Plodding along

Tags

1825, Cambridge, Gregory 1, Gregory Hardiman, Regency, research, writing

Goodness, I had forgotten quite how slow it is writing the first book in a series.  To be fair, I didn’t realise at the time that “Fatal Forgery” was the first in that series – I thought it was a standalone book until Sam caught hold of me and wouldn’t let go – but I certainly noticed that I speeded up the writing through the series.  I thought maybe it was just me becoming a really good writer (hah!) but it turns out that the magic ingredient was familiarity: familiarity with my characters, and familiarity with the location.  And as I embark on “Gregory 1”, both of those are missing.

Yes, I have been canny enough to stick with a familiar timeframe: “Gregory 1” is set in 1825, which is the same year as for “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.  But I’m already finding that 1825 in modern, exciting, capital city London is not the same as 1825 in staid, academic, market town Cambridge.

And as for the other things that are slowing me down, it’s the usual stumbling blocks for the writer of historical fiction.  You start out with a simple sentence: He turned left into Sidney Street and headed for the market to buy fish for his meal.  Now, was it “Sidney Street”, or should I go with the nineteenth-century alternative of “Sidney-street”?  And I’m writing about a Tuesday – was the market in Cambridge on Tuesdays?  And were the fish sellers there every market day?  And were they actually in the main market, or near the “beast market” around the corner?  Perhaps he can do without a meal today!  I’m not complaining – well, not much – but it’s been a bit of a shock to go from days when I could quite happily pour out two or three thousand words, to feeling exhausted after only five hundred.  But at least this time, as I know already that it’s a series, I can comfort myself that time spent now on learning the details will be a good investment for future books.  Now, back to that fish: will Gregory choose Colchester oysters, salmon or herrings? Or even a tasty eel…

Like a pig in press

Tags

archive, Cambridge, Gregory 1, library, Metropolitan Police, newspaper, Plank 7, research, Samuel Plank

I am having just the most fun.  For some unknown reason (I guess I once showed an interest in the website) I have had an email from a newspaper archive service offering me a free three-day weekend pass to their records.  Three days of snooping around in old newspapers, especially given that I am library-starved during lockdown – yes please!  In short, you can put in any search term and time frame and the service rootles through its “20,200+ newspapers from the 1700s–2000s”.  It’s not comprehensive – sadly, there’s no sign of the “Cambridge Chronicle” that was published on Fridays in the 1820s and would have been useful for my new Cambridge-set series – but there’s certainly enough to keep me going.

I have written a long list of search terms, trying to think of anything that might be useful for “Plank 7” or the Cambridge series, while hoping that I don’t stumble across anything that contradicts something I have written in an earlier Sam book.  I have been clipping and saving like a demon, and have devised a new file-naming convention so that I can see at a glance which topic it covers (Crockford’s gambling club, Met Police, counterfeiting, university constables, etc.).  This has made me realise that the articles I had sourced before, in the good old days when I could go into a real-life archive, are named rather chaotically, so I need to go back through those and rename and reorganise them.  Don’t feel sorry for me for one single second: I’m in seventh heaven when I’m researching and organising.

I have also taken the opportunity to search for my own surname in the press; it’s unusual enough to accumulate only 393 matches between 1802 and today (and some of those are mis-readings of the words “grassy” and “grocery”).  I was hoping for something glamorous or scandalous or wealthy, but sadly the high point of the family’s achievements seems to be a W E Grossey triumphing after “close and spirited competition” to win the Church of Ireland Young Men’s Society Elocution Competition in 1891.

The puzzle of Plank

Tags

Gregory 1, Plank 7, plotting, Samuel Plank, writing

Today is a good day.  Not just because the Cheeto in Chief has finally left the White House (may he rot in Florida), but because for the first time in months – literally, months – I have felt properly “in the zone” while writing.

What I haven’t confessed to you is that last week I had a major wobble and considered reversing my decision to write “Plank 7” before embarking on my Cambridge series.  I re-read what I had written for “Gregory 1” and it’s not bad at all.  Perhaps, I reasoned, I needed a break from Sam and Martha.  Perhaps I was blocked because subconsciously I didn’t want to finish their series and say goodbye to them (although my husband has pointed out that I can always do “Young Sam and Martha” – if it’s good enough for Morse and Montalbano, it’s surely good enough for Plank).  Perhaps I needed a change of scenery, and relocating my writerly self from London to Cambridge might do the trick.  (Actually, as I’m under lockdown in Cambridge and it’s the only place I’ve seen for months, it’s rather more exciting to think about London.)  But it turns out that I was just being a bit feeble – as ever (and I can’t remember who said it) the key to writing is nothing more mysterious than applying the bottom to the chair and the hands to the keyboard/pen.

So, I am thrilled to report that Sam, Martha and I are back on track.  And this final instalment is even more of a mental workout than usual.  Not only do I have to figure out the plot (which, in true Sam style, is revealing and changing itself as we go along), but I also have to ensure that anything I write dovetails neatly with Sam’s adventures at the end of “Fatal Forgery”.  Although the majority of that book was set in 1824, you may remember that the final chapters jump ahead to September 1830 – and “Plank 7” is set in the autumn of 1829.  I didn’t know Sam very well when I was writing “Fatal Forgery”, and I am just hoping that I haven’t hamstrung him with any odd views or actions that I will now have to accommodate.  Still, it keeps the mental cogs whirring nicely.

Looking backwards and forwards

Tags

Amazon, Gregory 1, Kindle, paperback, Plank 7, plotting, promotion, sales, Samuel Plank, The Solo Squid, writing

And here we are, staring into a whole new year – there can’t be many among us who are sad to see the back of 2020…  I know that my creativity took quite a knock; much as I admire all those who managed to use the endless weeks and months of lockdown to burrow into their projects, I have to admit that constant low-level anxiety and uncertainty took up most of my brain space.  As a result, I am now confronted by two stalled books – “Gregory 1” and “Plank 7” – and I am very much hoping that 2021 will be different.

Self-pity aside, I must gird my loins and look at my sales figures for the past year.  But despite Amazon reporting target-busting sales and (apparently) people turned to reading for comfort and escape, the boom has not quite hit my own titles!  In 2020, I sold 36 paperbacks across the six titles in the Sam series, and 185 e-books.  (But before you pat me on the back for those e-books, I must confess that 153 of those were downloaded for free during a promotion I ran in March/April.  So only 32 of the e-books brought in any money.)  And my little business book – “The Solo Squid” – sold 12 paperbacks and 16 e-books.

And so to money: with an average royalty of 90p per sale, my life as an author netted me about £86.40 in royalties in 2020.  Unfortunately, I also had to pay £200 for the cover for “The Solo Squid”, plus my memberships of the Society of Authors and the Alliance of Independent Authors (neither of which I would do without), so I’m actually about £350 in the red.  But as I don’t drink (yet…), smoke, or collect diamond jewellery or expensive cars, it’s a hobby I can afford.  And once I can reclaim some of this mis-used brain space, I can get back to enjoying it.  Happy new year to one and all!

The advertising game

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advertising, Amazon, Facebook, Gregory 1, Gregory Hardiman, magistrate, promotion, research, sales, Samuel Plank, The Solo Squid

It’s been a weekend of two halves, with regard to my writing.  On one hand, I have made a tiny bit of progress with “Gregory 1” – the first Gregory Hardiman book, set in Cambridge.  I have learned a lot about coroner’s inquests, and I have decided on a couple of confidants for Gregory – yes, a coroner, and perhaps a surgeon as well.  I found John Conant – a magistrate – an invaluable part of the Sam series, as the two men were able to discuss their work, and I feel I need someone in a similarly educated position for Gregory.  (I have also discovered that he doesn’t like being called Greg; Samuel Plank was perfectly easy with being called Sam, but Gregory insists on the full Gregory.  I wonder why…)

And on the other hand, I have been running an experimental Facebook ad for the past five days.  I have a dedicated Facebook page for my non-fiction business book “The Solo Squid: How to Run a Happy One-Person Business”, and for weeks now they have been tempting me with a £5 “credit” to try an ad to promote the page.  And in a moment of weakness – OK, a moment when I should have been writing but convinced myself that doing something commercial to promote a book was actually just as good as writing [spoiler alert: it isn’t] – I went for it.  I signed up to spend up to £1 a day for five days promoting the squid page to potential buyers of the book, with an ad to entice them to click on a link taking them to the Amazon page for the book.  I will admit that I didn’t put a great deal of thought into the ad or its settings, simply accepting the Facebook defaults for most of it, on the basis that as this was my first ad, they would do their best for me in order to suck me in for future campaigns.  I did limit the ad a little, by asking for it to be shown to both genders in the age range 25 to 58 [I figure that the very young aren’t setting up their own businesses quite yet, and those at the end of their working lives aren’t looking for guidance], in the US and the UK [prime English-speaking nations] and with a declared interest in entrepreneurship.  This netted me a potential target audience numbering 11,000,000, which Facebook assured me was ideal.  And off we went.

Five days later, Facebook informs me that my ad run has finished.  Over the five days it was seen by 1,399 people, eleven of whom clicked the link.  That cost me £4.80 of my £5 credit – or just under 44p per click.  Looking at the Amazon sales figures, I see that in the same period (10 to 14 June 2020) I sold no copies of “The Solo Squid”.  I’ll keep an eye on the sales in the next few days in case one of the eleven clicks put the book in their basket for later purchase, but based on this small and most unscientific experiment, I can safely say that I will not be investing the Grossey fortune in Facebook ads.  Back to the writing board.

My primitive brain

Tags

Gregory 1, NaNoWriMo, plotting, word count, writing

Usually I am a very focused person: I find it easy to shut off from outside distractions and apply myself to a project, sometimes for hours at a stretch.  But in lock-down, my ability to concentrate has all but deserted me, with the result that I am making glacial progress with “Gregory 1”.  This weekend, for instance, I managed to write just under six hundred words – and most of those weren’t very good.  And to judge from the writers’ groups that I follow, I’m not alone.  With all these empty days and weekends and no competing attractions like meals out with friends or holidays in exotic locations (or even just down the road), we should all be writing fistfuls of books – it should be like NaNoWriMo on steroids.  But it seems that many people are struggling with their concentration and cursing themselves for it – and then I found out why.

An article in the New Statesman (I’m not a regular reader; I was searching for help with “why can’t I concentrate” and came across this piece) explains it all.  This is the key paragraph: “The basic science you need to know is that your brain’s prefrontal cortex (a chunk behind your forehead) processes ‘higher functions’, such as critical thinking, inhibiting impulses and, crucially here, the ability to focus.  ‘The prefrontal cortex has got this built in genie that causes it to weaken with stress signalling,’ Professor Arnsten says, ‘whereas the related stress chemicals actually strengthen the primitive brain systems.’  So essentially, when faced with immediate physical danger, your prefrontal cortex shuts down to make way for the more primitive parts of your brain – the parts that can respond quickly and basically in order to protect you.’  And that’s where we are now: we’re all faced constantly with an invisible, ongoing, potentially deadly threat.  We can’t resolve the threat so our primitive brains remain on high alert – and our concentration (a higher function) is buggered.

In the past I have always maintained that the most efficient way for me to write is to do it in large chunks of time – a half-day or day – to give myself the best chance of becoming immersed in the time period and in the vocabulary that I need to write Sam and now Gregory.  But this system has obviously been scuppered by current events and my grasshopper brain, and so I can either accept that I’m going to spend hours sitting in front of a screen and ending up with six hundred words and a great deal of irritation, or I can adapt.  And I have decided that for the duration of this focus-stealing situation, I will instead aim to write for thirty minutes a day – no more.  I reckon that even I can concentrate for that long; indeed, I might even break it down into two quarter-hour sessions if I’m struggling.  With daily exposure I should be able to get back into the 1820s groove reasonably quickly, and to make sure that I hit the ground running I am going to finish each time in the middle of a scene, or maybe even in the middle of a

Horse artists and bird stuffers

Tags

Cambridge, Gregory 1, newsletter, Regency, research

With a whole weekend of social isolating at my disposal, I allowed myself the luxury of a deep-dive into Pigot’s.  What, you’ve never used this amazing resource?  Let me enlighten you.  James Pigot started out as a publisher of general directories and in 1811 he began publishing trade directories for Manchester.  His big project – the Commercial Directory – was first published in 1814, and in 1823 he expanded to other cities, including London.  And in 1830 our hero brought out his “National Commercial Directory; Comprising a Directory and Classification of the Merchants, Bankers, Professional Gentlemen, Manufacturers and Traders of the Cities, Towns, Sea-Ports and Principal Villages of the Following Counties, viz Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire”.  Catchy title!  But it does what it says on the tin: it’s basically the forerunner to the Yellow Pages.  And for getting the flavour of daily life at the time, it’s fantastic.

For instance, in 1830 Cambridge was the place of business for four artists (including one “horse artist”), two bird stuffers, four breeches makers, thirty-three butchers (four of them women), several chymists [sic] (including “Isaiah Deck, practical chymist to the Duke of Gloucester, and mineralogist”), numerous “coal and corn merchants” (not a combination we would imagine today), plenty of (non-university) professors and teachers (including the polyglot Frederick de Boetticher, who offered lessons in Italian, Spanish, French, German, Dutch and Russian), 110 pubs and taverns – and one dentist, one piano tuner and one coroner.  It certainly tells you a great deal about people’s interests, concerns and priorities.

I am also taking this opportunity to plan ahead with my monthly behind-the-scenes research newsletters, so do sign up if you’d like more fascinating detail about life in the 1820s, in both London and Cambridge.

Taming the squid

Tags

Facebook, Gregory 1, marketing, publicity, research, The Solo Squid, Twitter

“The Solo Squid” – my book about how to run a happy one-person business – has hit the same wall as the Sam Plank books: everyone who reads it says that it is good, but not enough people are reading it.  I don’t want to fall back into Twitter (for the reasons explained yesterday) but I do want to get the squid message out there, and so I have created a new Facebook page.

The theory is that the Solo Squid page will showcase the book, yes, but will also share tips and ideas on the theme central to the book: enjoying working alone, and being satisfied with that work status (i.e. being content with a one-person business and not plotting world domination).  To keep it manageable I plan to source and share one piece of squisdom every day or two, and I am going to be ferocious about keeping to the squidology – no veering off-message.

Like so many marketing ideas, it may die a death in a month or two, but that’s the nature of the marketing beast.  On the other hand, I should practise what I preach, and in the book I advise forgetting about formal marketing strategies: “Rather, I recommend starting at the end and asking yourself this one question: what can I do to make sure that my clients remember me in a positive light?”  And if my FB page can offer a helpful idea or a crumb of comfort to a lonely or struggling or exhausted solo squid, who then tells other solo squids about it, then I’m happy.

(And in case you’re wondering about my fictional life, I can assure you that each weekend I am immersed in research for the first Gregory book.  I have been reading a wonderful tome called “Annals of Cambridge”, which is a highly subjective – and at times unintentionally hilarious – record of the main events that happened in the city, organised by year.  And in 1830 we had this gem: “On 3 December 1830, apprehension having been entertained from the excited state of the labouring classes in many of the adjacent villages that there might be some disturbance in the town on the following market day, 800 of the [6,500 male] inhabitants voluntarily attended at the Town Hall and were sworn as special constables. Not the slightest disturbance occurred.”  I can guarantee that that little over-reaction will find its way into a Gregory book.)

Rabbit-holes of research

Tags

Cambridge, Gregory 1, Gregory Hardiman, Peninsular Wars, plotting, research, series

Alice’s adventures in Wonderland start when she spots a white rabbit checking his pocket-watch, which makes her “burn with curiosity”, and so she follows him down a rabbit-hole: “The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way… Either [it] was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next… Down, down, down.  Would the fall never come to an end!”  It’s not hard to see why, when we’re tempted to follow links and footnotes and passing references and dropped hints and other lines of enquiry, we call it “going down that rabbit-hole”: who knows how long it will last, where it will lead, and what we will find at the end of it.  And this is where I am at the moment, as I start my research for the first book in the Gregory/Cambridge series.

Before I can even think about plotting in earnest – I have the flimsiest of story ideas – I need to set the scene.  And so far I have found three rabbit-holes that I need to explore: military history (so that I can put Gregory into the right regiment for his military background and then send him to the right battle in the Peninsular Wars to get his injury and his nightmares); university history (so that I can drop the right references to the structure of the place and its governing bodies, as well as its often fractious relationship with the surrounding town); and details about the life and duties of a constable (which I already know are far more involved and varied than I had initially imagined).

My problem is that, oh dear me, I do love a rabbit-hole.  Yesterday I spent an hour reading happily about a “town and gown riot” that took place in Cambridge – in 1854.  Yes, that’s a full three decades after the setting of my series and therefore totally and utterly irrelevant, unless I decide to make Gregory a clairvoyant – and I can guarantee that I won’t.  I have no discipline at all when it comes to research and I need to get myself under control.  My mantra for today’s research session is: yes, but is it relevant?  Of course, I don’t yet know precisely which details I will use, so I am perfectly entitled – and indeed obligated – to gather much more than I will ever use, in order to give myself the wide knowledge that I need to talk with authority about the period.  But an hour on something that happens after Gregory has died?  Get a grip, woman!

Best writing day ever?

Tags

author talks, Gregory 1, Gregory Hardiman, indie publishing, library, sales, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, The Solo Squid

Many writing days are rather uneventful: enjoyable, certainly, but uneventful.  So when a writing day comes along that is exciting, I like to tell you about it.  And yesterday was a doozie.

For a start, I spent a good part of the morning with the Cambridge University Marshal and the Pro-Proctor for Ceremonial.  The what, I hear you cry – but if I tell you that these two are part of the office that employs the university constables, you will understand my excitement.  Quite apart from being lovely people, they were both an absolute fount of knowledge and so generous with that knowledge.  I now have a much clearer idea of the character for the narrator for my Cambridge series – for instance, I was going to give him a limp, but they said that constables (in the 1820s) needed to be fleet of foot to catch naughty undergraduates and so perhaps a eye injury (very common in war veterans of the period) would be more suitable.  I have pages and pages of notes and leads and ideas – just fizzing.

In the afternoon an email pinged in with the heading “The Solo Squid”.  This book was published on Sunday (paperback and Kindle version) and I have been a bit nervous about it: it’s a business book but not in the usual way, in that it doesn’t give guidance on setting up a business or dealing with the taxman or turning your company into a world-beating brand.  It simply encourages people to enjoy working alone and to take steps to make life as a one-person business professionally and personally fulfilling.  And I did wonder whether people would read it and say, what a load of self-indulgent piffle.  So I opened the email through squinted eyes, prepared for the worst – someone outraged and demanding a full refund.  But what did I see?  “The Solo Squid arrived from Amazon this morning and I have to say I read it all in one sitting – as such I felt compelled to contact you and to say thank you so much for writing this… Thank you once again for a superb read – something that I will endeavour to recommend to a number of business associates who have also risked it all to go it alone.”  I literally danced around the office – and the lovely fellow has already posted his thoughts as an Amazon review.

And in the evening I gave a talk at our local library on life as an indie-published author.  It was a packed room, as you can see:

I had notes to guide my talk and to make sure I didn’t miss out anything crucial, but there were so many questions and such a lot of interest – and I even sold a handful of books.  I love encouraging others to give indie publishing a go, and it is a great boost to know that my experience will help other authors and budding writers to take the plunge.  What a day!