Random Jottings

Timeless taboos: why 19th-century novels appeal to film-makers | Film | The Guardian

At press previews, to which movie critics are lured on weekday mornings by platters of complimentary croissants and fruit segments, a special mood of resentment greets the unspooling of a franchise in its later instalments: the ninth Nightmare on Elm Street, say, or the 12th Friday the 13th. Relentless repetition of the same characters or set-up is viewed as proof of imaginative poverty and commercial opportunism.

via www.guardian.co.uk

As another Great Expectations, Wuthering Heights and Anna Karenina loom, Mark Lawson writes in the Guardian on why they still appeal. Very interesting and thoughtful but I keep asking myself do we really need another Great Expectations, Wuthering Heights or Anna Karenina? Why not try some other Victorian writers?

Egypt's Lost Cities

I spent three years of my childhood in Egypt and simply loved it.  I re-visited about ten years ago and felt as if I had come back home. It is one of the most fascinating countries in the world and everyone who goes there falls under its spell. I went on a journey down the Nile and visited all the big temples on the tourist trail.  Normally when you see the popular tourist sites they can be disappointing or overcrowded, but this was not the case in Egypt.  There is such a sense of mystery and history about them all that it does not matter how crowded or busy they are, it is possible to ignore all around you because you are in such a magnificent place.  To be in the Valley of the Kings in the early morning before the heat of the day and to go down into the tombs in the stillness and dim light is quite stunning and moving at the same time.  On this visit  I took a flight up to Abu Simbel to see the sunrise there  impossible to express my feelings - as the sun came up it flooded the front of the temple turning it the most beautiful rose, then gold and then the beam of the sun strikes into the temple and hits the face of Ramases in the middle inner rooms.   It is the most overwhelming experience.

Now we have satellite imagery to help uncover hidden temples, tombs and pyramids totally undreamed of and unknown lurking beneath the sands of Egypt.  The BBC have shown a documentary about this tonight and it is absolutely mind blowing, no other way of describing it.   An American archaeologist, Dr Sarah Parcak may have uncovered hundreds of hitherto undreamed of buildings awaiting discovery, enough to keep archaeologists digging and excavating for the next century - Indiana Jones eat your heart out.

Totally fascinating but, once more, the BBC falls into the usual cliche ridden way of producing such a documentary.   Endless shots of Dr Parcak and her two BBC cohorts wandering around the desert, looking into the sunset as a gentle zephyr drifts their hair across their faces, chats with another archaeologist take place as they squat on the sand, and lots of fill in shots of boats on the Nile, birds scudding across the sky and every time we are told they are going to visit another part of Egypt, more shots of Range Rovers setting off and kicking up dust as they go.   I am probably being very unfair apostrophising only the BBC for this dreadful style as other channels do it too - I suspect that these documentaries are commissioned for a particular channel and this is the current method of production.  Loads of computer imagery of course which is absolutely fascinating and enables us to see just how these cities would have looked, but far too much of it.   We also had the usual presenter staring at the camera and asking portentious questions to which there are no answers.

In short, this documentary which was an hour and a half long, was padded and padded and tried to build up an artificial sense of tension.   Nowadays, when information and results are so easily obtainable and instant gratification is the name of the game, it is rather hard to make the possibility of an ancient city being found, but only after digging for some twenty or more years, exciting.   Archeology = Indiana Jones most of the time and unearthing gold and silver and jewels whereas the reality is digging amongst piles of sand and coming up with bits of pottery.   When I was at school I had thought of becoming an archaeologist, a dream which was never realised and this was why I found this programme so fascinating.   I know I am being hyper critical in its presentation which I found acutely annoying, but its content was marvellous.

The best part was when the Egyptian Minister of Antiquities took one of the presenters, Dallas Campbell, up a vertigo, claustrophobia inducing climb up the inside of one of the pyramids to its very tip where they sat in a small, dark chamber and looked at the mark on the walls of the builders who had worked here all those thousands of years ago.   For once BBC speak failed and Dallas just sat totally overwhelmed.

Wonderful stuff and I already feel the need for a return trip.  There is something about this country that lays its hand upon you and once caught it never lets you go.

Bank Holiday Ramblings

Yes it is a Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK so all workers will have a day off on Monday and I remember so well how much I used to look forward to this break when I was working.  I also used to have a list of chores that had to be done at that time, usually decorating of some sort as travelling anywhere during a public holiday is a nightmare so I always used to stay at home and have a domestic weekend.

So today I was up and off on my list of Things I Must do Today. Did my shopping, did some housework (yes I know.....), had a mass sort out of books and now have several bagfuls waiting delivery to the NSPCC Book Sale which collects throughout the year, another bagful to take to Oxford with me in a week or two when I am meeting up with fellow bloggers, tidied all my book shelves, washed them down etc.  I then turned my attention to my bay window and painted its ceiling as the heater makes it very grubby at the end of a long winter.  I then touched up some paintwork that needed doing and washed some that was looking a bit sad.  I was in full work mode when I suddenly stopped and asked myself what was I doing?  Why was I rushing around?   I don't work any more, I can schedule all of these things at any time I like and here I was ricocheting of the walls like a demented peahen.  Old habits die hard I suppose and for over thirty years I have had to fit this sort of activity into weekends and holidays and, just as I still wake up at 6 am every morning, it is hard to break the habits of a lifetime.

Once I realised what I was doing I cleared up, made a cup of tea, sat down and had a leisurely couple of hours reading the newspaper, doing a crossword and generally relaxing.   Mark you, if I had not had this sense of urgency I daresay none of these chores would have got done, that is the problem. I don't have a deadline or a time line any more and the danger is that I will let things slide.  My bedroom has not been painted for several years and I keep putting it off as the ceiling needs doing as well, but it has to be faced and in order to get this done I will have to schedule it and put it in my diary and just get on with it. At least I don't have to do it in one day and can take my time and as the last time I did the paintwork in the bedroom, I decided to move the furniture around and nearly gave myself a hernia in so doing, I must remind myself to go slowly.  I am dithering as always as to the colour of paint I will choose, I did flirt with the idea of a rose colour last year, but have now gone off this and am now leaning towards an all white room, which is what I already have, with colours picked out in accessories etc.  I do tit around before actually getting on with something.

So an eventful day - not.  Only excitement came this afternoon when I was making soup (oh yes I did that as well) and the most awful caterwauling noise came from outside my window and looking at the car park there were two cats eyeballing each other, fur standing on end and making the most ghastly noise.  Lobbed a bit of celery in their direction and was astounded when it bounced off the nose of one of them and they both let out an eldritch shriek and skedaddled.  It was a shot I could not have done if I had tried.

Which brings me neatly to tonight's big sporting event, the European Cup Final with Barcelona and Manchester United battling it out.  My money was on Barcelona, mainly because I loathe Manchester United, Wayne Rooney and Sir Alec Ferguson and wanted them to lose. And yes I know that is not logical or sporting but a team that houses such a Neanderthal as the aforementioned Wayne, and the Family Man, Ryan Giggs who has just tried to sue everybody on Twitter for naming him as the footballer who had an affair and who slapped an injunction on her and the Press to keep his identity hidden, is hardly a body of men who inspire confidence and respect.  Mark you, I have supported Chelsea for years and they are hardly an upstanding lot either. If anybody wanted to demolish my argument for not supporting Man U tonight all they would have to do is say 'John Terry' and that would be the end of it.

I decided to watch Wallander instead - the Swedish version which is sooo much better than our Ken's portrayal and, as always, quite quite brilliant.  Just nipped over every now and then to see the match and it was clear to me, as always, that it is quite futile for England to think they can win Europe 2012 or the World Cup EVER when you watch the speed and fluency with which Barcelona nipped round the field.   Put the England team up against any team in Europe and we are shown up as the clodhoppers we are.

Sad but true.

And on that note I will say goodnight and finish up this totally riveting and staggeringly interesting post.....

Have a good weekend everyone.

Death in August - Marco Vichi

Well I am a happy woman. Why? Because I have just started what looks to be a really interesting and charming series of detective novels set in Florence.  In style I found it very similar to Donna Leon, in that our hero, in this case Inspector Bordelli, seems to share a warmth and humanity with his Venetian counterpart, Guido Brunetti.   He doesn't appear to have a perfect Henry James reading and magnificent cook wife, but for my part I am thankful for that.

It is Florence in August and it is HOT, baking HOT.  I was once in Florence in July and that was bad enough so heaven knows what August must be like, unbearable I should think if the description in Vichi's book is anything to go by.

It is 1963 so we don't have mobile phones, internet, email or any of the other hi-tech aids to solving crime.  It is also less than twenty years since the end of the war in which Bordelli fought and his memories of his days during this time and his friends and companions are never far from his mind or his thoughts.   He is 53, unmarried and alone, overweight and a chain smoker and with a melancholy in his heart wishing he had found a woman to love but knowing that it is probably now too late. Though there is a murder to be solved in Vichi's book it is almost incidental to the rounding out of Bordelli and his relationships with his friends and colleagues.    I have found this the same in some of the Donna Leon books, not so much in her early ones but the last few have had a philosophical air, pondering on human frailties and the uselessness of it all as the wicked still flourish despite all best efforts.  In Death in August an old lady is found dead in her villa.  On the face of it she has died of a cardiac arrest following an asthma attack, under the bed is her bottle of medication with the top screwed on tight. There is no sign of a forced entry and nothing has been stolen or moved. So a clear cut case?  Obviously not or we would not have a story and when we hear there are two venal and grasping nephews and their wives who are eager to get their hands on their aunt's villa and money, Bordelli is positive that somehow they are responsible. They have an iron clad alibi and were miles away at the time, but as all aficionados of detective fiction know, iron clad alibis are there to be broken...

So that is the plot and while Bordelli is investigating we get to know him and his background and his character.   One episode is most telling and one which, for me, really endeared the Inspector to me. Biordelli has a friend Rose, an old acquaintance of his, when she was a Lady of the Night- she is on holiday and has asked him to pop into her flat and water her plants while she is away and when he finally remembers to do so, he walks in to find Canapini, a burglar known to him, in situ and about to make his exit with his haul.

"How can you possibly be so unlucky Canapini? A lady friend of mine lives here'.  The burglar grew animated and ran up to Bordelli. 'I swear I didn't know Inspector.....'  He looked at Bordelli with the expression of a beaten dog. 'I'm in a bad way Inspector, if I don't find something to sell today, I won't eat'

'When did you get out?' 

'Yesterday Inspector, this is the first flat I've broken into'

Bordelli stood up, knees cracking and headed towards the kitchen. 'Give me a hand watering the plants.

When they leave the apartment Bordellis insistes on giving Canapini money

'But I can't accept this Inspector' He had tears in his eyes.... 'I don't want to hear about it Cana.  take it or I will arrest you'.

As they leave the flat Bordelli invites him to a dinner party he is holding the next night where another ex-burglar, Botta is doing the cooking.  As they leave the flat Bordelli has an idea and asks Canapini if he will come into the flat each day and water the plants as he is going to be too busy to do it.

'Thanks that takes a load off my mind. Here are the keys'  Canapini rasies his hand 'I can't take them Inspector, I'm afraid I might lose them'

'Then how will you get in?'  Bordelli realised at once what a silly question he had asked and only shook his head smiling.

I found this entire episode really amusing and heart warming and, sure enough, Canapini attends the dinner party the following evening where we are treated to a description of the most sumptuous meal.  As in Donna Leon and Andrea Camilleri, the food and the wine are of great importance.  I remember posting about this a while back so tracked down my earlier thoughts and here they are.

I loved this book.   It is warm, witty, wise and gentle and Inspector Bordelli is a wonderful character of whom I am already very very fond.  I note another in this series is due in January 2012 and my thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for sending me this delightful book and hope that they will keep my name on the reviewers list for the next one.

Highly recommended.

Viva Italia

Without meaning to I appear to be in the middle of an Italian splurge again. This seems to happen to me on a regular basis. I remember this happening to me a few years ago when I picked up a copy of the Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri which featured an Inspector Montalbano and was set in Sicily. This was the first Montalbano book I read and, not sure why, but I did not immediately fall in love with them.  This is what I said at the time:

"Inspector Montalbano is a lover of fine wine and food and there are copious descriptions of the food left for him by his housekeeper who appears to be a cook of supreme talent; he has a long distance relationship with a lady called Livia who he seems to be avoiding marrying and I am not totally sure if he is in any way likable or even interesting".

Well how wrong can you be? I read The Voice of the Violin after this one and then I was off and over the last three or four years have read all of the Camilleri books and eagerly await each one. There is a new one due very soon - The Track of Sand and this will not be bought for my Kindle. I have the entire series in proper book form and want to maintain them that way.  I adore these books so much now I really find it hard to understand why I did not take to them at first. Ah, well got there in the end.

And then there was Donna Leon.  I kept stumbling across articles about her in various magazines and thought I would give her books a whirl.  After all, I thought, they are set in Venice, one of my most favourite places on earth, so that is a good start.  The first one I picked off the shelf was Death at La Fenice.  A murder story set at the opera in Venice - irresistible. The victim was an arrogant German conductor with a penchant for fast cars and young wives and if this character was not based on the late Herbert von Karajan then I shall eat my baton. Her hero Commissario Guido Brunetti is near the top of my list of gorgeous policemen and at first I compared him with Montelbano and the Sicilian came off worse.  Now I adore them both and Montelbano has the advantage of not having a seemingly perfect wife whose persona is beginning to grate on me a tad.

In recent months I have discovered the Alec Blume novels set in Rome, as with other series I was fairly lukewarm about the first one, The Dogs of Rome, though I did enjoy it and the second, the Fatal touch, is more intricate and closely plotted and I now feel that these will stay on my list of Those to Watch out For.

And now another Italian detective has been brought to my attention.  One Inspector Bordelli in a series of books by Marco Vichi.  These are set in Florence and the first one been translated and published in this country, Death in August, and I have just started it.  So far it looks promising and I will let you know how I get on.  Not released until June but see there are a few reviews up already on Amazon so obviously some earlier reviewers were quick off the mark. 

So I now have detective stories set in Rome, Venice, Sicily and Florence.  I recently read a title by Grace Brophy set in Assisi which did not exactly overwhelm me so may not continue with hers, and I have Michael Dibdin's Zen books to read which I am rather saving up as a treat. I know I have to ration these as, sadly, the author is no longer with us so if I do my usual splurge and read them all then I am done for, no more will be arriving.

The only problem with reading books set in this country is that it reminds me just how much I love Italy and that it is some years since I was last there.  I was in Florence about four years ago, Venice about ten and last saw Rome when I was a mini-skirted teenager and found my bum was pinched with monotonous regularity in the Piazzas of Rome.

Not sure that I will have that problem now somehow.........

Late Monday evening Ramblings

Sorry for slight lack of posting for the last few days, have been a tad busy.  Friend round for day on Sunday and then today I took my friend Rosemary out to a local garden centre and, as she cannot walk hardly at all now, used one of the wheelchairs provided.  The ups and downs and camber of the outside walks was a bit difficult and I cannot think that it was going to do my back any good, but as it has been OK for the last couple of days I kept my fingers crossed.  We had tea afterwards and it was a good afternoon.

I was feeling pretty tired when I got in and almost ducked out of attending a Pilates class which I had discovered locally, but went in the end and very glad I did.  I feel my back does need some strengthening and I know Pilates works on one's core which in turn helps to support the back and as this class is more or less on my doorstep I have no excuse for not going.  Oh I did enjoy it - I am pretty sure that I will have muscles aching in the morning but the feeling of stretching and using one's body in the right way and feeling my stiff neck and back warming and loosening up was wonderful.  I have done Pilates and Yoga in the past and muscles do remember certain usage and I found I had no difficulty in the whole session as it all came back to me.   The instructor told me at the end that she thought I had done really well for a beginner, well as I have not done this particular exercise for about 25 years I thought I had better put myself in that category.  So I am sitting here feeling really energised and yet relaxed at the same time and will be nipping off to bed soon as I feel deliciously drowsy.

I rounded off the evening with feet up on sofa and decided I did not want to read or write or review, but needed some mindless TV so I looked through my DVD collection and decided to watch Speed one of my favourite, fun action films and one which I have not watched for some time.  Keanu Reeves is the star and in this particular movie he had this incredible haircut and had beefed up and worked out for the role and looked absolutely scrumptious and very fanciable.  Now, one thing the viewer of a Reeves movie has to realise is that Keanu Cannot Act.  OK, perhaps I am being unkind - he can act, just not very well but as I have already mentioned in Speed he looks gorgeous and just had to be heroic.   The premise is that there is a bomb on a bus speeding through Los Angeles - if the speed drops below 50mph the bus blows up.  Completely potty story and wildly improbably but I sat here and watched it and loved every moment of it.  The bit where the speeding bus leaps across a 50 foot gap is totally barmy and, I gather, physically and dynamically impossible, but what the hell, great stuff.

Have several reviews due as I have read some stonking books in the last week, but over the weekend my mind seized up and I looked at the pile waiting my attention and then the seven books which were delivered on Saturday morning and knew that I could not face any of them.  I was newbookedout....so I did what I always do when I get to this stage and turn to something old and loved and I decided to re-read Gaudy Night by DL Sayers for the umpteenth time.  This is what I said about it when first read:

"Gaudy Night - D L Sayer. I only discovered the incomparable Lord Peter Wimsey this year and so far have read half a dozen with lots more treats in store.  Everyone I have spoken to says this is her best and I have no argument with that so far.  Set in a women's college in Oxford where a nasty practical joker is at work and the discovery of his/her identity hinging on the falsification of a thesis and the suppression of evidence that proved this particular piece of research to be erroneous, it is densely written, very wordy but in the most elegant and agreeable way, and pure delight"

And I still find it so.

So back tomorrow, hopefully with a book review.

Au reservoir everyone.

The Blue Rinse and Bodice Rippers: In twin-sets and pearls meet the ladies behind Britain's steamiest novels | Mail Online

By Claudia Connell

via www.dailymail.co.uk

The Romantic Novelist Association has a party. Great fun articles and delighted to see my friend Jan name checked!

House of Silence - Review and Thanks

My thanks to Linda Gillard for being my guest on Random this week and for the extremely enlightening and interesting post about her latest venture into e-publishing. And a hugely successful venture it has been too and all of us who read her books with great enjoyment are delighted to hear it.  I was very intrigued to read about the ins and outs of How to Get a Book Published this way, but one thing is very clear, and this is obvious to those of us who have explored the books self-published for the e-market, is that there is a lot of dross about and you cannot just think you will write a book and publish it and the money will roll in.

Linda makes it very clear that she has a readership and a following she has built up over the years, mainly by her own efforts, by keeping in touch, by her own website and by building up good relationships with reviewers and bloggers.  So, though her publishers decided they didn't want the House of Silence, she knew that we did and had a base of readers waiting for her latest novel.  This is a perfect example of solid hard work paying off and I see from her comments that she is now going to republish two of her earlier titles as e-books which must surely now sell even better than they did before.

When Linda took over Random the other day I had yet to read House of Silence and now I have. I did not review it straight away, always good to spread them out a bit methinks, so mine is coming a little late to the party but am delighted to say that I enjoyed it very much indeed.

I have read all of Linda's output and each one is different so that we don't know what we are going to get. While it seems this makes marketing her books difficult as she does not fit into a genre or type, it makes her an interesting author and, I would have thought, would have been a publisher's dream as each book can be targeted to a different readership.  However, I suppose if your publisher wants to get your book into Asda and Tesco this makes it rather difficult.  Tough - they should try harder.

Well Linda described House of Silence as Rebecca meets Cold Comfort Farm which is as good a way as describing it that I can think of with an old houses containing dark secrets and deceptions and a dishy gardener who, one supposes, has not seen something 'nasty in the woodshed'.

Our heroine, Gwen, is a damaged individual who has suffered the loss of her family through drink and drugs and found her mother dead on the floor one Christmas day morning.  Her aunt and uncle suffered early deaths through promiscuous living and as a result she has learned to grow a second skin and to present a tough and capable face to the outside world.   When reading Linda's description of Gwen a sense of deja vu crept over me:

"...if you're 5' 9" and single you'd have to be supermodel confident to think you could wear heels and still have a good chance of pulling.....to make matters worse I was intelligent and articulate. Not exactly self-confident but I was at least capable, a 'coper'...I earned my own living and I was pursuing a career. I wasn't killing time until I could bury myself alive with babies and soft furnishing. But nor was I a girl about town, clubbing, drinking, sexually promiscuous. I liked sewing, reading, tending my houseplants, pottering about in flea markets and Oxfam shops.  I enjoyed old black and white movies and I listened to Radio 4.  On the basis of this, more than one e-boyfriend had described me as seriously weird'"

Oh Linda were you following me around during my teenage years?

Gwen, who is a wardrobe mistress, meets Alfie, an actor playing a role in a costume drama and the two embark on a relationship 'everything was going really well. Until I mentioned Christmas'..... Alfie goes home, reluctantly, each Christmas to spend the time with his family, his four sisters and his mother who is a famous author of a series of children's books who has suffered a nervous breakdown and is mentally fragile.   Alfie is the boy she used as a model for her young hero and he resents this bitterly as he now finds himself saddled with a label that prevents him progressing in his acting career. He also resents his family, but  Gwen yearns for one and so she accompanies him to Creake Hall.

"I didn't know what I'd been expecting. A ramshackle farmhouse. A Georgian rectory perhaps. I certainly wasn't expecting an Elizabethan manor house, a jumble of tall barley sugar chimneys and crow step gables, read brick walls and a battery of mullioned windows, winking at me as the car struggled up the pot-holed drive.  It was love at first sight"

Of course we know that in a house like this there are going to be dark secrets and deceit and lies and so it is.  There is a tragedy lurking at the core of the family and it revolves around Alfie, who is reluctant to be there and indifferent to his family and their affection for him.  Gwen begins to suspect that all is not as it should be after looking at family photographs of Alfie as a young boy and notices that in a picture of Alfie playing cricket, he is batting left handed.  But Alfie is right handed and when Gwen questions him about his school days she knows he is lying to her.   It is clear that he is not only acting a role in his profession, but in real life and that she does not know the real Alfie at all.

OK so I am stopping right there as if I go on any more I will give the entire plot away.  There are whole sections of the House of Silence that I would like to quote, so many descriptions and turns of phrase that I bookmarked (thanks to Linda I now know how to do this on my Kindle and make notes too...) but cannot put them all in this post otherwise I would be hear all night.  Here is an example of what I mean:

"Is she married?

Only to the job. She was married to boring Bryan, a social worker, even duller than Deb - till he upped and did a runner with his Tai Chi teacher..."

Priceless.

Linda has a style that is very much her own and is instantly recognisable no matter what genre her books may fall into - sparky, witty and quirky but never tipping over into being too clever for its own good.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book and am already looking forward to her next, no matter what format it is in. 

Simply delighted that she has had so much success with the House of Silence and, once again, my thanks for her entertaining and fascinating post.

The House of Silence by Linda Gillard - over to the author

According to the Washington Post there’s an “e-book goldrush” taking place. http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/novel-rejected-theres-an-e-book-gold-rush/2011/04/09/AFZdqb9F_story.html Much to my surprise, I find I’m one of the prospecting authors who has found gold.

You probably won’t have heard of me, but I’m a respectably-selling, award-winning, mid-list author of contemporary women’s fiction. Two years ago I was dropped by my publisher. “Disappointing sales” was the reason given. I was in good company. A lot of mid-list authors – some well-known names – were dropped as the recession bit deep. Editors wanted début novels, genre fiction and books by celebrities – all of which are easier to promote than “the latest rattling good yarn by X”. (That sort of tag is only used when the author in question sells in Grisham and Picoult quantities.)

After two years of my agent’s best efforts, we still hadn’t found a publisher for my fourth novel, HOUSE OF SILENCE. Editors liked the book, but said it would be hard to market as it belonged to no clear genre. They had a point. HOUSE OF SILENCE is a country house mystery/family drama/gothic rom-com/love story. Or to put it another way, COLD COMFORT FARM meets REBECCA.

It was so frustrating. I had a considerable, worldwide following and my loyal fans had been waiting for a new novel for three years. I’d managed to keep myself in the public eye by chatting on book forums, writing guest blogs and offering book giveaways. I had a ready-made (modest) market for my new novel, but no one wanted to publish it.

Then came the e-book revolution. Self-publishing on Kindle was the answer to a disgruntled author’s prayer. I wasn’t desperate to see my name on a book cover or on a shelf in Waterstones. (Been there, done that.) I didn’t even care if I made money, so long as I broke even. No, this was about letting a book find its readers, who I felt sure would love my story and characters as much as I did.

So with my agent’s approval, I decided to publish HOUSE OF SILENCE myself as a Kindle e-book. http://www.amazon.co.uk/HOUSE-OF SILENCE/dp/B004USSPN2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&m=A3TVV12T0I6NSM&qid=1301733772&sr=1-2 It sells for only £1.90 and believe it or not, I make a lot more per copy sold than I did from my paperbacks. Readers think authors are giving e-books away at humiliatingly low prices, or they suspect books that cheap can’t possibly be any good, but the appalling irony is, authors are making more money e-publishing – much more. If one of my £7.99 paperbacks sold in Waterstones, I used to get about 50p. (Much less if it sold on Amazon.) Selling HOUSE OF SILENCE at £1.90, I get 70% of the pre-VAT Amazon price.

This is why some established authors are moving away from mainstream to e-publishing, like disenchanted US author Barry Eisler http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-03-24/barry-eisler-explains-self-publishing-decision/# who turned down a $500,000 book deal to self-publish his next thriller as an e-book. Eisler believes he can make more money in the long term by e-publishing, but he also wanted artistic control.

I sympathise. Total artistic control of HOUSE OF SILENCE has been a heady experience for me. Two out of three of my previous novels were, in my opinion, sunk by unattractive covers, so this time I paid a professional designer to produce a cover to (oh joy!) my specifications. There were no headless people. No supermodel legs. No illegible fonts. Just a cover that made a clear statement about the content of the book. (A spooky old mansion under a lowering sky. An oldie, but a goodie.) But because I lashed out on a professional cover, I needed to sell 100 copies to make a profit.

I went into profit on Day 2 (My italics - Elaine)

I sold 3000 copies in 6 weeks. (No publisher could guarantee the sale of 3000 copies of any book by an unknown like me. They wouldn’t even print 3000 in the first place. Too risky.) As I write, HOUSE OF SILENCE has spent 21 days in the Top 100 paid-for e-books (that’s all genres) and is currently ranked #47. It’s ranked #11 in Romance.

So what did I do right? Could anyone do it?

Well, yes and no. I signed up with Kindle Direct Publishing on the Amazon.com site https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help and followed my nose. It certainly isn’t difficult to e-publish. You only have to look at a few sample chapters on Amazon to realise that publishing an e-book is a lot simpler than writing one, or even editing it. There’s no denying there’s a lot of dross out there, but it’s not difficult to make sure your e-book shines like a good deed in a naughty world.

You need a properly formatted doc to start with. To judge from the KDP forums, some authors have problems when they try to upload scruffy manuscripts with dodgy formatting. (Kindle doesn't do different fonts, but will do italic and bold.) The system converted my Word doc into something I could view on the Kindle previewer on my PC. (You don’t have to own a Kindle to e-publish or even read Kindle books. You can download a free Kindle app for PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry.) When I was happy with the preview version, I uploaded my book to the Kindle site. 48 hours later, it was on sale. And selling.

I’m doing well with HOUSE OF SILENCE thanks to my cover, price and blurb (the promotional material that appears alongside the book on Amazon.) Lots of readers have mentioned the cover and said that the blurb ticked a lot of boxes. Some readers have told me they bought HoS on the strength of the “COLD COMFORT FARM meets REBECCA” tag line.

Your e-book cover is your shop window and it has to work as a thumbnail. Do your research on Amazon and look at which covers work in miniature. Study the relevant genres. If your book is to find its readers, you must position it where they’ll find it. (KDP ask you to allocate your book to specific genre listings. Bear in mind the competition if you assign your book to Literary Fiction.) Tags are also important. The more you include, the easier your book will be to find and the more likely you are to sell.

Price is a key factor. Remember, you’re competing with a lot of free books and they’re not all unpunctuated porn. Some are by Dickens, the Brontës and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Many Amazon e-book reviews refer to price and value for money. Some e-book readers are feeding a book-a-day habit. Asking them to pay more than £2/$3 is asking quite a lot. (You can set a different price on Amazon UK and Amazon US and you can change that price if you think you got it wrong.)  It’s a fact that if you sell cheaply, you’ll sell more. If you don’t price cheaply, you might not sell at all. If your e-book doesn’t take off, try reducing the price or even making it free for an advertised “limited period only”. Once your book is selling, Amazon will take over the marketing with its rankings system. Eventually your e-book sells because it’s selling.

I already had a following. I know my readers and I know what they like, so I knew how to market my book. I knew the novel’s odd mix of genres didn’t mean it was uncommercial, simply that it was tricky to market. But with an e-book, the author markets directly to readers, who just want a good story. Publishers have to market to retailers who have completely different criteria, based on astronomic sales figures and famous names.  My healthy e-book sales are the end product of six years’ interaction with readers on the internet. Since I was first published in 2005, I’ve engaged in blog and forum discussions, I’ve been conscientious about keeping in touch with readers and frank about my publishing difficulties. I’ve used my Facebook author page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Linda-Gillard/148890999324?v=wall&ref=mf and my website www.lindagillard.co.uk to keep fans informed and it’s all paid off. When it came to publication day, we had an impromptu launch party for HOUSE OF SILENCE on Facebook. My lovely, loyal readers bought the book, Tweeted, blogged and plugged it online, so it was selling in a matter of hours.

But a word of caution: if you’re a new author or you’re not a confident user of the internet, it would be much harder to make a go of it. There are plenty of inspiring success stories like mine (see all the comments here http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/self-publishing-the-conversations-in-romance/ ), but do bear in mind that the vast majority of self-published e-books do not sell.

It’s hard to see now why I would go back to orthodox publishing, apart from my emotional attachment to paper books. I'd be lucky to sell 3000 paper books in a year, let alone six weeks. My agent says we need a paper book to secure foreign sales and I’d love a print edition of HOUSE OF SILENCE so I could do library and bookshop promotions. (I do like to meet my readers in person.) And I don’t believe anyone’s solved the problem yet of how you sign an e-book. Some readers have taken me to task for “discriminating” against those who dislike reading on screen or who don’t want to invest in a Kindle, but I didn’t have any choice. It was e-book or bust. My goals were to give my fans a new, affordable book and to find new readers. Self-publishing a print book would not have achieved either goal and it could have taken me a long time to break even.

I’m now planning to e-publish two more books from my out of print backlist this summer (EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY and A LIFETIME BURNING) and I have a new novel currently doing the rounds in manuscript, which might become e-book No.4. It’s getting the same response from editors as HOUSE OF SILENCE: they love the book, but it would be tough to market.

Tough for them maybe, but not for me. I listen to my readers. I am a reader. We share a passion for intelligent, well-written stories about believable, fascinating characters. It’s a genre that never goes out of fashion and if that’s hard to market, then there’s something seriously wrong with print publishers. If you ask me, they’ve lost the plot.

My thanks to Linda for this post which I think is fascinating and, I hope, helpful and informative for any of you out there who might be thinking of taking the plunge into e-publishing. 

Tuesday Ramblings with a bad back

I do enjoy my rambling days when I just sit here and waffle on and as I know from many comments that you do too (which is a relief I must say) I can ramble with a light mind.

Babysat last Saturday evening for darling Florence as parents were off to Cambridge for a dinner and would not be back till late so I was in total charge and I tell you now, even with a baby monitor, I was up and down those stairs like a fiddler's elbow, leaning over the cot making sure she was breathing and had not stopped since I last checked.  Old habits die hard and, yes, I also found myself putting my hand on her chest just to make doubly sure...

Back on Sunday and all that lifting and carrying had its effect as SNAP as I bent down to pick up something off the floor, my back went into spasm and I let out a shriek. Here we go again thinks I so the old routine of hot bath, hot water bottle and lashings of Deep Heat was the order of the day as I crawled into bed.  Monday morning not much better so decided to give it the cold treatment instead of the hot so quivering and biting lip turned the shower onto COLD and aimed the jet at my lower back.  Well, good job I live on my own that is all I can say as four letter words and yells rent the air. I stood it as long as I could then wrapped a warm dressing gown (simmering nicely on the bathroom radiator) around me and more Deep Heat applied.  This was repeated twice more during the day, last torture just before I got into bed and it seems to have done the trick as all seems OK today.  However, am glad I am not entertaining my gentleman friend at the moment as I am sure the pong of liniment emanating from my bed would kill any passion stone dead....

Have been searching for a Pilates or Yoga class locally as I feel I really need to strengthen my back and/or make it more flexible and lo and behold, have discovered one down the road, Pilates for a Bad Back. Well made for me obviously so will be popping along next week and seeing how it goes.

Back to bookish things.   Tomorrow Linda Gillard is my guest blogger as I have asked her if she would kindly write about her book The House of Silence which she has just published as an e-book.  It is going great guns and I really wanted to know the reasons for her taking this step and, which I think you will all find interesting, how you go about it.  I have already enjoyed reading her post and am sure you will as well.  This will be up tomorrow - I am in London with Florence again, so will be setting it to pop up around 10 am in the morning so fingers crossed I do it properly.

I will do a follow up on Thursday and put my bijou bit in about Linda and her writing and am looking forward to this very much.

Off to make my supper now and feet up for the evening - also I think another blast of the cold shower is on the cards.   Masochist - moi?