A Big Decision

Tags

Fatal Forgery, Gregory Hardiman, Heir Apparent, Martha Plank, Metropolitan Police, plotting, publication date, research, Samuel Plank, word count

I have some big news.  I know that back in the day (August last year) I asked your opinion on which book I should write next: the final Sam Plank book or the first Gregory Hardiman book.  Votes were fairly even, but in the end I decided to let Sam rest for a while and to embark on a new relationship with Gregory.  Since then, I have tried – I really have.  I have immersed myself in research into Cambridge and the University [everyone capitalised it in the 1820s] and the university constables.  I have worked out who Gregory is and where he comes from and how he reaches Cambridge, and what happened to him in Spain [spoiler: it’s not pretty].  But I just cannot get going with the writing; even with twelve weeks (and counting…) of lock-down, I’ve managed only about 5,000 words.  And after listening to one of Joanne Harris’s excellent Youtube tutorials, in which she talked about putting projects aside for when their time is right, I have come to a conclusion: I’m reversing my decision.  In other words, I’m going to do “Sam 7” before “Gregory 1”.  (Not instead of “Gregory 1”: I have done enough research to know that I really do want to do the Cambridge series, but just not right now.)

Before coming to this decision I had to make sure that I hadn’t hamstrung myself with “Fatal Forgery”.  You may remember that I did not plan a Sam series: it happened because once I had finished “FF” – which was intended as a standalone book – I just couldn’t bear to say goodbye to Sam.  But did I say anything in “FF” that would make it tricky to write the final Sam book, which sees the advent of the Metropolitan Police and a significant change in Sam’s working life?  With trembling hands I opened my copy and found this: “I continued working as a constable for the magistrates in Great Marlborough Street, and when the policing of London was reorganised in the summer of 1829 I was one of the first to transfer to the new Metropolitan Police Force.  I could have stayed with the magistrates, but I had a deal of respect for the two new Commissioners of Police, and London had grown so vast and so wild that I agreed with their view that the city was now sorely in need of an integrated police force.  With my years of experience, I was quickly put to work training new recruits.”  I then revisited “Heir Apparent” – the most recent Sam book – and at the end of that Wilson talks about joining the new force and encourages Sam to think about signing up to help train the new recruits.  Who would have guessed it!

I am so excited at the thought of being able to wade once more into the history of policing – Gregory is a university constable, which is not the same.  As for an actual plot, I’m quite taken with counterfeiting, coining (that’s the counterfeiting of money) and gambling.  I’m thinking of publication in October 2021.  And before you can ask, yes, there will be MORE MARTHA!

The approach of Gregory

Tags

Fatal Forgery, Gregory Hardiman, research, series, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

It’s nearly upon me…  One day soon, I am going to have to stop noodling around in the name of research and start writing the first book in my new series.  What is different this time is that when I wrote “Fatal Forgery” I didn’t know it was the first book in a series – I thought it was a standalone effort, if I even gave the distinction a moment’s thought.  And so when I came to start “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” – the second Sam book – I realised that I would have to continue with Sam as I had, with no planning, created him for his first outing.  I re-read “Fatal Forgery”, making careful notes of anything I had mentioned, carelessly, about his appearance or family or opinions, so that I could be consistent.  And with every book, I added to his biography – always dreading the day when I made a mistake and a scar appeared in the wrong place or he gained a sibling.

This time it’s different.  I already know that Gregory Hardiman – fairly sure about that name – is going to appear in five books.  This means that he needs to be rounded and interesting enough from the outset to make readers want to learn more about him, and that I will have to drip-feed what I already know.  With Sam, information was drip-fed by default, as I created it.  And this past weekend I spent several hours thinking about how I want Gregory to sound – literally and on the page.  I know he’s a country lad, Protestant, and that he served in the army in Spain – all of those will inform his diction, vocabulary and views.  I’m also conscious that I really don’t want him to sound like Sam, and so I am thinking that I will make him something of a poet – moved by beauty and nature.  Sam was moved by bustle and activity and being part of thriving city, but I think Greg will be a country mouse by comparison.  And as for appearance, well, I’m thinking stocky and sturdy (as a Norfolk farmer’s son would have been), handy with his fists, and self-conscious about his facial scarring.  Yes, he’s definitely on his way…

New fans for Sam?

Tags

Amazon, blogging, e-book, Facebook, Fatal Forgery, KDP, KDP Select, marketing, promotion, sales

Well that was fun!  I was trying to think of anything I could do to make people feel a bit better and my husband suggesting offering a free book, and the first Sam book – “Fatal Forgery” – seemed the obvious choice.  I now realise that lots of authors are doing this, and it’s wonderful – I’ve snagged a couple myself.  (The more escapist, feel-good and light-hearted the better – I’m certainly in no mood for dark or dismal disaster.)

When I explored KDP to find out how to do this, it turns out that as my Sam e-books are listed with KDP Select – which means that they are sold exclusively through Amazon (and the exclusivity brings me a higher royalty rate from Amazon) – I can take advantage of a couple of promotional schemes that they offer.  And one of these is the chance to offer my book for free, for five days out of every ninety days.  (Obviously Amazon does not want people offering their books for free all the time, otherwise they make no commission on the sales…)  And I decided to take all five days in one hit, rather than spreading them out (which you can do).  I did consider doing a day here and a day there, but I thought that with the time difference (days are according to US time zones, not European) I would confuse myself and everyone else about when the day started and finished, and by the time I got the word out it might all have ended – so I went for simplicity.  I publicised the offer on this blog, on my personal and author Facebook pages, and via an e-newsletter that I send out as part of my day job (to people who are tackling financial crime every day, so I thought some of them might like to read about historical financial crime instead).  The one thing I forgot to do was to ask people to leave reviews, but here’s hoping that some of them do it anyway.

So how popular was my offer?  Here’s the breakdown:

• Day one: 31 copies downloaded
• Day two: 55 copies
• Day three: 36 copies
• Day four: 8 copies
• Day five: 10 copies

So that’s a grand total of 140 copies.  Turning to my spreadsheet of “Fatal Forgery” sales, I can see that since it was published in July 2013 – and discounting this recent free promotion and another free promotion I did in January 2019 – I have actually sold 348 e-books.  I’m not sure what that tells us, except that people like free books!  (And that day two of the offer is the big one – by then, the word’s out.  But by day four, everyone who wants it has downloaded it, and I don’t think the word is spreading any further.  So perhaps – for commercial purposes – two widely-spaced two-day promotion periods would work better.)

During the promotion I did look every day at the Amazon list of 100 free best-selling e-books, always hoping that “Fatal Forgery” would appear, but it did not.  Nonetheless, I have had some lovely emails from people saying that they are already enjoying the book, and it’s a small thing that I can do.

Get “Fatal Forgery” for free!

Tags

Amazon, book group, Fatal Forgery, free download, KDP, Samuel Plank

In the middle of all the other crazy things on the news, I think the strangest fact I have learned this week is that one of the current bestselling books on Amazon is “The Eyes of Darkness” by Dean Koontz.  It’s about a mother trying to find her son in a world devastated by a virus called Wuhan-400.  Now I don’t really care whether Mr Koontz is in fact a soothsayer – what surprises me is that people want to sit in their homes, under lock-down, and read about a fictional pandemic.  Perhaps the Koontz story ends well and readers take comfort from that – but I’ll never know because even if it were the last book on earth, I would not want to read a book about a pandemic.  No, I’m escapism all the way: for me, one of the true miracles of reading is that it can transport me to places and times and situations that I could never experience in reality.

I assume that lots of other people feel the same way as I do and are looking to fiction to take them out of themselves.  And to help with this, I have decided to offer the e-book of my first Sam Plank book – “Fatal Forgery” – free on Amazon until the end of Thursday.  (I would do it for longer, but I sell my Sam e-books through KDP Select – i.e. they’re available exclusively on Amazon, and I get a higher royalty rate because of this.  And one of the rules of KDP Select is that you can offer a free download promotion for only five days out of every ninety.  It’s a commercial decision: if I give my books away for free, Amazon makes no commission on the download.  Entirely understandable, but I thought I would explain why it’s a time-limited free download offer.)

So if you would like to download the e-book of “Fatal Forgery” for free, please do so.  (That’s an international Amazon link, so should take you automatically to the correct Amazon site.)  I can guarantee that the plot is entirely free of any mention of plague, pestilence, pandemic, virus or pox.  And please share this offer with friends and family – the more the merrier.  Perhaps you’re setting up a virtual book group, and a free download for everyone would be a great way to start.  I hope you like the book – and if you do, perhaps you would consider leaving a little review on Amazon.  So get downloading, everyone, and happy reading!

Double delight

Tags

Book of the Month, Discovering Diamonds, Fatal Forgery, Heir Apparent, historical fiction, Jaffareadstoo, review, writing

I know I’m meant to do it for the love of it, and honestly, most of the time I do: Sam, Martha, Wilson and I sit in my back bedroom (grandly called “the study”) and between us we put enough words on the page to release a new adventure every eighteen months or so.  And it is a pleasure and a privilege to be able to spend all those hours on something so self-indulgent and enjoyable.  But I cannot deny that it is thrilling to get recognition for the effort and the hours and the words.  And in the past couple of days, I have had double recognition!

The marvellous Jo writes a book review blog called JaffaReadsToo (Jaffa being her feline office manager) and on her regular feature Hist Fic Saturday she graciously published a blushingly lovely review of “Heir Apparent”.  Jo has been a supporter of the series since “Fatal Forgery”, when I was casting around for reviewers of historical fiction and she kindly agreed to take a punt on a complete unknown (whereas now I have reached the dizzy heights of “not quite unknown”).  I was particularly nervous about sending her “Heir Apparent”, as it has the most complicated plot so far and – with Jo’s sharp eye – I knew that any inconsistencies would be laid bare…  Thankfully she and Jaffa have given it their paw-print of approval – calling the Sam books “perhaps one of the best historical crime series I have read” – and I can breathe once more.

And then yesterday I was travelling home on a crowded train, having been separated from my phone all day by the welcome distraction of a family gathering, when I spotted that the wonderful Helen Hollick of the Discovering Diamonds book review website has named “Heir Apparent” her Book of the Month for November 2019!  She had already published a lovely review, so this is an unexpected extra plaudit – and comes with the spiffy badge that you can see on the left of the page.  Helen, it goes without saying, is a doyenne of historical fiction – as both a writer and a reader – and her opinion is one of the most valued around.  I did a mini dance of delight on the train (95% internal, so as not to alarm other passengers) and then had celebratory fish and chips for supper.  What a week!

Ups and downs

Tags

Amazon, Book Report, Fatal Forgery, Gardners, Hatchards, Heir Apparent, KDP, Nielsen, sales, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat, Waterstones

It’s Friday, and time to take stock of the first official week of “Heir Apparent”.  It’s not an exact science (well, it probably is, but I don’t understand it) but according to Amazon/KDP/Book Report, I have now sold twenty-one copies of “Heir Apparent” (plus the previously-reported nineteen to bookshops and four direct to friends).  I’m very pleased with that, and will have a celebratory Jaffa Cake or three.  So that’s the up.

Now for the down – or maybe it’s an up, but I can’t quite tell.  Last Saturday I went to London to take part in the People’s Vote march (we’re campaigning for a vote on the Brexit deal, in case you’re wondering).  By chance, the friends I was meeting had decided to gather on Piccadilly, outside Hatchards.  Now, Hatchards is among the spiffiest of bookshops: it’s been selling books since 1797 and sitting at the heart of Piccadilly for over two centuries – and although it is now part of the giant Waterstones family, it still retains its elegant independence.  Suffice it to say that I would love to see Sam and Martha swanking about the place.  Back in my more innocent days, I breezed into Hatchards and spoke to the manager, saying that – as Sam is a local – the books definitely belonged on Hatchards’ shelves.  The manager kindly explained that he could stock them only if they were listed on the Waterstones buying system – which of course they were not.

Nothing daunted, I decided to get them on that system – how hard could it be?  Now pay attention.  In order to be listed on the Waterstones system, a book has to be available through one of the book wholesalers with which Waterstones deals, such as Gardners.  So I contacted Gardners and asked to be put on their system.  They explained that they don’t deal with authors – only publishers, and only publishers recognised by Nielsen BookNet.  So I contacted Nielsen and asked how I could be recognised as an independent publisher.  It took some time and lots of forms, but I managed it.  So now: Nielsen recognises me as an independent publisher, which means that Gardners is listed as my wholesaler, which means that the Waterstones catalogue (both internal for stores and external for customers) features my titles.  Hurrah!  And if anyone orders my book through Waterstones, the order goes from them to Nielsen, and from Nielsen to me (as an indie publisher).  I pack up the books and send them to Gardners, who deliver them to Waterstones, who get them to the customer (or put them on the shelf).  Simple.

Back to the march last Saturday.  There I am, standing outside Hatchards and gazing through their lovely window, when I spot the manager standing alone at his till.  I wander in, all casual-like, and go up to him.  “You may not remember me,” I say, “but you once said that if my books could be ordered through your system, you would give them a go”.  “Are your books marvellous?” he asked.  “They are,” I confirmed, and he went to his computer and ordered – he said – two each of “Fatal Forgery” and “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.  I was floating on air for most of that march – Sam and Martha, in Hatchards!  And to think, she couldn’t even read much apart from bottle labels until she met Sam.

This week, I waited patiently – hah! – for that order to come in from Nielsen.  And yesterday I contacted them, and Gardners, to check that I hadn’t misunderstood the process.  But no, no trace of any order from Hatchards or Waterstones – not a one.  After pondering what to do, I’ve gone passive-aggressive: I sent an email to the manager saying “I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that my books will be on the shelves of Hatchards – I shall tell all my London friends to come in and buy them”.  So near, and yet so far…

Close reading and cover design

Tags

ALLi, Alliance of Independent Authors, cover, dedication, editing, Fatal Forgery, Heir Apparent, launch, review, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

After the frenzied writing and word-counting of my writing retreat, it probably seems as though I have gone a bit quiet now – but that is the nature of the editing beast.  I have so far read the whole of “Heir Apparent” three times myself (including once when my printer went moody and missed out two whole chapters and I couldn’t work out why the plot made less sense than usual…) and now it is being read for typos, spelling, etc. by my husband.  He is a very precise person – engineer by training, bike mechanic by passion – and therefore good at looking closely at things.  Plus it gives him such pleasure to be able to point out spelling mistakes to me, an English graduate – the things we do for love.

While all of that is going on, an author’s mind turns to thoughts of publication.  And to that end I have been:

• Writing the “front matter” for the book – which (for me) means:
  • gathering extracts from reviews of the other books in the series – these go on the very first pages of the book
  • deciding on a classical quotation to start the book – I can’t remember why I first did this in “Fatal Forgery”, but it’s part of the process now, and quite good fun for someone who had no classical education
  • writing the dedication
• Co-operating with the cover designer – by which I mean I give him some rambling drivel about how I think the cover could look, and he creates something amazing out of it (we’re nearly there now – I’ll show it to you soon)
• Planning the launch – I’ve emailed one bookshop which (perhaps in a moment of madness after a reading) offered to hold my “next” launch party (they didn’t know I’ve never had one before).

After “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” (book two), I did write myself a list of pre-publication tasks, which had been invaluable: when you’re preparing a paperback and several e-versions, there’s a lot to remember.  And at the end of the list, I have written: Don’t worry about a specific publication date – Amazon will publish when it wants to.  Good advice.

On a related note, you know that I have my free guide to the Sam Plank series?  When I published it, I managed – through publishing on another site and putting that price to zero and then asking Amazon to price-match that zero price – to get the guide listed for free on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.  I assumed – fool! – that this meant that it would be free on all Amazons, but apparently not: a friend in Belgium emailed to say that Amazon.fr was trying to charge her 99¢ for it.  What to do, I wondered?  Thankfully, my friends at the Alliance of Independent Authors came up trumps; I put a query out to them and they suggested contacting Amazon directly and asking to have the publication price-matched across all Amazons – and it worked.  Live and learn, live and learn.

Ask and ye shall receive

Tags

ALLi, Alliance of Independent Authors, expertise, Fatal Forgery, Kew Gardens, Plank 6, research, self-publishing, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

I’ve written before about how helpful and inclusive is the self-publishing community.  If you have any self-publishing questions or concerns or requests, there are numerous fora on which you can post (including my own first port of call, the ALLi website) and you’ll be overwhelmed by answers, suggestions and encouragement.  But I think it’s only right that I should point out that the giving freely of expertise and advice is not limited to self-published authors.

If you’ve ever read a Sam Plank book, you might remember that at the start of each of them is a quotation from a classical author – Virgil in “Fatal Forgery”, Sophocles in “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” and so on.  The last time I studied Latin was when I was twelve (and that was when Jim Callaghan, Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev were in charge) and I’ve never attempted Greek, and so every time I have to rely on the kindness of Classics academics to check that I am using the most favoured translation.  All it takes is a few emails, and people are so happy to help.

All of the Sam books involve a great deal of research – no, don’t feel sorry for me, as I love it.  But sometimes the material is contradictory or just too technical for me to understand, and here too I turn to the experts.  I hope I won’t be giving too much away if I say that for the plot of “Plank 6” I needed some guidance on botany in the 1820s – which plants had been identified, what were their formal and common names, and whether people in England would have heard of them.  Kew Gardens was the obvious place to go with my enquiries, and the response was just wonderful: I was given exactly the answers I needed, along dedicated links to extra information (some of which gave me an excellent plot development) and a standing invitation to the Gardens to meet the experts and have a look at the plants I was asking about.  When Trump derides and rejects expertise, he is – as usual – talking out of his hat.  And experts who are willing to share their knowledge with random authors who contact them out of the blue add immeasurably to human wealth and happiness.  Thank Kew!

Five hours and one cake

Tags

Fatal Forgery, marketing, sales, WHSmith

I know you’ve all been on tenterhooks to know how today’s book-signing session went in my local branch of WHSmith.  Well, not well.  On reflection, this is probably not the shop in which to try to interest people in historical crime fiction by an unknown author.  The staff could not have been friendlier or more helpful; they set up a table for me in the upstairs book department for two hours and then for the next three hours they moved me downstairs into the general shop, by the main entrance (where it’s quite chilly, hence the fetching yellow jacket):

    

Upstairs, there was no interest at all: everyone headed straight for the children’s books or asked me if there was a loo (there isn’t – luckily I have excellent bladder control).  It was good to see so many families in a bookshop, but I have to confess that they mostly bought sticker books “for the car/bus/plane”.  Downstairs there was a little more curiosity, although I am still mulling over this exchange: a woman stopped at my table and picked up one of my books.  “It’s historical crime,” I said, “set in London in the 1820s”.  She put the book down and said, “No” – completely deadpan – before walking off without another word.  No, it’s not historical crime?  No, I’m not interested?  Downstairs was indeed busier, but bestsellers here were chocolate (including Easter eggs), scratchcards and slime.  The most popular book seemed to be something called “Mrs Hinch”, which is about cleaning and was half price.

So let’s get to the hard facts: how many did I sell?  Two books (both “Fatal Forgery”): one to a woman who thought her banker brother would like it, and the other to a nice Slovak chap who was very excited to meet a real author and bought it to prove to his father that he had met an author “even though I probably won’t read it”.  As I had offered a special price on the books (which I had to buy and supply) and WHSmith takes 50% of the sale price, over the five hours I made 98p.  And to cheer myself up on the way home I bought a chocolate cake from Sainsbury’s for £2, so the whole day cost me £1.02.  It’s a good job I’ve resolved to hang fire on the marketing for a while – I can’t afford it.

I have a dream

Tags

audiobook, BBC, Claudie Blakley, Fatal Forgery, library, Martha Plank, PLR, review, sales, Samuel Plank, The Selfies

At the weekend, for reasons too complicated to explain, I spent a couple of hours thinking about my dreams – not the sort where your teeth are falling out while you’re being chased by your O-level maths teacher for your overdue homework, but the sort where you imagine and plan for the future (as in “hopes and dreams”).  The brief was to dream big – to write down anything, regardless of likelihood or practicality.  Of course several of my dreams related to the Sam books and I thought I would share those with you:

• To publish two more Sam Plank books, taking the series to seven
• To hear one of the Sam books read aloud on Radio 4 as their “Book of the Week”
• To win “The Selfies” in April 2019
• To see “Fatal Forgery” on sale in Tesco and Waitrose [one for the numbers, the other for the snobbery…]
• To open a national newspaper and see one of the Sam books unexpectedly and favourably reviewed
• To have the Sam series recommended by Mariella Frostrup
• To see the Sam series turned into a Sunday evening costume drama on the BBC, with Claudie Blakley playing Martha – Sam is still to be cast.

Here’s Claudie in “Lark Rise to Candleford” – and maybe moody Brendan Coyle would work as Sam…

What surprised me when I went back over my Sam dreams was that none of them mentions money.  Sure, winning an award or getting a review heard/read by thousands would increase sales, but what seems to matter to me is a wide readership rather than earning a fortune.  I do appreciate that I am in the lucky position of having a day job quite apart from my Sam writing, which means that I do not have to rely – thank goodness! – on Sam income, but still, it’s shown me that I am motivated by getting people to read Sam rather than by getting them to buy books.  I’ve blogged before about my unhappy experience with libraries and the PLR system, but despite this I would be just as happy to see more people borrowing the Sam books as I would to see sales increasing.  (I just love checking our local library catalogue and seeing all the Sam books out on loan.)  So that’s the dreaming done – now on with the reality of writing.