How to be an author.

HOW TO BE AN AUTHOR... PROBABLY!

Over the past months I’ve interviewed lots of writers and authors. I asked most of them what advice they’d give a budding novice and I thought it would be interesting to put all their wisdom into one blog post.... at least the printable answers! Some are wise, some are entertaining and some are one word “Dunno!”, but all are worth reading!

Enjoy!

Crooked Cat:

I don’t accept - I tolerate. Someone has to write good and use, punctuation properly, and sepll well. But what’s most important of all is when they......BIRD BIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRDDD.....

Lorna Fergusson:

Goodness, how to choose? The first thing I’d say is to trust the process. That means you need to have faith that you can see your project through. Break it into segments, deal with it a little at a time, but deal with it all the same – commit yourself to putting word after word on the page and you’ll get there. Trust also that in the writing process, new notions and connections will come to you. Don’t wait for them. Write and they will come.

Richard Hardie (ME!):

Creat a maintain a blog. I use mine to post interviews with other authors, many of who are very famous such as Sue Cook, Bernard Cornwell and Helen Rappaport, though I find first-time authors equally fascinating when I hear of their struggles to get published and how they came up with their plots in the first place. Currently I try to post an interview every Friday at 6.30pm UK time and at the moment I get around 2,000 views a month. If only those views translated into book sales, I’d be very happy! It does however give other authors the chance of exposure.

Bernard Cornwell:

Social networking. I should imagine it’s important to any author!  You get a lot of ideas from readers!

Anthony Price:

The best piece of advice I could give any aspiring author is to just go out there and do it.  Keep writing.  The key to success is perseverance and not giving up, no matter how many rejections you get.  A writer can learn from criticism as well as praise.

Helen Rappaport:

I can’t be that pat about it. There’s lots to take on board. You need to be resilient, optimistic and work very very hard. Nothing falls into any writer’s lap unless you are unbelievably lucky. Nor is anything guaranteed beyond each book, as you finish it It is an extremely insecure profession, where the rewards for the  vast majority of writers are small, and getting even smaller. If you are looking for fame and fortune, this is not the profession for you. It requires a lot of persistence and absolute dedication to the craft.

Roxanne Barker:

To have a ripple effect working with other holistic practitioners Have a message to help those who feel there is no hope either through books, or a short film, workshops etc…It certainly takes patience, love and understanding at a deep and profound level.

Gina Dickerson:

I’m not very good at advice but I would say, read. Read lots of books and find out what you like, or don’t like. Most of all though, keep writing even if you can only squeeze in a little each day.

Tina Burton:

Be versatile. Don’t just stick to one thing, write as much as you can. The more you can write, the better you’ll become. Try short stories, letters and articles on a variety of subjects.

Mandy Baggot:

Keep writing! Enjoy it! If you want publication decide which path is right for you but don’t be afraid to mix and match. Indie and traditional both have their merits.

But most of all don’t get disheartened if things don’t go right at the first attempt. I’ve had so many rejections and doors shut in my face! Although it hurts, it feels so much sweeter when you’ve come out the other side!

Sarah England:

 

Take critiques. Forget your ego – chuck it right out! Be ruthless and objective and take all the advice you can get. 

Mandy James:

Never give up and never forget your dreams. Roll with the punches and be prepared to get back up off the ground every time. If you don’t, you will never make it.

Sue Cook:

Hmm.... that changes every week. I think the best advice is to tell a good story. Don’t get too hung up on the editing and sentence construction. Leave that for the second draft. Once you’re happy with the story  – its beginning, middle and end – and written it out, then you can start the polishing process. Oh – and I always write a biography of each of my characters –  where they went to school, what their parents were like, what always got them into trouble, what heartbreaks they’ve had in their lives, what their ambitions are, where they buy their clothes... some of these things might never come out in the book you write, but they will inform the way your characters behave and speak. Works wonders for writing the dialogue.

Glynis Smy:

Have faith in yourself. You can do it, if the book wants out, it will find a way. Never give up because you feel you can’t get published. Self-publish if you cannot find an agent/publisher. Don’t waste your life wishing you had, just do it! Get the book out there, print off a paperback version, hold it in your hand and realise your dream. Go for it, ask for help. I did when my mentor passed away, and now have a beta reader in Talli Roland! Yes, I know how lucky I am.

Carol Hedges:

 

Place backside on chair. Turn on laptop. Write.

Marit Meredith:

Don’t ever give up!

David Robinson:

I have this mantra: doubt everyone, never doubt yourself. It’s as simple as that. I have some wonderful people who help me along, particularly my dear friend and editor, Maureen Vincent-Northam, and Laurence and Steph at Crooked Cat Books, but essentially it’s up to me to get those words down on the page, and every writer must have that inner-belief. Without it, you’ll get nowhere.

One other piece of advice. Remember that most overnight successes take 20 years to achieve.

Trevor Forest:

Don’t let the nagging doubts get to you. Keep at it. Don’t be frightened to let others read your stuff; it’s the only way you will ever know how good your work is. Smile and hug relatives who say nice things about your project, then share it with people who actually know something about the craft. Always remember, not everyone will like what you turn out but then not everyone likes everything J K Rowling and Dan Brown have written either, (especially me). Join an online writers site or a local, face to face group if you can find one. Hopefully it won’t be as cliquey as the Westwich Writers Club.

Richard Hardie (Me again!)

Writing is a business. A hobby stops being a hobby the moment you depend on it for an income, no matter to what extent. A writer has to bear in mind a number of things, the most important of which is that he or she is writing for their readers, not for themselves. An agent I once had gave me a piece of paper with the letters GOWTS on it and told me to put it on top of my computer. She explained that the letters stand for Get On With The Story and although she taught me many things, that was a fantastic lesson. I don’t need that piece of paper any more because the letters GOWTS are embedded on my writer’s brain.

Carol Drinkwater:

 

Work hard!

Ailsa Abraham:

Write. Just that. Even if you end up with a mass of back material, that will come in really handy when you DO get published. Believe me, there is nothing worse than having a successful book out, your publishers clamouring for more and nothing to give them – that is pressure!

Maureen Vincent-Northam (Mo):

Believe in yourself and NEVER give up on your dream. I know this isn’t easy in the face of constant rejection (we’ve all been there) but as a wise person once said, “A successful author is just an unpublished author who didn’t give up.” Or something like that.


So there you have it from the mouths of a number of horses! How can you fail now?

Blog on, Dudes!

TODAY... David Williams has released his 9th book in the STAC detective series.

To celebrate it I've updated and reposted the interview I did with David at the beginning of the year.

Enjoy his new book 

COSTA DEL MURDER.

It's a killer!

MY INTERVIEW WITH DAVID ROBINSON

My guest tonight is a retired trucker, hypnotherapist and adult education teacher with a one-megaton sense of humour. He is a Yorkshireman from the outskirts of Manchester, northwest England, where he lives with his wife and a crazy Jack Russell Terrier named Joe (because he looks like a Joe).

He writes in several genres under different pseudonyms, but his mainstay is crime and mystery. He also produces darker, edgier thrillers which are aimed exclusively at an adult audience and which question the perceptions of reality. In a more light-hearted mood again, he turns out the occasional sci-fi or paranormal adventure and he has also published some non-fiction.

Often mistaken for the comedian David Walliams (it must be the dark, good looks), my guest tonight is David William Robinson.

David, firstly many thanks for agreeing to be interviewed. We exchange comments on Facebook, but tonight I want to find out something about the man behind the keyboard.

Nervous? Shaking like a leaf. I really must cut back on my caffeine intake.

Orange juice from now on then! When did you start writing and what was your first book about (published, or not!)?

I’ve been writing since I was a teenager, and my first “novel” was 5,000 words long, written in a school exercise book, and it was blatant rip-off of Ian Fleming’s Moonraker. I can’t remember when I wrote my first serious novel. Probably some time in the 80s, but my first major effort came in 1997. I’d been working with a TV company, Trailblazer Productions, on a 5-hour thriller entitled Murder by Suggestion. We were close to a commission when we were rejected. I rewrote it as a novel entitled The Handshaker. After years of near-misses, I self-published it in 2011, and Crooked Cat have recently re-published it. The novel (and TV series) centres on the abuse of hypnosis and how far it can be pushed.

Hypnotherapist and teacher to author….. do you use many of your past working experiences as plots?

Curiously enough, no. Even The Handshaker is concerned more with abduction, abuse and murder than it is hypnosis. Naturally, there are experiences which I put to good use in all my fiction. Although my work history appears grand, I actually spent the greater part of my life as a trucker, and I have an excellent geographical knowledge of Great Britain, which is useful for the STAC series, and the repartee between Joe and his customers at the Lazy Luncheonette.

As a hypnotist, Alex Croft makes use of my training in the field, and other characters, like Chris Deacon in Voices, take from my work as an adult education teacher.

The STAC murder mystery series is doing very well and I see The Filey Connection is now #16 in British Detectives on Amazon. How did you get the idea for the STAC?

The STAC Mysteries are a comparatively new venture, born sometime around 2009. I was 59 years old at the time, and I’d always had two great passions: whodunits and humour. I decided to combine the pair in a series of light-hearted murder mysteries.

Using the Sanford 3rd Age Club as a fulcrum allowed me to bring in middle-aged people, like myself. I have this thing about growing old disgracefully. I can be a huge embarrassment to my wife, who is always a little shy and retiring, whereas I’m a born-again teenager, determined to enjoy myself without giving much of a hoot what anyone else thinks.

There’s a lot of me in Joe: getting on in years, still grafting, a workaholic, but harbouring his private passions in the background. He’s curmudgeonly, certainly, but if you look beneath his grumbling, you’ll find it’s cynicism, a dissatisfaction with the world and the way it has deteriorated – in his eyes – since he was a 20-something lad about town.

Rings a bell! Tell me, how do you promote your books?

Blatantly. I find that so many writers believe “I’ve written the book, and that’s it.” Not if you want to sell, it isn’t. You must let people know it’s there. I use social media: Facebook and Twitteand I use my blog, but it’s not a hard sell. I don’t believe you can hard sell books like you do insurance, mobile phones, and home improvements. Instead, I will use a little prompt and lead naturally to my book. Allow me to give you an example.  “Snowed in? Dreaming of long, hot, sunny days. The Filey Connection, murder in a heatwave.”

One thing I find important when you’re working like this, is to keep abreast of the news. Here’s another example. “It took over 500 years to find Richard III buried under a car park. Pity Joe Murray wasn’t on the job. The STAC Mysteries; traditional British murder mysteries for your Kindle.”

I publicise my work a lot through social media and my blog, and some may say, “Give it a rest, will you?” My answer? No. I won’t. You don’t have to read the post, you can hide it on Facebook, you can block me on Twitter, but there are millions of people out there who don’t know about me yet, so I won’t shut up.

Does it work? Murder at the Murder Mystery Weekend entered the top 20 of its genre chart on the UK Kindle, on January 6th, as I write, it’s slipped slightly, dropping back into the top 30, but The Filey Connection is in the top 20, and ALL FIVE STAC Mysteries are in the top 100.

It’s too early to say whether the sixth, My Deadly Valentine, which was released on February 6th, will be as successful.

You write books for adults. Have you ever written for younger people?

No. There is a good reason. I simply do not identify with youngsters. I don’t understand them. Their values and aspirations are so much different to when I was their age. Don’t misunderstand me. I have no downer on kids. I’m not particularly fond of very young children, but I don’t mind teenagers. I think they’re having a rough time of it. Their future is not so rosy or assured as was ours, and if I see some kid making an effort, striving for his/her ambitions, then I can applaud him. But I can’t pretend that I have anything to say that may entertain him.

Do you have a set routine as a writer and a special place where you work?

I’m up between five and six every morning. I check my emails and newsfeeds for the first hour, track my overnight book positions, which is often an indicator to sales, then I set to work, usually by seven in the morning. I work for most of the morning, catch up a bit of sleep in the afternoon, and then do a little more before we have our evening meal. And I always work in the same place: at the back of the room where the workstation stands.

What projects are you’re working on right now?

Priority for now is the seventh STAC Mystery, The Chocolate Egg Murders. It’s targeted for an Easter release. Beyond that I already have outlines for the eighth and ninth STACs, and I’ll be working on a non-fiction title, explaining exactly how I sell using social media, and I have ideas for other crime series which I’ll be pitching to Crooked Cat later in the year.

What is the most important piece of advice you could give a budding writer?

I have this mantra: doubt everyone, never doubt yourself. It’s as simple as that. I have some wonderful people who help me along, particularly my dear friend and editor, Maureen Vincent-Northam, and Laurence and Steph at Crooked Cat Books, but essentially it’s up to me to get those words down on the page, and every writer must have that inner-belief. Without it, you’ll get nowhere.

One other piece of advice. Remember that most overnight successes take 20 years to achieve.

One last question, David. If you could achieve one important goal within the next 5 years, what would it be?

To see Joe, Sheila and Brenda on TV. At my time of life, most of my goals and ambitions have been achieved, but was it Mark Twain who said every man should die a failure. I take that to mean, you should be striving for something even on your death bed. To see the STAC Mysteries materialise as a TV series would probably be the crowning glory for... but then, I’d have to find another ambition.

David, it’s been a pleasure talking to you, and my thanks for not trying to hypnotise me. At least I assume you haven’t!

My pleasure. You are in my power, you are in my power, you are in my power…

Yes, O Master! Must buy STAC books, must buy all STAC books!.....

David has an excellent web site which includes his blog at:http://www.dwrob.com/

David’s latest book, the 6th STAC Mystery My Deadly Valentine is available on Amazon at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00B9HHF8I

Or in all e-formats from Smashwords at:http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/281516