Me and reading

They say it can be good for a writer if you read, well, I certainly do that. I have read for as long as I remember. Certainly when I was at primary school. I remember reading in a room, sitting round a table, reading I think it was Janet and John books. We read out loud, which I continued doing at home, much to my parents' annoyance. lol. The books I read as a child were: Mr Men, Noddy, then as I got older, to Secret Seven, Famous Five, Nancy Drew and the school based books such as St Claire's. I also remembering reading horsey adventure books.

As an adult, I remember going to the library down the road (now a voluntary centre) and taking out books by Lena Kennedy and Catherine Cookson. There was a period years ago when I bought and read lots of sagas. I also bought books by authors I knew. I wanted to write romantic suspense so bought Romantic Intrigue books by Mills & Boon; that was for a couple of years. Most recently, I did buy My Weekly pocket novels because I thought I could write for them, but I can't, so stopped buying them.

Then I began writing for children, so I bought those types of books, too. Mostly magical realism and fantasy books.

So, what do I read now? I still read both adult and children's fiction, but my tastes have changed, esp for adult reading. I now buy only books that I know the author's works and like eg Nora Roberts, Christina Jones, both write romance with magical realism in. I don't tend to buy books by authors I know, unless it is something I am interested in for my writing. Children's reading, I have been buying a lot recently esp magical realism ones, which I write myself. I am a fan of Linda Chapman's books, and also now like Holly Webb and Lily Small (I think might be a group of authors). I have also bought a few YA books by Teri Terry, which I love cos I find it interesting about what others think the future could be like for children; something I have in mind to write about myself sometime later.

So, my reading habits have changed over the years. Has yours?

RNA Conference Day 3

Finally, I have got round to post about the last day of the conference.

The first talk I went to was by Catherine Jones, talking about her life in the army and writing career in the army and onwards. Then was a talk about how to keep readers reading by Emma Darwin. She told us the many ways of writing styles there are, inc one I didn't know about called 'free indirect style'.  She gave us exercises to do in the different writing styles. One of these gave me an idea for a teen/YA book.

Then was a talk by Tamsyn Murray about emotion in YA. She explained one three YA books are so successful: 'The Fault in our Stars', Hunger Games and the Year of the Rat. They have these in common: Strong indentifiable and central theme. Memorable characters, quality writing, fantastic storytelling, brilliant world building, love, romance, crossover appeal, word of mouth success, PR commitment from publisher and luck. You have to know your reader. Research what's out there. Remember how intense your teen years were. Understand that readers form strong bonds with characters they like - make them relatable and make them care. Let them experience loss in a safe way. How? ID your theme early. Know what your book wants to say. Create loveable characters. Do something different. Don't be afraid to write strong emotions. Deepen the conflict there is already not add more. In teen books, more action has to happen more often. MG is best for engagement.

So there you have what I learnt and come away with. I hope you have learnt something, too.

My pricing experiment

I have hinted about doing this on social media, and I have actually begun it - a pricing experiment. Up until this year, all my ebooks were either free or 0.99c. Then I started to read Dean Wesley Smith's blog 'Think like a publisher' again and the new EU VAT law came in and I decided to increase the prices of most of them. I am going to do this for maybe three months to see what the results are. Here is what I have done:

The Guardian Angels
The Railway Angel, the first in my YA series 'The Guardian Angels' is still perma-free. I am keeping it that way to entice readers to buy the rest of the series and a thank you. I am still getting lots of downloads for that. Whether those are being read or not I don't know.
The rest of the series is now $2.99 each.

Geraldine's Gems
One Good Turn is remaining as 99c it being the first in the series. More Fish and Don't Get Mad are both now $2.99. The others in the series 'Life' and A trouble shared are both $3.99.

Mermaids
These are both $2.99 each. The last one, yet to be written, will also be that price.

Singleton
All these ebooks are now at $2.99.

I have priced all ebooks between 5K and 10K at $2.99. All ebooks over that word count and under 20K are $3.99.

So, I will let you know how the pricing goes. What results in sales I get.

Step 4 - Your goals for the year

So, here is the final step to your plan and the most important one I feel - writing down your goals for this year. To motivate you, here are mine:

1. To complete my YA fantasy series 'The Guardian Angels'
2. To complete my mermaid trilogy
3. To complete my adult romance series 'Geraldine's Gems'
4. To write 1 or 2 more of my Singleton village series (working on that now)
5. To maybe write another of my Asperkids series
6. To publish my first Asperkids books about Boring Billy
7. To get at least 5 short stories accepted and published by women's magazines
8. To earn at least £500 from no 7
9. To break even with my writing expenses this year. I've been working at a loss the last few years.#
10. The main one I feel is... to graduate from the RNA's New Writer's Scheme, hopefully with a Pocket Novel script. Working on this now. Am rewriting a script that I submitted a few years ago and did nothing with.

So there you have my ten goals for this year. I've been working on numbers 4, 7, 8 and 10 so far. Will give you an update on how I'm going with these in a few months time. So, what goals have you made for this year? Let me know how you are going with them.

Why I'm pleased I set up my new marketing website

Last Saturday I went to a panel talk held by the RNA on genre writing. Janet Gover asked most of the questions to the panel who were: Alison Morton, author of the Roma Nova novels about alternate history; Christina Courtney who writes historical, time-slip and YA for Choc Lit, and Monica Fairview who self-publishes books inspired by Jane Austen. I enjoyed listening to how they write what they do and why, but a couple of things happened that made me smile a lot. Christina (real name Pia) said that she is now going to self-publish her YA books because her publisher is not going to publish that genre anymore. Also, another author said in her introduction that she is going to press the 'print' button shortly with her first self-published book. That was number one that made me smile. People are still wanting to self-publish their books.

The second thing happened after the talk. Pia wanted to ask me a question. Me? Yay. Unfortunately, I couldn't answer it because she wanted to know about formatting with headings, which I have yet to do. Alison suggested to hire someone to do it for her. The following morning I messaged Pia on Facebook with other suggestions, which she said she'd look in to.

The third thing was shortly before I was about to leave, the other author, Linda Chamberlain, who said she is going to become an indie author, asked me for the link to my new website. I wrote it on the back of a postcard she had picked up at the talk. I do hope that the website matches people's expectations. The website is all about helping new authors get discovered with blog posts about marketing tips and strategies and guides about marketing. It can be found at www.hopewithjulie.wordpress.com.

Why I'm still happy being an indie author

Last Saturday 2 August, I went to an RNA (Romantic Novelists' Association) meeting and we had an open chat about all things writing and publishing. One lady asked a lot of the questions and the answers she got made me think, 'Yes, I'm happy to be an indie author and stay that way.' What were her questions? I can't remember exactly but can remember most of the replies she got.

The lady asked about Mills and Boon, saying she had queried them at the conference in July with her ms. She wanted to know more about them. The answer she got was: they require their authors to write two books a year to start with, then four a year. That's four books of say 60,000 words a year. I goggled at this. At one time I thought about writing for them, but realised I couldn't write to their formula. Now I know I can't write for them. There is no way I could write that amount of books in a year, not with all my health problems and appointments.

The lady also asked which publisher it is best to go with and what do they expect of you. Well, the answer was most of them would expect their authors to write in one genre so you could brand yourself. This was another thing that made me think, Yes, I still want to be an indie author. I want to be able to write what I like, and in different genres, like I am doing now.

The other thing that made me think about still being an indie author happened after the talk. I got to talking to a friend who has had one book published by a small publisher. She signed a contract to get her book in print and in digital, which it is. I had heard things happening about this publisher and asked her what was going on. She told me that the last she'd heard of them, they had changed to digital publishing only and moved to another country. I didn't think this was good news, but didn't tell her so. This got me thinking, that being an indie author, you only have to worry about yourself and not about what a publisher is doing. Third reason why I am glad to be an indie author and want to keep being one.

The fourth reason is similar to number two. On an email group a while ago, one author said that she had broken her contract with her publisher (a small well-known one) because they wanted her to write just for her, but she wanted to write another genre. Again, I want to write in different genres like I am doing now. I write MG (9-12 year-olds), teen/YA and adult, and want to continue doing this because I have so many ideas.

There is one reason I would like to get a contract, maybe for just one book, and that is so that I can become a full member of the RNA. I might see if I could get signed for one book, then carry on being an indie author, it depends on the publisher, though. We shall see.

Writing goals for 2014

So, all you writers and illustrators out there, have you made your new year goals yet? I have, and here they are. There might be a few more to come later in the year.

1. Finish writing and publishing both my YA 'Guardian Angel' series and adult romance series 'Geraldine's Gems.' Have edits to work on the penultimate Angel ebook, and two more romance ones to write after I've published the current wip in the new year.

2. Try writing poetry. I have an idea for a book of poems. We shall see. If I manage it, it will be my life with Asperger's in poetry.

3. Enter more stories for magazines/competitions.

4. Write more non-fiction, and submit to magazines both in UK and overseas, inc competitions. I have one competition in mind already, and got the Writers' Market book from my brother for Xmas with US magazine markets in.

5. Get a publisher for my 7+ children's books. Waiting to hear from a publisher at the moment. Wait and see if he likes my work enough to want to publish it as a graphic novel.

So, there you have my new year goals. What are your goals?  Let me know.

Character names - are yours similar?

When I was thinking about all the ebooks and books and stories I've been writing recently, it occurred to me that most of the names of the characters I've created are very similar. In my YA fantasy series 'The Guardian Angels' there is Lizzie and Danny. In my 7+ magical school series I'm writing there is Billy and now Charlie. In my first attempt at writing for middle-grade, there is Rosie and Allie (short for Alexandra). I am trying to put in characters with different sounding names, really.
I do wonder if it is because my name is Julie and has the sound at the end.

So, was wondering, do any of you out there give your characters similar sounding names like I've done? Let me know, so I feel not alone in doing it. Look forward to hearing from you all.