This week was crazy at work – I had my first session in the Main Lecture Theatre – 400 capacity, and it was pretty much full. 340, apparently. I think it was not the easiest group either – the lecturers who mostly run this cohort are struggling to control them, make them be quiet, make them stop cheating. I was running a session on plagiarism. It’s definitely the case with this new job that every new class I come into, I have to grab their attention and hold it. Normally as a teacher you do this once at the start …
Saint Justice sales page tweaks – 2020 Writing Week 6
This week I was kind of busy at work, so had less brain space for writing – but I have been on an emotional rollercoaster re- ads and the sales conversion of Saint Justice. Last Mayor rank/sales For some reason, my zombie boxset has tapered off from sales rank circa 3000 to more like 8000. I’m not sure why exactly, it seems to be selling a pretty consistent 15-20 /day just like the high times. A lot of fellow zombie box sets have dropped also, but a couple haven’t so… I up the AMS spend, try some new targeting techniques …
Saint Justice audio & more AMS trials – 2020 Writing Week 5
This week I’ve been drafting hard behind my fantastic narrator, Nick Cracknell. He finished up reading Saint Justice yesterday, and I put together a helluva edits document, with lots of re-reads, snippets to be cut out, and so forth. He finished it today. Now all that remains is for me to double-check, approve, pay, make the audiobook cover, and BOOM goes the dynamite, my first Wren thriller will be up! Wow. A month, all in. Feb will be for book 2, maybe also book 3. So exciting. And so many edits! I’m really glad Nick is game to do them. …
Repetition! Explanation! AMS Experimentation – 2020 Writing Week 3&4
Oh my word, do the lessons about my writing frailties ever end? Saint Justice edits I thought a had a bead on my tendency to run long, self-indulge and repeat myself endlessly – but actually all those lessons have come most powerfully since I edited the Last Mayor whole series. I blathered via deep-cut technobabble, repeating events from alternate perspectives and just foggy logic. That’s all gone now from the Last Mayor. But the Last Mayor edits took place after I wrote Christopher Wren 1. Oh my. Now, with the narrator reading the book and presenting it to me in …
Wren audiobook, LIA, Wren 4 – 2020 Writing Week 2
This week was my second at a new job, so it’s been tricky to find the time for writing – I got motion sickness from trying to write on the bus, and ended up nauseous for three days. Ugh, never again. To boot, the campus I’m at is right next to an airport (like two hundred yards from the runway across water) so every time a plane goes up or comes down, the air fills with the pollutant backwash of burnt jet fuel. Double ugh. But smile 🙂 I’m much better now, and the weekend is here! Wren 1 audiobook …
Polishing zombies, Wren edits for audio – 2020 Writing Week 1
I finished major edits of the Last Mayor series right on target at the end of 2019, but there were a few little bits to rework in book 1 in the first week of the new year. We had a holiday! Su and I went to Stratford on Avon for 2 nights, stayed in a great hotel with good spa facilities. Our days we spent being inspired by the Bard, our afternoons in the spa (sauna for me), our evenings editing and reading. Wonderful. A mini writing retreat. I chopped The Last a little, then put it up. Now I …
Finishing The Light edits, & a new series? – Writing Update 2019 Week 52
This week has been a full-time load of editing, with fitting in some family time in the middle. I’ve been working on the secret editing project, thinking about Wren book 4, finishing up The Last Mayor book 9 rework The Light, and ALSO dreaming up a new series. In turn: The Light rework With this last book in the Last Mayor series reworked, I have now completely rewritten the whole 9-book series! It is a pretty huge thing to do. I had it down for some future date, if I had time, spread out over years. Rather, thanks to sales …
Stopped all FB ads, ACX auditions, edits – Writing Update 2019 Week 51
The last week (almost last week of 2019!) I’ve been working on 5 things: Battling the intro and concept for Wren book 4 Reworking Last Mayor book 9 Editing a secret project (not mine – more some point later) Listening to audiobook auditions for Saint Justice Finishing up 5 years at my old job, On Campus London teaching English. I’ve also done my taxes and taken stock of ad success in the last few months. Thanks to affiliate links attached to various Facebook ads, I’ve known for some time that those ads didn’t seem to be connected very much to …
The Lies breakthrough & Wren comments – Writing Update 2019 Week 50
The Lies – For 2 weeks I’ve been struggling with my zombie book 8, The Lies – trying to figure out how to cut it so it makes sense, goes faster and captures what I wanted to do originally. Challenges standing in the way are the usuals, but in complex ways – repetition of past material, proliferation of deep tech explanations – plus something less problematic in previous books: low-stakes but high energy conflict. The central story is Amo learning who he needs to kill, setting up book 9 and the climax. There’s a lot of backstory, told live in …
Wren Bookbub, audiobooks and too much gore – Writing Update 2019 Week 47, 48, 49
On Thurs Nov 28 (Thanksgiving) I had the Bookbub for book one of the Chris Wren thriller series – Saint Justice. It was free in all markets, exclusive to KU. I never thought I’d get the BB without going wide, and was in fact planning on a wide run early in 2020, but applied while exclusive anyway on a whim. Well, they took it and ran it and now we have results – 24,000 free given away on the 28th, another 4,000 on the 29th, another 1,000 on the 30th. It held #1 position in Amazon free stores in UK, …