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!

Social Media and Authors: Participation and Presence

The importance of social media for writers continues to be a hot topic and is one of the aspects we'll discuss in How to Publish and Market your Book, the day course I'll be running with Ali Luke at Trinity College, Oxford on 10th May (see the Fictionfire website for more details - there's an early bird discount price until March 16th). Here's the article I wrote for Writers in Oxford last autumn after attending a fascinating discussion where the speakers were Simon Rosenheim of Imago, and Dan Holloway, who is such a superb spokesman for indie publishing.

ARE YOU TWITTERPATED? SOCIAL MEDIA FOR AUTHORS

Dan Holloway at last year's London Book Fair

‘They pay you, they forget about you and about five years later return your rights to you,’ says Simon Rosenheim of Imago, a publishing solutions company, talking about the traditional model of publishing. Cue battle-weary grins from assembled writers in an upstairs room of St Aldate’s Tavern on October 2^nd. Simon describes the old throw-money-at-it-and-see-if-it-will-stick approach to marketing before he and creative polymath, poet, publisher and performer Dan Holloway show us the benefits of using social media to create our online presence. This, as Simon says, leads to publicity which is both free and targeted - and therefore more efficient.

This is great news – and I think we all know it. The problem for us as writers, though, is how to target it. Oh, and the effort of it all! Simon (who, ironically, is on neither Facebook nor Twitter) discusses how you need to be active and engaged, but able to recognise when you don’t want to devote any more time to it. At that point you can walk away – or hand the management of your social media presence to a professional. He reviews the unfathomable mysteries of Google algorithms, shape-shifting, unpindownable things that they are. I’m unsettled to hear that the keyword-selection technique no longer guarantees Google will pay much attention to you. Take that, you SEO spammers in my inbox!

Dan describes how he wrote a novel on Facebook and how his following helped him to sell many copies in Blackwell’s. His multifarious activities are proof that you can create a significance presence through social media. He demonstrates Twitter in action, projecting his Twitter-stream onto a screen, telling us to ‘think of Twitter as a big party and what you have to do is find your group of people’. (Some parties, though, are populated with crashing bores or look-at-me poseurs. So it can be with Twitter.)

One member of the audience spots that his Tweets probably amount to 300,000 words - couldn’t he have been writing books instead? Dan stresses how prolific he is in other areas and claims only to spend half an hour a day on Twitter. If that’s the case, I’m going to have a private chat with him: I love both Facebook and Twitter, but the latter is the biggest time-suck known to man.

The secret is management. Dan shows us hashtags and lists as ways of managing the endless stream of tweets. He claims that ‘there’s something wonderfully serendipitous about Twitter’. That’s so true: through social media you hear about events and make friends and connections in a randomly exciting way. It builds organically. Through Facebook and Twitter, I’ve found digital greetings often lead to personal meetings. Advice is sought and given, opinions shared, heads shaken in despair, congratulations offered. As Dan says, on social media ‘the real and the digital meet’. Whether you’re independently or traditionally published, you can’t allow it to rule your life – but you shouldn’t rule it out of your life, not if you’re an author in search of a readership. When you do a deal with a publisher, they’ll be looking for you to set up your Twitter-list anyway …

Now, I’m off to investigate the possibilities of Pinterest …

Links:

Lorna Fergusson is socially present at www.facebook.com/LornaFergussonAuthor and www.facebook.com/pages/Fictionfire-Inspiration-for-Writers and @LornaFergusson on Twitter.

Dan Holloway is on Twitter at @agnieszkasshoes and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/DanHollowayWriter . He has blogged about social media and community building at http://danholloway.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/community-building-for-writers/ 

His latest book is Self-publish with Integrity: Define Success in your own Terms and then Achieve It http://www.amazon.co.uk/Self-publish-Integrity-Define-Success-Achieve-ebook/dp/B00HAHFCXQ/

Historical Novel Society Conference 2012 Part 1

The Historical Novel Society's much-anticipated conference took place at the University of Westminster on Regent Street, London, last weekend - here's the first of my reports, because I can't possibly fit it all into one! Ever since I joined the Society I've found it a warm and welcoming community of writers and readers, so the conference was a great opportunity to meet people I'd met only through Facebook before and to hear some big-name writers of historical fiction in discussion about the genre, what it means to them, where they think it's going.

Reception desk for HNS 

Now, during the speeches, panel-sessions and chats, which writer's name came up most often, do you think? Was it Bernard Cornwell (I wasn't at the Friday reception or Saturday evening banquet, so missed hearing the great man himself)? Was it Philippa Gregory? Patrick O'Brien? Conn Iggulden?

Nope. It was Jean Plaidy. I lost count of the times writers said they'd first fallen in love with HF through reading Jean Plaidy when they were young. As did I, for that matter. They also loved Anya Seton, Georgette Heyer, Henry Treece and Rosemary Sutcliff. Oh, yes. They'd learned about Tudor monarchs, wars and passions, Roman legions and medieval power-struggles, by being drawn into the stories of the figures from history which these writers so powerfully re-imagined.

Now, HF has moved on, of course. All genres have their waxings and their wanings, all have to evolve or die. History is only what we say it was. If we watch a historical film made in the Forties or the Seventies, Tudor gowns may be worn by the actresses but the flick of eye-liner, the carefully-welded curls or the suspiciously-supportive undergarments will tell us which era is currently doing the re-imagining.

Throughout the weekend, there was celebration of the current strength of the genre in the market, both here in Britain and in America and Canada - but there was also debate about fashions within the industry in terms of 'hot' eras and tired cover-treatments.

Here, then, is the first instalment of my summary of Saturday's conference speakers and sessions: 

Soldiers need cuppas too!

After we were welcomed by Richard Lee, who founded HNS back in 1997 (it now has 1000 members, which is great news), the first panel session What Sells HF? starred Matt Bates, Fiction Buyer for WH Smith Travel; Jade Chandler, commissioning editor for Sphere; author Diana Gabaldon; David Headley, who owns Goldsboro Books (see my last blogpost for my report on the History in the Court event there); Simon Taylor, editorial director at Transworld; and Susan Watt, publishing director at HarperCollins.

Simon Taylor reminded us that in the 1990s HF was a dead genre, before the panel moved on to discuss what attracts editors nowadays. Jade Chandler talked about 'that tingling feeling' you get when you read something good, but she linked that with a phrase we were to hear more than once during the weekend - 'high concept', which is, essentially, an easily-pitchable concept. We as writers struggle with the task of fitting the wonder and richness of our novel into the elevator pitch, the sizzle - not the steak, the concept. Most of us would agree that trying to boil our story down to a saleable pitch-sentence or two is the hardest, most frustrating thing in the world, but here it is - the editors and agents who may buy your work and who then have the task of selling it on to their sales/marketing bods, love to latch onto the 'concept'. In the discussion, concept, background, characters and voice were all cited as important when appealing to editors - and all of this was reiterated throughout the weekend. Now, these are matters over which the writer has some control - but there are other, unnerving issues which come into play. If you've written a novel set during the English Civil War, the editor may end up rejecting it because they already have three Civil War novels on their list. That's not your fault and there's nothing you can do about it. Simon Taylor, for instance, has enough Roman-set fiction on his list, thanks. David Headley also felt the Roman market is flagging and that certain historical periods are a hard sell, but repeated that 'if you've got a great character and great voice that is what will sell a book', no matter when it's set.

Doug Jackson - writes Roman thrillers and doesn't think the market is flagging!

Matt Bates of WH Smith Travel led the discussion towards the issue of cover-treatments. Lots of laughter and groaning followed as he divided the masculine and feminine sides of the market as shown on book-jackets. Male: bloke with sword. Or emblem. Or armour. Female: dress, worn by model with cut-off head. Everyone claimed they'd love to see more originality - but the truth is that cover-packages are carefully thought out and act as a powerful shortcut, telling the reader what to expect when they open the book. I was intrigued by the idea that in the future, especially with e-book covers, books will appear with various different jacket-treatments according to the divisions of the market the book can appeal to. Diana Gabaldon said that in the early days of her career when she was hand-selling books in shopping-malls, she'd give a different genre description of the book according to who approached her - a spotty youth would be told it was fantasy, a middle-aged man that it was military history and so on. She also broke from the 'I came to HF via Jean Plaidy' tradition by telling us she'd been drawn to it by seeing an old episode of Doctor Who, where his assistant wore a kilt and was a bit of all right - so Jamie (as played by Fraser Hines, remember him?) led to novels set in 18th century Scotland!

Right - I'm off now to discuss Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber with my son, who's doing his A levels, so I'll post more about the conference tomorrow.

Here are the links to the other reports I wrote about HNS 2012:

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

History in the Court 2012

History in the Court is a wonderful annual opportunity for lovers of historical fiction to meet one another and their favourite authors. It's run by David Headley, owner of Goldsboro Books in London. Last week I scooted up to the big smoke to attend for the second time. The bookshop is quite small, so people spill out into the street, with chatter and laughter broken only by the occasional sound of a wine-glass breaking...

It was lovely to meet again two writers I met last year: first, Douglas Jackson, who writes thrillers set in ancient Rome under his own name, and a different strand of thrillers, the most recent of which is The Isis Covenant, under the name James Douglas. Like so many writers, he works to a gruelling production schedule but clearly loves what he does - we had a good chat about how useful Google satellite is when researching locations.

I also met Karen Maitland, one of my favourite historical fiction writers, again. I've read all of her books and strongly recommend them - her latest, set in Iceland and Portugal, is The Falcons of Fire and Ice. We discussed Icelandic volcanoes and medieval health remedies!

It was great also to see the lovely Jenny Barden, who's caught up in the whirlwind of promoting her book, Mistress of the Sea (see my previous blogpost here about the launch) - and in organising the Historical Novel Society's Conference, which starts tomorrow!

I had hoped to meet Lynn Shepherd at last, the author of the brilliant Tom-All-Alone's - but one of the penalties of milling about in the street in the semi-dark is that it's very difficult to know who's there! Some writers wore badges, but you feel uncomfortable barging up to someone and staring fiercely at their pectoral region ...

I was also remiss on the photography front (blame the wine) - so I only have one of Karen Maitland. Here's the link to my report on last year's History in the Court, which is more heavily illustrated!

On Saturday, I'm off to the Historical Novel Society Conference, and I'm really looking forward to it. There are fascinating panel discussions and talks lined up, pitch meetings and the chance to socialise with authors and readers. Three of my Fictionfire clients will be there, so I'm looking forward to catching up with them.

Two Saturdays after that (13th October), I'll be running my writing workshop I Need a Hero, about how to create memorable heroes and heroines in your fiction - full details of that and the other workshops in the autumn/winter series are on my website here - they include setting up your social platform, writing short stories, and creating villains with relish!

www.fictionfire.co.uk

Jenny Barden: Mistress of the Sea Book Launch

Jenny Barden and her book, with its beautiful cover

Two weeks ago I went to Daunt's very lovely bookshop on Marylebone High Street to attend the launch of Jenny Barden's Tudor adventure, Mistress of the Sea. It was a great evening: Jenny made a speech, and excerpts of the novel were given dramatised readings by various young people dotted around the shop. Given that Daunt's has a beautiful wooden gallery running round the main shop-floor, it was easy to relate this to the idea of a 16th century theatre or the decks of a ship. Mind you, it did startle the clientele when the first stentorian voice belted out!

The book itself is the result of a long process, as books are: of ideas gelling, of strands coming together, of research and aha! moments, of doubts and of faith. Jenny paid tribute to friends and writing colleagues who've helped see her through, including the Verulam Writers' Circle, the new writers' scheme of the Romantic Novelists' Association, and the Historical Novel Society. Incredibly, she's been balancing preparing for this launch with organising the HNS Conference in London at the end of this month - I don't know how she manages it!

Writers are often full of self-doubt and success may seem an ever-receding goal, but attending book events like these reminds us that it can happen, it can come true. What we all need is staying-power. Plus passion. Plus friends and support. For me, it was a delight to meet Jenny and also to meet Emma Darwin at last - I'd got to know them through blogs, Twitter and Facebook, and this is how these networks function these days. You make contact, share ideas and experience, shore each other up, tell each other jokes and snippets of lit-gossip and trade-satire - and often you haven't even met that person, so it's such a pleasure when events such as these and the upcoming HNS Conference give you the chance to do so.

I'm looking forward to reading Mistress of the Sea: adventure on the high seas and in the New World at the time of Francis Drake, with romance and rebelliousness mixed in. What's not to like? If you want to find out more about Jenny, her website is http://www.jennybarden.co.uk/ . She's written a fascinating post about the genesis and development of the story at http://www.royaltyfreefictionary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/mistress-of-sea-by-jenny-barden.html

The Historical Novel Society is here  and is well worth joining, but the Conference is now, I believe, fully booked!

Jenny is in Plymouth today, giving a talk: 'Following Drake's first adventure - but suppose a woman had been there?' Great stuff!

Jenny is on Twitter: @jennywilldoit and I'm @LornaFergusson.

In October and November I'll be running workshops on creating heroes and villains, as part of my Fictionfire autumn and winter programme. I Need a Hero is on October 13th and Villains with Relish is on November 10th - you can find full details on the Fictionfire website: www.fictionfire.co.uk/page26.htm

Inheritance of Time: Alison Weir's book launch at the Tower of London

Regular readers will know how keen I am on history and historical fiction, so I was delighted when Alison Weir invited me to the launch of her new book, A Dangerous Inheritance, at the Tower of London on Wednesday evening. For many years, Alison has been famous for her numerous books on history, covering subjects from Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry VII's wives. A few years ago, she started writing historical fiction too, her first novel, Innocent Traitor, being about the nine days' queen, Lady Jane Grey. Her close knowledge of the period has of course lent all her novels authority, plus readers are always keen on the 'what might have happened' possibilities of history. Her latest has two central characters: Katherine Grey, imprisoned in the Tower like her ill-fated sister Jane, and Kate Plantagenet, the illegitimate daughter of Richard III, who has set herself the task of finding out what happened to the Princes in the Tower, seeking to clear her father's name of the crime of murdering them. The two time periods and the supernatural hints put me in mind of Barbara Erskine.

As in her other novels and in much of popular historical fiction, Alison explores the position of women in times of threat and oppression: women who are married off or discarded at will, women who are expected to breed or not breed as the politics of the time demands, women who are expected to be passive even when treated cruelly and unjustly, women who are victims of dynastic struggle.

The launch was held in a gorgeous room in the New Armouries building of the Tower and it was extremely well attended: Alison clearly has legions of loyal fans. She talked fascinatingly about the research she's done for the novel and of her view of the two main characters, interspersing this with readings. Kate Plantagenet is the more obscure, less-documented character. The benefit of this is that Alison has had more scope to imagine what she was like and what actions she might have taken, whereas Katherine Grey's life is much more fully recorded. Clearly Alison sympathises with both, but with perhaps a slight note of impatience towards Katherine Grey, who probably wasn't the brightest of bunnies compared with her formidably learned sister. What does create enormous sympathy, though, is how young these girls were when dreadful events overtook them. This reminded me of the unfortunate Katherine Howard, Henry VIII's fifth wife, whose air-headedness brought her to the block. In another era, she'd have just been yet another giggling girl, with her fads and fancies and promiscuity, and eventually she'd have grown up and settled down - only she wasn't given the chance.

Alison went on to talk about writing historical fiction in general and engaged in a lively question and answer session with her audience. She discussed the perennial problem of diction in historical fiction - the tension between two many prithees and a jarringly modern tone, agreeing that it's impossible to please everyone with the language you choose. She talked of the joys of switching between history and fiction and how she's getting more used to using a 'dollop of imagination', while at the same time making sure it's an 'informed imagination'. She told us how her agent said at one point 'You've got to come off the fence and stop being a historian and start being a novelist.' She never loses her love of research, the desire to find out, the desire to base her ideas on evidence. With regard to future topics for her history books, she said 'I don't count sheep at night, I count subjects I can write about!' Before signing books and chatting to fans, she declared 'It's lovely to be let out to do events' after the solitary writing process.

Afterwards, I took the opportunity to stroll around the Tower site. Scroll down to view some of the photos I took: I was particularly struck by how the views blended ancient and modern - a plane heading for Heathrow passing by the weathervanes on the White Tower, Tower Bridge in the background with the giant Olympic rings hanging from it, the very striking glass sculpture etched with the names of those who were beheaded on Tower Green, the sign inviting us to visit Torture at the Tower, the gleaming pyramid of the Shard seen beyond the half-timbered house where Guy Fawkes was questioned. Everything neat, manicured, signposted for tourists, and yet chilling. That tidy lawn saw executions. That tower saw imprisonment of despairing souls. That gate on the water let in those who would never depart. It's a fantastic tourist attraction - but we should all feel more than a delicious shiver at the thought of the past's dark deeds. The raven himself was hoarse that flapped down past me to land on the Information booth ...

Arch under the Bloody Tower

Traitor's Gate

Write, Edit, Publish and Market your Book in an Inspiring Oxford College Setting

Trinity College Gardens

As there's only one week to go before I close bookings for Write It! and Edit It!, I thought I'd take you on a little tour of Trinity College, the wonderful venue for my Fictionfire day courses. You can discover more historical details about Trinity on the college's own website and on my Course Venue and Directions page, but I prefer to devote this blogpost to entrancing you with photos taken when the weather was kinder than it has been for the past few weeks!

Clarendon Building and Bodleian Library

Jackson Building, Trinity

Trinity College is on Broad Street, just along from the world-famous Blackwell's Bookshop, where you can browse at lunchtime and after your Fictionfire course finishes. It's also very close to the Sheldonian Theatre and the Bodleian Library. Oxford is a wonderful place to stroll around. I've lived here for decades and even now some tiny architectural detail will suddenly announce itself or I'll feel that rush of delight and sense of privilege that I actually live here! Writers who attend my courses can come for the day or stay longer in Oxford in order to steep themselves in the city's unique atmosphere, and feel as if they've strayed into the pages of Brideshead Revisited or Northern Lights, or wandered onto the set of Lewis. In fact, last year, an episode of Lewis was actually being filmed at Trinity while I was running a course and one of my students inadvertently strayed across Kevin Whately's eyeline and was glared at!

Trinity Gardens

Oxford has always been a city of inspiration, partly because of the sense, somehow, that you're on a retreat. You enter college gates, cross a quadrangle or two, mount the stairs to a wood-panelled room ... and the world, the real everyday world, fades away. Oxford is still a place of complacency and exclusivity, it's true - but it's also a place where reading, thinking, staring into space, formulating ideas, refining words, designing arguments and structures are all valued. Oxford in fiction opens routes into other worlds, worlds of the imagination - whether you knock on a front door in Hobbiton or pass through a wardrobe into Narnia or tumble down a rabbit-hole into Wonderland.

The Sutro Room

Grinling Gibbons carving in Trinity Chapel

I chose the Sutro Room at Trinity because I felt it had a wonderfully serene yet inspiring quality. It's on the first floor, with views of the chapel and front quad, and beside an archway which leads to Trinity's renowned gardens. It's a room associated with literary figures such as Graham Greene, with some fascinating artwork, letters and literary editions on display, as you'll see if you join us.

So, let me tempt you! On 19th May my Write it! course is designed to encourage you to explore your motivation,  bring characters to life, write good dialogue, compose your plot and create atmosphere with your setting. Everything an aspiring novelist needs, from finding ideas to finishing that first draft.

Trinity Chapel

On 20th May Edit It! will cover how to revise and polish your work before getting it ready to submit to agents and publishers.

Publish It! on 26th May will help you choose whether to aim for traditional or independent publication. We'll see what traditional publishers can still offer to writers and how the the publication process works. We'll examine how you can publish your own work in e-book and print formats.

Market It! on the 27th will advise you how to create your author 'platform' and how best to build a loyal readership and promote your work effectively.

Trinity Dining Hall

For Publish It! and Market It! I'm delighted that Ali Luke of Aliventures and Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn will be joining me. They have a wealth of totally up-to-date knowledge of the fast-moving and exciting digital publishing world to share with you and both are dynamic, enthusiastic speakers. You can find out more about them on my website at Course Dates and Details.

Finally, here's a very important note: I will close bookings for Write It! and Edit It! on the 17th May and for Publish It! and Market It! on the 24th, so don't leave it too long! Cross over to the site, read through full details at Course Dates and Details and make your booking!

Let Oxford cast its spell of inspiration over you. Pass through the doorway to another world ...

Above the entrance to the Sutro Room

The setting was superb. (Liz C)


I very much enjoyed the Fictionfire day last Saturday, because it was the right balance for me of stimulating teaching, having a go at writing and meeting other people with their unique perspectives. (Sarah D.)


Thank you so much for a really informative day! Not a second was wasted and I learned heaps about plotting which let me see the shape of my own work more clearly. Also, I appreciated the relaxed atmosphere in the class - there really was no pressure. (E.G.)