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Thoughts and Fears as Release Day Approaches…

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

Release day for my next book A Song For Bill Robinson is creeping ever closer. I am not ready, not at all, but as I mentioned in my last post, I have a blog tour organised this time, so I do feel like there is less pressure on me to promote! I need to check my launch plan though and see what else I can achieve between now and then. All in all, I am just trying not to get stressed about it. My work life has increased a fair bit lately, with my company getting busier and in more demand, and this is wonderful. But it has meant less time for writing and promoting my own books. I think I have totally fallen out of the promo habit!! Eek, need to get back into that quick sharp.

Oh, and if you haven’t seen it yet, here is the front cover!!

So, this blog is really all about the thoughts and feelings that dominate when approaching the launch of a new novel. A Song For Bill Robinson will be my tenth release, which is a lovely round number and something I am incredibly proud of. But like all creative types, I have my moments of self-doubt and panic. Here are some of the thoughts and feelings rushing around in my head as launch day approaches!

  • The book is not ready! I think this is one of the biggest thoughts and most dominant fears. Despite spending three years writing and revising and editing this book, which is about what I spend on all of my novels, I still wonder if it could be better? If I left it a year and read it again, would I change things? Cut more words? I don’t think this thought ever really goes away and I often have the urge to go back over my other novels and double check them all. Again.
  • I’ve left promo too late! Another panicky thought and fear. My promo for releasing a novel has been a bit different with each one, and looking back, it really all depends on what’s going on in my life. It comes down to time and energy I guess. I wrote a very detailed launch plan for this one, but I think it was a bit ambitious considering how busy life is at the moment! I have to remember that promoting a book never ends. If you’re lacking around launch day, the game is not over. You can keep promoting it forever.
  • There might still be typos! Another fear that never goes. At the moment I have a very kind and wonderful reader going over it again for me before I hit publish, and so far I’m pleased to report they have not found any typos or spelling mistakes, just a few misplaced commas and some opportunities for cutting the word count down. I hate the thought of readers finding typos, even though I understand how hard it is to weed them all out.
  • No one will buy it! Ahh, the most common fear and not without good reason. As an indie author doing it all alone without much money to help with promo, I do struggle for sales, though I have never had a month without a sale. The most common fear a writer has with a book launch is that the readers will hate the book. I really don’t know how people will feel about this one and I won’t know until that first review comes in. It’s a scary feeling!
  • Now there’s room in my head for more books… Well, to be honest, as soon as a rough first draft of a book is done, that story gets shuffled to the side of my brain and the next one in line barges in. But it feels even better when the book is finally released, because it’s over, you’ve done it, you can let it go and move onto the next one. That’s a really good feeling and a great relief.
  • It’s a load of rubbish… What if all the reviews are critical? Okay you know you are going to get some people that love it and some that just like it and some that don’t get it, or whatever. That’s expected. But what if all the reviews are bad? What if I’ve really mucked it up this time? What if it makes no sense, is slow or boring or unrealistic? Beta readers have told me otherwise, but what if they’re biased or wrong??

And if I’m really honest, I’m so tired right now, my most dominant thought is; I can’t be arsed, why can’t someone else do all this for me? I’m sure that will change though. If my other book launches are anything to go by, I normally end up really enjoying it. It is an accomplishment and with this particular book, I’m really pleased it finally escaped that dusty old suitcase and the unfinished book I wrote as a 16 year-old is something bigger, brighter and better than I had attempted back then. Well done, teenage me for putting the wheels in motion and not throwing it away! And well done forty-plus me, for finally getting it done. I’m happy with that.

10 Fun Facts About My New Book

~ ChanAtkins ~ 5 Comments

Wow, time goes fast! Too fast! Although I have been working on YA novel A Song For Bill Robinson for three years, it’s release date is suddenly almost upon me and I do not feel ready! Life has been very busy lately and I feel unprepared for this book release and I’m ever so slightly panicking. I did consider delaying the release until after Christmas but I’m not going to. The good thing is this time around I have paid for a blog tour, so this is really going to help with the promotion and take some of the pressure off me. It’s something I’ve wanted to try for a while and if it has good results I will definitely save up my pennies and arrange another one for one of my older books. Anyway, my new book will be released on 7th December and the next few blog posts will be related to it, so if you are curious about the novel, stay tuned and learn more!

  1. I first wrote this book when I was 16. An early version of this story was written when I was 16. Most of the characters have remained the same in this new version, although a few have been added and some have had their names changed. Some of the storylines are the same and some are new. The character who remains most unchanged from my early teenager version is the protagonist, Bill Robinson.
  2. I forgot about it until I found it in a suitcase. I had totally forgotten about the book I wrote aged 16 but never managed to finish, until I found it in an old suitcase under my bed. The suitcase was full of my old diaries and stories and things I had written for school. Amongst all that was a huge lever arch file with the unnamed manuscript in it. What an exciting find! I sat there on the floor and flicked through it. It was handwritten on shabby A4 paper and I’d kept a separate notebook for character bios and plot developments, much like I do now! There is even a handy map! I was actually very impressed with my 16 year old self and decided I had to rewrite and finish this novel!
  3. I wrote two short stories first. As I was already working on another novel, I couldn’t just start rewriting A Song For Bill Robinson right away. I was also putting a short story collection together so I decided to pen two short stories related to the novel, in a bid to keep the rest of it at bay. Bird People and Night Prowler can be found in my collection; Bird People and Other Stories. Bird People is really a character snapshot of Bill Robinson and I really enjoyed getting to know him again. Night Prowler serves as a prequel to the novel, explaining what happened first.
  4. The original book was inspired by The Commitments. Yes, when I was 16 I watched the film The Commitments and it inspired me to write a story about a grumpy working class boy who wanted to be a singer. The book has very different storylines but the singing part was definitely inspired by that film!
  5. It has evolved into a trilogy. My characters do this to me all the time! One book is just never enough for them. So, while I was already developing The Boy With The Thorn In His Side into a six book series, A Song For Bill Robinson ended on a cliffhanger that just had to be addressed in a follow-up. I wrote that book and will release it next year but the same thing happened at the end of that one! I am now working on the first draft of that third book.
  6. It has an amazing soundtrack. If you’ve read any of my other books, particularly The Boy With The Thorn In His Side books, you will know that I am a huge music fan and will write songs into my books if I can. Of course, with this book being about a singer, I was able to have a lot of fun choosing songs! From The Clash, to Jamie T, to The Four Tops and David Bowie…this book rocks! You can listen to the playlist via this Pinterest storyboard…
  7. The characters gave me an extra storyline. Yes, they are so naughty like this. I already had a plot and some sub-plots. The attack on Bill starts the novel. Who attacked him and why, and is it connected to the unsolved murder of a local boy? These revelations come throughout the book as does the ongoing feud between Bill and local thug Charlie McDonnal, who Bill suspects of the murder. There is also the community centre under threat and the singing contest held to try to save it. Bill, of course, is a contender in the contest, but can he keep Charlie and his own inner, drink-related demons at bay long enough to win it? And in the middle of all this, my characters suggested a love triangle between the three main characters and best friends, Bill, Summer and Adam. This is a storyline that runs on into the next books.
  8. My daughter helped me edit it. My oldest daughter finished her GCSE’s and had a long summer ahead of her. Her main priority was reading lots of books! She offered to read the paperback proof of A Song For Bill Robinson for me and was an invaluable help. It’s aimed at her age group so I was curious about her reaction to it. She sped through it and loved the characters and she also sat with a pen as she read it, correcting typos and reordering words for me. She was brilliant! Of course it has had further edits and revisions before and after that as well as beta reader feedback, but her being the age it’s aimed at, really was a massive help.
  9. I wrote some songs for it. Well, sort of! You see, in the book, Bill ends up joining a band and playing covers with them. They want to write their own music though, so he starts trying to come up with some lyrics, something he does not think he can do to start with. So this meant I had to come up with some lyrics! And that’s mostly what there is in this book, disjointed lyrics for unnamed songs. But in the next two books those songs develop and become actual songs the band start singing at gigs.
  10. It’s set in a fictionalised version of the estate I grew up on. Just like Elliot Pie’s Guide To Human Nature, A Song For Bill Robinson is set on a council estate called Holds End. This is a fictionalised version of where I grew up. The books link slightly as Elliot mentions the Robinson family in his book and Elliot’s mother Laura, appears briefly in the next book in the Holds End trilogy. As for the location, I’ve kept most of it the same, changed a few roads names and added the community centre.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these random facts about my next book. In next week’s blog I should have news about the release date and a pre-order link for you!

Who Is My Reader?

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

One of the first pieces of advice I recall hearing when I started my indie publishing journey in 2013, was; ‘know your audience.’ It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? Know your audience, know who your reader is. Once you know who they are you can figure out how to find them, where they hang out on the internet, what social media they are likely to be on, what tags you can use to get their attention, who to market your books at and so on.

I remember struggling with this at the time though. And I’m still struggling now. Back then, I had written The Boy With The Thorn In His Side, Parts One and Two, but while it was with beta readers, I very quickly churned out The Mess Of Me. The two were written side by side for a while until eventually The Mess Of me won the race and was released first.

The Mess Of Me has a 16-year-old protagonist and is essentially a book about growing up and the many teenage issues that go with it. At the time though, I didn’t think of it as Young Adult or as being aimed at teenagers.  I just listened to the voices in my head, as I always do, and they were young.  I soon figured out that not categorising and marketing The Mess Of me as YA was foolish and ridiculous. I had to get my head around something then. Was I a YA author? Did I just write YA?

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I didn’t have a problem with this as I have never grown out of loving YA books, and although I read a lot of genres, I do frequently return to YA and always feel like I am coming home. The problem was the next book. Though also having a teenage protagonist, and dealing with teenage issues, it was far harder to classify. Partly because the teenage narrator grows up and becomes an adult, and partly because there are two narrators for Parts One and Two, and the second narrator is an adult. In my head, this book was never aimed at anyone. I just had it in my head and wrote it.

I’ve got to be honest, this has mostly been my approach since too. This Is Nowhere features a grown man, but every other chapter dives back into the past to when the character is a young boy and teenager. I always felt like this one was probably better suited to adults though, so I categorised it accordingly.

The Tree Of Rebels was the first and only book I wrote with a deliberate audience in mind, and I think I mentioned on here several times while writing it, that this made it the hardest book to write. It sort of altered how I felt about the book. It was like I was trying to write to please someone the whole time.

The Tree of Rebels

Since then, I returned to just writing what I wanted to write and not imagining the reader first. This is fine when writing, but presents all sorts of problems when the time comes to publish the book. What categories and keywords do I choose? How do I market it? What genre is it? How do I find the people who will like this book?

Elliot Pie’s Guide To Human Nature is a classic example of why I am still in such a muddle and still struggling to find my readers. It has a young narrator, but also an adult one. The adult themes, for me, make it more suitable for adults than teens, but Elliot’s day to day life and outlook are something that will more than likely resonate with young people. I still find it hard to describe the genre of this book. Definitely coming-of-age but also contemporary women’s fiction? Maybe even UpLit?

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With Parts One and Two of the new, revised The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series almost ready to be released, and Parts Three and Four being polished up in the background, my mind has once again returned to my elusive reader. 2019 will continue to be busy as I plan to release YA novel, A Song For Bill Robinson and possibly it’s almost finished sequel, Emily’s Baby. My list of novels is growing longer, but I still don’t know who my audience is. It’s tricky when you cross over so many genres. Most of my books cross into two or more, with psychological thriller, suspense, crime, coming-of-age, mystery and dystopian all regularly showing up.

So, who is my reader? What sort of person reads my books and likes them? I only have a small audience, so it’s hard to speculate. But I suppose really, my reader must be someone quite similar to me. I imagine them as slightly scruffy, or at least not terribly groomed and over bothered with appearances. They probably make an effort when they can, and they probably berate themselves fairly often about sorting out some kind of ‘look’, but it never really feels urgent to do so. They are probably young at heart. Stuck in the past, tinged with nostalgia, reluctant to admit and give in to adulthood. I think they are a music fan. They probably like all sorts. They’re not narrow-minded about it at all. They’ll listen to anything, but they have their favourite era of course, and their favourite songs. They see life in songs. Soundtracks are everywhere.

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What else? I imagine them as liking animals and nature. Not in a really obsessed, or professional way, just in that seeing a bird or a deer unexpectedly will really make them smile and have a better day. I think they enjoy being outside, all weathers too. Being outside makes them feel more alive.

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I think they are introverted but friendly and warm. A bit cynical and suspicious at times. Prone to the odd dark mood. Likely to panic about once a month about how the world is utterly doomed. But they always brighten up and soldier on. Despite being naturally shy, they are really interested in people, genuinely intrigued by them. They love a spot of people watching and love a character-driven book they can really get their teeth into. They are looking for stories about humans they can relate to and empathise with, and they are looking for characters to fall in love with, characters they wish were real.

They want to disappear inside a book and come out feeling different. They don’t want anything too formulaic or predictable. I think they are a bit of an eccentric at heart. They probably talk to themselves.

This is how I imagine my readers to be and I shall continue to do my best to try to find them. What about you? If you are a writer, do you know who your audience is? If you don’t know, does it make it harder to sell your books? If you’re sure of your audience, tell me about them. What are these people like? If you’re a reader, do you imagine yourself as part of a genre tribe, full of similar and like-minded people all connected by an appreciation of mysteries, or romance, or horror?

Please feel free to comment and share!