I have a couple of pieces of news I want to share.
The first is my nomination for the ALCS board.
For those of you who don’t know, ALCS (Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Agency) pays royalties to authors from secondary rights – such as photocopying and library borrowing. I’ve had several payments from them over the past few years, from my books (the written work and the graphics in them). I probably earn more through being a member of ALCS than I do from sales of my books.
So, when the email arrived to put myself forward for election, I thought it would be a great way to give back, and I think it’s important to have new experiences. The idea of attending meetings, and getting to learn and contribute to helping other writers is an exciting challenge for me. I’m not sure I’ll be voted in. I’m competing against over twenty others, all with far more experience than me, but it never hurts to try.
If you would like to vote for me, (you have to be an ALCS member) you can follow the link in the email ALCS have sent out to members. Everyone has a unique code to access the voting page, so there’s no point in me posting the link here.
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The second piece of news is my short non-fiction booklet on writing. What Do I Know?answers several questions about writing and publishing, and briefly talks about copywriting and dealing with requests for unpaid sample tests. I’m pleased to be able to share my experiences in writing and publishing, going back to 2014, when I first self-published a book and had no idea what I was doing.
The book doesn’t claim to contain expert knowledge, but is a summary of many of the things I learned. Back then, I relied on Amazon Kindle, before creating a paperback (also through Amazon). I didn’t realise the other options which were available to an author looking to self-published their books.
I struggled with marketing, and still do. As I said, this isn’t an expert guide. However, the book tells you some of the ways I learnt to market myself as an author.
I think people will already know some of the answers given, but there is probably something you will learn. It’s about sharing knowledge which took me 7 years to learn. I come across questions on Facebook all the time about marketing, finding publishers and more. So, If I can help someone reduce that learning time, it’s worth the time it took me to put the book together.
You can find it here.
This book is also part of my twelve projects in twelve months. I have set my co-written book, The Snow Was All We Could See for pre-order. So, I only have one more left to go, then I will have completed my self-set challenge.
The books I’ve completed all different, so if you’re not interested in reading a book on writing, you still might find one of my books completed during this challenge will interest you.
It doesn’t seem like it was only September last year, when Words to Remember: A Printed Words Anthology was released. In that time, we’ve raised money for Marie Curie and Cancer Research. All the profits so far have been donated to these to charities. We hope to raise more for other cancer charities.
Now is a great time to buy a copy, if you haven’t already. Amazon seem to love messing around with book prices. At the time of writing this, the eBook is just £1.59 and the paperback is the same price.
Last year I brought out a novel. I put six months of planning and more money than I could afford into marketing it. The pre-orders were promising, then froze as the pandemic took hold. Despite the book been shortlisted for an award and getting good reviews from the few people who did read it, reaching people and convincing them to read it was almost impossible. This year, I’m focussing more on paid work such as copywriting, but I still have lots of projects I want to release, even though I don’t expect any of them to make many sales.
I’ve set myself a challenge. Between February 2021 and January 2022, I’m going to publish something every month. With all the ideas I have for short collections of poetry and prose, and a few novella length books, I want to get these started/completed, so I can move onto longer projects in 2022.
The first release will be the audiobook version of my YA novel, First Charge. While the eBook and paperback are already out, I have had to spend time listening to and approving each chapter of the audiobook. I feel I can count this as a new release.
My March release will most likely be a chapbook, with future projects including a sci-fi novella and a re-edited version of something I published when I was just starting out.
I’ll post links to each new release on this blog post.
Project 6 – Second Chances (sequel to Ghost of Me). This one is a little different. It’s not available as an eBook. Instead, it’s available to read on Medium (see chapter links below) or to buy as a paperback from Amazon in all countries including UK and US.
This year has been difficult for a lot of people, which is why I’ve decided to share my failures and successes of 2020. Hopefully, they will inspire others. If I’ve learnt anything, it’s to take opportunities when you find them, because you never know which ones will lead to something.
Firstly, I was slowly building up my freelance writing, and the pre-orders from my novel “Ghost of Me” looked promising. Then in March/April my work dried up and the book sales plummeted not long after the release date. I could be writing this and focussing on this year being a complete failure, but I’m not. I’ll admit it’s been a series of struggles and I still haven’t rebuilt up my work to achieve a full-time living. What I have done is to look at other ways to promote myself and find work.
My charity book (Words to Remember)
This one isn’t just my success. It was only possible because of all the poems and stories other writers sent in, and those writers who helped promote it afterwards. Even so, I felt proud of myself and them when I made the £130 donation to Marie Curie with the first batch of profits. There’s more pending for other cancer charities at a later date. I know other people have raised more money for charity with less work involved, but I’m still pleased with this. At one point, I was trying to work out how much we might have raised by looking at the book rankings and thought we’d be lucky to raise £20. Finding out the first royalty payment was £130 was a nice surprise.
Podcasts/Radio
I started guesting on a lot of podcasts. After co-hosting my book review podcast since January 2018 and guesting on a few others, I stepped things up and began actively looking for podcasts I could appear on. Out of those, I had a couple of good experiences and some not so good. The worst was a guy who talked to me for fifteen minutes, clearly found me boring and wrapped up the podcast. It was never aired.
Some of the best experiences included having a poem broadcast on BBC Radio Manchester (followed by a short interview) and being a guest on Midnight FM where I talked to Tim Weisberg about my interest in the paranormal and how it inspires my writing. The poem broadcast on the BBC was the third I’d sent them, proving to myself that sometimes you have to keep trying. The Midnight FM interview came about after I guested on a paranormal podcast. I didn’t think it went that well, but the producer of Midnight FM got in touch with me and said one of their listeners had suggested me as a guest. I assume it was someone who heard that podcast.
Awards and sending out work
I came across the Author Elite Awards. It was free, so I entered Ghost of Me into it, but didn’t want to bother anyone by asking for votes to get it into the final. A few months later, I received an email saying it was a top ten finalist in the thriller category. I was surprised because I hadn’t asked anyone to vote for it, but obviously someone did. It didn’t win, but I get to add top ten finalist to my blurb.
Later in the year, I wrote a short story for a submission call in Divination Hollow’s Horror in Hollywood contest. Even as I sent the story, I didn’t think it had a chance, but again I was surprised to receive an email saying it was one of ten they had shortlisted. I don’t think I was one of the final three winners, as I would have heard by now, but it’s something to add to my writing CV and it encourages me to keep going. If I had listened to my own doubts about the story, I wouldn’t have sent it and it couldn’t have been shortlisted.
Finding other ways to make money from writing
I recently got paid for having some book reviews published. While it wasn’t much, I enjoyed reading and I love writing, so to get paid for combining the two is great. If things had been normal, I probably wouldn’t have gone down the path of writing book reviews. But while searching for opportunities, I came across Joyzine. Although they are predominantly a music zine, they were happy for me to volunteer to write book reviews. This gave me the experience and confidence to look for paid opportunities elsewhere. And again, it looks good on my CV.
And the failures…
Other than those I’ve already mentioned, I’ve had plenty of failures. I’ve run book giveaways where nobody has entered or the winners have never responded to claim their prizes, as if they’ve realised what the competition was for and they don’t want the prize. I’ve also tried to make use of my creative writing experience by co-running some paid workshops, but despite only charging £1.67 they sold very few tickets. Worse still, I offered tickets to a live reading on my Santa Claus book (with a free digital copy of the book) again for just £1.67 and had to cancel because it only sold one ticket. These are definitely my most embarrassing failures of the year, because I was sharing them so publicly. I thought they would fail, but I tried anyway. The point I’m trying to make is, sometimes you have to try something and take opportunities. You might fail, but you might not.
And to top the year off, I managed to sit through the first six seasons of American Horror Story, so it wasn’t a complete failure!
My plans for 2021
It will be a while before open mic poetry and spoken word nights return, but in January, I plan to take advantage of Zoom by reading at a few nights I’ve never read at before, ones that would normally be too far to travel to. I’m also going to look for more podcasts to guest on, more submissions calls and for any other opportunities. I’ll still write books, but this will be more of a hobby because I know they won’t help pay the bills. I’ll be focussing more on getting book reviews published, copywriting and pitching articles.
I’m not going to claim it’s easy being creative during lockdown. There are the distractions of constant updates coming through on social media and through my phone; more deaths, more government negligence … the list goes on.
However, it helps to look back at what you have done during this time and that is what I’m doing here. At the start of lockdown, I was panicking over losing at least 80% of my paid work, not been eligible for any benefits or grants and generally worrying about my basic survival. Those are big enough distractions, even without the pandemic and lockdown going on in the background.
This morning I found out the audio book version of my novel “Not Human” had gone online. To be fair, I didn’t do much work on this during lockdown. Most of the work was done before and it was a case of waiting for the files to be approved and to be sent to the online retailers. I’m still counting it as an achievement though, especially as it’s my first audiobook.
While I was waiting for this to be approved, I began working with a talented narrator from Canada to adapt my “Ghost of Me” book. I’m now working with her on the changes for that and hopefully, it should be available to buy within the next few months.
Once I accepted that panicking about financial matters wouldn’t improve them, I went back to an unfinished project and completed it, as part of a challenge set by a Facebook Group I’m in. The project was a choose your own adventure book about a writer who does everything wrong. It pokes fun at things that some writers do wrong and at the publishing and book promotion process in general. Working to complete it by a set date, gave me something to focus on and I enjoyed putting it together and creating the images to go with it.
As I usually do NaPoWriMo in April, I decided not to change that this year. Predictably, over half of the poems were about lockdown either directly or indirectly. I applied to a project, pitching the idea of a chapbook of lockdown related poems. While they haven’t sent me a rejection yet, I plan to self-publish the book later this month if they turn me down. I hope it will help others and they will be able to relate to at least some of it.
So, during lockdown I’ve brought out an audiobook, have another of the way and have short booklets coming out. It’s not so bad when I think of it that way. I’m not suggesting anyone starts and/or completes several projects during lockdown, but having at least one project to focus on might help. Even spending half an hour a day on something can quickly build up over time and before you know it, you’ll have a finished piece of work, or at least the solid start of something. It’s not easy, but trying to create something is much better than getting stressed about things you have no control over. I’ve started using a mindfulness app and listening to Forrest sounds on Spotify. Find whatever helps you feel less stressed and overwhelmed by everything.
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Please see the links below (which will be added as they become available) if any of my books I’ve mentioned interest you.
You can get a free digital copy of How to Write Wrong: A Choose Your own Adventure Story, from Booksprout in exchange for a honest review. You can be also pre-order a copy on Kindle for just 79p.
Always Darkest Before Dawn: A Collection of Poems from Lockdown can be pre-ordered on Kindle for just 80p
It was maybe 7 or 8 years ago when I began writing a novel in which the main character finds her own dead body in the morgue and realises she’s a ghost and someone killed her. A handful of chapters into it, life took over and even after I studied some creative writing modules as part of my BA degree, I forgot about the novel while I worked on other projects instead.
I found it years later while looking at old files on a memory stick, around the time I was starting my Creative Writing MA. I rewrote and edited what I had so far and used part of it during my first year, towards my assignments. The plan was to continue writing it and to submit the rest as part of my assignments for the second year. For reasons I won’t bore you with, I changed my mind, although I continued to write the novel and completed it before my course finished.
How did I get my ideas?
I can’t recall where the idea of a ghost solving her own murder came from, but as I continued writing, I liked the concept of getting to see what happens after you die and how people may not react in the way you hoped they would. It helped me to develop the characters in a different way to any of the other books I’ve written. I learned that imperfect characters can be better to read about, rather than unrealistic characters who do everything right all the time.
The protagonist, Sarah has been slightly self-absorbed for most of her life, thinking her fiancé (Paul) is the love of her life. After she’s murdered and becomes a ghost, she discovers that’s not true. The real Paul doesn’t match up to her imagined version of him. In fact, quite a few characters are hiding something, which adds to the intrigue of who the killer might be. Her behaviour is young for her age in some ways, because she hasn’t had much life experience.
Sarah isn’t a bad person; she tries to do the right thing and bring her killer to justice. It’s not just about revenge, even though that’s part of it. She genuinely wants to stop more women from being killed. She also wishes more people would mourn her death, not because she wants them to suffer, but because she wants her life to have made enough of an impact for people to miss her when she’s gone. I’m sure most people want that on some level. Nobody wants to be forgotten.
My first reviews of the book
I put more work in the writing and promoting of this book than many of my other books. So, I was so happy (and relieved) when I got my first review.
“This is a rare find. A great paranormal thriller. Spine-tingling and goosebumps throughout the book. Fast paced and action packed storyline. Keeps you from putting this book down.”
“This book has an original storyline with Sarah trying to solve her own murder. This story is well written and intriguing, with murder, ghosts, suspense, and twists and turns.”
It’s only £2.28 on Kindle (or the equivalent in your currency, if you’re not in the UK) so you’ve got nothing to lose? (Except for £2.28)
Book Trailer
If you’d like to find out more, about the book, here’s the book trailer, which I had a lot of fun putting together.
I’d watched The Walking Dead since the beginning, and before that I lapped up any TV show or film about zombies. It only occurred to me to write about zombies during Christmas one year. My sister’s birthday was the following March and I thought I’d write it as part of her present. That didn’t leave me long though. So, with only three months to write and edit, it became the novella After the Zombies. The original had so many mistakes due to the self-imposed time limit. I’ve re-edited it since.
When I had more time, I created a novel which followed on from the novella, but could be read as a standalone book. Now a few years on, I’ve re-released Not Human, with extra content which was previously a follow-on novella.
The thing I like about zombie stories, whether on the page or screen, is the characters. It’s not as much about the zombies. Of course they play a part, but I like exploring how people react.
In The Walking Dead, the show wouldn’t be the same if the only threats were slow staggering zombies. Each series usually has at least one human baddie.
I’ve tried to do that in my books too. In After the Zombies, the main enemy is the government who want to cover up a zombie outbreak in Manchester. Not Human has more threats though. Along with the government, Grace and her friends run into some unpleasant characters.
I also wanted to do something a bit different, though everything has probably been done before, but hopefully my combination of different things varies from other writers, not to mention its in my voice and not theirs. In the books, there are human/zombie hybrids (explaining the title Not Human) and a scene involving a zombie baby, but I don’t want to give too much away over that one.
The way I finished the book, ties up certain character’s storylines, with the possibility to write at least one further book. Although, I have no plans to do that, unless I feel it’s wanted.
It’s been a while since I put a writing update on here, but I’ve been busy. As the title of this blog post suggests, I’m working on a lot of projects.
In January this year, I started Printed Words; originally intending it to be an e-zime, but it seemed to force its way into print and became a magazine too. It’s been an experience; reading submissions, replying with acceptances or rejections and feedback whenever possible. I was worried that people might not react well to some constructive criticism, choosing to take it personally or become defensive. Instead, I’ve received a positive response. Most of the writers whose work I haven’t accepted have appreciated the feedback at least. As many seasoned writers will know, rejections often contain nothing to tell the writer why their work wasn’t accepted.
For anyone wanting to find out more about the e-zine/magazine here are the links to the guidelines and the Facebook page.
I’ve also re-edited and re-released After the Zombies, which was originally written as a present for my sister. If you’re reading this before 24th May you can enter to win a paperback copy HERE
Otherwise, you can buy a copy HERE or from your local Amazon website if not in the UK.
If you’d like to read the book for free, you can. It’s available as an e-book on several platforms.
The full-length sequel “Not Human” and the novella “Life After Zombies” which followed on the story will be re-edited and combined into one book, for release later this year. I’ll be sticking with the title “Not Human” and the amazing cover which was turned down from Amazon ads because the zombie was covered in blood.
I’m also working on numerous poetry projects. One I can’t talk about here, another is a collection of the poems I’ve written over the last three years. I’ve narrowed it down to 51 so far, but might cut a few more before it goes to print.
I’ve designed the cover already.
Another collection I’m putting together will involve Father Christmas dying repeatedly in a series of unfortunate incidents. It’s funnier than it sounds (I hope.)
Here a teaser image from an of the image which will accompany one of the poems.
I’m also working a series of seven-word poems with my partner. This is in addition to a collection about an imaginary couple inspired by his collection. There will be a crossover poem where the two couples meet.
Before I forget to mention it, my long-awaited YA novel “First Charge” has been given a June release date. This was previously self-published briefly, before I un-published it and was given a contract by Gnome on Pig Productions. They also want to publish the other two books in the series. I’ve written book two and am halfway through the first draft of book three.
If that’s not enough, I’ve just started writing a sci-fi novel which I’m really excited about, but can’t discuss yet. The ideas are flying around and I’m in the process of world-building, which is something I’ve never done to this extent before.
I joined Medium this month and have written some articles on there too.
I believe you have to be a paid member to read them all in full, but it allowed you to read a few articles before asking you to pay.
Finally, the monthly book review podcast I co-host with Andy N is still ongoing too. I find having to come up with two or three books a month encourages me read some of my books, even if I do keep buying them faster than I’m reading them. As Stephen King says, if you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time or the tool to write. Hopefully, the books I’m reading are providing me with the right tools.
Although (as discussed on Katy aka the Rebel Poetess blog*) having a breakdown at the age of 21 ultimately led me to becoming a writer, in a sense it taught me to fight for everything I have done in my career. However, going to university certainly was the trigger that pushed me up towards the skies.
I’ve interacted with a lot of writers since leaving, but university was where I learnt to look at my writing in a different way from the almost childish scribblings I was writing before – I’m being honest here. It came at the cost of watching lots of people give up, who in several cases I felt were better writers than me (at least then) including one friend of over twenty years – who I stopped speaking to recently for reasons I won’t go into here.
This gentleman in question is a case in point as he was an exceptional writer at university, but as soon as he left he simply fell out of the habit of writing and couldn’t get back into it when he started again years later. I’ve had moments like that over the years, but not as long. It proved challenging then, which leaves me thinking it would be almost impossible to start again after a such lengthy break as the one mentioned above.
I also recall other people like this gentleman simply gave up when they started receiving strong (sometimes cruel) criticism from tutors. My marks, it has to be said, were average before I reached my third year at university. Sometimes they were not so good, but I kept going.
Now in my case, I certainly can’t admit that I wrote masterpieces at university from 1998 to 200. In my opinion, I wrote some complete rubbish back then, but I kept going. I ended up joining a writing workshop in 2005 in Bolton. After that folded in 2008, I co-formed my own which still runs to this very day in some form or another.
At University however, although I clashed with some of the tutors there over my work, by the time I joined my first writing discussion group in 2005 I understood how to look at my work and others in a logistical way, even though I didn’t think I had learnt that at university.
Looking back at things many years later, perhaps I could have gone on to become the writer and artist I did without going to university. It’s unlikely that would have led to some of the adventures I’ve had though. At university, despite mixed relationships with some of the tutors, I made friends with certain writers, which have stayed with me until this time and taught me more than some of the tutors did. These writers, some of whom I don’t read anymore, set the foundations that what I did after university. I brought out my first book ‘Return to Kemptown’, then my second, ‘The End of Summer’. I literally had dozens of other adventures, all of which wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t had a breakdown, then went to university.
Andy N is the Author of three full poetry collections (the most recent is ‘The Birth of Autumn’ which was published in 2018) and numerous split poetry books. He is also the creator of the Barbarians of the Wall and Role Reversal series, and the editor and creator of the Spoken Label podcast series. With his partner, he co-hosts the Reading in Bed podcast, which reviews a selection of books each month.
Now, because I’m awkward, a lot has changed since the podcast was recorded. My book “While I was gone” is now called “Lost and Found: Part 1″ and is under the pen name “Aleesha Black”. The link to it is here.
I will still be reading at The Wigan Diggers warm up bash in Bolton, but not from my book. Although, if you do want to hear me reading the first chapter, it is available at the link below. This was recorded back in May from the previous version, and I struggled in parts due to the words hanging off the pages, but the story is generally the same now, with the exception of improved editing and formatting in the new version.
Finally, if you are in the UK you can enter to win a copy of Lost and Found: Part 1. All you need to do is go to my book trailer on Facebook and share it. One winner will be picked after the closing date of 1st September 2018
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