Authors Electric

This is Sheffield on a cold but sunny Saturday in November. Galaxy 4 is a shop specialising in Dr Who merchandise, and those people are queuing to buy a DVD and/or books. I am sitting just inside the window behind a table with a black cloth and a name placard with a pen and ready to sign purchases! Yes, those people are queuing to see me! Well, OK - they are more likely to be queuing to meet Damaris Hayman , tv actress who starred in the early 1970s Dr Who story The Daemons . She's also just starred in White Witch of Devil's End - a follow-on from the original story. Part monologue, part drama, this is a sequence of six short episodes where Olive Hawthorne talks about her life as protector of Devil's End. White Witch launched in November - and I wrote one of the episodes. So I now have my first IMDb credit as a scriptwriter and I get to sign DVD sleeves alongside Damaris and some of the other writers. Plus there is the book too - a novelisation and expansion of ...

My head is still spinning from discovering My book Killer's Craft, was sitting at number 3 on the bestseller shelf in Waterstones. This was alongside some highly respected writers. How did I find myself there is a question I am still asking. The answer is, I am not entirely sure. However, in the interests of helping others I will try and work it out. Join me in my quest.  I think the answer partly lies In the fact that I am quite a social person, and fairly confident. The story starts about 10 months ago when I went into my local Waterstones bookshop. For those outwith the UK, this is a large bookshop chain. I asked if I could hold a book launch for my first book, Killer's Countdown. This was despite the fact that I had nothing to show them other than a photo of the cover on my mobile phone. I must have been persuasive because the manager agreed to take a risk on a debut author and agreed. I then invited people to come along to the launch. Over a hundred people cam...

Wendy Jones talks about her book, Killer's Countdown Things have been very exciting for me recently as my first book, Killer's Countdown, was launched in November last year. If you are about to launch your first book, or are even writing your first book, I can assure you it is a heady feeling. It is also a whirlwind ride. In the midst of all this euphoria I also had to bear in mind that somehow or other I had to let the public know that my book was out and readily available. Now that was a sobering thought. So what have I learned about marketing in the midst of all the fun and excitement. I thought I would write this in order to help others. 1. Gradually build the level of interest. Having been reading about writing and marketing for some time, I was aware that marketing starts long before the book is hot off the press. It is important to build up excitement and anticipation so that people are waiting for it's arrival. The minute I started writing the book it wa...

It's been a busy few weeks with the emphasis being on anthologies and short stories.  Belonging to the Coventry Writers Group and running my own creative writing class, Focus on Fiction , which meets every Monday evening, both groups have put together anthologies of short stories and both have been launched this week. I'm excited about both, but I have to admit that I'm really excited about the Focus on Fiction anthology, Winter Tales as the majority of my eight students have never seen their work in print. And their enthusiasm in getting this book together has been fantastic. I got to know this group of novice writers at the beginning of the year when I started running a new creative writing course. The course was supposed to last just six weeks, but something clicked and my band of eight didn't want the course to end, and so it's continued throughout the year.  A couple of months ago I set them an exercise to write a wintery/Christmas short...

     Frances Thomas, writer and reader, said:  "No! You must publish! Ebook if you have to. You have two readers waiting in this house for starters, and I'm sure there are many many more. A bas les publishers! We want Sterkarms!!!"            Jenny Alexander, writer and reader, said: I feel the market is really pushing us to self-publish by being so 'narrow and risk-averse.' Feedback for the dream-book I've been working on for two decades has been entirely positive about the book but the killer-strike is that it's 'too niche' for t he market. I'm so sorry to hear you've taken the same hit, Sue. At least if you self-publish you should sell to everyone who's loved the first two Sterkarms, as well as new readers. And having been doing it for a while now, I personally don't think anything's wasted in the writer's life xx. "           Mary Hoffman , writer and reader, said: " That is so ridicu...