I’ve been blogging for a while now and the number of posts has grown. Time to pin a short post here to advise anyone unfamiliar with WordPress sites how to navigate around the blog. Let’s say you’re a writer interested in posts about marketing or grammar, you probably don’t want to be scrolling down oodles of posts you’re not interested in. There’s a search function and previous posts are archived according to month posted, but the simplest way is to use the Categories menu. It’s on the right—you might need to scroll down a little way to find it. Simply click on the category you’re interested in and you’ll be presented with the posts relevant to that subject-matter. The system’s not perfect—there are some posts that come under more than one category—but it’s the easiest method to find your way around.
Oh, and if you want to leave a comment or read existing comments, you have to be on the post’s page (by clicking its title), rather than on a page containing more than one post.
Please note that links to the Amazon UK site will usually be affiliate links, meaning I earn a small amount of commission from any purchases made after following the links. They don’t affect the prices you pay Amazon.
When writers refer to their ebooks as ‘being wide’, they usually mean that the ebooks are not solely published on Amazon, but are available on other online retailers like Apple, Smashwords and Kobo.
Such has been the case with my ebooks. I publish them directly with Amazon, Kobo and GooglePlay, and use a distributor—Draft2Digital (D2D)—to publish on the umpteen other retailers and library sites available, many of which I have never heard of before. D2D take a cut from every sale and it’s an arrangement that has worked well as far as I’m concerned.
Not so much for D2D apparently. They’ve recently announced that they are to introduce an annual charge for everyone who distributes through them who hasn’t achieved at least $100 in net sales in the previous twelve months.
The purpose of this piece isn’t to be critical of D2D. They’re perfectly entitled to introduce a fee for using their service and they’ve given us plenty of warning so we can choose to withdraw from distributing with them before the charge kicks in next month.
The charge will apply to me this year. Although I have enjoyed years where I’ve achieved sales comfortably in excess of $100 with D2D, I’ll be nowhere near that figure this year. It’s not a huge charge—only $12, I believe, annually—but it has me thinking about whether it’s worth my while continuing to distribute through them. In short, the answer’s no.
I conducted a simple analysis of where sales of my ebooks come from. (For these purposes, I completely ignored books given away in limited-time promotions or permanently free.) The results were not what I’d expected.
Knowing that the Earth Haven trilogy has sold reasonably well in the wider channels, I’d assumed the pattern would be similar across all titles. It was a bit of an eye-opener.
In short, Amazon accounts for the vast majority of my sales. My collection of dark Christmas short stories has the smallest percentage share on Amazon, but the Zon nevertheless accounts for 76% of all sales of that title in ebook format. The largest percentage share is of my first published work, the short story collection Pond Life. Amazon accounts for a staggering 98% of all ebooks sold of that title.
We’re talking low overall sales figures of both these titles, but the picture is similar with my bestselling works. The Earth Haven trilogy, which has combined ebook sales exceeding fifteen thousand and so which arguably provides more reliable statistics, breaks down percentage sales on Amazon as follows:
The Cleansing 89%
The Beacon 94%
The Reckoning 93%.
I worked out the average percentage share across all my titles sold in ebook format. It’s pretty conclusive:
Amazon 89%
The rest 11%.
Clearly, Amazon is by far and away the retailer where most of my ebooks are sold. So how does this affect the way forward for me?
I like having my ebooks available to readers at retailers like Apple and GooglePlay and Kobo, and I’ll always be grateful to the handful of readers there who have bought my books. But sales on those sites have dried to a tiny trickle and I don’t know how to reach their readers—have I ever mentioned that I’m really useless at marketing?
And a group of readers exists—a group I understand to be voracious in its reading appetites—to which I have not had access: members of Kindle Unlimited. (For anyone who doesn’t know, Kindle Unlimited is an Amazon programme that allows subscribers unlimited access to ebooks which are enrolled in the scheme and which pays the authors according to the number of pages read by those subscribers. For writers to have their ebooks included in this scheme, the works must be exclusive to Amazon.)
So I face a simple choice:
—start paying for my ebooks to be distributed across the wide platforms, but without the marketing skills to promote to users of those platforms, a prospect I find singularly unappealing; or
—make my ebooks available to an untapped section of a market which is already by far the most profitable for me, and it’s not even close.
It’s a bit of a no-brainer. This, then, is what I have decided to do:
—withdraw my ebooks from sale on the various wide channels like Apple, Kobo and GooglePlay, and from loan on the various lending sites like Hoopla; and
—enrol all my ebooks into the Kindle Unlimited programme.
In other words, I’m going narrow.
My ebooks can still be purchased, though only on Amazon. They will no longer be available to buy or loan in the wider channels. They will become available to read at no additional cost to subscribers to Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited programme.
I am, of course, aware that some readers object to shopping on Amazon on moral grounds and I am sorry that my ebooks will no longer be available to such readers, but my paperback and audiobook editions will continue to be available to purchase (or borrow where applicable) at the various online outlets where they have been available since they were published.
Wish me luck in trying to crack the Kindle Unlimited market. Being a complete muppet at marketing, I expect I’ll need it. I shall report back in a few months or so as to how it’s going.
Despite my best efforts, these Christmas posts tend to become a little maudlin as I look back on the year that has gone. My frustrations about the state of the world tend to spill over when I’m trying to be upbeat about the season of peace and goodwill.
I would, for instance, end up deploring the ongoing wars and unrest that seem as prevalent today as they’ve ever been, condemning the hatred and intolerance and outright ignorance (flat Earth, anyone?) I see daily on social media, rolling my eyes and sighing over the steady encroachment into the writing world of generative AI, and bemoaning the dire state of Welsh rugby. Don’t even get me started on politics, at home or abroad.
Just as well, then, there’ll be no reflections this year. Short and simple it is. A bit like me, boom boom.
Here’s wishing everyone a merry and peaceful Christmas. May your stockings be full, your turkeys moist and your cups of joy overflowing.
Completely without shame, I’m recycling last year’s snap of me and Milo in our digital festive hats, and I’ll leave the last word to him in his best Father Christmas voice.
I don’t recall the year, but I was young, probably pre-teen, when I had this thought:
Sixty is old. Can’t imagine I’ll ever be that old.
Yet, here I am, two days from reaching that milestone. And I have to say, it doesn’t feel old at all.
Of course, I have some aches and pains associated with advancing age. My hips and knees are a little dodgy, probably from the rugby and football I played in my younger days, but they’re not in such bad shape yet. And I do a lot of walking to keep myself mobile and to try to keep the weight down, though that’s a struggle as my metabolism seems to have taken early retirement.
Parts of me are deteriorating. My hair started disappearing in my early twenties, so no surprise I’m almost totally bald by now, and my eyesight has always been on the short side. My teeth aren’t in the best shape and my hearing is not as sharp as it once was.
But I’m lucky: I don’t yet need any moving parts replaced; I don’t suffer with arthritis or osteoporosis; apart from the aneurysm I suffered in my knee in 2020, requiring emergency bypass surgery, I haven’t yet experienced any major health scares. (Fate, if you’re listening, I’m really not trying to tempt you, okay?)
So, physically, things could be much worse. What about mentally?
All I can say is I haven’t noticed any diminution in my mental faculties. Doesn’t mean it isn’t happening, just that I haven’t noticed it.
Ever since the BBC series Grumpy Old Men aired in the early noughties, my family have called me a grumpy old man. And I own it. I am getting more cantankerous, increasingly irritated by the state of the world. I find my tolerance for stupidity and unkindness grows lower by the day.
But turning sixty isn’t that bad, especially when considering the alternative. And there’s a bonus: on attaining sixty, we become entitled to a pass which allows us free travel on buses throughout Wales and parts of England.
One of my old school friends, who turned sixty a few weeks back, has been waiting patiently for me to catch up so he has someone to hop on the bus with—not sure where we’ll go, but I’ll bet it’s somewhere with a pub near the bus stop.
So happy big birthday to me for Sunday. There will be beer.
Another year passes. Another year marked by wars and hatred and lies and stupidity.
In short, another year of shittiness. And here in the UK we seem intent on becoming the masters of all things shitty. There have been occasions this past year when I’ve felt a little ashamed to be British. As I’ve said before, this isn’t the place, and I’m not the person, to embark on political rants, but Rwanda. Sigh.
As we left 2022 behind, I wished for a kinder 2023. Might as well have wished to become an international bestseller with multiple movie deals. (Yeah, yeah, all right, I wish for that every year.)
It seems it is too much to expect people to try to get along with others despite them having different coloured skin, or worshipping a different god—or even the same god but in a different way… sigh—or having a different sexual orientation, or any of the myriad other ways we humans can differ from one another.
To shamelessly pinch a line from The Simpsons, Jesus must be turning in his grave.
Talking of graves, let’s spare a thought for those who have gone to theirs.
We said goodbye to more greats this year, including the gorgeous Raquel Welch (I’ll never forget seeing her in a fur bikini in the film One Million Years B.C.), Alan Arkin (who will always, to me, be Yossarian), and Cormac McCarthy (who wrote one of the bleakest yet utterly compelling post-apocalyptic novels I’ve read, The Road), to name but a few.
And Shane MacGowan has gone to join Kirsty MacColl at the smoke-wreathed piano in the sky, where I imagine them belting out my favourite Christmas tune ‘Fairytale of New York’.
But enough doom and gloom. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life as a grumpy old man, though finding stuff to be positive about in today’s world is not easy. Trying to be upbeat these days feels a bit like peeing into the wind, only without the damp trousers.
I’ll include a snap below of me smiling into the lens, Milo by my side, with our digital Santa hats on. And I’m going to keep telling myself that humanity is ultimately good and raise a glass to a kinder 2024.
And yet…
I can’t help but feel this is forced optimism in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I’m the turkey cheerfully wishing that next Christmas everyone will have turned vegetarian.
So, bollocks to it. Ebenezer Scrooge it is, then. Altogether now, in our best Bah Humbug voices:
I started writing this post assuming I could fit all I have to say on this subject into one reasonably sized article. It quickly became apparent how foolish that assumption was so I went back and added ‘Part 1’ to the title. There’ll definitely be a Part 2 along soon, probably followed at some point by a Part 3. After that, who knows?
But let’s focus on this part. It’s essentially the background to my recent decision to change all my book covers and I’m going to start with a well-known saying:
Never judge a book by its cover.
We’ve all heard the expression, though I’d bet my last penny we all do it. At the very least, it’s usually the cover that first draws our attention. Do you ever pick up a book while browsing in a bookshop (or click a link online) that your gaze would otherwise have slid past if it wasn’t for the cover? Occasionally a title or author’s name will attract me, but more often than not it’s the cover that first catches my eye.
It’s obvious that, from an author’s point-of-view, covers are pretty important—at least to authors who want to sell lots of books. When I parted company with my small-press publisher in March 2018 and decided to take the opportunity to become fully self-sufficient at publishing my own work, I knew that designing covers would be one of the quickest new skills I’d need to acquire and would involve one of the steepest learning curves.
Indeed. The only thing that’s proved to be tougher is learning how to produce my own audiobooks—I’ve blogged extensively about the challenges I faced there and I won’t repeat them now. (If you want to read about them, type ‘audiobooks’ into the site’s search bar; there are nine posts in total. Mind, they’re not for the faint of heart, especially the later posts, concerning themselves as they do with the basics of audio editing.)
After parting company with my publisher, I acquired a photograph-editing program called Affinity and learned how to use it. (By ‘learned how to use it’ I mean that after hour upon hour of trial and error, and painstakingly poring over instructional videos with the mouse cursor hovering over the pause button, I picked up sufficient of the basics to enable me to design simple covers, but have barely scratched the surface of Affinity’s capabilities.)
I had published a few books myself while still signed up to the publisher. (I wasn’t doing anything wrong—I had no contract with the publisher for the books I self-published.) The covers I used for these were either off-the-shelf designs with my name and the book’s title added (e.g. That Elusive Something), or kindly designed by my brother (e.g. the three Elevator ebooks), or cobbled together by me in a handy website called Canva (e.g. Ghosts of Christmas Past—Canva is a great site for designing ebook covers, though wasn’t as good then for the greater resolution required for paperback covers; I don’t know what it’s like these days).
Five books reverted back to me from the small press: Pond Life, the Earth Haven trilogy and The Village of Lost Souls. Apart from one (Pond Life, for which I used Canva), I designed new covers myself—both ebook and, even more of a challenge, paperback—using Affinity. I knew they weren’t great, but they were the best I could do at that time.
Aside from some minor tweaks, my covers have pretty much remained the same since. Even though it’s always been at the back of my mind that they needed improving, there was always something more pressing to be done, such as writing the next tale or producing the next audiobook. Changing just-about-adequate covers for new ones unlikely to be such a huge improvement as to justify the time spent wasn’t high on my list of priorities.
So why change them now? That’ll be the subject of Part 2.
So Mrs Kates and I mooched off to the Mediterranean for a much-delayed two-week cruise that was supposed to be to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. As it happened, it was the day of our 33rd anniversary that we set off for Southampton.
The lead-up hadn’t gone well, making us wonder whether a holiday can be jinxed. The Cursed Cruise—sounds like a title from The Three Investigators series of books. That was down to me.
Around five weeks before the cruise, I suffered an infection in my left forearm from some insect bites. I do a lot of walking in the countryside and the culprit was probably a horsefly—the little sods seem to like tucking into me. It necessitated a course of strong antibiotics and, we think, triggered the worst attack of psoriasis* I’ve ever experienced. My usual go-to steroid treatment didn’t touch it.
Worse, the day before we were due to leave, I noticed fresh red marks (not psoriasis patches) on my right shin and calf. They were slightly swollen, hot and tender to the touch. Fresh insect bites—again, probably horseflies—and too late to do anything about them. Bugger.
Horsefly, aka little sod
After a day or two aboard ship, my lower leg looked as though it had a severe case of sunburn and had swollen so much I could only manage to fit into one pair of shoes in the evenings, a low-backed pair of slip-ons. The onboard doctor diagnosed cellulitis and prescribed another course of strong antibiotics. Ideally, I needed to rest my leg and keep it elevated. Easier said than done on a cruise.
We were determined not to allow these mishaps to ruin the holiday and we had a good time despite them. What follows is a brief recount of some of the highlights. Since this blog is mainly about writing and reading, I’ll mix in some literary flavour where I can.
A word or two about the ship and some of the passengers we encountered. Britannia is a ship we haven’t sailed on before, but we will definitely be keen to board her again. Although she’s big, we rarely felt overwhelmed by crowded spaces. The staff are, as always on P&O ships in our experience, approachable and incredibly hard-working, and massively enhance our enjoyment of the holiday.
We chatted to quite a few of our fellow passengers in bars or restaurants or around the decks, and unfailingly encountered friendly people, with more than a smattering of fellow Welshies. But it was in the main dining room we struck gold. We had club dining, meaning we had the same table reserved at the same time every evening in one of the main restaurants. We shared our table with an awesome young couple from Liverpool (one of them is originally from Manchester, she’ll want me to make known) and, despite (or, maybe, because of) the generation gap, hit it off immediately.
We didn’t eat in the main dining room every evening, and neither did the young couple, but when we were all there at the same time, the evening passed in a flash of lively chit-chat and reminiscing about how much we were missing our pets at home: cats Taco and Nacho in their case, pooch Milo in ours. They celebrated their 5th wedding anniversary while in port at Ibiza and went ashore for a celebratory meal where they met and had photos with a well-known club DJ. My and Mrs K’s clubbing days being far in the past, we hadn’t heard of him, but the couple’s enthusiasm was so infectious we felt as though we were fans, too.
Our waiters often had to stand about waiting for us to stop yakking so they could finish clearing away. (Sorry, Birini and Sonam, you were fantastic, too.) A huge thank you to our lovely table fellows A and C, you helped to make our cruise a memorable one. And come on, you Reds!
Milo (badly in need of a trim)
It being a cruise, there were, naturally, ports of call. Here they are, in the order in which we visited them, with an occasional bookish note and snap from the hundreds we took.
Gibraltar
We have visited Gibraltar on many previous cruises and it has become one of our favourite ports. I like to partake of a pint of San Miguel in one of the local pubs and Mrs K enjoys a glass of sangria in the main square while watching the world (well, at any event, the passengers from whichever ships are in that day) go by.
We’ve explored most of the Rock, inside and out, but this time decided to visit the Trafalgar Cemetery at the far end of Main Street. It was well worth the stroll through the intense heat (to which we hadn’t yet had time to become acclimatised, though a pitstop for liquid refreshment eased our path). The cemetery is a place of great tranquility amidst the hustle and bustle of touristy Main Street. It contains two graves of sailors who took part in the Battle of Trafalgar and died of their wounds on Gibraltar. I found myself a little awestruck.
Gibraltar
Ibiza
Although we have enjoyed holidays on the Balearic islands of Mallorca and Menorca, this was our first visit to their sister island Ibiza. We wanted to see as much as we could in the limited time available so opted for a guided excursion to the north of the island, taking in quaint villages and picturesque resorts, before stopping for a bite to eat and some liquid refreshment in Santa Eularia.
Ibiza
Palma, Mallorca
We had nothing planned here as we’ve visited a few times before. We just got off the ship and went for a little wander.
French novelist Albert Camus (I’ve read The Stranger and The Plague) stayed in Palma in 1935 and apparently met his first wife in Mallorca. Totally unrelated, the pic is of a gun emplacement outside San Carlos military museum that overlooks the cruise terminal.
Palma
Cagliari, Sardinia
Here we spent a cultural morning being entertained by Sardinian folk dancers and singers, while sampling local sweets and cheeses and wines. A most enjoyable morning, indeed.
Sardinia is the subject of a travel book, Sea and Sardinia, about a visit to the island, including Cagliari, by D.H.Lawrence and his wife in 1921.
Sunrise, Sardinia
Malaga
One of the oldest cities in the world, Malaga is known as ‘the land of poets’. Hemingway is said to have written his nonfiction work The Dangerous Summer while staying in the city.
We took an excursion to visit Marbella, which we found a little disappointing with its preponderance of high-rise, soulless buildings (at least in the part which we got to see), and Puerto Banus, with its array of billionaire’s yachts lining the marina partly shrouded by an eerie sea mist, the occasional Ferrari and Lamborghini parked alongside. How the other half live, eh.
Puerto Banus
Cadiz
One of my favourite books from my early teens was Laurie Lee’s Cider With Rosie. I also enjoyed his follow-up As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, Lee’s memoir of his 19-year-old self’s journey to and around a Spain about to be engulfed in civil war. He leaves his home in rural Gloucestershire (the setting for Cider With Rosie) and sets off for London, calling in Southampton along the way. In Spain, he starts at Vigo (a port we have been to on a previous cruise) and visits Cadiz, Gibraltar and Malaga. His description of Cadiz is evocative: ‘…a city of sharp incandescence, a scribble of white on a sheet of blue glass, lying curved in the bay like a scimitar and sparkling with African light.’
We, too, are fond of Cadiz and took this opportunity for a wander around parts of the city we haven’t seen previously, before eventually settling—sweaty, footsore and thirsty—in a pavement bar near the port, where we enjoyed a late lunch and a beer or two. Mrs K watched agog when she asked for a glass of sangria and they descended upon our table armed with five bottles of alcoholic beverages and a bottle of lemonade. They proceeded to mix her a sangria by sloshing ‘measures’ into the glass. “How is it?” I enquired. “Delicious,” she replied, “though strong.” Hic
Cadiz cathedral
If you’re been detecting a bit of a theme, you could be right. It’s probably fair to say that when we go on a cruise, we tend to eat and drink our way around the Mediterranean, or Baltic or Norwegian Seas…
Here’s to the next time. Cheers!
Back on board for a champagne sailaway
* I’ve suffered with psoriasis for many years, a condition which causes my body to produce too many skin cells, making the skin on parts of my body (usually my knuckles, elbows, knees and ankles) inflamed and flaky. Actually, ‘suffered’ is overstating it. It’s not contagious, doesn’t cause me much discomfort apart from occasional mild itchiness and is usually controlled by ointments prescribed by my GP. It’s never been so bad that I’ve needed to see a dermatologist about it. Until now.
This is the final part of a lengthy set of interview questions I completed to be featured on a fellow writer’s blog in January 2019. More than four years ago… where has that time gone?
As usual with these reproduced interviews, I’ve changed the wording of the questions for copyright reasons, but without changing the questions’ meaning. The answers I haven’t touched except that, where relevant, I’ve added the occasional update in square brackets after my original answer.
Which actors would you like to play the main characters if your books were made into films?
Quite honestly, if any of my books were made into films, I’d be thrilled regardless of who was cast in the lead roles.
[I do a lot of walking, especially in spring and summer. When I’m approaching a forbidding hill, I often try to distract myself by mentally playing out fantasies about becoming a famous author and suchlike. A favourite is deciding who would play the characters from The Cleansing in a film. Not only is it good fun, it can get me up a hill without noticing how steep it was.]
Name one person you’d love to meet.
It’s difficult to choose only one, but I’ll plump for Stephen King. I grew up with his books and would love to chat with him about writing, over a beer or coffee.
Do you have any hobbies?
I’m a member of a pub quiz team and I watch a lot of rugby and football—I’m past the age where I can play without endangering my joints. Does drinking beer count as a hobby?
Are there any TV shows or films you enjoy watching?
I never seem to find the time to watch a great deal of television. My go-to shows are The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. I’ll always make time to watch films—although my preference is for science fiction, fantasy and horror, I’ll give almost anything a go.
[Both TV shows mentioned have now finished. I recently enjoyed The OA and Manifest. I’m watching the Star Wars spin-offs and making my way through Stranger Things. I still watch a variety of films.]
What are your favourite foods?
Ribeye steak, curry, pizza, though not all at the same time.
Starsign and lucky number?
Scorpio—a typical one, says my wife, whatever that means. I don’t have a lucky number.
What is your favourite colour?
Since it’s the colour two of my favourite sports teams play in and the colour of the dragon on the Welsh flag, I’d have to say red.
What sort of music would accompany your latest book?
My work in progress is edging towards dark fantasy. As such, I imagine it to be Celtic music similar to that in the Lord of the Rings trilogy meets the soundtrack of Halloween.
If you could no longer write, what would you do?
That’s a scary question. I have recently started a part-time proofreading/copyediting business so I guess I’d concentrate more on that.
[I no longer offer the proofreading service. To edit someone else’s work thoroughly is a time-consuming process, one that doesn’t sit easily alongside my own writing and audiobook production. Something had to give.]
If you only had twenty-four hours to live how would you spend it?
That’s an even scarier question. I’d spend it with my family, making sure they know how I feel about them. There would probably also be beer.
What would you write on your head stone?
Here lies he who never gave less than his best.
Did you make any mistakes with your first book?
Probably, but it was a long time ago now and it’s published (The Village of Lost Souls) so I try not to think about it. But since you’ve asked… damn it.
What advice would you give to aspiring authors?
Read extensively, inside and outside the genres in which you want to be published. And, of course, write as often and as much as you can. Prepare yourself for disappointments—almost everyone gets rejected somewhere along the way—and, above all, persevere.
Who do you turn to for help?
In a writing sense? I’ll always seek out my brother’s opinion. But, ultimately, I follow my own instincts.
This is the second part of a lengthy set of interview questions I completed to be featured on a fellow writer’s blog in January 2019.
As usual with these reproduced interviews, I’ve changed the wording of the questions for copyright reasons, but without changing the questions’ meaning. The answers I haven’t touched except that, where relevant, I’ve added the occasional update in square brackets after my original answer.
What music do you listen to while writing?
I envy writers who can work with music playing in the background. That’s not for me, I regret. It has to be quiet so I can escape into the world I’m creating without distraction.
Name one indispensable aid to writing.
Coffee.
Is there any part of the publishing process you detest?
If by ‘publishing’ you mean the narrow process of getting polished manuscript to distributor, there’s no part of that I detest. But if we’re talking about the wider process, then the most detestable thing to me—though, sadly, a necessary evil—is marketing. I’m a complete muppet at it. I’m also not keen on writing the first draft of a novel—it always feels a little like pulling teeth.
[The title of my long-running series of blog posts about marketing—Marketing for Muppets—remains apt.]
What’s the biggest hurdle you’ve faced to becoming a writer?
Finding the time has always been one of my biggest problems, at least until about eighteen months ago. Then I went part-time in my regular job and my writing productivity shot up.
[When I gave this interview, the possibility of taking early retirement in November that year hadn’t yet occurred to me. It was during a chance conversation in work a couple of months later that a colleague mentioned we could take early retirement at 55 and a flashbulb went off in my head—my Archimedes-in-the-bath moment.]
Who are your go-to authors?
Terry Pratchett, Stephen King, Tolkien… countless others. They remind me what it feels like to become lost in a fantastic world and why I wanted to write in the first place.
Do you market your books?
I run Amazon ads on the first book of both completed trilogies. The ads just about pay for themselves in terms of sales of the books so advertised, but the real benefit comes in follow-through sales of the sequels. I also blog about writing, reading and publishing, which I enjoy but also regard as a form of marketing.
[Amazon advertising, so effective for me then, has since gone drastically downhill as it has become so expensive and effectively priced me out of the market. I have also dabbled in Facebook advertising, with mixed results. I feel I’m almost back to square one when it comes to marketing, nearly as invisible as when I started out. As for blogging, I have stopped posting to a fixed schedule because I was finding it was interfering with the writing and audiobook production, and becoming a chore. So I now blog irregularly and it feels like fun again.]
Do readers ever get in touch with you?
It does sometimes happen, usually through my author Facebook page, or more occasionally by e-mail. I’ve been lucky that they’ve never been less than complimentary about my work.
[Reader interaction has since largely died away, which I suppose is inevitably a result of reduced visibility. In common with most writers, I have received less-than-glowing comments on my work in reviews. I’m not complaining—it’s an occupational hazard.]
Is there anyone you trust to read your draft work?
I have a few trusted beta readers, the main one being my brother. If he says something needs to be changed, I listen.
Describe your first book signing.
I’ve never done one and, unless it was essential for furthering my writing career, I’d shy away from ever doing one.
What message are you trying to pass to readers through your work?
I’m not trying to pass on any messages or make any points with my work. They’re stories told for the sheer enjoyment of telling them and to entertain the reader. If, as a by-product, they make the reader think, that’s a bonus.
This time last year I was in a mild state of despondency. Covid was rife, our government was in a bit of a mess, social media was often a cesspit of hatred and misinformation, my book sales weren’t great, and advertising was growing increasingly expensive and ineffective.
I wish I could say all or some of those things have improved. But, nah.
We’re learning to live with it, but covid is still very much with us. We’ve had not one but two changes of prime minister, and I’m not convinced the current incumbent is much of an upgrade on his predecessors. Social media is as rancid as it ever was. My sales still aren’t much to write home about, and I remain extremely wary of the cost and effectiveness of advertising.
But so much more shittiness (you’ll have to excuse my French—it’s difficult to talk about the current state of this world without resorting to the occasional swear word) has happened in this past year.
The new year had barely begun when, without warning, I lost one of my oldest friends. His funeral in London on a mild day in late January was, as you might imagine, a desperately sad affair.
Also in early January, we watched our televisions disbelievingly as what looked like an attempted coup unfolded across the pond when rioters stormed the US Capitol, apparently with the blessing of or, at least, lack of condemnation from the outgoing president.
The following month and Russia invaded Ukraine, bringing World War III significantly nearer to becoming a reality. Massive hikes to energy prices followed and a consequent cost-of-living crisis.
Inflation has been rampant and interest rates keep increasing to try to counter it. Some believe Brexit has also played a significant role in the current mess we’re in, not to mention a bizarre mini-budget from the previous PM and her Chancellor that sent the financial markets into a blind panic.
Summer temperatures soared in the UK as new records were set and we all wilted like last week’s lettuce.
Then, in September, Queen Elizabeth II died. She was the only monarch I’d ever known and, though I’m by no means a royalist, it was a time of deep sorrow—it felt as though we’d lost a constant presence in our lives that we’d not even been aware of until it had gone.
It was also a surreal time as people queued for days to view her coffin lying in state in the Palace of Westminster and a television channel was devoted to seeing those paying their respects filing past. I sometimes turned over to watch it for a while.
Currently there are strikes everywhere you look, from rail workers to nurses. Last year, the government urged us to clap for the NHS staff who worked so selflessly during the pandemic; now the same government would have us believe they’re being selfish for expecting to be paid a living wage. Sigh. This isn’t the place, and I’m not the person, to go off on political rants. Still, sigh.
That was 2022. A year of loss, insurrection, war, economic turmoil, weather extremes, political and royal upheaval.
There’s undoubtedly a recession looming. We can only hope Armageddon isn’t.
Shit happens, as the saying goes, though it’s a little mild to describe what’s happened this past twelve months. Dumbfuckery of the highest order is more accurate. Little wonder my sense of despondency has, if anything, deepened.
When I was seventeen, I appeared in the school play. It contained a line I still quote, usually accompanied by an exaggerated shrug of the shoulders, whenever dumbfuckery is occurring. It’s especially apt now:
Hey ho, such is life.
Have yourself the merriest flipping Christmas (or whatever) and here’s to a kinder 2023. Perhaps if enough of us say it often enough, more kindness will happen. No, I’m not going to hold my breath either.
This is the first part of a lengthy set of interview questions I completed to be featured on a fellow writer’s blog in January 2019. The original interview is so long I’ve split it into three parts.
As usual with these reproduced interviews, I’ve changed the wording of the questions for copyright reasons, but without changing the questions’ meaning. The answers I haven’t touched except that, where relevant, I’ve added the occasional update in square brackets after my original answer.
Why did you decide to become a writer?
Since learning to read as a four- or five-year-old, I’ve read voraciously. Writing seemed the natural progression. I still marvel at worlds other authors have created, but now I create my own, too.
What are you aiming to release next?
I’m aiming to release a new novel later this year. It will be a standalone fantasy, though a chunky one of around 180,000 words. A collection of dark novellas might come before it—depends which I finish first.
[The collection of dark novellas, Moths, was published later that year, in August, but—due to the time-drain of producing my own audiobooks—I’m only 70,000-words into the fantasy novel. I love the note of cheery, but wildly misplaced, optimism in my January 2019 answer.]
Do you think it’s important that aspiring authors should read widely?
I think it’s vital. No doubt there are exceptions but, generally speaking, I don’t see how anyone can hope to become an accomplished writer without reading a lot of books. It would be like hoping to become a cabinet maker without trying to understand how cabinets are put together.
What was the first book you remember reading?
Other than Dick and Jane, or whatever they were called, in nursery school (‘Run, Dick, run!’), it was probably one of the Enid Blyton books about the wishing chair or the enchanted wood. Her books opened my child’s eyes to the endless possibilities to be discovered on a page.
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. I’m also picking away at Infinite Jest, but I’m finding it a challenge, to put it mildly, so don’t anticipate finishing it any time soon.
[I thoroughly enjoyed Aurora. I’m still picking away at Infinite Jest.]
Tell us about a series you’ve written and how you came up with the title.
I have two complete series—The Elevator and Earth Haven trilogies. The idea for Earth Haven came from a short story I wrote at the turn of the millennium about a young man who survives a plague that wipes out almost the entire population of the world. The title of the series came from how some of the characters refer to our planet—to them, it represents a haven to which to escape their own dying planet many light years away.
Is there a character you identify with in your books?
I don’t identify with any of the characters in my books, with one possible exception. The only novel I’ve written that doesn’t come under the broad umbrella of speculative fiction is called That Elusive Something. It’s about a professional in his early thirties who yearns for something more. Funnily enough, when I wrote it I was a lawyer in my early thirties yearning for something more.
Since most of the stuff I write is horror or science fiction or fantasy, I’d have led a damned peculiar existence if my books came from true-life experiences.
Do you only base your stories in places you’ve visited?
I’ve based parts of books in Sydney and Los Angeles, and Wick in Scotland, places I’ve never visited. That’s when Google Earth is your friend.
There’ll be a couple more parts along shortly. Till then…
