Category: Writing musings

Plotting for pantsers

Most authors like to plot a book out before they start to write. For some, that may be a couple of A4 sheets of scribbled notes. For others, it will be so detailed that it includes every chapter and scene, including lists of characters present and what happens, with a huge pile of background notes on characters, places, research, historical data and so on. The advantage is that when they come to write, they can focus on the words and not have to keep stopping to work out what happens next. The disadvantage is that a tightly plotted book can feel over-contrived and artificial. And then there are pantsers. What’s a pantser? An author who writes by the seat of her pants, that’s what. A pantser sits down with a blank sheet of paper (metaphorically, because almost everyone writes direct to computer these days), maybe a character or two and […]

Posted March 6, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Current writings, The Second God, Writing musings / 0 Comments

Writing to market: or, can I make money self-publishing?

There’s a lot of discussion amongst authors about whether it’s possible to make any money from writing books. Pundits suck their teeth and shake their heads and stroke their chins in gloom. Typical advances for a deal with a traditional publisher are only a few thousand, we hear, even if you’re lucky enough to get any offer at all. The average book sells only 500 copies, ever. Even modest successes sell only a few thousand in the book’s lifetime. So self-publishing is the way to go, right? That lovely 70% royalty that Amazon offers – there must be money to made there, surely. More chin-stroking and tut-tutting ensues. Self-publishers, they’ll tell you, fight for visibility in the vast, shark-infested ocean of Amazon and what about average sales of a self-published book? Just 100. Ever. The classic advice is: think of it as a hobby. Well, rubbish. Can you make money […]

Posted February 21, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Publishing/marketing, Writing musings / 0 Comments

2016 strategy part 2: launches and promotions

I talked in part 1 about my writing and publishing career to date, and my writing plans for 2016. This time, I want to talk about the other half of the writing/publishing equation, which is launching and promotion, or telling the world your books exist. There’s a lot of talk about marketing strategies and building a platform and the value of blog tours or Facebook boosts or whatever. However, the only truly effective measure I’ve found has been paid promotion via mailing list sites. The most effective ones included Ereader News Today, One Hundred Free Books, Book Barbarian, Robin Reads, FreeBooksy/BargainBooksy, Booksends and Free Kindle Books and Tips. Both discounted books (setting the price to 99c) and free worked well. Having a mailing list is reputed to be a good way to boost a new book launch, by setting the book to a special low price for a day or […]

Posted January 7, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in General, Publishing/marketing, Writing musings / 0 Comments

2016 strategy part 1: Writing

January 2016 sees me enter my seventeenth month as a self-publisher. To date, I have four books published, the fifth is imminent and the sixth is written in first draft form. The seventh is already taking shape in my head. All of these are part of the Brightmoon Annals world, a connected series of (mostly) stand-alone books. There is also a new project, tentatively entitled the Allamont Annals, a series of Regency romances. The first of these is almost finished. In 2015, I wrote 318,000 words. In terms of sales, the books have had some modest success. Total sales 4,000, borrows 2,000 and over a million pages read. This is nowhere near bestseller status, but it’s satisfying to know that there are complete strangers out there who read and enjoy the books. In addition, I’ve given away more than 20,000 copies for free. But now that I’ve worked out how […]

Posted January 5, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Current writings, Regency romances, The Dragon's Egg, The Fire Mages' Daughter, Writing musings / 0 Comments

Authors Answer 3: How difficult do you find it to write characters who have vastly different beliefs than you?

I find this a slightly odd question. Any author of fiction is going to be writing characters who are very different from themselves in scores of ways. I’ve written characters who are male, good with a sword, live in multi-couple marriages, rule a nation, can ride a horse, summon eagles or speak many languages, none of which can be said of me. And then there’s magic: my characters can spout fire from their fingertips, bend metal with mental power, manipulate emotions in other people and read memories. Their beliefs are the least of it. As far as religious belief goes, my world has a slightly uneasy relationship with it, since one group of people likes to use religion as a tool: to keep the population under control, or to disseminate a useful idea. And they create religions wholesale, simply making up gods and mythology and rituals, as it suits them. […]

Posted December 10, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in AuthorsAnswer, Brightmoon world, Writing musings / 0 Comments

Authors Answer 1: If you could design your dream writing studio/office, what would it be like?

A little over a year ago, blogger Jay Dee Archer, of the I Read Encyclopedias For Fun blog, had an idea: why not gather together an eclectic bunch of authors and ask them to answer an interesting question every week? And so Authors Answer was born. I discovered it rather late in the day, but when Erica Dakin, of the Theft And Sorcery blog, and author of the raunchy fantasy trilogy of the same name, decided to revive the questions to answer on her own blog, I thought – why not do the same? So here goes: the first Authors Answer question is: Question 1: If you could design your dream writing studio/office, what would it be like? The study I have is pretty close, actually. It already has space for a nice big desk and plenty of bookcases. It has a big picture window looking out to the Moray […]

Posted November 21, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in AuthorsAnswer, Writing musings / 0 Comments

The work-in-progress blog tour: The Mines of Asharim

Yes, folks, it’s another of those fun blog tour thingies. The rules: link back to the previous blog post, then describe your current work in progress, with the openings of the first three chapters, and finally tag another author blog to carry things onwards. So, just another excuse to talk about writing… You can blame Marina Finlayson for this one. She’s the author of Twiceborn, an urban fantasy featuring both werewolves and dragons (yay for dragons!). It’s also cool that it’s set in Sydney, which makes a refreshing change from London or various US cities. You can read her blog post here. My current work-in-progress is called The Mines of Asharim. It features a young woman escaping from traumatic events, trying to find a refuge. What she finds instead is far more powerful, and sets her on a path to restoring her people’s fortunes. It’s set in another part of […]

Posted March 9, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in The Magic Mines of Asharim, Writing musings / 0 Comments

Happy New Year!

The turn of the year is a time for looking both back and forwards. This is probably the forty seventh you’ve read, so to keep it brief, here’s a quick summary of my year: Memorable events of 2014 (good and bad): I published a book! ‘The Plains of Kallanash’ went live on 12th September 2014. [Kind of a roller-coaster, but mostly good] I learned that when you spend time writing, you get less reading done. [Bad] I taught myself the 400 steps necessary to obtain an EIN from Uncle Sam to avoid withholding tax on my book royalties (ha! If only…), which involves dancing naked with unicorn feathers and the sacrifice of one’s first-born (sorry, James, but needs must), not to mention visiting the American Embassy in London, which is almost as far from here as it’s possible to get without falling into the ocean. And then the system was […]

Posted January 2, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in General, Writing musings / 0 Comments

Writing process blog hop

I don’t normally do these things, where you get mentioned on someone’s blog and you are asked to pay it forward by mentioning several other blogs. It always seems a bit like those chain letters, or a blog version of pyramid selling. But recently this blog hop came to H. Anthe Davis’s rather splendid blog, wherein she describes in astonishing detail all aspects of her created world, as seen in her ‘War of Memory’ series. And you know what? This particular blog hop is rather fun. The only requirement is to talk about your own writing process, and mention three other writers you admire. What could be easier? Who doesn’t like talking about themselves? So here goes. 1. What am I currently working on? I have four books on the go at the moment, at different stages. 1) ‘The Plains of Kallanash’: epic fantasy with a strong romance element, set […]

Posted August 2, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Current writings, Writing musings / 10 Comments

Writing progress report: third book finished

So another one bites the dust. Today I typed ‘The End’ on ‘The Mages of Bennamore’, the third epic fantasy set in the Brightmoon world. Because I like statistics, here are some numbers for the three books for comparison: Book 1: ‘The Plains of Kallanash’ Elapsed writing time: 1 year Total days of writing: 190 Total words: 220,000 Average words per writing day: 1,100 Chapters: 58 Book 2: ‘The Fire Mages’ Elapsed writing time: 5 months Total days of writing: 90 Total words: 151,000 Average words per writing day: 1,700 Chapters: 44 Book 3: ‘The Mages of Bennamore’ Elapsed writing time: 7 months Total days of writing: 119 Total words: 157,000 Average words per writing day: 1,300 Chapters: 44 This third book is much the same size as the second, but it took 7 months overall instead of 5 months, largely because I was also working on revising ‘The Plains […]

Posted July 27, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Current writings, The Fire Mages, The Mages of Bennamore, The Plains of Kallanash, Writing musings / 4 Comments