Lexi Revellian's Blog, page 23

Unofficial Girl, the cover...

I've rethought the cover for Unofficial Girl , dragooning the offspring into posing for me. She's a few years younger than Beth, my heroine, a little thinner, and has the WRONG HAIR. Beth's is long, curly and red/gold. As you can see from Remix's cover, the daughter's is long, blonde, straight as rain, and wants to stay that way.
So I spent an hour with curling tongs, hair grips and a lot of extra-strength hair lacquer, and you can see the results in the new cover. I changed the colour on Adobe Photoshop.
All my future heroines will have whatever hairstyle my daughter has at the time, I've decided.

How to Fully Enjoy Popular Fiction, by Scott Meyer

I'm frantically busy, so here is a cartoon to amuse you instead of a post. Click to enlarge.

Speed bumps in the text

I usually edit each chapter with Autocrit as I finish it, but this has been a distracting year and I've missed a lot of them, so am currently putting the whole of Unofficial Girl through the Autocrit software. It's rather wearing, doing it all at once.
The main thing I need Autocrit for is my word echo problem; you'd think that as I'm aware of it I'd be able to deal with it, but I still miss some of the most obvious instances. It's brilliant for that. The other areas it focuses on are less useful, and some are counter-productive. For instance, on one occasion I used 36 adverbs instead of the 35 allowed, so EVERY adverb was in red - distracting. And the software has recently changed, and become a lot pickier. I preferred its more laissez-faire version.
At this stage, I'm eliminating speed bumps in the text; anything that will trip a reader and remind him that he is reading a book. I'll be reading it aloud next. The aim is to make the prose as smooth as possible. This is something readers like, even if it's not consciously appreciated. Indeed, on YouWriteOn and Authonomy, I suspected there were those who marked down an easy read as somehow inferior to more taxing writing. They were deeply wrong.

Writing the ending

I am SO near the end of Unofficial Girl - 79,728 words and counting - and can't wait to finish and start tweaking and polishing and sending it out to beta readers.
Usually I find the end of a novel easy to write, because I don't start writing a book until I know how it will end. The last couple of chapters are the home stretch. But with Unofficial Girl, I made a last minute decision to change the end, thus making it much more challenging.
I just hope readers like it...
Sorry for this rather short post, I need to get back to the WIP.

What's a novel worth?

THE hot topic on the writers' forums I frequent right now is the price of ebooks, and more specifically, what a self-published writer should charge.
(We all know publishers have their own dark reasons for charging more than the price of a paperback, in spite of the negligible or zero costs of producing, storing, and distributing an ebook, and I'm not getting into that topic here.)
Here's a summary of the main arguments for a higher price, and my thoughts in italics:I value my work, and I demonstrate that in the price I charge for it. This book took me a year to write and is worth a sensible amount. What matters is not the author's perception of value, but the purchaser's, and it's an act of faith to buy and spend hours of your time on a novel by an author you've never heard of.

Self-publishers who price their books low are doing a disservice to other indies by engendering an expectation of low prices. Welcome to the free market. In business, you price to sell your product, not to win friends; I am responsible for no one's sales except my own.

If you price your book on Amazon at less than £1.49, thus earning 35% rather than 70% royalty, you will need to sell six times the number of books to break even. With a popular book, you will do this and much, much more. See JA Konrath and Victorine Lieske. And, in a more modest way, me.The whole publishing industry is in a fascinating state of upheaval right now. Pricing is just a part of that turmoil. One can only speculate on what the industry will be like in five years' time, and the prices that ebooks will command. There'll be one constant, though. Readers will still buy books they like, and it will still be impossible to predict which books have that magic quality.

Likeable heroes and heroines

Before she began Emma , Jane Austen wrote, "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like." I think she was wrong; certainly these days most readers like Emma. The heroine we don't like is Fanny Price, so outwardly meek while inwardly censorious about everyone else. It's the strength of a good book that we can have an opinion of the characters not necessarily the same as the author's.
I'm getting towards the end of the first draft of Unofficial Girl - 73,000 words out of an estimated 80,000 - and I've started wondering whether readers will like Nick Cavanagh, a spec op and one of the three main characters. He elbowed his way into a major role, ousting the disabled Marine who was to have been a key player in the story. Beth becomes romantically involved with him, believing he is there to protect her; in fact, he's hunting her replica. He's unscrupulous on occasion, an opportunist, ruthless and fairly selfish. But I like him. (I think the daughter does too, since she was disappointed when it emerged he is 5'10". She prefers taller men.)
I'm just writing the scene where the two Beths, the original and her identical copy, get together for the first time. Nick has tried and failed to get Beth One on her own and give her an edited version of events which will show him in a better light, and Beth Two is about to tell all.
Beth Two took the stool next to Beth and began to eat, apparently in no hurry to enlighten her. Her demeanour was relaxed and blithe, as if she might whistle were she not eating. Nick made himself a coffee while helplessly waiting for the truth to emerge like a rat from a toilet.

The Afrika Reich - Guy Saville's book launch

Last night the daughter and I went to the launch party of Guy Saville's alternative history thriller, The Africa Reich, in Waterstones Piccadilly.
I've never been to a launch before, so didn't know quite what to expect. The first surprise was that there is a large and busy bar on the fifth floor of Waterstones, an ideal rendezvous spot for book-lovers. Guy's do was around a smaller bar at one end of the vast space, with sofas, wine and piles of The Afrika Reich , which noticeably dwindled by the end of the evening.
The bar was crowded. I met some internet friends and acquaintances - lovely to put a face to the personalities I know from writers' websites. Katherine Robb, Justine Windsor (who has just got herself an agent), Carlie Lee, Katherine Webb, author of the bestselling Legacy , and Fraser Grace, playwright. Guy gave a brief and apposite speech, then sat in a corner to sign copies of his book. You had to take a copy to the fourth floor to pay (there was a queue) and return for a signature (another, longer queue, as Guy wrote appropriate messages, not just his name).
It's a beautifully-produced hardback, with a map in the front and Germanic dropped caps, and Guy is a terrific writer. I'm really looking forward to reading it.

Trying to be a Time Lord

I'm 65,000 words into the current novel, which I think may be 80,000 words long when finished (it's difficult to judge) and I'm having a worse than usual battle with Time.
You'd think it wouldn't be hard for an author; after all, I'm in total control of the world I created - except when the characters get above themselves - and I'm telling the story in chronological order. I've printed out a calendar of the weeks I'm using, and have noted what happens on which day. Simple, huh?
Actually, no, and I think it's because of the structure of Unofficial Girl . At the start, Beth Chandler is duplicated in a flawed experiment, and alternating chapters tell the stories of Beth One and Beth Two, in third and first person narratives. This is harder to write than Remix , because just as I get on a roll, I have to switch to another character/group of characters. I also have to stop one Beth getting ahead in time when not much is happening to her, and there is lots of action in the life of the other.
I've tried novel writing software, but you have to learn how to use it to benefit, and I'm not convinced enough of its worth to expend the time. I can only admire and envy Gary Corby, who does spreadsheets to fine-tune his plotting. Darned if I could.
I'll just have to muddle on, grim and determined. I'll get there in the end. Watch this space.

My very own Kindle

I wanted a Kindle - such a neat and clever device, but I'm not reading a great deal right now, since I'm finishing my fourth novel, and have no time. I don't do holidays, and thank goodness, I'm no longer hanging around for hours in the fracture clinic at the Royal London Hospital (what a godsend it would have been last year) so it was hard to justify the expense.
But Wednesday an unexpected parcel arrived; an early birthday present from my insanely generous sister, and there it was; my own Kindle 3G!
It's a nifty bit of design. I like the graphite colour, so classy, and its lightness in the hand; the instructions are right there, clearly written, and I can imagine I will quickly get used to reading on screen so the Kindle disappears. It's a one-trick pony, and the better for it; a dedicated e-reader.
I can now see for myself why people are so enthusiastic about their Kindles, and get so fond of them. I believe they will, sooner than we think, take over from paperbacks.

Interview with famous author Lexi Revellian :o)

You can find out all about me and my writing at Sandra Patterson's blog today.
Discover how I went from rejection by all the best literary agents in the UK to becoming an indie author who has sold more than 12,000 ebooks in less than six months.
(And note I don't use the expression 'roller-coaster ride' once in the whole interview.)
The cartoon is by my daughter.