Festive financial crime

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Fatal Forgery, financial crime, plotting, police, Regency, research, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat, writing

As regular readers will know, over the summer I was able to blag myself a writing retreat – a whole month away from the day job and the ironing and the food shopping, with just a daily word count to achieve, with the (achieved) aim of completing the main draft of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.  I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to do it again in 2015, as it was pretty grim for my husband, left behind to keep the home fires burning, but I did think that I might be able to do something approximating it over this festive period.  Nothing like as long, or as isolated, of course, but still time away from the daily routines.

My Grand Plan is this.  I am finishing work today – which is rare for me, as we self-employed types tend to work on through.  But I have put in extra hours over the past few weeks and “worked ahead” on January deadlines, so now (unless something spectacular happens in the world of money laundering) I don’t need to do anything until 5 January 2015.  That’s next year!  By my diary count, and excluding Christmas Day and other days already committed to family visits, this gives me eleven days of freedom.  Let’s knock off another three for being just too lazy, or going to the cinema, or watching “Morecambe and Wise”, or reading the piles of books that I have put on my Christmas list – and I’ve still got eight days for writing.  Eight whole days!

Of course, with “Plank 3” being at such an early stage, I can’t use the daily word count thing to galvanise myself.  But there are certain things I still need to do, and I’m going to spend Day One writing down all of these tasks, and then allocate them to Days Two to Eight.  So by the time I get back to work, “Plank 3” will be bubbling away nicely on the back burner.  I may blog about this as I do it, or I may ban myself from the Internet to avoid distractions – we’ll see.  Either way, I’ll muse on how the Inaugural Christmas Pseudo-Retreat went when I “return” in January.

Merry Christmas to you all!  And in case you thought Christmas buskers were a new invention, here are some that Sam might have seen:

Endless possibilities

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Fatal Forgery, financial crime, plotting, Regency, Samuel Plank, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

A little bit of background: “Fatal Forgery” (the first Sam Plank novel) was based largely on the real case of a thieving banker.  I fictionalised and embellished at will, but knowing the true facts gave me a structure and limits.  When it came to “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” (Plank 2), I decided to complicate things a bit and weave together four cases – this time basing them more loosely on real crimes, but not real people.  At times during that process my mind went a bit wobbly, but Sam worked stoically on pulling it all together for me.  So now my thoughts are turning to (well, let’s be honest, my thoughts are rarely far from) “Plank 3”.

I think it will be more like “Canary”, in that I’m envisaging several plot lines with a connection.  At the moment I know the connection – which is the opposite to “Canary”, where the stories came first and I had to wait for the connection to become apparent (bit of a worry, that, when it took a while to show up).  So I have the body of the spider, so to speak, and now need to run down each leg in turn to see where it leads.  How many legs?  Well, as I say, “Canary” had four (now we’re all confused: I’m beginning to regret the spider analogy, as they have eight legs, and of course canaries actually have two…), and I rather like that number.  More might be difficult for the reader to follow, and fewer seems a bit lazy.  And I’ve already settled on two “leg” stories. So I’m thinking of choosing two or three more, and then that’s the big decisions made.  With such a terrific subject – Regency crime with a financial bent to it – my difficulty is not finding ideas, but whittling them down.  Thank goodness I’ve already decided on that series of seven books – I can just save the others for later.

All I want for Christmas is a magistrate’s constable

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bookshop, financial crime, Hammicks, paperback, promotion, publicity, Samuel Plank, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

I had some very exciting news this week: Hammicks legal bookshop (on the corner of Fleet Street and Chancery Lane in London – top legal hang-out) has decided to include “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” in its Christmas promotion!  This entitles the book to a prime position on a table in the middle of the main floor of the shop (surrounded by rubber ducks on the legal theme – Sherlock Duck, etc.) and (wait for it…) in the window!

There it is, top right in all its golden glory, alongside the autobiography of the man who founded law firm DLA Piper, an exposé of how big corporations get away with crime, and a book about Magna Carta (lovely woman – beautiful skin).  So here’s hoping that London’s lawyers, filled with the festive spirit and looking for that perfect gift, will stumble upon Sam.

Swimming up the Amazon

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Amazon, Fatal Forgery, financial crime, Regency, Samuel Plank, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

Yesterday, while checking for new books on my chosen speciality, I made an astounding discovery: if you use Amazon.co.uk and enter the search term “money laundering”, one of my books is listed first.  First!  It has been selling well recently, and someone has very kindly given it a five-star review, but Amazon’s rankings are a complete mystery to me.

My curiosity piqued, I started to use other search terms and categories, to see if either “Fatal Forgery” (16 reviews, most of them five-star) or “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” (one five-star review) could be made to appear on top-level pages.  (And I don’t mean by searching on the specific title!  I mean perhaps using “Regency crime” or “Regency police” or “police history” or “historical crime police”, which should pick up the key words I put with each listing – you’re allowed up to seven per book.)  But no, nothing yet – although “historical crime police” does put “Canary” on the second page of listings.  I guess it comes higher than the better-reviewed “Fatal Forgery” because it is more recent…?

So then I turned to the specific book listings to see how each is doing within the categories to which I assigned them on publication (e.g. fiction/historical, and fiction/crime).  But this information is not available: all Amazon will tell me is how each book is doing among all books.  So “Fatal Forgery” is currently Amazon’s 187,746th best-selling book, while “Canary” is miles ahead at 166,752th.  (And in case you’re wondering, as indeed was I, the best-selling book on Amazon as I write this is “The Long Haul (Diary of a Wimpy Kid book 9)”.)  And to really put me in my place, the third best-selling one hasn’t even been published yet: “Girl Online” by “YouTube phenomenon Zoe Sugg” isn’t due out for another fortnight, and it’s already 166,749 places ahead of my best effort!  Ho hum.  All I can do is soldier on, and this afternoon’s task is to start work on “Plank 3”.  Of which, more later.

The future for Sam

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Fatal Forgery, financial crime, plotting, police, Regency, research, Samuel Plank, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat, writing

Did I mention that I have decided that there will be seven Sam Plank books?  It’s not a nod to JK, or anything to do with the significance of the number seven – it’s just worked out that way.

“Fatal Forgery” (Plank 1) is set mostly in 1824.  “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” (Plank 2) takes place in 1825.  So I thought it would be interesting to set one novel per year until 1830, which is a good end point because policing in London changed significantly in 1829 (when the Metropolitan Police was founded) and Sam would be thinking about retirement then anyway, so I thought that he could work with the Met for a year, passing on his knowledge and skills, and then bow out gracefully.  Or not – Sam rather makes his own decisions, I have found.  If I am permitted to follow this plan, it means that I am now committed to Plank 3 in 1826, Plank 4 in 1827, Plank 5 in 1828, Plank 6 in 1829 and Plank 7 in 1830.  And so far I have published them in successive years, which would mean publishing Plank 3 in 2015, Plank 4 in 2016, Plank 5 in 2017, Plank 6 in 2018 and Plank 7 in 2019.

Now I am used to planning ahead in my day job.  I’m self-employed, so if you don’t put holidays in the diary well ahead of time, they don’t happen.  And I work mainly with compliance departments, which are usually very organised and like to book staff training and other initiatives well in advance.  So I already know what work I will be doing for most of 2015.  But as far ahead as 2019…. that’s a bit scary.

And the other thing that is exercising my mind at the moment is wondering how I am going to keep track of all the details in the series.  If, for instance, I mention Martha’s birthday in one of the books, I will have to make sure that it stays on the same date if I mention it again.  I think before I go too much further, I am going to have to close-read “Fatal Forgery” and “Canary” again, and make a careful note of any details that I do mention, and keep a Bumper Book of Sam Facts.  I wonder how JK managed it?

Publication Day is here!

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author, bookshop, financial crime, Heffers, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

Here we are at last: the official publication day for “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.  I have updated this website’s Purchase page, and my Facebook page, and my business website (which in turn updates Twitter and LinkedIn), so I think that’s all the notifications done.

I mentioned all the e-formats I have been working on, and their unpredictable publication timetables.  Well, the Kindle and Kobo versions are up, as is the plain PDF listed on Gumroad, but no sign yet of the Nook or iBook versions.  I remember going through this with “Fatal Forgery” and getting into a right stew about it, but it’s all a matter of patience: basically, you upload the files to the relevant site (Smashwords, in my case), and then when the front-end sites do their regular updates, they sweep through Smashwords and collect the latest publications.  And it seems that Kobo does its updates more frequently than Nook or iBooks.  And no amount of emails or panic is going to alter the Zen-like pace of these updates – believe me, I tried last time.  So this time I am a model of patience and calm: they’ll arrive when they arrive.

So what else awaits the Author on her Publication Day?  Well, my husband is taking me out for lunch to the local pub,and also cooking me steak and chips for dinner, so nutrition is well taken care of.  I am spending quite a bit of time checking my KDP sales figures (that’s for the Kindle edition), but there is little point checking CreateSpace (for the paperback edition) as those figures are always a day in arrears – so I know that two people bought “Canary” yesterday, but I’ll have no idea of the effect of the Official Publication until tomorrow.

All of this sounds a bit muted, I know, but what I haven’t mentioned is the sheer relief of having got it all done!  Oh, and just a couple of photos of “Canary” on the shelves in Heffers, my local bookshop – you’ll notice that I am once again cuddling up to John Grisham!  (And yes, I was waiting at the bookshop doors at 9am to rush in and take these photos….

And I must remember to remove that countdown clock on the left – although I might leave it until tomorrow to see if it starts counting backwards in negative time!

E-nough e-formatting!

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Amazon, financial crime, formatting, Gumroad, Kindle, Kobo, publicity, self-publishing, Smashwords, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

I do rather envy Jane Austen, you know.  When she was writing “P&P” and all the others, she simply sat in a sunny room in Hampshire and filled pages of parchment with lovely curly writing, then sent it off to London and someone turned it into books.  For me (note how I subtly compare myself to Jane Austen…), once the story is finished, the work is only half-done.

I do love self-publishing, as you know, for the many opportunities it offers, but it really is blooming hard work.  You may think that there is only one “Canary”, but I know otherwise: there is the paperback, then the Kindle version, the Smashwords version, the Kobo version, the iBook version and the plain PDF.  Each is subtly different (in formatting, not in words), and each has to be carefully prepared, checked and uploaded, with each publication route asking for different interior and cover files, and for slightly different information about book category, pricing structure, distribution rights and so on.  As my late nan used to say (alongside “a dulage of rain”), it’s a mindfield out there.

On the plus side, it’s all done – hurrah!  Now I’m just waiting for the various e-formats to appear on their sites in time for the Big Launch on Friday – although the Kindle one is already available (thanks to reader Graham for spotting it – too exciting!).

The Big Week is here!

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Amazon, bookshop, financial crime, G David, Hammicks, Heffers, Kindle, marketing, paperback, print-on-demand, publication date, publicity, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

Apologies for my silence – I was away on holiday in Crete for a week, girding my loins for the Big Week of Publication.  My husband – slow reader and therefore typo-spotter extraordinaire – was also reading my proof copy of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”, and yesterday I made my final, final corrections (thankfully only a handful of very small ones needed).  (A bit nerve-racking, his reading of the book, as it was the first time he had read it – he prefers not to read works-in-progress.  So I spent three days hovering over him whenever he was reading, asking, “Where are you up to now?”.  Poor man.  At the end, I asked him which bit he liked best, and it wasn’t what I would have guessed at all, so that’s interesting.)

When we arrived home, two massive boxes of copies of “Canary” were waiting with a neighbour, so three review copies have been sent out, as well as “thanks” copies to my beta-reader, and to the lady who gave us permission to use a document from her late husband’s collection as part of our cover design, and to two relatives who are not Amazon-y.

So what does this week hold?  The paperback and Kindle files have been uploaded to Amazon, as it is something of a dark art to calculate when they might appear, so I thought sooner rather than later might be sensible.  Hopefully they will be in situ, resplendent in their golden covers and ready to go on Friday.  I am tripping over stacks of copies of “Canary”, so they need to be distributed: six copies are going to Hammicks in London today, care of husband and a Boris bike.  Heffers have ordered twelve and David’s ten, so I’ll deliver them tomorrow myself – both are local to me here in Cambridge.  Then I’ll be turning to my “people to tell” list, and working my way through that on Friday – it’s journalists who have kindly written about me before, my own websites, the Society of Authors, and then odd little extras like a poster for my local Department of Criminology.  I tell you, being self-published is not for the faint of heart or weak of cycling leg!

All over bar the selling

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bookshop, financial crime, G David, Hammicks, Heffers, marketing, print-on-demand, Samuel Plank, Susan Grossey, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

Put out the flags!  I have just ordered my paper proof copy of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”, and paid extra for it to be sent by rocket-powered carrier pigeon from the US so that it should arrive by the end of the week.  In my mind, that’s it: I will read the proof copy, of course, but my main intention is to check the quality of the printing and paper – the proof-reading has been done already.  That said, over a quarter-century of writing documents, I have learned to accept the Golden Rule of Proofing: no matter how many times you, your friends and even paid professionals proof-read a document, something will always get through.  It’s a bit like weddings: something will always go wrong, and the sooner the bride-to-be accepts this, the happier and more relaxed she will be in the run-up to the big day.  (For me, the caterers forgot to bring coffee cups, so people drank their coffee out of champagne glasses.  And you know what?  No-one gave a hoot.)

Once the proof copy has shown itself to be of excellent quality, I will order my author copies – for me, for family members who do not live in Cambridge and are not online (so can’t buy their own copies), for reviewers who have kindly agreed to have a look, and for the three bookshops who very generously have agreed to stock “Canary” alongside “Fatal Forgery”.  So – barring misfortune such as a fire in the printing works – I’m online to meet that publication date of 31 October.

I’m feeling a bit bereft, as “Canary” has been alongside me for so long now.  But luckily I was listening to the radio the other day, and a magazine item caught my ear.  So now I am fairly sure I know what is going to be the central crime of “Plank 3″…

The Golden Plank

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cover, financial crime, marketing, Regency, Samuel Plank, Susan Grossey, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

As someone with the artistic capabilities of a roll-top desk, I am always amazed when other people can create visually glorious things.  And into the category falls the cover for “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”, which was finalised today.  Feast your eyes:

Isn’t it just too gorgeous?  It echoes the main features of the cover of “Fatal Forgery”, as you can see:

So this creates the feeling of a related series, while “building the brand”.  The cover designer suggested the tagline across the top (“A Sam Plank mystery”) and the use of one of my lovely reviews at the bottom.  I am simply delighted, and particularly like the new colour – strong yet somehow vintage rather than modern.