David Nicol's Blog, page 2

My Writing Process Blog Tour – David Nicol

And so it was, the planets aligned, a cat and a dog shared a home, a twitter notification sounded in the dark. “I nominate YOOOOOOOOUUUUU!” It said. Or words to that effect. This is all pretty much artistic licence right now. But that’s what writing’s about.

Here’s what really happened:

Christopher Smith, a writer who is much better than he gives himself credit for, nominated me to do this Writing Process Blog thingy. He is a bit difficult to find so tweet him at @Reckoner67 to get his latest thingammywhatsits, or visit ProseBeforeHoHos. You can read his Writing Process here.

Now apparently I have to answer some questions about my writing process….

What Am I Working On?

Right now, at the time of writing, I’m working on book 2 of ‘Lament for the Living‘ which is the concluding part of the story of survivors of the zombie apocalypse. It’s set three years after the outbreak, at a time when most of the zombie threat is gone, and the survivors are attempting to rebuild their own civilisations and societal structures.

I also have a number of short stories on the go, covering various themes. I’m quite old school when it comes to short stories in that I like them to be allegorical, or have allusions and latent meanings.

There is also the prequel novel to the dystopian short story ‘The Deluge of Elias‘ which I did start working on after I completed ‘Lament for the Living‘, but stopped when the troubles escalated in Egypt. The setting is just outside Alexandria and a lot of the main scenario had echoes of what was going on there. Very creepy. So that’s on the back burner right now until I can see how Egypt pans out.

I’m also quite excited about another project idea I have that is much more in the fantasy realm. But we’ll see how that goes.

How Does My Work Differ From Others of Its Genre?

None of my characters are safe. It’s wise to enjoy being with your favourite character while you can because they have a habit of finding themselves dead (Chris wanted to know more about this, so I’m going to write a separate, specific post about it).

My characters have their own lives. They do their own thing as I’m writing them. That may sound crazy, but these characters just don’t behave. That Tobias in ‘Lament for the Living‘? Naughty boy!

When I write, I see the scene, and as each word is written I move from just typing words to the point where I’m practically there. I’m describing the smell of the air, the feel of the surroundings, how the light is. The most common piece of feedback I’ve had about ‘Lament for the Living‘ is that it could easily be a movie as the descriptions are cinematic, which would indicate that I’m getting my vision from the page into the readers mind.

Why Do I Write What I Write?

I write what I write because I enjoy it. As I said in the previous question, the characters are alive and I’m getting to know them as I write them (and kill them off).

Primarily I write for me first, and then with the help of some amazing people, that writing is transformed into something that is accessible to the reader at large.

It really is an amazing feeling to have someone come back and say “I enjoyed your story, when’s the next one out?” Just a simple bit of feedback is an amazing motivator. Seriously, regardless of who you’re reading, if you’re enjoying their work, send them an email, a tweet, even one of those paper writey things with a stamp on and let them know that you’ve enjoyed what they’ve written.

How Does My Writing Process Work?

My aim is to produce the most professional end product I can. I’ve always worked in environments where quality has been a key factor and so I put as much effort into my writing and production as I do with my daytime job (yes, have to work a “proper” job as well). I find it quite disheartening to see independent titles on Amazon or Smashwords that are poorly edited and full of typos. There don’t seem to be as many as there used to be, so that’s a bonus.

When I write I aim to put down at least 1,000 words a day, six days out of seven (that’s what I aim to do, it doesn’t always happen). Each chapter target is roughly 3,000 words (an amount I came to as a comfortable amount to read in one sitting).

That’s the mechanics of the writing, here’s the process:

I start out with the idea: what I’m going to write about. This involves a lot of what other people call “staring out of the window” and “creating google searches that will cause alarm bells to start ringing in the national security department”.
Then I get the alpha and omega of the story sorted out. Where am I starting, and where’s it going to end. Who the main characters and their motivations are.
This is the first draft stage now where I know the beginning and the end. There are also a number of pivotal points in the story that the characters need to pass through. I start writing, and the characters fight their way to the end via each waypoint. Sometimes, despite their best efforts the Hammer of Doom still falls on them. I don’t plan out chapter by chapter at the moment, although it would probably be more efficient to write that way, but I feel it would kill the spirit of my writing (I have tried it using yWriter, which is a fantastic tool, but it just doesn’t fit with the way I work right now).
Once the draft is completed I go back through it myself to check for typos, continuity issues, and big logical flaws (when I did this with ‘Lament for the Living‘ I got to a set of square brackets – which is where I usually put notes to myself – that said something like this [insert here how they get from there to here] which is fine… Except that one instruction was actually about six chapters and required the untying of multiple threads, some cuts, a lot of knots and bit of sticky backed plastic to resolve!
When that’s done, it’s what I consider to be in Alpha state. That’s basically a working manuscript, but nowhere near polished. It now goes to my wife who reads it, finds the typos I’ve missed (it’s a scientific fact that you stop seeing certain errors by filling in or correcting the spelling unconsciously) and highlights the sections that don’t make sense, or don’t read properly. After another read through and edit it’s what I consider ready for Beta.
The Beta-stage is where I harness the talents of the many wonderful people that I’ve met over the years on t’internet. Each of them has a unique set of skills. My beta readers go over the manuscript, then let me know if they enjoyed story,  and feed back any typos they find, issues with pacing, and sections that don’t make sense to them. As a UK author I think it’s important to ensure that scenes translate well across both sides of the pond.
At this point I’m looking at the final round of edits, which involves a spreadsheet of page and paragraph numbers that I systematically go through. This is where the machete comes out and the most brutal edits are made. On top of that, I fire up the Multiphasic Interdimensional Scribeomatic 5000 to add anything that needs it. At the same time I’m usually finalising the cover for the book which will have gone through a number of iterations during the course of the drafting process.
Everything is then put together. The US English edit, the UK English edit, formatting for ebook, formatting for print, proofing and then launch date.

I also have notes floating about. Below is a picture of what I currenlty have stuck to the wall next to my desk. Those are a rough waypoint outline for the main groups in the story, some plot points and a list of all the characters from ‘Lament for the Living‘ and whether they made it through the book or not. *Looks at sheet…. hmmm a lot have “dead” written next to them…*

Typical Story Idea/Flow Sheets

Well I hope you’ve enjoyed this incredibly long post about how my head works. Thanks again to Christopher Smith for nominating me. It’s at this point that I’m supposed to nominate other writers to join the tour. Unfortunately, I don’t know a great deal of other writers because I’m kept chained up in a box with nothing for company but a keyboard, and a bowl to catch my tears. However, I did notice that one person tweeted Chris about dodging the bullet.

*!PTANG!* – Ricochet: Michael Woods. You’re it!

Retiring the Facebook Pages

facebook logo

When I post something to the facebook pages for my author page, or the book pages they are seen by hardly anyone, unless they are liked and shared by fellow internetravellers. Of course, if I wanted to ensure that every single person who has ever liked my pages was guaranteed to see my posts then all I have to day is pay facebook, and they make it happen… I’m not comfortable with that. facebook advertising (like adwords) does not have a reliable conversion rate for the likes of me. Perhaps if I was selling fake Armani goods, penis strengthening and lengthening devices, or some mysterious powder that was guaranteed to get you seriously ripped(!) in six weeks GUARANTEED, then it would be an option. But I like to see a return on my investment.

As such I’m retiring the facebook “business” pages. They won’t be closed down or deleted (until such time as facebook remove them for inactivity that is), they just won’t be used from now on. Instead readers are encouraged to follow my personal facebook profile. The majority of my posts are public, and so you can expect to see something new pretty much every day (which is a lot more regularly than you’re getting on the “business” pages).

Twitter remains the same, as does google+ (although I don’t use that as often as I should). For any announcements, they will be made via this website first.

Thank you all for being a wonderfully supportive bunch, and I look forward to seeing you popping up here, there and internettywhere.

Cheers

David

So you got a Kindle for Christmas?

Or another e-reader such as a Nook, Kobo, Sony ereader or perhaps even an Apple iPad or Android tablet.  Whatever you got, Merry Christmas.

And I have a Christmas present for you too, whether you have an ereader or not. For today only (that’ll be Christmas Day 2013), you can download for free all my work.

The Deluge of Elias, a future dystopian short is only available on Kindle, and you can find it here: http://smarturl.it/TheDelugeOfElias

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Hannibal House, a horror tale set in West Wales, follows a young American as he searches for his roots, but finds more than he bargained for. You can get this from Smashwords using coupon code: UE59Q to discount it to *FREE* https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/283929

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And what about Lament for the Living? My first full novel, set three years after the destruction of society, Lament for the Living follows the survivors and their struggles with the past, present, and future. Oh, and it has zombies in. You can get this from Smashwords using coupon code: AZ25E to discount it to *FREE* https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/313539

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All my titles are published by TBFmedia.com and are only available through the associated links. Lament for the Living is available in paperback via Amazon http://smarturl.it/LamentForTheLiving or if you’d like a signed copy then they are available direct from TBFmedia: http://www.tbfmedia.com/lament-for-the-living/signed-copies/

Remember, you can read any of these titles with or without an e-reader by using the Kindle reader App for your PC/MAC, or Adobe’s Digital Editions software.

Merry Christmas everyone

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Lament For The Living Semi-Finalist

The original cover for ‘Lament for the Living’ has made it to the semi-finals of the AuthorsDb.com cover competition.

It would be amazing to see the cover progress to the quarter finals, but that cannot be accomplished without your votes.

There are two ways to vote:

1 – on the website directly: http://authorsdb.com/books/2013-book-cover-semi-finalists/horror

2 – via the AuthorsDb facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Authorsdb/410138019060349?id=410138019060349&sk=app_448952861833126

Good luck to all the entrants, and happy voting.

All the best

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Kobo and WHSmiths Throwing the Baby Out With the Bath Water

In their haste to throw the baby out with the bath water, WHSmiths Online and Kobo have removed ALL indie titles. That includes mine. My work is not erotic, romantic, and neither does it blur the lines of legality that has caused this purge.

Although I fully back the removal of abusive titles, removing all indie titles is a step too far.

As such, I and TBFmedia will be boycotting Kobo and WHSmiths until further notice. Should they reinstate indie books on their platform, mine will be absent.

They will still be available from all GOOD retailers.

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Top 5 Author Marketing Mistakes

So you’ve written your book, polished it to perfection, and now it’s time to pimp it out… but you’ve got no idea how to do it. Marketing, it’s one of those things that sends an icy sliver of fear right into the heart of the most accomplished author. It’s like black magic, alchemy, the occult. A dark art practised by people with fake tans, wearing shiny suits.

Like writing, there is no actual secret to marketing. There are no rules, only what works, and what doesn’t. And here’s the rub: what works for one person, doesn’t necessarily mean it will work for you. But to help you along in your marketing journey, here are five things that a pretty much useless to the majority of indie authors:

#5 Spamming your friends

This should be a no-brainer. But then marketing and common-sense seem to be incompatible. Chances are that on your contact list you have a mix of real-life friends, “friends”, and people who are contacts because they are vaguely associated with you. They already know that you have a book out. They may already have bought it. So what they need is for you to post a dozen times a day about your book. Hell, why stop there? They put a picture of their little bundle of joy, so why not put in the comments that your book would make a brilliant Christening present… Can you see where I’m going with this. Save your spam for your official author channels, keep your friends as friends.

#4 Preaching to the choir

Some of you will say: “But authors are readers too!”. And although that is true it doesn’t make for a good marketing strategy. Like #5 above, spamming other authors/author groups will elicit the same response – a roll of the eyes every time your name pops up. Yes, authors are readers too, but of what genre? I’m and author, and I’m a reader. But I’m fussy. And so are most people. Authors also have limited time to dedicate to reading, so if their genre is, for example, historical fiction, what are the chances that they’ll give your transgender paranormal romance a whirl? While the scatter-shot technique may provide some results, it makes more sense to channel your efforts into a targeted campaign.

#3 Using Social Media as a one way pipe

This is my pet hate. Social. Media. The clue is in the name. It’s not called Amass a Billion Followers Who You Never Interact With Media. That’s what happens though. Accounts with tens of thousands of followers and followees all blast their messages into the interwebs – and neither side sees the other because they’re too busy saying “FOLLOW ME” and “BUY MY BOOK” to interact. Or worse still… they’re not even there. Their accounts all linked to one automated crud cruncher that churns out message after message at set times during the day. What a great way to foster a relationship with readers and potential readers. [that was irony by the way]

#2 Being Free with Freebies

People love something for nothing. But nothing devalues your work as quickly as nothing. See what I did there? And now the explanation: You are not a “best-seller” if you top the free listing chart. The majority of copies you gave away will never be read (sorry, but pretty much every Kindle, Nook and Kobo are jammed to the digital gills with free books that were downloaded for one reason, and one reason only: they were free). I’m not against giving your work away for free. But only if it is done as a way to entice sales. Make your readers (and potential readers) value your work, even when it’s free. Make it quid pro quo. They get a free book by following/tweeting/sharing/liking. OR, if you want to be even more fiendish with the freebies (and increase the perceived value) make it into a draw. Their interaction enters them into the draw for a copy. FREE free copies have had their day as a marketing tool, and will simply gather digital dust. Respect your work, and retain the value of it to your readers.

#1 Copying the Big Boys/Girls

Okay, this is quite a big topic so I’ll condense it as best I can. When I talk about the Big Boys/Girls, I mean the traditional publishing marketing methods. Unless you can match their budgets and manpower, forget it. They may be dinosaurs, but they still have a lot of clout, like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. Definitely don’t get bogged down by meaningless numbers. The only numbers you should be concentrating on is your ACTUAL readership. Not how many followers you have on twitter, not how many likes you have on facebook, not how many klowns you have on klout, or even how many hits your website gets. If they’re not translating into sales then you’re wasting your efforts. Your marketing needs to be cost effective so think very carefully before you put any cash down on advertising. Every clam you shell out on marketing needs to do one of two things: increase your reputation, or increase your sales (hopefully both). Unfortunately, the majority of “marketing solutions” will do neither, and the majority of “marketing solutions” won’t guarantee to do either. So buyer beware. It makes better sense, as an indie author, to invest your money in you and your readership.

What do you consider to be the worst marketing mistakes?

Have you got any marketing nuggets you’d like to share?

Lament for the Living is out now: paperback and ebook

Top 5 Marketing Mistakes

So you’ve written your book, polished it to perfection, and now it’s time to pimp it out… but you’ve got no idea how to do it. Marketing, it’s one of those things that sends an icy sliver of fear right into the heart of the most accomplished author. It’s like black magic, alchemy, the occult. A dark art practised by people with fake tans, wearing shiny suits.

Like writing, there is no actual secret to marketing. There are no rules, only what works, and what doesn’t. And here’s the rub: what works for one person, doesn’t necessarily mean it will work for you. But to help you along in your marketing journey, here are five things that a pretty much useless to the majority of indie authors:

#5 Spamming your friends

This should be a no-brainer. But then marketing and common-sense seem to be incompatible. Chances are that on your contact list you have a mix of real-life friends, “friends”, and people who are contacts because they are vaguely associated with you. They already know that you have a book out. They may already have bought it. So what they need is for you to post a dozen times a day about your book. Hell, why stop there? They put a picture of their little bundle of joy, so why not put in the comments that your book would make a brilliant Christening present… Can you see where I’m going with this. Save your spam for your official author channels, keep your friends as friends.

#4 Preaching to the choir

Some of you will say: “But authors are readers too!”. And although that is true it doesn’t make for a good marketing strategy. Like #5 above, spamming other authors/author groups will elicit the same response – a roll of the eyes every time your name pops up. Yes, authors are readers too, but of what genre? I’m and author, and I’m a reader. But I’m fussy. And so are most people. Authors also have limited time to dedicate to reading, so if their genre is, for example, historical fiction, what are the chances that they’ll give your transgender paranormal romance a whirl? While the scatter-shot technique may provide some results, it makes more sense to channel your efforts into a targeted campaign.

#3 Using Social Media as a one way pipe

This is my pet hate. Social. Media. The clue is in the name. It’s not called Amass a Billion Followers Who You Never Interact With Media. That’s what happens though. Accounts with tens of thousands of followers and followees all blast their messages into the interwebs – and neither side sees the other because they’re too busy saying “FOLLOW ME” and “BUY MY BOOK” to interact. Or worse still… they’re not even there. Their accounts all linked to one automated crud cruncher that churns out message after message at set times during the day. What a great way to foster a relationship with readers and potential readers. [that was irony by the way]

#2 Being Free with Freebies

People love something for nothing. But nothing devalues your work as quickly as nothing. See what I did there? And now the explanation: You are not a “best-seller” if you top the free listing chart. The majority of copies you gave away will never be read (sorry, but pretty much every Kindle, Nook and Kobo are jammed to the digital gills with free books that were downloaded for one reason, and one reason only: they were free). I’m not against giving your work away for free. But only if it is done as a way to entice sales. Make your readers (and potential readers) value your work, even when it’s free. Make it quid pro quo. They get a free book by following/tweeting/sharing/liking. OR, if you want to be even more fiendish with the freebies (and increase the perceived value) make it into a draw. Their interaction enters them into the draw for a copy. FREE free copies have had their day as a marketing tool, and will simply gather digital dust. Respect your work, and retain the value of it to your readers.

#1 Copying the Big Boys/Girls

Okay, this is quite a big topic so I’ll condense it as best I can. When I talk about the Big Boys/Girls, I mean the traditional publishing marketing methods. Unless you can match their budgets and manpower, forget it. They may be dinosaurs, but they still have a lot of clout, like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. Definitely don’t get bogged down by meaningless numbers. The only numbers you should be concentrating on is your ACTUAL readership. Not how many followers you have on twitter, not how many likes you have on facebook, not how many klowns you have on klout, or even how many hits your website gets. If they’re not translating into sales then you’re wasting your efforts. Your marketing needs to be cost effective so think very carefully before you put any cash down on advertising. Every clam you shell out on marketing needs to do one of two things: increase your reputation, or increase your sales (hopefully both). Unfortunately, the majority of “marketing solutions” will do neither, and the majority of “marketing solutions” won’t guarantee to do either. So buyer beware. It makes better sense, as an indie author, to invest your money in you and your readership.

What do you consider to be the worst marketing mistakes?

Have you got any marketing nuggets you’d like to share?

Lament for the Living is out now: paperback and ebook

The post Top 5 Marketing Mistakes appeared first on TBFmedia - David Nicol.

All Authors Blog Blitz – Meet Cooley & Rose and Its Author

Take a dead marriage; an unwanted body part; Rose, a woman who would rather be anywhere on earth than with her husband; and Cooley, a man with a great appetite for anything alive, and you have a harrowing yet hilarious horror story of the living.

Imagine David’s surprise and my own when we learned his blog would feature Cooley & Rose, a quirky yet touching novel about the fickleness of love during Goodreads All Authors Blog Blitz. I wish we could have seen each other’s reactions. “Jay-sus. What the. . .?. “ from me. Or “ Naaaaaargh!” from him.

But for a few days, he is stuck with me, Terry Perrel, a former journalist turned short story and novelist who lives near Virginia coast of the Chesapeake Bay, and Cooley & Rose, the novel that I’m hawking on this page.

What follows is the bit that appears on the back cover of my novel.

“One morning in May 1948, prudish Rose Godwin wakes, suffocating, believing mistakenly that someone is trying to kill her. She quickly realizes it is her husband up to his dirty tricks.

Cooley has not meant to scare her. His wife of nineteen years had looked so beautiful lying in bed, gently snoring, her lovely lips parted, that he couldn’t help himself.



Fed up with her husband, Rose once again leaves her home in South Norfolk, Virginia, and Cooley is glad. Now, he can spend more hours with his girl, LaBelle, an aspiring singer.



This time, however, Rose surprises him and herself as she heads by way of Route 66 to Hollywood, home to movie stars and the killer of The Black Dahlia, and farther. That is when the real trouble begins as Cooley and Rose, both keepers of secrets, reluctantly confront their own shortcomings and foolish expectations of love.

A gem of comic literature, Cooley & Rose is an imaginative work that explores the vagaries of the human heart. Beautifully crafted and peopled by unforgettable characters, it is a story that readers will long remember.”

As of this writing Cooley & Rose is available as a paperback from Amazon.com and as an e-book for all readers, computers and smart phones from your favorite online store. By the end of the summer, it will also be available in brick stores, both big and little.

So far the reviews are great — ten 5-star reviews and three 4-star reviews at Amazon.com; three 5-stars at ITunes; and three 5-stars at Goodreads. If you would like to read some reviews and the first chapter of Cooley & Rose, go to

www.amazon.com. This novel is also available in the UK and Europe.

Find more information about Terry Perrel on her blog: terryperrel.wordpress.com/

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Lament for the Living – Gahiji’s Poetry Book

In ‘Lament for the Living’ there’s a scene where the character Gahiji is trying to make sense of all the violence and killing, not just from the Outbreak, but also from his own past experiences in Rwanda.

It’s a flashback scene where he finds a small book of poetry by Robert Burns, and in it he reads the poem “Man was made to mourn; a Dirge”.

Excerpt from Chapter 13: Second Watch

During their travels they stopped overnight in a house at the end of a dirt track.  The place was a mess, it smelled of death, but the dead were long gone.  It looked like the house was in a time warp, untouched for sixty years.  The only things that gave away that it had been lived in were a DAB radio and flat screen television.  Gahiji had found a small book, no more than three inches by four inches.  A padded cover in orange and green tartan gave no clue as to the content.  He opened it to a random page and read the following:

Man was made to mourn: A Dirge

Many and sharp the num’rous ills

Inwoven with our frame!

More pointed still we make ourselves

Regret, remorse, and shame!

And man, whose heav’n-erected face

The smiles of love adorn, -

Man’s inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn!

There it was, “Man’s inhumanity to man”, in black in white.  Gahiji had seen it many times since in various guises.  The Outbreak had broken the thread that bound humanity together.  People were animals, and animals were treated inhumanely as a matter of course.  He had found the legend in the book about the author, Robert Burns who had been dead for three hundred years.  His words echoing across the centuries, as true now as they were then.  Gahiji still had the small book.  He carried it with him to remind him of the true nature of Man.  Other poems in the book rejoiced in life, and spoke of hope, like Pandora’s box.  Despite everything he had seen, Gahiji also clung onto hope.

Some of you readers out there already know that many of the places in my stories are based on real areas, well that passage was based on a real book that’s been in my family for nearly forty years:

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Poems by Robert Burns – a “Midget” Classic is the book.  And interestingly, although the book made it into my book, the poem that did, didn’t make it into that book.

Anyhoo, thought that was a nice bit of trivia for you all.

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