Jen Black's Blog, page 83

New Release - VIKING MAGIC

Yesterday I published by accident! VIKING MAGIC  is now on the market.
I had intended to download it to Kindle Previewer as a final check that everything was OK, but hit the wrong button. By this morning it was up for sale, so I bought it, hastily checked it and it looks OK. If there is anything wrong with it, I expect I'll soon hear about it!  So there we go - rush out and buy, everyone!

Now I shall give myself a well-earned rest and potter in the garden for a bit until the urge to write strikes again. These last few weeks have been a struggle to get the editing done to a high standard, and the cover gave me some tough decisions. I wanted something striking and simple, something that would stand out from all the covers that feature bare chested men and heroines with long flowing locks - but would still suggest romance as well as Viking adventures.

I could turn my attention to my other novel, the one that has been on the stocks for so long. Maybe it is time to self-publish that one as well. If I were twenty, I might persevere with the seeking-an-agent thing, but I'm not twenty and don't have time to waste. So, I think I have a plan - a few days well earned rest, and then focus on Matho and his pals.

The link to the new book:  http://tinyurl.com/qayzzz7

VIKING MAGIC

Soon I shall be free! I'm on to checking the actual format of my book VIKING MAGIC.

Are all the chapter headings and Scene Breaks the same? Is the spacing correct? All that sort of thing. Boring but necessary. Once I load it up on Kindle previewer I'll see what tricks I've missed.

The woods behind us have sprouted dense patches of bluebells and the blue seems to get deeper as the days go by. Wonderful. There are butterflies zooming about and the days are warm even if the sun doesn't shine. Thanks to Tim, I get out and about every day, three times a day, so I feel deeply in tune with nature this year. We've had the delight of discovering snowdrops while crocuses bloomed in the gardens. Then the daffodils, followed by primroses, a week later the wood anemones and woodland violets. Now we have cowslips (said to be rare these days, but they've sprouted in my garden and in various places along the riverbank) speedwell, dandelions, celandines, forget-me-nots and now the buttercups are joining the daisies. All that rain has brought a riot of spring flowers. Any couch potatoes out there should get up and get themselves out into the coutnryside and enjoy it all.

Gruesome and Graphic

Ann Cleeves, who writes the Vera and Shetland stories, claims Scandinavian fiction treats women victims badly. She doesn't like graphic violence against women and children. Her work is less violent because "we tend to write what we want to read." There have been studies on violence against women in the thriller genre. Is it necessary, or for entertainment? Some say it reflects sexism in society. Others think if a strong female predominates, such as Gillian Anderson's character in The Fall, then it is OK to have such violence against women. What do you think?
I think there is graphic violence right through tv these days, and often it is so gruesome I won't watch. Luther was one of these, and The Wire another. Somehow it has become a race for tv shows to show more and more graphic violence, often but not always against women. I don't want to see a man or child or a woman - or an animal - tortured. I don't read enough thrillers to know if the violence is in the text before it translates to the screen. I do know it is labelled as realism, sometimes gritty realism. I now know enough to be very wary of programmes hyped with this sort of label. 
It is possible to buy and read, or borrow and read, non-fiction accounts of forensic investigations into murders which - you would think - would turn the stomach of the ordinary citizen. Yet murders and stories of murderers have always had a fascination. When I worked in a public library the murder/war crimes section was one of the most popular. It seems the general public wants to be horrified, or turned on by graphic violence in the same way they want to be scared by vampire and ghost stories. 
 "I'm aware families sit around the telly to watch Vera, which is making entertainment out of murder," said Cleeves. "But I don't enjoy reading about people's pain. I tend to put myself in that position and it's not somewhere I want to be."
 I'm afraid that Ms Cleeves and I buck the trend. A lot of people do enjoy reading about people's pain and watching actors deliver it on screen.  Until they start avoiding or switching off, it will go on being delivered and will very likely get even more gruesome, if that is possible.

More US fiction Titles?

Amazon Publishing plans to increase activity in the UK. President Jeff Belle says the company plans to release 500 titles in 2014. Included will be US-acquired titles as well UK-acquired titles.

Cynic I may be but I fear this may mean more and more of our bookshop shelves will be taken over by US authors. They want us to buy their books, of course they do, just as we want them to buy ours. I look along my library shelves and even there, more and more books are set in US locations, about US people and written in the US style. Bookshops are the same. It's the numbers that worry me. Even Facebook and Twitter sound American because there are so many more of them than us. We get drowned out by sheer volume. all the strange rules about avoiding -ing endings and not using was and were - I'm convinced they originated in the US. 
There is a difference in style. Not so much in the literary end of fiction, perhaps, but in the mid-range romances and historicals it is easy to spot the feisty heroine who behaves like a 21st century girl and say Ah! Here we go. A transatlantic version of history, spiced up and usually sexed up. Heroes don't speak, they grit, they swipe, they swoosh.... It's the small things. Remember the film Prince of Thieves where Kevin Costner landed by the white cliffs of Dover and next day arrived at Hadrian's Wall?  I read a romance where the heroine was stranded in the middle of Scotland, escaped through a dungeon and came out on the sea coast. Is that possible? It is not.
I like the more sober, more accurate versions of history (well, most of them) produced by UK authors. I want to read more of them, not have them drowned out or overlooked. I think I can say I'm not altogether happy about Amazon Publishing. Do they plan to publish UK authors in the US? Does anyone know? That might make it a more palatable prospect, but somehow, you know, I doubt that it will happen. 
It's obviously my day for a rant today. Tomorrow I shall be sunny and smiling - but I won't be blogging!

Titles and covers again

I have my new cover to match the new title on my upcoming release. For better or worse, this is it!

The worst of the double edit is behind me now. There are about six chapters printed out and waiting my attention. I've edited them on screen, but tomorrow I shall edit the print-out and make necessary adjustments. (There always are!) I think by tomorrow night I shall be finished. What a relief!

One thing I've discovered with covers is to get the size right for Amazon Kindle first of all. They recommend 1563x2071, and getting that right after you've worked on illustration can be soul destroying. To get the right size you sometimes need to be able to free up proportion constraints and that, as you can imagine, sends your illustration through the wringer. Dragons come out looking like swans and vice versa.

Colours are important. I want the cover to stand out among all the others, and somehow Black and Red just didn't do it for me this time. It looks fine close up, but viewed among many others, it just faded away, whereas the orange cover still drew the eye.
Well, OK, it drew my eye. 

I hope the dragon head says Viking to everyone who looks at it. The story is a romance, but I didn't want to put a bare-chested man in a fur tunic on the cover. Tell me I'm wrong or old-fashioned if you must, but that sort of cover says to me that there is only romance in the story. My stories have romance, sure, but they also have adventure, death and disaster. The villain certainly gets what he deserves in this one! The hero is Oli, a sixteen-year-old who falls head-over-heels in love with a girl who has rather a lot of problems to solve. Oli was nine years old in my book Far After Gold and his life with Flane and Emer has been fairy easy up until this point. If he wants to win the girl,he has to rise to the challenge and Karli Olafsson is no normal Viking.....
Look out for Viking Magic on Amazon Kindle in the next couple of weeks.

Snippets and Jamaica Inn

Today I'm thinking Viking Magic  might be a good title, but I haven't checked to see how many books - if any - have already used it. I thought of it just before I fell asleep and it has stayed with me overnight. Most good ideas disappear into thin air while you sleep. Viking Magic can refer to so many things in the story, not least the plain old magic practiced by Karli Olafsson.

Today is a good day for getting on with some work as the clouds are so  low they're just about sitting on the lawn and Tim and I made trails in the dew as we walked across the field. We met Dan the lurcher this morning, and he seems to accept us now. Initially he chased poor Tim and wouldn't come to me in greeting. He was a rescue dog and no one knew his history, but he was scared of other dogs. We first met him at puppy school last year when no other dog could get near him. So, great strides are being made there.

DH is busy making sourdough bread. Paul told us about it when he came at Christmas, and since then we have been eating it instead of "ordinary" bread. The big Kilner starter jar stands on the bench above the radiator, and every couple of days dh takes some of the yeastless dough and makes bread with it. Then he feeds the dough left in the jar and it grows and expands until there's enough to make another loaf. Suits us perfectly. Tastes good, and is so much more filling than bought bread. He's also promised to make some Florentines. We both adore those. Yum.

I am one of those people who sat down ready to watch Jamaica Inn, episode 1, and gave up 3/4 of the way through. I'm not surprised it attracted 2,182 complaints about mumbled dialogue by the end of the third episode. I'm amazed that 4.1 million people tuned in to watch the third and final episode.Two million decided they had something better to do.

The sound engineers came in for some stick, but really, there was nothing wrong with the sound levels. I could even hear the wind blowing around the house. Perhaps they relied on microphones within cameras? Perhaps actors think that turning aside and speaking into someone's pocket is real life - it may be so, but in real life we get the chance to  say What Did you Say?? In drama, actors should speak to be heard. The actors mumbled - that was the problem. Especially the vile uncle Joss.

Ben Stephenson of the BBC, later said the problem was partly down to the actors.
"Actors not being clear is obviously one part of it but my understanding about the complaints about Jamaica Inn was more complex than that," he said. "I think it's probably not right to just single out that, but clearly we want actors to speak clearly. Of course we want them to give brilliant performances and you've got to respect that but if no-one can understand what they're saying then there is a problem."

The pic? The Hebridean Princess turning up outside the Crinan Hotel. Possibly the ship the Queen hired for her 80th birthday trip.

Titles and squirrels

Since Monday I've discovered there are at least two other books with the title Blood Feud, so maybe I'd better think of another title. I own one of them. It's non fiction by Richard Fletcher - murder and revenge in Anglo-Saxon England. He spells it as one word. The one I saw on Amazon yesterday is a crime thriller, Mafia style feuding. So. along with the hunt for a better cover, I'll hunt for a better title!

Went out for an early morning twenty minutes on the field behind the house and discovered how warm it is in the sun now. The grass is lush and green, everything is growing like crazy and it's a pleasure to be out walking. A squirrel darted along the fringe of the woods. Tim bounded after it. I wasn't sure what he would do - he hasn't actually caught anything yet, though he has finally begun to see and chase rabbits. The squirrel chose the wrong tree - one with a smooth bark - and couldn't climb. Tim chased it round the tree, snacking at it. I feared the worst when it lay on its back, quite still, little paws, with those long claws, limp on its chest.

Tim sniffed at it, but didn't volunteer to eat it. I grabbed his collar and pulled him of it. The squirrel picked itself up and stumbled away, went to another tree and vanished. I think it went up into the tree, but Tim was yelping and struggling to get after it and I didn't actually see what it did. I hope it got away. Such a little beauty. I fear we managed, between the three of us, to squash a few bluebells that have sprung up and into flower this week. I hate squashing growing things. Must be a Buddhist at heart.

Blood Feud

Happy to report that Blood Feud is well on in the editing stakes. Chapter Nine is currently getting the treatment! This is after it has been through a sharp-eyed critique group, and first read through by me, a rest of several weeks and then a second read through. Now I'm printing out a chapter at a time, reading it, making corrections....Maybe then I'll consider it OK to self-publish. OTOH, I'll need to check chapter headings are all the same, that the font doesn't vary, all those sort of technical little things that catch you out. Well, they catch me out, especially when I put something on Facebook.

I'm working on a cover, too. Not entirely happy with what I have. May start again.

The story is set in 1046  AD and these are the opening lines:

‘Thor’s teeth!’ Flane hammered his fist on the mast and gazed at the sky. Above the thatched roofs and smoking fires of Dyflin’s thousand-strong Viking community, the sky was so blue it hurt the eyes. Good sailing weather going to waste. If Oli didn’t move faster than a sick snail, they’d have to wait half a day for the next high tide to take them safely over the sand bars in the estuary. That meant yet another night in Dyflin, and more opportunity for the crew to get into trouble.
A blur of colour and movement caught his eye. Curious, he squinted through the tracery of masts and ropes that blocked his view. A small figure ran heedlessly fast along the wharf. Her fists hiked her skirt out from beneath her feet as she dodged loaded carts and leapt over creels and coils of rope in her path. Long hair, glinting gold in the sunlight, streamed out behind her. She darted towards a ship, veered away and ran toward the end of the wharf where he stood on the Sea Bird.
‘Oh, Christ, no!’ Flane swore under his breath. He was not mistaken; the girl headed straight for him.

The first cover is maybe not clear enough, though I like it. I have just this minute realised that the second cover reminds me of that iconic photo of Nessie the Loch Ness Monster done around 1933, so maybe that would work against it. What do you think?   

Self-publisher alert

The Guardian has joined forces with publisher Legend Times to award a prize every month to the best self-published novels in any genre. Alison Flood's article explains: new figures show selfies (my word for self-published!) accounted for 1 in 5 of the 80m ebooks bought in 2013. The mainstream publishing industry cannot ignore what people choose to read any longer.
Hugh Howey, Barry Eisler, Steven Berkoff and David Mamet are among the successful ebook authors.
The Guardian and Legend's new prize is open to self-published novels written in the English language – translations are also welcome – and submissions will be read by a Legend's readers' panel. They will draw up a shortlist of up to 10 titles a month that will then be read by expert judges, with the winning entry to be reviewed in the Guardian, online or in the paper.
Claire Armitstead, literary editor of the Guardian, said the paper had decided to launch the prize because "the phenomenon of self-publishing over the last couple of years has become too big for any of us to ignore". 
The prize aims to find the "brilliant" self-published books, to "bring these gems to the forefront". Tom Chalmers, MD of Legend Times thinks  "People in the publishing industry and literary awards in general are often too quick to disregard the work of self-published authors, missing the wealth of creativity and innovative writing there is out there." He added,  "We are hoping to be a magnet to find the needle in the haystack. Everyone has a computer these days, and everyone is writing, which is brilliant, but it also means the market is completely flooded. That makes it quite hard if you don't have a natural social media presence to get your work to the top, and to get noticed."
Submissions for the Guardian Legend Times Self-Published Novel of the Month will be open for the first fortnight of each calendar month, with the exception of this month's submission period, which will run from April 8-18. Authors can submit one novel a month, in any fictional genre. The book must have been self-published after 31 December 2011.
Once the readers have winnowed submissions down to a shortlist, a panel of experts, featuring the literary agent Andrew Lownie, Legend Press's commissioning editor Lauren Parsons, traditionally published author Stuart Evers and HarperCollins-author-turned-DIY-poster-girl Polly Courtney, will choose each month's winner.
Armitstead added: "It's all too easy to dismiss the self-publishing sector as a wilderness of elves, sex and high-school romcoms, but we know from the emergence of novels such as Sergio de la Pava's A Naked Singularity – a book we'd love to have discovered – that 'there's gold in them thar hills'. So we're embracing the frontier spirit and setting off to pan for it."
• Entries for April should be sent to self-published@theguardian.com by April 18, with "Self-Published Book of the Month Submission" in the subject line. You can find more details of eligibility, terms and conditions here.

• How to enter the Guardian Legend self published book of the month competition




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Men and Reading

Caroline Carpenter reports in  the Bookseller that 63% of men rarely read. I wanted to cheer when I saw the headline, because the man I live with finds reading a chore. He'll be delighted to hear he is not alone!

 The Reading Agency commissioned the survey of 2,000 UK men and women which discovered - if surveys can be believed, of course - that men prefer to watch film instead. The reasons (excuses!) given were - too busy, did not enjoy reading, preferred doing the internet. One in five men admitted to pretending to have read a specific title in order to appear more intelligent. It also emerged that 30%  have not picked up a book since their school days. Men read more slowly, read fewer books and  are less likely to finish them than women. If all this is true, I am left wondering why so many literary critics are male. Why not more females writing up the reviews in the press since we do more reading?

World Book Night, where volunteers hand out thousands of free books to reluctant readers in their communities, is coming up on April 23rd. The focus this year is on men who aren’t reading enough.
The list of books was selected with young men in mind:-

Hello Mum by Bernardine Evaristo (Quick Read) (Penguin General)
Four Warned by Jeffrey Archer (Quick Read) (Macmillan)
A Perfect Murder by Peter James (Quick Read) (Macmillan)
Today Everything Changes by Andy McNab (Quick Read)(Transworld)
Short Stories by Roald Dahl (Michael Joseph)
CHERUB: The Recruit by Robert Muchamore (Hachette Children’s)
Theodore Boone by John Grisham (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Humans by Matt Haig (Canongate)
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne (Vintage)
Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith (Simon & Schuster)
Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin (Transworld)
Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch (Orion)
After the Funeral by Agatha Christie (HarperCollins)
Whatever it Takes by Adele Parks (Headline)
Geezer Girls by Dreda Say Mitchell (Hodder & Stoughton)
Black Hills by Nora Roberts (Little, Brown)
Getting Rid of Matthew by Jane Fallon (Michael Joseph)
The Boy With the Topknot by Sathnam Sanghera (Penguin General)
59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman (Macmillan)
Confessions of a GP by Dr Benjamin Daniels (The Friday Project).

Once again, women lose out. Next year, why not celebrate women who read?