Twelve free books too good to miss

Time has almost run out but until midnight on 28th February you can take your pick of any or all of these twelve amazing reads, simply by visiting www.helenahalme.com/instafreebie!

I've got together with eleven other women writers in an experiment in co-promotion of our stories. It has been a revelation to work this way, where we can pool our resources and talents to improve our chances of discoverability. We're hoping to increase our lists of subscribers and develop that relationship between writers and their readers that's so important to us. After all, we write to be read!

Let me introduce you in this video.

If you visit the landing page you can download any or all of the books, in return for subscribing to the author's mailing list (and you can unsubscribe later, of course, if you want!).

Here are the twelve books, including with my own An Oxford Vengeance:

I hope you'll enjoy these reads and for those of you who are writers, I'll report back on how this sort of promotional activity has worked - or not - for me!

Remember, you can always sign up for my newsletters at www.fictionfirepress.com and www.fictionfire.co.uk and you can follow me on Facebook at LornaFergussonAuthor and at Fictionfire-inspiration-for-writers!

Considering self-publishing? Jessica Bell shows you the stress-free way

I've known Jessica Bell for a few years as a fellow member of the Alliance of Independent Authors. She's an extraordinary person, charged with energy. Her output is simply amazing: she's a writer, poet, cover designer, musician  ...

I'm posting to recommend the latest in her series, Writing in a Nutshell: these are nifty, pithy manuals helping writers with aspects of composition and here, with self-publishing. Jessica herself explains it best:

Are you ready to self-publish your book, but dreading the massive learning curve? Well, there’s no need to dread it anymore!

This sixth instalment in the bestselling Writing in a Nutshell series will not overwhelm you with all information available—it will tell you exactly what you need to know, without the faff, by following a foolproof, cost-efficient, time-efficient, extremely easy-to-follow, step-by-step self-publishing method, so that you can go from manuscript to a professionally published book within one week.

You’ll learn how to: prepare your manuscript in Microsoft Word, design your paperback and eBook cover, prepare your front/back matter and blurb, format your paperback interior & eBook, proofread your designed pages, register with desired retailers/distributors, export your eBook to a retail-ready file and upload your paperback and eBook to retailers/distributors.

Not only will this book save you time and money, but it will also save you from inevitable stress. What are you waiting for? Grab a copy of Self-publish Your Book today! 

With Jessica at the London
Book Fair, 2014

Visit Jessica's site at www.jessicabellauthor.com to find out more about the series and all her other activities, including her book cover design service. You can buy her books via her website or on Amazon. Self-Publish your Book is available as an ebook or paperback.

Visit the Alliance of Independent Authors for incredibly useful resources and a warm, supportive community to help hold your hand along the self-publishing path. 

Women Writers Boxing Clever Part 3: featuring Joni Rodgers, Kathleen Jones and Jane Davis

In this third part of my feature on seven brilliant writers who've chosen to collaborate in producing an exciting box-set of their works, Outside the Box: Women Writing Women, we'll hear from Joni Rodgers, Kathleen Jones and Jane Davis.

I heard New York Times bestselling author Joni Rodgers give a wonderfully rousing speech at the launch of the Alliance of Independent Authors back in 2012 - it was a real whoop whoop! tour de force right at the start of the self-publishing revolution. Here are the compelling reasons she had for writing her novel Crazy for Trying:

'Tulsa, my heroine, is a bookish, zaftig misfit, much like I was in my early 20s, and I drew on my experience as the lone female disc jockey at a rock station in western Montana. The themes of body image, forgiveness, making peace with one’s past were important to me, then and now. I also wanted to write about a healthy, loving union between two women (Tulsa’s mother and her partner) and how unfair it was—to them and to their daughter—that they weren’t allowed to marry. I was turned down by a number of agents because I refused to cut that storyline, and back then (in the mid-1990s) it was still a verboten topic for commercial fiction.

I started writing this book when I was living on a fire tower in the Northern California wilderness and finished it almost ten years later while I was undergoing chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (blood cancer). I had no immune system, which meant mandatory isolation. That gave me the space and quiet to write 16 hours a day simply because I loved placing words in rows. This purely creative purpose breathed joy and peace into what was otherwise a very dark time. My prognosis was poor; I was told I’d live five years if I was lucky, and my son and daughter were just five and seven years old. When I started seriously pursuing getting the book published, I was driven by the reality that this book might be the only way my children would ever really know me.

Crazy for Trying was originally published by a prestigious small press and was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Award, which launched my career and gave me a whole new life. This book, I truly believe, is the reason I’m still alive. Had I not found the purpose and peace I gained from writing it, I don’t think I would have made it. It gave me so much pleasure to revisit Tulsa and her crew. The book is a lot funnier than I remembered!'

The Centauress is a compelling tale of family conflict about a disputed inheritance, written by another best-selling author and Royal Literary Fund Fellow, Kathleen Jones. Not only am I loving the titles of the books in this collection, but I'm finding it absolutely fascinating to hear how these stories emerged! 

'The Centauress was inspired by a meeting with an extraordinary Italian sculptor who was officially female, but was very open about the fact that she was a hermaphrodite. She appeared to revel in her dual sexuality, although there was an underlying note of tragedy in the stories she told about her life. I began to wonder what it must be like to be born without any specific gender identity and what it might mean for relationships.  Almost by accident, I was present when she was being interviewed for her biography and there were a lot of discussions about the ethical questions her life story raised; how much the biographer should tell and how to protect the people she’d shared her life with.

When she died, her story wouldn’t let me go. Meeting her had changed my life – as she had changed many people’s lives, not always for the better. Fictional episodes started writing themselves in my head, often centred around one of her reminiscences.  I kept thinking ‘what if?’ and gradually the novel began to take shape. Fiction can often be closer to the emotional truth of something than factual biography.

The Centauress is set in Istria – a very beautiful part of Croatia that used to belong to Italy and has the turbulent historical background I needed for the novel. The family of my main character, Zenobia, has been torn apart by conflict. Living in Europe means living every day with echoes of a violent, recent past; sharing your village or street with people who may have betrayed your relatives, or be relatives of someone your family also betrayed. Just below my house in Italy, at the bottom of the olive grove, is a memorial to six young boys who were dragged from their houses and shot, only a year before I was born.

As a biographer myself, I’ve often felt uncomfortable ‘eavesdropping’ on the most intimate moments of someone’s life, so it’s not surprising that my narrator, Alex, became a biographer researching the life story of celebrity artist Zenobia de Branganza, who is the Centauress of the story. Alex has to struggle with the problems of her subject’s desire for honesty and the wishes of friends and family not to have their lives exposed. Alex has her own private tragedies, because the novel is also about surviving some of the worst things that can happen to you. It’s this knowledge that enables Zenobia to trust Alex with her most intimate revelations.  And the message she gives to Alex is that it is possible to heal and that you must always be ready to accept happiness and love when it comes your way.'

Finally, Jane Davis has chosen An Unchoreographed Life for the collection. Jane's debut won the Daily Mail First Novel Award and she has gone on to produce six novels - I've already read A Funeral for an Owl and was much struck by the way she observes relationships, deals with issues of class and background and writes brilliant dialogue. Here she describes how she came to write An Unchoreographed Life:

'I was gripped by a 2008 court case, when, in an interesting twist, it was ruled that a prostitute had been living off the immoral earnings of one of her clients. Salacious headlines focused on the prostitute’s replies when she was asked to justify her charge of £20,000 a week. But the case also challenged perceptions of who was likely to be a prostitute. The answer turned out to be that she might well be the ordinary middle-aged woman with the husband and two teenage children who lives next door.

Whilst I was writing the novel, it became especially relevant when change to the laws governing prostitution were proposed and became headline news.

I grew up within the footprint of Nelson’s paradise estate. The story of his mistress, Emma Hamilton, has always fascinated me. Born into extreme poverty and forced to resort to prostitution, she later became a muse for artists such as George Romney and Joshua Reynolds and a fashionista by bucking the tight-laced trends of the day. Cast aside by an aristocratic lover, she went on to marry his uncle. Completely self-educated, Emma continually reinvented herself, mixing in diplomatic circles and becoming confidante of both Marie Antoinette and the Queen of Naples.

But Emma’s story is unusual. I had a clear understanding that, had I been born in another age, the chances were that, living in London, I would have been either a domestic servant or a prostitute - but quite possibly, both. Prior to 1823, domestics under the age of sixteen didn’t receive a salary. They worked a sixteen-hour day in return for ‘bed and board’, a very generous description of what was actually on offer. And, in return, when they reached the age of sixteen, they were cast out onto the streets. 

During my research, I used the Internet extensively to source personal accounts, diaries, blogs and newspaper reports. How did sex-workers come to the attention of the police and social services? What were the main reasons they ended up in court? (The answer was generally tax evasion and financial crime, things I knew about from my day job.) How did sex workers see themselves? How did they view their clients? How did this perception change if they stopped? I also consulted The English Collective of Prostitutes, who very kindly allowed me to quote them in my fictional newspaper article.  

And then I began to imagine what life was like for the child of a prostitute. There was nowhere I could research that hidden subject. And it is always the thing that eludes you that becomes the story.'

So, seven dedicated, dynamic writers serving up seven amazing and diverse novels in one set for only GBP7.99! Only for 90 days, though, starting on February 20th - though you can pre-order now here. 'The authors of these books are at the forefront of [a] strong cohort of groundbreaking, boundary pushing women writing and self-publishing literary fiction. i cannot recommend this collection highly enough.' Dan Holloway, Guardian book pages columnist and publisher.

Visit the Outside the Box: Women Writing Women website here.

See Part 2 of this feature here and Part 1 here.

To pre-order Outside the Box: Women Writing Women: visit these links at Amazon.co.uk  and Amazon.com. Price £7.99. The set will be available for 90 days only from February 20th 2015.

For more information, visit www.womenwritewomen.com

Watch the video trailer at https://animoto.com/play/oTQrHVfeHYOqtS5V1o6RSA

Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/roz.morris.7/posts/787315564638520#!/womenwritewomen?fref=ts 

Women Writers Boxing Clever Part 2: featuring Orna Ross, Carol Cooper, Roz Morris and Jessica Bell

On Monday, I introduced you to seven excellent novelists who've got together to issue a box-set of their works at an amazing price (£7.99/$9.99 for seven novels!) - the link to that post is here. In this and the next post I'll be asking each of the writers about the novel they chose to include in the selection, Outside the Box: Women Writing Women.

I'll start with Orna Ross. I met Orna back in 2012 at the London Book Fair, when she launched the Alliance of Independent Authors. ALLi has gone from strength to strength since then. The Bookseller has named Orna as one of the 100 most influential people in publishing and she is incredibly positive, supportive and inspiring. Her philosophy is summed up in the title of her handbooks and prospective courses: 'Go Creative - It's your Native State'. 

Somehow she finds time to write poetry and novels, while doing all she can to facilitate the creativity and success of others. She's including Blue Mercy in the collection, a complex tale of betrayal, revenge, suspense, murder mystery - and surprise. Here's what she has to say about it: 'Blue Mercy is a high-octane drama in the shape of a mother-and-daughter conflict swirling around a family murder mystery. A tyrannical old father is dead, a suspected mercy killing. The answers as to who might have killed him and why are deeply embedded in male-female relationships but also, crucially for this volume collection, in something core and primal in inter-female relationships too.'

Carol Cooper, whom I've also met at the London Book Fair - such a great place for networking! - and at the Independent Author Fair in Chorleywood last autumn, is a journalist and award-winning non-fiction author who's turned her hand to writing acclaimed contemporary fiction. Oh, and in her spare time, she's a doctor. Here's how she came to write her novel about a group of people searching for love, sex and everything in between: 'One Night at the Jacaranda is the first novel I’ve created that got as far as the hands of readers. There’ve been other efforts: a coming-of-age novel set in Cambridge, a children’s story about a stray dog, a novel about a teenager coping with disability, and the chronicle of a female surgeon in training. She never reached the top as she spent too much time horizontal (like the manuscript, still languishing in a drawer somewhere).

Now I see that I was trying to fit into particular places on bookshelves. By contrast, One Night at the Jacaranda, although it’s contemporary women’s fiction, doesn’t nestle quite as neatly into a genre.

The idea came to me out of the blue. I was on a flight to the USA, on my way to my father’s funeral. As I sat sipping a much-needed gin and tonic, the idea for a story about a group of single Londoners popped into my head. There’d be a struggling journalist, a lonely lawyer, a newly single mother of four daring to date again.

I covered paper napkins with scrawled notes which eventually developed into the novel. Finally I’d embarked on creating the kind of book I’d want to read for pleasure. I wasn’t thinking about marketing angles. I just wrote.

All the characters are made up. I don’t know where ex-con Dan came from, and I’m glad I never had an au pair as manipulative as Dorottya, but some of the influences are obvious. Although the stressed doctor in my story is male, he takes on many of the frustrations I face in my day job. Ditto the single mother, the freelance journalist, and the young man diagnosed with cancer are all people I relate to.

I like to pretend that the story has nothing to do with my father. For one thing, it would have been far too racy for him. He’d have choked on a Harrogate toffee by page four.

Yet things fall into place when a parent dies, so his influence is there. The deeper message of One Night at the Jacaranda is that the characters can’t find happiness with someone else until they confront who they themselves really are.

Over the years I’d authored and co-authored many non-fiction books. The leap to writing fiction required new skills. But it was refreshing to write what I wanted to write, without worrying about word counts or thinking of appropriate illustrations. My experience in journalism shows, I think, in my short scenes, cutting from one character to the next.

Medicine has a huge impact on my fiction. You can’t put your patients in a book, but doctoring teaches you to observe. It’s no surprise that many great writers have been doctors. While I can’t pretend to be in the same league as Somerset Maugham, Michael Crichton, AJ Cronin, Khaled Hosseini or Abraham Varghese, I’m grateful that my work brings me into contact with such a wide range of people and situations.'

I've also met Roz Morris at the London Book Fair and at various ALLi events. She's a vibrant and knowledgeable writer, ghost-writer and writing coach. I highly recommend her blog, The Undercover Soundtrack, where she features writers talking about how music has inspired their stories and writing process. Last year I read the novel she has chosen to include in the collection, My Memories of a Future Life - it's an original and poetic novel, written in a compelling voice and asking questions about creativity and purpose which I found fascinating. It features science fiction and music and sharp social observation, and it veers from comedy to pathos and back again. A really original piece of work. Here's what she has to say:

I was always fascinated by tales of regression to past lives. I thought, what if instead of going to the past, someone went to a future life? Who would do that? Why? What would they find? 

Another longtime interest was the world of the classical musician. Musical scores are exacting and dictatorial - you play a note for perhaps a sixth of a second and not only that, there are instructions for how to feel - expressivo, amoroso. It's as if you don't play a piece of classical music; you channel the spirit of the composer. 

I became fascinated by a character who routinely opened her entire soul to the most emotional communications of classical composers. And I thought, what if she couldn’t do it any more? And then, what if I threw her together with someone who could trap the part of her that responded so completely to music?'

Finally, Jessica Bell, another very active member of ALLi, is an Australian novelist, singer-songwriter, publishing editor of Vine Leaves Literary Journal - and a book cover designer to boot. (Where do these people find their energy?). Her latest novel is White Lady, an intense, suspenseful ride rife with mystery. She says: 'Some writers do have a distinct message they want to expose through their books before they begin writing. Those writers would be able to answer the question Why? pretty easily. I am not one of those authors. If there are messages in my books, they develop and grow organically, without my interference. But now that White Lady is complete and on bookshelves, I would say that message is the following: The power of unconditional love can be scarier than having a knife held to your throat.'

Orna, Joni, Jessica, Kathleen, Jane, Carol and Jessica

In my next blogpost, I'll be featuring Joni Rodgers, Kathleen Jones and Jane Davis.

For Part 1 of this feature, go here .

To pre-order Outside the Box: Women Writing Women: visit these links at Amazon.co.uk  and Amazon.com. Price £7.99/$9.99. The set will be available for 90 days only from February 20th 2015.

For more information, visit www.womenwritewomen.com

Watch the video trailer at https://animoto.com/play/oTQrHVfeHYOqtS5V1o6RSA

Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/roz.morris.7/posts/787315564638520#!/womenwritewomen?fref=ts 

Two exciting book announcements!

This is a very big day for me. Regular readers may have noticed this blog has been quiet for a while. This is because I've been working incredibly hard, not only in my Fictionfire role, but to edit and publish my novel, The Chase. And today's the day! The novel was originally published by Bloomsbury and the rights reverted to me some time ago. I've commissioned a new - and very gorgeous - cover and published it on Kindle, but intend also to publish it in other e-reader formats and as a paperback. I'm going to blog more about the process and about what The Chase means to me and how I came to write it in the first place, but in the meantime I wanted to announce that it's available! Please do take a look and if you read it and like it, I'd be incredibly grateful if you would review it on Facebook, your blog or Goodreads, or mention it on Twitter.

Here's what novelist and historian Alison Weir has to say about The Chase:

'This is a haunting book, skilfully written and tantalisingly unravelled. Lorna Fergusson weaves a vivid but dark tale set in the beautiful Dordogne, where past and present fuse in a page-turning mystery. I could go back to this again and again.'

Now, you know what they say about buses coming along all at once? Well, I have another announcement to make today, which I've been longing to make public for a while. My unpublished children's book, Hinterland, has reached the longlist of eight for Macmillan publishing's Write Now Prize! This is a competition run in conjunction with independent bookshops - so do visit your local bookshop and if there's a chance to do so please vote for me! I'd love to make it to the shortlist of four! I'll be blogging more about this too in the coming weeks but now feel the need to lie down in a darkened room with a bottle of smelling salts to hand - so much excitement!

Next week I'll be attending the London Book Fair, so will be blogging about that. I also have a backlog of posts to write about the Oxford Literary Festival. I'll be interviewing lovely writers Lynn Shepherd, author of A Treacherous Likeness, Tom-All-Alone's and Murder at Mansfield Park, plus Teri Terry whose novel Fractured comes out next week and is the sequel to Slated, her YA dystopian thriller, which I loved.

Now that my spring series of workshops are over, next up are my day courses at Trinity College Oxford: on May 18th How to Plot and Pace your Novel, and on May 19th Perfect Pitch: How to Craft your Submission. Cross to the Fictionfire site for more information and how to book.

Tonight the man and I will be cracking open a bottle of bubbly!

Four key lessons about writing, editing, publishing and marketing

Trinity College Oxford

Last month I ran four Fictionfire courses here in Oxford, designed to guide writers through all the stages of producing a book, from sourcing first ideas through to marketing. These courses were ambitious in their scope and intense to say the least but all those who attended came away feeling they'd learned a great deal and I learned - or at least reinforced my awareness of - some lessons myself, which I want to share with you.

1   Write the thing! It's easy to get carried away by the notion of selling books and making millions (hollow laugh) but you need to create the story first. This will involve hard graft and commitment - no way round it. You also need to be open to learning and honing your writing skills. Remember, writing is the apprenticeship that never ends.

Oxford's Radcliffe Square, looking stunning on a May morning

2   Once it's written, you have to make it the very best it can be. That first draft is just the start: you must find the self-discipline and dedication to revise it, over and over, bringing in editorial help if need be. If you want to be proud of your work, you need to think like a professional. That means being able to take criticism and suggestions. It means cutting your beloved prose so that the shape of your story can shine through. It means checking every apostrophe. It means going an extra mile. And then another.

3   Don't shut the door to any publishing options. If you're afraid of the digital world, don't be. But don't allow yourself to be herded into the e-publishing corral if you feel it's not the right place for you. Exciting developments have taken place in the past couple of years and they've happened at a dizzying pace. This is wonderful. But it's not for everybody, this e-publishing, self-publishing business. If you're a fan of digital, don't blind yourself to what traditional publishing may still be able to offer you. The key word is options: there are more possibilities open to you than ever before. You choose what's right for you.

4   It's never too early to think about how to market your book. Whether you've chosen traditional publishing or self-publishing, you need to start making contacts and building relationships not just with potential customers but with bloggers, reviewers, fellow writers, reading groups - people who can put the word out about your book. You need also to have a clear sense of what your book is, what it offers the reader and who that reader might be. Think about genre and readership. Think about comparable books/authors. I, for instance, will market The Chase when I republish it, as 'Daphne du Maurier meets Joanne Harris', because it contains mystery and sensory richness, it's set in rural France, it's about people haunted by the past and it's steeped in a sense of place.

Guest speaker Ali Luke

I'd like to thank all the wonderful course attendees for their enthusiasm and stamina! I've loved hearing about the 'Aha!' moments of realisation they experienced and one person has declared that the courses took her 'from desperation to determination'. I also want to give wholehearted thanks to the inspirational Ali Luke of Aliventures and Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn. Their presentations during the second week were fantastic: so well-illustrated, informative, encouraging and exciting!

Guest speaker Joanna Penn

It's summer now (another hollow laugh), so I'm hoping to get down to some of my own writing, making progress with my new novel. I will be running more Focus Workshops at the end of the summer and will post details of these as soon as they are organised. If you're interested in my courses or workshops, please contact me at info@fictionfire.co.uk  - and let me know if there are any particular topics you'd like me to cover. You can also find details of my manuscript appraisal, editing and mentoring services on my website, www.fictionfire.co.uk.

My next teaching gig will be at the Winchester Writers' Conference: I'll be running a Masters' Course, Making Memorable Scenes, on 22nd June and giving a talk on writing Cracking Openings on 23rd June, followed by a day-long workshop on dialogue on 28th June. I may well see you there!

Why Every Self-Publishing Author Needs an Editor - Ali Luke of Aliventures Guest-posts

Why Every Self-Publishing Author Needs an Editor

Over the past couple of years, self-publishing (often called “indie publishing”) has finally become a legitimate option for novelists. With big time authors like Jackie Collins turning to self-publishing – plus previously-unknowns like Amanda Hocking and John Locke becoming hugely successful – you may be making plans to self-publish your own novel.

Inspired by Joanna Penn’s experiences with indie-publishing, in 2011, I brought out my first novel, Lycopolis, as an ebook; I’ve just released it as a print-on-demand paperback too. One critical part of my plan was to get the book professionally edited. (By Lorna, who did a fantastic job; you can find her editing services on her Fictionfire site.)

Here’s why you need an editor if you’re going to self-publish.

You Want Your Novel to Be as Good as Possible

In the fast-paced world of ebooks, print-on-demand, blogs and social media, it might well feel like you’re already behind. Maybe you’ve watched, a little enviously, as other authors have pumped out book after book and found success.

However tempting it is, don’t decide that your manuscript is “good enough” and put it online during a free weekend. You want your novel to be as good as it can possibly be, before you launch it to the world. Yes, it’s relatively easy to update an ebook or print-on-demand book – but you really want those first few readers to love your book. (That way, they’ll write reviews, tell their friends, and help you get the marketing ball rolling.)

I know that Lycopolis wouldn’t be receiving nearly such a good reception without Lorna’s hard work. She suggested cutting the manuscript considerably; in the end, I cut it down from 135,000 words to 85,000. “Fast paced” has come up in a lot of reviews and comments, and I know that’s thanks to her advice – the novel wouldn’t be receiving nearly such good feedback if it had stayed at its original bloated length.

Your Readers Expect High Standards

When you buy a traditionally-published novel, you expect certain standards. If the latest Joanne Harris or Alexander McCall Smith book was full of typos and mistakes, you’d be justifiably annoyed. It’s hard to read through misspelt words, missing quotation marks, or characters whose names change mid-way ... these sorts of slips jolt you out of the story.

As an independent author, you’re in charge of both the writing and the publishing. If you do your job well, many of the readers who buy your book may not even realise it’s been independently published – so don’t expect them to cut you any slack.

I’ve read lots of great self-published novels. I’ve also read a few that could’ve been great, but that had distracting mistakes (from stylistic slips to misspellings). I know how hard it is to get everything right on your own – which is why it makes so much sense to hire an editor.

Beta-Readers (Generally) Aren’t Professionals

You might worry that the investment in editing isn’t going to be worth it: after all, can’t you just get a few friends to look over your manuscript? In the indie publishing world, you’ll often hear authors talk about their “beta-readers”. These people play a role a little like beta-testers in the software industry, checking out a pre-release version of a novel for any problems and offering feedback.

Beta-readers do a fantastic job, and I’ve had hugely valuable feedback from mine (two writing groups). They can usually help you spot any major problems, like plot holes, or inconsistent characterisation and style. On a micro level, eagle-eyed beta readers may well pick up on typos, spelling mistakes, and factual errors.

However ... beta-readers aren’t generally professional authors or editors. It would be unreasonable of you to expect them to spend the same amount of time on your novel as a paid editor would. You may well be showing your novel to them piecemeal, if you belong to a writers’ group, making it hard for them to assess overall issues like structure and pace. While their feedback is very valuable during the drafting process, it doesn’t replace the need for a keen editorial eye once you reach your almost-final draft.

Whatever stage you’re at with your work-in-progress, think about how you might invest in editing. If you can’t afford to pay to have the whole of your magnum opus edited, you could get the first three chapters critiqued. (Even if you don’t decide to go down the self-publishing route, professional editing could make the difference between a polite “no thanks” from an agent and a request for your full manuscript.)

Having my novel edited gave me the confidence to publish it, knowing it was as good as it could be. I’m thrilled now to be getting reviews that make it really clear to me just how valuable that editing was.

Ali Luke is currently on a virtual book tour for her novel Lycopolis, a fast-paced supernatural thriller centred on a group of online role-players who summon a demon into their game ... and into the world. Described by readers as "a fast and furious, addictive piece of escapism" and "absolutely gripping", Lycopolis is available in print and ebook form. Find out more at www.lycopolis.co.uk.

Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/Lycopolis-ebook/dp/B0068R6GAC

Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lycopolis-ebook/dp/B0068R6GAC

Do you want to hear Ali speak in person?

I'm delighted that Ali will be joining me, along with Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn, for two information-packed day courses I'm running at Trinity College, Oxford next month. The first is Publish It! on the 26th May - we'll be helping you to set and achieve your publishing goals: do you want to pursue a traditional route to publication or do you want to publish independently? There's never been a more exciting time for writers, with the freedom to choose from a variety of avenues to publication, but this variety can seem overwhelming. I'll be talking about mainstream publishing and Joanna and Ali, as successful independent publishers, will share their personal experiences and the lessons they've learned along the way. We'll  give you a wealth of  practical advice to help you make the right choice for you and to maximise your chances of success. 

On 27th May, the course is titled Market It!: we'll be sharing advice and information about how to publicise your work, whether you've opted for the traditional or independent route. We'll explore all the online and offline opportunities open to you to connect with readers and spread the word. It doesn't matter how wonderful your book is, if no one knows it exists it's going to languish in obscurity. We'll show you how to bring it out into the light.

Trinity College, Oxford

Of course, you can neither publish nor publicise unless you have a book written and in the best, most polished state for bringing to a readership, so during the weekend of 19th and 20th May, I'll be running Write It! and Edit It! which will teach you how to construct your novel and then revise it. Full details of these courses, the speakers and the venue can be found on my website here.

Discounts are available if you book more than one course.

Don't leave it too late to book! Booking for Write It! and Edit It! will close Thursday 17th May and for Publish It! and Market It! on Thursday 24th May. If you have any questions do please contact me at info@fictionfire.co.uk or call 07827 455723. I do hope you can join us!

London Book Fair and the launch of The Alliance of Independent Authors

The publishing industry year is punctuated by various beanfeasts and bonanzas, including the London Book Fair. As a writer, I've always felt that it wouldn't be appropriate or useful to attend, as the Fair is all about wheeling and dealing amongst publishing folks and agents. Strange, though, isn't it, that writers, who produce the material these deals will be based on, feel like interlopers, when it's the products of their imagination and commitment that provide the raw material for the deals?

This, though, is an industry engaged in looking at the future, with a rabbit-caught-in-headlights expression. It's trying to adjust to the speed of change: digital proliferation, digital rights management, the power of Amazon, the influence of Google ...

For writers, there has been change too. In some ways, disastrous change, in that we've seen publishers become more and more risk-averse, more and more governed by sales figures, more and more in thrall to the power of the supermarkets. Writers have been dropped because sales figures are not good enough. Writers are not taken on because the publishing house can't afford to take a punt on them. Writers are dashing their skulls against the barriers of the industry or sitting at home counting their proliferating grey hairs.

Orna Ross

Or are they? The times they are a'changing and no mistake. Reader, I went to the London Book Fair this year, for the very first time. And I had a blast. The trigger for my visit was the official launch of The Alliance of Independent Authors. Now, that's an irony for a start, isn't it? Orna Ross, an award-winning novelist who has set up the Alliance, chose to do so at the heart of the Book Fair: we were in a room that looked down on the vast arena of publishers' stands, with the low buzz of it rising up to us as we celebrated the power of independence and freedom for us, as writers, to bring our words to the public in the manner of our choosing.

Joanna Penn

Orna introduced two panel discussions. The first was chaired by Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn: industry professionals set out their stalls, trying to woo us with the services they can offer. There was a pretty hyped transatlantic tone to this - the verbal equivalent of punching the air. Tom Kephart of Amazon's CreateSpace advised writers to include as much effective metadata in the descriptions of their books as possible, to help with visibility (or that clumsy word 'discoverability'). Teresa Pereira of print-on-demand service Blurb UK stressed that writers often want print versions as well as electronic versions of their books available. She referred to the recent biography of Apple's Steve Jobs and how readers wanted the portability of the e-version but the production values of the hardback too. Michael Tamblyn of Kobo (which supplies its e-readers to WH Smith's), told us that 7-10% of the books they now deliver are self-published. He said they were looking at making it possible for authors to comment on their own books - having marginal notes, for instance, explaining what they were thinking when they wrote a particular paragraph. Hmn. As if writing the bleedin' thing isn't enough, we now have to analyse our meaning and motivation - when probably all we were doing was thinking of when we could justifiably stop for a coffee and a Kit-Kat!

Linda Gillard

A panel discussion of authors, chaired by Sam Missingham of The Bookseller, followed. This featured Scottish writer John Logan, who self-published after far too many years of 'rave rejections', along with Dan Holloway from Oxford, who ploughs a highly-individualistic furrow with his writing, enjoying experimentation, interaction and the 'freedom to fail'. Joni Rodgers, a vibrant Texan, has experienced both traditional publishing and independent publishing. She was amazingly confident, an absolute hoot. She sees the New York publishing industry as being obsessed with celebrity and says the hallmark of self-publishing will be when it becomes 'the high ground of creative risk-takers'. Then there was our own Linda Gillard (I've just featured her on Literascribe): she's making a satisfying living from self-publishing after being dropped as a mid-list author by her traditional publisher. She reinforced the message that indie publishing is ideal if you don't write in a particular genre, if you want to tackle different types of novel. There was a fascinating discussion of pricing strategies and how authors can experiment with different price-points to gain the best returns. Sam Missingham pointed out the irony that people will happily pay £2.50 for a greetings card yet balk at paying that for an entire e-book. Linda reminded us that the royalty rate in traditional publishing is poor.

In the question and answer session afterwards, the panel members were asked about reviews. Linda feels book reviews don't really sell books anyway. Alison Baverstock, course leader for the Master's in Publishing at Kingston University, highlighted that respected book-bloggers can have a huge influence and Amazon's Tom Kephart stressed the importance of good customer reviews. It was agreed that writers have always had to do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of promotion, whether traditionally published or not. The tricky thing, as Joni reminded us, is protecting writing time and resisting the temptation to 'pull the trigger' prematurely when putting work out there.

Some writers have of course made the news by generating enormous income as indie writers and then doing deals with traditional publishers. (You may remember my interviews with Mark Edwards and Louise Voss last year - they e-published their thrillers Catch your Death and Killing Cupid before landing a contract with HarperCollins.) Linda and Joni both want nothing further to do with traditional publishing, and you often hear the question these days - what can publishers offer us that we can't do for ourselves? However, I do think that writers and publishers don't need to hide behind opposing ramparts, firing off pot-shots at one another. We should all be working together to advocate reading and bookselling. Orna says that the Alliance is all about 'collaboration, connection, contact' and that writing books is 'like football. You've got the Premier League - that doesn't stop you kicking a ball about the garden.' Historically, there's been a lot of snootiness with regard to self-publishing and God knows, there's a lot of dross out there and a lot of dross being encouraged by ease of access to publishing services. But there's a lot of great material out there too, material denied a platform because of market/industry dictats and limitations. I have had the experience of traditional publishing with a highly-respected publisher (Bloomsbury) with whom I was proud to be associated. The harsh reality is that any writer's time in the sun is limited because publishers and booksellers produce and display work briefly and then move on. Self-publishing allows you to take advantage of the 'long tail' of possible sales. It gives you freedom, it does away with the agony of waiting for responses, it gives you control over your income. Traditional publishing still gives you validation and kudos and it gives you access to bookshops, and foreign rights deals you might not be able to garner for yourself. Linda finds self-publishing is 'a way of making friends', Dan sees it as a way of being 'true', Joni talks of 'artistic freedom'. But it doesn't have to be a case of either/or. Orna wants writers to be seen as 'partners' in publishing, not as 'a resource to be mined'. If you buy a hybrid car, you can choose to power it with electricity or petrol. What's truly truly exciting for writers now is that we can choose a hybrid career, publishing independently or traditionally as it suits us. As it suits us. Suits me!

If you want to see and hear more about the launch of ALLIA, here's the link to Joanna Penn's video of interviews with those attending.

 Here is the link to a fascinating and lively interview she and Orna took part in on Radio Litopia - and if you want to find out more about the Alliance and how to join, just click on the button in the sidebar of this blog.

Remember, if you're a writer just starting out, you've finished your book and want to edit it or you're ready to take your book to the market, my upcoming Fictionfire courses, two of which I'm running with Joanna Penn, will offer you practical advice and inspiration.

Write It! will cover all the elements of composing your story, from finding ideas to finishing your first draft.

Edit It! will teach you crucial techniques for polishing and presenting your work effectively.

Joanna Penn of TheCreativePenn.com and Ali Luke of Aliventures.com will join me for Publish It!, where you'll learn to set and achieve your publishing goals, and Market It!, where we'll show you all the exciting online and offline opportunities for you to publicise and sell your work.

Trinity College

Full details of these courses are on the Course Dates and Details page of my website: www.fictionfire.co.uk and there are discounts if you wish to book more than one course. The courses run on 19th, 20th, 26th and 27th May at Trinity College Oxford - so don't leave it too long to make your booking!

Linda Gillard: Hearts and Crafts and Independence

I've just finished Emotional Geology, the third of Linda Gillard's novels I've read and enjoyed - the others being House of Silence and Untying the Knot. Linda has recently been setting us a fine example as a mid-list novelist who, having been dropped by her publisher, has proved that it's perfectly possible to be a successful indie writer and publisher. Her original publisher was worried when she wanted to experiment with genre: this is a very common problem with publishers who want writers to 'brand' themselves in a limited way. So, if you write thrillers you can't write rom-coms. If you have too many genre-elements in your novel, the bookseller 'won't know where to put you on the shelves' - this was said to me once when a publisher who 'loved' my writing wouldn't buy my book unless I chose to focus on one of the elements she perceived in my story and one only, and revise the book accordingly. I refused to fillet my book in that way. I sold my novel later, all the same.

This attitude is not only galling to writers, but patronising towards readers, as if the poor dears can't cope with too many elements at once. Readers, actually, are often bored out of their minds by the same-old same-old on the tables in bookshops. Readers want to be startled, refreshed, amazed, enraptured. Readers want writers they've fallen in love with to write books which have the capacity to take them by surprise. They want to be gripped: they don't want a rushed pot-boiler written to order, following the same jaded recipe as the previous three, ten or twenty books that novelist has written.

This is not to say that writers can't happily plough the same furrow all their writing career: what this is about is giving writers the freedom to veer off that course if they choose. Linda Gillard has achieved this freedom: her next story will be a supernatural story, because that's what she feels like producing. She's already decided to pull it from submission to traditional publishers. She has a loyal fanbase of readers who will follow her because they like her writing, no matter which nominal genre it seems to fall into.

So what have I enjoyed in Linda's writing? Heart, first of all. She has a warm and vibrant interest in what makes men and women tick. Her heroines are challenged by being outcast or ill, by being middle-aged in a youth-dominated culture. They are highly individual, creative and frequently troubled. They are scarred by memory. They fear but they also risk. They have children, grown up, with whom they conduct a loving war of the generations. They love the colours and tactile joys of textiles: they express imagination and feeling through shape and texture, finding creativity soothing and affirming when life knocks them off their feet. They commune with nature, are uplifted and healed by it in a way that any Romantic poet would relate to. They have men: and I mean it, dear reader - they have men. Linda's heroines are full of passion and longing, yet they fear to trust, because the men who awake that burning lust in them are imperfect. Her men are sexy, they talk a lot, they are strong and weak, they carry baggage from the past and they don't always handle that baggage - or the baggage they fancy - all that well.

Linda writes about imperfection: her characters are always human and frequently haunted (in Untying the Knot literally so). Her writing veers from high comedy to pathos to tragedy and back again. Her stories are sustained by the beauty of the descriptions of the landscapes and by the vigour of the sparky dialogue. She is popular because women, grown-up women, are her focus - and grown-up women are looking for grown-up books which will engage them and satisfy them. Commentators on Facebook even weigh up which of her heroes, her imperfect yet chivalrous heroes, is their favourite.

Calum for me, by the way ...

So far ...

Linda's website(with gorgeous photographs) is here.

If you're a writer and you're considering going indie, The Alliance of Independent Authors is officially launching at the London Book Fair on Wednesday 18th April (check the link button on the sidebar of this blog). I'm going to be there because I'm going to republish my previously traditionally-published novel The Chase in the summer as an ebook and I'm very excited about taking control of my own publishing destiny. Watch this space!

If you want to write and sell your own work, you might also be interested in these upcoming day courses: I'd love it if you could join us!

Do you want to tell a tale? Unlock your writing potential at my upcoming series of four Fictionfire day courses at Trinity College, Oxford in May.


Write It! will cover all the elements of composing your story, from finding ideas to finishing your first draft.


Edit It! will teach you crucial techniques for polishing and presenting your work effectively.

Trinity College

Joanna Penn of TheCreativePenn.com and Ali Luke of Aliventures.com will join me for Publish It!, where you'll learn to set and achieve your publishing goals, and Market It!, where we'll show you all the exciting online and offline opportunities for you to publicise your work.

Full details of these courses are on the Course Dates and Details page of my website: www.fictionfire.co.uk and there are discounts if you wish to book more than one course!