A vaguely seasonal post

Yes, you're right, I haven't been very active on here this year.  Look, it's not easy being a jet-setting multimillionairess best-selling author.  Or so I imagine.  It's certainly complicated enough being a disorganised (im)mature student and semi-professional hermit.

And no, I'm not going to make up for my absence with an extended post full of seasonal jollity.  You know where you keep the mince pies and alcohol, you can fend for yourselves, seasonal jollity-wise.

What I can do is offer you a Festive Freebie, with Looking for Buttons available to download for nowt but the price of your internet connection from Christmas Day until 29th December.

Ho ho ho.

Never mind the quality, feel the gigabytes

Here in England it's a Bank Holiday weekend, which for those of you outside the UK means a national holiday in which people tackle home improvement projects quite beyond their capabilities or queue in endless streams of traffic to go to beaches packed with people huddled miserably over sandwiches now containing real sand as the wind lashes them with the driving rain.  It's a cultural thing.

So as usual I'm having a Bank Holiday Bonanza and giving away free copies of Looking for Buttons on Amazon.

Which is fine, except I'm not really sure anyone actually reads them.

When books are so cheap, even free, you can pretty much download as many as you like, memory permitting.  Never mind the quality, feel the gigabytes.  But when it's so easy to pile up the words, it loses meaning.  You get the buzz of a download without the deep financial commitment of, say, an enormous hardback to compel you to actually read the books you've amassed so avidly.

I might shift a few hundred books during this promo if I'm lucky but those stats are meaningless if no-one gets any enjoyment out of it beyond those fleeting seconds of the download rush.

So if you're reading this I hope you're here because you've read the book and you've enjoyed it.

Please tell me if you have.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to find my adjustable spanner...

Happy birthday Kate Harper!

This week marks the first anniversary of the e-publication of Looking for Buttons, so it's obligatory for me to mark that by sharing some of the things I've learned from the experience:

1.  People like free stuff.

I've shifted hundreds of copies of the book.  I've sold far fewer.  Despite this, I did get my first UK royalty cheque earlier this year.  Should have had buns a la Nesbit for tea, bought fish and chips instead and the rest went on the rent.

2.  Being a writer is not 24/7 glamour.

See rent comment above.  And I still haven't had an opportunity to wear my frivolous shoes.

3.  People are fab.

People I have seldom or never met have helped me with technicalities and promotion.  Friends have read the book, bought the book, plugged the book, listened patiently to me fretting about the book and generally been very positive about the whole thing.  Complete strangers have sent me nice messages via Twitter, Facebook and the Kindle Users' Forum and posted reviews on Amazon.  As a shy and retiring hermit, I find this all slightly overwhelming.  Thank you, all of you.

I won't witter on.  You're busy people and I'm supposed to be writing an essay (being a mature (immature) student is a great way to put off writing the Difficult Second and Third Novels).  But it's been an interesting and sometimes fun year, so if you're reading this, thank you for coming to the party.

Do help yourself to tea and buns.

Looking for Buttons is free for Christmas - oh yes it is!

The curtain rises to show a simple domestic scene of pre-Christmas pandemonium.  Downstage a young(ish) woman (LUCIE) sits amid a sea of wrapping paper.  She has bits of sticky tape in her hair and is sobbing brokenly into a piece of tinsel.

LUCIE:  Less than a week until Christmas Day!  How will I ever get it all finished in time?  I must wrap all these presents and get them to Father Christmas without delay, yet there is also the laundry and the cleaning and to do that I must find the floor under all this paper.  The tree is drooping and the Christmas cake is not made.  All I want to do is read a book!  (She sobs.)

Enormous flash, stage left.  Enter FAIRY GODMOTHER, with Kindle.

FG:  Oh, do stop snivelling, woman!  Buck up and pull yourself together.  You'll get it all done, because you always do, and if you don't, well, quite frankly, does it matter?  You don't even like Christmas cake and there's a packet of Cadbury's chocolate fingers in the cupboard.

LUCIE:  I've already eaten most of them.

FG:  There were two packets, so nil desperandum.  Unless you've already eaten both, in which case you are a glutton and I have no sympathy.  Now put down that sticky tape -

LUCIE:  I can't, it's stuck to me.

FG:  I shall ignore that remark.  Shut up and listen.  While you shall not go to the ball -

LUCIE:  Why not?

FG:  You're a hermit.  You hate parties.

LUCIE:  Oh yes.

FG:  Where was I?  Oh yes.  While you shall not go to the ball, you shall have a good book to read over the Christmas period, for - tra la la and abracadabra - Looking for Buttons will be free to download from Amazon for five days, starting on Christmas Day!

LUCIE:  Oh.

FG:  You're supposed to leap about for joy at this point.

LUCIE:  But I've read it several times.  I wrote it.  And I don't have a Kindle.

FG:  Flaming heck, you can't please some people.  All right, here's a second hand boxed set of Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense.  You can have an hour off from the chores to watch the one with David McCallum and then you'll have to get back to work.

FAIRY GODMOTHER waves wand and turns LUCIE into a teapot before turning to beam at the audience.

FG:  Meanwhile, those of you who love romance, happy endings and aren't whinging hermits can download Looking for Buttons free from Amazon, 25th-29th December.  Merry Christmas!

Why I'm choosing to self-censor

When I started writing Looking for Buttons seven years ago (I know, I know), it was just a throwaway line, one that would mean little to anyone not growing up in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s.

When I published the Kindle e-book on Amazon in June, it was still just a throwaway line that would mean little to anyone not growing up in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s.

Then the Jimmy Savile scandal broke and suddenly a fleeting reference to Jim'll Fix It no longer seemed right for a lighthearted book meant to entertain.

I've edited the text and uploaded the amended version to Amazon this evening (would have done it sooner but life was a bit medical for a while).  I think Amazon will let those who have a copy download the updated version; not having a Kindle myself I'm not a hundred per cent sure on this.  Either way, I'll be having another free download day before long, which I'll flag up here, and anyone who wants the new version can get it then.

Making a guest appearance

Yes, I know I haven't updated for weeks.  While my writing persona spends her days wearing impractical shoes and reclining on a chaise longue, dictating the latest page-turner to a dapper and handsome secretary clad in an immaculate tweed suit, the rest of me has to deal with day-to-day crises.  Suffice it to say that several hit at once, resulting in no time or inclination to use a computer.

Anyway, this is just a quick update before I return to the World of Worry.  The lovely Jane Wenham-Jones was kind enough to invite me to contribute to the Guest Room of her Wannabe A Writer? website.  You can read my bit here.

Just because you think they're out to get you...

As Lexi Revellian wrote recently, Writer's Angst is a well-documented complaint.  I've moved up a gear.  I have Writer's Paranoia.

It's been coming on for a while.  I had a week where Looking for Buttons sold pretty well.  Then I had a week with no sales at all.  I panicked and held a three-day free promotion over the Bank Holiday weekend, which saw it climb to number 7 in Amazon's UK humour chart and number 29 (I think) in their US humor chart.  I waited, with the obligatory clichéd bated breath, to see how this would affect sales.

It didn't.  Nothing happened for a few days, then today, glory be, I had a five star review on Amazon UK (thank you, whoever you are!) and sold a respectable handful of copies.  When I checked a little later (compulsive checking of ranking and sales figures is an early symptom of Writer's Paranoia), two of these had been returned for a refund.

Well, that was it.  Crushed does not even begin to describe it.  While the calm-eyed scientist part of me was pointing out that it may not be that they actively disliked it, it may even have been an inadvertent multiple purchase caused by wobbly fingers, and anyway, does it really matter, the rest of me, the stressed majority that is already gibbering because I start a new job next week, is obsessing over those two returns.  Did they buy the book expecting haberdashery tips?  Fifty Shades-esque squelchiness?  Did they hate the prose?  The characters?  The plot?

I've taken some deep breaths and listened to my inner dispassionate scientist.  Sometimes you buy something and it's not what you expect so you return it.  I'm sure M&S don't weep because I've returned a jacket that makes me look like I'm wearing a cardboard box underneath it.  Why should I react any differently when someone returns my book?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to check my sale figures again...

You know how to whistle, don't you?

If you'd asked me about feedback ten years ago, I'd have launched into an explanation of how amplified sound leaving a loudspeaker is picked up by the microphone, causing a cycle of further amplification until you get the whistling screech familiar at rock concerts or near a hearing aid wearer.  Possibly I'd have drawn a diagram.  If you'd asked me on a day when things were going particularly badly, I'd probably have gibbered into my copy of Fundamentals of Acoustics and lapsed into miserable silence while scrolling through the vintage jewellery listings on eBay.

But those days are behind me now and today I'm more concerned with feedback from readers.  Yesterday a friend told me I had my first US review on Amazon.  I was a little nervous.  I don't know anyone in the States so this was my first review by a complete stranger.  Eventually I plucked up the courage to read it and it was far kinder than I'd dared hope.  This was A Relief.

Writing is a solitary pursuit.  It's easy to lose all perspective over whether what you write is any good or not, and it gets worse once you've had a few knockbacks from literary agents (although I still cherish the rejection letter than described Looking for Buttons as "well-written and perceptive").  Until now, only friends had judged the book and, delusional though I am, I could not regard their opinions as totally unbiased.  But now Looking for Buttons is out there, fending for itself, being read and, I hope, enjoyed by people I will never meet.  I hope that some of them will tell me what they think.

Until then, I'll just have to whistle to myself.

Freebie Friday - the aftermath

I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I put Looking for Buttons on a free promotion yesterday.  I hoped to get some more readers and to get some feedback - and, with luck, some positive reviews.  (My sole, cherished, five-star Amazon review is very kind - but the reviewer is an old friend and I'm not sure how much her kindness can be put down to liking the book and how much to the fear that I  might turn up at her house and wail plaintively through the letterbox if she said she hated it.)  I suppose what I wanted was to find out if there was a market for the book at all.

I checked the book's progress mid-afternoon and it had shifted a couple of hundred copies.  I was pleased with that.

I checked again just before I went to bed.  Looking for Buttons was at number ten on Amazon's free Kindle book Humour chart.  As I stared, it moved up to number nine.  It was at number 147 on the general chart.

Through sheer ill luck I wasn't able to log on to check the book's performance before the promotion ended this morning, so I don't know where it finished in the Humour chart, but the stats I could access showed it ended the promotion at number 111 overall.  In one day, nearly a thousand people worldwide had downloaded Looking for Buttons.  I'm still boggling about that.  Hopefully, some of them will actually like it and recommend it to other people.

I'm told word of mouth is the secret to marketing an indie book successfully.  I really hope that's true.  If I start to see an improvement in sales, I'll consider holding another free promotion.  Watch this space.

Friday Freebie!

Only time for a quick post today, but it's a good 'un.

From 9 a.m. (if I've got the conversion right - midnight if you're on Pacific Time in the USA) on Friday 3rd August, for one day only, Looking for Buttons is free.

DOWNLOAD IT FREE ON 3rd AUGUST

The pros and cons of sticking with what you know

I have a confession to make: I haven't actually written anything new since last year.  I'd lost confidence and had pretty much decided to call it a day.  However, the same compulsion that has been known to find me scribbling by torchlight at three in the morning led me to have one last try.  I'd put Looking for Buttons on Amazon as a Kindle e-book and if no-one bought it, that would be the end of my writing career.  To my delighted surprise, people are buying it.  (Thank you!)

And suddenly I've started writing again.  There's this blog and random appearances on Twitter as looking4buttons, and then, very late last night, I dug out part of the Difficult Second Novel.  I read it with a little difficulty, as the only reason the laptop was still on was that I'd been lying in the dark to catch up with the fabulously titled Before the Screaming Begins on BBC iPlayer and hadn't got my glasses on.  Even so, as I squinted at the screen, I realised it wasn't as bad as I'd thought.  It was written so long ago I was coming to it fresh and I found I wanted to know what happens next (it would help considerably if I've got to write it).  Better still, the narrator's voice was completely distinct from Looking for Buttons's Kate Harper.  The book seems to be a runner after all.

Which puts me in a dilemma.  Should I dust off the first ten chapters of the Difficult Second Novel and try to produce the rest of the book, or should I keep it on the back burner and carry on with the Difficult Third Novel, currently standing at a chapter and a half?  The DTN is probably going to end up falling broadly into the romance genre, meaning I could pitch it to the Looking for Buttons audience, hopefully resulting in a book that sells.  The DSN, however, is a thriller set in the 1970s, requiring a different pseudonym and a lot of research (watching re-runs of The Professionals is research, really it is, not an obsession at all, no).

I need to make a decision and soon.  Inside my head I can hear Gladys Knight and the Pips singing Come Back And Finish What You Started.  I can't decide if that's a sign that I need to take up the Difficult Second Novel once more or if my subconscious is desperate to hear a bit of Motown.

Portrait of the author

When I was getting ready to publish Looking for Buttons (yes, she's going on about that again), one of the many gems of wisdom from the fabulous indie author Lexi Revellian was that I needed an author page on Amazon.  With a photo.

Ah.

I don't do photos.  Not in a diva-ish, sunglasses on, hand-over-the-lens sort of manner.  More in an oh-sorry-did-I-just-break-your-camera-by-looking-at-it? way.  A few (okay, more than a few) years back, I had vague hopes that eventually I might mature into Eleanor Bron-esque elegance.  All I've managed is brontosaurus.

But in this image-conscious world the look is all, and I can't possibly go on blogging facelessly.  I'm not going to do all the work for you, though.  I'll give you a thumbnail sketch and your imagination can fill in the rest.  This is what I look like:

The secret love child of Nana Mouskouri and Harry Palmer.

Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking...

Looking for Buttons has been on sale for two days.  So far I've sold six copies, which might not sound like many but feels like a huge triumph.  That's six whole people who've looked at the cover, read the blurb and thought "Yeah, I'll give that a go, and what's more, I'll pay for the privilege."  I find that wildly exciting.  (It is true that I don't get out much.)

What's more, it's already taking on a life of its own, thanks to friends using Facebook and Twitter to spread the word.  Twinkle Mummy has been badgering members of her local twins club to buy it and Norfolkbookworm has blogged about it, not once but twice!  (Norfolkbookworm, I must confess, is not entirely impartial.  She's been a good friend for over twenty years, has been one of Looking for Buttons's staunchest supporters, and roped in her very talented dad to do the cover!)

While I'm handing out the laurels, I must thank the inspirational Lexi Revellian who has been so generous with advice and support.  Her books, including the best-selling Remix and Replica, are great reads and her writing blog is a goldmine of information for the aspiring self-publisher.

Lastly, I must thank my late aunt and uncle.  They gave me my first PC some years ago, thinking it would help me study.  I wrote a book on it instead.  This book.  They're not here to see it published but I hope they would be pleased.