’s a question that studios and development companies often put to any screenplay they’re evaluating: 

What’s the in? What’s the out? 

What they mean is, “What is this script’s opening image and closing image? Do the two work together? Are they cohesive? Are they on-theme? Are they are far apart emotionally as possible?”

And from In/Out, Part 2

Here is a rule, if you will: 

The first rule of Ins and Outs Club is  

The Opening and Closing Images of our story should look as alike as reasonably possible.  

The second rule of Ins and Outs Club is  

At the same time, the Out should be as far away as we can make it, in emotional and narrative terms, from the In.

Pressfield uses the movie Shane as an example of the perfect Hollywood In and Out:

Last week we cited the opening and closing images from the 1953 Western Shane.

In the In, our hero, the gunfighter Shane (Alan Ladd), enters the Valley carrying aspirations for a better life. He hopes that in this new place he will be able to hang up his six-shooter and start afresh, be a normal person, maybe even find a wife and raise a family. 

In the Out, Shane departs the valley by exactly the same route he entered. Only now he knows that that dream will not come true for him—not now, not ever. 

In other words, this is exactly how an In and an Out should work. 

The closing image resonates powerfully with the opening image—they are bookends really—but in emotional and narrative terms they are as far apart as they can possibly be.

Pressfield’s explanation of the In/Out images has transformed everything for me. I’ve reread this last line about a dozen times over the last two weeks. At some point both the In and Out images of my novel materialized in my head. 

Every question I’ve had and struggled with regarding my main character’s development fell into place once I had the novel’s in and out images.

Fiction doesn’t come naturally to me. I’ve never been a voracious reader. Don’t get me wrong, I love to read. But I think of myself as the world’s slowest reader. To have this suggestion at the ready has made all the difference for me. I feel like I’ve just got my ticket punched and I’m now sitting in the third-class car of the great train of fiction.

I’m happy to finally be aboard.

Self-publishing your out-of-print children’s non-fiction might be harder than you expected! An interview with Jenny Alexander by Alex Marchant

Jenny Alexander

As a new self-published author I’m always interested to hear of others’ experiences and when I found out Jenny Alexander was looking for a guest blog spot, I jumped at the chance to learn from hers. Particularly when I found out the book she’s launching this week is on a subject that links well with my own books and is clearly close to my heart.

Earlier in the summer, when invited to talk to two Year 6 classes in Barnard Castle (when presenting them with copies of my book donated by a local community group: see the-best-laid-plans-by-alex-marchant), it struck me that The Order of the White Boar wasn’t just about King Richard III, but also about the transition from primary to senior school. In this case, the transition from York Minster song school to ‘page school’ at Middleham Castle, but it’s effectively the same. And my other two books (neither historical fiction) are also about the same subject – and all three tackle the issue of bullying in one way or another.

Jenny Alexander has had lots of books published traditionally and, in recent years, she has branched out into independent publishing for new books that don’t fit the business model of big publishers, being ‘too niche to achieve bulk sales.’

Cover designed by Rachel Lawston

She is also reissuing some of her traditionally published books that have gone out of print. And this week sees the publication of her latest revised and updated children’s book, 70 Ways to Bullyproof Yourself, which was originally published by Hodder under the title The 7-Day Bully-Buster. I think it’s safe to say that it’s a book that Matthew Wansford would have found very useful had it been available when he first encountered Master Hugh Soulsby...

I asked Jenny about her reasons for republishing the book and about the difficulties she encountered along the way.

Alex: Why did you decide to republish this book?

Jenny: It was part of a series that went out of print quite quickly although the reviews had been amazing, apparently because the publishers decided to cut back on their non-fiction list. There were four books in the series, and I decided to try publishing new editions of two of them, with a view to starting a new series that could accommodate some brand new books I’ve been working on.

Alex: Which two did you choose, and why?

Jenny: I chose the one on self-esteem and this one on bullying, because I couldn’t find other books for children that were genuinely self-help – books that could help children not only understand their problems but also learn practical strategies for tackling them, through building up good psychological self-defences.

The techniques I suggest are basic Cognitive Behavioural Therapy mixed with common sense and illustrated by quizzes, jokes and stories – there’s absolutely nothing difficult about them.

Jenny chose illustrator Karen Donnelly for the project, only realizing later that she had illustrated one of her earlier books for A and C Black

Alex: What about the other two books in the original series – why aren’t you publishing new editions of them at the same time?

Jenny: It’s mostly financial. The subjects are also very relevant for children today – how to manage stress, and how to experience learning as a joyful process – but I’ve realised there’s a problem for sales with reissuing out-of-print books.

These days, online retailers like Amazon keep the out-of-print version easy to source and buy second hand, so the new edition is competing with a former version that has built up good reviews and may cost less than a single penny.

I’ll wait and see how these two do before I commit more resources to reissuing the others.

Alex: You mentioned there will be some completely new books in the 70 Ways series?

Jenny: I might be having a change of plan, because I found the process of self-publishing children’s non-fiction much more challenging than I’d expected.

I don’t do any of the layouts and cover designing for my self-published adults’ non-fiction or children’s fiction, and I thought it would be no problem adding an illustrator and creating a more designed-looking interior.

In my head, it would be more of a comic-style layout, with different kinds of boxes and so on. But because I didn’t understand any of the design issues – what’s possible, what’s difficult, when and how to incorporate illustrations, what size of illustrations would work best and be within my budget, reflowable vs fixed formats for ebooks and so on – I found project managing it really stressful.

So I’m planning to look for other routes to publication for the new books, and I’ve redrafted them as standalones rather than part of the 70 Ways series.

For the time being, I’m happy for 70 Ways to Boost Your Self-Esteem and 70 Ways to Bullyproof Yourself to stand as a pair.

70 Ways to Bullyproof Yourself  is published on 12th September, price £5.99. If you’ve self-published children’s non-fiction, Jenny would love to hear about your experiences in the comments below.

Rachel Lawston also created promo materials for Jenny 

Writing the Weather -- Bronwen Griffiths

Here, in the UK, we’re always talking about the weather. It’s part of our DNA. Almost an international joke. But we talk about the weather because it’s an important and essential part of our lives. It affects our mood and our health - and sometimes even our very survival.

Weather in our writing is an essential part of the setting. It can affect the way our characters behave and feel – just as it affects us. But sometimes the weather functions in a more symbolic way – in my latest novel, Here Casts No Shadow, the falling snow at the beginning of the book presages a change in the heroine’s life.

The tank sped up. I never realised a tank could move so fast. Grey smoke poured from its exhaust and the mounted gun swung round in our direction. I yanked Pearl’s arm and dragged her in the direction of the trees. Breath steamed out of our mouths. The snow was glassy underfoot where it had been trodden down and we ran and the trees were far away and how thin they were.

Snow is important throughout Here Casts No Shadow, particularly in the first chapter. It affects Mira’s mood – at first there is excitement as she and her younger sister look at the falling snow and then as they run outside and make snow angels. Later the snow becomes dangerous and sinister, and even the snow angels take on a different presence.

I also ‘book-end’ the snow theme – here it is again at the end of the novel – this time as a symbol of hope. I fly down the steps, light as the snowflakes that fall from the city sky. This is now. This is home.

The snow also features as a symbol of death – its white colour – like bones – its searing cold. However, the snow also has a positive role to play in the book. When it snows hard in Mira’s town the jets cannot fly and drop their bombs. It eliminates Mira’s footsteps. In these instances the weather affects the plot, as it does in many stories. A storm grounds a group of people in an airport. A fire burning after months of hot, dry weather, causes people to flee.

Think also of books like Peter Hoeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, where the snow also plays a vital role in the plot and feeling of the book, or The Long Dry by Cyan Jones set in a long, hot, arid summer. Because of the weather the grass is sparse and Gareth, struggling to continue farming in his west Wales home, wakes to find one of his heavily pregnant cows has wandered away. Another has dropped a stillborn calf - this recalls the repeated miscarriages of Gareth's wife, Kate, now nursing only tension and depression. Or take Megan Hunter’s book, The End We Start From, set in a flooded world.  Here the heroine has just given birth and is flooded with milk, while the waters rise around the hospital.

Writing about the weather isn’t always easy. Because it’s so much part of our lives we can often fall into clichés – lashing rain, baking summer days, the wind groaning in the trees. One way of avoiding this is to write not of the weather itself but the effect it has. Or we can simply state, ‘it was raining that day…’ and get on with what else we want to write about.

I enjoy writing haikus and short poems about the weather. This helps me think about the words I use when describing the weather.

So…don’t ignore the weather, even if it’s hard to write. It’s essential to enable the reader to imagine where he or she is. But don’t overdo it either. Because when writing about the weather, as with everything else in novel writing, less is nearly always more.

Bronwen is the author of Here Casts No Shadow, 2018, Not Here, Not Us – stories of Syria, 2016 and A Bird in the House, 2014. Her flash fiction has been widely published. She’s currently editing a book set in a fictitious Dungeness – in which a woman is obsessed with rising sea levels.

www.bronwengriff.co.uk

https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/contemporary/here-casts-no-shadow/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Not-Here-Us-Short-Stories/dp/1910841412

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bird-House-Bronwen-Griffiths/dp/1910153060