Author: PaulineMRoss

First books and second books

Writing a book is no different from any other craft: it takes practice. Nobody is able to paint or to make model aeroplanes or to write phone apps or drive a car straight out of the box. Well, growing potatoes, maybe; stick them in the ground, then dig them up three months later and enjoy delicious new potatoes with butter and a sprig of mint. Yummy. But I digress. Everyone needs to learn and hone their skills, and (except for potatoes) that takes practice. A lot of practice. For driving a car, they say it takes one lesson for every year of your life. For writing, the received wisdom is that it takes a million words. So the first effort is always a bit wonky. It’s like those clay models kids bring home from school – they’re always a bit lop-sided. ‘The Plains of Kallanash’ is my first, wonky effort. […]

Posted July 25, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in The Fire Mages, The Plains of Kallanash, Writing musings / 4 Comments

On Wattpad and KDP Select

Now that I’m getting closer to publishing ‘The Plains of Kallanash’ in September, I’ve been starting to think about marketing (for want of a better term). Which online retailers to sell through, pricing and all that jazz. And how to build up some awareness of the book beyond the three regular readers of this blog (hi folks! {waves}). I had already devised a plan to post ‘The Plains of Kallanash’, chapter by chapter, on Wattpad, a process that would take many months. I’ve now uploaded more than half the book, and somewhere around the two-thirds point would fall the actual date of publication to Amazon. The idea was to make Wattpad readers aware of the book itself while uploading the final chapters, and even if that didn’t translate into sales, it might generate a review or two. But then I started looking into Amazon’s programs in more detail, in particular, […]

Posted July 19, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Publishing/marketing / 9 Comments

A year on Amazon: how many reviews?

A year ago, for reasons not relevant here, I decided to record every Kindle ebook uploaded to Amazon for a full month. For the sake of my sanity, I restricted it to epic fantasy. I recorded 390 ebooks uploaded over the month of April 2013, excluding foreign language ones. A year on, it occurred to me that it might be interesting to see what had happened to those 390 books. So during April 2014, I looked each one up on Amazon, and noted the number of reviews. These are total numbers; I didn’t attempt to track numbers of 5*, 4* and so on. I noted rankings, too, but these are just a snapshot in time, whereas reviews are cumulative.

Posted July 9, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Publishing/marketing / 2 Comments

Kallanash update: final edits done

I’ve spent the last few weeks feverishly revising ‘The Plains of Kallanash’ in light of the comments received from my beta readers. And when I say ‘feverishly’, sometimes it almost felt as if I were literally feverish – I’d go to bed thinking about edits, I’d wake up thinking about them, and sometimes I even dreamt about them. It was hard work, and a great deal of it was spent, not pecking away at the keyboard, but just mulling over ideas. Not much else got done, although I’ve found that mindless occupations like ironing or gardening are excellent pondering opportunities. After the pondering and the final rewriting, I read through the whole book one final time to tighten up excessive wordiness, and looking out for last minute gotchas resulting from the revisions. No use removing that unwanted chunk of text if a different part of the book refers to the […]

Posted July 6, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in The Plains of Kallanash, Writing musings / 12 Comments

Update on Wattpad

It’s coming up for two months since I started posting chapters of ‘The Plains of Kallanash’ on Wattpad (previous posts here and here), so this seems like a good time for an update. First, some stats. Chapters posted: 27 Followers: 27 Reads: 543 (each person reading one chapter counts as one read) Votes: 102 Comments: 97 I post one new chapter a week, usually on a Friday morning. At the current rate of progress, I should reach the last chapter at the end of January.

Posted June 30, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Publishing/marketing / 0 Comments

Update on Bookvetter

A few weeks back I signed up for Bookvetter, a site which allows authors to peer-review each other’s completed novels and achieve a degree of approval which then connects to book bloggers. I said at the time that I liked the idea of it, and I still do, but I’m not sure how well it’s working at the moment. Here’s how it’s supposed to work. Authors post their own completed novel for review, selecting the number of reviews they wish to receive. They then have to review the same number of books in return before they can see any reviews posted for their own work. To achieve ‘vetted’ status takes at least six reviews of your work which agree that it is of publishable quality. Which means you have to complete six reviews of other authors’ work. At least. It’s a long process.

Posted June 17, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Publishing/marketing / 0 Comments

Final editing and beta reports

I’ve had a number of beta readers report back to me, and I’m now running through ‘The Plains of Kallanash’ one more time, incorporating final edits. I had a weekend away recently, which allowed me to read the whole book through from beginning to end, so I have my own notes on changes I want to make, as well. Some of them are easy: typos, repetition, adding in a little foreshadowing, tightening descriptions. But some are less easy. Here are a few problems that have come up: 1) Your main character is too passive. Well, yes, she is a timid, meek character, who does what she’s told and doesn’t exhibit much agency initially. That is very much in her nature, and, to be honest, if she had even an ounce of assertiveness in her, she’d have put her foot down in chapter 3 or 4, told her two men how […]

Posted June 15, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in The Plains of Kallanash, Writing musings / 4 Comments

Cover reveal for ‘The Plains of Kallanash’

If you read my previous post on cover art, you’ll know that I decided to pay the professionals to design something for me, since my artistic skills are non-existent. I found some pre-made artwork that captured something of the feel I was hoping for, so I was able to pass that along to the designer as a starting point. The beauty of custom cover art is that you can ask for whatever imagery or symbolism you want. I knew I wanted to capture the vastness of the plains – that big sky effect. I also suggested using pampas grass heads to represent the sort of grasses growing there. I asked for a fantasy-style font, and maybe some glowing letters, since that plays a part in the plot.

Posted June 4, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Publishing/marketing, The Plains of Kallanash / 4 Comments

‘The Plains of Kallanash’: bonus scene (Jonnor’s interview)

‘The Plains of Kallanash’ is written with just two point-of-view characters, Mia and Hurst, so everything that happens is seen through the eyes of one or the other of those two. Nevertheless, there are other characters who have a significant impact on the story, whose actions and feelings and ideas resonate throughout the book. Some of them, like Tella, will always remain mysterious. Some, like Hurst’s Companions and family, are fairly transparent, so don’t need elaboration. And then there’s Jonnor. As the lead husband in the marriage, Jonnor has a very big impact on both Mia and Hurst, and sometimes his actions seem contradictory or unusually volatile. One such occasion is after his first interview at the Ring. Before this, he is openly hostile towards Hurst, but afterwards he makes some effort to reach out to him. This scene explains some of this. It is also written from Jonnor’s point-of-view, […]

Posted June 2, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Character profile, The Plains of Kallanash / 0 Comments

Writing update

I recently passed the 100,000 word mark on my current writing project, which seemed like a good point to take a moment and review the state of my writing so far. I’ve been writing seriously (as in stories with a beginning, middle and end, rather than random dabbling) for perhaps three or four years now, resulting in two complete novels and two incomplete. The Plains of Kallanash A 220K word behemoth (so it’s epic fantasy, it’s meant to be big, all right?), finished in first draft form in May 2013, left to brew for several months, critiqued in part on Scribophile (my online critique group) and currently with beta readers. I’ve set a deadline of mid-June for beta feedback, then I’ll do a final revision phase, with the objective of getting it to my proofreader by mid-July. The cover art is scheduled for early June, so after a final pass […]

Posted May 27, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Current writings / 0 Comments