Author: PaulineMRoss

2016 review: Part 3: Writing

I got a lot of writing done in 2016. A lot. I finally found my stride, and increased my speed, as well as making daily writing a more consistent habit, and the result was (tada! roll of drums!): 548,000 words written Which is a lot! Of that, 167,000 words, or 30%, was fantasy and the rest Regency romance. For the fantasy, I wrote the whole of The Second God and began Findo Gask’s Apprentice. For the Regencies, I finished Amy, and wrote Belle, Connie, Dulcie, Grace and Hope, plus a novella, Mary. I discovered along the way that I can’t write two books at the same time. I can, however, write one and edit another, so that’s how I work it. At any one time, I’ll have one book being written, another ‘brewing’, or resting before editing, and another being edited or otherwise prepared for publication. At this precise moment, […]

Posted January 29, 2017 by PaulineMRoss in Current writings, Ramblings, Writing musings / 0 Comments

Mystery review: ‘A Case of Murder in Mayfair’ by Clara Benson

This is the second in the spin-off series from the author’s Angela Marchmont series or murder mysteries set in the twenties. This time, Freddy Pilkington-Soames, insouciant man-about-town, finds himself in the middle of a drugs-and-murder case amongst a set of film people. A famous Hollywood actress somehow falls from a high balcony during a party announcing her landing a plum part. She wasn’t the nicest person in the world, so no shortage of suspects with a grudge against her, including another actress, a cameraman, a producer, the actress’s sister and so on. Freddy joins forces with another journalist, the less than scrupulous Corky Beckwith, to investigate. This series has one advantage over its predecessor – Freddy is able to take a far more active part in events than the ladylike Angela. So there’s a great deal of creeping about at night, sneaking into suspects’ houses and getting into fights. Freddy’s […]

Posted January 23, 2017 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

2016 review: Part 2: Reading

There was a time when I read 100+ books a year. In 2012, it was 108, and I also had time to review them all, write series reviews and compose long, detailed essays about my reading-related thoughts. In 2013, I read 91 books. In 2014, the year I published the first of my own books, it was 61, then 57 in 2015. In 2016 it was just 46, and that included a month in Australia with my Kindle, and a whole shedload of long-haul flights. This is the trouble with writing — it eats away at my reading time. And that also means that I have to be more selective with what I read, and I tend to be less experimental. Out come the tried-and-trusted authors, whose work I know I’ll enjoy. And the effect of that is that my average rating on Goodreads has risen from 3.3 stars to […]

Posted January 16, 2017 by PaulineMRoss in General, Ramblings / 0 Comments

Review: ‘The Warden’ by Anthony Trollope

I’ve never read any Trollope before, but my book group likes to mix things up, so here we are. This was a real surprise to me. It was published in 1855 and my previous dabblings in that era have left me less than enthusiastic. Overly wordy, sentimental, turgid and a real slog to get through – that was what I expected. What I got was funny, sharply observed, sympathetic and surprising easy to read. I have to say, though, that I’ve never read a book with so many words where so little actually happens. Much of the body of the text is made up of lovely commentary on the characters, their histories, quirks and motivations, together with the author’s opinions on the church, the newspaper industry and the legal profession. Some of that is interesting, but some is also very repetitive and long-winded, and could have been scrapped without any […]

Posted January 16, 2017 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Five self-published gems of 2013

Edit: This is my original post, reposted here because it got lost in a cyber-black-hole. Self-publishing gets a bad rap. Some wit once said: the best thing about self-publishing is that anyone can do it; and the worst thing about self-publishing is that anyone can do it. Occasionally, trawling through the endless heaps of optimistic offerings on Amazon, it seems as if half the world’s population sat down at the computer, rattled off that novel they’ve always wanted to write, and without a single further thought clicked the ‘Publish’ button. Bad spelling, bad grammar, no punctuation at all, wooden characters, trite plots… But there are authors out there who write as well as any of the big names, and better than many of them. They take the time to edit thoroughly, they add professional cover art, they take endless trouble with formatting. Their work is indistinguishable in quality from anything […]

Posted January 15, 2017 by PaulineMRoss in Archive, Ramblings, Review / 0 Comments

Pauline’s self-published gems of 2014

Edit: Reposting this which got lost in a cyber-black-hole. I read a lot of self-published books – about half my reading, both this year and last. I don’t specifically choose that, I follow my nose where books are concerned. If I like the look of a book, from reading the first few pages, I’ll give it a go. It doesn’t always work out, but I’ll try anything that’s well written and isn’t just a zombie-fest. I’ve found I’m just as likely to be happy with a self-published book as with a traditionally published one, although I confess I’m very selective. If there’s the merest hint of a grammatical error in the first chapter, that’s a no go. But there are some areas where the self-published books outshine the traditionally published ones. Here are a few ways: 1) The ebooks are usually cheaper. Self-pubbing authors have far more control over pricing, […]

Posted January 15, 2017 by PaulineMRoss in Archive, Ramblings, Review / 0 Comments

The Second God: Chapters 1-4

1: Request Ly looked up at me, his hands still working the pastry. “May I ask a favour of you, Drina?” he said, then ducked his head down again. Still diffident, even after five years of marriage. But then he was still my prisoner, officially. “You may ask,” I said, as I always did. He shot me a shy smile, the amber pendant at his throat shimmering. We were sitting in the kitchen of his suite of rooms within my apartment, me at the high table with a glass of wine, Ly sitting on the floor, one leg folded under him, the other knee bent up. His face was intent, as he concentrated on heaping fruit into the pastry circles and folding them. I loved to watch his slender fingers chopping and mixing and shaping. He was an excellent cook and he still liked to prepare food crouching on the […]

Posted January 15, 2017 by PaulineMRoss in The Second God / 1 Comment

Authors Answer 19: How did you get into writing and what made you select your genre of choice?

I didn’t exactly ‘get into’ writing. For me it was never something I just took up, in the way one might decide to take up golf or macrame or yoga. I’ve always been ‘in’ writing. At school, I loved those free-for-all creative writing exercises. Not the ‘what I did on my holidays’ dullathons, but the ‘imagine you’re a fairy’ stuff. Not that there was much of that after primary school. Secondary school was far too serious for such frivolities. So I turned to writing my own comic strips, and (later) extremely bad fan fiction, although I didn’t know then what it was. A few years later, when I lived abroad and couldn’t work, I bought a manual typewriter and bashed out most of a Regency romance. Why Regency? Because that’s what I was reading at the time, trawling methodically through the entire Georgette Heyer catalogue. For a few years, the […]

Posted January 14, 2017 by PaulineMRoss in AuthorsAnswer, Writing musings / 0 Comments

Brightmoon end of year quiz – answers!

I hope you had fun with the quiz. Here are all the answers. Any comments, objections, mistakes, etc – please feel free to post a comment or to email me. 1) The Plains of Kallanash Question 1: What was Dethin’s job when Mia first met him? A) Blacksmith B) Commander of First Section C) Eastern Warlord D) Skirmisher Answer: C) Dethin was the Eastern Warlord, with power of command over several individual sections. Bulraney was the deeply unpleasant character who was Commander of First Section when Mia first arrived there. Hurst and his companions were Skirmishers.

Posted January 8, 2017 by PaulineMRoss in Brightmoon world / 0 Comments

2016 review: Part 1: Publishing

Inspired by Chris Fox’s discussion of his 2016 self-publishing financials {link below}, I thought it would be interesting to have a look at mine, which are on a much smaller scale but perhaps more typical of small-time self-pubbers. I’ve never had a wildly successful book, but they chug along bringing in income every day. To start with, let me recap my self-pubbing career to date. I published my first epic fantasy book in September 2014, and by the end of that year, I’d made royalties of $263. Sadly, my accumulated expenses at that point were $4,000. It can be expensive self-publishing; I spent money on top quality covers, professional proofreading and paperback copies, as well as a number of books and software to help improve my writing, but virtually no promotion at that point. In 2015 I did rather better. I published three more epic fantasies, and made $12,800 royalties […]

Posted January 4, 2017 by PaulineMRoss in Publishing/marketing / 0 Comments