A.B. Finlayson's Blog, page 8

All Hail Emperor Bezos and Bow Down Before the Amazon Overlords!

There is no getting around it. Very soon I will have to get on my knees like everyone else in the world and beg for scraps at the feet of Emperor Bezos. As much as I would love The Book and the Blade to be 100% indie… only available in small shops with quirky cafes and book sellers who double as baristas, or perhaps even in unique little corners of the internet on websites run by enthusiastic book bloggers, I will still need to play The Amazon Game!

3(0) is the magic number! Yes it is, it’s the magic number!

– 30 reviews gets your book noticed by Amazon’s algorithms (Wizards. Wizards sounds cooler.)

– reviews get you onto lists

– lists get you exposure

Lists like these…

Having not released the book yet it is no surprise I’m floundering at the very bottom

But then there’s the strange caveat that reviews from people you know sometimes disappear. I’ve seen this with author friends and there are many indie authors on Twitter who testify to the same thing… any reviews they have which may be linked to, say, people on their Facebook friends list, can mysteriously vanish. Forget algorithms and wizards, that is the work of Amazon’s Dark Overlords!

(A smidge dramatic? Maybe.)

This doesn’t always happen but it has occurred enough times for it to be “a thing” for indie authors.

I don’t know how it will play out for The Book and the Blade but I do ask (and will repeatedly beg) that if you do read my little book, please leave a review. They might vanish into the ether, they might not. Either way, all interaction makes a huge difference. Perhaps together we can unite and overthrow the overlords? And they don’t have to be complex reviews or even analyse the story in any way. They just have to exist.

Here’s a few examples…

***** Excellent cover

I.P. Freely

***** Interesting title

Ivana Tinkle

***** It’s a book

My mate Mitchell

***** Looks great on my shelf

Seymour Butts

***** That bit with the cat was funny

Al Coholic

***** It’s not that shit

Oliver Klozoff

Thanks for reading!

I will eviscerate you in fiction!

Every pimple, every character flaw. I was naked for a day; you will be naked for eternity.

Geoffrey Chaucer (sort of)

One of the fun things about writing a book you think pretty much no one will read is putting all your friends and family in there and ending their lives in new and imaginative ways. Not in a ‘secret serial killer’ kind of way you understand, more in a ‘hey lads, won’t this be a laugh?’ kind of way. But when said book bizarrely comes to the verge of publication all those funny little in-jokes and tragic ends suddenly seem a little… odd. What is perhaps even more strange is calling your friends and asking them for permission to end their lives.

So, chaps. I wrote a book. It’s getting published. You’re all kind of in it. Some of you for longer than others. Are you all cool with me using your names? And, well, killing you?

Thankfully, I am blessed with excellent friends. Perhaps my favourite reply was this one…

“Anyway man, can I please use your full name in a short scene where you get brutally torn apart by a…” “If you don’t use my full name, I’ll kill you”

What a legend! And they’re all the same. Everyone said yes. So friends and family are-quite literally in some places-littered throughout the books. What is interesting, however, is that I never once chose the name of a person I dislike (there aren’t that many people to be fair, but my Yorkshire-based stories leave little room for Donalds and Vladimirs. Perhaps I should have used Boris the bumbling oaf somewhere though?)

When Paul Bettany-in his excellent portrayal of Geoffrey Chaucer in A Knight’s Tale (loosely based on The Canterbury Tales)-hissed the wonderful insult,

I will eviscerate you in fiction!

he was going after the rogues and scoundrels. When I do it, I’m going after my friends.

Read into that what you will.

So when these books do eventually come out and you’re sitting there having a little read witnessing a particularly gruesome death (an evisceration perhaps?) Just think, that’s someone I love. And they don’t deserve it at all.

It’s a funny old world.

Zombies, ghosts and nunchucks. What shenaniganary is this?!

Yes, that’s a word (maybe)

A short post here, ladies and gents… I wrote a daft zombie story set in the 90s. A kid dies and comes back as a ghost while his body reanimates as a zombie. He then spends the night trying to summon his inner Patrick Swayze in order to stop the damn thing eating all his loved ones and kickstarting the zombie apocalypse. Erm, in Redcar. My hometown. S

So, yeah. Really high-brow stuff.

But someone wants to publish it!

I got the official letter today. So watch this space for zombies, ghosts and erm… nunchucks.

Ask me anything… (sort of)

Well, ladies and gents, I’ve managed to get this website up and running and I’ve made sure all the links work (and go precisely where they’re meant to). So far, it’s all tip-top and shiny. So, I wanted to draw your attention to a couple of new links I added just now. These two…

That’s Goodreads and Youtube and you can find them both in the header of this website. The reason I want to mention Goodreads, in particular, is because eventually, I will be begging people to leave reviews of The Book and the Blade there. And on Amazon.

As much as it pains me that old Bezoz rules the world and I will be hopefully focusing more on independent bookshops than the big brother dark overlord of book purveyors it is pretty much essential for a new book to get good traction on the conveyor belt of Amazon in order to have even a hope of success. And like everything else in this dear world, Amazon bought Goodreads.

So anyway, enough of the politics for a second. I set up a Goodreads account a while ago. I list all the books I’ve read there, post reviews, keep my reading life organised and, apparently, I also opened myself up to an ‘ask the author’ segment.

I don’t remember doing this, but I answered a couple of questions (generic ones, I believe. I still stand by the answers). So, I figured, what the heck? Ask me anything! Go for it, don’t be shy. Either do it on Goodreads itself (and please give a follow while you’re there) or ask in the comments here or on Facebook/Twitter.

And yes, Mam, you can just call on Whatsapp and ask me there x

Thanks for reading

A spanking new website!

Things are happening, folks! First of all, the countdown to the book release is on. At the time of writing, there are 149 days left! I also had an exceptionally cool meeting with my amazing editor yesterday but I can’t really dish the goss on that one yet other than to say she is a legend!

The purpose of this post is to let people know that the old website is now offline and has been replaced by this shiny new one. The plan is to actually write things! (I know! Shocking!) In a week or two, it will have its own domain (abfinlayson.com) which seems awfully grown-up and I will be putting together a monthly newsletter that people can subscribe to (thanks Mam!)

As we get closer to the release date I will add more details about where you can buy the book (digital and physical), get merch (if that’s your thing) and all the launch details.

In the meantime, not really knowing what else to do, I built this little website and added Easter Eggs throughout. Never trust a link, ladies and gents, who knows where they will take you?

click me

Go on, I dare you!

Judge a book by its cover!

It has no doubt become abundantly clear to anyone who saved this website (and there are a few of you – sorry) that I’m absolutely rubbish at keeping it updated. Well, here’s one for you… The Book and the Blade has a cover!

Remember, beautiful people… sharing is caring

That was some year! (written in June 2021)

It has been just over a year since I woke up one morning to an email from some lovely people in The States who told me they wanted to publish my little book.

A year!

2020.

Nothing much happened there, right? Just an ordinary, boring, humdrum kind of year. So I thought I’d let you know what I got up to during that time (book-related, of course, not just a random diary).

Let’s see…

I made a website… and then entirely failed to write anything.

I made a plan for a monthly newsletter… and then didn’t do it.

I started social media accounts… and kind of half-arsed them all.

It might seem that I’ve done sod all in the last 12 months but it has been bloody busy, although, if I’m honest, that was more through fear than anything else.

Why fear?

Well, I signed a contract for a series but I only really had one book. Oh sure, I was writing the second and I kind of knew what would happen in the third but I saw this as an ‘all eggs in one basket’ kind of situation. I grew very anxious that The Book and the Blade was just a flash in the pan and that when I finally submitted book 2 the publisher would hate it. So I powered through the second book, terrified it would be shit or that I’d forget how to write, and when that was finished I went immediately to three and four. One after the other. Non-stop. Writing like a nutter and feeling like a fraud. Imposter syndrome they call it. Because you see, there’s me, signing a contract as an author but what if I wasn’t one?

What if I just got lucky that one time?

On some odd level, I think I’ve considered this time between contract and publication as a gift, a strange little period of limbo where I haven’t yet been found out. I’m not even sure I really believe it myself. I don’t think I will until I’m holding the book in my hand. Strangely enough, this has spurred me on to write more than ever; to get the most out of it before it all goes tits up.

So, along with some admittedly mediocre social media dabbling, I have spent the year:

Completing two rounds of edits for Book 1

Writing Book 2

Editing Book 2

Submitting Book 2

Writing Book 3

Editing Book 3

Writing Book 4

Writing a completely new novel unrelated to The Book and the Blade

Editing it

Editing a novel I wrote in 2016.

Submitting it (last week in fact)

Drinking too much

Sleeping too little

And boring the ever-living shit out of my wonderful wife and friends with incessant questions about devils, demons, folklore and whether or not ghosts can touch themselves.

Tomorrow I will be submitting the new book and adding that anxiety to the big ball of crazy that is me.

Oh, and I’ve already started working on another project, a zombie project – and it’s probably worth noting here that I’m scared of zombies (a therapist would have a field day with this).

Thank dog I have so many wonderful people around me, many of whom I met this last year. Without them, I think I’d go crazy.

Thanks for reading

It’s easy to get a publisher, right?

It turns out I keep this online diary almost as consistently as I keep my personal diary, i.e. hardly ever. This is quite normal for me. I seem to work in flurries of madness separated by long periods of nothing. Well, I say nothing, but the old noggin is always ticking over. It’s like a bag of cats in there. If it’s any help, I have thought about what to write many times.

This diary entry is about my search for a publisher.

The moment I finished writing the book, I had the seed of belief that it was good enough to be put out there, that someone might get a titter out of it and think it was a good fit. This might sound arrogant but when you’ve written so much shit you notice the occasional diamond in the nugget. So I knocked up a hasty cover letter (rubbish), a synopsis (even worse), and started throwing it out into the ether.

I didn’t have a plan and I did next to no research.

And I got results!

Almost immediately. I’m not kidding. I sent the book out on a Sunday and had a reply on Tuesday with an offer of publication. I was stoked! This never happens. This was my shining moment, all that hard work paid off, you love me! You really love me!

And then they asked for money. A lot of money.

Not a publisher.

(In case you’re starting out and you have questions about this, the answer is quite simple… a legit publisher will NEVER ask you for money. Ever.)

I was gutted, but then the next week I received another email, this time from a publisher who only read the first 30 pages… they wanted the rest. Happy days! Back in business!

A week after that they sent me a contract!

And a bill.

Here’s the thing. That bill was remarkably smaller than the first. We’re talking a few hundred instead of a few thousand, and so I was tempted. Really tempted.

At this point my wonderful wife stepped in and did the research I should have done myself. She discovered that the fee I was being asked for was exactly one hundred pounds more than the fee charged by a certain online company that specialises in getting self-published texts ready for ebook distribution. It seemed like another scam, but I was still reeling from the first let-down and thought it might be worth a punt anyway.

Then I saw the cover designs.

Holy snapping duck crap Batman! The font being used for many of the titles was that dodgy ‘Word Art’ thing you get in old editions of Microsoft Publisher and PowerPoint. You know the one, black outline with yellow and orange ‘flames’ in the text. It was the title for every 90s kid’s comic sans created short story. And the less said about the images the better.

(I know you probably want to see some of these but I’m a gentleman – ahem! – and won’t tattle-tale – each to their own and all that. More power to them.)

Did I run away? You’d think so, but not quite. I was still tempted. Other publishers were getting back to me with polite but firm rejections. There was still hope here.

But then I read the contract and there were two clauses that changed everything,

1) I would retain the rights to the original manuscript but any edited manuscript (and all its contents and characters) would become the property of the publisher.

2) I had to take all the swearing out.

No way, get fucked, fuck off! Those fucking characters are fucking mine! I fucking love them! They’ve been rattling around my stupid fucking brain for twenty fucking years!

FYI: The Book and the Blade contains…

38 variations of fuck

15 shits

4 twats

2 bastards

and a partridge in a pear tree.

Needless to say, I walked away.

But then another publisher said yes!

Then they went bankrupt.

Three strikes, you’re out!

I was about ready to give up but I decided to give it one last punt. This time, I would do it properly. This time, I would do my research. This time, I would look for publishers that specialised in my kind of story. And so I did. I created an excel spreadsheet and everything, so you know I was being serious. I categorised every publisher I found in order of preference and at the top of the list emerged an independent publishing house in the USA with a clear sense of style, humour, and an interest in the macabre that mirrored exactly what I was looking for.

But they weren’t taking submissions.

So I waited. I polished the manuscript. I did a better cover letter. Wrote a better synopsis. And then I sat up until midnight on the day the submissions opened and sent it in at 12:01.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

(Apart from the video they asked me to film as a ‘getting to know potential authors’. We don’t talk about that.)

So here we are. Without research… 15 publishers. 3 dodgy yeses. 5 rejections. 5 no responses. And 2 incorrectly addressed emails on my part.

With research… my first choice publisher working hard to bring my book to the world in 2022.

As the incomparable Sir Terry Pratchett said,

“If you trust in yourself. . . and believe in your dreams. . . and follow your star. . . you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.”

Amazon: https://amzn.to/2MJzbST

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-book-and-the-blade

Before The Book and the Blade

I wrote six books before I started work on The Book and the Blade. They were not great. One, two and three were terrible in fact. Four showed some small promise but floundered (drowned) in the middle. Five was a present for my kids that I’m still happy with, and six was a silly thing that I enjoyed but will never sell to anyone. Ever.

A sixteen-year-old kid runs away from home in 1992 to watch Nirvana play at the Reading Festival while being part of the most cliche-ridden love triangle imaginable.

It is hardly a literary masterpiece.

I have a number of (very patient) friends and family who read these pieces of rubbish and my uncle quite enjoyed the last one but he did ask, ‘when are you going to write some fantasy?’

And that’s the moment I started thinking about it seriously. Let’s forget the fact it took me until I was well into my thirties to actually write what might be considered a ‘complete novel’, why wasn’t I writing in the genre I most loved? I’ve always read fantasy. Sir Terry Pratchett is my favourite author by a long way. Next to him are Neil Gaiman, Bernard Cornwell, David Gemmell, Stephen Kind and Richard Matheson. So that’s quite a potent mix of fantasy, folklore and horror. Maybe it was about time I started writing my own?

So on the 31st of January 2019, I did. I even marked the date in my diary, but what I didn’t comment on was why I started writing.

The thing that really kicked me into gear was a night out and being really quite unhappy at work.

It is frustrating to admit that last part. I’m a teacher. I love teaching. But I was struggling. We had moved from Australia back to Yorkshire and found a dream house (a cottage below a castle) in a dream town because I’d secured what looked to be a dream job. It was our Big England Adventure. My wife found an amazing job in York, and our kids were happy at school. But I wasn’t. I really struggled to get back into the English way of doing things. For the first time in fourteen years of teaching, I felt really quite shit at it. I was surrounded by amazing people and supportive colleagues who became firm friends but I was unhappy. That unhappiness led to a sense of frustration because I couldn’t control it. And that frustration led me to write… because I could control that.

Just before Christmas, 2018 I’d gone for a day out with the lads from university. Naturally, we met in York and toured all our old haunts (pun absolutely intended) and over Christmas, I couldn’t help but think of the story idea that had come to me decades earlier when we first met. So by the time I was back in the classroom (heading to work in the dark and leaving work in the dark and desperately looking forward to the weekends) I started taking a few moments for myself to write the story I’d always wanted to write.

And it made me happy.

There’s nothing quite like writing about a pissed-up, sarcastic loner talking to dead people to put a smile on your face.

York. Some places just exude atmosphere.

Where have you been?

Years ago I ploughed my way through Frank McCourt’s books because one of my students was reading Angela’s Ashes and raving about it in class, so I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I read the same book, loved it, and decided to read everything else he had written as well. Somewhere along the way, I came across a quote that really resonated with me. I think it must have been in Teacher Man but I’m not a hundred per cent sure so don’t quote me, ahem, while I quote him…

“I was teaching 11,000 students 33,000 lessons over 28 years. I was too busy to write.”

Frank McCourt

Too busy to write. I hear that all the time. Usually from my own lips. But the truth is I’ve written more in this last year than I ever have before. The Book and the Blade comes out in 2022 and I have a finished sequel, the first draft of a third, and 55k words of a fourth to follow it up with. Then there are short stories and a few little extras flitting around that I’m toying with. In November alone I wrote somewhere in the region of 60k words in what my wife would call a fever, somehow fitting that in around my job… as a teacher. And the thing is, that left me with very little time or energy to put anything down for this website. So here it sits, a neglected and forgotten little corner of the World Wide Web. But one of the great joys of being a teacher, especially a teacher in Australia, is the summer holidays. So after I’ve had a wee bit of a rest and recovered from smashing my way through a few litres of egg nog in 38 degrees I might carve out some time to do this whole social media/internet thing properly. I checked the stats… at least three people visit here a day (Woah! Woah! Calm down, Finlayson. Don’t let the fame go to your head now!) so it would probably be nice if they had something to read.

And here is a pic of a grotesque (not a gargoyle) in York Minster for no reason other than he looks awesome (and I also think it looks like he’s stroking the ear of a quizzical puppy but my kids just think I’m seeing things)

Take care lovely people,

Until next time