This week is one of those crazy weeks where I am working on three projects. First, I have a short story to write for an anthology, this is a 15k love story and is set in New York and Cardiff. I can’t really say too much more about that other than it is part of an anthology for Indie love and it will be out in May, the cover release will be next month so I will tell you more about this project then.
The second is the edits on a previous short story I want to get those finished and submitted this week even though I do have a little longer. It is for the Books On The Beach 2022 anthology, I don’t have a set release date yet for this one, however, I expect it will be towards the end of July, I really loved this story, it came to me out of the blue and the one friend I have had read it says it deserves to be a full novel.
The final project underway this week is still Rosie, I struggled to get back into this one after setting it aside for so long so I don’t want to push it aside again. Instead I am doing half an hour each day keeping momentum going.
I am behind on where I wanted to be this year but I have also taken on a few extra anthology pieces which have inspired me and got my writing mojo back. I am hoping over the next few weeks I will get back on track.
The plus side is that I have a launch this week…
The book is released tomorrow so you can still pre-order here
I really liked my characters in this book and can’t wait to read the other stories in the book.
I will see you back here next week to share more of my writing journey.
This week I am writing mafia, sex, and violence! One of those things is new to me, yes the mafia part lol. I am in the process of finishing up a piece for an anthology. The problem with short stories is that as you create them, you find they take on a life of their own demanding they become a full fledged novel at the very least. So while the short story will be complete in it’s arc these characters will most likely be back at some point in the future.
To research this story I have to say google has been my friend and my enemy, do you know how many hours you can lose doing a google search for gang tattoos…
A few of the google search results that inspired my characters body art
I can’t show you all the images I saved for inspiration, you will learn about some of them at a later date, if the story makes it to a full book or more.
I also have harassed my friend Jakab for knowledge of his homeland, and I won’t lie his voice inspired my main character Cezar, I swear he sounds just like an 80’s Bond villain. When deciding to write a mafia story I was determined I didn’t want to do Italian Mafia or Russian Bratva, so instead I decided to go with Romanian.
Straight away I hit a snag as most Romanian gangs tended to be more street gangs without a larger infrastructure, however, I got around this by Cezar having being trained and having links to the Bratva. His life, upbringing and parentage are all things that will come into play if the story makes it to a full book or series.
The anthology is available to pre-order on Amazon and I will be back with more details about that next Wednesday!
The project numbers will change from week to week depending on where I am with that project however there is now a projects tab at the top listing each one and letting you see where in the process that project is and updated as there is something new to add.
Project Two
This is almost done and I hope to have it finished by the end of the week, it has been quite hard to write as the subject matter has meant that I have to get into the right frame of mind to write it and then get back out of that mindset after. The cause is worth the difficulties of writing it though and I look forward to seeing what the other authors involved have come up with.
Project Three
I am behind one this short story for my Patreon, it has been pushed to the back burner as I have no subscribers still, but it has been started and outlined. It is a ghost story with a witchy theme.
Project Four
I have not really touched my novel which has disappointed me as I had hoped to have it out for Leeds but now the Telford signing is more of realistic aim, I really love the idea behind this book and can’t wait to get back to work on it.
Project Five
This is a top secret charity project, I have now submitted the poem and I will reveal that I titled it Cleansed but there is nothing more I can add at this time we just have to wait now.
Project Six
This will be the February Patreon story, it may seem strange adding it in now but if I was on track I would be onto this project by now so for my own interest I want to be able to look back and see where I am in terms of my own personal goals as well as meeting other deadlines.
Project Seven
I am posting this here for the same reason as the one above. At the start of the year planned my year to get out a certain number of books within the next twelve months, at this point I had intended to be back working on the second part of the Queen of Ages Trilogy Reawakening but as I want this to be an honest representation to myself as well as you as to how my year and various projects work out then it is only right I keep track of where I am letting myself down. So fingers crossed over the next couple of weeks I start pulling closer to getting back on track.
Sorry you have missed a couple of weeks but to be honest nothing much happened writing wise. In my personal life my beautiful granddaughter was born but I shall post about that tomorrow. So, this week we are back at it with deadlines looming…
Project 0ne
This was the short story for a charity anthology I am going to rveal that it was titled Love Through A Lens but it is now pending acceptance so not much more I can tell you about that one for now, just keep fingers crossed.
Project Two
IThis is the second charity anthology project, I have my story outlined and am about half way through writing it, if you are on FB and head to the Shenanigans FB page then you can see the cover reveal and the other authors involved. I will share more on this project next week.
Project Three
I am behind one this short story for my Patreon, it has been puched to the back burner slightly as I have no subscribers on there at the minute anyway however I am hoping to be back up to date on this by the end of the month.
Project Four
Not, much done on The Role Of The Dice this month so far other than a little more outlining in my notebooks. I really want this out before the Leeds signing , it is going to be a push but fingers crossed I will manage it.
Project Five
This is a top secret charity project that I cannot really say much about other than it is writng a poem rather than a story and it has to be inspired by a picture provided. I have the inspiration and an idea of how I want the poem to go, I just need to sit down and get the ideas from my head onto the screen.
Hello and welcome to the revamped WIP Wednesday, I used to do this when I first started but somewhere along the way I got rather lost. So I am taking this back to basics and each week I will fill you in on the projects I am working on though of course the amount of detail you get will depend on how far along I am.
Project 0ne
This is a short story for a charity anthology, this is in the final stages of editing and is a holiday romance. I have to say I found it quite difficult, as you will all know love and romance are not my normal main plots in a story so it was challenging resisting the urge to slaughter everyone.
Project Two
Another short story for a charity anthology, this again is for a charity anthology and is quite taxing, it has a dark, twisted undercurrant and deals woth disturbing subjects but is more realism than my usual fantasy which is making me push myself in different ways. The base plot for the story was one I wrote for a different anthology which was never published and fits very well with the required subject for this anthology.
Project Three
Is yet another short story, this is the first story for my Patreon, normally I will only have two projects running at once, however, because the first two have run over from last year I am having to work hard these first few weeks. I will confess that at this minute I am still undecided if all the stories will be a the same genre or just in a similar vein. I was initially thinking of making this double up as eventually eing the second volume of ghost stories but it may be that I make is more of a general horror genre, I would like to tie in some of the stories with the month they appear in so we shall see.
Project Four
This is the novel I am working on currently The Role Of The Dice, I am really loving this story and will elaborate on it more next week once I have at least one less project to tell you about but for this week I will share a graphic for it…
Over the last couple of months while I have been suffering from lethargy in terms of posting I have been working away behind the scenes and I thought today I would take the chance to fill you in on some of what is going on in the background.
The first thing is I have signed up for a course on Exploring Copyright: History, Culture, Industry it is a free 4 week course, just 3 hours a week. you might wonder why I would take on doing extra study when I am already snowed under and I am not gaining a qualification from it but I am looking at it as a chance to gain knowledge which may be useful going forward. We all know in this Internet age that cyber-piracy is something many authors are coming up against, work plagiarised or republished on pirate sites where they are given away for free, and while some will argue that gaining readers this way is a counterbalance to the loss of earning on that book, for others it is a loss they cannot afford. We all write the copyright notice at the front of our books but how much of it do we understand, what actual rights we have and protections are offered by it. If you are interested you can find more details here.
The other thing I have been looking into is publishing options, it was brought up on FB a couple of weeks ago that there were other options for print on demand other than KDP and Createspace, so I took a little time to look into it. The most popular way is the use Createspace however I have found a suggestion that long term it may be best to use a combination of Createspace and Ingram Sparks, you can read the article I found helpful here. The trilogy I am working on at the minute will remain on Createspace as setting up the other requires money to invest in buying ISBN numbers but I have begun the process of getting ready for this for future series. When you buy the block of numbers you register them to an imprint name and I have decided to go with Raven’s Rest Press, I have set up an email, FB and Twitter to grab the name there, I will be adding the logo to my other books and I would not be averse to perhaps collaborating with other indie authors who want to publish under the name and help promote each others work. I am not going to go too much into things here as obviously I am still setting it all up but I will keep you up to date with my experiences. Right off to the day job now after all until the books start selling I have to fund the present as well as investing in my future.
When you get an idea for a story, when you feel inspired by the voices in your head to sit and write, your biggest challenge is getting your fingers to keep up with the words. You sit and hammer on the keyboard as fast as you can, hundreds if not thousands of words flowing from you at each sitting. Eventually you reach the end and then the real work starts.
I think it is fair to say right now I hate editing, I am more or less in the process of editing voices from one document to another because despite hitting a clear formatting button something is wrong with the file and it keeps resetting things I don’t want. To be fair this is working in my favour in the long run though as with each pass I am doing I am picking up on more silly errors. You know the type, the silly typos spell-check misses because nothing is spelt wrong you just intended to type on and ended up with no. But even this is not the hardest bit, because you know this is the necessary evil you have to go through to get that book out there.
The hardest part for most of us is the next stage.
You have your book, it looks all pretty, you have editing, double checked, banged your head against the wall, edited again, bought proof copies, spotted a couple of error you still missed and fixed them, then you hit the publish button and any confidence you had disappears.
You now have to sell your book, it sounds so simple, Twitter is full of people selling books but be honest how often have you every clicked on a link? You share to your Facebook page but unless you have already got a few books out there selling well most of the people seeing the posts are friends who either believe you should give them a copy for free or they want to support you but they are not really interested in buying or reading your books. Even when you do a give-away and people read it so few leave reviews that it makes it impossible to bump your books up the Amazon logistics chain to get it to a point where they get recommended.
Amazon are also now taking away the cheque option for payment, no I admit the idea of waiting until you have earned enough to receive a cheque was frustrating but more frustrating is trying to find a bank account here in the UK where you will not end up paying the bank more than you are receiving from Amazon. The cheapest one I have now found is going to cost me £2 for each overseas payment received which means I need to earn at least that each months from book sales before I cover the costs and that goes for each market. I don’t know if the decision to change this policy was due to people taking too long to earn enough to receive the cheque and it was messing up Amazon’s books or whether it is a way to reduce the number of people who decide to self publish but it does mean that instead of moving on to the next project the amount of time taken up doing marketing will have to increase.
Of course it is not all doom and gloom if you can just stick at it and increase the number of titles you have out there up for sale, and that is may aim for the next six months, life is going to get hectic and I might miss out on some of the summer sun by being sat at my desk but I want this enough to make those sacrifices.
Does the change to the way Amazon pays effect you? Any tips for marketing?
This is a bit of a non post in some ways, it won’t tell you really what I have been doing or what I am up to but hopefully it will allow you to see I do have a plan.
In fact I have several plans but since some of them involve winning the lottery, marrying a millionaire wrestler or selling film rights to me book or all three I will stick to the ones that might actually be achievable.
The first is along side Voices there will be two other books out this year, Dragons Mark and the first part of the Queen of Ages Trilogy, Ascension. I have decided that as I like to write in different genres it makes sense that I find some way to differentiate between them so the fantasy/Dark Fantasy books will come under the banner of my Keys to The Castle books, then once I write in other genres I shall come up with a name for those as well, the idea for this is as I build up the home-made swag I can have some which relates to the general genre as well as the specific books.
The swag thing is still a side line, something to go along side the books, an added extra as you will, one of the hardest things is proving to be not wanting to keep it all for me as I make things up lol if you want a quick peek you can look at the Etsy store here or via the website there is still not much actually up there yet but I do have more waiting to go up once I take some photos I might even create a link page here at a later date.
I have recorded the vlog today and I discuss a couple of things on there but I know now that if I want to make changes to my life in terms of a career from writing then I have to make it happen no one will do it for me.
I feel really positive right now and I feel like even though other people might not see a lot happening at the minute that the future is looking bright.
First let me say what a wonderful time I had , and highly recommend if you get the chance to attend one of the Hourglass events you should. In fact next October they are going to be in Peterborough, The Darker Side of Fiction event is looking for authors and bloggers to attend so you should certainly consider it, I hope to be there as an author but if not shall be there as a guest so we can meet for a coffee or something a little stronger in real life.Check out the Facebook page here
Now back to the weekend just gone, I have filmed the before and a clip of the ballroom but not much on the night, I was too busy enjoying myself but I shall intersperse a few pictures in this post. So let’s start with a selfie…
The camera on my phone is not brilliant for photos in low light as the flash is on the rear facing camera only but I do like the rather gothic feel it gives this photo.
First thing to discuss is the stress of getting ready in a limited time frame, rather like leaving your novel until a week before a deadline it means you have to cut corners and are not quite as prepared as you would like. Okay the shortcuts taken in getting ready may be seen quicker but they are at least fleeting, whereas the cracks in your work can pervade your whole writing career.
The first thing I realised after leaving the house was I felt incredibly overdressed, another reason the arrive the day before and stay at the hotel next year but stepping out of your comfort zone is a good things sometimes and I definitely went with the old maxim of if you do not feel confident fake it, and so upon arriving at the hotel we entered the foyer and moved towards other masked and gowned people.
No the one slight negative I would say is that most of the getting to know each other seemed to have been done during the day at the actual signing, the evening event is more social and although I still chatted to a few people and met some amazing authors and readers, you feel a outsider, like you have been invited to a party but you do not really know anyone and they all know each other, it also does not help that no one looks like their author profile picture in the evening, I certainly don’t look like mine…
And no the cleavage is not that impressive in real life it was just the camera angle and the dress. The thing is unless you are really confident in yourself these events can be daunting, there were women of every age and shape there but you cannot help but to compare yourself and your dress choice to others, I still felt fine until we had official photos taken, one of which I shall be posting on the kitchen door to keep me out of it for the next year lol but seriously by the next one I attend I intend to have the most glamorous before and after shots ever.
This is the one and I know you are all going to tell me how good I look because you are all far to lovely to be realistic but seriously there is far too much junk in that trunk.
You are also treated to a rare photo of the daughter which she will probably demand I remove so enjoy it while it lasts, though as she does not read the blog she might not notice if no one tells her.
But anyway back to lessons learnt, and the fact is I learnt more about myself than anything else, about which of my insecurities are holding me back and make me self concious, that I really want to be parter of this type of creative community and that I need to really focus and stop procrastinating to make it happen.
I am my own worst enemy!
There was of course entertainment and I did do a little video of them so you will see that on Friday, we failed to win anything in the raffle and left before the disco was really in full swing (I had been at work that day) but here is a little food porn to excite the taste buds, I did not take a picture of the starter because basically I was starving at that point but I did take photos of the main and dessert…
I realised that when the last book launch did not go off how I wanted it to that I have become disillusioned and allowed it to effect my belief in myself, how can I expect anyone else to believe in me if I do not have it in myself. So next month I shall do the A – Z challenge again, at the same time I shall be reworking a couple of parts of Disintegration and Voices then I shall be back at the start of May ready to push both while working on The Dragon’s Mark, if I want to make this my career and earn an actual living from writing I need to push myself and find the faith in myself that I had at the start of the year.
At the end of the day yes, luck and fate play a part in success but we cannot complain if we fail to push ourselves and do everything we are capable of to achieve our dreams. Part of that means sacrifice, in my case spending less time chatting online to friends or wasting time playing games on FB when I could be writing, the morning after may not look pretty,
But it will be worth it to reach your goals and get the life you want, so I shall leave you with a final picture, until the next event, and know how incredibly lucky I am to know you all have my back and are always willing to gove me a shove forward when I feel myself falling back, I know I am already ahead of the game in that respect xxxx
Paula Acton 