lost cause – Ladies of Mystery

You might think that the life of an author is all glamour and thrills, but you’d be wrong. I am looking down the barrel of a deadline and I am just not ready. My editor has already put the date back a month for me but I am still struggling. Book 3 in my series was going great guns. Things were happening, balls were in the air, juggling was going on. Nothing was going to stop me, until I got to the middle of the book. The nice shiny new was gone. The end seemed to be way too far to go. The plot was beyond my comprehension and I wanted to join my heroine in a large glass of wine.

So what do you do when you don’t want to do what you are supposed to be doing? You find something more interesting. My more interesting involved all sorts of things. Starting a diet, cooking (and if any of you knew me you’d know just how much I wanted to avoid writing if I was hanging out in the kitchen with a cook book), I started jogging again, and I decided to learn book marketing.

Can you guess which one had me running back to my half written manuscript? Yep, marketing. I’ve been buried in books on marketing, online videos, I have been wrestling with Amazon to add keywords to my books so that people can find them.

I am now in the midst of a course on how to advertise on Facebook. That is an exercise in frustration if ever there was one. I spent one evening wrestling with the Power Editor on Facebook creating an advert and nothing worked. The things I created kept disappearing. My stress levels were at maximum and the next morning I had an appointment with my doctor to get my blood pressure checked. I was shocked that it was normal because I felt like my head was going to explode.

Anyway, despite my best efforts, I am yet to crack marketing but it’s all good. For some unknown reason, whilst I was banging about screwing up everything I touched trying to give my first book away to a US audience, it took off in the UK and peaked at number two on the best sellers list in its genre. How or why that happened is still a mystery. Did someone somewhere talk it up online? Did Amazon decide to wind me up by emailing hundreds of people suggesting that they download it?

I wish I knew so that I could try and do it again. Meanwhile I have a photo of my computer screen showing how well it did and I will continue battling away trying to get a grip on book marketing. So, if you haven’t read my book…and there are millions of you…feel free to take tiptoe over to Amazon and download a copy. I need all the help I can get with this book selling lark.

You can download it at Amazon.

As an indie author, (I love that, it sounds so much more hip and cutting edge than self-published), every aspect of the publishing process for my Daisy Dunlop Mystery series is down to me. I don’t have an agent to send my work to for feedback, nor do I have an in-house editor at a publishing house. In order to work out if a book is any good, or not, I am solely reliant on the kindness and honesty of others.

As I write each of my books I’m sure they’re rubbish. The plots don’t work, the characters are out of character, the ending sucks, and on and on the never ending negativity goes. When I start out I have a vague idea of what the book is going to be about, but I’m usually a third of the way in before it even starts to make sense to me. I never have a detailed plot because I prefer my writing to be like my life, unexpected, traumatic and a never ending series of embarrassing and yet funny disasters. Honestly, I have as much fun writing the stories to find out what is going to happen as I hope readers have reading them.

I have some lovely people who critique and beta read for me, including this blogs very own Amber Foxx. These people are in my corner, and I know I can trust them to tell me when something is not working. I rewrote the end of Lost & Found because Amber said it needed more, and she was right. I also have a wonderful Greek editor, (Yep she’s Greek and her English grammar is better than mine), who edits my books at a discount for me.

My lovely Greek editor, Sotia Lazu also does my book covers, oh to be multi-talented. When this is all done, the book formatted, the blurb written, the price chosen and the book goes live I then sit and wait for an audience response. Sales of my books are never meteoric, Daisy and I console ourselves with the fact we are working on a long term plan. After Lost Cause being out for eight months I have now decided to give it away free everywhere to help Daisy get some traction. Anyway, I am now getting emails almost daily from readers.

What are they saying? Funnily enough they all like the book. Honestly! Who would have thought people who bother to email an author would be people who enjoy the book? That’s not to say they don’t have something negative to say. The people who I am now claiming as fans fall into three basic categories, ex pat Brits (all men) who love the English slang, the swearing and the feel of home my books give them. Did I mention they’re set on the South Coast of England where I grew up? The next group are UK and US readers who love everything about the book, and the third are US readers who like the story despite the slang and/or the bad language.

So, my dilemma, one group love the slang and bad language, and one group is not so keen. I read a lot of US books and some days I’m not sure they’re even written in English, but I muddle through. I have cut the slang back to just enough to give it an authentic UK feel and even my Irish PI is less Irish than any Irish person I’ve ever met. Maybe my readers will learn some new exciting phrases they can use at home. Reading is an adventure like world travel, it broadens the mind without the risk of Delhi belly and sunburn.

Language is unique in every culture, but you learn to adapt. When we first emigrated to Australia my husband had a job in Melbourne and one of the guys asked him what he wanted for smoko. My husband told him he didn’t smoke. The guy looked confused and said, “No mate do you want something for smoko?” My husband, “I don’t smoke.” The irrate dude, “Something to eat?” My husband, “Oh morning tea?” The rest of the construction crew now wetting themselves laughing at the pompous sounding Englishman.

So, I think, in Book 3 Lost Property which is still a work in progress, Daisy will have too continue swearing, just a little, and Solomon will have to keep sounding Irish. I figure if the Greek editor can muddle through and make sense of it, then the readers can work out what is going on. Besides, if you have no idea what something in a book is make it up. That’s what I do. Whenever I read the word banquette, and it comes up more often than you would think in a US book, I imagine a massive sofa with flashing lights, or a huge feast set out for a king, like a banquet but bigger…who knows what it really is? But most times I can get the plot without having to understand every US thing in the book. I dare you, come with me, download Lost Cause for free and come on a UK adventure that will show you an England you never knew existed.