Paula R.C. Readman's Blog, page 30

There comes a time when…

There comes a time in your life when you have to grab the bull by its horns, or step outside your comfort zone, or even go where angels fear to tread, to make good things happen, if you want to reach your final goal. It’s all about taking a gamble, and trying something new. I’ve reached that point in my career where I need to move up a gear, and treat my writing like it’s a real business. maybe as a dear friend told me this morning, I should be selling myself as a Brand. How’s that for stepping outside my comfort zone.

And no, the hot weather isn’t getting to me.

As the publisher of my three novels doesn’t market them for me, it means I have to do that for myself. I have been hunting around for a new way of marketing my books. Of course, the best way of meeting the readers is face to face, but that doesn’t help if they live in a different part of the world. That’s where the internet is helpful. Having a blog helps, too, but I don’t feel I’m using it to its full advantage. I need to be brave, and investigate ways of making more use of it.

Yesterday, I said, in a post in my Facebook writing group, that Facebook Promotional Groups weren’t very helpful when marketing books and that I felt I should invest my time using my blog more. A couple of writing friends suggested I should set up an author’s page on Facebook. I decided to take the plunge, and was shocked to find it unlocked a whole array of new possibilities. Of course, this all comes at a price, but maybe that’s a good thing.

It’s a question of what will generate the biggest return.

The only catch I can see for myself, is I’m limited to the amount of money I have to spend on marketing. It’s easy to get carried away, if you don’t set yourself a budget, and stick to it. Over a free to download weekend I can spend up to £40, and see no return on this. At least, this way I have a bigger control when and how I market my books. It must give me a bigger return than free-to-download weekend, or to cut the price of my book.

I wish all my books were more widely available like my single collection, Days Pass Like A Shadow rather than just on Amazon. My three novels, soon to be four are only available on Amazon. Once Amazon and my publisher have taken their cut I receive hardly anything in my share, so it’s important that I sell more novels to make it worthwhile.

If you would like to join my Facebook Author’s page, or just want to check it out here’s the link: Paula R C Readman Author’s Page

I’ve linked this blog into my author’s page, too, as well as my Instagram account. Hopefully, this will cut down the endless hours spent writing social media posts to share across the internet, rather than the time I could be using to work on my novel.

No Time Like The Present

I’ve decided instead of using Facebook day to day as a place to chat, I shall use my blog. After all I’m paying for it. Somehow Facebook isn’t the place it used to be. Three times I have been locked out of my Facebook account, and been accused of spamming after sharing my Nature Walks Videos to two of my village Facebook groups where the admin was happy for me to share them.

Now I’ve been left feeling disheartened by it, so I’m just going to focus on my writing. I haven’t found Facebook very helpful as far as marketing my novels. The Facebook promotional groups seem to be flooded with authors only, while the reading groups are mainly for readers to chat about the books they have read. The only place I find really helpful is Twitter.

So with that in mind, I’ve come back to my blog. I need to find a way of using this platform better to promote my books and writing. After all, I am paying for it, so I need to make it pay for itself.

At the moment, I’m working on promoting my village’s Garage Sale. Yes, I know that doesn’t have anything to do with writing. In a way, it does as it is supporting my husband as well as the village too. My husband used to enjoy selling at the local car boot sales, but that has become expensive, with the cost of the sites, plus petrol. Also, running the garage sale in the village allows single income families a way of generating extra money, while helping the environment too.

Of course, for me it is a way of meeting my readers in person as I set up a table to promote my books. So it is a win, win situation. Today, a lovely couple came to buy a bike my husband had finished restoring. My husband takes unloved bicycles, cleans them up and repairs them before finding them new homes. While the wife was trying the bike out for size and comfort, I got chatting with the husband. After chatting about my husband’s hobby, the hot weather and our garden, I mentioned I was busy writing a book. The gentleman asked me, “Is your name, Paula, and do you post the Nature Walks on NextDoor.”

“Yes, I am.” And that’s when the conversation turned to my other books. It turned out the couple were both avid readers, both reading more than one book a week. The husband said, the telly goes off and they enjoy the peace and quiet of reading. So after they finished making arrangements with my husband to when they would be able to collect their bike, as their car wasn’t suitable to take it with them, they took one of my book business cards and a copy of the Funeral Birds, too. They both use Kindle, so will be checking my other books out on Amazon.

Oh, if only, the world was full of more readers like that.

Creating Characters: Martha Wenlock

I’ve never really written a blog post about my writing process. I guess it was because a) I didn’t think anyone would be interested b) everyone had a better way of doing it, and c) I’m self-taught.

Granny Wenlock is such an important character to me, and of course, to Dave Cavendish, too. In The Funeral Birds, Martha Wenlock is an omniscient character who is the voice that speaks to Dave and not the reader. In my new novel, Martha will take centre stage to begin with. My reason for doing this is because I want the reader to get to know her from a personal point of view. Martha will, in a way, be a time-traveller from the past.

Creating Martha’s backstory will be a journey of discovery not just for the readers of The Funeral Birds, but for myself, too. The novella, The Funeral Birds was born out of a short story I wrote for a BBC short story competition quite awhile ago. I felt because the winning story would be read on the radio it was important that the tale was character led. The opening scene came to me fully-formed. Dave tells the readers that he knows when things are about to go wrong when he gets a feeling in the pit of his stomach. His mother always claimed he had inherited some psychic powers from a witch in their family, but his wife Joan puts it all down to him doing his job for too long.

At this point in the story, only Dave knows that Martha Wenlock speaks to him at his moments of stress. By the end of the novella, we find out when Martha died as Joan and Dave uncover her grave in the abandon churchyard. There’s a lot more to the Funeral Birds tale than just the story of Martha, so if you do want to read it for yourself I haven’t revealed anything here in this posting. We do find out one more fact about Martha from the novella which is linked to the graveyard where she’s buried.

This small gem of information about Martha’s burial is what I want to investigate more in the novel. Having a larger word count gives me the scope to fill in the background stories of my main characters, especially Martha’s. Of course, it is important not to just dump large amounts of information at one go, but to feed it to the readers throughout the book as and when it is needed to be told.

Martha Wenlock isn’t what you expect a witch to be, she’s so much more.

I ask myself a question while writing: Does the reader need to know this?

Of course, during the writing of the first draft, it’s important just to write down everything that comes to mind, but be prepare to cut, cut, cut during the next set of edits. It is important to keep your reader immersed in the main storyline as much as possible. Yes, have several threads running alongside the main plot to keep the tension building, while holding the reader’s attention, but it is such a fine balancing act. Too much information one way or the other and you’ll break the tension, or lose the reader’s interest causing them to begin to skip pages to get back to the main plot.

In rural England, during Martha’s time the church was the word of God with a fist of iron.

At the moment, while building Martha’s past, I’m reading up on Renaissance England through to the Elizabethan age. I’m not writing a historical novel, nor do I want to get bogged down in facts and dates, but I do want to get a feel for the time and place in which Martha is living. I want to know what rights a single woman had at a time which religion played a big part in people’s lives. Science was becoming a threat to the old world order, and the church. At the age of 51 Martha was considered to be old woman in her world, but in today’s world Martha would be in the prime of her life.

I want to investigate whether Martha’s wisdom and understanding of her world will stand up in our modern world.

Dear Granny Wenlock…

It’s time to get my head down, and focus on writing the next Granny Wenlock book. Granny has been waiting long enough, so as it’s too hot to do anything else now is the right time to get started. Apart from one other writing project, which I’m still waiting to hear back from the publisher about, I’m up to date. In truth, I need to write something new and flex my creative muscle. I have plenty of incomplete novels on my computer, but I’m itching to write a new book.

Here’s the link https://mybook.to/thefuneralbirds

If you would like to know more about Granny Wenlock please check out a book trailer I made.

Get ready for Granny’s next big adventure. Remember you can’t keep a good woman down, especially when she was buried over four hundred years ago.

Don’t forget to check out this review of Seeking the Dark on YouTube.

A week of surprises.

This week Seeking The Dark the first novel I wrote has won a second award. The Chill with a Book Readers’ Award which was such a lovely surprise.

This morning I was amazed to find my new novel The Phoenix Hour had climb up an Amazon chart to no: 10 in one of the Amazon Charts and no: 40 in another was lovely to see, especially as it has been launched yet. I’m hoping it might reach number 1 but I sure it will soon tumble down.

This morning I had a trip to the optician because for the last week or so I have been worrying about a horseshoe shaped floater in my right eye. At first, I thought my glasses needed cleaning and then when I was in the garden it was like I had a fly dancing in front of my face. Once I realised it was something within the eye, I started to panic and thought I better get it checked out.

I felt quite depressed to think I was have problems with my sight, especially now my writing and art is taking off. After I had two tests done on my eyes, I’ve been told what has happened, and that the retina is still intact. As our eyes ages tiny strands of the vitreous ( the gel-like fluid in the eyeball) breaks away as it shrinks. This is normal as we ages and after a few months the brain will not notice the floater. I can’t wait for that to happen, but at least I know my eyes are as healthy as they can be.

Now I can relax and focus on my art and writing, thank goodness.

Have a lovely weekend.

What a lovely surprise!

I’ve been signed up to the Bridge House Publishing’s newsletter since being published by them in 2010. My first short crime story Rat Trap was included in their Crime Anthology, Crime after Crime. When I first started on my writing journey I was a painful shy person and writing forced me out of my comfort zone to meet liked-minded people. I’ve made such wonderful friends across the world. Many of them I’ve never met, but the wonders of the internet allows such friendships to grow.

Today I received their email newsletter and as I read it I was shocked to discover one of my short stories called The Untrodden Snow on the Cafelit site had over 500 hits.

If you would like to read the story for yourself then click on the link below.

https://www.cafelitmagazine.uk/2018/12/the-untrodden-snow.html

The Untrodden Snow (view to Cressing Church, Essex)

Thank you to everyone who have made my journey possible. To all the new writers who drop by , let me say, don’t give up on your dreams take them to the next level.

Keep on writing.

Seeking the Dark

How wonderful to receive a email newsletter from Goodreads and find a review of your book.

Seeking the Dark link click here

The Phoenix Hour Book Trailer.

After spending all day putting together a book trailer for my new novel, I’ve just uploaded it to YouTube to make it easier to share across the internet. The Phoenix Hour is due out on the 16th August and the printed copy is due out three months later.

New Book: The Phoenix Hour

I do hope you enjoy watching my book trailer and if you do please pre-order it. https://mybook.to/PhoenixHour Thank you.

Busy Promoting

Phew, thought another car had been written off. ⁩ Not Russell’s fault. Sitting at a junction when A young man hit us up the bottom. Luckily no damage done. We had a good chat. He’s going to buy a copy of Stone Angels as an apology
Have to promote your work at every opportunity I also left a comment on the NextDoor media site today in a thread about advertising your business after another member complained about her account being removed. I explained you needed a business account. I said I had wanted to promote my books. She asked me what sort of books I private messaged her and that led to a sale too.

At What Price?

I’ve just seen an advertisement from yet another company that wishes us writers to give our books away for Free while they charge us for the pleasure of doing so. It does make me cross. As far as I’m concerned the only place books should be available for free to the reader is in a library.

All writers should value their hard work, as undertaking writing a novel isn’t easy, and is time consuming. Would you work for free in hope of earning money in the future?

I wouldn’t expect a toilet cleaner to work for free, yet it seems to me these companies like BookBub, HelloBooks etc expect us writers to first of all pay them and then give our books away for free. This is fine if a company like BookBub is working with a huge publishing company like Random House or Headlines who has a marketing budget of hundreds of pounds and is a world wide brand.

I run my writing career like a business. I have manufactured a product .i.e. my books, which I advertise for sale. Once my product produces a sale I reinvest the money into my business hoping to take it to the next level. Giving my books away isn’t a sound investment. All I’m doing is adding to the huge pile of unread books sitting on kindles and on Goodreads. The internet is awash with writers offering their books for free in hope of encouraging readers to read their books, but all this is doing is undermining the market, and encouraging readers to fill their kindles with free books. None of the big publishing companies would continuously give their big named authors’ books away for free, so why should we?

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I have to date given nearly 6k books away for free, and have seen next to nothing back. Goodreads tells me that there is a good number of readers with my books in their to-read list. Some of those readers have over 20k books on their to-read list so I’m not expecting a flood of reviews, or to earn any money back from pages turned.

Maybe I’m just too much of a sceptic to believe these companies are a wise investment for us writers without the backing of a large publishing company, investing in our books. Too often I see it as others making money from my hard work without me earning a dime. I accept the second-hand market of a book sold in aid of a charity or given away to family and friends as the book has been bought at its full price at one point whether that be an ebook or paperback.

I feel the time has come to find a new way of generating sales for our books without giving them away for nothing.

What’s your view point and how much are you willing to pay for a book?