A few thoughts - a fortnight after publication...

I've seen a lot of people over the Xmas period and obviously our book has come up in discussions – by which I mean I haven't stopped talking about it. As Lily Allen once tweeted: People say I'm self-obsessed. But enough about them. Anyway, having listened to our customer base, it's clear there are a few misunderstandings I'd like to attempt to address.



Firstly though, a huge thanks to those who have bought the book and reviewed it so nicely – you have no idea how much it means to us. And as for the people we neither of us know who have raved about it on Amazon, well that really is why we bothered to tell a story. To those of you who have bought the book and not yet read it, or have no intention of getting round to it, we thank you for our ten pence. We promise not to spend it wisely. For those of you with no interest I apologise once again for stinking up your internet without mentioning cats or food. Anne will rectify shortly.


Now for some thoughts:

1.  It is not romantic fiction. No bodices are ripped. There is no dark and handsome man with deep character faults some sadly deluded heroine/author thinks she can cure. It does not end happily. And it is not written for people with the reading age of 10. (Unless any of that is what attracted you to the book, in which case please ignore all I've just said and tuck in.) True, it is an unabashed love story, but a grown-up one for grown-ups. Ok, so it isn't One Day but that was roughly where we were aiming.

2.  It is not self-published. Yes, I realise it's not in Waterstone's, but we're at the cutting edge of future publishing, where books are digitally launched cheaply into the world to see if they will fly. The book does come with the seal of approval of one of the world's largest publishers, I promise you. We're not trying to force on you a piece of toot no-one deemed to have any merit. Not yet anyway. My Shropshire book will be self-published shortly...



3.  A 5 star review does not mean a 5 star review. I totally understand anyone who has problems with this. In a normal world even I wouldn't give Farewell Trip 5 stars. I reviewed films for fifteen years and only gave twelve films 5 stars. I've read thousands of novels and would rate fewer than ten that highly. But this is 2013. It's about PR, marketing and lies. Grade inflation is all. A four star review on Amazon doesn't mean it's a great read, one of the best books I've read for ages. It means “meh”. A three star review doesn't mean “read this book, I really liked it.” It means “what a bore”. The best way to think of a 5 star review is as the equivalent to a C Grade A-Level in 1983. And we really do need 5 star reviews if we're to get any traction. So can I ask those of you struggling with that conundrum to put 'helping friends' first and 'critical honesty' second. If it does reach an audience, and we need your help with that, don't worry there will be plenty of people out there ready to redress any grade imbalance.


4.  Yes, of course I wrote all the dirty bits.


Thanks.

The ninja of patience strikes back

I was moaning to The Patient One (aka Mr W) yesterday about blogging and how flippin hard it is.

"I really want to write posts," I alas and alacked to him "but I just don't have any original thoughts or ideas. Moan, moan, blah, blah..."

"Well, I think you probably do have ideas, but you don't recognise them as such." Explained The Patient One, patiently.

"Gary's really good at it and it's not fair and it's too hard." I self-pitied. "Moan, moan, blah, blah."

"Moan, moan and blah, blah to you too. Halt the pathetitude right now. It doesn't suit you."

I stuck my tongue out. The Patient One refused to succumb and rolled his eyes instead.

"Anyway, writing blogs aren't real writing. It's such a waste of time when I could be getting Eileen into a spot of bother with two gun-toting baddies." I gave it some welly with the pathetic face. To no avail. The Patient One has deep reserves and only gently advised me.

"Why don't you do what you do when you're doing real writing then?  Give yourself a time limit and just do it?"

God, don't you hate sensible advice? Especially when delivered by a ninja of patience. I responded with the usually infallible Eeyore face. That magnificence of a sad, misunderstood, world's against me and I can't do anything about it face.

"But Gary's so good and I'm so rubbish..."

"Oh for gods sake, stop bloody moaning and get on with it. You've written five novels, you can't tell me a simple blog post is beyond you."

Final score - Eeyore face 1 : The Patient One 0

Farewell Trip and onwards

Farewell Trip on sale here!

And here!

And so here we are. Carina UK has published our novel and it currently nestles inside the top 5000 in the Amazon best-seller charts! To infinity and beyond.

Early feedback has been lovely. I can't help but think it's only a matter of time till the naysayers and trolls arrive. Still, who cares? Some people I respect greatly have said how much they enjoyed it and how well written it was. That's enough for me.

For “two real writers awaiting validation” it feels like the end of the journey, or the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning, or something. I'm fairly sure TS Eliot and Churchill put it better.

So we've decided to change the title of the blog, as you'll see. We feel validated and a big thank you to everyone who made that possible.

Instead let's get on with being real writers. Which as best as I can work out means moaning incessantly about a writer's life – problem publishers, absent editors, the lack of sales, the fake smiling at the success of others, the whole creative process, darling.

Can't wait...

The Last Line of a Novel. Is it Important?

Our lovely Carina editor sent us through a copy of our book, exactly as it is to be e-published on Tuesday. It's a free copy to be distributed to bloggers and reviewers – in fact we are under strict instructions to give it to anyone willing to put a 5 star review up on Amazon in exchange. So anyone easily bribed, do let us know!

So, I spent a few hours reading my own book on Kindle, which is more than I have anyone else's book. And it seems to scrub up OK. I don't know if I've just read and rewritten the start so many times that I'm blind to it, or whether it just took us 50 pages to find our voice and stride, but the book doesn't seem to get going until Paris. But then it definitely goes boom, or kapow, or at the very least a little bit whee and pop.

I was actually quite gripped by some of the later bits - Karin's stuff mainly, some of which I'm not entirely sure I'd read before. That's teamwork for you, the Twynam way. I even cried at a bit.

And so I reached the end thinking, oh well it may disappear without trace, but I'm pretty pleased with it. Woody Allen is famously dismissive of his films. He says they never come out how he saw them in his head. Broadway Danny Rose did, but little else. Well, I'd say this came out even better than I saw it in my head, sketching it out when walking on the Long Mynd with Anne about two years ago and for that Karin should be mighty proud.

The only thing is, I reached the end and they've missed out the very last line. I think a proof-reader has been over zealous. It is a strange line. The book still makes sense without it and I rather think that's how it may be published until or if we can rectify it. If it is, I'll share the proper last line exclusively here! Or run a competition so you can guess it.

A Orange Egg

It seems ridiculous that even though I'm at home all day, I just can't get any writing done. I don't only mean writing on our current book (a crime story called Got It For A Song, for your information), but writing posts for this blog or my cancer one (http://karindixon.blogspot.co.uk) as well.

The problem, of course, is Facebook. And Twitter. And Snapchat. And emails. And Facebook. And Twitter. And Snapchat. And emails. And Facebook. And... You get the picture.

One day last week I got up at 9:00, made myself breakfast (a mug of English Breakfast tea and Mr W's homemade rye bread toast with marmite and homemade gooseberry jam, if you're interested), took it back up to bed and settled in for a good long writing spell. Three hours later, the cat started scratching to get out of the bedroom and I was still scrolling up and down my newsfeed clicking on every shared post just in case I hadn't already seen it.

Three hours! On bloody Facebook!

That was the point I knew I had to take control. Not only was my writing productivity suffering, but I  have a free Lovefilm offer till January 14th and I'm only on halfway through series 2 of the 8 series of Spooks...

And so, I consulted my resident Person With Good Ideas. "Easy-peasy. We can solve your conundrum easily and cheaply. Let's go."

So off we went. To a very lovely kitchen shop. Yep, you heard right, a kitchen shop was going to solve my social media addiction. Novel idea, but I was willing to give it a go. And this is what my Person With Good Ideas found: 

A Orange Egg

A Orange Egg is male (something about being too competitive if he was female, which is weird, but there you are). He is a delightful colour exactly the same as this plump tangerine and when I twist his little Orange Eggy head he ticks charmingly until he reaches my chosen time and then his whole little Orange Eggy body rings and shakes to tell me in his sweet Orange Eggy way that I must turn off the broadband.

We began our collaboration as writing partners this morning and it has been amazing. A Orange Egg says stop and I stop, without even a "Just a sec, A Orange, just need to do th...". Productivity has soared (viz, this post) and I have a whole evening free for Peter Firth, Keeley Hawes and Matthew McFadyen. Score!

Farewell Trip - cover and publication date

Exciting times. The book has a release date - 12th December - just in time for Christmas. And a rather natty cover, as you can see.

The cover has been interesting. When we were considering self-publishing I asked my niece, who is studying art for A Level, to have a go at designing one. From our suggestions, she came up with a rather nice picture of a woman reading a letter with Paris as a backdrop.

Later on someone sent us a "secret photo" of what was supposedly our cover, a shadowy picture of an outline of a woman silhouetted against an autumnal tree. We were pretty pleased with that to be honest.

But we're mighty chuffed with this final one, which goes well beyond the obvious. Just a shame we won't be able to hold it in our hands.

Getting close...

Advice for the young at heart

I'm a rubbish blogger. I do very much like the idea of expounding to all and sundry about my inner musings and like even better the idea that someone might find it moderately entertaining.  However, inner musings don't much occur, other than those crucial ones about which type of tea to make (builder's, redbush... Ummmm, builder's, redbush) or whether it's cold enough to justify turning the heating on.

You may be interested to know Mr W's questions to be answered before so doing are 1) how many jumpers do you have on? 2) how many pairs of socks are you wearing? 3) hat? (Not as Scroogey as it sounds, remember I am bald as the proverbial) 4) jumping jacks?  If the answers do not match or exceed 2, 2, yes and 20, the heating stays firmly off. Or not.

However, I digress (if you only knew the joy it gives me to actually write that sentence. No idea why, but it fills me with delight), as I said, I'm a crap blogger.  What's worse is that it means Gary is left with the miserable task of finding something to write upon.

Luckily, as you can see, his mind has plenty of inner musings and they're interesting ones too.  Anyway, my inner musings only conspicuous by their absence, I offer to you a choice morsel from Gary's delicious poetry volume, Silly Verse for Grown Ups.  It's advice he has passed on to loinfruit #1 and #2 much in the manner of a god-dad. Which they don't have but if they did, it would be him.


In The Name Of Love

Isobel, over the centuries not much has changed;
The most important thing about a man remains his name.

Take, for example, a man named Ralph.
Don't date him if he rhymes with Alph.
But if he tells you he's called Rafe,
Fellate him first then make him wait.

Want to meet someone who's as sound as pounds,
Head for a bar in the best part of town;
Shout out Torquil and when someone turns round,
Go and say Oh, there you are. It's your round...

Forget all that nonsense about love, what a bore;
It's a myth put around to keep poor people poor.
And whatever you do, please don't marry
A loser with a name like Stephen or Gary.