Category Archives: Indie writing

Mapping the writing process

07 Saturday Jan 2012

Posted by in Indie writing, Software, Writing

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I had a vague overall idea about what I wanted to happen in The Viking and the Vendetta, but that was it: I let the book evolve as I was writing, relying on ideas to crop up when I needed them to. This is the brass-rubbing technique of writing I’ve described before. I did feel a little frightened when I’d finished the penultimate chapter but still had no clear idea about what was going to happen in the final one. I knew that certain things needed to happen, I just wasn’t sure how they would unfold. This has happened before, though, so I was hopeful that I’d be able to come up with the answers eventually.

After a good night’s sleep I woke up and started having ideas. I’m sure that my unconscious mind was working away on the problem as I slept. The final 3,500 words of the book poured out of me and onto the keyboard in one glorious day, quite often surprising me in the direction they took.

I don’t do a lot of on-paper planning of what is going to happen in my stories, but I do keep a digital mind-map of the writing process. This is divided into sections, one for each group of three chapters. I make a note of the main scenes of each chapter: sometimes after I’ve written, but other times beforehand, when I know what needs to happen but haven’t got round to writing it yet. It starts off as a fairly simple mind map, but ends up looking like a dog’s dinner:

Viking and Vendetta mind map

There are a few notes at the top left about important aspects of the story, but the rest is just a chapter-by-chapter summary of the work-in-progress, marked off with a green tick when the chapter is completed. I also make a note of how many words are in each chapter, so that they’re approximately the same length, give or take 500 words. For these books, the chapter length seems to have settled at around 3,250 words. It just happened that way; I’m not sure that there’s an optimum word length for chapters.

I did something similar with The Roman and the Runaway, but that one was a lot simpler and I didn’t use it as consistently as I did with the second book. It stops at Chapter 11 and the name of the main female character was still Connie when I last updated it, not Pagan as she became a bit later.

Roman and Runaway mind map

The software I use for these maps is Freemind. Which, as the name suggests, is free. I’m sure there are more sophisticated tools out there, but this one works very well for my novel-mapping purposes.

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Pink Snowbunnies in Hell (and Amazon…and Smashwords)

01 Thursday Sep 2011

Posted by in epublishing, Indie writing, Writers, Writing

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Back in May, author Debora Geary put out a challenge on a Kindleboards forum, asking whether people would be interested in contributing a story of under 1,000 words to an anthology. The story had to contain the line ‘pink snowbunnies will ski in Hell’ in it, but other than that, anything went.

The resulting publication (which had a cover before any content) is now available for sale at Amazon and Smashwords. It’s interesting to see how the different authors interpreted this brief (for me it was a chance to dip my toe into ‘light romance’ territory…). All proceeds are going to animal shelter charities and there are chances to win free copies over at Jimi Ripley, Coral Moore, Rex Jameson, Nicole Chase and Barbara Annino’s sites.

Book review: Concrete Underground by Moxie Mezcal

19 Sunday Jun 2011

Posted by in 'Show me the free' challenge, Free reads, Indie writing, Reviews, Writers

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Concrete Underground

Concrete Underground by Moxie Mezcal

It’s been a while since I’ve done a book review on here. Not because I haven’t been reading (or reviewing, for that matter), but simply because most of my reading of late has been of traditionally-published books. In this blog, I highlight independently-published works which I’ve enjoyed.

Looking at the last 20 books I’ve read, about one in five are independently published. The quality has varied, but generally they’ve been good. Concrete Underground stands out from them in a number of ways. For one thing, it is uncompromisingly violent and raunchy compared to the rest – not something I usually seek out in a book or movie. Yet the physical abuse and sex scenes are written in a very matter-of-fact way, which doesn’t negate their impact, but carries the reader along without making him or her cringe in horror or embarrassment.

The book is also interesting in that it raises more questions than it answers. My response to reaching the end of it was to start reading from the beginning all over again, as I wanted to try to work out what the answers to those questions are. The writing was of such a high quality that this was not any sort of hardship.

Concrete Underground is also different from my other recent reads in relation to its genre. It’s been described elsewhere as ‘postmodern pulp fiction’, which is as good a description as any. The book is a mystery, with a morals-free, Mexican investigative journalist main character who is looking into the activities of a search-engine company’s CEO. The story takes a sideways look at the overly-monitored lives we lead today. One passage that sums this up stood out:

…the age of surveillance is only a symptom of the new hyper-narcissism that has infected our collective reality tunnels. We invite the surveillance cameras into our homes because they are proof that someone is paying attention to us.

If you’re willing to try something new and aren’t put off by adult content, I highly recommend this novel. It’s not always a comfortable read, and may leave you feeling more confused at the end than you were at the beginning, but it is definitely worth the ride.

Amazon update

05 Thursday May 2011

Posted by in Indie writing, Marketing, Websites

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For the first time, I put a few posts on the Amazon Kindle forums to promote The Roman and the Runaway in the last week. Maybe four, in different, appropriate-seeming places (‘Kindle books for 99 cents’, that kind of thing). I’ve got a (probably very British) horror of self-promotion and certainly don’t want to put people’s backs up with anything that smacks of desperation or (even worse) spam.

I also joined a few of the ‘you tag me and I’ll tag you’ forums – one on Amazon itself and the others on the Kindleboards site. With these, you add Amazon tags to other authors’ books in return for them tagging yours with your preferred categories. So for my book, for the US site, those are:

young adult, contemporary fiction, fathers and sons, boarding school, runaways, family relationships, kindle, 99 cents

Some people put a huge amount of time into tagging other books with these tags and getting more on their own in return. I’m not sure how much of a difference the tags make, but I have sold one book on Amazon.com and my first ever* on Amazon.co.uk since doing this small quantity of self-promotion last weekend, so perhaps it does have an effect!

I still don’t think I’m going to dedicate my life to it, though…

*Woohoo!

What goes around…

04 Friday Mar 2011

Posted by in Editing, Feedback, Indie writing, Writers

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A few months ago, a fellow indie writer gave me some great feedback on The Roman and the Runaway, coming up with three errors in the text (which I’d been so sure was perfect by then!). I hadn’t asked her to do this, and was grateful for the time and effort that she’d put into reading and correcting the book.

As a result, I determined to do the same for other authors if I found similar problems with their works. Sometimes with self-published books there are just too many errors to make it a sensible option, but if there are only a few, in an otherwise good book, then I’m willing to do some free editorial work to make the book even better. I feel quite strongly that indie authors should help each other out where they can: we don’t have the resources of publishers behind us and experience has shown me the truth of the view that it is impossible to be sure that you have caught all the errors in your own work.

Last week I sent another indie author a list of around 20 errors that I’d found in one of her books. I’d noted them on my ereader as I do when I’m editing my own work. She was glad to hear about them and has given me another one of her books in return. In my experience, indie authors are always pleased to be told about mistakes: don’t be afraid to let them know!

A small milestone

28 Monday Feb 2011

Posted by in Indie writing, Sales

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I reported back in October that The Roman and the Runaway was available at Amazon’s US and UK stores. The level of interest in the book has been, well, disappointing. I gave up regularly checking to see if I’ve had any sales on Amazon months ago. It was still getting downloaded fairly frequently from Smashwords and the sites it distributes to, as well as from Feedbooks. I figured that it was probably my own fault for not really spending much time promoting it. I just don’t take the whole thing seriously enough, I suppose. I’m happy that the book is out there and that people seem to be enjoying it, but I’m not hugely motivated by the financial aspect, or even the kudos-of-being-an-author one.

But today, when I checked, the report page had changed.

First sale

The way the numbers are lined up, it took a moment to work out that this was a sale and not a refund. It’s taken nearly five months, but at least I now know that the book is actually visible on Amazon. And that one person at least has taken a chance on it.

Book review: Snow Burn by Joel Arnold

28 Tuesday Dec 2010

Posted by in Indie writing, Reviews, YA fiction

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Snow Burn by Joel Arnold

I came across this book via a review from Red Adept. I think I must have got it through a coupon (as I’m still leery of paying to read ebooks), and I see that on his blog Joel is offering to send a coupon for it to anyone who emails him.

It’s an enjoyable story – quite short, at under 30,000 words – but a pleasant way of spending a couple of hours. Particularly if you’re curled up in front of a warm fire, as I was, while reading about the two boys who are out camping in a blizzard when they rescue a dangerous escaped convict.

The characters are believable, the dialogue convincing and the story flows smoothly and well. I enjoyed the small digressions into ethical problems along the way. Things like: would you kill Hitler when he was a child, if you had the opportunity? One of the characters, Vince, firmly states that the answer to this should be ‘no’. His ethical views are tested by the murderous intent of the escaped prisoner.

Book review: Misery’s Fire by Kim Jewell

28 Tuesday Sep 2010

Posted by in Indie writing, Reviews, Websites, YA fiction

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The books I’ve reviewed here so far have all been available from Smashwords. This is the first Authonomy book I’ve reviewed. As the books on Authonomy are not really published, but are on the way to publication, I’m not sure of the etiquette around this. But in the hope that I’m not breaking some unwritten rule, I’ll go ahead and review it anyway. One of the main disadvantages is that you can’t download it onto an ereader, but if that doesn’t bother you, read on.

Misery's Fire

Misery’s Fire is about 19 year-old Grant Williams, who wakes up in Hell after avenging the death of his sister in a fatal fire. Nothing that the demons of Hell throw at him is capable of causing him greater suffering than the loss of his sister, Misery, so they decide to send him back to earth to endure an alternative Hell: High School.

The descriptions of Hell and its activities drew me into the book straight away – I love the idea of the denizens of Hell being responsible for earthquakes, volcanoes and, er, potholes. Once back on Earth, Grant has to cope with a new body, four years younger than his old one, and find a way of surviving with no home, no money and no family.

I read the book at one sitting – I really wanted to know how Grant would manage to escape the clutches of Hell. The book is an enjoyable read and I’m sure there will be plenty of other fans of YA books out there who would also find it engaging.

Small pleasures

21 Tuesday Sep 2010

Posted by in Indie writing, Websites

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I’ve talked about Feedbooks here before. Design-wise, I think it’s one of the best-looking ebook sites, it’s easy to upload and update books on, and I do like their reporting on where ebooks are being downloaded from. The other part of the site that I enjoy is the ability to see users’ bookshelves. There’s something deeply satisfying for an ‘indie’ author in seeing their work on a virtual shelf alongside more established writers. This screenshot has my book on a user’s shelf near to works by D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster and John Buchan (Jerome K. Jerome was just off the screen, too).

Feedbooks bookshelf

It’s a small pleasure, but a profound one. 😉

Book review: Tamar Black – Djinnx’d by Nicola Rhodes

25 Wednesday Aug 2010

Posted by in Editing, Indie writing, Reviews

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The useful list of free Smashwords books that I linked to in my last book review has now gone, so I found my next free read by going to Smashwords itself and searching for free books from their home page. I went into the Sci-Fi and Fantasy section, which wouldn’t be my normal first choice, but thought I should mix up the genres I’m reviewing a bit. From the ‘most downloaded’ list I picked the first book that appealed, which was this one. Having just blogged about book covers, I should mention that I really try not to let them influence me. It’s the words that matter, as far as I’m concerned. The blurb for Tamar Black – Djinnx’d showed an author with a sense of humour, so I bit and downloaded the book.

And I’m really glad I did. It’s a twist on the classic genie-in-a-bottle story and is very Terry Pratchett-esque in its humour. From the cheeky foreword and the very first chapter, with its sly rewriting of the Book of Genesis as a computer programming job, I was sucked in. Funny and smart. What’s not to like?

Well, actually, there is something that not everyone will like, and that’s the standard of editing. Font size changes randomly in the .epub version of the file and the punctuation is decidedly hit-and-miss at times. But (and this follows on from observations I’ve made before) it really doesn’t matter that much. It’s slightly irritating and my inner copy editor was itching to take out a red pen, but after a while I gave up noting down the errors (yes, I really did start to write them all down – thinking that the author might like to know about them) and just sat down to enjoy the ride.

There are four other books in the series, which sell for between $2.50 and $2.99. Now, the question is, would I pay for them, knowing that they are probably as badly edited as this one? And you know what, I think I probably would. But not right now – I’d want to get an ereading device first and then curl up in front of the fire with them in the winter. Paying to read things on my computer screen still seems wrong.

So there’s the proof of what I’ve been arguing in this blog for a while. Quality matters, yes, but if there’s a good read in amongst the errors then this reader is willing to overlook them and potentially pay for the next book, regardless. It’s time to stop wringing our hands about the quality of editing in ebooks – let’s just enjoy a damn good story when it presents itself instead.