Hear ye, hear ye!

After something of a gap owing to other commitments (including working with the Royal Shakespeare Company, darlings! Only the best for us!), our wonderful audiobook narrator Guy Hanson has just started work on the third Sam Plank book, “Worm in the Blossom”.  Guy has the perfect voice for Sam – warm, mature, humorous and gently London.  And having read both “Fatal Forgery” and “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”, he’s also a dab hand (throat?) at adjusting his voice to encompass Martha, Conant, Wontner and all our other regulars.

If you’ve not yet sampled audiobooks – ideal for car/train/plane journeys, and good company when gardening/jogging/dog-walking – did you know that you can get a free 30-day trial to Audible (the audiobook arm of Amazon)?  With a free trial you get:

• One free audiobook of your choice – which you can keep even if you cancel after the trial (and if you’re an Amazon Prime customer, you get two free audiobooks during your trial)
• Unlimited listening to the Plus Catalogue, which contains thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts and select audiobooks (including mine, of course)
• After the 30-day trial, you can download one book a month, with unlimited access to the Plus Catalogue, for £7.99/month (which renews automatically)
• And you can pause or cancel your membership at any time.

(In the interests of openness and transparency, I should tell you that – should you take out a trial or membership through my link – I get what Amazon calls a “bounty”.  Sadly not a yummy coconut chocolate bar, but just some ordinary money.)

So if you’re tempted to meet Guy/Sam and make a Sam Plank novel your free starter audiobook, here are the links: “Fatal Forgery” and “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.

Using adverbs wisely, judiciously, carefully and rarely

My heroic narrator Guy Hanson is in the throes of recording “Worm in the Blossom”.  When he started this one – the third in the series – I extracted from him a promise that he was in it for the long haul, and would continue to be Sam for all seven books.  And now that I know that the books are going to be audio-fied (you know what I mean) and especially now that I can hear Guy as I write, I find that it is affecting my dialogue.

For instance, I used to employ more adverbs: “he said quietly”, “she replied quickly”.  (And at one point I tried to find a gazillion ways to say “said” – he growled, she whispered, they spat – until thankfully I came to my senses and realised that it irritates me when I am reading someone else’s book, so why would I replicate it in my own?)  But I did stick with the adverbs for a while, until I heard Guy.  And it sounds rather silly for someone to say, angrily, “‘Why should I?’ he asked angrily.”  The context and words should be sufficient to convey the mood and tone, and if they are not, simply slapping an adverb on the end is not the answer.  As a result, my dialogue is – I think – much simpler and crisper in layout: it’s pretty much all “he said”, “she said”, “he replied”.  Guy is more than capable of supplying the right spirit when he reads aloud, and so are readers when they read to themselves.

You don’t have to take my word for it: Stephen King, who perhaps rather outsells me (so it must be working), is of the same mind.

Fits and starts

I seem to do nothing on this blog at the moment but apologise – and here I am again.  I have been working on “Plank 5”, honestly, but my day job has been so busy recently that I haven’t had any extra capacity to write this blog as well.  Nonetheless, you might like to know what I have been up to with regard to Plank writing and promotion (other self-published authors will recognise the juggling act!):

• The audiobook “Worm in the Blossom” (the third Plank book) is currently being recorded by the wonderful Guy Hanson of Go4pro audio, who just is Sam – he’s up to chapter 21 (of 40). When he completes a chapter he sends me a link to the audio file, and I listen to it while reading along in the book, and send back any corrections that need to be made.  As you can imagine, I can’t do this on the same day as I am writing “Plank 5” – otherwise I would muddle the plots.
• I have booked time with the fabulous Design for Writers cover designers so that they can work on the “Plank 5” cover in February 2018.
• In idle moments, I have allowed myself to find some possible images for that cover, and I have also started to assemble a list of possible titles for the book…
• I have contacted another independent bookshop in a nearby town – Hart’s Books in Saffron Walden – to see whether they would like to stock Sam. I’ve had no response to my email, so I think I’ll have to call in in person – I should imagine they get hundreds of email approaches.
• I have been selected by the angelic Helen Hollick to be part of her seasonal promotion of “discovered diamonds” – independent and self-published authors of historical fiction. Her idea is to feature an excerpt from a different novel each day in December, from the 3^rd to the 23^rd, with the theme of “Diamond Tales”.  As those of you who have read “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” may remember, Sam decides to mark his silver wedding anniversary by buying Martha a ring…  His scene will appear on the “Discovering Diamonds” blog on 16^th December, but I urge you to look at all the others – who knows what gems you will unearth!  The diamond-themed excerpts will start on 3^rd December 2017, on this blog.  (You can also click on the “Diamond Tales” logo on the left.)  A wonderful Christmas present for this author.

I think that’s it for now.  Thankfully things are slowing down with work as people – oddly enough – don’t want to be reminded about financial criminals in the run-up to Christmas, so I am hoping to get some good stretches of writing time during December.  Martha would have no truck with this procrastination, would she?

The “Canary” sings

It’s been quite the week in Sam Plank land – first my “Book of the Month” accolade for “Portraits of Pretence”, then the arrival of the bookmarks, and now the publication (if that’s the word) of the audio edition of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.

Guy the narrator has been working like a Trojan in recent weeks, sending me clutches of chapters of “Canary”, and I have had a ball listening to it all again.  I haven’t read it since I published it, and it’s been great to hear it.  Even more importantly, it is very useful to have it to remind myself of certain character traits and biographical details as I start to wade more deeply into “Plank 5”.  Here’s where I spent most of the past weekend, during that sunny spell:

That’s my A4 “Plank 5” notebook on the left, filled with my favoured plotting method: plot points written in boxes and then joined together with arrows – some going across several pages.  If I had a dedicated writing office (I do have a desk, but it’s in the back bedroom, which is sometimes needed as, well, a back bedroom) I would have a plain white wall for the affixing of coloured Post-It notes, but as I don’t, the arrowed book will suffice.

So now the audio version of “Canary” is available.  (If you’re curious about the royalty/bounty side of audiobook sales, I’ve written about it before here.)  I trust that Audible (the audiobook member of the Amazon stable) will promote it to people who bought the audio “Fatal Forgery”, and I will need to get the word out there as well.  As before, they are going to send me a clutch of promo codes for free downloads, so I will consider how best to use those.  Last time, for “Fatal Forgery”, I offered them on a suitable audiobook forum in Goodreads, so I may do the same again.  Any other suggestions?  I could run a competition, I suppose…  Let me get back to you on that one.

Progress on all Planks

I once spoke to a professional author – a full-time writer – who said that one of the aspects of his job that he had not anticipated was the overlap of books.  And now I know what he meant.  At the moment I am (a) writing “Plank 5”, (b) trying to promote “Portraits of Pretence”, and (c) checking the audiobook version of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.  So here’s where I am with each of these.

“Plank 5” now has a completed first chapter and outlines for another twelve chapters, and I have been doing a great deal of reading around non-conformist religions in 1828 – from the familiar Methodists and Baptists to the more evangelical and (in those days) wacky Ranters.  We’re a bit too early for spiritualism, which is a shame, as I’d love to write a séance scene!  I am also looking at epidemics, but I’m not going to tell you why…

“Portraits of Pretence” is slowly, slowly gathering more reviews, including this lovely one today on Helen Hollick’s “Discovering Diamonds” blog (“Independent reviews of the best in historical fiction”, so I’m very flattered to have made the cut).  This means that I can now proudly display this logo all over the place:

And in a review on Amazon of the same book, a Mr L Moss said that “Worm in the Blossom” had been his favourite book of 2015, so that’s something I remind myself of when I am struggling with Ranters and epidemics.

And my fabulous narrator Guy has just sent me the final chapters of the “Canary” audiobook, so I shall listen to them over the weekend and we might just be able to audio-publish next week.  After a good start, the “Fatal Forgery” audiobook sales have slowed right down, so I am hoping that Guy will still be willing to record the other Plank books (we’re on a 50/50 profit share through ACX).  And if anyone has any ideas for how to promote audiobooks, please share them – I’m struggling a bit with this one.

Reading aloud: before and after?

As regular readers of this blog will know, I am gradually – very gradually – creating audiobooks of the Sam series.  I am doing it through a website called ACX – owned by Audible, which is in turn part of Amazon – and the basic deal is that the narrator and I share any profits fifty-fifty.  The narrator I found for “Fatal Forgery”, Guy Hanson – in essence, he’s the voice of Sam – has kindly agreed to stay fit and healthy so that he can narrate all seven books, and he’s now working on “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.  He uploads chapters to ACX and I listen to them and ask for any changes.  Sometimes there will be a wrong word or a mispronunciation or a misplacing of stress, but Guy is so completely Sam-ish that my requests are few.

However, as I listen to my words read aloud, I do sometimes think, “Hmm, that’s a bit clumsily written”, or “I’ve used that word three times already this chapter – I should have thought of another”.  And sometimes Guy’s words do not exactly match the text but actually improve on it, making it smoother.  I have read the advice that authors should read their books aloud before publishing, to catch just such instances, but I’ve never done it.  I wonder whether I should from now on…

On the positive side, there is a quite a bit of Martha in “Canary”, and it is really helpful for me to reacquaint myself with her as I launch into “Plank 5”, which will focus more on her.  For instance, I have just heard her say this when spotting a fortune teller at the Bartholomew Fair: “Who would want to know their future?  If it’s bad, you’ll waste your life worrying, and if it’s good, it will be a lovely surprise.”  In “Plank 5”, I intend to have her rethink this position, giving Sam cause for great concern.

Plank plans

Apologies for the radio silence: I have been away on holiday for a week.  But I do have plenty of updates for you.

Just before I went away, I placed my “author order” of fifty copies of “Portraits of Pretence” with CreateSpace.  I chose one of the slower delivery speeds, so they are probably on the back of giant turtle making its leisurely way across the sea as we speak, but they’re coming.  Fifty is a rather optimistic number, isn’t it?  I have pre-sold about twenty to various bookshops, and I have a few promotional ideas for a handful more, but the rest was perhaps rather reckless.  It’s always a funny, limbo period, between finalising the book and officially publishing it.

However, things are moving on elsewhere.  My lovely narrator Guy has already started work on the next instalment of AudioSam by completing the first chapter of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.  As I’ve been away I haven’t listened to it yet, but I will do that tomorrow.  We have been buoyed and encouraged by good reviews for the “Fatal Forgery” audiobook that have started appearing on Goodreads.

But perhaps the most important development is that I have made a big decision about “Plank 5”.  I am not going to write it next year – or, more accurately, I am not going to plan to publish it next year.  I always said that, once I had three books out there, I would have a good idea about whether the Sam Plank series would be a success.  And here I am, about to send the fourth one out, and it turns out that I don’t have a good idea at all.  People who read them love them, to be sure, but then not that many people read them.  It’s such a crowded marketplace now – poor old Sam is up against millions of other books.  So my plan is this: “Plank 5” will come out in October 2018.  This will give me more time to write it – or, more realistically, the same amount of time but stretched over a longer period, so that I’m not writing in every moment that I’m not working.  And the time that is freed up will be spent on marketing and promotion of the Sam Plank series.  I often have ideas of things I could do to promote them, but then I don’t have the time – and now I will.  Of course all of these deadlines and timetables are entirely made up by me, so if I get bored with promotion, I’ll start writing again.  And there is absolutely no need to worry that this is my gentle way of saying that “Plank 5” (and “Plank 6” and “Plank 7”) will not happen – I can promise that they will.  After all, I’ve got their plots all ready to go…

 

Sam and the Map Man

Just because I am counting the days (thirty!) until the official arrival of “Portraits of Pretence”, don’t think that I have forgotten my other Plankish projects.  For a start, Guy the narrator has already embarked on the audiobook of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.  Sales of the first AudioSam are going well, and autumn is a relatively quiet time for Guy, so it made sense for him to use his down-time to crack on with AudioSam II.  We’re not rushing to get this one finished, as I figure that the publication of audiobooks in the gap between publication of new books will give everyone a nice fillip – so perhaps March or April 2017.

Secondly, I have just met with the Map Man and he has shown me the rough draft of Sam’s London.  Here it is, with the new book on it for scale:

And here is some detail – that’s the area around Great Marlborough Street:

So yes, rather large – and perhaps not practical at that scale for inclusion in paperback books.  So the next step is to decide on the extent of the map, and then for the Map Man to make a tidy version of it – he has the most beautiful penmanship, so the labels will look lovely.  He is also intending to include some little drawings of key sites – here are a couple of prisons, for example:

And thirdly, I have started to jot down some ideas for “Plank 5”.  I already know the key plot point, of course – I planned that for each of the seven books right back at the beginning.  Shall I tell you?  Hmmmm, OK then: inheritance gone wrong.  It’s been a few weeks now since I wrote anything new for Sam, and I’m starting to miss it.

“Like a good radio drama”

Waiting for reviews is always rather scary, and with “AudioSam”, there is the extra tension of knowing that there is someone else involved too – what if someone says something bad about the narrator and it’s actually my fault for writing a bad book?  So it is a HUGE relief to be able to report that Guy (the narrator) and I have received our first review for the audiobook of “Fatal Forgery”, and it’s really positive and encouraging.  It’s on Goodreads, and here’s what it says:

Like a good radio drama

I enjoyed Fatal Forgery.  The storyline and narration were good.  Guy Hanson as Constable Sam Plank brought the whole story to life and I was transported to Victorian London.  I did like it when Sam got excited at the trial and with all the different character witnesses quite quick fire.  Felt like a Sherlock Holmes in Part and a James McLevy but without the sidekick.

The main downside is that this is the first in the Sam Plank series to be made available through Audible and I would really like to listen to the next one now to follow the story.  So can you please get on with this now.

Please note that this review was undertaken through The Good Reads audiobook programme.

Bill Scott
Edinburgh September 2016

I am so thrilled that Guy’s hard work on the large number of voices needed for the trial chapter was noticed – I felt a bit bad about that one!  I think we’ll probably wait a little while to check that sales go well (we’ve just cleared twenty) but it’s certainly nice to know that at least one listener would like the (audio) series to continue.

Meet the voice of Sam

As you know, the audiobook of “Fatal Forgery” has now been released.  Sales are going well: twelve so far.  It has been a great project, and one of the nicest things about it has been communicating with “my” narrator, Guy Hanson (or “AudioSam”, as he’s known in our house).  And I thought that you might like to know a little more about the fine fellow who has brought Sam to life (if you’re not keen on buying the audiobook, you can still hear an audio clip of Guy/Sam on Amazon, Audible and iTunes).  So Guy and I have done a little Q&A for you.

Me: I chose you as my ideal Sam after listening to dozens of voice audio samples on ACX.  But of course it is a two-way agreement, so when I offered you Sam, why did you agree?

Guy: I think very simply because I liked the character of Sam; he is a chap you could imagine running into in a pub in his later life and being able to spend hours just listening to his stories.

Me: And having now spent hours in his company, what do you think are Sam’s key characteristics?

Guy: Sam is a quiet, thoughtful person but tenacious in “getting his man”.

Me: I have written “Fatal Forgery” (and indeed the subsequent Sam novels) in the form of a constable’s notebook – short chapters, with dates, concentrating on action and dialogue rather than description.  Do you think this format works for an audiobook?

Guy: It works brilliantly and reflects Sam’s character too.  Interestingly it more of a challenging as a narrator, because you don’t have much of a lead in and you’re hitting the characters straight away.

Me: Many of the characters in “Fatal Forgery” appear in later Sam Plank novels too, and you have said that – if this audiobook is a success – you would like to do the others as well.  How do you keep track of each voice, so that, for instance, John Wontner always sounds the same?

Guy: I’m sure all narrators have their way of doing this, but my way is to start to build up a library of character voices.  I often add a note or two as well if there are certain thing about a character which I have used to “find” them in the first place.

Me: Most of the characters in “Fatal Forgery” are male but there are some women and girls.  How do you voice them without sounding like a parody?

Guy: Ah now, that an interesting question.  I don’t think that audiences actually have a problem with male doing female characters or vice versa (look at panto!); I think the important thing, as in any performance, is that you must be genuine and believable.

Me: Can you tell us a little about your narration process – for instance, do you read the whole book before starting, or just the chapter you’re about to record?  How long can you spend reading aloud before you have to give your voice (and perhaps your back!) a rest?

Guy: I first like to read through the first four or five chapters just to get a general feel for the piece.  I will then speak to the author and get notes on particular character traits or anything that might affect the voice or the way they speak, so accents, lisps etc.  I have to say that for the most part authors tend to let me get on with it, and then occasionally change something if it’s not right as we go along.  I will often record chapters in sections and tie them together during editing.  If you work on the principle that an hour’s completed and edited audio is around four hours’ work, you can see that a couple of hours’ narration is usually enough, before the voice starts to strain.