E-Day for “Close to the Edge – Tales from the Holderness Coast”

For anyone thinking of self-publishing, here are some tips that you might find useful, on the part that it’s all too easy to overlook: publicity.

writeonthebeach

Tomorrow the Kindle version of my history/travel book becomes available on Amazon. The Paperback is already out and some lovely people have bought it – more than I anticipated since I don’t really get into the marketing swing until 10 August when I’m back in the UK.

I thought I’d share some of the marketing ideas that I’ve put together and the responses I’ve had to them -bear in mind that this is a non-fiction book and likely to have a limited audience.

1. I’ve had A5 posters made of the cover. I spent ages agonising over the size of these – naturally I thought the bigger the better. However, the posters are going to library, museum, visitor centre and supermarket notice boards in the towns and villages down the coast that feature in the book. The decision about size was taken on the basis that there is always pressure…

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Shades and shadows.

Hi there, me again, posting another blog.  How long have we been meeting like this now?

Are you beginning to feel that you know me?  I hope so.  I’ve told you so much about what I think, do, like and dislike that I sometimes wonder if this blog looks like therapy.

I’ve been using the ‘me’ and ‘I’ approach, known (technically) as writing in the first person.  I’ve created a voice on the page, or perhaps I should say screen, that has its own idiosyncrasies, and hopefully convinced you that I’m a living, fully-rounded person, not just a flat fictional character.

Detail from Humphrey Newton’s notebook, 1497

I’ve been confiding in you, and since I hope I haven’t offered you anything offensive or shocking, you’ve been inclined to believe me, haven’t you?  Might I even claim to have gained some degree of trust?

Well, of course, there was that lapse, last October when I abandoned blogging without warning, and disappeared for several months.  But let’s slide over that for the moment, and concentrate of content. That’s been sound, hasn’t it?

Tricky thing, pinpointing truth.  I was flicking through some old notebooks today, and came across one with some Dennis Potter quotes I’d copied out for a university project, and since one of them has been resonating, I thought I’d share it with you:

…apparently autobiographical forms are very powerful.  It’s…a method of appearing to inhabit one person’s head in a ‘truthful’ way.

The authenticity of the background and the surface detail is therefore guaranteed, as is the emotion, which gives me the licence to introduce and explore emotions that are not mine, that are fiction.

 

Finding space for another book…

A couple of weeks ago I treated myself to the Stroud Short Stories anthology.  It gathers together, ‘almost every story read at the nine Stroud Short Story events from June 2011 to April 2015.’  I’ve had a lovely time dipping in and out of this collection.  It’s a good cross-section of styles, tones and genres.

With an upper limit of 1500 words, and a minimum of 100 (though few are quite so brief as that), these stories are great for those short reading spaces, such as between trains; in waiting rooms; or instead of watching a pot boil.

So, I hear you say, what does Stroud Short Stories offer?

I can do no better than quote John Holland (the organiser) in his introduction to the anthology:

The event we call Stroud Short Stories (SSS) was initiated by writer and artist Bill Jones in 2011.  The format is a simple but effective one.  Local authors submit stories and the organiser/editor/judge chooses ten, which are read before a large and appreciative audience at the Stroud Valleys Artspace.  There is no winner.  The authors who have appeared on stage (and who appear in this anthology) range from rank newcomers to experienced professional authors.

Holland goes on to say that the stories were ‘chosen not just for their quality, but also for how they contribute to a varied, stimulating and enjoyable evening’s entertainment.’  These, then, are performance stories.

Aside from their entertainment value, this anthology provides an opportunity to think about the differences between stories made for the page and those for the ear.  So it’s earned a space on my bookshelf…

 

At Last!!

A suggestion for your travel shelf…

writeonthebeach

It’s all over bar the marketing. The paperback is up on Amazon and the e-book shortly follows – “Close to the Edge – Tales from the Holderness Coast” is a reality. It’s taken around two years to get to this point and the final product is not a bit like my original idea. Perhaps that’s inevitable and I’m happy that it’s so.

There are lots of questions to ask myself when I have time to reflect a little; four big ones come to mind:
Was it worth it?
Would I do it again?
What would I do differently?
What have I learned from the experience?

Perhaps in another blog I’ll share my reflections with you. For now, I’m putting my rather sketchy marketing plan in place and I’ll be back in the UK at the end of the month to drum up some interest…well try to at any rate.
In…

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Keepsakes and Treasure Seekers

You see this box?It was a thank-you gift.

Someone who noticed how I like boxes thought I would appreciate it

I did.  It was not a big box, being shorter than a penguin paperback, but deeper.  If you look closely you’ll see that it’s made from good quality materials; that the surface has a linen-like texture and the edges are beveled.  I liked the solid design and the simplicity of the logo, though I didn’t know who Jo Malone was, or what they sold.  

What made it really special was that it was offered filled with mementos.   It told the story of a writing weekend, but here was a different view of where we’d been and what had happened.

For nearly a year this box has been on the edge of my desk.  Sometimes I open it, but mostly I remember what is inside.

I haven’t put this with my other boxes, because this one does something different.  It doesn’t just transport me back to another time and place, it also paints a portrait of the person who selected the contents.

The best stories…

Imagine this:

It’s winter.

On a damp, cold, morning in January, Kelly has just arrived for work at Rustic Farm.  The breakfast sky is overcast, the hedges and trees are leafless, and underfoot there is mud.  The concrete yard is spotted with large dark puddles.  England in winter feels like a grey place.

Even though Kelly is wearing her quilted waterproof coat, heavy jeans, a woolly hat, and black wellington boots, she has stuffed her hands in her pockets.  The wet cold is seeping through to her bones and she’s only been out of the car five minutes.

She hurries to the storeroom and measures out food for the calves.  As soon as they see the buckets, they rush to the feed barrier and jostle for space at the trough, churning the air with their hot snorting breath, reaching out their long, coarse pink tongues to lick at the cascading trail of feed.  The calves chew contentedly, snuffling mouthfuls before raising their heads and chewing, open-mouthed, their eyes blissfully half-closing.

Kelly goes to the barn and climbs the ladder up the haystack.  She is so close to the corrugated tin roof that she has to crouch.  The air up there is dry.  Kelly roles five bales off the edge.

Back at the manger, she hefts a bale in and cuts the strings holding it together.  The hay falls into fragrant sections.  Kelly fluffs up the stems and spreads them out.  She makes a cloud of soft greens for the calves to sort through.  The scent of sweet meadow grasses wafts up, and for an instant, evokes the memory of a hot June afternoon stacking bales.  She pauses, picks out a stem and chews it.  It is faintly, dryly sweet.

A calf coughs, vigorously.  A shower of dung sprays through the rungs of the gate by Kelly’s feet.  She laughs, throws away the soggy hay stem, gathers up the cut bale strings and goes to fetch a shovel.

Maybe this is a bit corny, but sometimes a metaphor says it best.

So this week, as I was helping with the hay making, absorbing the scents of sun drenched herbs and grasses, I was thinking about that moment when the bale gets opened.  What makes good hay is the quality of the herbage that will go into it, and the care taken to cut it at the right moment, then to dry it quickly and thoroughly before it gets baled.

It seems to me, that what I aim for in my writing is the same thing.  I too must judge the perfect moment to cut into and out of my story, and use the best words I can to evoke the essence of a time and place.  I aspire for my reader to forget, just briefly, everything except the story I am telling.  Because those were the sorts of story that set me dreaming of becoming a writer.

Print by
Alberto Manrique

FREE WORLDWIDE — popular creative writing ebook: offer ends Sunday July 5th

Here’s a useful book to add to your Writer’s Library. And, just for today, you can download it for free from Amazon.
Can we ever have enough books about story?
I don’t think so.
Don’t take my word for it that this is a good one, have a look for yourself.

BRIDGET WHELAN writer

From today until Sunday July 5th BACK TO CREATIVE WRITING SCHOOL is free to download from Amazon. Thirty exercises to set your imagination free and it won’t cost you a penny.

Here are some recent reviews:

 Nothing like the dry martini of some other instructionals but more the literary equivalent of a smooth mango daiquiri with lychee twist. Particularly enjoyed the chapter entitled “THE HORROR! THE HORROR! on writing ghost stories.

oOo

If some of Bridget Whelan’s lessons had been learned sooner, I may have published much earlier.

oOo

 Ideas may come from staring at the clouds, but they’ll advance in surprising rapidity with a few of Bridget’s well-conceived exercises. While her enthusiasm flows from the pages, the budding writer is swept forward on a tide of ideas that are unlikely to have occurred otherwise. Her tips on what to avoid along the way are every bit as valid and…

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What a Poetry Reviewer looks for

It seems to me that these pointers are as relevant to prose writers as to poets. If we’re going to go to the trouble of getting self-published, let’s make a good job of it.

Emma Lee's Blog

I recently came across a suggestion that self-published poetry books could be seen as lacking credibility or editorial rigour. That’s not my experience as a reviewer. It’s fair to say a self-published poet is more likely to make a negative comment about my review, but that’s usually because a self-published poet places more importance on reviews than they deserve.

What does a Poetry Reviewer look for?

• Poet’s name – not because established poets get a more favourable reaction but because if I’ve seen the name before as someone getting regularly published in poetry magazines (regardless of how many poetry books they have or haven’t published), then the poems in the book are more likely to be of a good standard.
• Publisher – not because of a bias towards certain publishers but just to see whether the book is self, vanity or traditionally published. At this stage it’s about production values…

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