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.
Monday, 15 October 2012
Sunday, 30 September 2012
Pottering on
I feel sorry for J.K. Rowling.
Writing a book is hard. It takes time and effort and a lot of emotional investment. I should think every author worries if anyone will want to read their book, let alone actually like it. Now imagine the pressure of being so famous and so successful. Either people will be desperate to read your book and vocal in their disappointment if it doesn't meet their impossibly high expectations, or they'll be desperate for you to be seen to fail just because you're so famous and so successful.
There is no way Rowling will get an unbiased review. Every reader who has heard of Rowling or of Harry Potter will come to The Casual Vacancy with some sort of agenda. So, yes, I feel sorry for a very successful author.
There's a moral here for us minnows: be careful what you wish for.
Writing a book is hard. It takes time and effort and a lot of emotional investment. I should think every author worries if anyone will want to read their book, let alone actually like it. Now imagine the pressure of being so famous and so successful. Either people will be desperate to read your book and vocal in their disappointment if it doesn't meet their impossibly high expectations, or they'll be desperate for you to be seen to fail just because you're so famous and so successful.
There is no way Rowling will get an unbiased review. Every reader who has heard of Rowling or of Harry Potter will come to The Casual Vacancy with some sort of agenda. So, yes, I feel sorry for a very successful author.
There's a moral here for us minnows: be careful what you wish for.
Sunday, 23 September 2012
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.
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.
Thursday, 30 August 2012
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...
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...
Sunday, 26 August 2012
Never too late to jump on a bandwagon
Looking for Buttons now has its very own Facebook page!
Apparently, this means that you can 'like' the book, as opposed to before the Facebook page, when you just liked it (or not - you are of course welcome to your opinion). There are probably other things the page will do but I haven't worked it out yet. Do please bear in mind that I am a neo-luddite and left to my own devices would probably still be self-publishing with crayons.
I'll be posting updates on Facebook from time to time and will continue to witter on Twitter as @looking4buttons.
Isn't modern technology grand? All these ways to avoid actually talking to people...
[Don't forget Looking for Buttons is FREE throughout the Bank Holiday weekend!]
Apparently, this means that you can 'like' the book, as opposed to before the Facebook page, when you just liked it (or not - you are of course welcome to your opinion). There are probably other things the page will do but I haven't worked it out yet. Do please bear in mind that I am a neo-luddite and left to my own devices would probably still be self-publishing with crayons.
I'll be posting updates on Facebook from time to time and will continue to witter on Twitter as @looking4buttons.
Isn't modern technology grand? All these ways to avoid actually talking to people...
[Don't forget Looking for Buttons is FREE throughout the Bank Holiday weekend!]
Friday, 24 August 2012
Literary networking the Lucie Parish way
One of my biggest regrets about my undergraduate life (apart from studying a subject I didn't much care for in the deluded hope that it would improve my employment prospects, says she, laughing hollowly) was that I avoided Jilly Cooper.
I was shopping with a friend one Saturday. We drifted into W.H. Smith. There was Jilly Cooper, PR lady at her side, sitting at a table piled high with copies of her latest novel. My friend, a great fan, was very excited and decided to get a signed book for her mum's birthday present. At the time, I had never read any of her novels (this was at the peak of my Alistair MacLean phase). I felt so ashamed at the thought of coming face to face with a very famous author and admitting I'd never even read so much as a blurb that I bolted out of the shop and lurked outside until my friend reappeared, clutching her trophy.
Since then I've read and enjoyed Mrs Cooper's books (I can't call her Jilly, that would be presumptous, given my behaviour). Flatteringly, but ludicrously, Looking for Buttons has been compared to her early novels. Yesterday I read an interview with her in the Times (to which I can't link as it's a subscription-only site) in which she championed character and good writing and generally came across as a thoroughly good egg. I've been kicking myself about the W.H. Smith incident ever since.
Some years later, I saw Joanna Trollope sitting alone at a signing in my local Waterstone's. I'd read and enjoyed her books. I was too skint to buy one and too shy to approach her to say I loved her work, so I just scuttled off instead.
I am so very, very bad at treating published authors as human beings. It's just as well that Looking for Buttons is only available as an e-book. If I had a signing I'd be too embarrassed to turn up.
[This weekend, it's a Bank Holiday Bonanza! Get Looking for Buttons FREE from Amazon from Saturday 25th to Monday 27th August! It's the last giveaway I'll be holding for a while so make the most of it.]
I was shopping with a friend one Saturday. We drifted into W.H. Smith. There was Jilly Cooper, PR lady at her side, sitting at a table piled high with copies of her latest novel. My friend, a great fan, was very excited and decided to get a signed book for her mum's birthday present. At the time, I had never read any of her novels (this was at the peak of my Alistair MacLean phase). I felt so ashamed at the thought of coming face to face with a very famous author and admitting I'd never even read so much as a blurb that I bolted out of the shop and lurked outside until my friend reappeared, clutching her trophy.
Since then I've read and enjoyed Mrs Cooper's books (I can't call her Jilly, that would be presumptous, given my behaviour). Flatteringly, but ludicrously, Looking for Buttons has been compared to her early novels. Yesterday I read an interview with her in the Times (to which I can't link as it's a subscription-only site) in which she championed character and good writing and generally came across as a thoroughly good egg. I've been kicking myself about the W.H. Smith incident ever since.
Some years later, I saw Joanna Trollope sitting alone at a signing in my local Waterstone's. I'd read and enjoyed her books. I was too skint to buy one and too shy to approach her to say I loved her work, so I just scuttled off instead.
I am so very, very bad at treating published authors as human beings. It's just as well that Looking for Buttons is only available as an e-book. If I had a signing I'd be too embarrassed to turn up.
[This weekend, it's a Bank Holiday Bonanza! Get Looking for Buttons FREE from Amazon from Saturday 25th to Monday 27th August! It's the last giveaway I'll be holding for a while so make the most of it.]
Friday, 17 August 2012
Gottle of geer
"Find your voice!" the writing handbooks say. Which is fair enough. But there's more.
"Find the voice of your characters!" OK, yes, reading it back they seem to be distinct personalities. Next.
"Find your narrative voice!"
Ah.
Looking for Buttons was written in the first person, narrated by Kate, the central character. I like first person narrative, I like its immediacy and intrinsic bias. It's why I prefer Ice Station Zebra to Where Eagles Dare, although filmwise I'd call it the other way. (Yes, I do realise that writers of romantic comedy do not as a rule cite Alistair MacLean as their writing inspiration, but I am nothing if not, erm, yes, you could say odd.) The Difficult Second Novel, which has more in common with MacLean and Adam Hall than with Looking for Buttons, has a first person narrative. So, first problem - does the narrator of the DSN sound too much like Kate, i.e. do both books in fact just sound like me?
The Difficult Third Novel is shaping up to follow Looking for Buttons into the chick lit genre, but it's written in the third person, with an all-seeing impartial narrator (a bit like David Attenborough, only without the charm and erudition). Reading it back, it's OK, but it's not quite right. So, second problem - should I rewrite it from the point of view of the central character and see if that sorts it out? Which itself brings me to the third problem, which is actually the first problem all over again.
I feel I should draw a flow chart at this point, but that's just the latent scientist in me, and if I sit quietly with my copy of Doctor Faustus for a minute the feeling will pass.
It's not enough just to put words on a page in the right order. You've got to throw your voice at the same time. But if you don't get it right it turns into a boomerang and comes back to clout you round the ear.
It's enough to drive you to drink a gottle of geer.
"Find the voice of your characters!" OK, yes, reading it back they seem to be distinct personalities. Next.
"Find your narrative voice!"
Ah.
Looking for Buttons was written in the first person, narrated by Kate, the central character. I like first person narrative, I like its immediacy and intrinsic bias. It's why I prefer Ice Station Zebra to Where Eagles Dare, although filmwise I'd call it the other way. (Yes, I do realise that writers of romantic comedy do not as a rule cite Alistair MacLean as their writing inspiration, but I am nothing if not, erm, yes, you could say odd.) The Difficult Second Novel, which has more in common with MacLean and Adam Hall than with Looking for Buttons, has a first person narrative. So, first problem - does the narrator of the DSN sound too much like Kate, i.e. do both books in fact just sound like me?
The Difficult Third Novel is shaping up to follow Looking for Buttons into the chick lit genre, but it's written in the third person, with an all-seeing impartial narrator (a bit like David Attenborough, only without the charm and erudition). Reading it back, it's OK, but it's not quite right. So, second problem - should I rewrite it from the point of view of the central character and see if that sorts it out? Which itself brings me to the third problem, which is actually the first problem all over again.
I feel I should draw a flow chart at this point, but that's just the latent scientist in me, and if I sit quietly with my copy of Doctor Faustus for a minute the feeling will pass.
It's not enough just to put words on a page in the right order. You've got to throw your voice at the same time. But if you don't get it right it turns into a boomerang and comes back to clout you round the ear.
It's enough to drive you to drink a gottle of geer.
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