Paula R.C. Readman's Blog, page 35

Please vote on Seeking the Dark

My novel Seeking the Dark has made on to the top 100 indie list, but now I need votes for it to make it onto 50 top Indie Books of 2021. Please could you help me by voting again on my book. Thank you
Don’t forget to vote on the best paranormal too as Seeking the Dark is in that category Thank you.

To vote on my novel Seeking the Dark please click on this link and vote in the best paranormal books

https://www.readfree.ly/best-indie-books-of-2021-vote/Click here to vote on my novel Seeking the Dark : https://www.readfree.ly/best-indie-books-of-2021-vote/

Along The Seashore

Then saunter down that terrace whence the sea All fair with wing-like sails you may discern; be glad and say, "This beauty is for me- A thing to love and learn.When wave and sunshine meet" : Jean Ingelow (17 March 1820 – 20 July 1897) was an English poet and novelist.

Yesterday my husband and I were invited over to my son and daughter-in-law’s for the day. Unfortunately, Kathryn wasn’t well enough to join us on our walk alone the shoreline on Clacton-On-Sea . When I was younger, I had been to Clacton but It didn’t impress me as I found it to be a tourist destination rather than a place to see the natural world. My son took us to a lovely spot where he was able to walk his dog and I was able to walk along part of the breach. The tide was high and it was quite choppy too.

Among the shells we found lots of interesting seaweed too.

Among a tangle of seaweed I found what is known as a mermaid purse. The small black or brown pods can look like the air bladder of some common brown seaweeds, but it is the egg capsule of the lesser spotted dogfish. Dogfish are a small shark that are bottom feeder living on molluscs, crustaceans, and small fish. The egg capsule is anchored by its tendrils to seaweeds after five to eleven months the young dogfish hatches out.

Egg case to the Common WhelkCommon Whelk

The Common Whelk is a flesh-eating sea snail. It has a distinct groove at the bottom of its shell where a tube extends to detect food and take in clean water. Often dozens of whelks converge on a body of a dead crab or fish to feed. They clean up the bottom of the seas. The whelk grows up to six inches long and is the largest British sea snail. It lays its eggs in a pale yellow sponge-like mass of several hundred eggs.

Carragheen (Chondrus Crispus)Dulse (Palmaria palmata)

Low-Water Mark Seaweeds: Carragheen (Chondrus Crispus) grows on all types of shore where there are rocks or stones. The fronds which grow in clusters, have either a distinct flat stalk, repeatedly forked six to eight times. They are usually purplish red in colour but may turn green in strong sunlight.

Dulse (Palmaria palmata) The various large brown forked, seaweed and has fan-shaped frond. It’s attached by a small disc-shaped base and holdfast to stones at low-water mark.

Edible Oyster

Oysters have been harvested for food since prehistoric times, and were very popular with Romans. By the end of the 18th century vast beds had been established along the coasts town in Britain and Europe.

Have a great week. Chat again soon.

A Special Offer For The Weekend

Please check out my two gothic novels over this weekend as they are available at the special price of 99p/99c. The links will take you to your own country’s Amazon sites. If you do purchase a copy of my novels please leave a review if you enjoy reading them. Thank you so much.

Click here for the link to your Amazon Site Click here for the link to your Amazon site

This Weekend There A Special Offer!

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!

Darkstroke my publisher will celebrating a whopping 10 year anniversary and birthday! Over the weekend (Saturday 20th/Sunday 21st) hundreds of their books will be available at the amazing price of 99p / 99c

My two novels are included too. All Darkstroke books will be available for 99p/99c on Amazon. So please do check them out you are bound to find a book to fall in love with

Don’t miss out!

Here’s are some of the many books published by Darkstroke. If you would like to join Darkstroke and become their next author click on this link

Stone Angels and Seeking the Dark are available just click on their links.

Here is the link to Darkstroke Books

Now That’s A Bit of A Surprise

It’s surprising what you can find on the internet when you have a bit of a wander around. I wasn’t expecting to find Stone Angels sitting at number 59 on one of Amazon’s many different categories in Australia. Any placing is better than none, especially at this time of the year.

With Christmas just around the corner I’m trying to promote my novels more while still editing my fifth book. I was hoping to have the book completed by now, but I’m still not happy with it. The house is calling to me to be cleaned, and I need to start thinking about baking my son’s birthday cake, as he has invited my husband and I over to his at the weekend. I’m planning to have family over during the Christmas period so I need to get the house ready. The Christmas cards need writing to get them in the post early. My writing group meets next week and it is our last meeting of the year. So I like to decorate the house to get us all in the mood for our Christmas dinner at the pub.

Have a great week,

I’m off to do some more editing. Chat again soon.

If you would like to know more about The Funeral Birds click on this link

Seeking An Award

I’ve entered my novel Seeking the Dark into a book award. Of course, I’m hopeful that it does well, but if it doesn’t, at least I’ll be promoting it.

I’ve been promoting my books on two sites, one is called Readfree.ly. This site runs a competition to help 50 indie published books the chance to win an award. So I thought I would put my vampire novel forward, but all I need now is for readers to nominate my novel Seeking the Dark.

Here’s the link if you would like to nominate my novel. https://www.readfree.ly/50-best-indie-books-2021/

Thank you so much, if you do.

Just When I Needed You Most!

The other day my second novel Seeking the Dark rose again in the Amazon charts after my husband and I returned from the Whitby Goth Festival in the North of England. While there I had been handing out my business cards, and chatting with other goths about my books and writing. The weather wasn’t great as we did have a lot of rain, but after two years of missing both Whitby and the festival it was lovely to meet up with our friends again.

On receiving my royalty statement, I was shock to find I had earn the grand total of 0.16p. Of course, I wasn’t expecting to have a bestseller overnight. My dear friend, Ivy Lord (AKA Maggie Ford) explained to me years ago, that she didn’t at first earn much money from her writing. It was a long uphill struggle, so I have always known it would be tough. I love writing, but I’m sad that it isn’t paying enough for me to be able to promote it more.

As the cost of living is on the rise, I have to think carefully about where, and how much I spend on promoting and what sort of return I will receive. Most of the time I just promote across the internet, (i.e. sharing posts like this one) in the hope that someone might select one of my novels to buy, but it’s all very much hit and miss. I’m on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook promoting my writing and books. The trouble is you can become to easily side-tracked and obsessive with promoting your published work you forget about focusing on writing your next book.

Paying to promote your work may save you time, so you can stay focused on writing your next novel, but it is just as much a gamble too. I’ve set myself a budget and try to stay with in that limit. Again, it is too easy to fall into the trap of blowing a large sum of money in hope of huge returns, but there’s no guarantee. Remember, promoting is all about reaching your novel’s target audience and, of course, writing the right book at the right time.

I can’t say for sure whether I’ve reached my target audience through just posting across the internet or paying for promotional sites to market for me. Have my sales been steady? Are my books selling well? I can’t answer these questions. I have no idea. Personally, I don’t feel I’m doing enough, but I’m always scared I will bore the pants off readers, if I’m too pushy.

Five months ago, one of my short stories appeared on Tony Walker’s Classic Ghost Stories podcasts. Tony did a wonderful job of reading the Chimes at Midnight and then interviewed me afterwards. I received some wonderful comments from his listeners. The other evening while I was feeling down, I went back to see if there had been any new comments left. What a wonderful surprise was waiting there for me.

To read that the listener had not only enjoyed my story but put my writing in the same category as Wilkie Collins blew my mind, lifted my confidence and made me smile. I was seriously thinking about going back to writing short stories rather than novels. A lot of work goes into writing a novel for so little return. Thank you so much, Kelli Ryan for such a positive review just when I needed it the most. I’m now busy working through the last edits of my next novel.

Click on pictures to enlarge: to Listen to podcast, and all the other wonderful ghost stories Tony reads click on this link

A Long Journey To Save The Planet

Just before my son was born in the late eighties, I bought a book written in the 1960’s about saving the planet. It talked about the growing population worldwide, our reliance on coal and gas and our growing use of the car and building roads that cut through the British countryside. The destruction of hedgerows, farmland and the pollution of rivers etc. The book went on to say we needed to rethink our attitude to our precious planet.

In the early 1960’s, in the house where I was born and spent the first six years of my life, we never had an indoor toilet or bathroom. A tin bath before a fire on a Saturday evening was where my mother bathed my brother, two sisters and I. She did her washing in the backyard washhouse which was shared by the other houses in the terraced-row where we lived. When I was six years old, we moved to the mill in Chelmsford. At last we had an indoor bathroom and toilet but no central heating. When we had a bath in the winter months, mum put an electric heater in the bathroom to warm it enough to get undressed quickly to have a bath and get dress again. The only fire in the house was in the living room. We had no heating in our bedrooms, and the window would frost up on the insides. It wasn’t until I was in my late twenties, when I was able to come home to a warm house as my ex-husband had installed storage heating in our first home together.

So where am I going with this post? As you must know the world leaders have gathered to save the planet. Personally, I feel they’re cutting it a bit fine deciding to do something now. I expect they feel its better late than never. Myself, I feel attitudes need to change across the western world. Our views on possessing material goods that have no real function to our lives must stop. My husband is a natural born hoarder, where I’m not. I hate being surrounded by unnecessary stuff. I hate having to search among boxes of clutter to find what I need. If something doesn’t serve a purpose then I want to get rid of it. I love order, not clutter. I possess to many clothes. Apart from underwear, most of my clothes have been bought second-hand. My grandmother got me hooked on charity shops in the early 70’s and this has help me to help others while keeping a roof over my son’s head and food on the table while being able to dress well.

After my first marriage broke down, I went back to working full-time. It was a struggle paying the household bills, mortgage, a loan on a car and child-minding. The house needed new windows, doors, fascias, guttering, a new boiler and work on the roof none of which I could afford to do. I had to tape the glass into the window frame in my son’s bedroom. My son and I lived a hand to mouth each month and I topped up our food by growing a few vegetables in the garden. As long as I wasn’t a penny overdrawn each month I was happy. I made sure my son understood why I couldn’t just buy what he wanted when he wanted it. Birthdays and Christmases were the times for receiving gifts and money not all year round.

Once the car was paid for and my son no longer needed a child-minder my second husband and I were now able to take out a loan to pay for the work needed on the house. We made sure the house was well-insulated and the windows and doors were the best on the market. We had invested in a new eco-friendly washing machine, cooker and boiler but now we have realised time has moved on. What we thought would see us through to the end of our lives will need replacing. Our green life-style isn’t green enough and we need to spend a large sum of money to replace the boiler, car and to buy solar-panels.

I’ve told my husband we need to start playing the lottery as my writing isn’t going to pay for the changes our government are wanting us to invest into our homes to meet their green targets they are setting at COP26. It makes me sad to think my simple way of living isn’t green enough to save the planet.

Oh How Amazing!

Today my husband and I traveled up to the North of England to Whitby, North Yorkshire. We are so pleased to be able to return to the part of England we love best. It’s been two years since we were last here and it was wonderful to be back in our second home. Anne made us feel so welcome.

Today, we arrived at the B&B at one o’clock and then went into Whitby town centre to look around. While there we went into the spa centre where the goth stores were being set up for selling everything a goth would want, from cakes to clothes. As we wandered around we wore our masks, and mine has a cover of one of my books on it. One of the stall-holders studied me with interest.

‘Is that a book cover on your mask?’ she asked.

I handed her my business card.

‘Oh you’re the author!’

‘Yes, Stone Angels is about a serial killer who’s an artist…’

‘Yes, I know I’ve already have the book on my kindle. I thought I recognised it.’’

I was so taken back I didn’t know quite what to say, so l said, ”when you’ve read it please leave a review.’

I’m so glad I was wearing my mask

https://mybook.to/stoneangels

And then there are days when your positivity leaves you…

It’s hard to feel positive about your writing every day. Today, I’m not so confident about mine. A hundred nagging doubts are racing through my head. Am I writing the right sort of books that the modern reader is looking for?

Is being a novelist the right way forward for me? Or should I just focus on writing short stories?

I’ve been looking at the covers on the sort of books I’m writing, and I’m not sure whether my style of writing fits in with the modern pop-culture. I know reading is down to personal taste. I guess it’s like coffee, most people like it instant, rather than waiting for it to percolate, to bring out the rich flavour. They don’t want a story that develops and grows as the tension builds, but more instant satisfaction. After reading some of the reviews on these types of books, I’ve reach the conclusion that most Vampire book readers of today are looking for a certain type of book.

The modern reader of vampire books are seeking a more highly-gloss sexualised creature, and not the old style gothic blood-sucking ones that hung around graveyards while hunting in the darkness. Modern vampire book covers are far more glossy, almost fairy-tale in appearance, and are about a power struggle between sex and violence. They are very sexualised creatures too, with pouty blood-red lips, and bare-chested moody men with alluring eyes. The women are almost warrior-like too as instead of being a victim, they are now the hunter or vampire lover. I’m guessing vampires have become more of a romantic figure, a prince, or princess charming, with teeth. Though I could never imagine Count Dracula ever being seen as a lustful romantic character.

I feel like I’m out of my comfort zone, and I not sure whether I could write such violent books, especially anything overly violent towards women. Maybe being brought up in the era of Hammer House of Horror Films, where everything was far more tame in comparison has left me feeling out of my depth.

I want to believe there is a market for my kind of writing, but a quick search on Amazon and my free-download weekend has left me feeling unsure whether it’s what most readers are looking for these days.

Yesterday, I received a copy of the Journey Anthology put together by Elaine Marie Carnegie-Padgell. All the writers that have appeared on her, Writers Journey Blog were invited to sent in a short story or poetry with the theme, Journey. I’m very pleased that my story Journey Of the Heart was accepted. It is one of my favourite stories I wrote. It started life for another competition and had to be set in Japan. I wrote the opening for the story but couldn’t finish it. It sat for a long time on my computer incomplete. Then I need a story for a submission and found new ideas came to me. It was published online by Cafelit, but never made it into their printed collection.