A.L. Michael's Blog, page 8

Larmertree Festival 2016 – a recap

So, I make no apologies for my obsession with Larmertree festival – it was the first festival I ever went to, it’s small and family friendly and chilled as hell. Bigger festivals make me anxious with their vastness and the huge amount of people. At Larmertree, if you feel a bit overwhelmed, you can go sit in a tree or lay in the Social on some pillows, or hang out in the Lostwoods and look at the lights. Quite frankly, I love it.

I also love that I get to run workshops, and explore all the different things I’m excited by about writing. Over the years I’ve run kids writing workshops, writing and craft, writing for wellbeing, fiction writing, and this year, I was exciting to offer three new ones: Writing and Nature, Writing and the Body, and Writing for Publication.

It was really great to be able to offer some activities based on my MSc research into writing and body, and I think everyone found it to be something a little different, and connected differently with it. For some, it was about writing an apology to their body, another was to ask why the hell it was slowing down on them in later life, and others just made a promise to stop feeding them rubbish and move them a little more.

It was such a beautiful, calm environment, and it’s renewed my desire to run writing for wellbeing retreats, something I’m going to start looking into as soon as my degree is over. There’s something so magical about being in nature, writing for fun, looking inwards and sharing with a bunch of people who really ‘get’ what writing can be.

I’ll share a few tips from my Writing for Publication talk next week, and hopefully Sara from Huhbub, who gave a talk on Publishing as an introduction for writers who aren’t sure where to go next, can share some more of the wisdom that she offered in the Larmertree Gardens. I’ve been working with publishers for years, but it’s amazing to hear about how it all works from the other side!

Hope you guys are having a good week! Keep writing!

 

 

Tagged: creativity, larmertree festival, larmertree festival 2016, lessons, novelists, publication tips, workshops, writing, writing and body, writing and nature, writing for publications, writing for wellbeing, writing tops

Is there a new style book launch in town?

The idea of a book launch has always been very straightforward.

1- You find your favourite book shop.

2 – You ply people with cheap wine in the hopes that they’ll buy your books.

3 – You sign books and feel like a superstar.

4 – You read from your book and feel like you wanna vomit.

5 – You console yourself that you sold books and people love you, even though you have a sneaking suspicion a lot of them were there for the free wine.

Traditional book launches have the advantage of being very simple to organise, lots of fun, and they make the author feel important and supported. It’s almost a rite of passage as an author. That is what a launch looks like to most people.

But I wonder how many books get sold at these events, really? I know when I’ve had to stand in front of people I love and people I don’t know, reading from my novel and trying to convince them that I deserve to have such a fuss made, I don’t feel like I’m doing my work justice. Also, did I mention about the wanting to vomit?

So the answer? A modern twist on the book launch. After all, many of us are ebook authors, what is achieved by sitting in a bookshop when there aren’t physical copies? A lot of authors run online launches, which can be fun and I’ve seen them done really well, with prizes and giveaways, and they certainly make you pay attention. But getting twenty notifications every hour from other people who have ‘popped by’ the launch can be a bit frustrating, and  might drive away your readership.

Enter Sara Veal, from Huhbub Ltd, a creative company that believe books can be ‘the jumping off point’ for creative campaigns that promote your book, but also benefit the community.

Thing is, I love an event, and I was excited to see what Sara could do with my book, Goodbye Ruby Tuesday, a novel focused around the healing power of arts, noughties era nostalgia and some girl power. I wanted an event that placed my story in the centre, without making me the centre of attention: And that was exactly what I got.

In the basement of one of my favourite spots in London, Drink Shop Do (a place actually used as a setting in one of my other novels!) Huhbub managed to create a night of comedy, music and burlesque, with cocktails, nostalgic noughties music and the chance to raise money for Core Arts, a charity that focuses on using creativity for mental health.

An event that does good for the community, promotes my story, allows me to have fun without having to talk about my work, and gets people talking about the themes in the novel.

In my opinion, getting called out by a fabulous drag queen MC, dancing to Craig David and drinking sparkly Ruby-themed cocktails whilst people look at the postcards featuring a free copy of my book beats the tepid wine of yesteryear any day.

Ebook authors need to find a new way to celebrate and promote their new releases, a modern way to engage with readers and writers without making it about ego or the money. Here is your answer: build a huhbub around your book.

I think it was a roaring success and if I could do it for every book I write, I would!

Big thanks to Sara at Huhbub for such a wonderful event, and thanks to all those who came on the night! Share your photos and favourite moments!

 

 

Tagged: author advice, book launch, book launch london, community, creative, events, how to book launch, launch, london, marketing, new ways to launch book, novels, promotion, writing, writing business

5 Things You Didn’t Know About Ruby Tuesday

If you liked meeting Ruby in Goodbye Ruby Tuesday, seeing her teenage antics and drama, then you’ll have even more of her wit and wisdom in the second book in the House on Camden Square series, Nice Day for a White Wedding.

But here’s five things you might not know about her:

Ruby’s real name is Ruby Jane Montgomery, she was given her full name before her mother gave her up. She’s never looked for her, but a few people claiming to be her mother got in touch when she got famous. She never met any of them.
Ruby sent little gifts to Mollie for her child ever since she left, up until she died. She never met her, and never gave an address for Mollie to write back.
Ruby was still sick before every gig, throughout her career. No matter how many times she performed, no matter how small the show. The nerves always got to her.
She’s only been in love once.
And she looks like this:

 

Thanks to Anna Martindale for her awesome work putting Ruby into reality!

 

Joining the Coven: What I love about the writing community.

What do you call a group of writers? A scribble of writers? A composition? Whatever you call it, I love it. I love belonging to a world that has so much support.

Because writers know what it’s like, they know that blank page is a wall when the words won’t come, they know that pattering anxiety in your chest when the book is due in the next day and its two am and it’s still SO SHIT. They know the 40k stalemate and the ending book blues. They know the pain of the pointless Amazon reviews (1* – ‘Didn’t read it’ – well gee, thanks for helping a sister out). They know the endless shuffle up and down on the Snakes and Ladders that is ranking. And they know the most important thing:

You can still love them, respect them, believe they deserve every wonderful that happens to them…and you can be just the *teensiest* bit jealous.

And that’s okay. Because the writer community accepts that we are fallible. That we are both ‘those crazy writers’ and those ‘business minded individuals who get shit done’. And how glad I am that we get to be both, because I’ve been both my whole life. Before I wrote books, before they were published, before I was up at stupid o’clock in the morning wondering why I do this to myself and surely what I’ve written is shit…before all that, I was a writer.

The writing community gets a bad rap: either we’re airy fairy nutcases, or we’re narcissists, or we’re part of a clique that we weren’t cool enough to be part of in high school. The truth is, when you’re part of a group, it’s powerful, and it’s emotional. Whenever I meet other authors, and they tell me their stories about publication, or deadlines, or how their cover wasn’t what they wanted, or how they went to a book signing in Germany, I realise that I’m part of this undercover world, populated by writers who are also massive fans and readers. You can accidentally meet your idol, and no-one will know, because you’re a writer too.

You’re part of the coven, making magic.

Guest Post: Chatting to Kaisha from The Writing Garnet

I’m a little excited today to turn the tables and be the host instead of the writer! Kaisha at The Writing Garnet has not only done a tremendous amount of reading and blogging in the short time since she set the blog up, but she’s been an amazingly supportive friend when I released Goodbye Ruby Tuesday, and has really gone above and beyond in helping me promote my book baby! So I wanted to know about her!

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Guest post – Life before The Writing Garnet.



First of all, I would like to thank Andi for inviting me to write a post for her blog! Very honoured to be asked, usually it’s me that does the asking! For those that haven’t heard of me, I’ll introduce myself a little. My name is Kaisha and I run The Writing Garnet blog where I review many books from so many talented authors as well as being involved in cover reveals and interviewing authors and being part of blog tours. The Writing Garnet is still a baby blog as I only started it in March this year. Three months later and I have interviews with Jenny Colgan, Carol Wyer, Cathy Bramley and many, many more, under my belt. It’s incredible surreal. ‘But how did you start your blog? Why did you start it?’ are probably two questions you might be thinking of right now.

So sit back and relax as I tell you a story: Life before The Writing Garnet.

Ever since I was a little girl (five years old to be precise), I have always had my nose stuck in a book. As I grew up from books such as ‘The Hungry Caterpillar’, I enjoyed books like ‘The Babysitters Club’ by Ann. M. Martin, ‘The Magic Faraway Tree’ by Enid Blyton, ‘Milly, Molly, Mandy’ by Joyce Lankester Brisley and many more. I just love books and luckily that stayed with me as I went into my late teens. Although, when you get to sixteen years old you kind of need to go to work (meh, I started working at seventeen!) and reading has to take a back seat. Lucky for me though, it wasn’t on the back seat for long.

Reading and books became a big part of my life in 2011, because I became poorly and relied heavily on books as my escape. Unfortunately, I have become more unwell over the last five years and the only escape from all the wildness of six illnesses, is books. For a long time I had been mulling over how I would be able to get into the book world, aside from reading. So this year, after learning that the chances of me being able to work outside my home are slim to nil, I had to find out whether I could work from home and look after my daughter whilst being comfortable.

Off to Google I popped and decided to do a little bit of research to see whether my idea was feasible and not just a pipe dream.
The results were good that I had found, however I couldn’t shift my lack of confidence. What if I couldn’t turn my dream into a job? What if people wouldn’t want to read what I write? What if, what if, what if.

Then one day in March I thought ‘stuff it’. I had just finished reading Fiona Gibson’s ‘The Woman who upped and left’ and I tweeted her to say that her book would be the first review on my new blog. Well, I hate letting people down and going against what I say, so I just had to follow through with it. That was the day that The Writing Garnet was born. You might be wondering why I called my blog The Writing Garnet? My reasons behind the name are that garnet is my birthstone and my blog is about writing, well, I write on my blog. Same thing I’m sure!

The last three months have been incredible surreal and I still cannot take it all in. I have been part of many wonderful book tours, supporting authors in the promotion of their books AND getting to know other very talented bloggers. There is one big thing I still cannot get my head round, the fact that I have the opportunity to rub shoulders with many incredible authors on a daily basis. Some of which I have read their books for ages and suddenly they’re e-mailing me, pinch me now! I never expected the blog to take off like this, at all. I also never expected to be nominated for ‘Best Newcomer’ in the Blogger Bash Awards. I am incredibly grateful to everyone that supports me and my blog, you have been incredible. I just hope that I can turn this into a paying job, my life pretty much depends on it. It would be a dream come true to write about books or be involved in books as my job. 
It makes me feel incredible when my reviews get quoted on promotional pictures, or when I get tweets/messages from the authors of the books saying how moved they are by my reviews. It means so much to me and I am incredibly honoured to be surrounded by such wonderful people. I’m looking forward to seeing where The Writing Garnet goes.

Where were you in 2006?

I’m big on nostalgia. Anyone who’s read any of my novels can tell you that.

I thirst for memories of bopping to crappy teen music, wallowing in heartbreak (or what seemed like heartbreak) and wearing those trousers with skirts over the top like Steps used to (Boot-scootin-baby indeed).

So it’s no surprise that Goodbye Ruby Tuesday features a lot of flashbacks, when the girls were 16, 17 and 18. Now, it’s my book, so I made them my age. Their memories of tightly pulled back hair and huge gold hoop earrings from Argos are my memories (though not my style, I pulled worse faux pas than that). I’m a nostalgia junkie, and it’s probably why I love YA books so much – a passage back to the awkward teenage years, that, in truth, were probably not as good as now (especially now Craig David has returned, I mean, what more can a girl ask for?) but are somehow painful and beautiful, and a bit magic.

Well, we’re planning an event to celebrate the launch of Goodbye Ruby Tuesday in July, in London. More details will be coming soon, but it will be celebrating a lot of things that are mentioned in the book (arts for mental health, charity work, burlesque, cocktails and kick ass females) and will be featuring some excellent noughties music.

We’ll be sharing details about the event soon, but there’s a way for readers, bloggers and writers to get involved without stepping out from behind a computer screen.

We’re asking you: Where were you in 2006? I’m looking for a few sentences, a paragraph, a memory, about something you did, something you felt, something you were in 2006. We’ll be tweeting the shorter ones in the run up to the event, but more than that, we’ll be displaying them in real life, so that guests can walk through a room of a hundred people’s memories, and wonder about who they are, make them nostalgic. And then everyone can have a boogie.

So, if you’d like to share where/what/how you were in 2006, please email your sentence or memory to: goodbyerubytuesdaynovel@gmail.com

I’ll keep you updated with the event details as they become available, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a party that Ruby herself would be proud of!

 

 

Call for bloggers!

Hey guys,

So excited to announce that my second book in the House on Camden Square series, Nice Day for a White Wedding is going to be out at the end of August.

I really love Chelsea’s story, and those of you who read Goodbye Ruby Tuesday know that she’s fiesty, fun and deserves her happy ending! Plus the book is set in Lake Garda, one of my absolutely favourite places.

I’m looking for some bloggers who’d love to read the book ahead of time, and would like to help promote it. I’m going to be running a fairly long blog tour and I’m eager to get it booked in ASAP!

Please let me know if you’d like to be involved in the blog tour for Nice Day for a White Wedding, either to review or host an interview, or whatever you’d like!

For those of you who have responded on Twitter already, thank you!

If you’re interested in being part of the blog tour, tweet me, DM me, or leave a message on my facebook page!

 

Thanks!

A L Michael

 

 

Ruby Tuesday and the Cult of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl

Don’t get me wrong, I loved a manic pixie dream girl as much as the rest of them. Give me Zooey Deschanel in 500 Days of Summer, being beautiful but complex. Or Zooey Deschanel, in Yes Man! riding a scooter and teaching jogging photography. Pretty much Zooey Deschanel in anything. A manic pixie dream girl is the one who astounds the guy, is more than they expect, acting in crazy and unusual ways, because they’re just so damn cool.

Except, well, they’re not real women, are they? Often, what this is, is the misrepresentation of some poor sod, putting all his hopes and dreams into one quirky girl who is probably just as confused about her own life and everything else. Oh, you like The Smiths? Well, we must be soul mates.

So, when writing Ruby, I had to make sure she had the allure of an MPDG without doing the disservice of making her one. Yes, she makes magical stuff happen, and her friends can’t often tell what she’s going to do next, but that’s because her intentions are good and her methods are madness. She wants fun and destruction and excitement (because, hey, she’s seventeen and living in a tiny, crappy town) and she wants stardom because she’s an unloved foster-child who has already realised she’s pretty enough to make men do things for her.

The difference with an MPDG and a regular, but flawed and interesting male character, is that MPDG don’t seem to have any purpose, beyond being a love interest. They’re there to be adored, to inspire a man to be his best self, and then *poof*, they’re gone, off to live a life of adventure and excitement (read: loneliness because they’re only ever the muse, and when men take them off the pedestal, they’re just human, shock horror). They’re never allowed their own storyline.

So Ruby Tuesday, whilst we only get snaps of her in this series, is the driving force behind the whole thing, even in death, she’s brought her friends together and effected change. And whilst the rest of the world knows her as a bit of a pixie, her true friends remember the times she made them laugh, made them mad and made them cry.

Goodbye Ruby Tuesday is available to buy now.

Nice Day for a White Wedding will out in July

and Be My Baby is available for pre-order now.

10 Things I Never Thought I’d Have to Worry About as A Writer

Writers write, right? That’s the point. Anyone can join the group, anyone can pick up a pen one day and become an author, a poet, a blogger, a diarist.

I’ve always been one – I think better on the page. In real life, I’m awkward, always faffing about looking for the right phrase and getting tongue-tied, talking too much or saying the wrong thing.

The truth? The right words tend to fall from my fingertips instead of my lips.

So I wrote a book, and then I wrote another, and another. And thus, an author was born. Sounds simple, right? Wrong. Because there’s a whole world of bullshit that comes with making a book work, and I had no idea any of this would even matter.

 Writing the book is just the beginning. Even when you’ve drafted and redrafted, left it in the drawer, edited again until you’re sick of the thing – the end result is not actually the book, it’s the support of the book.
To me, my books are a little like my tattoos – my feelings about them might change, but as long as I was honest in what I felt when I wrote my books, they take me back to that time again. Don’t create something you aren’t willing to let define you, at least in part.
Books need lead time – let them breathe, get them out to bloggers, talk about them, find ways to let them be read -BEFORE publication! They need to be out there before publication day, people need to read them and support them – there’s a reason it’s a LAUNCH. It needs a push!
Reviews are freaking gold dust. They’re your magic ticket, and it’s easy to say you don’t care, or you’re writing for you, or people don’t get you, but reviews are necessary for your little baby to fly free.
Some reviews will be ridiculous. You’ll get a one star where the person hasn’t even read it yet, or a one star where the person loves it. You’ll also get five stars that make your soul feel shiny, and reviews that highlight problems you will suddenly notice, and make you go ‘d’oh!’ There’ll be reviews that make your head spin and your blood boil and make you want to scream. And there’ll be the real ones, the human ones, the ones that say your work made them laugh, or made their shitty day a little easier, and you’ll feel like you have a purpose.
Don’t betray your work just because you’re grateful to have a chance – if your blurb isn’t honest, if your character is misrepresented, if the cover doesn’t fit, well, you worked hard on this thing, right? Sometimes, you have to compromise, but you want to give your book it’s best chance, why else would you have written it and bothered going for publication.
Amazon rating algorithms, Good Reads responses, Google Alerts, Blog reads, likes, tweets, retweets…numbers become obsessive, and you’ll scheme and you’ll plot and you’ll blog and you’ll tweet, in a desperate effort not to become just another voice shouting into cyberspace about how great you are.
Not everyone wants your book to succeed. Not everyone thinks you’re capable. And that’s okay. They don’t need to.
You’re going to not be able to shut up about your book. I don’t talk about the plot or the process, but boy do I chat about the launches and the reviews, and the tweets and the covers and all sorts of annoying crap. Try to curb it, it’s like when people talk about all the inane shit their kids are doing – no-one else is as bothered.
Once you start, you want to be on an upward trajectory, and sometimes that won’t be the case. Some books will sink, some will be ignored, unloved and unseen. Sometimes they’re the favourite things you’ve written, the thing you spent the longest time working on. A writing career isn’t just about the royalties, it’s a balancing act between being read, being reviewed, continuing to write, building a fanbase, building a writing community, getting the promo, getting the build up and actually enjoying it. And if you’re very lucky, you’ll be worrying about all this crap for as long as you want to!

 

If you haven’t seen, Goodbye Ruby Tuesday was out this month, and book two in the series, Nice Day for a White Wedding, will be out in about a month! Stay tuned!

So, what things did you never even consider about being a writer?

 

Balance and Control in Publication

It’s the first thing anyone an author will say when you ask why they’re self publishing:

I’m in control of my book, every element of it.

Now, that can sound controlling, paranoid or just like a hell of a lot of work. When you think about the things outside of writing a book, that are just as important, like the editing, the promotion, the cover, the blurb, the reviews, the pricing and the long term plan for a book, it can seem daunting.

I’ve never thought I’d be able to do my books justice. I struggle as it is to write and work and study.

But there is something terrifying about leaving your book at the mercy of others, letting the cover, the angle, the promotion and the pricing be decided by someone else, whether they’re a specialist or it’s the market that determines how it’s seen.

The truth is, your book is never going to be more important to anyone than you. For you, it’s a piece of yourself, a piece of your truth, whether it’s a silly story or a saga you spent years perfecting – it’s yours. And the idea that it might been seen in a way you don’t want it to be, can be painful.

However, at some point, you have to give up the control any way. The minute those words are released into the world, the minute someone picks it up and starts the first sentence, you have no control. The control you had as a writer is done the minute the final draft is finished. The control you have as a publicist is to ensure your book is defined correctly, that the cover isn’t misleading and that you keep the conversation going.

This summer, I’m running workshops at Larmertree Festival in Wiltshire. This will be my sixth year with them, and along with my writing for wellbeing, I’m going to be running a ‘Writing for Publication’ class. This will be focussing on defining your work, branding and owning that branding. Deciding who you’re writing for and what you want to say. But as a dear friend and excellent writer said recently, “I want to work with writers who love what they’re writing.” So publication can’t always be the main goal. It’s got to be a labour of love, to an extent.

That’s how I feel about my latest book, Goodbye Ruby Tuesday. It will be released on Friday, and then I’ll have to let it go, out into the ether to make its own destiny, create it’s own history. Perhaps, it will achieve greatness, or perhaps it will sink into the depths of thousands of other books being released this week, month or year – ignored and destined to sit sweetly on an Amazon page. And after it’s out there, all I can do is talk about it, tweet about it, and wish my baby well. There’s a grief and anxiety in that, like not fully preparing your child before they go off to uni.

But most of all, I’m excited to introduce you to Ruby. This is my favourite story, and I’m so glad I get to write two more books in the series, and hang around my fictional friends a while longer!

Keep an eye out on twitter over the next few weeks using the hashtags #goodbyerubytuesday and #houseoncamdensquare and stay tuned for news of a London launch next month!

And to all the writers out there: how much control do you want over your book?

 

 

 

Tagged: authors, carina uk, control, goodbye ruby tuesday, harlequin, harper collins, london, publication, publishers, self-publishing, The House on Camden Square, writers, writing