Valuing your craft… reprised…

Posted on July 31, 2018 by Mark Hayes

How do you value the results of your craft?
It’s one of those questions that’s always hard to answer, and harder to answer as a writer than, for example, as a carpenter. You might want to bear with me here for a moment…

A carpenter decides to make a table. He cuts the wood, joins the pieces together, sands down the rough edges, lays on a few layers of varnish, then polishes it all up. Possibly he does a bit of nice fretwork or uses a couple of different woods that compliment each other in tone and quality.  Then if he adds up the cost of the materials, ascribes some base value to an hour of his life, and figures out how long he spent making the table, before adding a reasonable percentage on top, voila he has found the value of his work. So can look to sell this finely crafted table at a price that reflects its worth. If he is a highly skilled craftsman making bespoke furniture he can charge a little more, because people will be able to see the value in his work, but ultimately whoever buys the table to is paying for a singular item with a solid as you like value. In short, it’s relatively easy for a carpenter to value his craft…

For a writer, however, the value of your craft is somewhat harder to ascribe. Ironically so as while what is written is singular and unique in nature, the way we market it is not.
If, for example, you add up all the hours I spent on thinking about, writing, editing, redrafting, proofing, final editing, typesetting, revising again, when I wrote my first novel Cider Lane it stacks up quite considerably. In the same time, I would posit, our carpenter could have made a fair few tables, or else he could have made a very beautiful and very expensive table.
The novel took me a year to write between the first word I typed on the screen and it reaching publication, and if you add up the hours spent drafting, redrafting, editing, re-editing, reading through, printing it off and editing it again, polishing every word, every syntax, and re-writing the bits I was not entirely happy with, and you get a rather large figure. One which a reader does not as a rule see, hence the iceberg below.

 

Despite this, the craft of writing is for me a labour of love. I don’t write to make a living, I have a full-time job and writing is a hobby, though if I could make a living as a writer I would. I am not alone in this, truly professional indie authors are few and far between. While I get my fair share of readers, I would need to sell a lot of books for writing to replace my day job, and that’s not going to happen any day soon. Cider lane took a year to write, Passing Place was written over a period of five years, the forthcoming Hannibal Smyth Novels have been in the works since 2015, even ‘A scar of Avarice’ a short novella I released this year which took about three months to get from concept to printed page was only happens so quickly because over half of it was already written in other forms over the last couple of years. In all this far from huge body of work has been ongoing since 2010 (I have been writing a lot longer than that, but my published works were started back then) The amount of time I have spent, the long evenings, early mornings, stolen lunch hours etc. add up. That iceberg is far bigger than you possibly imagine. Oh to be a carpenter making tables…

As I say, I write for the love of it, it is a calling perhaps, a hobby certainly, an obsession much of the time, and I don’t do it for the money. This does not mean, however, I don’t want to be paid fairly for my work. It may not be how I pay the mortgage, but reasonable recompense for the work I put into it all would be nice. It is however very hard to ascribe a value to such work. A balance between trying to find new readers and getting fair recompense has to be struck, and unlike our friendly carpenter’s table placing that value on that work remains a difficult proposition.

There is compensation, however, as when we sell a book we can sell it to more than one person. The words we craft aren’t carved into a stone tablet by hand after all. We can figure out the cost of paper and ink easily enough, print on demand sites will tell you exactly what the minimum is and you can just add a value to that in order to figure out the price you should charge for a book. I used Createspace originally for my own novels, before moving them to KDP (so it’s in the same place as the ebook variants) though they are plenty of other POD services. Some possible better, a few worse. You don’t even have to do that in this day of electronic publishing. But I’m a heart a Bibliophile, I like seeing paper copies of my novels, and like selling them direct when I get a chance, though the paperback market, I am sure you will be unsurprised to learn, is not where I sell most of my books, it is still somewhere I like to be.

E-books are however the main marketplace for new and aspirating authors who decide to go down the self-publishing route. E-books which bring their own questions of value to the table. With the E-book you’re not even a physical thing. All your selling are binary strings of code that together to form a readable text. We can sell them, then we sell them again, it is effectively a never-ending supply of binary code. Which, if you think about that for a moment, make it harder to ascribe a value to, because ultimately you’re selling nothing but a copy of that code. You’re not, however, not really…

What your selling, what I am selling with every copy of one of my novels sold on Kindle is a little piece of my writer’s soul laid bare. A little slither of my thoughts and dreams and on occasion nightmares. Of the ide of my inner being. And yes… I say this fully aware of how pretentious it sounds, gleefully aware in fact.

Market economists (a grey inhuman bunch, who are as lacking in souls as it is possible for a human to be) would tell you that the market finds its own values, through supply and demand. (see the note at the end). They would, I suspect, advise a new writer that wishes to find readers that they should give their work away. Make it free, and they will come… Create a free supply, and you will undoubtedly be at the peak of the demand curve… There is even some degree of sense to that, certainly, if you have a series of novels in the marketplace. Make the first one free, and you may well create your own market… Which is true enough. But what rubs against this idea for me is a simple thought.  ‘Do people value anything they get for free?’

I know that I myself have seen free e-books advertised all over the place. I also know I have ignored them on the whole simply because ‘If it’s been given away its probably not worth anything’?  I am, at heart, a child of consumerism after all. Yet even if a book is set at a price that is the bare minimum you’re allowed to set them at (on Amazon that’s £0.99) it still it suffers from the ‘if it’s that cheap it must be worthless’ factor. This is despite the fact a lot of books are set at such low prices, exceedingly good books in many cases, utterly wonderful novels on occasion are set this low or given away free.

How then do we value the writer’s craft, if writers themselves give their creations away so often, so freely? Some readers I have come across have got so used to free books on the internet they just don’t understand why they would ever have to pay for something. I’ve genuinely had people cursing at me on facebook for saying ‘no’ when they ask for a free copy of one of my novels. Not as a reviewer, not as a website writer or a blogger, not as anything other than a reader who might, possibly, consider writing a  review on Amazon, if they can be arsed. I have had people swearing at me, or even threaten to write a negative review if I don’t send them a free copy of a novel. It has somehow become something they feel entitled to, not just expect but demand at times… The below is a genuine quote from one facebook message I received…

“I get Neil Gaiman books for nothing why should I pay for yours?”

The world is ever a strange place, but it is all the stranger when people expect something for nothing while valuing it all the less for being free. Not to mention I strongly suspect the only reason they got a Gaiman book for free is because they downloaded a pirate copy. Which makes that statement all the stranger…

“I impinged a famous writers copyright, so why should I not impinge yours?”

Such experiences harden my opinion of humanity somewhat. But it is the market writers live in, and no one ever said all readers are nice people…

Its also, as an aside which irritates me somewhat unreasonably perhaps, a market where Mr Gaimen’s (and most well established big name authors) publishing companies routinely drop the cost of his novels on Kindle and the like to £0.99 for a week or so. Which make me mildly apoplectic, because it is hard enough to compete for readers with other indie writers and those still trying to ‘breakthrough’ without competing with the big names coming down to our level… I love Neil Gaiman, hell I’ve even bought a couple of his novels in the past when they were at £0.99, because while as a concept it might annoy the hell out to me, I’m not stupid. But I would have bought them at a higher price at some point, and I am fairly sure the same is true of most people who take advantage of his publishing companies largess. But that is somewhat off topic…

What inspired this topic, and the original version of this post a couple of years ago, was back when Cider lane was my only published novel I dropped the price down from  £1.99 to £0.99  for several months in the hope of selling a few more books (which btw it didn’t, because the difference between the £1.99 market and the £0.99 market is negligible). Which inspired this ramble or, to be more exact, the mixed feeling I had about the experience.

While I honestly care nothing about the money I make from book sales. See the whole, it’s not my job, it doesn’t pay the mortgage or put food on the table thing above.  I do care about people valuing my work and the feeling of value I ascribe to it myself. Readers are important to me. I want my work to be read, far more than I want fiscal returns for my work. I wouldn’t want one reader paying me the true value of my work  (I did the maths on Cider Lane once and just in hours spent on that one novel it’s at least £20,000 worth of my time if I use the hourly rate I get paid in my day job. No one reader is ever going to pay me the value of my work… ) I would, it has to be said, vastly prefer 20,000 readers, who, even if I made a quid a book on sales (which I don’t) would barely cover the time invested in a novel. But I would have 20,000 readers. I put Cider Lane back up to £1.99 a while ago, and it still feels like giving it away. As does the option to do just that and make a novel free on Amazon for a week, which I did once and shifted a lot of copies. Hopefully, a lot of those who took advantage of that and got a free copy, enjoyed the book. I really hope that is the case. But, in the end, it did me little long-term good as Cider Lane is a stand-alone and not part of any logical series of even loosely connected novels. But as long as those who got it for nothing enjoyed it, I am happy, though you would have thought that would net me at least a few Amazon reviews… As far as I can tell it didn’t.

Ultimately, artists (any form of artist) seldom get the true value in return for the work they produce. Some lucky souls perhaps do. Big name authors make thousands, tens of thousands, millions even, but they are the few and far between. The vast majority of us still toil away more in hope than expectation of our work being valued to what we might consider its true worth. We live in a culture that sometimes seems to glorify the average, thinks nothing of paying footballers millions to kick a ball around a field, yet wants its movies/ books/art for free. It is hard to see how anyone could ascribe true value to work that someone puts there all into. After all…

 “I get Neil Gaiman books for nothing why should I pay for yours?”

But if we, the artists of all kinds, do not value our own work, who will… If not in monetary terms, then in terms of art at the very least. Pretentious as that may be…

Cider lane, Passing Place, and A Scar of Avarice remain available on Kindle and in paperback for a fraction of the value of my soul, of which they are, I venture, a slither… and a fraction of the value I would wish ascribed to them and the work I put into bringing them into the world.

To follow me on Amazon, click on my face below, or just imagine your punching me, whatever works best for you…

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Note on Economists as promised above…

I did a degree in politic’s philosophy and economics. What I learned is this.  Economics is politics with the humanity removed, people are figures on a spreadsheet, their hopes and dreams an irrelevant factor. They never consider if they should be doing something because it will be good for people, they only the effect it will have on the little green bits of paper they obsess about. This is why few socialists are economists.

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Reading Habits and Old Haunts…

Posted on July 23, 2018 by Mark Hayes

I read a lot, (yes I know this doesn’t come as a shock to anyone). I also tend to have more than one book on the go at any given time. There is a system, there has to be a system because if there weren’t, I would probably lose track of what I am reading at any given point very quickly. But also it is a system that is enforced by technology, to an extent. That and my desire as an insomniac not to make matters worse with late night blue light pollution…

The system is this, there is always a book being read on my old kindle that sits in my drawer at work. For those times I have to do jobs that involve a lot of waiting around with nothing productive I could be doing. This is the Kindle book.

Then there is the book on my new Kindle, that sits next to the sofa at home for those chill on the sofa and read hours. This is the Other Kindle book…

Then there is the book on my phone kindle app that is for reading, well where ever and whenever I have a bit of time to kill, it tends to be lighter reading as I dip in and out of it a lot. This is the Other Other Kindle book…

And yes, before you ask I know my three Kindle devices ( not including the pc, the big tablet and oh whatever other devices I can find, all will sync and find my page for anything I was reading on the others but it sort of makes sense at times to keep them separate. I read each in different ways…)

Then there are books, lovely old fashioned, never go out of date because they are sharks, books. (and don’t blame me for the shark’s thing, that’s what Douglas Adams calls them, and you don’t argue with a Douglas Adams analogy…) I tend to pile them high on the nightstand, and I could be reading one, or several at once, they end up all over the house as well, but when they are being read actively, they tend to live mostly on the bedside table. I read in bed a lot, it’s my way to chill down, but blue light is bad for people with normal sleep patterns, and all devices kick out lots of blue light. I don’t have a normal sleep pattern, the very last thing I should ever do is read a device in bed and flood myself with blue light. That’s a night without sleep right there…

So, lots of devices, lots of paper, and lost of different books on the go at any given time. And its good, its great in fact, juggling all these books, these different idea’s, different worlds, different concepts, fiction, none fiction, weird stuff, smart stuff,  you name it I am probably reading it at some point in some way, some time.

It is rare that any book crosses these frontiers, very rare for them to cross several frontiers and with a few exceptions almost unheard of for them to cross into the night time reading. As I am perfectly serious about blue light pollution and the effect, late night blue light has on my already torrid ability to sleep. In fact, aside from the habits of a lifetime, one of the reasons I also have an hour or so to read when I hit the sack is the effect of all the blue light I routinely dose myself with the rest of the time. I can’t sleep after a night on the PC writing, or gaming or whatever, and the tv is no better for blue light. Pick up a shark and read for a while and let it all ease away, the best solution I know of… So the kindles never get in the bedroom…

But there are exceptions to every rule and last week after I finished ‘The Adventures of Alan Shaw’ by Craig Hallam and posted a review, I bought the sequel. ‘Old Haunt’s’. Originally I planned it to be the ‘Other Other Kindle book’ and to read it on the sofa with a pot of tea and some nice biscuits… But as with the first in the series ‘Old haunts’ swiftly crossed between devices. It got read on all of them, at work, at home, on the park bench, on other sofa’s, in the queue at the post office… because it was just too damn good to put down, and I wanted to know what happened next… then it did the unthinkable and crossed the threshold of the bedroom door and damn the blue light to hell… Which is, as I said, a rare thing indeed. As reviews go, ‘it was so good I read it in bed’  may seem a little light. Indeed it may appear scant recommendation. But it was, it is, and even if you have not read the first novel, you should read the second ( but seriously read the first one first.)

I don’t normally review two books by the same author so close together. Hell, I am supposed to try and sell my own books, not other peoples… But having finished Old Haunts so quickly after the first book I don’t see much point in not reviewing it right now… So here goes…

Old Haunts, It’s just as pulpy in all the best ways as the first Alan Shaw novel. It is also just as much unpretentious rollicking good fun. Everything I said about the first book is just as valid about the second. It doesn’t up the high bar the first novel set, but it doesn’t have to, when you are on a plateau you just need to keep on running, which is what it does. It remains an echo of those bygone Strand magazine, weird tales of yesteryear, Pulp period sci-fi with everything you can imagine thrown in the pot and brought to the boil. Egyptian tombs, American gangsters, A great train robbery, old gods, dark forces, steam-powered contraptions of death and destruction, brave heroines, slimy tentacles, monsters, mayhem,  lady ninja’s, love, hate, jealousy, madness, dark villains, foul murders on the streets of old London town and a lead character at war with his own history. Its pulp, but glorious unrepentant beautifully written pulp that drags you on with its willful abandon. Bravo Mr Hallam Bravo…

Now, will someone chain Craig to a keyboard, supply him with intravenous tea on a drip and give him six of the best if he stops typing… I want to read the next instalment…  And so will you…

To use my old Lovecraft rating system. As Amazon stars are so last week…

6out 6

You might also want to read the steampunk offerings of another writer. Who gets a mention right at the end of this post because it’s my damn blog. So sue me, and use the money to buy a copy of A Scar of Avarice…

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Posted in amreading, book reviews, books, fiction, goodreads, indie novels, reads, sci-fi, steampunk | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Reading between the lines…

Posted on July 22, 2018 by Mark Hayes

I had one of those conversations on Friday, the ones every writer dreads. Okay maybe not every writer, I am making a grand assumption here based on a small pool of reference, but hell grand assumptions are what make the world go round, or so it seems much of the time… The conversation in question started with a question, its one of the questions, the questions anyone who writes gets asked from time to time…

Where do you get your idea’s from?

Oh, how I hate that question. And it’s not because its such a cliche of a question, though it is, and like most cliches, it has a certain root of truth to it. But yes, I get asked it from time to time, I suspect everyone who writes does. I also suspect everyone who writes doesn’t really have an answer, I know I don’t. At least, not one that would satisfy those who ask the question. Though many may ask it out of nothing more than vague interest, some I am sure, ask it because they want to know the magic formula. Certainly, this seems to be the case every time it is asked on a writers forum, which in the case of the several I lurk upon, is roughly every couple of days. Without fail the person asking the question goes away unhappy with the answers they receive. Because no one likes the answer that most of us seem to ultimately come up with, and certainly I usually come up with:

We don’t know!

Well, I don’t at any rate. Maybe some writer somewhere does. But if that’s the case, they are keeping it to themselves.

But there is another answer, one which doesn’t satisfy those looking for a magic formula either, but one that is as close to the truth as you’ll likely to get. We get our idea’s from reading… Those who want us to tell them the magic formula never like that answer either. Reading doesn’t sound like the easy option they were looking for. Which in the case of writers forums on Facebook and the like is generally why the question was asked. But in the end, it comes down to reading…

We get our idea’s the way magpies build nests. Plagiarism is not a sin in the First Orthodox Church of the Scribbler, its more or less the first commandment. As the FOCotS Bishop of Maine has been known to say…

8028-stephen-king-quote

Oh, we don’t steal whole plots from other writers. Not that there are that many basic plots about in the universe to start with. We don’t steal characters or ideas, or even a word or a phrase here or there. Well, I don’t at any rate. But reading feeds the imagination in ways no movie, play, tv series, or anything else come to that ever does. It fires the mind and then sits smouldering in the back for a while, sometimes forever…

But there are different ways to read, and a writer I feel need to read differently to everyone else. Though again, this may be just me, I don’t have any real authority on this score. But if I was to give advice to anyone about how to become a writer, other than reading Stephen Kings ‘On Writing’ and quoting it a lot in blog post… Its teach yourself to read as a writer should.

I don’t mean learn to read between the lines, between the lines is easy. Anyone can read between the lines if they just take the time to think about what they are reading. What you need to learn to read is the bits that aren’t between the lines, but behind them.

The question to ask is never ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ But what were you thinking about when you starting writing? What were you trying to say but never said? What were you trying to express three layers down from all those words you wrote?

And you shouldn’t be asking it of a writer, not if you aspire to be a writer yourself, because you have already asked that question, each and every time you start to read anything, and sought out the answer yourself. More importantly, with practice, study and a whole lot of reading, you’ll never need to ask another writer you meet that old cliched question, ‘Where do you get your idea’s from?‘ because if you have read their work you’ll have an answer to it yourself…

Of course, it may not be the same answer they would give or the right answer, but it is a right answer, and that’s what matters. Though again, that may be just me…

Oddly enough this answer has never satisfied anyone who ‘aspires’ to be a writer but is looking for the easy route via questions on writers forums…

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Steampunk and Alan Shaw…

Posted on July 18, 2018 by Mark Hayes

Steampunk is a broad, and occasionally elusive, church. You can, in point of fact, stick a top hat on a story, liberally sprinkle around a few cog-wheels, the odd bit of clockwork, a corset or two and voila, you have steampunk… At least that’s a common misconception. In point of fact, you don’t really need any of those things.  Not that a liberal use of corset’s and clockwork never goes amiss. What you need most of all is a sense of wonder, a sense of the absurd, the uncanny, a naivety and a feel for a period of time that almost but never quite existed, and the forefathers of science fiction, Wells, Verne, Ellis, Stevenson and Twain…  But that’s just my opinion, and as I say its a broad church, so whom am I to define what is steampunk and what is not…

Which brings me to the reason for this particular post, which is about a novel which is everything I love about Steampunk, and ticks every one of those boxes I listed. Not you may be glad to hear one of mine. But ‘The Adventures Of Alan Shaw’ by Craig Hallam.

The novel, set out in many ways as a set of shorter tales with common threads, follows the adventures of the title character. From his lowly beginnings as a gutter rat orphan on the streets of old mother London, through a series of increasing odd adventures, throughout which the hero grows in reputation and bravado until it climax’s far form foggy old London in the depths of Imperial India where all the bravado and reputation in the world cannot save Shaw from his own conscience.

What makes this such a fun ride, however, is not so much the journey of Shaw from childhood to man, but the people and places he crosses along his journey. That and the nieve, old-fashioned, pulpy nature of the tales. Indeed that is what I enjoyed the most about this journey. The stories have much of old ‘The Strand Magazine’ pulp about them. The kind of tales that resided alongside the Sherlock Holmes stories of Doyle, the tales Wells published there, Kipling, Christie and so many others. The story is king here, not the whys and hows of the technology. I don’t care how the Automatons work, or the squid tentacled submarine, or the air-ship with its feisty French girl mechanic, or the brass monkeys, the strangely faceless acrobats, or anything else. It’s enough that they work within the world they inhabit. A magician should never reveal the whole trick after all.

There is a lot that is pulp here, but I say that without intending to be dismissive, quite the reverse, this is clever, well constructed, thoughtfully put together pulp. It’s fast and furious and throws you enough blind alleys that you’re never entirely sure where it is going and what is going to crop up. Especially what is going to crop up. There was more than one time along the way I thought I spotted a story thread that never happened. Perhaps because I expect a certain degree of melodrama in a novel. Instead of melodrama Hallam opted for drama, and never let things become mellow. Its fast paced and swings about wildly, yet he has kept a real sense of place and time. This really is fiction that could have been written for The Strand Magazine as speculative fiction, or indeed the likes of weird tales and others.

Yet, despite this old feel to it, Hallam manages at the same time to retain a modern sensibility and strength to the novel. It’s delightfully strange at times, yet wonderfully readable.  Which is a really neat trick, take it from me…

Or don’t, instead just have a read of the free sample on Amazon, then I defy you not to buy it…

I’ve read a lot of old pulp, and regular reads of these witterings could no doubt attest. I like old pulp, even when I am trawling through another Lovecraft story or delving into a bit of middling Poe. There is a feel to it that some modern novelists never attain, a sense of anything being possible that just takes you down the road with it…

 

Clearly, when I am doing my best to encourage you, dear reader, to read some steampunk by the delightful Mr Hallam esq, it would be obtuse of me, and indeed a little uncouth to make mention of another author recently released steampunk novelette…

But I am from Yorkshire, and Hannibal almost certainly would…..

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Posted in amreading, book reviews, books, fiction, goodreads, Hannibal Smyth, indie, indie novels, opinion, pointless things of wonderfulness, reads, sci-fi, steampunk, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

The page count problem…

Posted on July 16, 2018 by Mark Hayes

Wheather you self-publish or go the traditional route page count is a problem for a writer. The reasons page count matters are different, but the result is the same. But for a writer, unless you’re one of those rare ones that ‘just does it for the money’ rather than someone deeply passionate about your work, the page count isn’t really a consideration. You’re telling a story, the story is as long, or short, as the story needs to be. No writer wants to cut something short to fit in with a length prescribed by the industry, and no writer is going to pad for the sake of padding to achieve the same result.

Sometimes, when you self-publish, you have to wear a different hat for a while. the writer has to go have a coffee and a breath of fresh air while the publisher takes charge. then the publisher has to take the writer to one side and ‘explain’ to them why they need to put a little thought into their page count. At least with traditional publishers, you’re not arguing with yourself at this point…

Let me try to explain why this matters. Normally, as a writer, I talk in word counts, not page counts, but a publisher needs to think in page counts. A traditional publisher wants a novel between 250 and 400 pages long. Unless the writer is well established when the rules are different. The reason is simple economics, the more pages in a book, the more it costs to print, and the more it costs to print the smaller the profit to be made. Sure you can charge more for a longer book, but if you’re trying to sell a writer that’s not an established name you want to keep the price’s reasonable and minimise your risk…

A self-publisher has exactly the same concerns but from a different angle. Print on Demand costs more or less scale directly with page count. For example, ‘Passing Place‘ is more expensive than ‘Cider Lane,’ not because one is a newer novel, or that I believe one is worth more than the other, but because the base cost on POD for ‘Passing Place‘ is almost twice that of ‘Cider Lane‘, and that is purely down to page count. Print cost leads to minimum list pricing, ergo Passing Place is expensive in print.

And yes, of course, Passing Place is worth the cost, and I would not have cut out huge swathes of the novel to make it cheaper to print, it is the length that it is, but all the same page count matters…

Because of this with, my next novel ‘A Spider in the Eye’ I have increasingly found myself worrying about the page count as it keeps growing with the final (ish) edit I’m working on. While I don’t wish to trim for the sake of trimming, I find myself doing so anyway. Trying to work out if I can cut whole sections just to meet a page count… While not wanting to cut anything for any reason other than literary ones.

‘If its good for the story to lose something fine, but for page count, sod that… ‘

So It was time to put my publisher’s hat on and have a really good think before talking to the writer, explaining the options and some of the home truths about publishing…

‘A Spider in the Eye’ is too long, and while that doesn’t matter if it was only published as an Ebook it does matter if it is published in print, and I always want my books to be available in print. Sorry but I am a bibliophile, I want to hold the damn thing in my hand, they are not real to me until I do… If, however, it keeps growing through the edit as I suspect it will it will end up a good hundred pages longer than ‘Passing Place‘ Or twice the length of ‘Cider Lane‘. The POD cost would be too much and print copies would have to be priced too high, and the only person to ever hold one in their hand would probably be me.

There is, however, one solution to all this. ‘Spider in the Eye‘ has always been planned as the first book in a series. There is a natural point, just over halfway through the current edit, where I could split it into two novels…  Which given I will probably add a good 10000 words more before I get to that point in this edit would make it about the same length as ‘Cider Lane‘.. the second book would probably run to a similar length.

So there you go, thanks to my publisher self, repeatably shouting at my writer self I am not now close to publishing my next novel… Instead, I am close to publishing my next two. Which only leave me with the issue of thinking up another title…

(yer, of course, I have already thought up the title for the second book, I am just keeping it to myself for a bit…)

 

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Posted in Hannibal Smyth, indie novels, Passing Place, self-publishing, writes, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Writers on reading…

Posted on July 9, 2018 by Mark Hayes

The old sage and great whit Stephen King says in ‘On Writing‘ “If you want to be a writer you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” Occasionally I forget the former when I am too busy with the latter, Or forget the latter when I am too busy with the former. But then we all get lost in a good book once in a while, getting lost in a world of the imagination is more or less the point quite often. To be human, I sometimes think, is to tell stories, and listen to them…

Here then, because I have not done one of these for a while, are some quotes from the great, the good, and the occasional persistent scribbler, on reading…

“We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.”  ~ Philip Pullman

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.” ~ Lemony Snicket (aka Daniel Handler)

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.” ~ Joyce Carol Oates

ernest_hemingway_quote_there_is_no_friend_as_loyal_as_a_book_149

“What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.” ~ Anne Lamott

“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” ~ Oscar Wilde

“The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.” ~ Gustave Flaubert

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“My alma mater was books, a good library…. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.” ~ Malcolm X

“No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.” ~ Confucius

“Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you’d most like not to lose.” ~ Neil Gaiman

Good-friends-good-books-and-a-sleepy-conscience-this-is-the-ideal-life.

And finally, because on occasion one likes to pretend one truly understands the bleak nihilism of a certain cheerful German-speaking Bohemian Jewish novelist and managed to read ‘The Trial’ without it seeming to be such a trial to do so… And because quoting a certain cheerful German-speaking Bohemian Jewish novelist and Dr. Seuss in the same post amuses me way too much not to do it…

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.” ~ Franz Kafka

Ever a ray of sunshine there Franz…

edit: In case your wondering I actually love the bleak nihilism of Kafka, I just don’t understand it, except when I am drunk, feeling philosophical and claim to do so.

 

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A Scar of Avarice: Available now on Kindle and in paperback

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The waiting room of the psyche…

Posted on June 28, 2018 by Mark Hayes

I am a little bi-polar, though that is not unusual, almost everyone is to a degree. We all have highs and lows, and our moods swing between them. the truly bipolar are just those for whom the swing between extremes is more pronounced and the extremes all the greater. I, while not at the extreme end of the spectrum, am a little more bi-polar than your average man in the street, whomever that is, and whichever street he happens to stand in.

Outside influences beyond my control affect me more than they should, while things under my control are no less triggers. I am however very self-aware. I know when I am getting down, and I generally can spot when I am being a tad on the manic side. I can take steps to level myself out in most cases. I am undoubtedly lucky in this regard…

I have however been down for the last week or so, noticeably so not only to myself, and while I know the cause, it’s a bit of a strange one. Indeed the cause is closely associated to my own preferred method of self-medication. Which if you are a regular ready you might be aware is writing, as I explained in this post a couple of months or so ago. I am not going to go over all that again here. Suffice to say for me writing is more than a mere hobby, it is part of my life in an intrinsic way.

The problem, or what has lead to an extended period of the ‘downs’ for want of a better word, is that when you write there comes a point when a thing is written… And as you might also be aware I released a small novelette about ten days ago. The process of turning what you have written into a book and everything else involved with getting it out there, where ever there happens to be, is almost by necessity a manic period. I get hyped up, I am rushing about mentally, doing all the little jobs here and there I need to sort out, blurbs , covers, typesetting, last-minute edits, angst, worry, sending the final copy off, fixing the final copy when it comes back with a couple of errors, sending it off again. then telling people it is out there in the first place. Manic Manic Manic…

Then suddenly, a day or two after its finally published the backwash hits you. All that energy is expended, and you’re suddenly drained, spent… And that’s when I swing to the other end of my spectrum… That’s when I slip into the ‘downs’ and they always end up being the deep downs… It’s also when you start waiting… Because readers will read in their own time. Readers are the thing that you have no control over and bare in mind up to this point you had absolute control of everything to do with your book. Be it a short novella like ‘A Scar of Avarice’ or a full-blown novel like Passing Place. Once you put it out there all you can do is wait.

Wait and hope, that somewhere someone is reading the damn thing and sort of, kind of, maybe, likes it.

Wait and hope that maybe someone will even take a moment to tell you they liked it.

Wait, and hope, and try not to feel like you need external justification to reassure you bruised psyche that you’ll be fine. That it doesn’t matter if anyone likes it or not, that you have no reason to worry, because the only person who needs to like it at the end of the day is yourself, and you write first and foremost for yourself. While knowing at your core that it does matter, if only to you. While trying to climb back to that happy middle ground between mania and depression…

So, here I am, in the deep downs, several days after publication, waiting…

Except I’m not, not now, I’ve got past that down and moved on to sod it. Which I why I am actually writing this short post at lunchtime. To remind myself that it is the writing that matters, the sun is shining, and life is remarkably good. Time to stop the waiting in the deep downs and get on with the next thing. Let the waiting take care of itself…

 

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An Authors Avarice…

Posted on June 22, 2018 by Mark Hayes

I may have mentioned this… But forgive me for being overly excited about a new release…

flier

Normal service, whatever waffling meanderings on writing, Lovecraft, politics, the world, and general geekery can be described as normal will resume shortly. But in the meantime, you’ll just have to bear with me…

Or of course, you could buy a copy in paperback, or on Kindle, or read it on Kindle unlimited, or all three… Indeed buy a second copy of the paperback and hide it under that loose floorboard in the corner of your bedroom,  in case you’re raided by The Ministry and the Sleepmen take one away…

Now an apology…

scar of averice

And yes I will stop going on about this soon, but in the meantime, if you’re so inclined please like and share this post, so others may hear of this little novella of which I am unreasonably proud… And it may even aid my author’s avarice … That strange driven desire to have as many people as possible read my work…

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New release…

Posted on June 19, 2018 by Mark Hayes

Well, it’s finally out there.

 

Though… For reasons I am not entirely sure of the kindle version (edit kindle version now live too)  is taking some time to go live, however, available in paperback NOW for the tiny price of 4 squids…
And on kindle very very soon for a single squid…
My little novelette A Scar of Avarice…

Note, squids is not a typo, but for those that don’t buy things in cephalopods, pounds will do 🙂

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1717378250/ref=sr_1_12…

Alternatively, if you live outside the former heart of the British Empire, in the land which replaced it for $5.49

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1717378250/ref=sr_1_5…

(disclaimer: cephalopods are not a negotiable currency, neither are crustations.)

I suspect I will mention it again in the next couple of posts but just thought I would do a quick one first …

Kindle links are finally active as well 🙂

US…

 

 

UK

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Piano Player or Pianist…

Posted on June 15, 2018 by Mark Hayes

Sam, he who was famously, but never actually, asked to ‘Play it again,‘ was the piano player in Rick’s bar in Casablanca. To my mind, that is whom he is, ‘The Piano Player’, he has never been ‘The Pianist’.

That may seem like an odd distinction to make because frankly, it is an odd distinction to make. It’s also one I have never thought much about before. But if you were to ask me ‘Who was Sam in Casablanca?‘ I would, I have no doubt, say ‘He was the piano player.‘  Because bars have piano players, they don’t have pianists.  Its why the sign in the bus station window in ‘Passing Place‘ reads :

Coming ever closer ........

Because advertising for a pianist to play at Esqwiths Bar and Grill, just seems utterly absurd… Okay, I know, a Piano Player at a bar and grill equally seems a little absurd, but it feels right to me or did when I wrote it, and it was being Sam from Casablanca that more or less was the job that was being advertised… Sort of, though the bar is not a bar, and it’s location,,, well that’s all relative…

Why am I tell you all this, eclectic readers? Well because I got back the proof-read copy of ‘Scar of Avarice’ this morning and while I have been working through it and seeing what my proofreader has changed one of the things he changed was Richards ( the main character in ‘Passing Place’, who is also featured in ‘Scar of Avarice’ ) job  Piano Player to Pianist, and as I worked through the manuscript for an hour or so  that kept happening. Most of the little changes here and there that my proof-reader has made add to the overall novella. He has done a fine job. But I found myself stuck on this one change. (there were others of course, but this is the one that stood out.)

I found myself questioning if it should be Piano Player or as my proof-reader insisted (though only in the proof, not actually in person or anything.) Pianist.

Pianist is the right word for a person who makes there living tickling the ivories. I know that, I have always known that. But after letting it bug me for a couple of hours I realised something very important. Something every writer realises on occasion. The right word is not always the right word. Sometimes you have to go with the word that actually feels right…

So, with nothing but love and respect for my proof-reader, who has done a fantastic job for me, Richard will remain, The Piano Player…

In other news:  Scar of Avarice, or A Scar of Avaris (damned if I can decide which is right, with the ‘A’ or without it… going to end up going with my gut on that one, once my gut decide’s ) is that much closer to being published … yay …

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