My brain hurts - win a book! by Jan Needle
So picture this, sensation seekers. At a
specified time on Monday, I will be hunched over my laptop fielding a million
calls from slavering punters desperate to know the nuts and bolts of historical
fiction-writing.
In actual fact, I am due to take part in an
online forum organised by my e-book publishers Endeavour Press. Historical
books are a substantial part of their trade, and a substantial part of my
output.
My first book when I moved from children to
adults was called A Fine Boy for Killing, set in the British Navy in the second
half of the eighteenth century. My latest effort, which I am only halfway
through, is the third in my series of novellas based on the life of Nelson.
In between, there have been further
delvings into times past (should that be passed, I wonder?), one of which,
Death Order, uses the mystery flight of Rudolf Hess as its basis. I'm not a
great believer in conspiracy theories, but some of them are just too enticing.
My last novella, Napoleon: The Escape, posits the possibility that an attempt
was made to spring him from St Helena in a submarine. Crazy? Some of the
evidence is extraordinarily strong!
And Death Order, being a historical novel,
is a prize to be won in the aforementioned festival/forum. It will be a
paperback, naturally. A virtual novel as a prize would probably be a step too
far even for a proud electric author. Although I bet somebody's done it. The
future, dear boy. The future is NOW!
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| The Jan that Goodreads thinks is a lady |
I do have problems as an electric author,
however, and the big one, the elephant in the room to use the latest cliche, is
getting my old single cylinder diesel engine brain to even begin to understand
the new technology.
I suspect I'm driving Caoimhe O’Brien,
Endeavour's marketing manager, spare
with my questions on such simple matters as how to link my own website to a
‘widget’ on Goodreads, for example. And how, indeed, to make the Goodreads site
do what it needs to do to connect me to my avid questioners. What, indeed, a
bleeding widget might even be.
Further to these problems at the
cutting-edge of the virtual world, is the fact that I've never come to grips
with the publicity revolution we’re all meant to be a part of. I'm on Facebook,
and I'm on Twitter, but I didn't even find out, except by accident, that
Electric Authors were bringing out a second book of stories, which left me only
about three weeks to dredge one from my skull. I enjoy Facebook for the daft
and lovely things I find there, but Twitter baffles me.
What is it for? What does it do? Apart from
trolling, it appears to have no function of any interest to a normally sentient
human being. Please don't tell Caoimhe, though. I've probably caused her enough
existential pain already.
And further to that problem is another of
this brave new world. When it was suggested I might take part in the upcoming
festival, I was exhorted to open a Goodreads account. I dutifully did so, only
to find that I already had one. I'd been on it for some years apparently, and
despite the fact it had a picture of me clearly with a beard, it referred to me
throughout as 'she.'
What's more it listed versions of some of
my books that I have since revisited, often in a very big way, even up to
giving them new titles. As I've said before here, one of the glories of the
e-book is that it can be treated as a living thing. I found to my mild horror
(mild horror; good eh?) that some of my sea books – written consciously as
genre busters – had been reviewed by the good denizens of Goodreads as
bog-standard members of that genre. A Fine Boy, for example, was complained
about as having ‘no pleasant characters of any sort.’ Which, as well as being
inaccurate, was why I wrote the damned thing, wasn't it?
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| WIN IT 4 FREE! |
I wonder what it does to my reputation (!)
and my sales; of course I do. But I also wonder if publicity of any sort, and
books, have a lot to do with each other. On Amazon, for instance, there are
many many books with many many stars and many many reviews. Are they genuine?
No idea. Does it keep a good book down? Ditto.
By publicity I mean virtual publicity, of
course. We all know that if publishers throw bucketloads of cash at a novel
there is a good chance that it will sell, and if it wins one of the prizes it
will do much better. If it is taken up by the media for any reason, even
better. Truly there is no such thing as bad publicity. But virtual publicity? I
haven't got a clue.
As for myself, I just keep writing. And if
you want to ask me questions – virtual questions, naturally – tune in on Tuesday,
April 18 at the Endeavour Festival. Everybody welcome, trolls included. If the
idea of getting off with a lady with a beard excites you, then I'm your man.
But don't tell Caoimhe!
The Giveaway (including Death
Order) is live here till the 25th: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27587432-death-order
Blogs about the festival books and
authors here:
Author page
Twitter
Facebook
A Fine Boy for Killing
The Spithead Nymph http://amzn.to/22rF8iF
The Wicked Trade
Undertakers Wind
Nelson: the Dreadful havoc
Charlie
Raven books:
Death card http://amzn.to/1Q4Upp1
Comments
An email yesterday told me that I hadn't registered an interest in your festival appearance early enough and that the invitation had therefore been withdrawn. I shall nonetheless try to sneak in and ask embarrassing questions about your private life.
And if any others are reading this comment, I recommend that you buy and read Death Order immediately. It's a great read and provokes lots of thoughts.
As to being disbarred due to a withdrawn invite, well, what can I say? At least I can spell Caoimhe. There are few questions about my private life left to embarrass me, but I'd be interested to see you try. Please feel free to gatecrash.
A bit like the comedians (gatecrash, that is) who put up the comment ahead of yours. I don't even know what SEO means, let alone expert. And isn't Grabbit one of Private Eye's libel lawyers?
Thanks for the comment about Death Order. If I wasn't such a modest girl, I'd say you were dead right!