- Giving away a book doesn't guarrantee anything, but it doesn't actually hurt your sales. The people who get the free version aren't the people who were going to give you money for it. They might be the people who will give you a good review though, or get your ebook up near the top of a chart where other people will see it, or simply buy your next one.
- Blogtours might or might not do anything. One curiosity about the way this one came out was that there wasn't the huge fanfare that comes with some releases. JR Rain announced it on his facebook and twitter, Eve and I did the same with the various places we were. That was enough for it to do fine. I'm not suggesting that interviews etc never do anything, yet my own experience of them is that they're a thing in their own right rather than a route to sales.
- Covers that look a bit over bright and splashy when big are perfect when you've got a thumbnail an inch across to play with.
- You can write much faster than you think when you're in the grip of a story (15 days for the original novella that became the novel)
- That one star reviews happen, even if other people are giving you five stars, and it doesn't matter to me as much as it used to.
- That genuine half and half collaboration can work surprisingly well. (Although I worked in my capacity as ghost on this one, it was a lot more evenly balanced than many of the projects I've been in on).
- That self/small publishing might be more interesting than I thought.
Wednesday, 1 May 2013
IWSG: Things I Learned In April
In April, a paranormal romance I worked on with Eve Paludan and then JR Rain (Witchy Business, watch out for the sequel shortly) came out. It went to #1 in Amazon's free fantasy chart for a brief while, and since going paid has jumped into the top ten of at least a couple of their sub-categories. In the course of all this, I've learned a wide variety of things about both the process of writing and publicity (which I've never been that good at). Here are just a few:
Promise in Cricket
So, Yorkshire are playing Derbyshire, Chesney Hughes has hit 270 not out for Derbyshire and what do I want to concentrate on? The way Adil Rashid is bowling, primarily.
A year or two ago, he was a close contender for an England Test place. He even played some limited overs cricket for the national side, although he since seems to have been overtaken in the spare one day spinner spot by a variety of other people ranging from Scott Borthwick to Danny Briggs. In Derbyshire's first innings, he managed three wickets for just over 120 runs. Not disastrous, given the scale of the total, and at least he was taking wickets. David Wainwright's lack of any for Derbyshire with his left arm spin may suggest that it was not the most helpful of pitches. Yet Rashid went for those runs off around thirty overs, meaning an economy rate far higher than is really ideal.
What has happened to him? What has happened to the bowler who showed such promise at the start of his career?
Actually, I would argue that nothing much has happened, and that the case of Rashid shows us more about the way the current system works than about any major failings on his part. I should explain. Over the years, we have seen a number of bowlers pulled into the fringes of the England set up because of their 'potential'. The public, the media, and even the England management get excited about up and coming players, particularly, it seems, young fast bowlers with decent pace and spinners. Wrist spinners more than most.
They look at these players and they almost never see what they are. Instead, they see what they 'could' be with the right encouragement and exposure. It seems obvious that in just a few years, the kid bowling at 85mph in the county game might be strong enough to bowl 90mph for his country. That the 90mph bowler with accuracy issues might be taught to tame them. That the spinner with only one trick could be taught a few more. That the wrist spinner who currently goes for too many runs will metamorphosise into the next Shane Warne.
There's a level of natural optimism in this process. It says 'the kid has the right attributes, so we can build on that'. It also recognises that there is a sort of arc to a playing career, based on the rise and decline of physical attributes, acquired skills and experience. And there have been instances where players picked with less than perfect county records have done better for England (Duncan Fletcher's determination to stick with Michael Vaughn and Marcus Trescothick, for example).
And yet...
All of this feels like it is predicated on a couple of key assumptions. First, that players will grow and improve once they have reached the top level. Second, that we can accurately predict the ways in which young players will develop. I would question both of those assumptions.
The first is probably the more important of the two. It is the idea that we can take a player who is 'almost there' or who has most of the things he needs for success and give him the rest. That because Rashid spins the ball, we can build on that foundation to create a world beater. Yet frequently, when you look at players, their 'learning' phase is actually quite short. They are essentially the same players at the start of their careers as at the end, unless forced to change through the reduction of their powers, or through injury.
Yes, there are players who change and grow. Richard Hadlee famously sat down and decided to become a fast/medium bowler because he felt New Zeeland needed that more than a tearaway fast bowler. Yes, there are players who learn new tricks, such as Murali acquiring his doosra or Matthew Hoggard learning to cut the ball in. Yes, Shane Warne changed his bag of tricks as injuries forced him to put away the googly and flipper.
Yet fundamentally, how many players go from being nothing to something on the back of changes? Steve Harmison was still bowling slightly short and straight at the end of his England career despite plenty of attempts to get him to learn more tricks. Saj Mahmood never did learn to bowl accurately. Warne's restricted options never changed the type of bowler he was, and Murali was a massively spinning off spinner before the arrival of the other one. Monty Panesar is still bowling just like Monty, despite all the shouting at him to flight it or not flight it, acquire a slower one or a quicker one. Tinkering with a bowler doesn't change who he is. Unless there is a specific technical deficiency stopping him from being great, a bowler is unlikely to magically gain 5-10mph of pace, or change his approach to bowling, or indeed become more accurate. Most of these people have been playing the game all their lives. Their development is about as developed as it gets.
More than that, when we do tinker, we don't know what result we'll get. There might conceivably be an improvement if, as I just suggested, there is a specific problem holding someone back. Yet we must look at the example of James Anderson to see that it isn't always a good idea trying to change people. He started well, with deliveries that swung either way in the mid-high eighties and occasionally low nineties. Then someone pointed out that he wasn't looking where he was bowling at the point of release, and proceeded to tinker with his action. He actually dropped out of the England team, experiencing a slump. Now, he is back, not looking where he is bowling, and swinging it both ways in the mid 80s to (occasionally) low 90s.
What does all this mean for Adil Rashid? Well, perhaps it means that we shouldn't be wondering where the promise of his England days went. Perhaps it also means that no one is going to be turning him into Shane Warne soon. Maybe the main thing here is what happens to the next young spinner. Maybe we should acknowledge that what we have by the time he's playing first team county cricket probably is pretty close to the finished product.
Of course, having said all this, I'd still love for Rashid to prove me wrong. It just goes to show that this sort of optimism doesn't go away.
A year or two ago, he was a close contender for an England Test place. He even played some limited overs cricket for the national side, although he since seems to have been overtaken in the spare one day spinner spot by a variety of other people ranging from Scott Borthwick to Danny Briggs. In Derbyshire's first innings, he managed three wickets for just over 120 runs. Not disastrous, given the scale of the total, and at least he was taking wickets. David Wainwright's lack of any for Derbyshire with his left arm spin may suggest that it was not the most helpful of pitches. Yet Rashid went for those runs off around thirty overs, meaning an economy rate far higher than is really ideal.
What has happened to him? What has happened to the bowler who showed such promise at the start of his career?
Actually, I would argue that nothing much has happened, and that the case of Rashid shows us more about the way the current system works than about any major failings on his part. I should explain. Over the years, we have seen a number of bowlers pulled into the fringes of the England set up because of their 'potential'. The public, the media, and even the England management get excited about up and coming players, particularly, it seems, young fast bowlers with decent pace and spinners. Wrist spinners more than most.
They look at these players and they almost never see what they are. Instead, they see what they 'could' be with the right encouragement and exposure. It seems obvious that in just a few years, the kid bowling at 85mph in the county game might be strong enough to bowl 90mph for his country. That the 90mph bowler with accuracy issues might be taught to tame them. That the spinner with only one trick could be taught a few more. That the wrist spinner who currently goes for too many runs will metamorphosise into the next Shane Warne.
There's a level of natural optimism in this process. It says 'the kid has the right attributes, so we can build on that'. It also recognises that there is a sort of arc to a playing career, based on the rise and decline of physical attributes, acquired skills and experience. And there have been instances where players picked with less than perfect county records have done better for England (Duncan Fletcher's determination to stick with Michael Vaughn and Marcus Trescothick, for example).
And yet...
All of this feels like it is predicated on a couple of key assumptions. First, that players will grow and improve once they have reached the top level. Second, that we can accurately predict the ways in which young players will develop. I would question both of those assumptions.
The first is probably the more important of the two. It is the idea that we can take a player who is 'almost there' or who has most of the things he needs for success and give him the rest. That because Rashid spins the ball, we can build on that foundation to create a world beater. Yet frequently, when you look at players, their 'learning' phase is actually quite short. They are essentially the same players at the start of their careers as at the end, unless forced to change through the reduction of their powers, or through injury.
Yes, there are players who change and grow. Richard Hadlee famously sat down and decided to become a fast/medium bowler because he felt New Zeeland needed that more than a tearaway fast bowler. Yes, there are players who learn new tricks, such as Murali acquiring his doosra or Matthew Hoggard learning to cut the ball in. Yes, Shane Warne changed his bag of tricks as injuries forced him to put away the googly and flipper.
Yet fundamentally, how many players go from being nothing to something on the back of changes? Steve Harmison was still bowling slightly short and straight at the end of his England career despite plenty of attempts to get him to learn more tricks. Saj Mahmood never did learn to bowl accurately. Warne's restricted options never changed the type of bowler he was, and Murali was a massively spinning off spinner before the arrival of the other one. Monty Panesar is still bowling just like Monty, despite all the shouting at him to flight it or not flight it, acquire a slower one or a quicker one. Tinkering with a bowler doesn't change who he is. Unless there is a specific technical deficiency stopping him from being great, a bowler is unlikely to magically gain 5-10mph of pace, or change his approach to bowling, or indeed become more accurate. Most of these people have been playing the game all their lives. Their development is about as developed as it gets.
More than that, when we do tinker, we don't know what result we'll get. There might conceivably be an improvement if, as I just suggested, there is a specific problem holding someone back. Yet we must look at the example of James Anderson to see that it isn't always a good idea trying to change people. He started well, with deliveries that swung either way in the mid-high eighties and occasionally low nineties. Then someone pointed out that he wasn't looking where he was bowling at the point of release, and proceeded to tinker with his action. He actually dropped out of the England team, experiencing a slump. Now, he is back, not looking where he is bowling, and swinging it both ways in the mid 80s to (occasionally) low 90s.
What does all this mean for Adil Rashid? Well, perhaps it means that we shouldn't be wondering where the promise of his England days went. Perhaps it also means that no one is going to be turning him into Shane Warne soon. Maybe the main thing here is what happens to the next young spinner. Maybe we should acknowledge that what we have by the time he's playing first team county cricket probably is pretty close to the finished product.
Of course, having said all this, I'd still love for Rashid to prove me wrong. It just goes to show that this sort of optimism doesn't go away.
Tuesday, 23 April 2013
The Thing With Dragons
This being St George's Day, I thought I'd have a look at dragons, and specifically at the key problems with dragons when it comes to fantasy literature.
They've obviously been a part of literature and consciousness for a long time. We have creatures of broadly that 'family' showing up in Ancient Greek myths (what is the hydra but a multiple choice dragon?) in Chinese and Northern European traditions, all sorts of different places.
Yet for the modern fantasy writer, they have a couple of small difficulties. They aren't humanoid. They're big. They're solitary. They're generally intelligent in a lot of cases. They're also immensely powerful, to the extent that if they're common, we have to ask the question of why humans are in charge and not them.
So, we have a creature that is hard to humanise on one level, because it can't fit into human cities, or relate to humans on a casual level. We have a creature that is also so powerful that it's a little unbalancing in many settings.
How can anyone possibly use one of those?
Well, obviously they have, using a number of pretty consistent strategies:
There's the strategy that has the dragon as a singular monster to be defeated. It's powerful, it's big. It's terrifying. But it's a monster. It's not really much of a character. It sits around on a pile of gold (because it's planning for its retirement, or just because it's a big, scaly magpie) and waits for heroes to come along and try to stab it. Occasionally, there are lots of them, but that doesn't change the part where it's just another sort of monster.
There's the strategy that has dragons as something to be tamed. Yes, they are powerful, but in this they are usually not also intelligent. So a great hero (or just a particular class of knight, depending on the series in question) may be able to prove their worth enough to control and use dragons.
Occasionally, we get the dragon as a mentor and/or manipulator. In this approach, it is intelligent, but its difficulties in fitting into a human society mean it is relegated to working through intermediaries, like the heroes. Exactly why it should care is often not established.
They've obviously been a part of literature and consciousness for a long time. We have creatures of broadly that 'family' showing up in Ancient Greek myths (what is the hydra but a multiple choice dragon?) in Chinese and Northern European traditions, all sorts of different places.
Yet for the modern fantasy writer, they have a couple of small difficulties. They aren't humanoid. They're big. They're solitary. They're generally intelligent in a lot of cases. They're also immensely powerful, to the extent that if they're common, we have to ask the question of why humans are in charge and not them.
So, we have a creature that is hard to humanise on one level, because it can't fit into human cities, or relate to humans on a casual level. We have a creature that is also so powerful that it's a little unbalancing in many settings.
How can anyone possibly use one of those?
Well, obviously they have, using a number of pretty consistent strategies:
There's the strategy that has the dragon as a singular monster to be defeated. It's powerful, it's big. It's terrifying. But it's a monster. It's not really much of a character. It sits around on a pile of gold (because it's planning for its retirement, or just because it's a big, scaly magpie) and waits for heroes to come along and try to stab it. Occasionally, there are lots of them, but that doesn't change the part where it's just another sort of monster.
There's the strategy that has dragons as something to be tamed. Yes, they are powerful, but in this they are usually not also intelligent. So a great hero (or just a particular class of knight, depending on the series in question) may be able to prove their worth enough to control and use dragons.
Occasionally, we get the dragon as a mentor and/or manipulator. In this approach, it is intelligent, but its difficulties in fitting into a human society mean it is relegated to working through intermediaries, like the heroes. Exactly why it should care is often not established.
Friday, 19 April 2013
Quantity and Outlining
A few thoughts, all jumbled up together this time. First is on quantity of output. One thing I've noticed is that authors at the moment seem to be aiming for relatively high output. Even quite famous authors seem to have multiple projects on the go, while e-book based authors in particular seem to put work out at a tremendous rate.
I'm not complaining about this. Indeed, as a ghost writer, I tend to write a lot of stuff myself. But it is interesting that quantity seems to have become one of the key dynamics of the writing game at the moment. Rather than that one big hit, it feels like everyone is aiming for multiple smaller ones, with each one making just enough of a profit. Yet there's also a balancing act there. It's easy to rush things, and settle for producing something okay when you could produce something that will be life changing for the reader.
My other thought was on outlining. I change the way I plan a lot, yet the ability to sit down and simply write out a one or two page synopsis seems to have been at the heart of all the novels I've finished. If I can do that, I know that I know the shape of the story, complete with the ending and the major stops along the way. If I can't, then there's probably a problem in there that I haven't seen in other planning.
I'm not complaining about this. Indeed, as a ghost writer, I tend to write a lot of stuff myself. But it is interesting that quantity seems to have become one of the key dynamics of the writing game at the moment. Rather than that one big hit, it feels like everyone is aiming for multiple smaller ones, with each one making just enough of a profit. Yet there's also a balancing act there. It's easy to rush things, and settle for producing something okay when you could produce something that will be life changing for the reader.
My other thought was on outlining. I change the way I plan a lot, yet the ability to sit down and simply write out a one or two page synopsis seems to have been at the heart of all the novels I've finished. If I can do that, I know that I know the shape of the story, complete with the ending and the major stops along the way. If I can't, then there's probably a problem in there that I haven't seen in other planning.
Tuesday, 16 April 2013
What do you have to say
A friend of mine once told me that he wasn't planning to write any more stories at that time because he felt like he didn't have anything he hugely wanted to say. At the time, I didn't get that. It felt like waiting around for that perfect piece of inspiration and a burning topic just to write short stories was a bit over the top. After all, he could still write something entertaining and interesting.
Yet now I have a few novels under my belt, I can sort of see where he was coming from. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with the purely 'fun' novel. Indeed, that is something occasionally levelled at Court of Dreams as though it is an acusation, when it really shouldn't be. Wodehouse built a career on 'fun' novels. Although I do worry a little, because CofD was actually meant to contain quite a bit about family, duty and responsibility, so if that isn't coming through, maybe I got that part wrong.
Certainly now, I can feel the importance of having something to say. It isn't enough to knock out a novel for the sake of putting one out there. It isn't enough to just follow a vague genre template with a few twists of location or character (although there are obviously genres where doing so is considered the norm). I think this is perhaps one of the pressures of a world where people can publish whatever they want, in whatever volume they want. It's easy to be caught up in a competition to keep up.
Instead, I currently feel like the competition is to say things better. To have something that you feel deeply interested in and explore it. That doesn't necessarily have to be what other people would think of as a big issue (although I explore some pretty big ones in 'The Glass', for the current WIP I'm thinking about history and the ways we think about it, which is clearly primarily of interest to me). It does have to be something that means enough to you to be worth seventy or eight thousand words.
Yet now I have a few novels under my belt, I can sort of see where he was coming from. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with the purely 'fun' novel. Indeed, that is something occasionally levelled at Court of Dreams as though it is an acusation, when it really shouldn't be. Wodehouse built a career on 'fun' novels. Although I do worry a little, because CofD was actually meant to contain quite a bit about family, duty and responsibility, so if that isn't coming through, maybe I got that part wrong.
Certainly now, I can feel the importance of having something to say. It isn't enough to knock out a novel for the sake of putting one out there. It isn't enough to just follow a vague genre template with a few twists of location or character (although there are obviously genres where doing so is considered the norm). I think this is perhaps one of the pressures of a world where people can publish whatever they want, in whatever volume they want. It's easy to be caught up in a competition to keep up.
Instead, I currently feel like the competition is to say things better. To have something that you feel deeply interested in and explore it. That doesn't necessarily have to be what other people would think of as a big issue (although I explore some pretty big ones in 'The Glass', for the current WIP I'm thinking about history and the ways we think about it, which is clearly primarily of interest to me). It does have to be something that means enough to you to be worth seventy or eight thousand words.
Thursday, 11 April 2013
Multiple works.
Novels, novels, everywhere... I'm working on about three at the moment, although it may be two again after my attempts to play around with my own the other night.
Sometimes people ask me how I keep everything distinct in my head when I happen to have more than one thing running at once. The answer is complicated. Partly, it's because I don't try to do it all in my head: I'm relying on carefully written plans/outlines to give me the shape.
Partly, it's because characters in books are closer to one another than most people admit. We see so little of them, and in such a controlled way, that creating differences between them is relatively straightforward. Particularly if you happen to view them as a part of the story as a whole rather than separate individuals, because that helps to give each one some of the flavour of the story.
Partly, it's an organisational thing. I tend to work on particular pieces at different times of the day (or at least in a consistent order) so I know which space my head has to be in for each one.
On a separate note I may just have given up on the idea of complete spontenaity for novels. Pantsing through the current idea has been giving me some nice ideas, but I just realised I have no idea where it is going.
Sometimes people ask me how I keep everything distinct in my head when I happen to have more than one thing running at once. The answer is complicated. Partly, it's because I don't try to do it all in my head: I'm relying on carefully written plans/outlines to give me the shape.
Partly, it's because characters in books are closer to one another than most people admit. We see so little of them, and in such a controlled way, that creating differences between them is relatively straightforward. Particularly if you happen to view them as a part of the story as a whole rather than separate individuals, because that helps to give each one some of the flavour of the story.
Partly, it's an organisational thing. I tend to work on particular pieces at different times of the day (or at least in a consistent order) so I know which space my head has to be in for each one.
On a separate note I may just have given up on the idea of complete spontenaity for novels. Pantsing through the current idea has been giving me some nice ideas, but I just realised I have no idea where it is going.
Tuesday, 9 April 2013
Witchy Business part 2
It occurs to me that I only put in a link to the amazon uk page for Witchy Business in the last post. So, for all those elsewhere here's the link to it on amazon.com. Currently, it's running at #2 overall in free books for fantasy, and was briefly the bestseller (bestgivaway? bestfreebie?) in the 'witches and wizards' sub category. I enjoyed working on this one with Eve Paludan, and I hope it does well for her and JR Rain. Especially because I'm writing this while procrastinating on writing the sequel.
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