Martin Blake's Blog

A grand day out

Had a great day in Cambridge yesterday doing location research for the current novel. Visited the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the Fitzwilliam amongst others, followed by lunch with an old friend. Not a bad life being a writer. Shame about all the trees on the line though …

Return of the Prodigal Son

After some time away, I’ve decided to make using social media more economical by linking my twitter account with my wordpress and goodreads blogs. This is a test message to see if I’ve set it up right. Here goes.

A distinctly mixed week

Had a bit of a setback at the w/e when my old poetry tutor said she didn’t feel it would be appropriate to give an endorsement to my poetry collection. Even though I half-expected this, I still felt a bit deflated. In addition, neither Simply Spalding nor the Lincs Free Press have actually used my press release, which means basically that hardly anyone outside my circle of immediate friends and family even knows the book exists. Don’t know quite what else I’m supposed to do … I’ve decided the only way to proceed is to crack on with editing the next novel, ‘The Ghosts of Afallach’, an Arthurian fantasy, kind of. It’s finished, but the plot doesn’t really work so I’m having to do some quite extensive re-writing. I suspect it’ll take a few months.

Things are looking up …

Seem to be on a bit of a roll this week. I’ve decided to use my publish-a-book-for-£1 freebie for a collection of poems and short stories, gathering together the best things I’ve written so far (or so I think). I suppose there’s a bit of a closure thing going on; clear the decks before moving onward, and hopefully upward. I’ve also started reworking my sub-Arthurian epic as the next novel to be published, so for the first time in ages I’m actually feeling quite positive about this whole writing thing. Sadly, the local paper still hasn’t used my press release for ‘The English Pilgrim’; I’ll go in and berate them later. Had an e-mail from Simply Spalding, the local free glossy monthly, however, saying they’re interested in using it. Fingers crossed.

This week …

On Monday I took 6 of my free books into Bookmark, our local bookshop in Spalding, who’d agreed to try to sell them for me. As of a couple of days ago, I was told there were 3 left. Numerous problems with the publishers AuthorHouse, who have just got so many things wrong and, since they’ve had my money off me, are suddenly far less attentive about responding to my enquiries. In fact they’ve taken to ignoring me.

Anyway, I’ve 2 new projects to focus on; I’m using my second £1 publication with AuthorHouse to publish a collection of my poems to date. I won’t try to market them (no-one buys poetry anyway, unless it’s by Simon Armitage, Carol-Ann Duffy or Seamus Heaney), just use them as a promotional tool. More importantly, I think I’m well on the way to working out an ending for my next novel, ‘Out of Time’, which has been a long time gestating. Come to think of it, I stopped writing it originally because I ran out of steam/ideas. Thankfully I feel more invigorated now. Hope it lasts until I get it finished.

Friday 9 August 2013

I’ve just sent off 4 press releases to local media outlets. Everyone warns you that when you publish a book it takes so much time to market and promote it (assuming you’re not already world-famous) that there’s none left to do any further writing. That’s certainly turning out to be the case. I’ve got some free copies of my book to take into the local bookshop, Bookmark in Spalding, to see if they can sell some. Half of me feels nervous that someone might actually want to talk to me about the book, though I’m sure being ignored is worse.

New link

I’ve supposedly added a proper link to my novel ‘The English Pilgrim’ rather than the crappy one I included in my first post. Not sure where it’s supposed to appear …

The journey of a thousand miles …

I’ve decided to create a blog to record events following the publication of my first novel, ‘The English Pilgrim’, a historical novel set mostly in southern France in the fourteenth century (http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000663133/The-English-Pilgrim.aspx). I’m quite pleased with how it’s turned out, but my opinion counts for not very much. Along the way, I’m sure I’ll want to use the blog to get other things off my chest as well. Maybe it’ll be therapeutic, cathartic even. Not sure I’ll have something to post every day, but we’ll see how things develop.