Wayne M. Bailey's Blog

Q&A about The Mars Migration

Q&A - The Mars Migration.
(Mars - Courtesy of Nasa)

Hello again friends!Following a really enjoyable and successful meeting of a new book club at Blue Sheep books in Wednesbury, I have decided that due to the amazing questions that people had for me, to write this post. Hopefully I can answer some of the types of questions that I was asked, or have ever been asked about my book.Here are some of them, and if I get asked more, I will update the blog as we move along with our journey together. 
1. Q) Why do all of the residents in the dark space, have names beginning with V? 
A) This is a great question, and I do have a reason. When thinking about a planet (Earth for example in the long distant future) that has made the perilous journey through the black hole (in my story). The planet just about survives, ending up as not much more than a ball of scorched rock. Practically everything from its surface has been wiped out. Everything begins again from scratch.    Now, it is my humble opinion, that if this happened to the Earth, then one could assume that at some point, the primordial mixture of some sort of life would "Possibly" start over. Whether you believe in Adam and Eve, or a chemical reaction - amino acids etc, mixing together to form the building blocks of life, then eventually civilisations would again evolve into existence, and again, in my view follow a similar path to what we know of today. I can justify this simply, by the technology that would be invented and become available to any creatures in early development. So just for example, similar patterns of life to the Cavemen, Inca's, Aztecs, Egyptians, Vikings, Romans etc etc. I believe that this would also happen in the Dark space. So which people was I more drawn to write about? The Vikings interested me. Yet the people and their ideas in our "Dark space" might not have necessarily evolved at exactly the same rate as they did in our not so distant past. So, Something for example the idea of the wheel, writing and language, diverting water, electricity, tools, could all have evolved there at a faster rate than they did for us. So, to cut a long story short - my apologies for rambling on, the names beginning with V, are all Norse names. I waffle, because their technology in my book, is obviously more advanced that ours. But this was the thought process behind why I did that. 
2. Q) Why did you choose Mars to write about? 
 A) Well, funny story (sorry, another long one)  - which I forgot to mention at book club, my apologies - it was difficult to think of everything on the spot. So about four years ago, long before any ideas of writing came along, myself and a good friend, were thinking about trademarks or web domains that might be good to invest a small amount of money in, in order to make our next fortune. Thinking at the time about an episode of South Park, where the kids trademark the name 'Washington Redskins' - due to the trademark for the football team lapsing. I wondered what the next big thing could possibly be, and I thought about Brexit. (At the time this was big news) But the boat had already sailed on that one. My next thought was quite literally "Mars Migration" At the time there was a lot of talk about the beginning of all the Mars manned missions in the next few years. So I checked, and ended up buying, the web domain -  "www.marsmigration.com. "What I'm trying to get at, basically is that I believe the migration to Mars will become a big thing, and managed to build the name and some of the concepts into my story. Its funny how this became the working title for my book - The Mars Migration, nothing else just seemed close to being better than that. So the name for my book was actually born long before I started writing - which was very weird. That's why Mars!
3. Q) When Amber and Daniel move through Volya's advanced tech doorway, are they trackable? 
 A) Another great question - it shows that you're paying attention :) So, my explanation here is that yes, normally everyone that uses the doorways in the Dark space would be trackable - as they have a chip in their arm don't they? Well, when things all start to kick off, somebody whispers a tip-off into Daniel's ear when they're in the shelter, and then afterwards when they're back at Volya's house, somebody drops a tablet into Volya's doorway. Which burns up after being read - Mission Impossible style. Without the reader knowing what is said - and I think that Volya was too scared at this point to mention anything - (they're listening) it is basically hinting that he should turn a blind eye, something is happening and that everything has been arranged without him having to look guilty about anything. So the doorways are one of the things that Secondary have taken care of. 
4. Q) Why spheres?
A) Well, it's not really a long answer for this one, (Reader breathes a sigh of relief) When looking out of my back door to my garden, I have long wished to see another UFO. There is also a school at the back of my house, and the same thing that happens in Daniel's chapter - with the object arriving from space is what I visualized when looking at this school.A craft landing from space wouldn't really have fit in with the story I have in mind, neither would a meteorite. So a sphere seemed the obvious choice for a sci-fi story. It also fit with the anomaly being projected out from the sphere and being round in shape.I just want to mention - Under the dome - So yes, obviously fans of the show or book (myself included) -  will see similarities and I will happily say that I was heavily influenced by that story. I don't feel that I have copied it. If you know that book well, then you will be able to see that. But you are obviously free to form your own opinions on that.  
5. Q) Are the characters based on anybody in particular? And did you enjoy writing anyone in particular?
A) Amber and Daniel are loosely based on my son and daughter of the same name. So those characters mean a lot to me. The noisy cleaner - Jeanette - this is my mother in law, Mwuahahaaaaa!My mom - Sheena is in Selkirk, in the diner keeping her eye on Amber. But I have to say, it's strange as my kids are sort of in the book, but I particularly enjoyed writing Mick, maybe I felt that I had more freedom to imagine how he would feel and what he would say. And I love the fact that so many people have also said that they love Mick too! This makes me feel immensely good about my writing journey.My father in law's name is Mick, but I admit to not having anyone in particular in mind when writing him. I have left some family out, and had to apologise for that - but I didn't want to have to shoe-horn everyone in. I would only use their names if I had the ideal character for them.
6. Q) Are we going to see a sequel?
A) I must admit, I only really set out to write one book in the beginning. And it really took it out of me mentally by the end, all the stress about getting it right. The sleepless nights thinking about plot holes. Then the after writing journey of getting it edited, feedback, correcting it etc. I said to myself that I would only ever write a sequel to it, (1) If people took to my writing and the story and wanted it. And (2) If I could do it justice - if I had enough good ideas for it.However, now things have calmed down a little, I do find myself thinking about my characters, what they would be up to and thinking, and dealing with what they have been through.So yes, I am planning to now. I have drafted about the first four chapters. And if I have enough material, I would like to put out a full trilogy - Back to the future stylie! - The Mars Migration, Parts 1, 2 and 3! 
7. Q) Any other funny stories about writing the Mars Migration?
A) It was a very interesting journey. Moments that will stick in my memory are things like - One time I had pieces of A3 paper all over my living room floor. With timelines drawn on them, time zones and arrows everywhere, making sure that I had plotted the time travel - and then the time zone elements as best I could. I'd shout out while my wife was watching her soaps "I'VE FOUND ANOTHER PLOT HOLE!!"Another moment, this made me laugh, was while communicating with my editor, Cleo. She is from Texas, so would email me - especially when I had to dip into the Black country accent, and she would ask "What does this mean? Did you mean to write this?" And I would have to explain our local dialect to her. "How bin ya?" Is basically "How have you been?" in the Black Country. Local people would find this amusing.Also another thing that I was quite impressed with myself for, was that I had to try to communicate with the various company names that I have used in my story. So for example where I used "Sharpie" Or "BMW" I would have to send out emails and really pester these people for permission to use those words. Thankfully most people came back to me with their approvals and thanks for the mention. But one company I had to really badger - was NASA! There is a photo at the end of my story, I won't say anymore as it will be a big spoiler. So anyway, I tried tweeting them, emailing general email addresses that I found, and nothing. Obviously - why would they? So then I found out that they have this copyright/permissions department, I sent them an email every week until they answered me. In the end this guy emailed me back from NASA and was just like "That's fine." Very 'to the point' but at least I had this email from NASA which I thought was really cool! 
Thank you for your time again. If you have any further questions for me, I would be delighted to answer them! Please comment or DM me. 

The nuts and bolts of my writing journey.

 

Hi you! Me again. This is going to be a long one, so getcomfy. I thought I would run through some of the stages I went through in mywriting, giving you a full nuts and bolts account of the things that we gothrough in our first books publishing journey.

Hopefully this might help you a little if you are just startingyour own writing journey. Or you may just be interested in reading more aboutmy own journey, either way, here it is and thank you for reading it.

So, my previous blog about the UFO sightings might have givenyou a little insight on some of my influences for the actual story. But whatabout the work that goes into making the book? All the behind the scenes stuff.How did I start off? How did I publish it? How did I get a book on Amazon, andon the shelves at Waterstones stores?

I will try and answer some of those questions here.

So, once I had the idea that I wanted to write something,and I started to get ideas flowing for my story, rather than plan and plot (tostart with anyway), I just started to type. Google Docs was what worked for me,for these main reasons - I could start the book on my laptop, signed into my Googleaccount at home, and then if I was at work on my lunchbreak I could log on andcarry on with it.

Also, and very importantly - Google Docs saves your work asyou go, so no risk of losing your progress really. I have heard about someauthors that have used Word, and not clicked save when exiting. Or their laptophas had a meltdown and they’ve lost everything. Google Docs instantly saves asyou go.

I did find one disadvantage much later on in the process ofusing Google Docs over MS Word. I’ll go into that later and how we fixed it.

So anyway, you type out your story, they say to stick to 12size text, double spaced, and Times new Roman, it’s like the industry standard.You write your story and then type “The end.”

Now, not to get too excited here, the work is far fromnearly over. At this stage, I would recommend your first step is finding some“Beta readers.” You can start with people that you know, who love to read, and hopethat they give you some constructive criticism of your story and writing.

I’ll be blunt here, sorry if I offend anyone, but it’s true,family and friends are lovely to have, you will need them for support, but honestly,they don’t make the best beta readers. Why? Because they don’t want to hurtyour feelings.

You need someone who will be blunt with you, and honestly –if your writing or story is shite – to tell you so, nicely if possible.

I wrote out my first draft, and then googled “beta readers,”and made a notes of a few to email. These are people that I didn’t know, they’rethe best Beta readers. They will have websites hopefully explaining that they willdo beta reads of your story. Some charge, but I managed to find a few readersthat offer to read your book for free.

So, I sent off my first draft to three Beta readers, bearingin mind that I had already been working on my story for just over a year.Prepare yourself that you may possibly get hurt here. Out of the three, oneagreed to read the whole story. One read the first chapter and kindly let meknow that she would leave it there, and one just refused it point blank.

The one that very kindly read the whole draft, produced forme a very good report – what worked, what didn’t, what it lacked story wise,where it was slow, or needed further explanation. Also that I was switchingtenses and viewpoints. When I started, I didn’t even know what this meant. Sheexplained that I had the makings of a story, but it was not a story yet.

Obviously depending on your internal make-up, you are eithergoing to cry like a baby, or get straight back to it.

I was shaken at first, I won’t lie, but then I went straightback into it. Looking back, my writing was shite!

I completely re-wrote it. Not simply editing my first draft,I took my basic plot across, and started again on a new file. I probably spentanother year re-writing it. This time, with more note making of where I wanteda chapter to go, I made diagrams of the different timelines and time zones. Iworked on making it more dramatic and with more twists.

Working out my timelines

To help me to write a proper book this time, I startedreading a lot more. I read books at work, in the bath, in bed, listened toaudio books while commuting, I read, read and read. I’ll admit to not beingmuch of a reader before this journey started – and I think the best advice Ihad was read read read. I think this is very important!

Now, a lot more work went into my writing, a lot of sleeplessnight thinking of plot holes, even in the middle of the night - I finally endedup with my second draft. But even still, in the weeks after thinking I wasfinished, I would still keep going back into the book, and I would add thingsand take things out. It’s funny the things that come to you while you’re justdriving about, at work, or in bed.

Making notes wherever I can.

Stephen King would recommend that you now put it in a drawand let it rest for a while. Which I did, or I tried to do. His book “OnWriting” is very much worth a read.

Once you feel like you are definitely done writing, to thepoint where you can’t think of anything else to change, then it’s time to startdeciding on which way we are going with the publishing. Are we self-publishing,or are we going for the apparent big money traditional publishing?

I can’t speak for every detail on either side of thepublishing journey, but this is what I made of it:

If you self-publish your book, you are paying for, anddesigning every step of the book yourself. You are fully producing it and havefull control over it. You are publishing it and marketing it yourself, frombeginning to end. You will then get royalty payments from every copy sold, whereveryou decide to publish it.

If you go for traditional publishing, you would spend timequerying for agents, you will then have some input, and then from what I gatherthe publisher will give you a nice big cheque, to pay you for your book – if itis up to a certain standard of course. They will get it edited and the coverdone for you. They will publish it and market it for you, sending you royaltycheque’s every month.

If you want to go for traditional publishing, “to query fora publisher”, you would start to send your manuscript off to agents first. Hopefullyone will agree to work with you. You will get rejections, lots of them. Butthen if they sign you up, they will pitch it to the publishers on your behalf,aiming to get you, and them, the best deal possible.

I wasn’t patient enough for that, I had spent three yearsworking on it, I was ready to go for it, now! So, I dived right into theself-publishing route.

I started shopping around for the services that I knew I wasgoing to need others for – What would be the most expensive parts of thejourney. These are cover design, and editing.

Some people will tell you … “Oh you can publish a book forfree on Amazon.” Yes, you could, but it would be rubbish - In my humble opinion.

Let’s start with the cover. Only because it’s worth startingto gather ideas for what you want on it as early as you can and get a feel for howyou want it to look. At this point, you will either know exactly what you want,or you won’t have a Scooby-Doo! I had already made some rough sketches at thisstage, I had an idea of what I wanted on it. I had been scouring vintagescience fiction books like Arthur C. Clarke and Asimov, so that’s the kind offeels I wanted for mine.

My rough arse cover sketch.

So then I started to shop around on Google and Fiverr forcover designers and artists. I saved a few of them to my browser bookmarksuntil I had decided.

The thing I would say with cover designers is – you must doyour diligence, use common sense. Check that they have lots of reviews, examplesof their work, and ask yourself if the reviews look genuine? If they’re onFiverr, do they have a professional looking website of their own as well? Remember,cheap does not always mean good and proper.

One thing horror story that I read about some cheap coverdesigners - which scared me - is that there are some people who claim to be acover designer. They might make a nice job of it, but some have been known touse stock images. Images that may have been used on other covers, or maybe evenbelong to somebody else. Ask whoever you use, “are these images that you are usingproperly licenced?” If they have just took them off the internet, or someoneelse’s website, you may well get emails from people trying to sue you for usingtheir images or covers. So you have to be very careful and check that the coverdesigner is experienced and pays for the rights to use the images that theyuse.

In the end I didn’t use Fiverr for this, I googled bookcover designers again and came across Flintlock covers, who took my rough arsesketch, and turned it into a pucka design. It wasn’t cheap (compared to Fiverr),but I was happy knowing that it would be quality, and all licenced and correct.

I also noticed on Shaun’s website that he would size theimages correctly for Amazon and Ingramspark (more on those later too). So thatI wouldn’t have any trouble when uploading my files to wherever I wanted topublish my book. You do see a lot of questions from people in Facebook writer’sgroups asking why Amazon keeps rejecting their cover images. It’s likely thatthey have designed it themselves, or used an inexperienced designer, and theyare not the correct the correct sizes.

Next, I started the search for editors. Again I started off lookingon Fiverr to get some ideas of what I was looking to pay out. Editing and thecover will be by far your biggest outlays!

I started saving editors that looked good to me onto my browserbookmarks again.

The thing with editing, is that you could spend well intothe thousands on this. Again there are people claiming to be editors, but youmight want to contact a couple and ask for an idea on cost, and what theirqualifications are, Fiverr is useful, as it generally tells you the cost basedon your word count. There are some genuinely talented people on there, I’m notknocking it at all. My editor was actually on Fiverr, I just checked that shehad her own website as well, so I could see who I was dealing with.

Now, something that I had to learn, and you will come tolearn, is that there are different types of edit that you need to have done, hereare a few of the main types:

Developmental editing– this looks at things like the structure and plot, viewpoints and narrativestyles, thing like that.

Line edit – thislooks at word choices, whether the dialogue makes sense, clichés used,past/present tenses and if you have used them correctly.   

Copy editing –things like spelling, grammar, letter & line spacing, dialogue tagging,hyphenation, capitalisation.

I know, bit scary and complicated, isn’t it?

Each of these rounds of edit will cost you. I read about,and then went on the journey myself, of trying to find an editor that would doan all-in-one package, they are out there. It just takes some searching.

Budget wise, like I say they can range from around £500 upto a few thousand easily! So - especially for your first try at doing a book -it is all about finding one that is suitable for your budget. The best you canfind, compared to what you can afford. They mostly give you a price based onword count. Most writing programs will tell you the word count at the bottom ofthe screen.

I found one that I liked the look of – I was attracted by anaffordable price, she had her own proofreading website, and that she says thatshe is a self-confessed “SCI-FI Nut” - Winner! Cleo Miele from Texas was thechosen one for my editing.

We’re still going for a while yet, sorry. Go and do yourselfa cuppa. Much still to do yet.

With my story completed, I sent it off to her to begin her editing.After a few weeks, I started to get emails asking what something meant. Thereis one section in my story, where I had gone into some local Black Countrydialect, which was funny and really threw her. We had some laughs about the waythe British, and the Americans use different words for things. 

After a while I had my book back, with all of the editsshown to me on the screen, with notes down the right-hand side. I could eitherapply all of her changes in one go, or go through each one, approving herchanges or keeping it as my version. This was quite another long process. It’stough because you think you are at the end of it.

Ok, here is where I will say that Google Docs falls down.For some reason, I think maybe by now, the size of the file with all the editson as well, was just too big for a web browser to cope with.

I could not open my book with all the edits on. Browserswould just crash. Luckily, very luckily, Cleo had a copy of it that she couldsend me on MS Word with the tracked changes on – Day saved! (Thank you, Cleo, 😊)

Once I had made all the changes that I wanted - on Word, Isent it back to Cleo, and then she goes through it again, (included in herquoted cost). To make sure that any changes I have made, are stillgrammatically correct and make sense. It wasn’t just grammar - I had made a fewchanges to the story too, Cleo would give me her input on scenes, which wasinvaluable!

Editing complete. Phew!

Now we go back to cover guy Shaun, I needed my bookformatted next. Otherwise known as Typesetting. This will make our edited andfinal word file, look like a book.

It will be laid out properly according to your chosenphysical book size, yes, you have to choose a book size too. Each genre of bookwill have a recommended physical size, so google what is recommended for yourgenre…

Measuring books to get an idea on what size to go for.

If your cover person is worth their salt, they will alsohelp you with this. As Shaun did. You might want dropped fancy capitals at thebeginning of a paragraph, things like that to add a bit of style to the words.You will end up with the correct file types from your formatter – PDF, ePUB,MOBI are some of the file types that you will need to upload to amazon forkindle and ingramspark for print books.

I noticed on Shaun’s website that he offered formatting aswell as covers, again, a bit dearer than someone on Fiverr would charge, but Iliked the thought of keeping it in house with someone who knew what he wasdoing. If I had any issues in the future, I knew that Shaun will help me.  

So I placed an order with Shaun for the formatting as wellas approving the final cover design.

Now we almost have a book. We have the edited file, typesetand a shiny cover.

Now to look into actually publishing it. 

I knew I wanted to end up with a paperback and ebookversions of my book, so naturally I started thinking about Amazon. They havethe biggest market share, so it makes sense to start there.

Now, here is an important thing to be considered, andanother purchase you have to make, sorry! ISBN numbers. You will need one ISBNnumber for each format of your book. So for example, you will need one forebook, one for paperback, one for hardback and one for audiobook if you so wishto have them. This ISBN number is the long number on the back of every book,what the world database of books knows you by. It makes each book easilytrackable for the bookshops, libraries, and everyone who deals in books,searches for this number.

If you are going to be self-publishing, and in all of thosedifferent formats, and likely doing another book, it is better for you to them buyin bulk. They get cheaper the more you buy, if you can afford to buy in blocksof 10, or more this is better.

Each country of the world has its own official agency thatsells you the ISBN numbers. So for the USA its Bowkers who will charge you $125for one, or a block of 10 for £295 – See what I mean?

In the UK its Nielsen BookData. £91 for one ISBN, or £169for 10.

So whichever country you are in, just google where to buyISBN’s in your country.

A couple of extra points I want to make on ISBN’s before Imove on. And something that affected where I brought mine from, and who showsup as the publisher.

Very importantly, some people will tell you – “You don’tneed to buy an ISBN number, as when you publish on Amazon, if you don’t haveone, one will be supplied to you by Amazon.” Yep, but then you can’t publishyour book anywhere else aside from Amazon, if you have dreams about gettingyour book in bookshops – forget about Amazon’s free ISBN number!

That’s why it is important to sort your own out, and thenwhen you publish to Amazon, you tell it that you have your own ISBN, thank youvery much!

I didn’t buy mine from Nielsen BookData – and I’ll explainwhy. I had a thought, and then found a bit of a work around for that thought.

If you are self-publishing, and you buy your own ISBN numberdirect from the agency for your country, if a bookshop searches for your ISBN,it will tell them that you“Dave” are the Books publisher. I personally think that this could cost you alittle cred when that happens. I could be wrong – that is just my impression –I imagine the bookshop owner looking at newly published books for that month onthe book release catalogue, wondering what to stock …

“Shall we stock this one Fred?”

“Who is the publisher?”

“Dave!”

So, here is another way. While searching for ISBN numbersonline, I came across Compass-Publishing UK, and Alexa there sells ISBN numbersfrom her publishing house. Cheaper than you can buy a single one from Nielsen’s– she obviously buys in bulk being a small publishing house.

If you buy your ISBN from Alexa, and publish using thatnumber, when a bookshop now searches for that ISBN number – the publisher willshow up as “Compass-Publishing UK” – It adds a little more cred points doesn’tit? Do you agree?

You now have a self-published book, but it also now lookslike you have been traditionally published by Compass-Publishing UK! Result!

That’s what I did. You still get to keep all your rights andyour profits too.

Now, to start the ball rolling on hitting that publishbutton, to make it public, all you do is open an account on Amazon KDP, andupload the files, it pretty much walks you through everything step by step. Youupload the cover, you upload the files that your formatter sent you, you set aprice, but don’t click publish just yet. It lets you save as a draft. Do that,and again I’ll explain why below.

Ok, so you have your files waiting to go on KDP, saved as adraft, all you have to do is smack that publish now button, and you are live. Don’thit it just yet.

So, Amazon KDP will get us our paperback, and an ebook forkindle. But what bookshop or library is going to order your book from Amazon?None!

You will likely, like I did want to “Go wide” to get yourbook into as many places as possible – not just on Amazon, so you need anotheroption for publishing that will get you the trade contacts, the bookshops, thelibraries. So this is why we will also create an account on, and upload ourfiles in the same way as on Amazon, but on Ingramspark.

Ingramspark will get you the chance to get into bookshops,as for example Bookshop.org/Bookshop.UK/Waterstones and I think, but not 100%on this - Barnes & Noble, all order through a book wholesale system calledGardners Books. And Gardeners order from Ingramspark – who are a book printerand distributor.

There is a small charge to upload your files to Ingramspark,but sometimes they do introductory offers. But you still need to do it if youwant to sell in more places than just Amazon. So even if you have to pay, itsworth it.

Ok, in the interest of transparency, here is a stage where Ireally cocked up, Big stylie!

I want to explain what I did, so that you don’t have to cockup, or it might help you handle this part a little better than I did.

Your sell price, my thinking here was that I would keep mycover price as low as possible, so that people could afford it, and that Iwould hopefully sell more copies. Nobody knows who the hell I am, so who isgoing to want to spend more money on your book than say, Stephen King’s book?

I was set in my head that my book was going to be £9.99.Sounds fair right? So I told Shaun the cover guy, to print on the back by thebarcode that my book is going to be £9.99.

Shaun said, I wouldn’t put the price on the back if I wereyou.

Now, I had read that bookshops prefer a price on the back,so that’s what I wanted dammit! 

Anyway, I can’t remember what the actual figures were here,but when you upload your files to Amazon and Ingram, which I was now doingafter having £9.99 on my cover and approving it.

Amazon and Ingram take into account printing and handlingcosts, and have a wonderful calculator on there that now tells you what yourroyalty from each book sold will be. I would be making a minus figure from eachbook sold! Whoops!

So now I needed to go back to Shaun, and say, sorry MrShaun, you know how I demanded a price on the back, and you told me not to, Ineed it changing now please. He had to charge me for the changes to the files.Bugger and Feck!

Anyway, sorted, £12.99 is my cover price now. For threeyears of work, and a fortune spent, I would like to have at least some moneycoming back in.

So to continue on with the publishing. I have my files onAmazon KDP, saved to a draft for kindle and paperback.

The same on Ingramspark, saved to draft waiting to go. Ichoose a publish date and set it, and away we go.

Now, this is why you don’t hit publish yet on Amazon, forsome unknown mystifying reason, Amazon will allow you to upload your bookfiles, and set a release date for your ebook. Say you’re in July, and want itto release on August 20th, Amazon will let you do that for your ebook. But notfor your paperback! I know right, weird as hell.

Ingamspark will allow you to set a release date in thefuture, it’s just the Amazon paperback part that won’t. I don’t get it.

So, once you hit publish on your Amazon paperback, it islive. So I found that the best way to handle this, is with Amazon and ingramboth having your files saved as a draft ready to go, set Ingramspark to releaseon August 20th, your kindle book to release on August 20th,and hit publish on your Amazon paperback the day before, so on August 19th.

There is another option that I dabbled with for publishingyour ebook wider – Draft2Digital. This website if you upload your book to it,gets your ebook onto more marketplaces – so you will get on Apple Books, Kobo,Scribd, Smashwords, Vivlio, Barnes & Noble and a few more sites. It willliterally get your ebook around the world. It doesn’t cost you anything, butobviously they take a percentage of your royalties. If you do try this, justremember to untick that you want Draft2Digital to list your book on Kindle, itwill already be on there.

Personally, I did try Draft2Digital for the first few monthsafter my release, but to be honest I sold barely a few books that’s all, Amazonis by FAR the market leader. It does make you appreciate how much market share theyhave in the book world.

So, after a few months of being live, I decided to tryputting my book on Kindle Unlimited, which I didn’t do to begin with, as this meanspulling your book off Draft2Digital. Amazon must have exclusivity if you go onKU – only for ebooks though. You can still sell your paperback on as manyplaces as you wish.

I have had some joy with Kindle Unlimited, people arereading my book – Thank you, if that is you! As of the end of April 2023 Justover 4000 pages have been read. And I made it available on KU in January, so thatis in just three months.

Basically, how that works is you get paid per page read,from the Kindle Unlimited world fund. So you do still get royalties. Althoughsome of its appeal is also gaining new readers.

Remember - Kindle Unlimited readers, read that much that theypay for the privilege every month. So in my opinion it is worth being on there.

When you have got to your chosen date, and the books becamelive, you will be checking every hour of every day to see how many have sold.

Being self-published, well, kind of… (With my little workaround) You’re not talking big numbers, that’s why every single sale means theworld! You can go long periods where you haven’t sold any at all, so it isimportant to dabble in some paid ads, Amazon and Facebook are the ones I haveused, with varying results. But if you don’t try any, you ill just disappearoff the page.

My finished book.

Now you have to get your head around marketing. This is adifferent story for a different day!

If you are going through the same as what I have been, Isincerely wish you the best of luck.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my madramblings again!

And thank you to everyone that has read my book, I honestlyappreciate you so much!

Please remember to review if you have read it, this canreally help me.

Thank you so, so much!

Wayne.

Mine and my Dad's UFO experiences.

I wanted to offer you some more details about the seperate UFO experiences that myself and my Dad had. 

I have mentioned these experiences when being interviewed about my book, The Mars Migration, but you don't really have time during some interviews to think on the spot and get everything out there that you want to say. So I thought I might use this platform to say a bit more than I can in interviews, so here goes.

Growing up, my Dad mentioned his UFO experience, he didn't go on and on about it, but it did come up from time to time. We might say things like "Yeah, yeah." Or "Honestly, did this actually happen?" Obviously we were young, and you took some things with a pinch of salt when you were younger. Or may not fully appreciate someones experience. Believe this or not, I can categorically say without any doubt, that anyone that knew my Dad, would say that among his endearing qualities, was that he was an honest, genuine man, Something that I try to live up to in my older years. 

 His experience would have been before myself and my younger Brother came along, we're talking around 1976/1977 here. (I was born in 1979)

I won't try to simulate his experience with a drawing, it would be a total guess and thats not fair on you. I will just present you with the facts that I have. Unfortunately my Dad is no longer with us, so I can't elaborate or check on anything now. 

The story goes, he had left my Nan's house early on the morning, where he and my Mom had been living until they were able to purchase their own house. My Nan's house was on Alumwell Road, not far from junction ten of the M6 motorway, Walsall. He was standing, waiting for his morning lift to work, when he says a saucer shaped craft appeared, and this craft was wider than the street he was standing on. It went from rooftop to rooftop. I have google mapped the spot that I think it was, here:

I am certain this is the spot, as my Nan's house is just up on the left, a couple of houses down, and on the right, are some retirement flats, where he said that an older lady came out, either taking her rubbish out or collecting her milk, or something like that, and also saw the craft. As you can see, the street is quite a wide one, imagine this thing from the rooftops on the left, across to the rooftops of the flats on the right. This thing was massive. He says that different, but recognisable colours, circled the edge of the saucer, "came down onto the road, and then bounced back up to the craft"He describes wanting to run back to the house to tell my Mom, who would have still been in bed, but being unable to move. He also says that the old lady across the road, also looked frozen to the spot.My Mom says that in the days following, there had been other people that had seen it. (obviously being as big as it was, I would have hoped that other peple had seen it) And there was lots of discussion about it in their local pub, The Belle Vue, on Moat Road by the Manor Hospital. 
As for my Dad's experience, you now know as much as me. 
Fast forward to around (I'm sorry, I was young, so can only guess at this) 1989, it could have been anytime between 1989 and 1991, I'm guessing this as I was with my brother, and my best friend Dean. Unfortunately as me and Dean went to different secondary schools, it was around this time that we started to drift apart. So being around the ages of 9 to 11, we used to love just hanging around at the back of some flats on the Wolverhampton Road. 
I have done another Google map image below, to show where my UFO experience was (In Red) compared to where my Dad's experience was (In Green). Close weren't they?


It sounds random - to be hanging around at the back of some flats. It was nothing dodgy don't worry, but surrounding these flats were concrete and grass slopes, so we used to love to ride our bikes behind here. It was late in the evening, we would be starting to make our way home soon. My memory is a bit sketchy here, but anyway this is how I remember it. One of us looked up and saw something in the sky. Dismissed at first as possibly just a plane, but as it stayed there for a while, it drew our attention a little more. It remained there for a good couple of minutes - enough time to ask each other if any of us knew what it was, strangely my Brother now says that he didn't see it, but remembers me and Dean staring up at something. After we had decided that we couldn't match it to anything that we knew of, myself and Dean put our right hand across our chest and started to sing "God save the Queen."This is what it looked like: (Not a photo, just a mock up, that I made on paint)

If you look towards the top right, you can see what I remember seeing. I describe it as looking like a double decker bus high up in the sky. Just white lights. Because it was just white lights against the dark sky, I couldn't see what they belonged to.So, it hovered there for a while, but then it seemed to tilt slightly so that its left hand side dipped down a little, its right hand side went up, and then it shot off, diagonally upward, visible for only the first half a second or so - if that, then it was gone. 
Again, there was some coroboration the next day. It must have been during the school holidays, and on  Wednesday, as on a Thursday, my Nan and Grandad would take me and my brother on the bus to Bilston Market. Then we would jump back on the bus and go to my Auntie Margaret's house, on Hill Road, Willenhall. Near the Grapes pub. After excitedly telling her about my experience, she explained that one of her local friends had also seen something that night. 
So, there you have it. Mine and my Dad's UFO experiences, I would love to hear about yours, if you have one. People have already started sending me vidoes on Instagram, I love that. 
Also, if you are local, and saw, or have any memories of one of mine or my Dad's suspected UFO's (or UAP's as they are now) Please do get in touch.
I would say that these experiences helped influence my book, my interest in UFO's and what else is out there has always been there. But I would say my main influences for the book would have been the amazing science fiction films that I grew up watching. Things like: The Thing, Aliens, 2001: A Space odyssey, Close encounters of the third kind, E.T, Star Wars and Back to the Future.
Thank you for reading, and don't forget to look up. 
Wayne.