Cheryl Burman's Blog: Blog posts for readers and writers, page 52

‘Keepers’ – what’s happening

Thrilled with these stylish bookmarks which match the cover of Keepers.

When I get the paperbacks, each one sent out by myself will have one, maybe two!

Keepers timing is still on for a 2 April release, and pre-orders for the ebook are open via this link – Amazon, Kobo, Apple and many other options!

To stay up to date on progress, sign up to my newsletter here.

Newsletter subscribers are growing, thank you to so many people for your support. The March newsletter will contain a short sneak p...

Keepers pre-orders

I’ve just sent out my February By the Letter newsletter. It’s always nerve-wracking pressing send on something that goes to a lot of people. Check, double-check – we all know what it’s like.

It’s gone now and included among the gems (says she modestly) is an interview with English poet Lily Lawson and – da da – the cover for my April historical romance release Keepers. This is pretty thrilling!

Click on the image for more details, including an extract there for you to read as well as links for e...

Be careful what you wish for!

A Gift of Butterflies by David Toft

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The author sent this to me because he pulled my name out of a twitter hat and/or decided I needed to expand my reading taste. Very happy that he did.
Mark and Suzie have a problem – or rather, people who annoy them have a problem. Although both are English, it’s the US government which wishes to exploit this ‘problem’ gift of ‘butterflies’. But be careful what you wish for should be branded on everyone’s forehead. This is an entertaining and imaginative read, with an interesting premise and some great characters to like and dislike. Settings are done really well and the story rocks along at a nice pace. The ending totally caught me out. Thank you David. I’ve downloaded the remaining two books as I really need to know…




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Four self-publishing tips

At the end of this process, I plan on writing one blog post putting together the various things I’ve learned to date about self-publishing. I will still have lots to learn of course! Here are some current pearls about the actual process.

1 Proof copies

Do order a proof copy of your paperback, and order it as early as possible: it was great to see my book, Keepers, as it would look to a buyer, but it was obvious there were some small formatting changes I wanted to make. I’m very lucky in ...

Great opportunity for avid e-book readers!

Likely I should have had a more detailed plan before now, but hey … we’ll get there! But what I’m enjoying (mostly) is the challenge of discovering how to do things like send e-books of Keepers to potential reviewers.

Photo credit: mobilyazilar on Visualhunt / CC BY

Thank you to Story Origin for being there for authors – and what a great opportunity for avid readers. Free books and supporting indie authors as well.

The other fun thing is creating banners etc for the book. Here’s what I po...

Newsletter No. 1 has gone!

I was thrilled with the positive feedback for my inaugural newsletter. There was a bit of news, an extract for subscribers only from my upcoming novel, Keepers – my April romance release – and a review of Sarah Franklin’s beautiful second novel How To Belong.

In February, I plan to run a competition with a nice giveaway, pass on a bit of history researched for Keepers and review a fascinating book I’m currently reading (holding my breath as I do so). Sign up here.

A picture to remind us that summer will come!

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Second person, present tense: 2 pros, 2 cons

As a homework exercise for Dean Writers Circle, I suggested writing a piece in second person, present tense. Not something we see very often, and now, having attempted it, I can understand why.

The first issue I had was getting the ‘you’ perspective into my head as the person writing the piece rather than it being addressed to a third person. There’s a difference between:

‘You are the love of my life’
and
‘You love her, deeply, totally’

Is it worth the effort? Here are two pros –

1. Especially when paired with present tense, second person gives a sense of urgency to the story, of immediacy. At first I wondered if it was more about the present tense rather than what pronoun we’re using, so did a little experiment:

‘He picks up the knife, tests its edge with the ball of his thumb.’
‘I pick up the knife, test its edge with the ball of my thumb.’
‘You pick up the knife, test its edge with the ball of your thumb.’

The second person sentence definitely has more of a ‘horror’ feel to it.

Is it because third person is distant? We can be watching him/her pick up the knife from a safe distance, it’s not happening to us.
First person, we’re in control, so we don’t need to be worried – that knife is (likely) not meant for us, unless we want it to be.
But second person feels close, the reader/writer is involved, watching this for real – we become the character, but without the control of first person, as if we are puppets manipulated by a puppet-master. A fully immersive experience!

2. In reviewing various posts about the issue, I was told that because second person is unusual, it will feel fresh to the reader. Perhaps. But see second point against, below.

And the cons?

1. It’s extremely difficult to do well. Perhaps you can pull it off in short pieces, but a whole novel? The reason it’s difficult is the complementary side to the the major pro above. If the reader becomes the character, it needs to be a character they feel comfortable about being! Living out fantasies may be all well and good, but perhaps we don’t want too many readers who enjoy being the person who feels the sharpness of a knife against the ball of their thumb. (Unless it’s to carve the Christmas turkey.) Not all our readers will want to be seduced into becoming our main character.

2. While some readers may like the second person because it’s different, the examples I read felt strained, as if the writer was trying to be too clever. Worse, I had to focus on the story to make sense of it rather than let it flow over me.

In summary

A fun thing to play with, to stretch our writing skills, and if you tingle with excitement at the idea of writing a novel in second person, go for it – it will probably win the Man Booker…. For me, I’ll leave it be!

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Newsletter preparation…

Having spent the time before Christmas setting this up, I’m thrilled at how people are responding to my invitation to sign up to my new monthly newsletter, By the Letter. A little news, something I’ve learned or an interview with another author (I have a few terrific people lined up!), what I’m reading, and a short story or novel extract exclusively for subscribers, is what’s on offer. Go here to join the gang!

Photo credit: sure2talk on Visualhunt.com / CC BY

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Christmas Eve 2020

Why wait until the new year to do an overview?

It’s been an ‘interesting’ year (old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times), but while I have missed my regular visits from my grown children, I have much to be grateful for at a personal level. I live in the country so have been able to get out for dog walking in our beautiful Forest. While my husband was ill with what we strongly suspect was Covid in early March, he has recovered fully, which is more than many have. I myself have stayed healthy. Neither of us work, so we haven’t had to deal with all those issues. We are, however, heavily involved in various community activities and they have of course been much impacted. Saddest has been our inability to continue with the work we do in primary schools to encourage creative writing, often with a local history twist. Fingers crossed for sometime next year to take this up again and spend some of that generous grant from The Gloucestershire High Sheriff’s Community Fund.

On the writing front, though, things have been much cheerier. My local writing group, Dean Writers Circle, has coped well with zoom (a challenge initially but we got there!), and continues to meet in one form or another four times a month. We have grown – several new members have joined us. We reached out to others in the local writing community and sought submissions for an anthology, aptly titled Resilience, and launched that in early December. Sales have been excellent, with proceeds going to a local charity which supports adults with literacy problems. We have won/been short and long listed/commended etc in many competitions, both poetry and prize.

Elsewhere I’ve posted about the benefits of writing groups, and I can only reiterate here that they are a good thing! Ours has kept me motivated and I’ve been working hard on several writing related fronts. So here’s the plan for 2021 (is this tempting fate?)

1. Keep working on building my author platform to spread the word about my existing and upcoming books
2. Publish Keepers, my historical romance set in Australia – plans for that are coming along well and the aim is early April
3. Finish my current WIP and maybe query it, see how it goes, and if it’s not taken up quickly, publish it myself
4. Keep querying The Shanty Keeper’s Wife with fingers crossed! It must be Betsy’s turn, surely?

Meanwhile, season’s greetings to all and let’s be optimistic for 2021.

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Confidence boosters …

The opening chapter (plus synopsis) of one of my unpublished novels has been shortlisted in a major competition.
It was exciting seeing it on the longlist alongside 49 others. I was happy! Then to open my emails and see the shortlist announced only a few days later… with absolutely zero expectation (you learn about that when you’re trying to get your books out there) I opened the list. There it was, with the longlist cut to a mere 15 books. Over the moon?? You bet!
Getting a book out into the wild is a long process (although I understand there are authors who do several a year – good luck to them!) but entering competitions is by comparison much shorter, and certainly with very much shorter timeframes to know whether you’ve been successful or not. So as well as helping your writing by giving practice opportunities, competitions can also provide that occasional boost which tells us that others (apart from our friends and families) believe our writing is worth reading.
That’s an excellent motivator!
And on that note, I’m preparing a blog post on trad vs self-publishing, as I’m going down both routes at the moment. Lots to think about, and when I’ve gotten my thoughts in order, I’ll share them. It might help someone out there.

Photo on Visualhunt.com

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