David W. Robinson's Blog: Always Writing, page 21

Monday Mumbling: I Won’t Turn a Crisis Into A Drama

It’s been a day or two since I last reported on my health, and if I’m suffering, I see no reason you shouldn’t.

Those of you paying attention will know that I fell quite ill last Wednesday, since when I’ve been on an exclusive diet of antibiotics, analgesics and cigarettes. The first clears the infection, the second eases the fever, and the third, aside from keeping my temper under control, helps me cough up all the crap that the tobacco put there in the first place.

My appetites are slowly returning. I’m eating okay, I’m writing again, but the odds on my getting a legover this side of New Year’s Eve still rank it as an outside bet.

On this angle, it’s fair to say that matters took a turn for the worst on Friday when Her Indoors took Joe for a walk on her own.

Joe is a bastardised Jack Russell, with a bit of bulldog in him. He’s the size of a meerkat with the strength of a horse. Pull? He can pull better than I could when I was in me prime.

So she’s crossing the road, with Joe tugging away at his 5-metre lead, when she tripped over the kerb and fell flat, scraped both hands on the tarmac, sprained her wrist, and banged her head on the ground. I wasn’t bothered about the bump on the nut. It’d take lot more than a concrete kerbstone to get through her bone head.

However, while she is now nursing me back to good health, I’m nursing the wounds to her hands and wrist, and it’s confusing. We’re never sure who’s supposed to be doing what to whom or when he/she is supposed to be doing it. A bit like our nightly adventures many, many, MANY moons ago. In the meantime, I’m supposed to stop smoking today.

Is it any wonder the word Flatcap is synonymous with catastrophe?

Crisis Over: I’m Back

Yesterday will go down as one of the worst days of my life. It began as a disaster and went rapidly downhill from there.

I don’t sleep well. There are a number of factors contributing to that, but essentially, I don’t worry too much when I get up feeling tired. I felt tired at half past six yesterday morning. Nothing to worry about.

Then at about half past nine I felt cold. Central heating was running so there was no reason for it. At ten o’clock, I was shivering uncontrollably and I felt sick. I went back to bed. I was sick three times and each time I brought up nothing but bile, my head was spinning and I was freezing cold under two sheets, a duvet and a bathrobe thrown on top for extra insulation.

Her Indoors often complains she can’t cope with my various and mostly self-inflicted health problems, but she coped all right yesterday and got the emergency doctor out.

A pleasant young woman, after running all the usual tests, blood pressure and glucose level (both okay), she had a listen to my chest and declared a massive infection. A week of antibiotics for the infection, analgesics to bring down the fever. She left a prescription and I said I’d pick it up tomorrow (today). Her Indoors had different ideas and went out for it straight away. While she was out, she also spent thirty quid on a new blouse!!!! so it wasn’t quite the philanthropic sacrifice she will no doubt make it appear.

I haven’t slept well overnight, but that’s probably because I spent so much of yesterday sleeping. However, as I got up this morning, I feel 1,000% better. Well enough to delve into my fund of hyperbole and come up with “1,000%” anyway. The fever is gone. I still get occasional sweats but I’m well enough to tackle STAC Mystery #12, A Killing in the Family (I bet you thought I wouldn’t have the balls to throw in a cheap plug).

But this business is a mystery in its own right. I suffer from three or four chest infections a year and I always know when they’re coming on. This time I hadn’t a clue and it must have been in there a week or two to have such a devastating effect.

Just what I need at my time of life: sneaky, subversive chest infections.

Wednesday Writing: Is There a Difference Between Vanity and POD?

I read my fair share of advice blogs/columns. I’m one of those old idiots who believes he knows everything, and spends a lot of time every day learning those things he’s discovered he didn’t know, so he checks out the web advisors. The vast majority are sound as a pound. The advice they give is good, and should be heeded. They know a lot more than I do.

But now and again I come across one who clearly hasn’t a clue what he/she is talking about.

So what brought this particular rant on? It was a comment I read concerning POD publishing, and how everyone should be wary of it or it will end up costing you a fortune. What a lot of tosh. The person concerned obviously doesn’t know the difference between POD and vanity publishing.

POD stands for Print On Demand. In other words the publisher does not hold stocks of books and doesn’t really deal with High Street bookshops, which is just as well because where I live, we don’t have that many left. Instead, a book is printed when a reader demands (i.e. orders) it.

Vanity publishing, on the other hand, has been around almost as long the publishing industry.  It’s where a publisher is happy to take on your book regardless of quality, but subject to you forking out a large sum of money in advance. He gets his three grand, and that’s all he gives a toss about. He will do nothing to help sell your book, but he will expect you to take delivery of hundreds of copies, which you can store in your garage until you decide it’s time for a bonfire.

The terms are not necessarily mutually exclusive. A good number of vanity publishers utilise POD technology on the offchance that you may need to order more copies… presumably when the bonfire is going out.

However, just because a publisher works with POD does not make them a vanity publisher.

Some years ago, I worked with an American imprint, Virtual Tales. An upfront, thoroughly respectable publisher who liked my novel, and took it on. They designed a cover, they appointed an editor, and consulted with me at every stage of the process. And when the book was ready to go, they sent me a complimentary paperback copy.

Virtual Tales did not store books. They utilised POD. And yet, they never charged me a penny.

These days, aside from some self-published titles which no one else is crazy enough to take on, I work exclusively with Crooked Cat Publishing. When they receive my scripts, they pore over my work, making whatever additional edits they feel are necessary, they design a cover, and they consult with me on everything from that cover and those edits, right down to pricing. And when we’re ready to go, they send me a complimentary copy of the paperback.

To date, I’ve published no less than 14 paperback titles (and one exclusive e-book) with Crooked Cat, and the fifteenth, STAC Mystery #12, A Killing in the Family, is due soon. They’ve never charged me one penny.

And yet they utilise POD.

With an ever-increasing amount of business done over the internet, POD is the way forward for the smaller companies. It avoids filling a huge warehouse with thousands and thousands of copies of the books. It’s also kinder to the trees and avoids any number of unsold books being pulped and recycled into toilet rolls.

So there you have it. If you want to criticise the independent publishers, do so, but do your homework first, and if you’re not prepared to do that, at least learn the difference between vanity and POD.

Tracy’s Back

It’s true. She’s Back!

Can’t remember when it was exactly, but I first met Tracy sometime around 2009/10, when my old mate Trevor Belshaw asked me to have a look at this idea he’d had. Not that he just sent it to me, you understand. I’m no more a comedy guru than the bloke next door, and he sent to a number of people. In common with them all, I liked what I read and said he should go for it.

Lo and behold, Tracy’s Hot Mail appeared a couple of years later, the very first book published by Crooked Cat.

I said at the time that Tracy brings Bridget Jones into the 21st century: the diary format laid out as a series of emails to her best friend and unseen confidante, Emma. Email is logical when you think about it. I meanersay, who keeps a proper diary these days?

Well, Trevor has now taken matters a step further with the second in the series making its debut today, and it’s the 100th book published by Crooked Cat. And you can pick up Tracy’s Celebrity Hot Mail from a whole host of e-book and paperback sellers, including Amazon.

If I were forty years younger, Tracy would be the kind of girl I’d cross the street to avoid. Not that there’s anything seriously amiss with her. It’s just that I can get into enough trouble without her help.

She’s feisty, funny, fashionable and her IQ isn’t high enough to get her onto reality crap like TOWIE, which means she blends in perfectly with most of the airheads I meet in my day to day meanderings. And that level of marginal innocence, combined with bouts of pure insanity, backed up by her bog-standard, Royle-ish family and a host of everyday folk on the funny farm, makes for great comedy.

I’m seriously looking forward to reacquainting myself with Spotty Irene, Old Man Tugger, Barry the Brake and Petrol Pauline, Pranger the driving instructor… but then, you know I like name-dropping.

There’s the usual Crooked Cat launch party on Facebook, where I think there may be some freebies, but if Tracy’s dad got them through his iffy mates, you’re assured that they didn’t fall off the back of a lorry. They were probably nicked straight from the manufacturer.

Everyone is welcome over there, but if, like me, you’re not in a party mood, then get yourself over to one of the online suppliers, then settle down for a couple of hours of chucklesome fun.

Monday Mumbling: Suffering for My Art?

I spend most of my life in pain from one problem or another, mainly brought on by years of ignoring medical advice.

Now there’s a novelty: someone with health problems NOT blaming it on other people.

Unusual or not, it’s the truth. If I’d taken better care of myself when I was younger, I wouldn’t have most of the problems I have right now: arthritis, COPD, type 2 diabetes, being the three major culprits. I’m no more sensible now. Look carefully, and you can see strands of tobacco to the right of the myriad pills I have to swallow.

Right now, I have some muscle problems with my back. I’ve been in chronic pain for a fortnight or more , and matters reached a head last week when I had to bite the bullet and talk to my doctor… again. We’re gonna start looking into it this coming week, and this must be the umpteenth week when I’ve decided to “look into it”.

As a novelist, however, there is a plus side to this. I can make my characters suffer the same problems.

I’m a boomer (born between 1946 and 1970) Joe, Sheila and Brenda and most of the STAC gang are boomers. It would be strange if they didn’t suffer the same trouble as me, although, aside from Sylvia Goodson’s diabetes, and Sheila’s gallstones, it’s never been addressed… yet.

So as we moved from Easter into the summer of 2013, I made Joe feel the pinch of too many cigarettes, too many late nights and early mornings, and not enough rest. And in the autumn, he found out the same way I did, by suffering a suspected heart attack.

The difference is, Joe is more intelligent than me. He’ll listen to medical advice (eventually) and he has two people at his side who will make him do as his told. My missus has tried to make me do as I’m told, but it didn’t work.

Not because the missus isn’t forceful enough, but because I’m too stupid to listen.

Wednesday Writing: A guest post from Vanessa Couchman

Pre-launch book publicity: what works?

My guest today is Vanessa Couchman, whose first novel, The House at Zaronza was launched last week and stormed the Amazon. I wanted to know what Vanessa did in advance of publication to create such an immediate impact. Over to Vanessa.

I’ve always disliked the word “networking”. It conjures up visions of captains of industry swapping business cards over lavish lunches. But this word sprang (or crawled, anyway, after a booze-fuelled launch party) to mind when David asked me to write about the pre-launch publicity I did for my novel.

The House at Zaronza was released on 29th July in paperback and e-book formats. By the end of launch day, it had clambered into the top 3,000 in the Kindle rankings and was number 6 in the women’s historical fiction genre.

This is my first novel and my first taste at publicising my own book. I used to work in publishing in the days before Kindles and e-books were a gleam in anyone’s eye but things have changed radically since then. A few years ago, I thought a social medium was a nice cup of tea. I’ve been on a steep learning curve ever since. And they keep coming up with new ones!

I’d like to say that The House of Zaronza’s success in the charts was the result of a carefully-considered marketing strategy. But that would be economical with the truth. I did draw up a marketing plan or, rather, a jumbled list of 80 things I thought I ought to do. Working out which of those should be a priority has not been easy, but here’s what I think did it for me:

I have been priming people about the book’s origins and, later, publication for some time. My blog, Life on La Lune , gets about 7,000 hits a month so it was a no-brainer to use that as a platform. However, it’s about French life rather than writing, so I had to be careful not to spam readers and drive them away. My blog is linked to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.



Being of a certain age with several careers behind me, I’ve got a lot of contacts, many of them with literary interests. This is where the networking comes in. I’ve discovered the power of email in drumming up interest for other activities. A week before publication, I emailed everyone I know with info about the book, but didn’t say, “Please buy it.” Sales of the paperback spiked the next day at #4,000 in the Amazon overall rankings – and that was pre-publication.


In the 10 days before publication, I tweeted a daily quote from the book with the link to Amazon to ca. 550 followers. I also tweeted links to relevant articles by other people. Retweets and mentions from Twitter friends helped, too.


Also coming up to publication, I published extracts from the book on Facebook. Having not only my personal page but also the Crooked Cat Readers page increased the reach.

What didn’t work?

I set up a Facebook page for the novel. It got a lot of likes in the first few days but declined sharply after that. Trying to drive people to it was time-consuming but unproductive. It became confusing posting to it as well as my own page and the Crooked Cat one.

One thing I am sure about: you can’t just sit back after publication and expect the book to sell itself. The three months after release are probably critical to its success. And people have to like it, too.

***

 

Vanessa Couchman is passionate about French and Corsican history, from which she derives the inspiration for much of her fiction. She has lived in France since 1997, where she runs a copywriting business and also writes magazine articles. Her short stories have won and been placed in creative writing competitions. The House at Zaronza is her debut novel.

 

 

The House at Zaronza

Set in early 20th-century Corsica and at the Western Front in World War I, The House at Zaronza tells the story of Maria Orsini, the daughter of a bourgeois family. She and the village schoolmaster carry on a secret romance, but Maria’s family has other ideas for her future. She becomes a volunteer nurse during World War I and the novel follows her fortunes through the war and beyond.

Find Vanessa at:

Blog: Life on La Lune – http://vanessafrance.wordpress.com

Writing site: http://vanessacouchmanwriter.wordpress.com

Amazon author page: www.amazon.com/author/vanessacouchman and http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vanessa-Couchman/e/B00LQM4T9O/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1407067430&sr=8-1

Twitter: @Vanessainfrance

Facebook: vanessa.couchman.3

Authorsden: http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewwork.asp?id=63918&authorid=182844

You can find The House at Zaronza at:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/House-at-Zaronza-Vanessa-Couchman-ebook/dp/B00M5A0U6C/

http://www.amazon.com/House-at-Zaronza-Vanessa-Couchman-ebook/dp/B00M5A0U6C/

 

Monday Mumbling (Part 2): Went the Day Well

The appointments were speedily and efficiently dealt with but by twelve noon, having had nothing to eat or drink but water since midnight, I was beginning to feel the effects, as the following selfie demonstrates.

 

And the upshot of it all?

Breathing: I am still breathing, but the output is pure poison, as is most of the input thanks to my hand-rolling tobacco.

Blood sugar: haven’t a clue and won’t have until tomorrow, but the chances are it’ll be normal for a Type 2 diabetic.

Aortic Aneurysm: dunno. She couldn’t do the scan because the images were hazy again. What they fondly imagined was gas last time, was there again, but it wasn’t gas. My best guess is it’s my internal plumbing which was re-arranged twenty years ago to repair other problems.

Retinopathy: the interior of my eye looked like the planet Mars. Apparently this is normal, but I don’t know where that little vehicle marked NASA came from.

Overall judgement: sorry, but I’ll be back tomorrow.

***After discussions with a good friend, Carol Hedges, I looked into the comment spam set up on WordPress, and I am now able to allow comments again. Please feel free to speak your mind. Cheques payable to…

 

Monday Mumbling: Organised? Me?

We all know that when it comes to organisation, I’m the world’s best… not.

For most people, when they consider my organisational abilities, the words ‘piss up’ and ‘brewery’ spring instantly to mind. I admit it. If I ever got organised, I’d probably rule the world, so you should be glad I’m a one-man disaster area.

Well, this time I’ve excelled myself.

I have to be at the doc’s this at 10:30 this morning for my annual diabetic check-up and bloods. It’s a fasting test. After that, at 11:50, I shuffle along the corridor for an ultrasound scan looking for potential aortic aneurysms. I went once before, but the poor woman couldn’t see anything for gas. I offered to fart, but she said it wouldn’t work, so we rearranged the test for today, and I’m ordered to fast for it.

Then came the letter from our local PCT arranging my annual diabetic retinopathy scan. They have a habit of sending me all over Manchester for these tests, and I can’t drive because the drops they put in my eye anaesthetises the pupils, which means I’m dazzled when I come out.

So last year, I put my foot down and so, “No way. You fix it up at my doctor’s surgery.” And they did. Come this year, they forgot my irritability and wanted to send me to the dark side of the moon, or Rochdale as we know it. I rang again and read them the riot act, after which they re-arranged it for the medical centre where I’m registered. They suggested “August 4th?” and I said, okay, having completely forgotten about the other two appointments.

So now, I’ve had nothing to eat or drink since before midnight, and those two stale loaves and that dead rat will be looking decidedly delicious by twelve noon. Moreover, I can’t eat anything until sometime after noon when the aortic oojah has been dealt with, and then I have to kill a couple of hours in town before turning back up at the medical centre for the retinopathy. And I can’t take the car because I won’t be able to drive home.

I’ll be at the medical centre so long, they’ll probably consult me on the redecoration, and by lunchtime, I’m sure I’ll have wasted away to shadow of my former self.

Will someone please tell me, how do you arrange a piss up in a brewery?

Wednesday Writing: Content Farms? Bid Sites? Pass

This piece should have appeared yesterday, but I had a problem with it… I forgot

I had an invite from someone who contributes to one of those content sites. Would I like to submit work to the site? I won’t name it because basically they’re all the same. Generous soul that I am, I checked it out and learned that on each piece I put up, I would earn the princely sum of 1/2 cent for each “unique” view of the article. I don’t know what they mean by unique, but I assume it’s there to stop the author clicking and clicking and clicking to jack up his pay.

This means that I would knock out $1 for 200 unique hits. I can’t get that kind of figure on my blog, never mind on a site crowded with thousands of wannabes.

What did cross my mind was, when did the freelance word become so devalued?

To give you an idea where I’m coming from, I sold my first piece (500-600 words) to a local newspaper almost 30 years ago for the princely sum of £8 ($12). I’ve sold a good many since then for varying amounts, and the only reason I don’t do this kind of work any longer is because I concentrate on book-length fiction. That first piece paid at a rate of about £15 ($25) per 1,000 words. Now here are people offering derisory amounts for anyone’s work and the pay is based on views, not wordage. If you get no views, hard luck, you get bugger all.

And it’s not just content farms. A few years back I checked out the bid sites. Once again, let me give you some history to put matters into perspective.

In 1996 I pitched a 5-hour serial to the commissioning editors of a British TV production house. The director and I had jumped through all the early hoops and this was a face-to-face meeting. My fees as a TV newcomer were £4,000 PER HOUR of drama. That serial was worth almost £20,000 to me as the writer. Over and above that, there were the rights to consider since it was an adaptation of one of my novels. All up, it was worth about £30,000.

All right, we didn’t get the commission. We gave it our best shot, but it floundered on production costs. Reality TV was beginning to make its mark and five hours of drama would cost half a million to produce.

That’s the background.

Surfing the bid sites, I came across someone who required a 90-minute TV script. He would provide the storyline, the writer had to produce the script. Budget? £150 ($250). I can write a 90-minute draft in three days. To bring it up to production standards would take no less than 6 months, and ideally, I would prefer a year. For £150? I could earn £7,000 a year stocking shelves in supermarket.

Neither the content farms nor the bid sites are particular interested in quality. They’re concerned with price. To prove it, I wrote an article for one content farm about four years ago. It was a blatant plug for one of my books, 1,000 words long, it took less than an hour to write, correct and upload. It was trite, hackneyed dross which I wouldn’t even put up as a Flatcap blog post.

It was accepted without question, categorised incorrectly, and the last I heard, it had earned me the princely sum of 13¢.

Just in case you think I’m being a bit diva-ish on this matter, I will work for nothing. I was an editor on 100 Stories for Haiti, 50 Stories for Pakistan and 100 for Queensland. I also contributed short stories to Crooked Cat’s Fear and Crooked Cat Tales anthologies, the proceeds of which go to charity.

To the person who recommended the content site the other day, I say thanks, but I’d rather try making a living. And the pay-per-click site I contributed to? I told them exactly where they could stick the 13¢… penny by penny.

Monday Mumbling: Weekend Wagon Woes

It’s been one of those weekends here at Festung Flatcap.

Let me recap for a minute. I got rid of my car in September last year. Expedient since it fell apart and ended up less roadworthy than Her Indoors’ shopping trolley. We decided to manage with buses. Over the course of the next few months the bus company made many changes ‘after consultation with passengers’.

I would love to meet the gormless tits who voted for fewer buses and extortionate fares.

This being the case, I invested in new wheels in April this year. I never buy new cars. If I want to know how badly I’m being ripped off, I just check my gas and electricity bills. So the car I bought was about 11 years old. It was in fairly good nick, had a full MOT on it, and it was worth what I paid for it.

It’s also the same make and model as my last shed (a Ford Ka if you’re interested) and that car fell apart after the snow and ice of two vicious winters got to it. With that in mind I decided to get ahead of the game, and have the new one undersealed and prepped before the bad weather turns up. I also had a suspicion that the car hadn’t been serviced. Therefore it went to Dave, the lad who does my work, on Friday. He brought it back yesterday having undersealed it and given it good going over.

Hadn’t been serviced? Dave showed me the fuel filter. It had been in place since the car came off the production line in 2002. It was so badly rusted it could have been mistaken for a World War Two grenade. The rattling noise which the previous owner assured me was the spare wheel cage moving about under the back end, turned out to be the tappets tuning up for a full rendition of The Radetsky March. The spark plugs had been in the block so long, they were practically welded into place and the back brakes were sticking on because the handbrake release mechanism didn’t work properly. As a result, I’d been riding round with the brakes partly on, and they needed replacing. Finally, when Dave drained the oil, there was only half a litre in the sump, which accounted for the oil pressure warning light flashing at me now and then.

I had my excuses ready. I dipped the oil when I first got it and according to the dipstick, it was full, but as Dave pointed out, I park with the car facing downhill. And the rattling tappets? I never heard them because I’m stone deaf, and even though Her Indoors heard them, she would know a tappet from a tap washer.

The result of all this is open wallet surgery, but at least we’re on top of the job now, and I have my cars serviced annually, so my glorious, Technicolor dream shed will run for at least another year and Dave can bugger off to Tenerife safe in the knowledge that he’s just picked up his spending money.

I got the car back on Sunday. At the same time, my left elbow flared. Tennis elbow, and before you start, I’ve already done all the Andy Murray jokes. It is extremely painful. Her Indoors has been quite cheerful about it, but that’s par for the course, innit? As long as it hurts me, she’s cool.

So after spending all this money getting the car into shape, I can’t drive the flicking thing. Let Her Indoors drive? Not possible, I’m afraid. She doesn’t so much drive as aim.

And I’m back to using overpriced, come-when-you-will buses.

***I regret, I’m still unable to permit comments on this blog. This is down to spammers who are too lazy or too crooked to target their dubious services properly and instead choose to irritate the hell out of those of us who do.