This week has been a full-time load of editing, with fitting in some family time in the middle. I’ve been working on the secret editing project, thinking about Wren book 4, finishing up The Last Mayor book 9 rework The Light, and ALSO dreaming up a new series. In turn: The Light rework With this last book in the Last Mayor series reworked, I have now completely rewritten the whole 9-book series! It is a pretty huge thing to do. I had it down for some future date, if I had time, spread out over years. Rather, thanks to sales …
Stopped all FB ads, ACX auditions, edits – Writing Update 2019 Week 51
The last week (almost last week of 2019!) I’ve been working on 5 things: Battling the intro and concept for Wren book 4 Reworking Last Mayor book 9 Editing a secret project (not mine – more some point later) Listening to audiobook auditions for Saint Justice Finishing up 5 years at my old job, On Campus London teaching English. I’ve also done my taxes and taken stock of ad success in the last few months. Thanks to affiliate links attached to various Facebook ads, I’ve known for some time that those ads didn’t seem to be connected very much to …
The Lies breakthrough & Wren comments – Writing Update 2019 Week 50
The Lies – For 2 weeks I’ve been struggling with my zombie book 8, The Lies – trying to figure out how to cut it so it makes sense, goes faster and captures what I wanted to do originally. Challenges standing in the way are the usuals, but in complex ways – repetition of past material, proliferation of deep tech explanations – plus something less problematic in previous books: low-stakes but high energy conflict. The central story is Amo learning who he needs to kill, setting up book 9 and the climax. There’s a lot of backstory, told live in …
Wren Bookbub, audiobooks and too much gore – Writing Update 2019 Week 47, 48, 49
On Thurs Nov 28 (Thanksgiving) I had the Bookbub for book one of the Chris Wren thriller series – Saint Justice. It was free in all markets, exclusive to KU. I never thought I’d get the BB without going wide, and was in fact planning on a wide run early in 2020, but applied while exclusive anyway on a whim. Well, they took it and ran it and now we have results – 24,000 free given away on the 28th, another 4,000 on the 29th, another 1,000 on the 30th. It held #1 position in Amazon free stores in UK, …
Edits on The Lash & lessons for Wren – Writing Update 2019 Week 46
This week has been consumed by editing The Lash, my Last Mayor zombie book 9. There have been some real ups and downs, crises of confidence, which I didn’t get when editing the earlier books in the series. This one took one major unusual step – flipping Amo from the good guy to the bad guy – and addressing that was a challenge. Here’s what I did with them all: Cerulean dreams Naturally there were some interwoven, consistent Cerulean dreams throughout the novel, all in Amo’s POV. It happened in the Yangtze Darkness – some complex stuff about Amo getting …
Bookbub for Wren, The Lash edits & stellar email – Writing Update 2019 Week 45
Lots of writerly action this week – with income contuining to hold at around $160 a day, 50% ACOS at around $80 a day on FB, AMS and BB ads. I have since squashed the BB ads (ineffective), trimmed the sails of the AMS ads (too expensive), and cut the Anna-image FB ads (they got very many cheap clicks due to the slight sexiness but very few sales). Indie Authors London I also had the Indie Authors London group Meetup which I run – we had some 14 people attend – including a big guy who looked like Idris Elba …
Brutality in my books, Massive Edits & Confirmatory Reviews – Writing Update 2019 Week 44
It looks like I had a lot to say last week, as I wrote two extra blogs about the following topics: Massive edits to Last Mayor book 6 Confirmatory reviews approving my Last Mayor box set progress to date The upshot of both is that I finished editing book 6, The Laws, and moved on to Book 7, The Lash, where I faced the old challenges – simplifying complex technobabble, reducing repetition, speeding up action scenes – as well as a new one – losing sympathy for the main character when he goes too dark. I was aware when I …
Confirmatory reviews – Last Mayor is on the right track!
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
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
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 …