Jaque Thay's Blog, page 6

Taking some time out (I'm not avoiding it, honest!)

As I sat here contemplating what to write for my Nanowrimo project I thought I'd stop for a minute and write a blog instead (okay, I might be avoiding writing my nano project, but I spend all day every day reading, writing and editing, so a few minutes break can't hurt… right?).

On Saturday I went along to a pre-nano meet-up in Cardiff and met some lovely fellows. We met in the Prince of Wales, a Wetherspoons pub that has become the defacto meeting point for nanowrimo over the past few years. I arrived looking for Jay Walker, the local liaison officer for our area. I met her a few months back when I took part in Script Frenzy – Nanowrimo's smaller brother; instead of writing a 50,000 word novel you need to write 100 pages of scripts. So anyway, I went in, focused on finding Jay, and was so engrossed trying to spot her purple hat that I completely overlooked the big sign saying "Nano here!" pinned to the wall above a table.

Once I found them, feeling rather sheepish at this point, I introduced myself and we all got down to talking. We talked about plots and genres, characters and arcs of development and even swapped tips on how to create names and locations for our stories. It was good fun.

I think that's enough of a break. Back to the manuscript. A wordsmith's work is never done.

Perks of the job

It's Halloween tomorrow; I'm expecting lots of spooky happenings and ghostly goings on… but right now my attention is focused on a final proof copy of Deadstar Publishing's first foray into the world of graphic novels. I'm going through it as a favour to the manager… and besides, who doesn't enjoy free comics?

Called Rising Stars, it's going to be released the same week as my second book, Twictions, and I've been told that some of the writers and artists might be at Leeds Thoughtbubble. I'll be there too of course. I'm not allowed to post any promo pics yet (they're tough on secrecy at Deadstar Publishing… I'm still not allowed to show you the cover for my own book!) but as soon as I am I'll let you know.

Right, I've got scripts to write, books to edit and children to scare. Better get back to work.

Andi Ewington's "Forty-five" – A review

When I first heard about Com x's graphic novel Forty-five, I wasn't sure what to make of it. Forty-five stories about forty-five superheroes drawn by forty-five artists. I sounded like chaos. Nevertheless, I was intrigued enough by the concept that when I found out that my local Forbidden Planet were holding a signing to mark the release I thought I'd take a chance. As I have a long-term interest in writing graphic novels among other things it was a dual opportunity because I would also have time to speak to Com x's editor, Ed Deighton.

I try not to read spoilers or reviews when looking at products I know little about; for giants like Iron Man or Transformers there is enough information in the public domain that you are sure to know something relevant – and those intellectual properties are vast enough that it doesn't matter. For a small or one-off project though, learning too much about it in advance can ruin the experience.

At the signing I got signatures from everybody there, I had a flick through the book to see exactly what I'd bought… and then real life took over again and it stayed on my 'to read' pile for several months. What a mistake that was.

A few days ago I picked it off the shelf where I keep all my unread books (I'm a fast reader, but I don't have anywhere near enough time to read as much as I'd like to) because I wanted a change of pace after reading three novels in a week. I was looking for something easier… something that I could watch instead of swimming through a hundred thousand words to reach the end. And so I sat down and read Forty-five.

Wow. What took me so long! Apart from a niggling typo in the first introduction nothing shook my suspension of disbelief. In Forty-five Andi Ewington has managed to create a world like that of Alan Moore's Watchmen (one of the interviewees is a fantastic hat bow to Dr Manhatten), a believable insight into a contemporary reality where superpowers exist but one that doesn't focus exclusively on these super-powered folks as Marvel are prone to doing. Looking through the eyes of James Stanley, a journalist, the book follows him around the globe as he interviews forty-five superheroes as research before the birth of his own child; a child who may, or may not grow up to become a superhero themselves. Each interview is provided as a transcript, a very simple device and one that you would not traditionally associate with storytelling. Alongside this is the single piece of artwork that corresponds to each interview. As you read through the transcripts cleverly woven plots begin to emerge – a story that is being told by its absence. This is the true strength of Ewington's writing; his ability to show you what isn't there.

That isn't to say that the interviews are dull or boring, far from it. Each is insightful into the mind and psyche of the character being interviewed. In each interview an entire character is described through their responses. This is the ultimate example of 'show, don't tell'.

I suppose I should talk about the art too – this is a graphic novel after all. Everybody who reads comics will recognise names of artists; from the legendary Jock (where to start!) through to Rufus Dayglo (Tankgirl), Dan Fraga (Spiderman, X-Men) and Tim Vigil (Faust) among many others. Every page contains clues, both to the characters themselves, and to the ongoing hidden sub-plot. What can I say about the art? It's gorgeous. It's simple, it's complicated, it's engrossing. It's art!

The one detraction from it – a lot of other reviewers have called it the first of its kind for the way in which it mixes narrative with visual. It isn't. Xenology – a book realised by The Black Library in 2006 also used the same technique in that regard. Still, that's a minor issue. 

This isn't a book just for comic collectors – although they should certainly read it. This is also a book for anybody who has ever found themselves smiling at the end of The Usual Suspects, or who ever felt different. This is a book that everybody should read – and you can buy Forty-five here.

One month live – some numbers to show what's going on

Today marks the one month anniversary of the new website design. Overall it's been a big success. It's cleaner, easier to use, faster loading and acts more like I want it to than the old site ever could. As well as being a writer, I've always been fascinated by numbers and statistics – yes, I do know the old joke that 93% of statistics are made up on the spot – so I thought I'd share some of the details about how the site has performed since it was revamped.

Unfortunately I'm not able to provide comparison data for the site before the change as – like the old and muchly underutilised blog – my records vanished by mistake when I made the switchover. If this post proves to be a success though I'll keep comparison data from here on in and feed it out to you on a monthly basis.

Right, to start with let's look at some figures; the redesigned site launch happened at 1.30am on Thursday 22nd September. Since then it has been visited by people from ten countries: UK, USA, Australia, Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Mexico, India and Japan. Of those, the UK represents most of my visitors – almost 85%, America is a distant second with 8.2%, Australia and the Netherlands tie with 1.3% and the others come in around the 0.6% mark. This is to be expected – I am offering a service that is only of use to English speaking clients and all of my marketing has been conducted through English based media.

Of my visitors, 33% return at least once – over time I expect this percentage to rise, particularly as my blog continues to develop and I am able to begin adding additional products to my shop. An interesting point to note is that first time visitors tend to view only 4 pages on average whereas returning visitors read an average of 8 pages. Does this mean that people who click through to the site decide not to look around much? If so then it implies that I'm missing the attention of these people. This is borne out by the average time that people spend on the site: first time visitors only spend 3 minutes and 9 seconds before leaving whereas returning visitors spend an average of 12 minutes and 13 seconds here – presumably those that choose to return do so because they want to learn exactly who I am and what I do.

I mentioned that 33% of people are visiting for their second or subsequent time – let's look a little deeper than that; 13% of my visitors have seen my site exactly twice, 5% have been here three times, the percentages that have come between four and eight times are roughly 1.5% each. After that we have a jump; the start of my loyal visitors. These 4.8% have sought me out between nine and fourteen times each – somewhere between every two to three days this month. The final category are my very loyal fans, the 2% of you who have viewed my website up to 25 times. If you're one of these people, come say hi, tell me what you like so much. Maybe I'll mention you in my next summary of the site's activity.

Browsers and operating systems make for an interesting debate. I've long been aware that Microsoft is losing its battle for dominance in the web browser wars – w3schools have kept rankings on the percentage of users both for browser and OS for the past eight years. September 2008 was the month when Internet Explorer stopped being the browser used by the majority of world users, and in January 2009 Firefox took the lead with the highest percentage of users from all the different options available. They have never been able to pass that crucial 50% mark though because although they are still the most widely used browser, the growing use of Chrome has kept them from taking the overall majority. How do my visitors compare to these rankings? I would expect around 45% to be with Firefox, 31% with Internet Explorer, 17% with Chrome and to have Safari and Opera as minor players holding 3.7% and 2.2% of the user share respectively. What I actually found was a little different: Internet Explorer held the lead with 29%, Firefox came second with 25% and Chrome came in a close third with 21% of my visitors using it. Mozilla Compatible Agent and Safari both came in at 11% although this is a slightly misleading statistic as many smartphone browsers appear to be Mozilla Compatible Agents without giving any further detail. Last on the list was Amoi 8709 with 1.4% of the visits and BlackBerry making up the last 0.7%. So – breaking from global data, Internet Explorer is still the most commonly used browser for accessing my site – barely. That Chrome was so close is also interesting; perhaps Firefox is losing users to Chrome while Internet Explorer retains a loyal cadre of dedicated users? Safari's market share was much higher than anticipated, and poor Opera didn't bring a single person to my site! All this is useful to me as it reinforces the need for me to test the appearance and functionality of the site in multiple browsers. I'm aware that there are still one or two bugs to be resolved in regards to Firefox and Chrome but until now I'd never even considered testing for mobile phone browsers.

Next up is operating systems; here Microsoft shows a clear dominance with a whopping 73% of visitors using a MS OS. In comparison only 10% of my traffic came from Macintosh, 2.7% on an iPad, 2% an iPhone, 1.4% Linux then Android, BlackBerry and the humble iPod taking 0.7% each. There were a further 8.2% of you who have set your systems to hide your OS details – a figure I shall be watching in coming months.

It would seem that Microsoft have been successful with recent marketing as Windows 7 took the lion's share of visits – 41%. That means that over 56% of the total views made in the past month came from machines running Windows 7. In comparison Vista achieved 36% and XP held 22% – not bad for an operating system released in 2001! A surprise appearance on the list was Server 2003 who made up just 1.9% of visits from a MS OS. I'm quite curious to know who uses a web server to browse the internet.

Now that we know what browsers and operating systems you used, let's have a look at how people found the site. Interestingly 42% of you typed it directly into your url bars – I would imagine that many of those visits were made by people returning to the site who had previously bookmarked it, or who have seen the address listed in my book. The next most popular method for finding me, 18% of traffic, was from Facebook, 17% of you googled me and 15% followed directions from my Twitter account. After that there is a steep decline; just 3.5% of you looked me up after seeing my profile on iFreelance.com, 1.4% came from my much neglected DeviantArt page – I love you guys and I'll post some updates soon, I promise! While the smallest percentage came from Bing – just 0.7% used that to find me.

So what are the most popular pages on my site? Unsurprisingly the homepage is the most visited with 17.7% of traffic, closely followed by this blog with 16.4%. My store appears in forth position with 10.4% of your page visits. Only 6.7% of the traffic was spent accessing my contact page – the eighth most popular, and least popular were my testimonials with a measly 1.5% of the total page views. That makes for interesting reading because exactly 50% of you enter my site through the homepage – which gets 17.7% of the total traffic and 32% of you enter through the news page. The rest of the pages receive nominal and fairly equal ranking in terms of the percentage of time in which they spend as an entry page.

What does all this mean in terms of developemt? Well, it lets me see who the type of people are that visit my site and allows me to customise my marketing methods to use sites where I have a strong following to my best advantage. This in turn means that I'll need to spend less time on promoting myself and will permit me to spend more time doing what I should be doing: writing, editing and proofreading. There are a few other topics I could cover while talking about analytics, but I'll leave them for another time.

I know this has been a long read, and possibly not the most interesting for some of you so here's a deal – I promise that my next blog post will be a lot shorter and much more colourful. There, that isn't so bad is it? Until next time, keep writing, keep reading, and keep in contact!

Theft!

I should be writing right now. I should be editing and drafting, but right now none of that feels so important. Instead I'm outraged. Someone, somewhere just tried to rob me. Through some method they obtained my credit card details and attempted to make a purchase online.

In addition to needing my bank card number and sort-code they also needed a three digit secure code that is only used during telephone and online purchases. Most credit card cloning occurs at cashpoints, a device inserted into the reader records all the data from your card. Even your PIN is captured - but that wouldn't give you access to the three digit code. They had that. This means that at some point they have likely either held my card, or, more frighteningly, one of the sites that I have previously trusted to do business with leaked my details.

The bank that I have an account with insists that as an added measure of protection you must enter random letters from a password separate to your PIN. Aha! That should stop anybody from fraudulently using my card… or so you'd think. A little bit before 2am this morning I received an email from my bank notifying me that my credit card's online shopping password had been changed. Whoever was using my card details must have discovered that they couldn't make their purchase without knowing that password so they somehow managed to change it instead.

When I saw the email I was immediately cautious; although it looked authentic, I've received a spate of similar emails recently claiming similar things but all from banks where I don't have an account. It took almost forty minutes of investigating before I was sure that yes, the email was genuine, and yes, it was safe to follow their instructions and query the change. When I phoned the bank to see what was happening I discovered that someone had attempted to make a purchase for €1600 from an online marketplace. I was not amused. Fortunately the purchase seems to have failed. I'll have to wait a few days to be fully sure, but I now have details on who to call and what to say if the bill does come through on me. In the meantime my bank card has been cancelled with immediate effect. It will take a few days for a new one to arrive, which will be annoying but I'd rather endure some disruption to my daily routine than to lose over a month's wages.

This act has had one other effect; it has really driven home for me just how important an issue security has become in our digital world. As a result of tonight's events I can no longer feel sure that my personal information is safe. My trust has been violated, and that hurts. I've spent an hour now looking at all of my passwords, reviewing the places that I trust with my data and changing how I act online. I was pretty good before; never revealing more than was necessary, but now I'm determined. I've changed my passwords, I've restricted my information, and in future I'll be watching my card at all times. I've been caught once, next time it won't be so easy.

Reviewers needed

On Thursday I announced that my second book will be released on November 20th. The book, like Jaque's Magic Beans, is being published by Deadstar Publishing.

I'm still not allowed to give out all the details, so there will be another post when I am given permission, but I can reveal that the book will feature 140 of my 140 character stories. Some you will recognise from my Twitter feed - others have been written especially for this book.

So… onto the matter at hand; the title of this post. For any book to succeed, it needs reviews and if you're reading this then I would like to invite you to apply to review it. Contact me and tell me why you want to review my book, where you would display that review and who you'd tell and if I choose you then I will send you an advance review copy in .pdf format. In addition to that, I will link to your blog/website and if that's not enough, I'll even send you a signed copy of the book as soon as I receive my promotional copies!

So what are you waiting for? Get in touch and let me know why I should pick you to review my book. Be the first to read all the unseen new stories!

Sprout writing competition (now closed)

During July this year I ran a short story competition in collaboration with Lynda Nash and theSprout. The competition was timed to coincide with the launch of my short story anthology, Jaque's Magic Beans, and Lynda's poetry collection, Ashes of a Valleys Childhood. We chose the Sprout website because of the excellent work they do in encouraging social participation among youngsters aged 11-25. In the coming weeks I'll be writing a blog post dedicated to them, but for now, back to the competition: the rules were simple; anybody that lived in Wales and was between 11-25 was eligible to enter. All they had to do was write a story in under 1500 words and submit it to the Sprout website, and we would announce the winner on August 5th. For prizes, Lynda and myself each donated a signed copy of our books, as well as purchasing a £10 Waterstones book voucher.  

The competition ran for a month and we saw some really good entries. After the competition closed, Lynda and I met in a secret location to decide between us who the winner would be. It took us many hours of reading, re-reading and much debate but eventually we knew who our winner was. We couldn't announce it yet though – we had sworn to keep it a secret until the Sprout magazine's 2nd issue launch party where we were appearing as guests.

That night came quickly and Grassroots, an outreach centre for 16-25 year olds, was our venue. As Sprout editorial members, fans, friends and family settled in to enjoy an evening of entertainment and celebration Lynda and I made our final preparations. We had performed several readings together by this stage and were becoming used to speaking in front of crowds – just as well; Grassroots was packed to the rafters! After the compere had introduced himself and Arielle, the Sprout's head-honcho, had thanked everybody for coming we were ushered up to the stage.

We took turns, as we always do, to read selected stories and poems from our respective books, and when we were done we proceeded to announce the winner and award the prize. So, after asking the audience members who had entered the competition to give a show of hands, we opened our envelope, drew out the winner's name and read it aloud… which is when we discovered that Opal_Eyes, the winner of our competition, was not there!

Well! What could we do? We couldn't give her prize away to somebody else, that just wouldn't be fair – but we couldn't keep the prize either, so Dan, one of the Sprout's sub-editors, graciously agreed to 'receive' the award in order to pass it on to Opal_Eyes (who we later found out had become stuck in the Brecon Beacons, some thirty miles north of us) at a later date.

Gift voucher and books given away, our tale might have ended there – but as fate would have it, Opal_Eyes was unable to claim her prize from Dan straight away so it wasn't until the Sprout's following editorial meeting at the end of August that Opal_Eyes that received her books. Fortunately for me, I was present at the meeting so was able give an impromptu awards ceremony (complete with drumroll from the editorial committee) and personally present Opal_Eyes with her prizes.

This brings me almost to our conclusion, but for one thing: earlier this week I received an email Dan with a message from Opal_Eyes… "Jaque's book of short stories was well worth coming down for, read it all on the bus home and it made the trip a million times more enjoyable."

Thank you Opal_Eyes, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Now, for you, my readers, if you would like to read the story that won the competition, look here. If you'd like to return to my website then click on this link instead, and if you'd like to buy the book that impressed Opal_Eyes so much… take a look at my store.

Pocket Notebook – A novel

I met Mike Thomas in March this year at the launch party for his inaugural novel, Pocket Notebook. Fast forward seven long and busy months and I was fortunate enough to meet him again last night at a reading and signing performed at the University of Glamorgan. In March he was surrounded by friends and family, including members of the Bedwas Writing Group, of which he has been a long-time member – last night he was speaking as a guest to a room full of MPhil Creative Writing students, academics and book lovers. To be asked to present such a reading is an honour for him; it shows the literary success that he has achieved but this was a little bit more than that: Mike attended Glamorgan a few years back when he was a student on the MPhil Creative Writing course, so for him last night was a triumphant return to a home away from home.

If you are a book lover then you are probably aware of the literary success that Glamorgan has enjoyed over the past few years; many of its past students, myself included, have had works published and their star asset, lecturer Philip Gross, has won almost every literary prize open to him this year. It seems that the university is turning out a new generation of influential and successful writers, people including Dan Rhodes and Rachel Trezise, and there are no signs of the trend stopping any time soon.

Mike is, as has probably been mentioned in every blog and review post written about him, an active, serving policeman, and it is from this experience that he was able to craft Pocket Notebook. The novel follows Jacob Smith (Jake) as his life collapses. From his position as a tactical firearms officer living with his wife and daughter, bit by bit his life falls to pieces. When I first started reading the book in March I found it gruelling to read through – not because it is badly written, the very opposite in fact. Pocket Notebook is written with so much passion and insight into police life, and the prose is tackled with such skill that it became almost unbearable to read the slow motion car crash that Jake's life becomes. Bear with it though. The book is rewarding. Mike is aware of the sheer unlikeability of his protagonist and makes an effort to play off this through deft use of humour. At times Jake's actions will make you laugh aloud – as many of us did during his reading last night – as you consider the sheer facetiousness of the situations that emerge as Jake's life and mind unravels.

If you are a fan of contemporary writing then Pocket Notebook is one that should be in your collection; it can be uncomfortable reading at times, forcing us as it does to re-evaluate our perceptions of the boys in blue, but it is a book that you will want to finish if only to see just how far Jake can fall.

Released in February 2010, Pocket Notebook is available from all good bookstores – but you can get it without leaving the house if you buy it from Amazon.

Just what do I do?

I was asked this at a networking event I attended last week. There were about thirty of us in the room, milling around, putting out feelers for business and sometimes searching for a supplier/service provider to use for our own purposes, and almost every person I spoke to asked me this question. It wasn't mean, or malicious; they weren't impugning me or putting me down as being unable to do a job – they were genuinely curious. Most, it seems, had never encountered somebody in my line of work before.

Do you know what I do? I assume you have some idea as you are reading the blog on my website, but let me go into a little more detail for you. To put it briefly, I am an author, a proofreader and an editor – but this only just scratches the extent of the work that I do. Proofreading is fairly simple – that's just looking for mistakes, right? It's checking spelling and making sure there are no errors. It's easy, Microsoft Word even does it for you.

Wrong!

A proofreader does look for spelling mistakes, that's true, but they do a lot more on top; things that no computer can do. A proofreader will check that you have used the words that you mean to use; they will ensure that what you have written makes sense, and if they are good at their job they will check that it is correct too. The obvious group of people to use a proofreader are writers – everybody makes mistakes and nobody wants to see a book in print with bad spelling etc, so publishing houses hire proofreaders to try to weed out all those niggling little slipups. They aren't the only ones though; can you imagine the havoc that could occur if a lawyer drafted a contract and there was a mistake in it? Adding or subtracting the right word can change the meaning of an entire paragraph. Legal documents must be absolutely correct. So that's work for a proofreader.

Websites too – the big brand companies stand to lose a lot of money… and even small businesses can be affected if their website is riddled with mistakes. Again, work for a proofreader. So that's one part of my job. The next is editorial work; this involves taking existing content (sometimes called copy) and looking at its strengths, its weaknesses, its flow and style, and working to improve it. Again, newspapers and publishing houses are the obvious consumers of an editor's skills – but really any group or organisation that wants to make the most of their written materials should have an editor look over it. Editors have a profound understanding of how language works; the power of certain words and phrases, and how to elicit the most favourable response to a piece.

Which leads me to the final part of my descriptor: author. That is perhaps the easiest, and most difficult, part of my job to define. In short, I write – but I don't just write; I craft words, I massage meaning: I create symbols and ideas through careful construction of sentences. What do I write? Well, everything really. Just in the past six months I've written website copy, scripts, essays, short stories, sections of novels, self-help guides, blog posts, personal statements, job adverts and much more.

So, that's what I do… but can you guess what I said? Bearing in mind I often had only a few seconds to make an impression before they moved onto the next person they wished to speak to, so my words were carefully selected; I said, "I'm a Wordsmith. If you deal with the written word in any way, then you can benefit from my services." So far I've had emails from three people at that event enquiring further. I would call that a success.

Redesign – an update

A fortnight ago I unveiled the new design for my website. It was functional and I was very pleased with it. I was aware though of the failings it still possessed. Since then I have worked, when I could, to remedy these faults and to continue to improve upon the design. Last night saw a major advancement in that. With the help of @tnjh I now have an integrated blog and my sidebar now functions as intended. For that I am greatly indebted to him.

Many of the minor issues have also been corrected too – so much so that I have only one outstanding issue regarding layout that still needs to be completed, and that is a purely aesthetic issue, not one that has any practical effect on the site.

I'm still testing for bugs and errors though, so if you do spot anything please let me know and I will try to address it. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the new layout.