Confirmatory reviews – Last Mayor is on the right track!

Mike Grist Last Mayor, Writing 2 Comments

A month ago I received this review of the Last Mayor box set books 1-9 on Amazon US: Started off like a snowball down a mountain. By book 4 it slowed to a pebble rolling down a rocky slope. Well defined characters, interesting premise but some points go against all common sense. But still a good read. But cant bring my self to give a five. Oddly, I found this to be incredibly reassuring. This person had read an earlier version, where I’d edited books 1-3 but hadn’t yet touched books 4-6. So – what I’d done was working! The …

Massive edits to the Last Mayor 6: The Laws

Mike Grist Last Mayor, Writing, Zombie Ocean 2 Comments

In the last couple of weeks I have been editing The Laws, Last Mayor book 6, and am almost at the final word count. It started off at 107,000 words. That’s a decent length book, bigger than an ‘average’ novel length of 80,000. It has great reviews on all vendors, basically a solid five stars. It may even be crazy to edit it at all – since something about it is working. And yet… I have now cut it down to 55,000 words. That’s basically chopping it in half. Here’s what I cut, and why: 13,000 words of Drake’s backstory. …

Adding Bookbub ads – Writing Update 2019 Week 43

Mike Grist Weekly Writing Update, Writing Leave a Comment

The stellar performance of my Last Mayor box set books 1-9 continues unabated. This remains something I am surprised by, don’t fully understand, and have no idea how long it will go on for – therefore I am enjoying it very much while it lasts! It is selling some 70 copies a day, with around 20,000 page reads. That’s around $100 gross a day. Of course I am paying around 40% for the privilege. On days when AMS spends my ad budget it does better. Likewise with FB ads – though somehow the FB ads have been cutting themselves out …

Sell the sizzle not the steak in book blurbs – Writing Update 2019 Week 42

Mike Grist Story Craft, Weekly Writing Update, Writing Leave a Comment

When I launched the Soul Jacker box set last week, I also took a hard look at the blurb I was using for Soul Jacker book 1. This blurb was only a few months old. It’s a book I’ve re-blurbed multiple times. But somehow, this time around I could see how little of the ‘sizzle’ was coming through. It was all steak. Descriptive. Interesting. Not exciting. David Gluckman Case Study Maybe it was doing a mentoring session with David Gluckman, inventor of Bailey’s Irish Cream, a few weeks back that helped me see this. In advance of our session I …

The astounding binge power of book box sets – Writing Update 2019 Week 41

Mike Grist Weekly Writing Update, Writing Leave a Comment

Some hard talk to start – and one possible reason I stopped the Weekly Writing Updates 24 weeks (half a year!) ago: My big Soul Jacker relaunch failed. No point beating around the bush. It hurt at the time – like any setback. I’d spent a lot of time rewriting this trilogy which I first wrote in 2014/15 – paid for developmental editing, got new covers, labored for the 5th year on the blurb. I got amazing testimonials from top authors in the game (Michael Marshall Smith!, Pat Mills!) built a hell of a promo stack around a Bookbub New …

Chris Wren 3, Last Mayor Rewrites & Mentoring – Writing Update 2019 week 39 & 40

Mike Grist Weekly Writing Update, Writing Leave a Comment

Hoo boy. It has been 24 weeks since I last updated this writing blog! What have I been doing? Wrote book 3 of the Chris Wren thrillers, Reparation. Substantially rewrote and released book 4 of the Last Mayor series, The Loss. Just now (an hour ago) got done rewriting book 5 of the Last Mayor series, The List. Mentored another writer on marketing 1-1. Spoke to a writer’s group on marketing. Released books 1-3 of the Chris Wren thrillers. Ramped up Facebook and Amazon ad spend such that I’m now making around $40 profit a day. Put all the Last …