Heading North again...

in my imagination, at least.  I've been on holiday for two weeks already: not sure where they've gone to be honest, but they have been surprisingly fruitful.  Thanks to Google I've been doing a little light research in the wee small hours to fill in a little more background about the post Hamish took at the end of Scotch Pine and the kinds of jobs he's finding himself doing.  I'm slowly building up an image of the places around the wee cottage on the loch and, if I'm honest,  I'm getting really rather excited. 

There are 4,000 words of a new novel - about a chapter's worth - on my lap top at the moment and although I'm not quite sure as yet where they are going, they are definitely going somewhere.

The three years since Scotch Pine have brought a few changes to the lives of the characters - some of which have taken me by surprise already - and it's taken a little bit of manipulation to get everyone back together again but all the usual suspects will be there. 

I'm heading away on holiday soon, which is always a good writing space for me, and I've got several scenes that I want to put down while I'm away.  I'm not going North, however, but South, so the google images I've saved into a folder will  inspire me, I'm sure!!  And in mid August I have my (almost!) annual audience with the great Ian Rankin in Edinburgh - only stopping in the city for ten hours so that'll have to be enough to get a Scottish fix this year!

What happened yesterday???

I've checked my Amazon stats a couple of times a week since I 'Kindled' G&P.  I glanced on Friday and saw that nothing had changed: the same 6 copies were listed as sold on Amazon.co.uk and none elsewhere.   Yesterday I didn't come on line at all, so this afternoon, just before I logged off, I thought I'd just have a quick look - good job I did! To my amazement,  I sold 9 books yesterday across the whole range of titles! 

And then, to add to the excitement, the wonderful  'felepain'  left a review which is quite simply sensational!!! 

I feel so proud at having disrupted at least one reader's housework!!!  Thank you so much!

Almost there...

Summer holidays start tomorrow and I say goodbye to the place where I've worked for 19 years and where Grouse and Partridge were actually born, in an English exam, sitting next to a fidgety Year 9 pupil who needed constant supervision.  I was bored, I decided to attempt the writing task... and all these years later, I'm still writing about them!  It'll be a day of very mixed emotion tomorrow, but I really am excited about September...

Moving on...

 I have begun the great clear out and started finally to throw away some of the rubbish I've accumulated in the last 19 years.  This was one of the piles of boxes which went out for recycling from my classroom last week! With only 9 working days left at my old school I'm frantically trying to write goodbye notes, wrap retirement presents, clear my room and bring home everything that's mine rather than the school's!  I'm actually quite enjoying the process.  The first of my 'fond fareweels' was on Friday at the house of a friend and former collegue where much wine was drunk and many interesting conversations were persued.  I was really touched by the cards, presents and beautiful flowers I was given (- and delighted that my former head of department's very moving speech in my honour was interupted by a vociferous demand for 'More Grouse and Partridge!' from a friendly heckler!)  I'm not looking forward to the last day of term, however:  there's a bit of a tradition of digging up old stories from the past when people leave our place and I'm a little nervous about what will be unearthed!!!! I'm already looking forward to the new school year and my 'reinvention' for a new location.  What I've seen and heard so far has been enough to make me very excited about what's on the horizon...

The Reluctant Self Publicist strikes again..

I've been giving this self-promotion thing a bit more thought this week for two reasons.  I have a small but perfectly formed following for G&P which is centred around my current place of work and I face the dilemma of how to keep them interested in the 'product' when I'm not there to bombard them with it in person! 
I'm toying with the idea of a twice yearly newsletter - at midsummer and Christmas - to be circulated by email or post.  (Only, my inner critic keeps muttering about me brow-beating my readers into following me.  I can't win!)

The second reason is because I suspect I really need some Amazon reviews and a few 'likes' on the sales pages to persuade people to linger and maybe even purchase.  My readers would be the perfect people to do this.  But I'd have to ask them to do it and that, again, feels like brow-beating!

I think I need a publicity manager!!!!!!

The Reluctant Self-Publicist...

Found myself in the middle of one of those conversations at work today - the ones where really nice people who don't really know about Grouse and Partridge pick up on something somehow and start to ask questions like, 'Oh, do you write?' 'What have you written?' 'Have you been published?'

I know that I should, at that point, swing into rampant self-publishing overdrive and promote my 'product' to within an inch of its life and instead I want to creep into a corner and hide until the subject changes to something else!  I find myself going 'It's only...' 'It was just...' 'It isn't very...' and then I stop talking altogether and everyone thinks I'm really odd!  

All the magazine articles and blog-posts I read tell me this is not the way to build my profile or create a following and that I need to do both of these things if I'm to sell more than a single copy on Kindle this year (and I suspect that may have been bought by a lovely relative!!)  And yet, I cannot do it.

It's not that I'm ashamed of G & P - far from it.  It's not that I don't want people to read it - I do!  Yet I cannot get past the fact that it feels a bit like bad manners to go on and on about my own books in the way I would happily do about someone else's! So worried am I that I will be considered a self centred bore that I dismiss it  all as something trivial, even though I consider that asserting my 'right to write' is one of the more important things I've ever done!  I'm terrified that people will feel the need to buy it out of duty, because they know me.  Or worse still, feel they have to be nice about it once they've read it!

This afternoon, the awkward moment passed, the conversation moved on and I was left realising the bitter truth:  I may be cut out to write the stuff but I sure as hell ain't cut out for selling it!

Can I be a Scot by inclination? Please?

To be eligible to submit writing to New Writing Scotland you need to be a writer 'resident in Scotland or Scots by birth, upbringing or inclination'.
I love the idea of the last category!  What other nation would welcome you to their fold just because you felt you wanted to be one of them?  It reminded me of the National Trust for Scotland doorman in Glasgow who, when he heard where we were from, said 'Och, weel, we used to come down and raid your bit of the country all the time so you're honorary Scots really.' 

http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/scotlit/asls/NewWriting.html