Today is the day I have finally broken out of the red in my writing career, through the glass break-even ceiling, and into the black! Wow, the air up here is rarefied. It’s balmy. I can just swim in these waters all day. Amazon release the payouts for the previous month (August) on the 15th of the next month (now, September), and tallying it all up in my Excel file, I spotted that I had finally crossed that most daunting of rubicons- I’m no longer an indentured author, paying off the debt of my past indisgressions! Previously every bit of … Read More
Really moving in and on.
Today we finished painting the dining room in cream and orange, which basically completes downstairs bar doing something with the kitchen floor, and it leaves me with a funny feeling of melancholy. It hit hardest when I was flattening a few boxes- very sturdy boxes from a Korean courier service, which carried all our stuff from Japan over a year ago. Emptying them and now flattening them (I felt like keeping them in storage in the attic, for the next time we might need them) really felt like closing that door to the past. It’s unexpected, as we’ve been in … Read More
First 3k words + surreal art
I have written the first chapter of Zombie Ocean 3! Or TL3, as I call it (as each book’s title is The L….). It is very different from what I expected. Will it hook people? Who knows. I thought the exact same thing about TL1 and TL2. I was uncertain earlier about the start I’d made, but I just pushed through and it came good and conflict-y. I worry I know nothing about this field (inner city gangs!) but then whatever, that rule to only ‘Write What You Know’ is not one I agree with. Cerulean has a heckuva past, … Read More
New desk!
Its a mini pedestal desk with 7 drawers and two writing-ey bits that pop out above drawers at left and right to afford more writing surface. It is where I will do most of my writing hereon in. Just behind the chair is my weights bench. Did weights tonight. Corbyn won the Labour leadership election. People say it’s huge, but the next election is not til 2020, so I’m not convinced it means all that much. Plus I can’t say I’m anti-austerity. Increase tax on rich people, yes, I’m for that, but pure socialism just seems so mushy to … Read More
Story arc in Zombie Ocean 3
Today I thought a lot about what Cerulean’s story arc is. I think knowing that will make the writing flow. With Amo and Anna it was easy- they were both a kind of love story. Boy/girl, parent/daughter. The arc from beginning to end is straightforward- have someone, lose them, get them back again. That’s not Cerulean’s arc though. If anything, his is about heroism, and straining towards an ideal. So in the start- he loses sight of that ideal. Then he dpends the rest of the story trying to get it back. I’ve been tinkering with the blurb, and thinking … Read More
Pre-story ‘set-up’ writing?
I had some time today for writing, and I set to it with slogging perseverance. It was not especially fun, more like wrestling with a slippery goat in a vat of cold spaghetti bolognese. There were certainly mini-highs, as I stumbled upon a bit that seemed fun or pointing in the right direction, but there were quite a lot of fumbles and potential missteps. Ah, writing beginnings. They have to do so much work- . And recently, I keep on setting myself challenges to ‘set up’ the story with a pre-story, because I want to ‘situate’ the crazy changes to … Read More
Adventures in Book Marketing: The Last
The Last is without doubt my most successful book yet. It has sold close to a thousand copies since release 4 months ago, with several hundred more in Kindle Unlimited borrows, and close to 10,000 copies given away free. Why is this happening? It surely has been down to three things: title, cover, blurb. In a nutshell- the book’s marketing. This post is about the marketing path to the current title, cover and blurb. DESIGN ONE I started off with a wordy, opaque title which I thought was clever, silly and fun. It tied in perfectly to the book, being … Read More
The wardrobes fit!
We hired two guys who came round today and brute forced the wardrobes up over the banister and into the room. The banister got pretty scratched up, but paint will fix that. The wardrobes are massive, very deep, but they look great. The TV stand we bought though was damaged, crunched on the corner, so it will hopefully go back for a full refund. It’s weirdly stressful, receiving furniture- even stuff you want and are mostly happy with. I’ve never experienced it before, having never really owned anything. Maybe it’s a bit like that feeling after you take a cast … Read More
Wardrobe nightmare
The wardrobes don’t fit!! The stairs prevented the delivery men from getting either of our two wardrobes up the stairs, round the bend, and into the bedroom, and poor old SY was at home to deal with it. Now they are in the dining room. To return them costs £100 a piece. But, but but but, I am holding out hope they can be handled in such a way as to get them alley-up and over the banister. I will hire men to do this work with me. It will be like 300 on those stairs. We will battle until … Read More
Little bits of daily life
– These days it’s dark when I wake up at 6:30, though the house is warm from the new Hive central heating controller which turns the boiler on automatically. It goes to 23 degrees Celsius, and if I wanted I could crank that up from my phone via the app connected to the wifi router. – I could turn the heat up in my house from anywhere in the world, as long as I had internet access. Think about that for a minute. – Actually I’ve unplugged it. Not much call for it, really. It seems neat, but the timer … Read More