Guest-post with real hand-drawn picture of a turkey on a sledge! check it out here: http://ow.ly/899R0 christmas blog

A Christmas blog involving dogs and sprouts.... check it out! christmas blog sprouts puppy http://ow.ly/82NtA

Lexi Revellian's guestblog on http://ow.ly/82Njd gives you her take on the pantomime characters of epublishing this year. Agree, disagree?

http://ow.ly/7Wp2u Blog with MT McGuire - mother, writer, inventor of the snurd (& includes pictorial evidence of the wondrous Ely Marrow!)

New blog up - interview with author MT Maguire FewAreChosen fantasy humor http://ow.ly/7TXr8

halloween post!! http://ow.ly/7eFWK what to do when insulted by the undead - zombies or mummies you should still avoid this fauxpas!

http://ow.ly/6pTIY indie freebie goodness for you lot! Humorous, even if it doesn't involve any whelks. kindle nook amazon rt hamgee

fantasy fans of the UK, ondarkshores is now reduced to 49 of your Eeeenglish Pennies.
http://ow.ly/6lE2C kindle rt amazon ebooks

Have you read ondarkshores? New short story set in that world - published half an hour ago! Be the first to read it! http://ow.ly/6kHku

Typo, sorry about that! Not sure what the MoMersAndshakers list is so best correct it accordingly methinks!! facepalm

OnDarkShores is about to get through 3500th copy - since Thursday! If you like your fantasy gritting and compelling, try http://ow.ly/6hp7Z

btw,on amazon.CO.UK ondarkshores is now #1 top Free in Fantasy, up to #6 in Kindlestore Top 100 & on 2500th copy! http://ow.ly/6gt1t

Recommendations for freebies on Amazon, courtesy of "Boz" http://ow.ly/6gsRo free kindle ebooks rt hotdeals bestseller whatever

http://ow.ly/6ghL0 ondarkshores is #7 in Top 100 Free Kindle
in Fantasy on AmazonUK(not US, sorry).Heading for 2500th download...!

Did I mention that someone just bought the two thousandth copy of "On Dark Shores: The Lady" on Amazon.co.uk?? Good grief....

WOOT!! there goes the THOUSANDTH copy of "On Dark Shores: The Lady" -since Thursday!! We Brits like freebies methinks! http://ow.ly/6f0ac

....and in the Top 25 Free Kindle ebooks! http://ow.ly/6eXKR Amazon made ondarkshores free,so no idea for how long- help yourself, I say!

On Dark Shores: the Lady is now free on Amazon in the US too...http://ping.fm/h67v1 Have a nosey!

Good grief!! Amazon have made OnDarkShores The Lady FREE! http://ow.ly/6ckRf Dunno if it's a typo but if you're interested, get in quick!

Hey all! free flash fiction fantasy short -be among the first to read before it goes to Amazon for general release! http://ow.ly/694tL

Further sample - snippet from Ch 2 of ondarkshores ;The Lady http://ow.ly/68LUz and others...#kindle nook ss nookcolor ibookstore

Anyone for a bit of poetry? http://ow.ly/68LOd A couple of light-hearted ones for your amusement... sample wattpad goodreads

Yes, "On Dark Shores: The Lady " is also available from Amazon.co.uk for Brits! I hadn't forgotten you! Link is http://ow.ly/68LJJ

If you liked ondarkshores parallels check out "On Dark Shores:The Lady" From Amazon http://ow.ly/68LoI & Smashwords http://ow.ly/68Lqx

samplesunday ss short story set some time before "On Dark Shores: the Lady" - check out "On Dark Shores-Parallels" at http://ow.ly/68Lkf

Twitter for beginners... so far!

So; Marketing.

I just wrote an immense post about how busy this week was and how little I got done; how supportive and lovely my bloke is and how frustrating it was that I was spending time on social networking that I should be spending either on my edits or with him - but that was a boring whingy post so I deleted it and, in the interests of having something interesting for you passing weekend readers to peruse if you dropped by, I shall now write something less dull.

Hopefully.

But it is now nearly 2am and given my bedtime these days is 9pm (yes, I know how to live!!) I'm not promising anything.

Anyway, given that a lot of my blog-traffic seems to be Twitter-driven, I thought it might be interesting to talk a little about Twitter, how it seems to a newbie and ask if anyone has anything to add on the subject; so that's what I'll do!

It seems to me that for many indie writers the big issue is publicity. You can write the best book in the world but if no-one but your Mum knows it's out there, you're not going to sell a million! So how do we do this?

From what I've read it seems that the jargon they use for creating interest is to talk about "setting up a platform". By platform they are referring to readers who are interested in the author as a brand - because, ladies and gents, that's what we are. To sell our books we now have to engage with the digital age and sell the BrandYou - or in my case, JAClement. How do we do this? By means of digital media.

We'll start with Twitter. I'm still very much a beginner at this, so you may all be laughing like drains at my ingenuity by now - for instance, I'm not sure that "meme" means what I think it means - any thoughts? On the other hand, this blog may be useful to people who are considering setting up an account but who are a bit put off by the Twitspeke and general jargon, so if you're already a member of the Twitterati and know it inside out, please give us any tips you think of via the comments box!

So, what I have discovered by my own trial and error is as follows:

There are all sorts of ways of finding new people to follow you on Twitter. Many add you if you add them; some want verification you're not a Spambot, and some won't add you at all. You can search by keyword in author and Tweets and there is a tool to suggest people you might be interested in following. For me the thing I have to remember is that I'm not just looking at any people, but specifically people who are interested in books and ebooks; I don't want to spam people with information about books and writers if it's not something they're interested in as that's a sure-fire way to vex them.

I've started with the authors I know from the forums and expanded from there. So far I appear to have hit 300+ followers, some of whom are spam, some reviewers, some interesting people but a large majority of whom are authors. On the one hand this would appear to be preaching to the converted, but most authors are voracious readers as well - and people interested in what one author has to say seem to be up for finding out what another author is on about as well. Add this to the fact that if the author likes your book, they may retweet it to their own following, and that's a useful tool.

There are also Twitter traditions that are useful. Some "Tweeps" do MentionMondays, some do WritersWednesdays, there is a widespread tendency towards FollowFridays, and the correct use of hashtags can be quite powerful. Possibly the most useful of these for you as a writer is SampleSunday, whereby you post a sample of your book on your blog or website or wherever, and then Tweet the link. Accepted practice seems to be to reTweet (RT) other people's samples to your own audience, and quite a few Tweeps have subsequently posted on the Monday to say that they've just found a book they like from one of the previous day's samples, so kudos to all involved!

ReTweeting anything, whether sample or random quote, can bring you to the notice of the original poster (and will often get a thank you) and people don't seem to cavil if you reply to something they said despite having never spoken to them before in your life! When they reply it shows on their feed so their followers will see your name - a few may be interested enough to investigate your page but remember that if you are inept enough to cause offence, any irate replies will also be there for the viewing by however many followers that person has and like many areas of the internet, things can get tribal VERY fast.

Twitter is useful in conjunction with other media, though, because snappy banter and links are all very well but if you want to sell your style as a writer (another major part of BrandYou) you need to show your fans something longer than 140 characters. At the moment I'm in a Facebook Group that facilitates mutual help between authors but mostly you're looking at forums for conversation and help, blogs for samples and general musings, and Facebook is good for status updates, photos, and video-sharing.

However, in the short-term, Twitter's a pretty good place to start and though you have to be careful not to get bogged down in it, it veers from the facile to the fascinating sometimes in the space of subsequent Tweets. The Holy Grail of Twitter marketing is to "go viral" - but there is no way of predicting just what will achieve that heady status.

So - that's what I've found out so far. What have I missed?If you have useful techie knowledge or hints and tips for using Twitter, please tell!

Have you had a successful marketing ploy or noticed a trend in what works and what doesn't? If you're a reader, have you ever bought a book after reading a SampleSunday quote, or followed an author because of a comment they made elsewhere? What are your opinions? I'd be really interested to know.

Right, I'm off to bed now because it's getting on for time to get up. If there are any typos or I'm talking nonsense, that'll be why... Will come back tomorrow (er, later today) and see what you guys can tell me (which I'm actually really looking forward to finding out).

And in the meantime, have a great weekend!

...zzzZZZzzz...

Catch you later, guys;

JAC

Update:

http://ping.fm/kAZEh is a useful blog re amwriting hashtag

http://ping.fm/bSRCb explains a bit about what hashtags are and how you can search by them

http://ping.fm/19Zlq explains how to manage Twitter a bit better when it's getting mad (and has a great video at the end)

More as I find them!

Some useful tips /links - and thanks

Wotcha peeps:

Further to last week's excerpt, I'd just like to say thank you to everyone who took the time to read it and give feedback, whether here, on the forums or by email; your feedback is much appreciated!

For anyone that is interested in improving their own writing style, here are some of the useful bits of information and style-hints that I've collated from all your answers. Hope you find them interesting and / or useful - and if you have any other tips to add, please do - you know where the comment box is.

1) Take out as many uses of was/had etc as possible. Apparently a typical beginner’s error is to use them too much, ie "was waiting" instead of "waited" or "had eaten" instead of "ate". Though there are small differences of meaning between the different uses of the verb, the point is that when you use “was waiting” the reader is reading a description of what the character is doing (thus adding a layer of distance between reader and action) whereas when you say “waited” the reader has to imagine the action happening, and because there is no layer of description getting in the way, it makes it all a lot more immediate and gripping. (Show don't tell, remember?) Same with other “layers” that aren’t necessary, like “seemed to” “became aware of” etc.

Example: He had waited in the shadows, hiding until he became aware that she was walking round the corner. He had snatched the hat she was wearing and was running away as she yelled “Stop” and lobbed a small donkey at him.

Should be: He waited in the shadows, hiding until she walked round the corner. He snatched the hat she wore and ran away as she yelled [etc]

2) “He said / she remarked / they commented / it mused” etc etc. These are used too often and slow down the text unnecessarily - either transfer what they thought into reported speech or leave out attributions where poss. If you know there are two people having a conversation it is fairly obvious who is speaking once you’re into it.

Example:

“Why did you throw a donkey at me?” he asked.

“Why did you nick my hat?” she countered.

“Because it’s a nice colour and it would suit me” he told her, amazed that she could not see this.

“You’re a nutter!” she muttered, and left, hat in hand.

Should be:

“Why did you throw a donkey at me?” he asked.

“Why did you nick my hat?”

“Because it’s a nice colour and it would suit me.” Surely this was obvious?

“You’re a nutter!” Hat in hand, she left.

Useful websites:

Ray Rhamey - Flogging the Quill

April L Hamilton - Indie Author

I'm sure there'll be others so I'll try to add any more sites to my Links page as I find them.

As a newbie, it's been really useful to have my bad habits pointed out, because it's very difficult to see that sort of thing for yourself (obviously, or you'd have stopped it by now!). Also I've been sent in the direction of a variety of websites that have interesting or insightful points on them - always good to have a read and see what tips you can get from writers of really snappy prose.

I've been going through my story and have done a quick edit based on the feedback I received. Reading through it afterwards, I think the amount of difference made by a couple of small stylistic tips has been tremendous. I'm about to send it off to my second editor and proof-reader, and he seems to be quite excited at the altered first chapter (though he hasn't seen the rewritten bits yet) so I figure I can't have gone far wrong with it so far.

The other thing I wanted to say was that I've been really impressed by the constructiveness and the positivity of the comments I've had in all three arenas, and from feeling really fed-up and a bit lost in it all, your feedback has completely re-enthused me about my editing. Yes - you read that correctly, folks - I am actually really enjoying the process again! You should all be impressed by the power of your words and positivity, and if - WHEN - "On Dark Shores" finally does hit Kindle, you should all know that each of you has had a hand in getting it there...

My thanks to all!

JAC

Sorry quote re Hobbit film from http://ping.fm/S2K4Q

Fave Hobbit quote:"reading the cast members I realized this is going to be fluff version. Hell why not throw in Thor and Spiderman?" http://ping.fm/FFTSN

Intro Excerpt - Feedback, anyone?

Wotcha peeps.

I'm working on a interest-catcher to start Chapter 1 with as my beta-readers have said it starts a bit slowly. I thought I'd post it here and see if anyone had any thoughts -  if you read this would it spark your interest enough to read past a slow-ish start?

The book is On Dark Shores Part 1: The Lady.
Most of you know what the cover is like (there's a link in the first post on the homepage of www.weaselgreenpress.co.uk if you haven't).
After this excerpt it talks about Eliset and her mother for a while before cutting back to Scarlock.

There's quite a lot of conversation before anything dramatic happens, so the question is, having read this, would you have a chapter and a half's worth of patience before thinking it was too dull?

All feedback gratefully received; text follows.

=====

It was a time of dark dreams. They washed in like flotsam on the night tide, slipping beneath doorways and window latches, rising through the streets and hills; and the little fishing-town of Scarlock foundered deep.

The moneylender dreamed of the woman they said was his mother. The fury of her fit over, she subsided on the dirty straw of the madhouse, seemingly unmoved by the stench and the noise. She made no sign of recognising her boy; he was glad. He wanted nothing to do with her. Then the twitching began. His heart began to hammer as he realized that it was happening again. Like the mad woman, his muscles convulsed, and he jerked and raved like a puppet on its strings until he was gripped in the clutch of the padded shackles, pulling him in to share the cell with the drooling wreck of his mother. 

The bodyguard dreamt of his final boxing match; the crowd chasing him, the broken shoulder that ended his career, and the brandy he laced with Angel Feathers to dull the pain. He wanted to give up the drug, but everywhere the Angel Feathers touched him a sore blossomed, gaping open like a hungry mouth, while he moaned with bitter pleasure.

The thief dreamt of the storm in which her parents had drowned. Dark waves thundered, smashing onto the reef where the ship's bones lay broken. The wind-whipped surf lashed up and fell like salt rain. Somewhere in the voracious waters the thief's memories were dissolving, but she could do nothing; she had to hide. It was not so much for herself, but the young girl whose beauty shone out, burning through the tattered cloak that the thief held up to cover them.

And further out across the sea and high up into the mountains the dreams insinuated themselves, even into the heavily-guarded sleep of the Mother of the Shantari….
…the old woman awoke in tears, full of the piercing sorrow which never left her. The time was close, so near that the echoes of it haunted her dreams, and of all her people, the most terrible sacrifice had been demanded of her. She wanted to rail against it, but this was the price of being guard and guide to her people; the women of her line were gifted, but the balance had to be paid in the blood of their own.
With an effort, she hauled herself out of the bed and crossed the room to open the heavy green shutters and then the window itself. She looked out over the harsh craggy slopes that fell steeply to the dark green of the tree line.  Up here on the shoulders of the mountain it should have been bitterly cold at this time of year, but the hare was still wearing his summer coat and the waters of the stream were running freely.
The signs were everywhere. She grimaced; she was deceiving herself like a silly old woman, hoping against hope that she was wrong when in her bones she knew the truth.
 “Mother?” Eliset paused in the doorway. “I dreamt it again, the same vision as before; about her.”
“The Lady?”
“Yes. She was walking along the pale beach, and behind her the sun rose over the Dark Seas. What does it mean?” Eliset hesitated, looking keenly at the older woman.  “Mother? Your dreams walked a different path, again...”
“It was Absalom....” Her mother’s voice was barely a whisper. “It is always Absalom. I cannot see beyond his death. I cannot see anything but his death. I cannot see any way for it to end that could possibly make his death anything but wasteful. And I cannot forgive myself for setting his feet on a path that can only lead him to death and the Dark Waters.”
======

So: thoughts, guys? Reading this, would you want to read a bit more or have got a bit bored yet?
All comments gratefully received...

Thanks;
JAC

The times they are a-changin'.........

I was chatting to a friend the other day – my sister went to college with her so she’s about my sister’s age (which is to say about a decade older than I). We got to talking about books and writing, and she told me that she too is in the throes of polishing her own story, which is more fiction than fantasy. She is submitting it to all sorts of publishers and agents and was getting the most encouraging letters gushing about her story in terms that made it clear that they hadn’t even read the damn thing – and of course when she looked into it further, it became clear that the publishers in question were vanity publishers. I asked her if she had considered self-pub, and the following conversation was something of an eye-opener to me.

Since the iPad came out a year back, I’ve been really interested to watch the growth of awareness of ebooks in the UK, but I am always aware that it is difficult to tell when it’s only your own growing knowledge and what is general knowledge; but as far as I can tell, very roughly it’s been along these lines – in London, at least!

Spring 2010: ebooks? Whohellhe?

Summer 2010: Apparently you can read books electronically on the iPad, you know. Like pdfs or something.

Autumn 2010: Have you seen all the ads around the Tube and on the telly for the Kindle?

Winter 2010; I’m getting an iPad / Kindle for Christmas. Can’t wait!

And by January 2011 (ie now) Waterstones are putting out their own ebook-specific newsletter, a lot of people are discussing agency pricing and ebooks are taking off slowly but surely. I suspect it’s only a matter of time before you start getting a regular ebook review in one or other of the big papers if there isn’t one already, as the Times (to name only one) did a review of the top ten bestsellers of 2010.

So in London at least, ebooks are getting more accepted. You see people reading Kindles on the train, the Tube, the bus all the time where this time last year it was something of a novelty. There are adverts on the telly for Kindle, and most of the big publishers are bringing out books simultaneously on both media. Fairly main-stream, I thought; then I went back ooop North at Christmas and of course they haven’t had the saturation you’ve seen in the South. As always, London leads the wave because London has the information and the disposable income; no-one bothers to plaster the North with Kindle posters with the result that they might see the odd advert on the telly but there seems to be no real recognition of the sort of step-change that is going on.

My lot are fairly bookish and they were all giving paper copies at Christmas. I got a Kindle for Christmas and none of them had seen one before or knew anyone else who was getting one for Christmas. Apple managed to cover the whole country but Kindle, bizarrely, appear to have missed a significant chunk out. Oh, they’ll get there in a few months – summer will see them as Kindled up as the rest of us – at least the more techtastic ones with the spare income to actually buy it in the first place – but it was an interesting check to my views.

These were further drawn back when I talked with my sister’s friend. Only ten years older than me and living more centrally than North, still she was not particularly  knowledgeable about ebooks or epublishing; in fact it took me ten minutes to explain the difference between self-publishing and vanity publishing. POD was something she hadn’t heard of and ebooks seemed intangible and basically a step  up from a blog, I suspect; she was interested to hear what I had to say but knew that she wanted to be traditionally published by a “proper” publisher.

I told her about my own research into it; how my partner used to work in the bookselling industry and where there used to be hundreds of new books published every year, now there was hardly a tenth of that number, and a lot of those seem to be by reality stars or popsters or other people who have had their fifteen minutes’ fame and want to cash in on it while their name is still recognised. In my view, in hard economic times, the chances of being picked up by a publisher are small and by all accounts the chances of being given the time to build up a following are minimal. A literary friend talked of her colleague who had been picked up by a publisher and had books on the shelves of every bookshop in town for maybe six weeks; after which the publisher decided it wasn’t selling fast enough and pulped the lot, leaving the author stuck in a contract with no books to sell. Another author tells of an editor agreeing to publish the book if she changed the ending to an anodyne happily ever after which would have totally changed the character of the book, destroying the whole point of it.  

Now, I don’t think my story is by any means flawless – that why it’s in the process of going through an editor and a proof-reader before being released to my beta-readers – but I would be seriously cross if they carved it up in a manner that meant they missed the point. So far all my edits have been great, carving off the excess or superfluous bits and tautening up the action. But that said, neither do I expect to be an overnight success – in six weeks if I’ve sold twenty-five copies I’ll be chuffed, not least because I don’t have much in the way of time to spend publicising it. I wish I did but alas the day-job has to pay the rent so the day-job wins on that front, especially in a time of cuts and down-sizing.

So for me, all the downsides of trad publishing overmounted the plusses – and when I knew that self-publishing seemed to be such a viable option, I went for that instead. I’ve never submitted my stuff to an agent, so it’s not a case of having been turned down by everyone else; I just did the research and thought that I could envisage my little story pottering along in Kindle-form and selling the odd one here and there; hopefully eventually selling enough to pay for itself and for the paperback form that will follow afterwards. I don’t have much time full stop so devoting time to the writing and the editing and the input and the formatting is proving difficult, never mind the publicity; but I have always known that if ever I am to make my mark on this world (and that’s not a given by any means) – that IF I ever do, it will be via my writing. This seems the simplest and most logical way to start undertaking just that.

I also think that the advent of ebooks is a complete game-changer and I want to be in on it. All my instincts are telling me that if I can just get a foot in the door at the right moment, it may be that I can go part-time with the day-job, or even go onto writing full-time and really put a bit or work into my writing. I think ebooks are going to go as far as mp3s have, and I think if you can make a name as someone whose books have been edited, proofed, properly formatted with a full active Table of Contents, and all the other technical quirks required by Kindle, Apple and the rest; if you can do that NOW while the market is in its early days, then the possibilities are very good. So that’s what I aim to do; to make my books as professional as anything you might find in a bookshop or from a trad publisher. (Of course, all I have to do now is magically find an extra couple of hours in every day, but that’s by the by!)

A year from now, my sister’s friend and I will be coming back to take stock of progress. You can’t really draw direct comparisons, of course, but it will be really interesting to see how each of us fares. It may be that she is agented up, with a contract and the first hardcopies rolling off the press and hitting the shelves at bookshops across the country, while I am still lurking on Twitter saying “Anyone want to buy a book?!”; or it may be that my ebooks are flying off virtual shelves to the extent that my hardcopies will be merrily rolling off the POD printers, who knows?

At all events, I think it’s going to be fun – hard work, granted, but hopefully fun too – finding out.

JAC

Find me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JAClementwriter and say hello!

Sigh..... still down with the lurghy. Which is like being down with my homies, but different....
JAC

Argh! Killed my Blackberry fairly comprehensively! And though it has frozen, not quite the same way as RonnieCorbett's has.... http://ping.fm/tLyOc

Procrastinating? Me? Don't know what you mean..... http://ping.fm/r7qVp