Email from Bang Publishing

Afternoon loyal reader,

I received an email from Bang today. Sadly it was just an update to say they were still reading my manuscript but that they would be in touch. Stil, at least they bothered to let me know and it's better than a rejection.

In other news I'm still awaiting a response of any kind from Aitken Alexander with regard to the 29 pages of finely crafted prose I sent to them in early January.

Meawhile sales remain steady at just over 1 copy per day despite the fact that I haven't done any promo since January 21st. The reason for the lack of promo is that I'm still hard at work editing a novel from the back catalogue which I hope to launch in the next week or so. I've actually made the effort to draft a bit of a marketing plan for this one so hopefully it will mean bigger initial sales of all three books.

Finally, just for the sake of sharing, I bought a huge hardback copy of the collected works of Jane Austen which I'm going to display in my library as a pretentious talking point. I may even leave it open at a random page when visitors come, just for the sake of it. What a ponce they all cried!

Anyway, that's it for now. Just finished reading Peter James latest effort and very good it was too. Now I'm off to paint a wall Lilac.

Thanks for stopping by.

I'm now on Kindle Boards!

Afternoon all,

It's a grim day here, gales and rain all the way which is why I'm inside blogging.

I now am a member of Kindle Boards and a very nice bunch they are too. I've created a page for my books, added links, photos, all sorts. I'd recommend the site to anyone who is a keen reader or, indeed, an author.

My Playground Cool product page is here. The Storyteller page is here.

Aside from that I've edited just over fifty pages of the next novel - All the fun of the Fair which will be launched just as soon as I finish editing the remaining 300 pages.

There will be a sample available via YouWriteOn shortly, which members can review.

I have yet to hear back from the agents, or from Bang, about The 24 Hour Jazz Cafe so I'll assume no news is good news.

Right, I'd best crack on and edit more pages because Liverpool are playing Bolton on ESPN at 5PM.

Until next time...

Camilla has read my email

Afternoon folks,

Just a quick update today. I've sent an email to a site I found on the Amazon discussion boards which apparently promotes Indie authors like myself.

But the big news is that one of the agents I sent an email to earier in the week has read it (and quite possibly deleted it). So we shall see. And according to their Twitter feed, Bang Publishing are ploughing through manuscripts so fingers crossed.

Editing on The 24 Hour Jazz Cafe is finished so the next tasks are to send out more stuff to agents, finally sort out a Facebook page (though I might leave that until something happens with the new book) and begin editing a previous novel called All The Fun of The Fair.

It's all happening and hopefully a decent chunk of redundancy money from the NHS later in the year will allow me some free time to attack the writing full time, at least for a few months.

Chasing the dream

Hi folks,

So, things are progressing, sort of. I'm still not making any money but lots and lots of people have downloaded my books.

After the success of my short story promo with The Storyteller (still at number five on Amazon UK as of this minute) I decided to do a free promo with Playground Cool, the full length debut. It went a bit berserk and shifted about a 1000 copies in 36 hours. Needless to say, all good. I've ended the promo now to see if it translates into any real sales as with the short story.

I've been posting quite a bit on Goodreads and the folk there have been pretty supportive with a few folk saying they've got a copy and the moderators even posting links to my book on Amazon. Top work!

I've not heard back from BANG yet about the completed manuscript I sent but fingers are still crossed. Yesterday I emailed three agents and today posted (old school) extracts and letters etc of the latest effort just because I crave rejection letters. If they do reject me I'll fire off some more just to show how keen I am.

Finally, I'm building up to joining Facebook. Pain in the arse really because I hardly have time to write this blog, post on writing forums and go to work without having to find time for Facebook. But as the wife keeps reminding me, if I become successful I won't have to work in a warehouse anymore. Thank Christ for that.

Anyway, so far I've shifted somewhere around 1400 books, mostly from free downloads. But it's 1400 folk who had never heard of me before November, so it's hard to be negative.

Until next time...

Manuscript Sent to Publisher

Evening all,

Just a quick post to say, following on from a request from Bang Publishing, I have sent a completed manuscript this evening for their consideration.

I will keep you informed as to their response but it's all very exciting.

Happy New Year

Hello everyone,

First of all I hope everyone had a fun New Years Eve and I wish everyone a happy and successful 2012.

I've edited 74 pages of The 24 Hour Jazz Cafe with a view to sending it off to Bang by the end of this week, assuming I'm happy with it.

Aside from that I've done a couple of press releases which seems to have a very positive impact on traffic to the blog and on sales. Also, I'm planning an assault on the top ten at YouWriteOn in an attempt to do well in their January Next Big Author Competition. I'll keep you up to speed on that as the month progresses.

But for now, thanks for bothering to look.

Interest From a Publisher!

Evening all,

Exciting start to the day today, as the title of this post suggests.

A few weeks ago Ian Rankin (the tip-top crime writer famous for Rebus and now Malcolm Fox) retweeted a message regarding an up and coming publisher called Bang. They were asking for submissions of crime novels, ideally to form a series. They asked for five pages and a brief synopsis via email.

This morning I received a reply which said:

"...I think your novel shows real promise and would like to consider it. Please could you send me a completed manuscript...Please could you also give me more detail about how you see a series will develop from this title and how many books the series might be."

Now I'm not daft, or new to interest from a publisher. I suspect this might well be a standard email sent out to the majority of the submissions received as I know Bang are looking for clients. But it's still positive, obviously, and I'm just nicely excited by it. The plan now is to finish editing The 24 Hour Jazz cafe and email it to them as well as to continue to promote my existing ebooks. If something comes of it, great. If not, I'm no worse off.

As ever, I shall keep you informed on here.

(By the way, I was lucky enough to meet Ian Rankin late last year at a gig he did in Lancaster. He signed my copy of The Complaints. I was pathetically star struck so the wife had to mention my writing and he wished me luck and advised to keep going while I stood there grinning like an idiot. Good times.)