Oh boy, the lessons never end! Recently I’ve been talking and thinking a lot about the interest/excitement factors in my writing. In brief – I’m great at evoking interest, through wacky world-building and lots of deep character hints – and not so great at evoking excitement, through conflict and danger and etc… Well – in this post I get punched in the face again, and come back asking for more. I’ve been rewriting Mr. Ruin to punch up the excitement and dial back the interest, and feeling like I’m succeeding. I’m thinking I have a killer blurb to reflect that …
Facebook ads promising…
The two Facebook ads I posted a couple of days ago have been selling books like gangbusters! And making a profit? Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves… It’s the best pay-per-click ad response I’ve ever had. My targeting is nothing different from what I’ve done before, just the ads are different. I’m targeting US and UK, to similar authors mostly. Yesterday I sold 18 books, including one reader who bought the whole Last Mayor series in one go – 9 books. Normally I sell 1 or 2 a day. From Feb 1-5 I’ve spent 65 pounds on ads and …
Media Review 2019 week 5
It’s been a great week of media intake!! Well, except for Roma :(. TV Sex Education – I watched Netflix’s new show Sex Education within the week, and think it is really fantastic. So good-hearted, so upbeat, but also not shying away from darker moments – a coming of age tale for the millennial generation, where sex, masturbation and even nascent stalking, bullying and shaming behaviours are not considered nasty or even evil, but rather accidents of fragile minds on unfortunate detours. Essentially, nobody is beyond saving – at least at this stage. I love its bright palette, its redemptive …
Writing Update 2019 weeks 4&5
I skipped a week! Let’s consider the post about why I’m not a millionnaire yet the week 4 update (even though it’s not titled as such). Buoyed by the self-revelations that post brought on, I’ve gone ahead and taken another stab at Facebook ads. Almost certainly this will be an ill-fated effort ending with me stuffing more dollar bills down Zuckerburg’s hoodie-front, for paltry returns, but what they hey. It’s a laugh, amirite? Facebook Ads Here are my new ads. The copy for these kind of wrote itself. It’s calm, but clear. It gives potential readers everything they need, and …
Why am I not a millionnaire author yet?
This question popped in my head the other day, and hasn’t been far from my thoughts since – begging to be turned into a full-bore navel-gazing blogalysis (blog analysis) of all my past books in summary and why they didn’t go large. I’ve done this before, in bits. For instance, I’ve blogalyzed in detail all the book covers I’ve ever had – and come up with the unsurprising conclusion that they were always bad. So chalk that one up: Bad book covers The Saint Ignifer covers were illustrated and weird for the epic fantasy genre. The Ruin books were just …
Media Review 2019 week 4
Recently I’ve been indulging my fascination with the news more than ever – still limited to reading in the morning once (waking up) and afternoon once (on the train home, as a treat). Su and I have also been aiming to watch more worthy movies and spend our weekday evenings working/studying rather than just vegging on the sofa. News I read BBC news, then NBC, then Salon.com, then Washington Post opinions page, then the Guardian, then the Atlantic, then maybe New York Times, then if I’m very hungry I check out how CNN and Fox both depict the day’s events. …
Writing Update 2019 week 3
It seems I have stopped blogging apart from these weekly writing updates! Maybe once a week is enough, really, to say everything. If anything important comes up, I’ll say it. Life mostly ticks over… Self-Editing I finished editing King Ruin, book 2 of the Ruin War series! *trumpet fanfare* Boy, this one was a headache. I recently read a new term that sums it up well – narrative urgency. King Ruin had some really great stuff in it – mostly building out world (skyscrapers buried in the desert and stuffed full of the dead) and character (King Ruin’s debate with …
Cats on the new shed
Su came home from a business trip, we went out in the garden to admire the waterproofness of the shed, and the cats came with!
Writing Update 2019 week 2
On Tuesday we had the London Indie Authors Marketing Meetup – a record number were in attendance, after some 25 expressed interest. We had perhaps 17 total, with our resident French octogenarian coming down from Oxford, our resident film critic coming in late (as ever), and a host of thriller, rom-com, drama and memoir authors all round. Brad told us about his book’s nomination for the Hollywood Voice Arts award. Kaye talked about her amazing success with Amazon UK ads. Leena got a critique on her new book’s blurb. It was a jam-packed session, which naturally devolved to the pub, …
Shed!
I promised to share pictures of my completed shed, which I finished with Su’s help last Sunday (she did all the wood treatment varnish painting!), but even though I took the pictures on my iphone, that bastard icloud didn’t update them to my photostream. Ugh. So I brute-forced it old school style and just sent them by email. Here for your delectation: