Authors Electric

I have just met the electronic version of Miss Whiplash, the editor from Hell. I’m talking about Autocrit which is described on their website as manuscript editing software for fiction writers. As you probably know I’m a sucker for software. I got seduced by Scrivener about a year ago and now swear by it as an organisational tool to whip your first draft into shape. The other software I’ve succumbed to is Dragon. I have the professional version and it’s superb. I’ve also added lots of other software bits and pieces to my long-suffering computer, but the programmes I’ve mentioned are the ones that stand head and shoulders above the rest. And if I run this through Autocrit it will smack my fingers for using such a blatant cliche. Now, there is no writing software on the market that will write your book for you, or if there is I haven’t found it yet. But what software will do is provide tools to either organise your manuscript into some kind of sensible order, or to highligh...

Christmas Day will be here in less than a week. The street decorations have been lit for the past month. Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone. The retail stores are counting their footfall and profits, and wondering whether there will be a last minute rush. Children are writing their Santa letters, and parents are ignoring their ever increasing credit card spending. Am I the only one who wonders, in the midst of this spending frenzy, where the magic has gone, the simple pleasures, and the enjoyment of what was once a religious festival. Memory Lane is sometimes a place it’s better not to visit. Everything in the past wasn’t perfect, and life for many has improved substantially, but in the process maybe we have become more disillusioned and less satisfied with the simple pleasures of the past. However, the temptation to wander through Christmases past is beckoning. There were no expensive presents left in the stocking I pinned up every year when I was a young ...

Americans in Dundee - at the top of the Law In the past, authors did not concern themselves with promoting their books. That was a job for the publisher. But times have changed and authors, both traditional and indie, are now responsible for their own promotion. Now, promotion does not come easy to authors who are more attuned to closeting themselves with computer or pen and paper, and promotion is often a chore. However, I had the opportunity recently of engaging in a promotional task which was pleasurable and great fun. Earlier in the year I was asked if I would accompany a group of American visitors on a tour of Dundee to visit the settings in the Dundee Crime Series , and on the next day accompany them to the fishing village of Auchmithie to talk about my fisher saga A Salt Splashed Cradle . Naturally I accepted this offer with alacrity. It was a small group of fifteen people, and they were spending some time in Dundee following their visit to Scotland ’s crime fe...

The idea of making money from writing gets a mixed reception. Those who regard themselves as professional writers see no problem with this. In fact they expect to make money because of their professional status. Then there are the hobbyists who write solely for the love of creating something. They are quite happy to distribute their writing, whether that is poetry, stories or novels, for no payment. They get their reward from knowing their work has been read. But among the hobbyists are some writers who are developing their work and themselves into semi-professional status. These are the writers who are happy to charge for their writing in order to acquire a bit of extra income, although many of them do not make a profit. In among these groupings there are some who believe that writers should not be paid for their work. They should supply everything free to their followers and readers. While this is a noble concept it is not a realistic one. It is easy to say money is u...

We are living in an age where entertainment is provided with the flick of a button, the wave of a remote control, or a spoken command, and I’m sure the time is fast approaching – if it isn’t here already – for entertainment to be activated by thought processes. One of the disadvantages of this rapid progress of technology is the shortening of many people’s attention spans, so a writer has to snare the reader from the very first word, or the book may be discarded as not worth the time it would take to read. Long winded openings and pages and pages of description no longer attract the reader looking for a quick fix, although those seeking a more literary experience may stay the course. Writers have always known that the need for a hook on the first page – preferably in the first paragraph, and even better if it’s in the first sentence – is imperative. And that is more true today than it has ever been. But how have various writers fared in this search for the perfect hook?...

I was asked this question by an agent after a Society of Authors meeting when we were walking, along with loads of other people, to the restaurant where we had booked a meal. Now, my usual answer to this question is that I write crime novels, but this was an agent, and he was expressing interest, so I had to think hard. How would I describe my crime novels? The answer I came up with was that I wrote dark crime. Darker than Agatha Christie, but not as dark as Val McDermid, although I thought I leaned more towards McDermid rather than Christie. And no, I didn’t get an agent contract, and the guy was probably only making conversation because we were in the same group. But turning over this simple question in my mind I’ve started to wonder what kind of books I do write. I’ve written the Dundee Crime Series, but the only thing that makes these three books a series is because they are contemporary murder mysteries set in Dundee with the same investigative detective team. H...

No wonder I’m feeling exhausted. I’ve just published my third book in the space of three months. Now, I’m usually a book a year writer, so where did that spurt of productivity come from? I suppose it all started at the end of last year’s summer. I was working on my historical crime novel, The Death Game, but I’d taken a bit of time out to act as the Crime Writer in Residence for the Edinburgh Ebook Festival, and during that time I posted a series of twelve posts on the different subgenres of crime. Once that was out of the way I got my head down to complete The Death Game . Things were trundling along and the book was taking shape when a chance meeting with another indie author, Bill Kirton, suggested I turn my Writer in Residence posts into book form. That was what planted the seed. I went back to the Edinburgh Ebook Festival posts and discovered they were no longer online. They had vanished into internet cyberspace. All my lovely Pinterest postings now had no information...

Which box are you in? Publishers have this unfortunate habit of placing authors in a specific genre box. If your first novel is romance, then you are a romance writer, and woe betide you if you step outside this genre. My first accepted novel, Dead Wood , was a contemporary crime one, although I had previously written a romantic saga. So, I was popped into the contemporary crime genre box and, if I was still with my traditional publisher, that is where you would find me languishing. My Dundee Crime Series Now, I am quite happy to be a crime writer, and I suppose I’m best known for my Dundee Crime series of books. However, I’m not sure that I want to be restricted in my choice of what to write. So, having successfully made the conversion to being an indie writer, I have a bit more autonomy. If you are wondering how I have exercised that autonomy, you have to look no further than my historical saga, A Salt Splashed Cradle , set in an 1830s fishing village. In that book...

When I researched my new novel The Death Game which is set in 1919 Dundee I came across some interesting facts. The main character of my novel is the first policewoman in Dundee, and in the process of researching the origins of women police I came across many fascinating details. Did you know? 1 – The first women’s police service was formed by the suffragette organisations in 1914 when they abandoned their militant actions on the commencement of the First World War. 2 – There were two women’s police services in London at this time. The first of these was the Women’s Police Volunteers which later became the Women’s Police Service. The second service was the Voluntary Women Patrols. 3 – Between 1914 to 1918 the women’s police service was voluntary, although they worked closely with the official police forces. 4 – In 1918 the Commissioner of the Police, Sir Nevil Macready, appointed one of the voluntary services as an official women’s police force. Interestingly, h...

The Death Game has finally made it. It’s now published as a Kindle ebook. However, the road to publication for this novel has been far from smooth. This was actually the first crime novel I ever wrote. Prior to this I’d written a historical saga which is now published as A Salt Splashed Cradle . I’d also written a lot of historical articles, many of them published in the US magazine The Highlander, as well as various UK magazines. So, I reckoned I was a historical writer. The Death Game went the rounds and met the usual thanks, but no thanks response. Although Penguin did seriously consider it, but at the last minute they decided they didn’t like it 110%. Now I’m no mathematician, but I did wonder how a writer could ever manage to reach that additional 10%. Nothing daunted I continued to submit and was over the moon when a new publisher ran a competition for the best unpublished crime fiction in the world – notice I said world – and I was one of the twenty winners. ...

     The inspiration for my blog post this month came from a comment I posted on Facebook. That comment attracted so much interest I did a little research on how PLR works, and that is what I want to share with you.      So what was my comment on Facebook? Here it is, written in the heat of the moment, “Spitting nails this morning. Just got my PLR (Library loans) statement and there are no payments for Night Watcher or A Salt Splashed Cradle despite the fact that Angus libraries’ waiting lists for both books are massive.” I knew my third book in the Dundee Crime Series would not earn anything because it wasn’t in the libraries during the qualifying period, but the other two books should have earned something. So that set me off on my research trail.      To start with, perhaps I should clarify what PLR is. PLR is short for Public Lending Right. Until fairly recently PLR funding was managed by the Registrar of Publ...