Now that I’m an international bestselling novelist

I thought I’d better say thank you to everyone who bought and read my novel, Winternights.

It surprised me by leaping to the upper rankings in both the US and the UK charts in the horror/occult genre.

It swiftly disappeared from the rankings after its dizzying ascent. This may have had something to do with the fact that it was only free for two days.

Whatever. I really enjoyed the thrill of international fame and acclaim while it lasted and I look forward to connecting with new readers in another year or so after I have written my next book.

Thanks once again. I love you all.

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It’s Free Now! Two days only!

Some people are already complaining that I didn’t put a link in my last post to where you can download my book.

If you’re in the UK you can get it here: Winternights (UK version).

If you’re in the United States, you need to go here instead: Winternights on Amazon.com.

If you’re rich enough to be an Amazon Prime customer, the book is free to borrow at any time.

If you’ve a Kindle Fire HD device, you’ll benefit from the special hi-res cover image that cost my designer a huge amount of effort to get right. Her original design was not hi-res and she had to change it when Apple brought out their retina display. She wasn’t happy about it but what can you do? Technology is advancing faster than we can think these days.

(The low-res image is being used in this post.)

The book is not yet available in the Apple Store. It mangled my format somehow so I’ve withdrawn it from sale there until I can iron out a technical problem with the table of contents.

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Proud of my profession

I wonder sometimes if I’ve done the right thing. I advised my daughter to become a writer.

Philip Roth was quoted in The Guardian this week telling a young writer ‘Don’t do this to yourself.’

But if you want to make a living these days there are very few respectable professions left.

I used to think my teaching qualification would stand me in good stead throughout my career. Now teachers aren’t to be trusted. As if being threatened with knives and bits of furniture in the classroom isn’t enough, teachers always have politicians on their backs trying to make them prove they’re good enough to teach our kids.

Politicians! Ha! My teachers always considered it the ultimate career goal to become a politician, or even Prime Minister. But we know now they’re all tax dodgers and expenses cheats who abuse our trust while they go off in pursuit of personal gain and illegal sexual gratification.

Social workers are always in the firing line, too, aren’t they? Whenever a child is beaten, a social worker gets the blame. Were some young girls groomed by paedophiles? Oh, it was the fault of their social workers. Social workers are nearly always criminally negligent.

Nurses? Murderers. Doctors? Incompetent.

Banking used to be respectable. Now anyone who works in a bank is guilty of causing the complete collapse of the global financial system in 2008, which destroyed all our pensions.

Seventies pop star? Radio DJ? Dear God!

Priests? There are more paedophiles in the priesthood than in politics and pop combined.

Accountants? Well, they’re the ones who make all the corruption in the world possible. When they’re not massaging balance sheets to disguise a company’s sickening losses, they’re advising global behemoths how to avoid paying tax. Who ever heard of an honest accountant?

Oil company executive. Tobacco manufacturer. Pharmacist. Food producer. Distiller and brewer. Can any of them hold their hand up and say they are working for the greater good of society?

What about policemen? We’ve just had some elections in the UK to elect a new type of official to keep policemen under control. They’re already under attack for taking a job that pays £100,000 a year without getting a clear mandate from the electorate. Is it their fault that no-one bothered to vote? Clearly it is, since the Home Secretary is already having to defend them.

The journalists reporting on all this greed and corruption are at least doing a good job, though, aren’t they? Oh, wait, I forgot. The newly-appointed Director General of the BBC has just had to resign because of poor editorial controls. First they covered up a story about a paedophile in their ranks and then they pointed a finger at the wrong man. We now have a news organisation in complete chaos, turning on itself with naked acrimony. At least the wronged parties have managed to find some good lawyers.

Good lawyers. Now there’s an oxymoron if ever I heard one.

Which brings me back to writers. I know writers are evil. They spam you on Twitter and cause fake reviews to be written on Amazon to con people into buying their books. They disparage their rivals and spread lies and libel in order to achieve their ends. They abuse your friendship on Facebook and ambush you on Goodreads. They split infinitives. They make stupid spelling mistakes. They are too lazy to proof-read. They devalue literature by selling novels that took them 2 years to write for a mere 87 pence (including VAT — which Amazon doesn’t pay, by the way) or 99 cents or even for nothing at all!

Nothing at all? Yes! Writers sometimes GIVE BOOKS AWAY! Incredible isn’t it? How can they be so irresponsible, so dirty, so … so CHEAP?

Well, for better or worse, I’ve advised my daughter to become a writer. She’s busy writing now. Poetry, as it happens.

And in order to fund the education for her future career, I’m giving away copies of my novel Winternights. It’s free on Amazon today and I hope Amazon bloody well accounts to the UK government for all the VAT it collects from my years of hard work.

But I don’t feel good about it. I feel immoral, to tell you the truth. I’ve failed as a parent. My book itself, besides being free, is the spawn of the Devil.

In fact I think I’m going to spend the afternoon beating myself with birch twigs and cutting my flesh with a dull razor blade. Then I’ll sit down to write the sequel.

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Where do ideas come from?

One question writers seem to dread is ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’

Stories are everywhere but sometimes when you are sitting at your computer and facing a blank screen wondering why it is taking so long to come up with a thousand words, the ideas can simply vanish.

One way to get them back is to relax and stimulate your subconscious. There is far more going on in there than you know. The trick is to get at it.

One way is to use tarot cards. I like Barabra Walker’s tarot cards, although the deck is currently out of print. I used them to construct the plot of my novel Winternights and to tease out more detail about the characters.

I found this image of the Babylonian fish god, Dagon, on a blog called Mandrake’s Rootwerx. Interestingly, the writer says on his blog that it’s one of his favourites for constructing plots and for overcoming writer’s block. I’ve chosen this image because it features in my novel. It comes up during a tarot reading and helps the protagonist track down the murderer.

Many people are frightened of the tarot. They are frightened to look at the cards or to touch them. This illustration of Dagon does have something a little scary about it. It has a primal, jarring quality. There is even something diabolical about it.  I won’t put an image of the devil card here in case it really freaks you out, but if you search for the picture in Google Images, you will find dozens of different horned creatures set against fiery backgrounds and with worshippers or abject slaves at their feet.

That fear or even revulsion that some people have is a sign that the cards have a lot to tell them. I was very scared of the tarot at first. When I was a teenager, my parents wouldn’t have it in the house. It is this emotional relationship with the images that makes them so powerful.

A popular tarot deck is Robin Wood’s. He has written books on the tarot but he says

“I advise you not to look at the booklet, for my deck or for any others. I find it works far better to look at the card, and assign it the meaning that feels right for that particular reading.”

I agree with this. Although I am very literary and read dozens of books on everything, the best way to use the tarot is to let each card speak to you through its imagery.  In fact, I have trimmed all the writing off my Barbara Walker deck. I just use the pictures without any text at all.

Barbara Walker, incidentally, wrote two very good books about mythology and symbolism:

The Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects (1988), Castle Books, ISBN 0-06-250923-3

The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (1983) ISBN 0-06-250925-X

She wrote many more books than these, in fact. I’ve found they are good not just for women.

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Scarier than Halloween

I thought I’d write a scary book in time for Halloween. It’s called Winternights and it’s a murder mystery.

Winternights is like Halloween but without the candy. It happens in the Nordic countries. All kinds of ghostly creatures swoop down out of the sky and scare the living daylights out of you. In Scandinavia they celebrate this kind of thing.

But my novel is set in a little village in England, where a group of occultists are gathering in the home of an Icelandic shaman. It’s just like an Agatha Christie novel, in other words.

I wasn’t sure I’d finish it by October, which, like Halloween, is when Winternights happens. So to hedge my bets I put some Yuletide celebrations in there as well. If I haven’t sold any copies by December I’ll change my marketing plan and republish it as “The Christmas Murders.”

I’m not sure seasonal marketing is a good idea. The professionals start early. I noticed most of the Halloween articles appearing in online publications weeks ago. But there’s always next year, isn’t there?

Cunningly, I haven’t called my novel “Halloween” so I have some flexibility. In England we have winter nights for at least six months of the year.

If I appear flippant it’s because murder is a such a terrifying subject. In my novel you’ll find some very unpleasant themes. There are dark secrets, weird beliefs, shocking disclosures and sickening twists.

I hope it doesn’t give you nightmares. Although, in a way, I also hope it does.

Winternights is available at the following sites:

UK Kindle

US Kindle

Smashwords

German Kindle

French Kindle (dans le collection Joseph)

In the coming weeks you’ll also be able to find it on iTunes, Barnes & Noble and all the usual retailers.

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J.K. Rowling halts publication

Ruggedly Intellectual

Ian Rankin isn’t stupid. He may be rugged but he knows when he’s beaten. The publication of his new novel, Standing in Another Man’s Grave, has been postponed until November.

He hopes the fuss about J.K. Rowling’s latest novel will have died down by then and people will have some pocket money once again to splash out on his new hardback.

I have to admit, I have never read an Ian Rankin novel, though I do own a paperback copy of Knots and Crosses that I bought after hearing him enthuse about R.L. Stevenson on television some years ago.  R.L. Stevenson is a particular favourite of mine. I thought, if Ian Rankin can be so articulate and passionate about this brilliant writer, his own books must have some good in them.

Unfortunately, I still haven’t read one so I can’t comment. No hard feelings, I hope, Ian. I do follow you on Twitter, at least.

Quite a lot of people comment without reading, though, as I noticed when scouring the reviews of The Casual Vacancy. And I don’t just mean the rowdy public, who, predictably, were running amok in the comments sections of the dozens of reviews and articles I saw. Even professional and quite intellectual journalists were venturing opinions and judgements on the novel without having read it.

One of the attitudes that really irritates me, which I have seen voiced many times by critics, commentators and, sadly, publishers, is that children’s authors can’t write for adults. As if writing for children is easier. It isn’t. In my opinion it’s a lot harder. This is probably open for discussion. But the dismissal of a book on this basis isn’t. It’s simply wrong.

And another attitude that grates is that R.L. Stevenson is a children’s author. I did enjoy reading his books when I was 15 but I would never give The Body Snatcher or Markheim to a child to read.

I did, after much frustration, come across one review that seemed to be informed by a thoughtful reading of The Casual Vacancy. It was by Melvyn Bragg in The Observer and it began:

This is a wonderful novel. J.K. Rowling’s skills as a storyteller are on a par with R.L. Stevenson, Conan Doyle and P. D. James. Here, they are combined with her ability to create memorable and moving characters to produce a state-of-England novel driven by tenderness and fury.

It was good to see Melvyn paying tribute there to R.L. Stevenson as well as J.K. Rowling.

I still can’t comment on The Casual Vacancy because I haven’t finished reading it. But I’m afraid publication of my own novel, Winternights, will be delayed because of it. I was hoping to get Winternights published by 15 October but I have been so engrossed in J.K. Rowling’s novel that I haven’t finished editing my own.

I am still planning to get it out by the end of the month, though, because October is the month of Winternights and the moon, you know, is a harsh mistress.

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Media hysteria

I know you are all watching and waiting and wondering when I am finally going to publish a novel. I’ve been talking about it since the summer of 2009 and there’s no sign of it yet. What’s gone wrong, why is he so slow, I know you’re all thinking.

Well, I’ve actually been putting in some serious effort over the last few weeks in order to make one of my novels publishable. It has been tough. I’ve had to concentrate for nearly an hour at a time. Some days I’ve gone without television. I’ve even got up earlier than usual once or twice.

And then I started to get cold feet. What if they don’t like it? What if they tear me apart like they did to E.L. James and J.K. Rowling? Or worse, what if it’s a runaway success and I become a media darling and everybody thinks they own me?

The worst thing about the media is that even if that happens, if people actually read my novel and say they like it, the media will still tear me apart like they did to E.L. James and J.K. Rowling. The best thing that can happen, the best I can hope for, is to be ignored. The fact that this is also the most likely outcome is the main thing that keeps me going.

The reviews of The Casual Vacancy make depressing reading.

“Doesn’t deserve the media frenzy surrounding it,” wrote Theo Tate in The Guardian on a day in which four out of five of the most read articles in The Guardian’s book pages were about the novel.

“Quite punishing to read,” said David Sexton in the Evening Standard.

“It’s just dull,” said Sherryl Connelly in the New York Daily News.

But most depressing of all was the tone of moral outrage in some of the reviews, like this rebuke from Allison Pearson in the Daily Telegraph.

If you have sold 450 million books, mainly to children, and you have achieved a net worth of £560 million, often from the pocket and birthday money of children, then you may not consider yourself to be their babysitter, or their teacher, but you were certainly their bedtime reading, and they will be helplessly drawn back to your voice.

But the media thrives on frenzy. There were so many articles in so many papers it was a struggle to work out which of them was the paper’s review by someone who had actually read the book. There were opinion pieces, interviews, editorials, features, rumours, hatchet-jobs and anecdotes. So many strident, desperate, hysterical voices all clamouring to be heard.

Once people have actually read the novel, then there will be the blogs. Oh my god, blogs! Sir Peter Stothard, who is the judge of this year’s Man Booker prize, hates blogs, and has been sounding off about them to Nick Clark in The Independent.

“The rise of blogging has proved particularly worrying. Eventually that will be to the detriment of literature. It will be bad for readers; as much as one would like to think that many bloggers’ opinions are as good as others, it just ain’t so. People will be encouraged to buy and read books that are no good, the good will be overwhelmed, and we’ll be worse off. There are some important issues here.”

There are some important issues here! Oh my god! Indeed! People will be encouraged to buy and read books that are no good. That would be awful.

But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they could be encouraged to buy and read one of mine. To buy and read but not review. That would probably be the best thing. Because the reviews, let’s face it, are bound to be hysterical.

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An emotional climax

I was hoping that the 17-year-old Chinese girl Hou Yifan would win outright in Gibraltar. She has played astonishingly well, beating a string of super elite chess grandmasters of both sexes in the strongest chess open tournament in history. But she lost to Nigel Short in a mini-match play-off to decide the outright winner.

It’s an emotional climax. I watched Nigel play less formidably when he was in London in December for the London Chess Classic. But he always does well in Gibraltar. I suppose the sea-side atmosphere and the sunshine suit his relaxed and risky style. I have a soft spot for Nigel because I love the way he writes.

It may seem strange to like a chess player because of the way he writes but I think the two are connected.  When he writes, he always finds a fresh angle. He can turn an idea as well as a phrase. His vocabulary is extensive. He often plucks an unexpected word out of the air and nimbly slots it into exactly the right context. When he plays, he favours old-fashioned romantic openings like the King’s and the Evans Gambits and isn’t afraid to try something swashbuckling in even the most tense of situations.

In London he played a weird kind of French Defence that goes against all classical principles. Viktor Korchnoi, who was in the commentary room at the time, screwed up his face in disgust. Someone pointed out that the variation had been recommended in a book called Dangerous Weapons: The French. Levon Aronian, who was also playing in the tournament but had a day off and was watching the game, immediately quipped: “It should be called endangered species.”

Nigel won that game but his eccentric tries don’t always work out so well and he fared badly overall in the London tournament.

So I am very glad to see him win in Gibraltar and at the same time very sad to see Yifan pipped at the post after such a brilliant and sustained performance.

In a way it’s heart-warming to see that a middle aged old gent who enjoys a generous glass of wine after a game can still pull out all the stops and quietly deflect the seemingly unstoppable onslaught of a feisty young fighter like Yifan.

Now I am looking forward to reading Nigel’s next column in New in Chess magazine and, of course, to his detailed analysis of his games, both in London and Gibraltar.

Just in case you were wondering what I’m reading.

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How to get lucky with Amazon’s algorithms

I have not written very much in my blog recently because I’ve been busy reading.

Mainly I’ve been reading a lot of self-published authors. Not just their books. Their internet articles too.

It seems to me that self-published authors have to write about 1,000 free words for every 100 words they want you to buy. This is called self-promotion.

Most of these self-published authors are very articulate.  In their articles. Probably because they’ve written so many. It’s a shame that most of their books aren’t any good.

Many of the articles are saying the same things in more or less the same words. The conventional wisdom is that if you are an unsuccessful self-published author, the way to become successful is to be very active on Twitter and Facebook and to blog a lot.

“That’s absolute crap!” says Scott Nicholson.

I have no idea if Scott Nicholson is successful or not. He has certainly done a lot of self-promotion. But if he is succesful, self-promotion had nothing to do with it. He attributes whatever success he has had to the quality of his work and to luck. Yes, luck!

That’s also how John Locke succeeeded, according to Scott.

John Locke got lucky with some Amazon algorithms, and to that, you can attribute probably 950,000 of his sales. If you think differently, and if you follow the blueprint in his guidebook and expect to sell a million books, please let me know if you make it. Locke’s genius can’t be reproduced, nor can his timing, situation, and luck.

What about Amanda Hocking’s success, Scott?

It was timing, Amazon algorithms, and luck.

J.A. Konrath?

Joe rarely shows up on Twitter and Facebook. And he’s the first to admit he got lucky.

It’s amazing that in this age of the internet, when there is rapid dissemination of information across the globe and a comprehensive audit trail that can be searched in seconds, opinions such as this should even exist. Scott writes with a tone of authority in a guest blog for a site specialising in advice to writers that is run by a team of experienced editors. But he writes absolute crap.

Let’s see how John Locke, in his own words, explains his success in a recent article in the Daily Mail.

I decided to buy advertising space in a mall in Louisville, Kentucky, in front of a bookshop … I tried other advertising: I bought online magazine ads, book trailers in movie theaters, and hired a publicist for £1,500 a month for three months. I sent out 100,000 press releases.

After a year of my time and more than £25,000 spent, I found I was selling 50 books a month, at 21p profit per sale.

Then in November 2010, I wrote a blog that got more than 5,000 hits in a day.

The emails started coming in and I began corresponding with my readers.

Scott Nicholson is right to advise writers to “be special” but anyone who thinks they are going to get lucky by being special is going to be waiting a long time.

John Locke didn’t just get lucky with his books. He didn’t just get lucky with his blog. He was a determined business man who knew a thing or two about marketing, invested a lot of time and capital, made some smart decisions and took risks.

As an e-publishing guru, Scott is plain misleading. I will not therefore be signing up for Scott’s newletter. I haven’t bookmarked his website. I won’t follow him on Twitter, like his Facebook page or sample any of his more than 20 Kindle books.

But I’ve no ill-feelings for Scott. I wish him luck on his indie journey.

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Oh no, a total stranger has posted a review!

The other day I was reading the blog of a writer who has published her novel on Amazon.

I have been following her blog for about two years so I know her novel underwent a great deal of polishing. The first chapter alone must have been rewritten about fifteen times.

As you might expect, it got some great 5 star reviews.

“a terrific book”

“nothing short of amazing”

“an awesome read”

“I was addicted from the very beginning”

“a truly talented author”

Then a couple of 1 or 2 star reviews appeared. The author was livid. “People I don’t even know are reviewing it,” she railed on her blog.

They accused her characters of being immature.

The author wrote a lengthy defence of her book (in another 5 star review) in which she proved that she was as immature as her characters.

The reviewers responded:

“plain awful”

“woefully immature”

“underdeveloped”

“messy”

“a terrible, terrible book”

“the worst I’ve read in years”

This proves that there is no point giving some people advice. You can polish your book endlessly. You can network in all the right places. You can guest blog and solicit reader comments. You can spend years building your author platform and then, when your book is finally published, you can totally destroy yourself.

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