Just a quick note to let you know I have been interviewed by the lovely A.M. Harte on her quillsandzebras blog. Anyone who has read my book, TimeSplash, may wonder what is the only thing that my uber-villain, Sniper, and I have in common.  Well, the answer is…  just a click away at quillsandzebras.

Today, May 4th, is the second anniversary of the commencement of this blog. I started it on my return from a writer’s retreat which I credit for kick-starting my career as a published author. So this anniversary is my day for taking stock of how all that is going.

Here is what I wrote in the initial post, and here is what I wrote last year on this day.

In the past year:

• I have had my debut novel, TimeSplash, accepted, edited and published. I only have complete data from the first two weeks of sales at the moment, so I can’t even tell you yet if it is selling well.
• I have been promoting TimeSplash as much as I can online. I built TimeSplash its own website and it even has its own blog. For the past two months I have been running a blog tour which has had eighteen stops on it, Before that, I did a 24-hour, non-stop, round-the-world Twitter tour.
• I have had seven short stories published – two in anthologies
• I’ve won prizes in two short story contests – one being the Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest 2009.
• I have continued to earn a trickle of money from short story publishing – but my production of short stories has dropped considerably. I wrote only six last year.
• I finished writing and editing my novel The Credulity Nexus and have begun querying agents for it. (I’ve written to two, so far, the second only about three days ago.)
• I have begun writing a new book, Loner’s Deep, which is a space opera set in the far future (and a sequel to my not-yet-complete Emissaries trilogy. (If fame ever comes knocking, I’ll have two great space opera trilogies ready to hand it.)
• I went to a writer’s festival.
• I have been increasing my presence in the various online social networks. My blogs (this one and the TimeSplash blog have over 1,000 unique visitors a month, and my Twitter following has gone from 0 to 987 in the past year. I’ve become a little more active on Facebook and quite active on Goodreads.
• In an attempt to raise my profile (and my writerly credentials ) I’ve joined the New York Journal of Books as a reviewer. I’ve done them 5 reviews on science and science fiction books so far. Early days. If this is successful, it will also one day become a writing income stream.
• I wrote a children’s story, Hangin’ With the Monkeys. I don’t want my career to go that way, so, rather than just throw it away, I’ve self-published it, and I’m giving it away free on Smashwords.

It all adds up to a very busy year – and a successful one. I’ve finally achieved my goal of having a novel published. I’ve made some great online friends. I’ve done loads of interesting things I didn’t expect I’d be doing. I’ve learned so much about writing and about the industry.

There are two things I didn’t manage to achieve this year – and that makes them my goals between now and next May. The first is to get an agent. It is patently obvious to me, even at this early stage, that TimeSplash would have done so much better if it had been agented. The second – and it may be related – is to start making some real money from my writing, not the dribble that has been coming in so far. And that is probably more a wish than an actual goal, but it’s what I have my sights on, so let’s see what can be done.

May the Fourth be with you too.

Fresh from my first ever web radio interview, I am now a world expert. (You can see just how expert I am at this by downloading the MP3 recording of the show I did yesterday with the lovely Nanci Arvizu, who does the Page Readers show on BlogTalkRadio.) And, on the basis of this extensive experience, I offer all writers the following advice:

1. Your interviewer will send you a list of questions or topics they hope to cover in the show. Glance at it briefly, saying “Yeah, yeah, no problem,” to yourself, and then put it out of your mind. As each question comes up in the show, you will find you recall seeing it on the list. This will momentarily distract you from the fact that you never did get around to thinking of a good response.
2. There may be questions that are highly relevant to promoting your new book (these sound something like, “Tell us about your book.”) and ones which are somewhat irrelevant (questions like, “Tell us something about your background.”) You will find the less relevant ones are easier to answer. Rambling about your poor working-class background and the benefits of socialist educational policies is a good way to fill up your half hour and will save you from having to say anything that potential readers might want to hear.
3. Don’t worry about burbling at length about your strange and involuted relationships with your characters. If the interviewer is skillful and takes pity on you, she will cut you off eventually with another question. Whatever you do at this point, try not to sob with relief and gratitude, it will prevent your from hearing what the interviewer has asked you.
4. If at any point your head is buzzing and swimming so much that you do not hear the question you were asked, pick on any word you think you might have heard and invent a plausible question that might have been asked. Answer it confidently. If the interviewer seems confused, rest assured, the listeners have probably all gone out to make a cup of tea by then.
5. Remember, you have set yourself the goal of at least mentioning your blog URL. When the interviewer, after what seems like just five minutes, starts thanking you and saying goodbye to the audience, you must stop her at all costs. Interrupt her repeatedly, raise your voice, become abusive, do whatever it takes to stop that flow of pleasantries so you can give out your URL. Even if, halfway through spelling out your 85-character address, you realise the interviewer had just been saying it would be up on the website after the show when you told her to shut her f***ing mouth and listen for chrissake, keep on doggedly to the end. The listeners will appreciate your determination.

A survey of book promotion tactics was conducted by The Savvy Book Marketer in December, 2009, and is reported today. It asked a number of authors what their book promotion strategy would involve in 2010. You can check the method and the outcome there. I just want to look at the list of tactics they came up with and try to get a feel for how appropriate they might be for marketing an ebook. The list, most popular at the top, is this:

1. Social networking and social media
2. Blogging
3. Seeking book reviews
4. Seeking testimonials and endorsements
5. Press releases
6. E-zines or email marketing
7. Radio and television talk shows
8. Speaking or teleseminars
9. Article marketing
10. Book signings

There are some obvious things to say about this, so let’s say them first. The people surveyed clearly included a lot of non-fiction authors. So I can eliminate items 8 and 9 as not really relevant for a novel. I can also eliminate 10. With an ebook, there is nothing to sign, and, for that matter, no reason why a bookshop (the traditional venue for such things) would let you in the door. So that leaves:

1. Social networking and social media
2. Blogging
3. Seeking book reviews
4. Seeking testimonials and endorsements
5. Press releases
6. E-zines or email marketing
7. Radio and television talk shows

1 and 2 are no-brainers. Anybody with a book to promote in any format and little or no money to spend, will be all over the social networks and blogsphere.

Seeking book reviews (3) might also seem obvious but it isn’t an avenue that is open to ebook writers in most genres. Where ebooks have been popular for years – in erotica and romance – there are dozens of popular and authoritative review sites on the Web. In all other genres, book reviewers will almost never review an ebook. Only rare exceptions exist among the popular review websites and online magazines. I am unaware of any exceptions among the major offline reviewers. So we can scratch that one. Over the next decade, as it becomes normal to release ebook-only novels (and as more reviewers buy ebook readers!) this will change. But in 2010, ebooks just don’t get reviewed.

4 is an interesting one. I have read a number of advice blogs saying you should do it and telling you how to go about it, but it is an amazingly difficult thing to bring oneself to do. You have to approach famous writers you admire and respect in your own genre – complete strangers, of course unless your damned lucky – and ask them to read your book and say something quotably nice about it. Given that many such writers have already come out and said, on their own blogs, that they hate being pestered this way, and some have said flat out that they won’t do it, I just can’t bring myself to ask it. I screwed up my courage in one single instance and asked a very well-known writer I’d had some slight dealings with, if he would look at my book. I then waited, cringing in embarrassment, for a reply that never did come.

5 is also interesting. I could put out press releases but who, really, would be interested? Not the national press, certainly not the international press. Which leaves the local press. Since I live out in the boondocks, my local press is full of reports on farming and country shows, and letters to the editor complaining about the global conspiracy to fool us into thinking there’s such a thing as climate change, or explaining, with Bible quotes, why God dislikes liberal politicians. I’m pretty sure I could get into a local paper but who in my area has even heard of ebooks? Who, in a town where they play country and western music in the supermarket, is interested in sci-fi?

Many e-marketers advise you to convert your social networking successes into cash by creating mailing lists. You get everyone to sign up for your regular magazine or newsletter and then, cunningly, blast them all with spam emails when the book is released. This is the strategy I assume is meant in 6. Well, I think such practices are evil. Sadly for me, I think most marketing practices are evil. Like a lot of writers, I just don’t have the personality type it takes to sell things.

And as for radio and television talk shows (7), the idea seems to suffer the same drawbacks as sending out press releases.

So, for an author with an ebook to promote, who is squeamish about marketing, and doesn’t live in a major metropolis, 1 and 2, and to a very limited extent 3, seem to be the only options available. Of course, ‘social networking’, ‘blogging’ and ‘reviews’ can mean a lot more than is obvious. Blog tours, viral promo videos, Twitter parties, online competitions, and so on, are all in the potential mix. The online activity around a new book can be quite vibrant and exciting. And, as for reviews, even if the big-name sci-fi magazines won’t review ebooks, ten kindly bloggers with readerships of a thousand or so, might easily reach more actual readers than a major print review magazine could ever hope for.

The Queensland Writers Centre is touring blogs again. This time the tour has a theme: Writers’ Desks. For some reason writers’ desks are fascinating and pictures of same are hugely popular. So QWC is probably onto a winner here. However, when they asked me to put up a picture of my own desk as part of the tour, I was painfully aware that I’ve only recently done that.

Fascinating as my desk is, I can’t keep posting pictures of it. It’s not as if it has seasonal changes or anything. So I’ve taken the opportunity to correct a glaring omission from my last picture and show you my computer ‘desktop’. This should be just as interesting as the wooden one since, for me at least, the computer is where 95% of the work gets done.

The desktop that really matters

For those without broadband (or using Telstra NextG, which is almost as bad) I apologise for the size of this picture. Even so, it isn’t big enough for you to recognise all the icons. That’s why the animation provides labels for the following groups.

• Group A: Various mobile device managers (phone, camera, MP3 player and so on.)
• Group B: Internet stuff (browser, email, Skype, Twitter, and FTP client)
• Group C: Office software (mostly Open Office but also PowerPoint)
• Group D: Music score editing software. (Yes, I write music. It’s a little hobby of mine.)
• Group E: Image editing software (Paint Shop Pro, IrfanView and IconEasel)
• Group F: Media players (Windows Media Player and WinAmp)
• Group G: HTML editors (HTML Kit and Komodo Edit)
• Group H: Sundry utilities (antivirus, encryption, DVD writers, backup, 3G wireless client, and Celestia, which lets me view the universe from various perspectives)
• Group I: Various ebook readers and ebook creators.
• Group J: Stuff to do with my current writing project (the Open Office file itself, my multifunction tracking sheet, and a program called StoryBook that I’ve been trying out as a way of organising the background info – I’m not getting along well with it.)
• Group K: Games (basically, the only computer game I ever play is Freecell – a patience-style card game.)

I should also mention the background picture. I change my background quite often and it is usually an astronomical theme. This one is a long-exposure shot of the space shuttle taking off in Florida last year. I love pictures of astronauts on EVAs, Hubble deep field shots, and the ISS. Images like these help keep me inspired.

This post is part of the Queensland Writers Centre blog tour, happening February to April 2010. To follow the tour, visit Queensland Writers Centre’s blog.

The e-Fiction Book Club has very kindly let me guest-blog with them. Jump across to that wonderful site and see what I had to say about opting for electronic publishing for my iupcoming novel TimeSplash.

While you’re there, why not browse the site? In a world where mainstream reviewers still won’t review anything but paper, e-Fiction Book Club is providing a great service to people who want to see reviews of e-books.

I ran the complete set of posts from this blog through the Wordle program. Wordle calculates word frequencies, translates them to physical sizes, and uses this information to lay out the most frequent words in interesting ways. The image below, therefore, shows you just what I talk about most in this blog. If you haven’t played with Wordle yet, it’s definitely worth ten minutes of your time.

Revealing, isn't it? (click for larger version)

When I was asked by QWC to take part in the Queensland Writers Centre Blog Tour, I leapt at the chance. Anything I can do to help QWC, I will, since QWC changed my life. I also think the Australian Writers Marketplace Online is a fantastic tool that writers the world over should subscribe to. So a big welcome to followers of the tour. I hope you’ve been enjoying the journey as much as I have. And for my regular readers, you can catch up on the rest of the tour at the QWC blog (details at the bottom of this post.)

They asked me the following questions:

Where do your words come from?

This probably sounds a bit weird but my characters write my books. My part in it is to create a world – I’m extremely meticulous about world-building – invent some interesting characters to go in it and an interesting predicament for them to find themselves in. After that, I just need to follow them through the story and let them say and do what their natures and the situation inevitably lead them to say and do. Not that I don’t work out the plot and the pacing, the key moments I need to hit, and the themes of the book, but even that is done by letting the characters’ actions unfold within the constraints of their world.

Where did you grow up and where do you live now?

I grew up in the city of Hull in Yorkshire, a poor town in the North of England. I lived on a gigantic council estate, part of a big, extended family, half of which was on the dole on any particular day. Yet, thanks entirely to the amazing, generous, socialist policies of the times, I got a first class schooling, and went to excellent universities, for free.

Now, after a long career in software R&D and user interface design, that has taken me all over the world, I have settled in the beautiful hills of Southern Queensland in an area they call the Granite Belt. My house is on a peak at about 1000m, I’m surrounded by native bush and wild animals. It’s quiet, peaceful, and very beautiful.

What’s the first sentence/line of your latest work?

My first novel, TimeSplash, starts with the following:

“The music thundered. So loud it was hard to breathe. The way the dancing crowd heaved in time to the beat made Patty feel nauseous.

Or was that just fear?

There had been lots of splashparties. Since she became Sniper’s bitch that’s all they’d done, going from one to another right across Europe. But she’d never seen a party from up here before. Not from inside the cage.”

As you might suppose, it’s a thriller. It’s set in Europe about forty years from now and it took most of last year to write. It’s due for release on 15th February 2010.

What piece of writing do you wish you had written?

I should probably say ‘Harry Potter’ or ‘The Da Vinci Code’ if I had any sense. At least then I’d be rich. But I obviously don’t because the kinds of books that come to mind are the ones that leave me gasping in admiration, awed by the skill, intelligence and sensitivity of the writer. Books like; ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’ by Ursula le Guin, ‘Slaughterhouse Five’ by Kurt Vonnegut, and ‘Fahrenheit 451′ by Ray Bradbury, to name but a tiny few of them. And that’s just the sci-fi novels. Don’t get me started on Thomas Hardy or Jane Austen, Chekhov, Shakespeare, Kipling, Wilfred Owen… And, oh, to think of writing Milton’s ‘On His Blindness’!

What are you currently working towards?

That’s easy. I’m working toward building a career as a writer. As I say, my first novel, TimeSplash, is about to be published. I really need that to be a success if I’m ever to be given the chance to publish another. These days, as a new author, that means publicising the book myself, using whatever resources I have to drive sales. A writer today is very much an entrepreneur. Writing the books is only half the job. I’m not one of life’s salesmen. It doesn’t come easy. But I’m more than willing to do it because I am one of life’s writers, and I’ll do whatever I have to to ensure that I can keep writing and keep getting published.

Complete this sentence… The future of the book is…

…electronic. My novel, TimeSplash, is being published as an ebook only. There will not be a print edition. This is a bit of a gamble at the moment but you will see this more and more over the next few years. These days, the mainstream publishers are still trying to work out what electronic publishing is all about. My own publisher, Lyrical Press Inc., has specialised in electronic publishing for some years already. While the big publishers are tentatively publishing electronic editions in parallel with print editions, the electronic publishers are branching out into more and more genres, and print-on-demand. I think it’s inevitable that print will slowly decline until it is a niche luxury product. In the end, the economics of electronic publishing will drive out print.

This post is part of the Queensland Writers Centre blog tour, happening October to December 2009. To follow the tour, visit Queensland Writers Centre’s blog The Empty Page.

A friend of mine whom I’ve never met, Emma Newman, has been worrying lately that her blog ain’t what it used to be, and that maybe it won’t ever be the same again. She is concerned that, as her circumstances have changed, as she herself has changed (from being a struggling, unknown, unpublished writer, with powerful yearnings and problems with self-confidence, to being a popular, well-regarded blogger with a publishing contract and a bright future ahead of her) the nature of her blog has failed to keep up.

It made me wonder why I’m not having the same trouble with my own blogs. I began my first blog (Waving Not Drowning) because I wanted to be part of the ‘conversation’ that was happening in the blogsphere. It was fun, I met interesting people, I fearlessly told the world just what I thought. I had a readership barely distinguishable from zero.

Then, a couple of years later, I got the bug to be published. I went to a writer’s workshop and they said, start your own blog and create your brand. So I started a new blog (the one you’re reading, called Graham Storrs because that’s my brand) and did pretty much what Emma did. I agonised about my struggles to find an agent and a publisher, I cheered my successes, I posted my stories. I also found a different set of interesting people. My readership leapt up from just scraping the ground to something like head-height. Not exactly soaring off into the stratosphere but a lot higher than I ever expected (thanks, everyone!)

I kept the two blogs going in parallel and have done so for nearly two full years (my writing blog and my ranting blog, as I like to describe them.) Some months ago, I signed a book deal for my novel, TimeSplash (and now I’ve started yet another blog just for the book!) Obviously, I could no longer write about my struggles to become published. I had to look again at this blog and ask myself what I was doing with it. (Unlike my friend, I don’t do this kind of agonising in public – which is probably a failing on my part.)

The answer, it turned out, was simple. In New Age terms, this blog is about my’ journey’ as a writer, a journey that will never end. In marketing terms, it is also, still, the major vehicle for my brand. The third post I wrote after I got my contract was called “After the End Comes the Beginning” which pretty much sums up how I feel about it. OK, I’ve got that first book contract – the one I’ve wanted all my life – but, to become a writer, I need more. I need a second contract, and a third, fourth and fifth. Unless TimeSplash sells like crazy, which is unlikely I have to admit, it is going to be harder to get that second contract than it was to get the first. Yes, harder. Agents and publishers look at the numbers and they judge you coldly and harshly. So I foresee plenty of writerly angst, a lifetime of ups and downs, and that means tons more to write about.

One of the interesting things Emma said on her post was that she didn’t want to “squander the privilege” of having people visit her blog. I know how she feels. The more your readership grows, the more you feel a responsibility towards all those people, a need to justify their attention. Just switching off the blog and doing something else would feel like a betrayal. Even long periods of silence make you feel guilty. All I can say is, thank heavens for RSS feeds! People don’t have to keep visiting your blog and going away empty-handed. They only come when there’s something happening.

'The Earth Ship' never looked so good.

My short story,  ‘The Earth Ship’, is available now in a new anthology from Absent Willow Publishing, modestly titled, ‘The Best Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction of 2009‘. Copies can be had from the publisher or on Amazon. The Absent Willow Review, which first published ‘The Earth Ship’ claims to be the world’s fastest growing magazine featuring short fiction works of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. You’ll find their latest edition full of great, free fiction.

And, while I have your attention, I’m looking for volunteers to host my TimeSplash Blog Tour. If you have a blog and think your readers might be interested in hearing from me on the subject of my new book, or if you’d like to interview me about it, or something vaguely related, just let me know. I hope to find a number of blogs to include on my tour in March and April 2010. Don’t be bashful. It’s fun, it’s easy, you’d be doing me a big favour, and your readers might even enjoy it. You can find out more and contact me on the TimeSplash blog. Or you can reach me through the comments or the contact page on this blog.