First donation made for Japan Tsunami Relief

Hello, everyone

As promised, I'm making this open. I've sold 116 books in March and received £35 for it. Amazon only paid for the UK sales (100) as there's a limit of £10 in order to send out a cheque. I believe I'll get one next month.

My chosen charities are British Red Cross where you donate directly for the cause. I've put £5 on top so each charity gets £20. I have ticked the gift aid button and will now have to find out what it is for haha.

 

I've also donated £20 to Doctors Without Borders and ticked the mental health issues box. I find this is something very important. Unfortunately, it's not possible to instruct you want it to be donated to Japan, but they're doing a fab job and I'm sure they're using the money wisely.

click picture to see original size

I'll do another donation next month, and in July another one. Thank you everyone who made this happen. You guys rock! Seriously.

An opinion on reviews: the gloves are off!!

Pictures this: a reader searching for a potential book to buy in order to enjoy a lunch break, commuting, holiday, evening in, you name it. He or she finds the description of your book appealing enough to decide spending precious spare time with your main charactes and story. How wonderful is that? Nowadays, it looks like this:

E-publishing has shaken up the whole industry. Authors who have been rejected by agents and publishers in the past are now let loose onto the reader. While that's a good thing, it has its downsides: authors are a one-man company, responsible for everything including generating sales.
Today, I'd like to focus on reviews.
Many authors seem to think it's the reader's duty to review their books. I am of a different opinion: it's their choice. I've seen authors moaning and complaining that nobody reviews their book and quite frankly, I'm sick of reading it. Readers are readers, reviewers are reviewers and most writers are confident enough to write one, too.
Two years ago, I was a reader who browsed through book shops, going home with a few and did what readers do: reading. When I finished, I'd tell my friends about it, good or bad. It wouldn't have occurred to me to write a review, go back to the shop to hand it in or write an e-mail to the author. Neither would I expect this today. Don't get me wrong, I know reviews are important to help potential buyers decide, especially since we indie authors are on our own, but I wouldn't expect a review from anyone who's bought my book. I've asked a few people I know are confident to write one to give an honest opinion on the upcoming book, but I would never put a note in my book asking the reader directly. As a reader, I personally would be put off. Two years ago, it might have left me showing a similar expression:

The common reader, won't know anything about style, voice and character development. Some might not even know much about punctuation (I certainly didn't). All they care for is: does this book fulfil my expectations? Does it make me laugh, cry, feel with the protagonist? Does it leave me with a fluffy feeling when I finish? That's all they want.
So how to get reviews? If you're on facebook or twitter, look around, search for reviewers, make a call for them on fora. There are plenty of people who offer them. Some have threads asking for books in certain genres. Get in touch. Don't ask the poor reader to offer feedback that should have been done before publishing. Be grateful if you receive one, good or bad.

Let the reader do his or her job, that is reading and do yours, that is writing a good story, because that's what really matters and sells in the end.

Rant over. :-) I wish you all a happy weekend.

Amazon payment on its way!

I've got notice from amazon that my first payment is on its way. That's for the sales in March (116, 100 in the UK and 16 in the US). They pay me for the UK sales only since you need to have a mininum of $10 to rectify a cheque to be sent out. I'll get paid for the US sales next month.
However the first payment will be £35 and will immediately go to charity. It's not the world, but it doubles next month and so on since sales for Excuse me, where is the exit?  have increased steadily.

 

Just to clarify again: I'm not posting this to brag, rather than informing people who follow the development, who helped me get the word out there and, at the end of the day, it's you readers who make it happen. Without you guys, I wouldn't be able to donate. Besides, there not much to brag about approaching a mere 1000 sales. I know of some authors who sold 7k in seven weeks or 10k in four months or people who just sell many more books than me. But I'm still a little proud. ;-)

Further good news:

My next book, No Wings Attached, will be out soon. It's still in proofing phase, but I hope I manage to release it on the 31st as planned. I think I'll have a little party with some friends, especially Fifi, who kindly offered to help me smoothing out my Germish. Thank you, Fi! I love you.

And more:

I'll be at the Stoke Newington Literary Festival. As a visitor, but I plan to be actively involved with a workshop next time round. I'll be meeting some fab people I've met on authonomy and am majorly excited to hug them all. Yes, I've threatened them to do that.

It's going to be a blast!

Don't you just want to tuck in?

I love my meat, I really do, though I'm not into red meat, I can't live without chicken or pork. As soon as the first rays of sun shine through my windows, I feel like barbecuing and rush to get my sausages and meat to marinate. But what is a barbecue without salad, sauces and bread?

Here's a delicious salad, you can even eat on its own:

Mixed salad                                                    
Grated carrots
Spring onions
Cherry tomatoes
Kidney beans
Sweetcorn
Mozzarella
Grapes (I prefer red)
Dressing: Whole grain mustard with honey and olive oil.
Seasoned with a pinch of salt.

For the sausages and Turkish Bread, I love tzaziki and this special ketchup: it's from Germany and the best ketchup ever, even if you just have fries.

Here a quick marinade for meat:
Tomato ketchup (any cheap one will do)
Gherkins
Chili
Red and green peppers
Spring onions
Garlic
Capers
Salt and Pepper
Olive oil

Chop the ingredients into little pieces, then mix everything together. Marinade the meat for at least two hours. It makes it tasty and tender.

Have you got a great marinade to share? Please leave a comment with the recipe.

Cheers,

Stella

On starting with back story

I can't believe I've done it myself! Since ages I told everyone whose opening I read and contained too much back story, not to do it, to web it in, to introduce it slowly and bit by bit, but ignored my own advice.

The reason being is that I've never written a sequel. I'm sure I wouldn't have done it with a new book, but the sequel is a different animal entirely. I created a scene with four people talking to each other, and two people, who are absent, introduced in the first 400 words. Now that's what I call tight writing, tight, but wrong.
I had a feeling it might be too much information and back story crammed into the opening and got the confirmation from a friend I sent it to. Nothing I couldn't fix easily, but something that shows once again, as writers we need feedback, best in the early stages to avoid big rewrites.

Sequels need to be able to stand alone, so while back story is important, it shouldn't have the function of a teaser for the other books in a series. It's a challenge to connect the books without going too deep into what happened in the first one. But you need to introduce the characters to readers who start with the second book.
Since I'm experiencing this now for the first time, I take my hat off to every single author who's managed that effortlessly.

I'll also have the task to go deeper into some of the characters that played minor roles in the first book, plus I'll add some more characters, especially for the dark side. Keeping the balance between romantic comedy and paranormal will be a lot harder for the sequel, I want to keep the light tone of the first book, the wonderful intimate moments between Celia and Tom, but without repeating them.

Well, something positive came out of it: he liked the writing and the scene itself. Go, me! ;-)

No Rapture and no picnic either, what a disappointment

I did expect the the former won't happen, but the picnic? No, that was something I looked forward to. My friend Elin, who used to live in London and is now back in Sweden came over for the weekend, so, of course I wanted to see her.

Kenwood House in Hampstead Heath

Planning is crucial for me, the route, that is, because I have no sense of direction at all. Drop me anywhere in London and I'll never find my way back home. Horrible, but at least you can be sure I bump into someone I know, always happens. So I took my cycling guide and planned the route, which roads to go and where to turn, wrote it all down, for me, silly Stella, meticulously, nothing can go wrong. Or so I thought.

Today, I made my way to Finsbury Park and was supposed to cycle along Seven Sisters Rd. If only I knew which one it is. I was sure it was the one behind the station, five minutes later, I learned it wasn't. Typical, I turned left, because it must lead, roughly, to Holloway Rd. which it didn't. It did, however, lead to Seven Sisters Rd, where I originally wanted to go, but I couldn't turn right, one way. Bugger! What now? I managed to find the right way, finally turned into Holloway Rd. and learned it's not only very long, but also goes mostly uphill and it didn't stop there. Up to Hampstead Heath, it's basically uphill all along.

 Uphill in Archway

Panting, sweating and deep red in my face, I stopped at Archway, looking uphill and decided to turn around, do some grocery shopping, then start with my sequel. There, at least I could enjoy the downhill ride and arrived safe and sound at home after an hour's exercise. Shame, though I didn't get to meet my friend.

My friends the speech marks.

The past two days I've spent an amusing time changing my manuscript's speech marks. The reason being is that I'm soon publishing my novel, No Wings Attached, and want to make it more eye-friendly for the Americans. Though people I've asked said they don't mind the spelling differences like colour (color), favourite (favorite) and others, they said the single quotes do disturb them immensely.

Since I learned creative writing in the UK, I never really thought about using anything else than single quotes. In fact, I quite like them. But in order to make my book more readable for buyers on the other side of the pond, I change them all into double quotes.

<---with open office


       with an older version of word ---->



There are other things to consider, too. I've been told by an editor who works for an American publisher, that my punctuation is off. Well, it wasn't, I used the BE. A bit embarrassing for the editor, who should've noticed. Never mind, I didn't say anything as I didn't want to do the suggested rewrites anyway. Here is an example for you.

BE: 'She said she was "out".'
AE: "She said she was 'out.'"

The only thing I won't recommend is doing those changes with find & replace. Well not if you don't know how to use it properly.

What I've learned? To ditch the single quotes and use doubles when you want to publish outside the UK.