Authors Electric

As anyone who’s ever bought a stereo system knows – who, after excavating it from several carapaces of polystyrene, and connecting red and black wires to tiny metal jaws, has in exhaustion simply set up the speakers in the corner of the living room, from where the sound is muffled and too far below ear height – there eventually comes a time when you have to make a stand. Boom! Boom! Ah, Independence Day. I remember when that film was released. A friend saw it with me and left the cinema raving that it was the best film he’d ever seen, except possibly for Dirty Harry. So he went to see it again, and came out wailing that it was the  worst  film he’d ever seen. That’s a neat trick for a director to pull off. I’m sure it takes real skill, to engineer enjoyment that is so  in the moment  that it simply cannot be recaptured. I think the Roman poet Catullus made a similar observation, after he went to see Jurassic Park (or it might have been about love or som...

Let me confess: I'm a fan of round-robin christmas letters.  It's fashionable to diss them in the UK, but I disagree. Even if the missive is smug and airbrushed and claims the golden offspring can split the atom, it’s more meaningful than a card that only says 'from Nina and Frederik'.      But since I approve of Christmas newsletters, that means I must compose one. And I don't know what to put. I spent this year writing, rewriting, talking to other writers and, er, working out what to write next. Sure, there was adventure and atom-splitting, but it happened on the page and in my head.      And that's my update. One paragraph. How can I spread it out?      When in doubt, study the requirements of the genre. Boasting     Christmas letters need boasting, with bells on. Your friends will report a mighty throng of promotions, bonuses, and other unceasing achievements. T...

Readers of this blog will know how many fine authors choose to self-publish or are driven to it because they don’t fit a marketing niche. But when we go it alone, how do we build a brand? One important function that publishers used to perform was curation - taking the creme de la creme, producing it well, putting it out under an influential imprint. In the real world, that didn’t always count for much, but the reading public thinks it did - so to get credibility, indies have to replace it somehow. And here’s how we’re doing it. Publishing collectives Some indies band together to form an editorial board. Books aren’t published unless all members approve them. That takes a lot of trust and rigor, and all members have to be in tune with a particular type of reader. Perhaps not good for mavericks, but it’s the indie version of the niche publisher. The handpicked collection Some authors are gathering collections of writers whose work they admire. I was lucky enough to ca...

This time last year I sent a tweet that said ‘after so long ghostwriting, this book’s for me’. I was preparing to self-publish my first novel. In the sunny land of tweets, I was keeping up a front of jolly emancipation. Behind the scenes, all was frantic. I’d done a last edit that turned drastic. I was pleased with it but my first advance reader bawled me out for my robust treatment of reincarnation. Although we’re now great friends, this was not reassuring. I had no clue how to market the book, but if I aimed at the wrong readers there’d be hate mail. I was blogging about it here and there, attempting to sketch my multilayered story in a thumbnail. Each time it sounded like a different book. And as for a back cover blurb? I was totally failing to write one that grasped the novel satisfactorily. But flap copy was a detail because I had no front cover. I was designing roughs and hated the way they were going. Even if I was going to use a designer (which in the end I didn’...

Some punks, deriding mainstream publishing           There's been a lot on TV and radio recently about punk rock. Not sure why, probably some anniversary - the media do love their anniversaries, bless 'em. I was never a punk myself, I was far too weedy and straight-laced, but I can't help feeling a certain nostalgia for an era when anyone could simply shout at a microphone, stick two fingers up at the establishment and call themselves a musician... Hang on...           Does that ring a bell with anyone? Might there be parallels between the punk movement of the 1970s and the self-publishing movement of the, err, what would we be, the '10s? Both were kicked off from an unexpected direction. Both caught on in a way which makes wildfire look like a 20W lightbulb. Both initially had their svengalis and their fringe pundits. Both were looked down upon by the press and the critics, apart ...

          I've been thinking about names quite a lot recently. A friend asked me why I had called my most recent book The Amber Heart.  (She hasn't read it yet, otherwise she might have guessed!) But if I'm honest, this is a book that has had many different titles over the years, including Noon Ghosts and The Sorrel Horse. I still quite like Noon Ghosts but it didn't 'stick' for some reason although I used the title for a radio play set in Poland instead. One of my previous agents had an aversion to the word 'horse' in any title, so the Sorrel Horse had to go. When I was doing the last major set of rewrites to this novel, I began to see that the piece of jewellery which runs through the story and is central to the plot had to be amber: a heart shaped chunk of this precious resin, set in silver filigree. When I first visited Poland, my Great Aunt Wanda gave me a necklace which she had managed to hang onto throughout the war and beyond...

Hello! Charity's Child was my first novel, published in 2008 by the small new independent publisher Circaidy Gregory Press (still going strong and branching out all over the place). Kay Green, who runs the press, gave me my first experience of working with a savvy and eagle-eyed editor, and without any doubt she helped me turn Charity into a better book. It came out; we did some publicity - oh, the story may sound familiar. My family and friends were excited and supportive and we had a celebratory barbecue in our back garden (it poured with rain but my wonderful partner found us a last-minute canopy and carried on cooking - thank you, Paul). It was a memorable day. I had signings, too, including one in the much missed Borders, five minutes' walk from home. That one was great - I told tons of people and many of them turned up. One couple who are old friends bought six copies - thank you, Keith and Sue. I had another signing, this time in Borders in Birmingham. It was August Ban...

This is that seven-year project. The cover's done, but the book isn't (a-hem)... Here's a shot of me at Shakespeare's Birthplace. For no reason whatsoever. At the moment, I'm working on a couple of projects, one of which is something I've been trying to get right for about seven years now. Seven. Years. It's getting there. Slowly. In ye olden days I would, by now - a few months off having the manuscript completed - be hopping about nervously trying to get a publisher interested, frantically bugging my poor agent to send the first chapters out to anyone who'll listen, and feeling crushed and heartbroken when phrases like 'not for us' or 'perhaps with some extensive editing' started turning up in emails. But this is not ye olden days. Not only do I not really anticipate a mainstream publisher offering me a contract ever again, pace the current state of the industry, but I'm not sure I'll ever seriously think about tout...