Balancing act of life and writing

This week has been hell for writing and maintaining my attempts to market my book due to work. Some very long shifts thrown in with a load of other stuff on top of that which stole away my creative part of my brain. Instead it was replaced with a frustrated and completely spinning part of me so I thought it the very best idea not to even attempt to put fingers to keyboard or touch the new story.

Of course if I needed to write a part of the story that was dark, brooding and irritable then maybe I would have been able to write that but that’s not what it is about so I’ve (for once) been grown up and left it alone.

I did however have a nice parcel arrive yesterday which was a number of copies of Footprints in paperback that I intend to sell locally. The fact that my story was inspired by the former brewery that is a well known local feature it only seems fitting that I share my alternative vision with people here. To that end I have got enough copies to put in a local store (or two perhaps) to see if I can sell a few copies that way.

I still have my GoodReads competition running which ends tomorrow so there will be another three copies (at my expense) but it has all been factored into my mediocre strategy to spread the word. As I keep saying to people this is like throwing a snowball up a mountain, by doing so it will always be there and I will have added something but who knows, over time it could roll back and get bigger in the process.

I was vicariously asked if I was running a book launch locally which seemed an alien idea to me. As an unknown fiction author with no fan-base beforehand it appeared to me to be something that more than anything would undermine my new found confidence in what I’m doing. Again though I am the unknown quantity in all of this – I am the inexperienced author, I am the fledgling writer who has made the leap, I am the man next door that tried something different but most importantly I am as I always say, the small ripple in an ocean of talent.

I freely admit I am still learning this craft. Yeah the writing was hard enough, but enjoyable of course, but the hardest part now seems to be breaking into the bigger world. Each time I sell (or give away) a copy of Footprints I feel like I have chipped some masonry away on a massive brick wall that stands between me and the wider world. One day I’ll eventually remove a brick but will that lead to me just having a view of the other side but never getting through? Who knows and really who am I to complain, I’ve started chipping away at that wall so that’s a start.

Kimberley Brewery Nottingham is a changing shell of its former self

Having seen the changes undergoing on my inspiration building which is in the process of its renovation and facelift I am quite looking forward to returning there for a part of Whispering Shadows. As with Footprints it will be split across three internal parts of the story of which one will allow me some time to revisit Dinymour. A prospect that again I am quite looking forward to, especially considering the fact that other people now know what I have made in my head then I have at least some other people with a little bit of expectation of what I want to do with Jack James.

Eminem – Survival Of The Fittest

Funny as I sit here writing this blog post a song has popped up that reminds me of many things, some good, some sad and some entertaining. That said the words ring very relevant so I leave you with a link (parental advisory) to the song, feel free to listen to the words but the title alone sums up so much about this experience:

“This is survival of the fittest, this is do or die…”

Eminem – Survival Of The Fittest