The NaNoWriMo Curse

I think Nanowrimo is cursed. Now, I don’t say this idly. I have thought about it, pondered the coincidences, tried to make other connections, and I have come to the conclusion that NaNoWriMo either hates me, or fate does.

Last year, I participated in Nano for the first time. To say I was excited about the possibility of writing a novel in a month, a huge endeavour on its own, was an understatement. I had my NaNo survival kit ready two weeks beforehand. Brand new gel pens, a whimsical notebook that advised me to “Stay Calm and Write”, I’d cleaned up my computer, dusted off my keyboard, researched the best techniques to successfully complete Nano and I was ready. Then Day One rolled around, and my landlords called and told me they were selling the house. So the rest of November was filled with packing boxes, writing a few hundred words, moving boxes, writing a thousand or so words, collapsing on a pile of my clothes that I no longer had the upper body strength to put away, and then more writing. It wasn’t what I was expecting. This was like extreme Nano, maybe even NaNoWriMo boot camp. I lost that cute notebook with all my notes during the move and had to freeball it for the rest of the 50,000 words to completion. But I’m happy to say, I got it done. It was tough, but I was proud of myself at the end of the day.

So when Camp NaNoWriMo came around, I was excited to be able to sit down and do it properly. I’d given myself a slightly lower word count, joined an all australian cabin (which is awesome, by the way. Huge shout out to those guys) and got my NaNo survival kit ready *this one contained an equally whimsical notebook with hipster foxes and bears on the cover, and contained infinitely more chocolate due to Camp Nano’s relation to Easter). The first day went fine, and I breathed a sigh of relief. However, on the second day, disaster struck. My new landlords called, and you guessed it, they want to sell the house. Time to move again. So back to packing, and scribbling down words in between wrapping plates and knick knacks and house inspections. But I am 8K words into it already, so wish me luck.

Maybe I’ll have better luck in November.

FLASH… FICTION… Saviour of the Universe!

My apologies if you have never heard the classic Queen song, recorded for the cheesy 80’s classic film Flash Gordan. The title of this blog post probably makes no sense.

Here’s a link to the YouTube clip, Flash – Queen. No need to thank me.

I have recently decided that I don’t have enough on my literary plate, what, with doing two courses, writing the final installment of my trilogy and being DETERMINED to win the Impress Prize for New Writers this year (Oh, I haven’t mentioned that yet? I’ll do a whole other blog post on it soon.)

No, I decided, that I had that spare ten minutes between cleaning my teeth and babysitting my nieces to create something beautiful to enter into Short Story Competitions. I thought, very wrongly, that because I can write a full length novel, then a short story was going to be a breeze. Ten minutes tops and I’ll pump out something brilliant, and win myself some chocolate money. So very, very wrong. And here is why!

There are literally hundreds of writing competitions occurring every year, both in Australia and overseas. I had to get a diary purely to keep track of all the different competitions, their entry prices, prize money and word count. That leads me into my second point….

The word count! I find that the term “Short Story Competition” tends to be a bit of a misnomer. Most competitions want what is known as FLASH FICTION, a 1000 words or less. Let me tell you, 1000 words is not a lot of room to work with, especially if you have to fit in the standard three act structure that most literature follows these days, (orientation, rising tension and climax, resolution.) Gone were the rambling sentences which allowed me to really sink my teeth into the character’s voice. There are no superfluous words in flash fiction. Every single word matters, even the title. It is definitely an art form, writing good flash fiction. And it is all too easy to write bad flash fiction. The most famous flash fiction piece would have to be by Hemingway. It’s just six words. “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” 

Damn you Hemingway.

As if that isn’t bad enough, most competitions have themes. I’m unsure if this makes the process easier or more difficult. I’m leaning towards more difficult. It’s hard enough to write a 1000 word story, without having to make sure that it doesn’t wander away from a preordained theme.

Another inhibiting factor to my short story competition success, is the entry fees. Some are reasonable. $5 or $6 dollars to enter a competition to win $500, totally worth it. $20 to enter to win $200 is a bit of a rort, even if they do rely on the entry money to keep the organisation afloat. There’s charitable giving and there’s price gouging, in my opinion. On the other hand, some are free, which is fantastic.

A fellow writer likened entering short story competitions to “word gambling” or the far more catchy “Texas Word’em”. Indeed some of them are like that. For instance, take the new site Hour of Writes  (hourofwrites.com). I like the concept, a peer reviewed writing competition, where you buy credits on the site to “enter” the weekly competitions, write for one specified hour on site. The winner, whose work is marked by their peers, and then selected by the Hour of Writes judges, is given the “pot” prize at the end of the night, which depends on how many entrants there were in the competition. My friend was right, it does sound a lot like a game of poker. I am still up in the air if I am going to register for this site. I’ll let you guys know.

However, all that aside, winning a legitimate competition would help give my work some credence, and put some dollars in my pocket. But I intend to pick and choose my battles, so I don’t end up stressed out, overworked, and even more impoverished than before.

Do you have a favourite short story or flash fiction? I’d love to know.

Until next time,

M x

My JukePop Brings All The Boys To The Yard..

So, a month ago I came up with an “ingenious” way to get my name as an author into the blogasphere. I’ve always wanted to use the word “blogasphere” in a post, just to show that I am up on all this hip new jargon. That probably makes me sound like my grandmother, but when some kid told me the other day that they didn’t “ship” something, I had no idea what they meant. And that made me feel old. Like really, really old. So watch me drop that modern colloquialisms with unabashed abandon.

OK, lets hop off that tangent, and back to my ingenious way to build an author platform. I’d just discovered serial fiction sites, such as JukePop and Wattpad, even though I’m a little behind the eight ball on this one. Four weeks on, I just wanted to give everyone an update.

Available on Wattpad and JukePop

The major things I wanted to get out of this little social media experiment were:

– To introduce myself to prospective readers of my genre.

– To engage with said readers.

– To direct said readers to my paid work.

– To harness the power of social media.

So has it been a success? Lets crunch the numbers:

Point 1: In regards to introducing myself to prospective readers, I have had 253 unique readers on Wattpad, and 319 on Jukepop. So that is 572 new readers across the board. Whilst that doesn’t seem like much when you put it up against some of the higher ranking books on JukePop and Wattpad, who number well into the hundreds of thousands. But it is at least 500 readers I didn’t have before.

Point 2: I’ve had a few comments here and there, but nothing near the level of immersion that I wanted. This is something that I want to work on. So hey, if you’ve read my stuff, or you like writing, or chocolate, or animals, or just stuff, drop me a line. I’d love to chat 🙂

Point 3: To be frank, this has been an abysmal failure. I’ve only sold one book above my average monthly rate. Hey, there’s still 15 weeks to go, so maybe there’ll be a rush towards the end. A girl can hope.

Point 4: This has been great. I have a few more blog followers, a few more twitter followers, a few more followers on my Instagram, and I’ve been able to network with other authors on all of these platforms. I’m not about to beat Kim Kardashian in a Follower competition (unless I start instagramming me reading with a lot less clothes on), but I’m happy with it’s progress.

Although I won’t be able to truly judge the success of using serial fiction as a launchpad of my Author platform until the end of the experiment (in approximately four more months), all I can say is so far, so good. It hasn’t been a roaring success, and there’s still quite a lot of room for growth, but I shall continue to flail around blindly in the dark until I reach success.

Remember, fake it ’til you make it!

M x

Writing talent: natural born killer or academic endeavour ?

Can being a successful and engaging writer be taught? I intend to find out! This year, my New Years resolution was to take my writing seriously as a career. I made my peace with the fact that I may never be more than a starving artist, but at least I’ll be happy and starving. So, I took the bull by the balls and signed up for two different sorts of writing courses. A diploma in Professional writing and editing, and a 5 week advanced writing course with the Australian Writers Centre. The diploma is two years long and covers a wide range of topics, not just fiction writing. Editing, non fiction writing, copyright issues, all these are topics that are covered in the Diploma. The advanced writing course covers the basics of fiction writing, chatacterization and plot progression, that kind of thing. It was easy to be inspired when the view out the window looked like this! br />
Sydney is actually about 3 hours from Goulburn, where I live. So when in Rome, hit all the bookshops you can! I went to one of my faves, Galaxy book store on York street, opposite the Queen Victoria building. I love Galaxy!

One day my book will grace those hallowed shelves! I’ll keep you up to date on my courses and whether or not I think they are worth the significant outlay of cash. But for the next 5 weeks, I’m going to head to Sydney and live it up, in one of the greatest culinary capital in the world (in my opinion!) Unfortunately, that blows resolution #2 – get bikini body right out of the water. Sigh… The things we sacrifice for art! Until next time! M x

Literary Love

Happy Valentine’s Day my lovely blog readers. Unless you hate Valentine’s day, in which case Happy Consumer Driven Useless Holiday.

Whatever your views on Valentine’s Day, I think there is one problem that all readers can relate to…. falling in love with a fictional character.

Don’t worry, we’ve all been there. For me, my first literary crush was Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings by Tolkien. Especially in the Lord of the Rings book, when everyone still knew him as Strider. Tall, dark, handsome and a total badass; what’s not to love? He made my little twelve year old heart go pitter-patter. Who needed Nick Carter from the Backstreet Boys when I had the brooding, sword-wielding Aragorn to set a completely unobtainable standard? Let’s just say Viggo Mortensen didn’t quench that fire, either.

Since Aragorn, there have been many other literary loves. Eric Northman from the Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris (True Blood), Carlos Manoso  aka Ranger from the Stephanie Plum Series by Janet Evanovich. Uh, Mr Darcy anyone? In all honesty, I fall a little in love with every character I read. Even the bad ones. Even Christian-Freakin’-Grey.

One of the most beautiful things about reading fiction, or reading anything really, is that the mind takes individual letters printed on a page, and transforms it into something entirely of the reader’s own making. With a few subtle suggestions, the reader fabricates a living, breathing (sort-of) person from the clues. And every time, we imbue the person with a few traits that we find attractive, construe the writer’s words in a way that appeals to us.

I’ve always striven to make my male characters appealing, not just to my female readers, but to all my readers. Sometimes, I grow wayyy too attached to my characters (I’m looking at you Cable Oliver), to even give them a happily ever after. Unless that happily ever after is with me. That’s not weird, right? Right? Hang on, there’s some guys at my door wearing white coats. I better see what they want.

Until I get back, remember guys; Roses may be Red, and Violet’s may be blue, but a good book is cheaper, than a dinner for two.

M x

A Box Full of Joy.

Yesterday, there was a knock at my door at 7:30 a.m. Now, I’m not much of a morning person, but when I opened the door to see a rather large box sitting on my doormat, I could have raced after the delivery man (or woman) and kissed them.

In that box were the author copies of my very first novel, Slow Burn, from Createspace. It was like Christmas morning, but with less booze. (Maybe it’s just my family who have alcoholic milkshakes for breakfast on Christmas day? That would explain a lot….)

I had a couple of people who had expressed interest in buying the paperback version of Slow Burn, so I had to work out for how much I was going to sell my book. This seems like an easy question, but it really isn’t. By the time I paid for international shipping (I’m in Australia), the cost price of each book was around $8.50. Plus postage from my hands to the hands of my readers, and other incidentals like packaging, let’s just say the profit margin is skinny. I ended up settling on $15.50 including postage within Australia. I didn’t want it to be so expensive that people didn’t want to buy it, and not so cheap that I was going to make a loss, or barely any profit, on each book. It was a delicate balancing act.

I was going to use eBay as my storefront, but found that eBay would charge me $1.36 for each transaction, and PayPal would charge me 2.6%. All of this would cut directly into my already slim profit margin. I still haven’t worked out how I am going to distribute it to people who aren’t acquaintances, or within my local area. If any of you guys have an idea, drop me a line, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

But, you know what? I doesn’t matter, because I got to sit down, with a felt tip pen, and sign my very first book. It was a giddy and surreal experience. Worth the stress, the complex problems, the sleepless nights where I go over lists of things I should have done.

I was so nervous that I’d mess up my signature that my palm was sweaty. I still messed that one up. Maybe I’ll give it to my mum…

I always say to people, that getting published is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s these little milestones that make it worth it.

Until next time,

M x

Serials, No Milk.

Serials. What are they? My grandmother loved the serials. Everything stopped and the world was quiet when the Bold and the Beautiful came on every afternoon.

But they aren’t the kind of serials I am talking about. I am talking about book serials, made famous by Dickens. A part of me has always known that serials must exist on the internet. Everything exists on the internet. But it wasn’t until I was looking at the sponsor page of NANOWRIMO, and saw Jukepop.com that I realized it was a big thing on the internet.

I hear your cries of, “HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD OF WATTPAD!? WHAT ROCK HAVE YOU BEEN LIVING UNDER?”

I wish I had an excuse for that. Apparently, I have been grossly lacking in my utilization of the social platforms for publishing. I guess I’ve been so busy writing books, that I didn’t even consider any alternative methods of publishing. As usual, I am behind the curve. I seem to spend my life behind the curve. But now I know that Wattpad is it’s own megalith, I am ready to jump on the bandwagon.

So, without further ado, here are the link to my Wattpad page. I’ll update with the JukePop link when my submission is approved. Here is the link to my Jukepop page.

My impression of Wattpad so far is that the whole thing is a bit overwhelming. The stats alone make me feel like I am going to drown in a sea of fanfiction. I should put this disclaimer up. I don’t write fan-fiction. Not because I look down on fanfiction, some of it is extremely well crafted. I mostly avoid FanFiction because I worry that elements of someone elses story will worm it’s way into my original manuscripts. No one needs that kind of lawsuit. However, they are welcome to half of the $4.82 I make a day through eBook sales.

Back to the stats on Wattpad. I got this off the Wattpad Blog. I give Wattpad an enthusiastic round of applause, whilst sink into a pit of despair.

Source: http://blog.wattpad.com/

With stats like that, how am I meant to get anyone to read my new story from within the 80+ million stories on Wattpad. Word of mouth. Social media bombardment, forum spelunking, annoying my friends to sign up and like my story. I should have spent more time making friends and less time reading during school. Sigh. 20/20 hindsight!

Well, if I come up with any solutions and strategies, you guys will be the first to know.

Take Care,

M x

Why The Hard Work Only Begins After You’ve Finished Writing Your Novel… A.K.A Launch Day!

It’s here. Launch day for my sequel, REFLASH! I’ve done this all before, so it should be a stroll in the park? Right?

WRONG! I have stubbornly learned nothing. I’m going into launch day grossly under prepared as usual. Why haven’t I learned from the last experience? Because I would rather be writing than marketing. That one small fact will always hold back my indie authorship aspirations.

So, what have I gathered from my sleepless night, where I tossed and turned about what I should and shouldn’t have done?
A) I ask too many questions in my blog posts when I’m tired. I’m sorry.

B) I do not utilize social media nearly as much as I should. Twitter, FB, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram.

C) I do not guilt trip my facebook friends into sharing my posts nearly enough. So, I’m gonna take that slice of friendship bread, and slather a thick helping of guilt on that baby.

D) Sleep more, obviously.

E) I have to interact more in the writing world, in fantasy and fiction message boards and blogs. Find out what the hell tumblr is. I need to get my name out there! Write guest blog posts, free articles. So hey, if you want to hang out and shoot the breeze, send me a comment.

There are multitudes of lists on blogs and websites, with a thousand things you should do to market your book successfully. But they all say the basically the same thing. Know your audience, know yourself, make yourself known where your target audience hang out and write a sequel. Looks like I’m going to spend a lot of time glued to my computer!

I’ll see you around the salt mines,

M x

KDP Free Promotion – Is it worth it?

This is a tough question to answer, and my answer would be: what do you have to lose. If you have enrolled in KDP Select through Amazon, chances are you will take advantage of one of promotions that they offer. I chose the free promotion, because as a Kindle owner, I pulled a lot of my books from the top 100 free list. Sure, I’m not getting a cent from the “sales” but my book would be able to get its name in shining lights. Well, in theory.

But that poses another philosophical question. If a reader buys my book for free (how’s that for an oxymoron), will they buy my next book? Will they even read it, or will it sit in their archive, lonely and unread for all of eternity. Authors need repeat business to become successful. There has to be anticipation, a connection to the author, that makes the readers want to return for more, regardless of the price of the book. It’s hard to know what to do as a first time self-publisher, so all you can do is read what you can, make gut choices and hope for the best.

So here are the stats from my free sale. I “sold” 157 free units in a 5 day period. Thats not many, however, considering that before that I had only sold 5, I was pretty happy with it. Secondly, I got to 67 on the Paranormal and Urban free list. However, I applied to get my book on a lot websites that list free books on the day of their sale. How many of those came through for me, I do not know.  I used the list from the Authors Marketing Club free ebook submission tool.

So was it worth it? Short answer is yes. 157 more people have seen my book than before the promotion, and maybe a couple of those will like it enough to buy the next one? Let’s hope so.

Until next time,

Madeline x

Adventures in Taxland, and Free Promotions.

It’s official. I mean, I’ve suspected it for some time, but the truth is now inescapable. I’m a terrible Blogger. It must extend from my “alleged” commitment issues, because for some strange reason I cannot make myself sit down at the computer and type a blog post. I enjoy it once I’m in front of the keyboard, typing down every nonsensical thing that comes into my mind, but dragging my nose out of a book, or putting the pen down on my new manuscript is impossibly difficult. But alas, accept my sincerest apologies and I shall attempt to do better in the future. So onto the topic of today’s blogpost:

Adventures in Taxland and Free Promotions.

My mother would be the first to tell you that I am a serious procrastinator when it comes to tasks I think will be mentally arduous. The term Procrastiknight has been thrown around as an official title.  One such arduous task was getting an ITTN from the IRS. I think everyone would agree that talking to the IRS is an arduous task; I can’t possibly be alone on that one. For anyone who is reading this and isn’t from the U.S and ITTN is a tax number so I don’t have to pay a whopping 30% tax. So last week, I finally bit the bullet and called up. I’d read all the advice online about getting an ITTN, and how it was better to get an EIN instead, so you could get it immediately and there was no messy forms to fill in and lodge with embassies etc. I got most of my info, including the numbers for the IRS from Australia (international calling codes etc.) from this wonderful lady right here.

I’m not sure I mentioned this, but I am Australian, so to call the international line in Pittsburgh, I had to call at 11pm. To say it was simple would be an understatement. The woman on the other end of the phone was nice in a “I-deal-with-tax-issues-all-day-and-its-6am” kind of way. And at the end of a very quick phone call I had the all important magic number of riches and glory in my hot little hand. Not nearly as arduous as I thought after all. Damn you for being right, Mum!

The second major thing I have done in regards to my writing was set a date for my free promotion. The inaugural free date for my promotion is.. wait for it… The 22nd of December to the 26th of December. I weighed up the pro’s and con’s of these dates quite seriously.

Pro’s: People are on holidays, so they can relax, get a book and lay on the couch and read. Also, if I can get my sales high enough that my book is on the top 100 free list, I might even be able to get the new customers who just got a new Kindle for Christmas.

Con’s: It’s Christmas time, everyone is running around hectically getting last minute presents and resenting their mother-in-laws for going on a gluten-free diet. Who has time to download books and read?

There is only a few weeks left on my KDP Select run, so it was really now or never. Nothing like a deadline to make decisions for you.

So, I’ll check in here when my Promotion starts and let you know how its going. Maybe someone can learn from my mistakes or (fingers crossed) successes.

Until next time,

Madeline x