Authors Electric

  ‘In today's competitive market a writer needs to capture their reader in the first paragraph if not the first line. Susan May Warren In today's climate of instant media and gratification, the author has only a few seconds to grab a reader's attention before they move on. Modern consumers are used to making an assessment and scrolling on if what they see or read does not interest them. Therefore, the opening to a book must hoo k the reader and pull them in, tantalise them and invite them to keep reading. It should set the tone and voice of the whole novel . Sara Ridley suggests six components of what a first line can do to make your reader move on.  Conflict Question Emotional Connection Humour Shock  Twist The types of opening lines are outlined as  Action Character Setting Thought Statement World building Of course, your first line can be a mixture of all of the above, although I would suggest you try not to pack too much into it or the opening may just become con...

I beg your indulgence this week as I give you an update on what is happening in this writer's life. In all fairness, it is not just self indulgence but an effort to help you, whether author reader, to find new promotional ideas or find new books to read. It’s not often I write a post such as this and the reason I am doing so is, it’s been a frightfully exciting week. This week will also continue to be exciting.  Firstly, I released the seventh book in my DI Shona McKenzie Mysteries series. Now, releasing a new book is always a momentous occasion but this one is even more momentous as it has been delayed by two years. Readers worldwide are rejoicing as they've been waiting for this book to arrive. I am also rejoicing as I didn’t think it was ever going to get published.  My first tip to you is, never give up. You will get there in the end and the feeling of joy will be indescribable. Tied in with this, I also got my Covid booster on the same day. These are somewhat tied togethe...

Novelist Debbie Young shares thoughts from a country garden Have you ever been surprised at how few people know a word that you've always taken for granted? That happened to me this week when I was working my way through suggestions and queries raised on my current work-in-progress by my extremely helpful team of beta readers . Oh, and before we go any further, just in case you've never come across the term "beta reader", that's the book's equivalent to a test pilot - a pre-publication reader who offers feedback on a book prior to publication. A Harvest of Words Autumn story now available to pre-order The work in question is the second in my Sophie Sayers Village Mysteries series of lighthearted classic cosy crime novels, Trick of Murder? This series will run the course of the village year from one summer to the next. Trick or Murder? spans October to November, thus incorporating both Halloween and Guy Fawkes' Night, and the tail end ...

Ghosts Electric was the first published anthology I wrote a short story for, and I had my reservations. While I love to read novellas or a two-page story spread in magazines, I never thought it was something I’d be able to successfully master. A collage of promotional images put together by the authors involved with the second anthology I have a short story published in      During my youth, I wrote untold amounts of small stories in notepads and colourfully designed  hardback books and treasured them for many years. But they were just for me. A collection of ideas that one day I hoped would evolve and grow and become a full-length novel. Those stories have never managed to make it out of the dusty drawer – and that’s probably a good thing – but I do finally have the ideas I need to make those novels. And, regardless of age and my state of imagination, the basic premise of writing is that the story must have a beginning, a middle and an end. But, when ...

As I write this, a week has passed since the Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, but it feels more like a month. It was my first experience of Harrogate, and any kind of book festival, and I’ve had a major comedown from the amazing event.  I booked up late, only  securing a B&B in April (most people attending had booked the previous year as soon as the dates were announced), and now I’m so glad that my ‘fear of missing out’ bug kicked me up the butt just in time. As a very new author, I was feeling quite daunted as the day to travel to Yorkshire approached. However, I pulled on my big girl pants and had a good talking to myself – this was a great opportunity to meet other authors, bloggers, publishers, publicists and people I’d spoken to online for over a year. If I’m honest, I think I embraced the experience more as a reader than an author, because once I was there my nerves took over on more than one occasion. But I don’t think it altered my experie...

During the last year, my life has changed dramatically thanks to the people I've met and the books I've read. So when I had the opportunity to be part of World Book Night as a distributor, I was delighted. Yes, I know it was almost a month ago now, but hear me out. The Reading Agency's World Book Night took place on 23rd April this year. Their drive was to reach out to people in the UK who do not normally read for pleasure - and therefore 187,500 copies of 15 specially printed books - including titles from Ann Cleeves, Amanda Prowse and Sarah Hilary, to name a few - were distributed by reading enthusiasts. That included me. Sometime last year, I filled out an online registration form as to why I wanted to be involved, how I would distribute the books and choose the title I would like to receive. I didn't actually think I'd get chosen, but I did. I was given 16 copies of Ann Cleeves' short story, Too Good To Be True. It wasn't the book I had requested, ...

          In my previous post 'Self-publishing V's Traditional Publishing' it was highlighted that most of the blog posts on this site are written from the writers point of view.           Well let's be honest they would be, we're all writers. It was suggested that perhaps a blog post about what the eBook revolution has done for the reader might be of interest. So as I'm running behind schedule on my personal book project (so don't have anything to share about that at the moment) and my other possible project I'm not allowed to talk about, I found I didn't have anything to write about. So I decided to put my readers hat on and talk about what the eBook revolution has done for me the reader.           So here goes: One:  It's meant I can download books, often for very little outlay therefore saving me money. Two: I can pack an entir...

          If you're reading this blog, it is reasonable to assume: 1) You're a reader or 2) You're a writer (and the second assumption presumes the first). If you like reading, it is also reasonable to assume you have at least one (almost certainly more than one) favorite author, and if you like reading this blog, it is not outside the realm of possibility that that favorite author is an independent author (if not, might I suggest one or more  of these fine writers ?).            Whether your favorite author is an independent writer or a traditionally published New York Times best-selling author, the relationship you have with that author is symbiotic: authors, insofar as their books are available to the public, cannot exist without someone to read their work, and the reader cannot exist without something to read. The unstated myth for many of us, though...

Going bananas in the Canaries I have a confession to make. I'm addicted to Pinterest. It is far and away the best form of displacement activity I've ever found. I can spend hours on there, gazing at other people's pictures and tinkering with my own. It's also a novelist's paradise. As far as my fiction is concerned, I'm what has come to be known as a pantser rather than a plotter. I write by the seat of my pants and hardly ever do anything but the most sketchy of outlines. In fact I've always disliked people asking me for detailed outlines of proposed projects. I could never stick to them. I tend to know the beginning and the end of a novel or play, but write to find out how to get there. If I already know how I (or more precisely the people in the story) get there I become bored and give up. I know, because I've done it a few times, on occasions when the people I was working with - mostly agents - demanded ever more highly refined outlines. By the...

It’s been a mad couple of weeks. I’ve been launching the third book in my Dundee Crime Series – Missing Believed Dead. I thought everything was under control, I was going to launch the ebook and Amazon paperback, at the same time as my book launch, which was scheduled for 11th July, in the Dundee branch of Waterstones. So, everything was underway. I was in the final proofs of the Createspace paperback. My local printer was geared up and ready to go to produce 200 paperbacks in the last week of June. That would give me plenty of time to address any hiccups, or delays. And prepublication copies of the ebook had been circulated for reviews. Thanks to everyone who was kind enough to do this for me. Silly, silly, silly! The first thing to upset the applecart was the paperback appearing on Amazon for pre-order for 1 July. I hadn’t approved it at that stage so I knew it wasn’t Amazon who had stuck it up there. It could only have been Nielsen who did the deed when I registered my IS...