The BIG Announcement!

Excited, me?  I should say so.

At last the fantastic news can be revealed: This writer is joining TRISKELE BOOKS!

I have long been a fan of the Triskele ladies and their work - Jill, Gill, Kat, Liza and Jane produce excellent content in packages to die for.  Take a look at their website to see just how wonderful they are.

I can't wait to see my book, DELIRIUM - The Rimbaud Delusion, wrapped up in one of their delicious covers.

Read more about it HERE.

And now I'm going off to swoon quietly for a bit.


(I was so excited that when I typed 'excited' above I wrote 'executed'. Well, dangle my legs over a drop and call me Stretch - what do I care? I'm a Triskele lady!)

Selling ebooks without promoting - Karen MacLeod tells how she did it.

My Guest Blogger today is novelist Karen MacLeod. Karen has been successful at selling her novels as ebooks with virtually no promotion or advertising. Or maybe that should be no 'virtual' promotion or advertising. 

I asked her to tell us how she achieved this without tweeting, blogging or promoting on Facebook.

Karen, you write mainly historical novels set in the 16th century - tell us a little bit about them and why you are attracted to this particular period.

 

I have three historical books - the Warbeck Trilogy. The first, Doubtful Blood, is a lengthening of a novella I wrote years ago from my own research and the other two followed naturally out of my protagonist’s life, unplanned. 

I’ve been fascinated by the sixteenth century since I was a child. I had knowledge and heaps of books on the period already, so it was only a case of buying a few more particular ones (and I still do – can’t go past a bookshop…) 

 

Why did you decide to self publish your books? What has your experience of self publishing ebooks been like?

I had submitted novels and had compliments from publishers and agents, but no one was taking and the difficulties for unknown authors were getting worse in the economic downturn. Barbara, who had put her books onto Kindle, suggested I might like to too. She did the technical bit and the fabulous covers. 

It’s very exciting, but varies so much. If I have a good sales day, it’s brilliant. A bad day makes me think that the publishers who rejected me were right. I can’t tell whether the readers are reluctant or the sales reports are slow in coming through. 

All I know is that readers who like my type of books also like tennis. Televised tournaments reduce sales. Last Wimbledon was wonderful in terms of Andy Murray and depressing in terms of sales. I got my first double figures in a fortnight on the day it finished, so that seems conclusive. 

 

Are you pleased though, with the number of sales you have achieved?

My last day without a sale was in September 2012 and I’ve had thirty plus sales on several days, so yes. My best ever month was last August, presumably due to holiday reading. 

It took sixteen months to reach my first thousand but accelerated so I've now had over six thousand sales. Kindle authors don’t have the publicity department of a publishing house behind them so every sale is precious. And the idea that my work might be distracting people from their worries is very satisfying. 

Many writers believe it's necessary to constantly promote, to blog and tweet, to be active on Facebook and suchlike. How much of this, if anything, have you done?

Very little, despite Barbara’s urging me. I work full time, so don’t really have the opportunity. Plus I want my work to be well known, not me. 

 

So, are you a technophobe? Do you think you could reach more readers by more promotion, advertising etc? Or do you think it's a waste of time?

Not a waste of time; one blog reader might tell lots of others. I just have a feeling that most of my readers are older and wouldn’t be reading blogs. Or I might be making two incorrect assumptions in one sentence. 

 

So what's your secret? How do you account for your success with almost no online promotion? Did you do any other advertising and was that successful, worthwhile? And did the discovery of Richard III's bones help do you think?

The discovery helped; the month it was confirmed was my first to reach three hundred sales. 

The e-books carry blurbs for my other books. A work colleague kindly created a website for me off her own bat but my only formal advertising was for my trilogy. 

My protagonist is the grandson of Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be the younger of the Princes in the Tower supposedly murdered by Richard III. If Perkin was the prince, then Richard III could not have murdered him as the Tudors alleged.

I put an advert in the Ricardian Bulletin, the magazine of the Richard III Society, of which I’m a member. It got straight to people who already knew who Perkin Warbeck was and were fascinated by his claims and by the period.

Another Society member, a complete stranger, wrote in to a subsequent Bulletin saying she hadn’t read such good fiction in many years. At that point, eleven months after the trilogy went online, the sales began to climb and continued to do so, I assume by word of mouth to readers who are not Society members. 

So yes, that advert was worthwhile. There’s nothing like an unsolicited testimonial. I’d love to meet that lady some day and thank her. 

 

Tell us something about your current writing project. Do you have a deadline? Do you intend to submit to agents or will you self-publish again?

I’ve begun a second timeshift/ghost story. My first timeshift novel Deverell Gatehouse was inspired by a stay in a haunted medieval gatehouse - we didn’t know it was haunted until we stayed there or I don’t think I’d have gone, but I got a book out of it. 

This second ghost story is about James IV of Scotland, the king who died bravely at Flodden. I’ve no deadline and think I’d self publish rather than submit to agents. 

 

And anything else you'd like to add?

I’ve just brought out an omnibus version of the Warbeck Trilogy and am holding my breath for the effect on sales. Self doubting as ever! 

Lastly, I like to thank my husband, Alan Richardson, who understands why I write since he’s a playwright himself, my fellow members of Visible Ink Writing Group, who also understand, Flora for her website and, most of all, Barbara, for her kindleship/script reading at short notice/nagging and general encouragement.

Thanks for the kind words, Karen. I hope sales continue to rise - and good luck with the Omnibus.

A RIMBAUD FOR ALL SEASONS

Rimbaud is many things to many people. He has been claimed by mystics, revolutionaries, feminists. He is a gay icon. He is a pagan. He is reformed Catholic. He is the first punk poet.

While he was still alive, though having abandoned poetry and buried himself away in Abyssinia, he gained a cult following of young poets. He was the icon of the Symbolists who hailed him as their own.

Since then he’s been a beatnik, a punk, a rock star. He’s been depicted in jeans; with a backpack; with a guitar.

He was the Dylan of his time; or the Patti Smith. He disappeared into Africa like Jim Morrison is alleged to have done – Jim supposedly following the trail of his hero and not dead at all.

For me it went like this:

Firstly, fascination with his love affair with Paul Verlaine. The story had everything: passion, poetry, violence, an abandoned wife. It had drink and drugs and degenerate behaviour. It had unwashed poets struggling to survive, living in squalor, welcoming their degradation, refusing to labour for an honest day’s pay. Their story involved knives, punches, wife-burning, baby battering – and it ended with a bullet in the wrist.

Secondly, he was the hero of my heroes. Bob Dylan read him, wrote a song mentioning him and Verlaine. Jim Morrison acted like the uncontrollable Rimbaud – unwelcome in polite households. 

Patti Smith wrote poetry and songs inspired by him. Van Morrison was a Rimbaldian too. I saw him everywhere – on record sleeves along with scattered Tarot cards and mystic symbols, graffitoed on walls, on the covers of books. 

He was the bliss that I was feeling.

He was influenced by his reading of mystic and occult books – Eliphas Levy, kabbalists, alchemists, Edgar Allan Poe, Eastern religions. I went to his source material and tried to see things how he saw them.

He tied in with my obsession with Dionysos. The Greek demi-god with a human mother and divine father. Dionysos is the Lord of the Dance. The bringer of thrilling music and wailing. The enticer of women, who enchants his Bacchantes and exhorts them to wildness and rapture.

Rimbaud, like Dionyosos, provided an entry point to the mystic realm: The words he used. The images he conveyed. The way he reached for something beyond – and seemed to grasp it.

He made me feel it, see it, understand it.

And that’s why I wanted to write about him.

DELIRIUM or The Rimbaud Delusion will be available as a paperback and ebook later this year.

FEAR OF THE NEW NOVEL

Now that DELIRIUM is finished and about to go through the pre-publication neatening up process, my mind is turning to ideas for a new writing project. But though I have ideas kicking around, I find I’m experiencing the same bewilderment that I always experience once a book is finished.

I realise I have no idea how to write.

Or rather, I completely forget how I wrote the last novel and can’t imagine how I can ever write another one.

At this stage, the whole process baffles me. Even though I’ve done it before, several times, I can’t see how I can possibly write another 80,000 or more words because I simply can’t remember how it happened last time.

I know it did happen. I have the words in a digital file to prove it. But how did they get there? Who wrote them? How come there are so many of them?

Of course, I know deep down that I will be able to do it again – if I want to. But I always seem to have to add that proviso. If I want to, I can write another novel – but I can’t be forced to do it. I have to let it sneak up on me.

It’s a bit like washing the dishes.

I say to myself, ‘I’ll just put the plates in hot water to soak and I’ll do them later’ and then I say, ‘Well, I may as well add some washing up liquid.’ After that it’s a small step to: ‘Since I’m here, I might as well do them while the water is hot.’ And so, by sneaking the idea up on myself, the dishes get done.

And that’s how novels happen. A snatch of conversation gets written down – may as well save it as I might need it later. A couple of characters start forming – might as well jot down some notes, just in case. A few ideas float up from the unconscious. Better write them down or else I'll forget them.

And before I realise it, I have what looks suspiciously like a pile of freshly washed chapters.

FLASH500 HUMOUR VERSE WINNERS

The FLASH500 HUMOUR VERSE competition winners are up on the website.

Winning entries will also be published in WORDS WITH JAM magazine.

Once again judged by me - and I had a great time reading all the poems.

Get your entries in now for the next competitions for humorous verse, flash fiction and novel opening chapters.

DEATH OF RIMBAUD

Arthur Rimbaud

37 ans

10 Novembre 1891

Priez pour lui 



Rimbaud back from Africa
sketched by his sister Isabelle.

Arthur Rimbaud died on the 10th November 1891 only a couple of weeks past his 37th birthday - an inflamed knee and an austere life in Abyssinia having used up what was left of his youth.

But what a youth it had been - charging around Europe mad to live and careless of anyone who got in his way. Then later trekking around Africa seeking his fortune. Though the fortune he searched for changed as he changed continents.

In Paris, in Brussels, in London, he sought the alchemical gold - the gold that brings with it bliss and enlightenment, that he believed could be found by altering the base metal of mundane life through extremes of behaviour, through drink, drugs, delirium. And sex.

With Paul Verlaine as his willing punchbag (a punchbag happy to punch back), Rimbaud scoured the cafes and bars, experienced the dives and debauchery of whatever city he was in. Looking like an angel, he lived like a demon. At times he believed he had found what he was looking for - attained 

Rimbaud at 16

that higher state that allowed him to see beyond the mundane and into the divine. He challenged a God he professed not to believe in to accept him as a worthy opponent.

Well, we all know what happens to angels who challenge the Almighty. Rimbaud fell like Lucifer into the flames of his own disgust. But hell turned out not to be a place of ice and fire. It was instead a return to that ordinary life he had once desired so fervently to leave behind.
 
On the shores of Africa he turned into an able clerk, honest and trustworthy, his work ethic firmly in place. When the spirit of adventure he could not suppress rose again in him, he travelled to Ethiopia - then known as Abyssinia - to seek a different fortune, to amass a different type of gold.

At the end of his life he had been carrying 14lbs of gold around with him, permanently strapped to his waist for fear of thieves. He ate little, dressed badly, lived sparsely, hoarding all the time gold coin after gold coin until the weight of it wore him down.

After a monstrous journey back to Europe, his leg was amputated. He lived out his final days in dreams and delirium and died in Marseilles begging to be transported back to Africa.



Rimbaud family tomb, Charleville Cemetery

DELIRIUM or The Rimbaud Delusion, a novel by Barbara Scott Emmett is available as a paperback and ebook.  https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FKJ1OCE 

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