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Bye Bye Book Baby…8 Tips To Survive Launch Day

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

Books start off as a wholly private thing. An idea, a spark, a what if? A character, a voice, a problem. All in the author’s head. Swirling around, mixing and sloshing, growing and evolving and swelling until finally it all bursts out. Into notebooks, into notes saved on mobile phones, into character bios and storyboards and plot outlines and research. And then, word by word, page by page, into an actual book. By this time you might be sharing bits here and there. You might be talking about the plot with other people, or asking for advice. But in the beginning, it’s entirely private.

Then comes the day you hand it over to carefully picked beta readers. You wait and dread and hope, and then take a deep breath when you start to digest their inevitably and wonderfully critical feedback. You work on it again and again and again.

Until the release day looms. That first spark of an idea, that grew and moulded itself into an actual book, is as perfect as it can be and finally, it’s time to say goodbye. And I always forget just how scary this is. Handing over to beta readers is hard enough, but usually, they are people you know and trust, and you know the book is not finished and still needs more work, so it’s easier to take the criticism.

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But after release day? The public have your book in their hands! And hopefully, they are going to read it, react to it and possibly review it. Scary stuff. There’s an element of wanting to avoid this, though obviously, we write to reach people, to pass on stories and lives and messages, however, there is no denying it’s hard to say the final goodbye. Good luck out there book baby, you are on your own now.

Here are my top tips for surviving release day;

  1. Whether you’ve arranged a physical launch or an online one, or something far quieter, ensure you’ve done all the hard work days before it kicks off. So blog posts, interviews, early reviews and graphics are all organised and ready to go. You’ll be nervous enough on release day and don’t want to be rushing around putting last minute things together.
  2. Enlist some fellow author friends to help you on launch day. They’ve been there, so know how it feels! You could ask them just to help share and Tweet your book link and reviews, or you could go further and ask them to co-host your event with you. Safety in numbers, plus you might need the moral support!
  3. Have another project on the go. Releasing a book and finally saying goodbye to it can make you feel a bit flat. I like to have another project already on the go to take my mind off the one leaving home. You can spend release day promoting and squeeze some fresh new writing in as well.
  4. It’s never too late to fix typos. Lingering typos are a constant fear. You’re sure you’ve got them all, mopped them all up on the millions of times you’ve gone over your book, but you know full well they can still creep through. But the great thing about indie publishing is that if some kind soul lets you know they found one, you can quickly amend it, republish and no one else need ever know!
  5. It doesn’t have to be goodbye forever. Part of you is so glad to get this book released, to finally have it done and out of the way, but another part of you feels a bit like your baby is leaving home and never coming back. Not true. You’ve still got to promote the book and that lasts forever. You can revisit the characters and the plot any time you want with extra short stories, character interviews and so on. You can even write a sequel or make it into a series…It doesn’t have to be over!
  6. Goodbye to one book makes way for the next. It’s hard to concentrate on the next book when you are waiting for one to move on. Once it’s gone, once it’s fully out there, you can breathe a sigh of relief and start paying proper attention to the next ones waiting to be written!
  7. Make sure you have some wine in to celebrate. Or whatever takes your fancy, Release day can be pretty exhausting, followed by a flat feeling and feelings of anxiety about how readers will react. Take deep breaths and have a drink or two to calm your nerves and celebrate what you have achieved.
  8. Enjoy it! Release day is scary and somewhat emotional, but don’t forget to have fun and allow yourself to enjoy it. It is your special day after all, and one you have worked amazingly hard for!

I’ll be saying goodbye to Elliot Pie on October 5th, but you can pre-order the novel right now here on Amazon, for just 99p! This is a special pre-order price and it will go up on release day! So grab your bargain copy right now and don’t forget to leave a review afterward to let others know what you thought!

 

Summer Blog-a-day 2018 – Extract from my next release!

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

I am so sorry I am late putting this up! I agreed to take part in the Summer Blog-a-day 2018, courtesy of the lovely Kay Macleod and today is my day! I’ve decided to post the first chapter of my upcoming release Elliot Pie’s Guide To Human Nature, which will be coming out with Pict Publishing in October. I hope you like it!

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Elliot

 

I think the men started it all. My mother going downhill.

She didn’t have much luck with the men, and this was a fact. According to my Nan and Uncle Liam, she kept picking bad ones.

She used to be able to laugh it off.

You live and you learn, she would say, got to kiss a few frogs before you find a Prince.

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if it had all started with the men. There had been quite a few bad ones in a row, the first being my father, who had not hung around to see me be born.

I scribbled the men into a notebook to help me remember;

-my father

-the one who beat her up downstairs when I was in bed

-the one who came home with her from the pub

-the one who stole her purse

-the one who cheated on her with three other women

I didn’t really know any of them. I hadn’t even seen the one who beat her up. He’d just been a voice in the hallway, murmuring while she giggled.

Then one night, his voice changed. Light and fun turned into husky snarling. High pitched at the end of his sentences, like his voice was snapping into pieces. There were thumps and bumps, gasping and scrabbling. The man spoke to her in a low, mean voice and then slammed the front door behind him. I got out of bed and started across the landing but she called out; No! I’m okay! Don’t come.

The second one wobbled home with her one night after closing time. I’d sat with my back against my bedroom door to listen.

Seen you about. Liked you for ages.

Didn’t think you’d look at me twice!

You’re lovely, you are. All woman!

She broke down on him not long after the glasses clinked.

So bloody fat, aren’t I?

No, no, you’re all right, you’re…

Who am I kidding? Probably had a bet with your mates, didn’t you? Taking the piss out of me!

She went on for a while, having a go at him and accusing him of things. And then he left, quietly.

Next was the one who stole her purse. Apparently, she’d given him her number the night before, so he turned up on the doorstep to try his luck. She came running up the stairs after he’d left. She woke me up shrieking; he’s robbed me! He’s robbed me! That shitting little bastard! She sat with me on my bed, red-eyed and shaking.

‘God, I can’t believe what a bloody idiot I am, Elliot! What a pushover! Robbed my purse! My bloody purse! Jesus Christ, what is wrong with people? Why do they go out with the sole purpose of hurting someone else?’

She left it a few months before she latched onto the next disaster. It went well for a few weeks, until she got a phone call from a woman claiming to be his girlfriend. It all kicked off after that. There was screaming and shouting and things getting smashed. That was the same night I started watching the house opposite ours. The one with the old lady and the two striped cats. It was the cats that caught my attention. Crying and mewling to be let in, day and night. Why didn’t the old lady let them in?

The next morning my mother had come to a decision.

‘I’m giving up men,’ she announced over breakfast. ‘That’s it. That’s final. They’re all the bloody same. I was right all along, wasn’t I? That’s it. No more.’

‘Have you seen that old lady across the street recently?’

Me changing the subject pissed her right off. No, she hadn’t seen the lady, what bloody old lady? Hadn’t I listened to a word she said?

But I couldn’t stop thinking about the cats. That night I could still see them sat on the doorstep waiting to be let in. I watched them for a while before lying back down and picking up my notebook to hold open on my chest.

My bed was under the window and I liked to sleep with the curtains apart and the window wide open. I liked to lie there like that until the cold night air had completely numbed the tip of my nose. I could never fall asleep until the outdoors had drenched me in cold. Once I was cold enough, I got under the duvet, pulled it over my head and fell asleep.

Just then, there was a tap on my door and my mother came in. She shuffled in, tugging the sleeves of her pale blue jumper down over her hands one at a time. I always felt a slight sinking in my belly when I looked at my mother and realised that we were complete opposites.

I was tall for my age, with a shock of thick black hair, and deep brown eyes. My mother was five-foot two and apple shaped. Her hair was pale yellow and when loose, hung limply over both shoulders, where she would often reach up to tug at the ends. I thought she was pretty. Her face was round and flat, her eyes pale blue and framed by blonde eyelashes. Her lips were like a small pink flower. I longed for the smack of them against my cheek, but she had never been a kissy sort of person.

I wished we looked alike. I wished that people would say how like my mum I was, instead of wondering if my dark skin meant I was adopted. I’d never heard anyone say that I had my mother’s eyes, or nose, or lips. It made me sigh when she walked into the room, and as her shoulders slumped with her own sigh, I wondered if she felt the same disappointment and sense of disorientation whenever she looked at me.

Perhaps if I had looked like her just a little bit, then the differences in our personalities would not have felt so obvious either. I forced a smile as she approached my bed, wringing her hands and frowning as if everything perplexed her. I couldn’t help glancing at her short legs, before gazing down at the long ones that emerged from below my barrel chest. My Nan told me I was still growing into myself, and that I was not a finished product yet. I hoped she was right. My long thin arms and legs made my chunky middle look out of place. You’re a beautiful boy, Nan was always telling me, but that’s not what the kids at school said.

My mother spotted the open window and scowled.

‘Close your bloody window! You’ll catch your death!’

‘Mum,’ I sat up. ‘The house across the close has had its lights on for weeks now.’

‘So, what? What are you spying for?

‘Mum, she hasn’t let her cats in either.’

‘What are you on about? What bloody cats?’ She came to the window, crossing her arms over her chest.

I leaned forward on my knees and pointed. ‘There. Look. She hasn’t let them in and her light has been on for two weeks. Maybe longer.’

She shook her head, distracted. ‘Look, I had a phone call…’

‘Do you think something has happened to her?’

‘Elliot, listen to me a minute. I need to talk to you about something.’

But she didn’t sit down, and she didn’t touch me, so I continued to stare at the cats and suddenly I didn’t want to look at my mother at all. She had the same look on her face that she’d had when she told me Uncle Liam’s baby had died. I didn’t want anyone to have died, so I just concentrated on the cats.

‘I’ll go and knock in the morning,’ I said with certainty. ‘Make sure she’s okay. Maybe she went on holiday and someone is supposed to be feeding them but they forgot!’

‘Can’t you even listen to me?’ she snapped then, stalking briskly away from the window. ‘Is it too much to ask? I came up here to talk to you! Do you even care?’

She didn’t give me a chance to answer before she flounced off. I felt bad after that, but at least I could be sure that no one had died. She would have said so, wouldn’t she?

When she was back downstairs, I tried again to put my finger on what was different about her. The red eyes, for instance. She never used to cry as much as she did now. The stalking about and walking away and starting conversations but not finishing them. That was another thing. I gazed at the list in my notebook. Five bad men.

Did it start with the men? Or was there something before that? Maybe I had just not been paying enough attention. And now I needed to help her. I needed to do something. I felt like it was just on the tip of my tongue, at the back of my brain, teasing me.

I wished Uncle Liam was still around to ask for advice. Uncle Liam had moved in with us six months ago, but he’d gone off recently to clear his head. He would be back soon, because we still had his car and his dog Tizer. I decided to embrace the fact that it was going to be up to me alone to work out how to save my mum.

The Return of the Voices (and the Nervous Stomach)

~ ChanAtkins ~ 5 Comments

Back in April, I blogged about the strange feeling of dread and nerves I was experiencing when I thought about writing, in When Writing is the Cause of and the Solution to Anxiety It took me a while to work out that the reason my stomach kept taking a nose dive was my writing. There was, however, a huge sense of relief when I finished the first draft of what will be The Boy With The Thorn In His Side- Part 3. I discussed this in First Draft Relief as The Voices Fall Silent. After that first draft, everything calmed down. The voices from this particular story shut up and while that did allow the next lot of characters to pipe up, I felt a lot better. My nervous stomach went away and I almost forgot about it.

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About a week ago, something very annoying happened. I got an idea for a new book. I really, really didn’t want this to happen. It actually makes me feel physically sick to even think about it!

And this is why;

  • at the moment I am trying to decide whether or not to release Elliot Pie’s Guide To Human Nature as it is, probably in September. Although, as I talked about in my last blog post, How Do You Know When It’s Time To Quit?, I am also considering another edit and possible rewrite. I change my mind about this on a daily basis. I am listening to all the advice I’ve received in feedback from publishers and from beta readers and anyone else who has commented, but I do still feel that the story is the way I intended it to be…so as you can tell, this book which has been two years in progress, is still plaguing my thoughts…
  • I have A Song For Bill Robinson and Emily’s Baby both written. Both need further edits and both need feedback from beta readers to move forward. But at the moment, both books are just sat there doing nothing, while I feel the constant gnaw of guilt and unease about the fact nothing is happening…
  • Currently, I am working on The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series. As explained in older posts, the original book and its sequel This Is The Day have been reworked into a series of four books which will be left open for the option of a fifth. Parts 1 and 2 just needed tweaking, while part 3 is entirely new, and part 4 is a reworked version of This Is The Day to tie in with the events of part 3…Tired yet? I am! Parts 1 and 2 are finished and awaiting frot covers and formatting for ebook and paperback. I have just finished the 4th draft of Part 3 on my Kindle and will soon dive into the 5th draft before I ask my beta readers to read it. I am working on Part 4 right now, and don’t think it will take more than a week or so, as only a few bits need changing. There is some relief with this series, but already a few ideas have crept in for a potential book 5…
  • The Day The Earth Turned, a 4 book YA series has been waiting for its turn for a good year or so now. I’ve plotted it, devised characters, and written short stories to keep it at bay. I’ve even dived into writing it and got as far as chapter 7. Once I have finished messing around with The Boy series, this series will be the next new, fresh thing I work on. That could be as soon as a few weeks time!! Exciting!! But those voices are getting louder and louder…
  • There are also sequels half written and neglected for The Mess Of Me and The Tree Of Rebels, but these will have to wait even longer now thanks to this bolshy new idea marching into my head last week!
  • I’m not going to tell you too much about the book so far, only tease you by admitting it’s been somewhat inspired by watching Breaking bad and Supernatural! Weird, I know, but the writer’s mind works in very strange ways. I didn’t want a new book idea. You can see how much I have going on, plus if you check out my upcoming books page, there are other books in the pipeline I’ve not even mentioned in this blog post. They will just get pushed back too as this new idea is a very insistent one.

So, with the new and unwanted book idea came new voices, names, characters, lives, homes, friends, lovers, backstories and shit loads of dialogue. They just don’t shut up! They are living and breathing and growing and evolving each and every day. Everything I do, everywhere I go, they are there too, demanding to be born, urging to be moulded and shaped into something real and living. I already know far more about these new characters than I wanted to. I’ve tried to ignore them and it’s not worked at all. They are just there!! They are just so alive.

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And obviously, the nose diving stomach is back. In a bad way. Like I’ve said before, it’s a lot like the feeling you get before an exam. My stomach lurches and twists and tightens. Sometimes out of the blue, for no reason. Other times, it’s because something to do with one of the books has popped into my head.

So I now know for sure that this anxious feeling is connected to book ideas…

So what to do about it? Other than try not to panic? And try not to die before I get all these books written and out of me?

I’ve done two things that have helped already, and one is something I’ve done before with other novels in waiting. I wrote a short story which I will include in a future newsletter for those of you subscribed to get a very, very early glimpse of this new book idea of mine. That eased things a bit.

And I’ve done something new. I’ve started a diary here on my blog, which will remain unpublished for now. It’s a diary of a novel from the first (in my case, unwanted) seed of an idea, to the finished product available to buy. I thought this would be really interesting to look back on once it’s all done!

So I write an entry when something has moved on with the novel idea. The first few entries contain notes about the original idea and the last few I wrote include possible names for the characters and more details on their lives and conflicts…

I hope this will be an interesting and cathartic process for me, plus I will have all the notes safe and sound in one place for when I start writing it!

Just one more thing to mention! This new idea? It is somewhat connected to The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series, in that some of the characters will appear in the others’ books…!!

How Do You Know When It’s Time To Quit?

~ ChanAtkins ~ 16 Comments

It’s a genuine question. I really don’t know.

I have been close to quitting a lot lately. It’s probably a weekly thing at the moment. I don’t mean writing, by the way, I could never quit writing.

I’m referring to the process of editing and rewriting and revising a book again and again and again in the faint hope of a publisher accepting it, versus making the decision to quit editing, rewriting and self-publish it. I am also referring to my writing company, Chasing Driftwood, which I constantly think about quitting. I am torn all the time. Do I give up on all these childish dreams and get myself a proper job? I am increasingly tempted.

Failure is a horrible thing. We all face it at various times in life, and it’s never, ever nice. We actively work to avoid it. Sometimes that means we never even try in the first place because we are scared of failing. We are scared of that feeling and don’t want to see ourselves as failures.

I think I can safely say that I have at least tried. Very, very hard. And a big part of me wants to keep trying. Despite the mixed feedback from two rounds of beta readers, I still love Elliot Pie and I feel like I have worked on it and worked on it, and made it a much, much better book that it was over two years ago when I started it. I’ve listened to feedback and I’ve acted on it. I submitted to a list of small press publishers and had three of them fairly interested in it, which is pretty positive really. I’ve never had that response to any of the other books I’ve put out. I keep reminding myself of this whenever I feel down. They may still be rejections, but they are positive rejections, which all say positive things about Elliot Pie. I have confidence that at the very least, my synopsis, my concept and my first few chapters are enough to entice people in!

Good stuff. But that leads me on to the reasons it was still rejected. Too long. I did go through it again and deleted another character, but I honestly could not see where else to cut. I know, I know, hire an editor you say. But I can’t afford that right now. Not in the slightest. Another reason for rejection was more specific. They loved the concept and my writing and absolutely adored Elliot, all of which is fantastic news. But they would have preferred the book to be written from the POV of Elliot and his mum. Just to explain, the book is mostly from Elliot’s POV, but also from his mum’s and the three strangers he makes friends with.

Now I can’t stop thinking about this suggestion. It would mean yet another entire and potentially very tricky rewrite. Losing the POV of three characters would also get the word count down…

But I just don’t know. I personally like the other characters POV being there because it means the reader gets to know or assume stuff about them which Elliot does not. His mother never meets these people. Do you see how tricky it could be to rewrite? I would have to write Elliot into scenes he was never meant to be in, or find other ways to suggest elements of their characters to the reader, through Elliot’s perceptions and reactions.

A lot of work. And I have two more finished but unpublished books to tidy up and start doing something with! Plus The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series which I am working on…

Life is short, right? The way I see it right now, I have two options with this book and with my writing company. I keep trying, keep battling, keep working until I get it right, whatever ‘right’ is, or I learn to know when to quit.

These are two separate issues really. I know I won’t quit my company yet. I just desperately need more time to make it all work and I know I will get that in September when my youngest starts school. I have decided to give it my all that year, give it everything I’ve got, and if I can’t do it, admit defeat at the end of that year and get a proper job, knowing at least I tried.

With Elliot Pie…I just can’t decide whether to keep rewriting in the hope of getting a publisher for it…or admit it’s the best I can do, it’s the book I wanted it to be, self-publish and hope for the best.

Funnily enough, when searching for images to post with this, I came across the quote ‘when you feel like quitting, think about why you started’ and it’s now changed the way I am looking at this. I’ve been thinking about what the story I originally wanted to tell and I’ve been thinking about the reason I started my writing company…

But it’s tricky, isn’ it? How do you know when to quit? How do you know when you’ve done the best and you’ve nothing left to give?

Answers on a postcard please! Or alternatively, leave a comment and let me know your thoughts! Have you ever felt like quitting a project? Was there a point when you just realised you’d done the best you could, and it was time to stop?