Sell the sizzle not the steak in book blurbs – Writing Update 2019 Week 42

Mike GristStory Craft, Weekly Writing Update, Writing Leave a Comment

When I launched the Soul Jacker box set last week, I also took a hard look at the blurb I was using for Soul Jacker book 1.

This blurb was only a few months old. It’s a book I’ve re-blurbed multiple times. But somehow, this time around I could see how little of the ‘sizzle’ was coming through. It was all steak. Descriptive. Interesting.

Not exciting.

David Gluckman Case Study

Maybe it was doing a mentoring session with David Gluckman, inventor of Bailey’s Irish Cream, a few weeks back that helped me see this. In advance of our session I took a look at the blurb for his book – a business biography about his numerous drinks inventions – and immediately felt like it was all steak with no sizzle.

Here is what he had on Amazon (and still has at the moment) for his book That Shit Will Never Sell:

The book is about ideas, mainly in the alcoholic drinks sector. Its centrepiece is the creation of Baileys Irish Cream. It is written in a light anecdotal style and will appeal to both business people and others who are interested in the way ideas happen.

It’s apparent. It’s descriptive. It may even be interesting, but it certainly is not exciting. Now, this is non-fiction, so exciting doesn’t have to be about conflict. As a business book, it should make me feel excited to learn something new. I’m getting the lowdown on the inside track.

I started kicking around a new blurb in my head. Develop an instant conflict. Pump it up with superlatives. If we can learn anything from Trump, it’s that people respond to confidence and authority. Here’s what I came up with:

The untold battle for Bailey’s Irish Cream (and other classic drinks brands) by a visionary drinks supremo.

4 billion bottles sold across 230 countries. A product family 15 layers deep. A brand emblazoned into the global consciousness – and in 1973, when neophyte drinks entrepreneur David Gluckman brewed Baileys Irish Cream from the ground up, the investors said:

“That sh*t will never sell.”

They were wrong.

This iconic business autobiography is crammed with delightful anecdotes, jaw-dropping drinks photography and the inside story of a dozen famous drinks brand – telling in loving, laugh-filled detail the unexpected story of David Gluckman’s rise from drinks dreamer to global alcohol impresario.

Learn:

  • How to keep faith and earn buy-in when doubters pour scorn on your creativity.
  • When to push hard in a pitch and when to ease back and take a critique.
  • How to shepherd your idea through the gauntlet of the modern business machine.

It starts off with conflict and secrecy using evocative language. It pumps up the authority of the author. It makes sense of that title (That shit will never sell), and adds powerful adjectives. It adds the Learn list, which I believe is common in these kinds of business titles.

So, this was the marketing department (that part of my brain) at work. I figured, if it can do this for someone else’s book, why not my own? Pump my blurbs up with steroids. Make them exciting. Everyone else is doing it, so why not me?

Soul Jacker Case Study:

So here is the old (pretty recent) blurb for Soul Jacker:

“MJG proves that cyberpunk is alive and kicking.” – Michael Marshall Smith, bestselling SF author.
“Superb – a Fantastic Voyage into the soul.” – Pat Mills, creator of 2000AD featuring Judge Dredd.
2364. A terrified girl flees a brutal slumlord…
It’s been a long time since Ritry risked his sanity on a deep-brain Soul-jack. Once renowned for hacking the most lethal minds, now he peddles cheap memory implants on the neon-lit slums of the Arctic Circle – staying out of trouble, mostly.
Then a terrified girl bolts into his jack-site, seeking a unique brain-hack to escape Don Zachary, the vicious slumlord. Ritry’s no hero, but he won’t stand by while another innocent dies.
Yet the Don does not forgive. Hounded from the slums, Ritry flees into the forgotten ruins of the old world, only to find a far crueler predator lying in wait, one with a dark taste for living Souls – plunging Ritry into one last desperate jack with the Souls of all humanity on the line…

On reflection, I feel it’s lacking in sizzle. The opening quotes are nice but not 11 out of 10. The opening paragraph is fair, though opening with ‘It’s been a long time…’ hints at long waits, which is slow and dull. It ends with a hint of a kicker (staying out of trouble, mostly…), but paragraph 2 (Then a terrified girl…) does not really carry that kicker on.

The enemy is a slumlord? OK, but not fascinating. Humdrum SF crime, maybe. It’s implied that Ritry helps the girl. So what? What’s at stake?

In paragraph 3 things compound. Maybe they get confusing. It was a slumlord, now it’s a crueler predator? It’s too many steps. Slumlord, and Ritry does this, then predator, and Ritry does this…

So let’s simplify, clarify, pump it up, and re-serve:

The Complete Acclaimed Soul Jacker Trilogy in One Box Set! Ferocious new SF – bristling with razor-bright ideas and action.

Once the greatest of the Soul Jackers – shock marines deployed to hijack pivotal enemy minds – Ritry now peddles cheap memory implants on the neon-lit slums of the Arctic Circle – staying out of trouble, mostly.

But trouble is stalking him. On a drunken night out at the slum’s floating edge, Ritry stumbles upon a bizarre murder scene staged just for him. The killer calls himself Mr. Ruin, a long-lived cannibal of souls, and threatens to eat Ritry’s soul alive if he won’t attempt an impossible heist – stealing a mythical weapon from the no-man’s-land of the inner mind

Now Ritry must plunge into the most dangerous jack ever, racing both the murderous Mr. Ruin and the terminal defenses of the inner mind, with the souls of all humanity hanging in the balance…

“If you’re a fan of Stephenson and Gibson, you must read Soul Jacker!” – Pat Mills, creator of 2000AD featuring Judge Dredd.

Right from the off, we’ve got power words that say the story will be 11/10. Ferocious. Bristling. Razor-bright. Paragraph 1 is the same except it has shock marines, hijack, pivotal. Paragraph 2 is a complete change – the girl is gone, the slumlord is gone, we’re straight in picking up the kicker (Trouble is stalking him). We go fast to ‘cannibal of the soul’ – pretty wacky.

People may balk, since they don’t know what that is, but I can’t explain everything. The words will have to explain enough. Intrigue is it’s own hook, and there’s more of it with the murder scene staged just for him. Why?

Then we go direct to stakes. This is what Ruin wants – a heist to get a weapon from the lethal inner mind. This is what he’ll do to Ritry – eat his soul. All done by the end of paragraph 2, forming a clear kicker: what will Ritry do?

We zip to paragraph 3 – Ritry takes on both, Ruin and the inner mind, and the stakes get bigger – not just his soul but everyone’s.

Then the quote – mentioning Stephenson and Gibson here, in Pat Mills’ words, is surely the most impactful. This is what readers need to know.

So, sizzle!

What do you think? I feel it’s better than ever. Punchier. More aggressive. Cleaner, and more gripping as a blurb.

I can do this for you too. Check out my mentoring page.

The astounding binge power of book box sets – Writing Update 2019 Week 41

Mike GristWeekly Writing Update, Writing Leave a Comment

Some hard talk to start – and one possible reason I stopped the Weekly Writing Updates 24 weeks (half a year!) ago:

My big Soul Jacker relaunch failed.

No point beating around the bush. It hurt at the time – like any setback. I’d spent a lot of time rewriting this trilogy which I first wrote in 2014/15 – paid for developmental editing, got new covers, labored for the 5th year on the blurb. I got amazing testimonials from top authors in the game (Michael Marshall Smith!, Pat Mills!) built a hell of a promo stack around a Bookbub New Release deal, dropped thousands on Facebook and Bookbub ads, and…

Nothing.

Despite selling over 1,000 copies in launch week, Amazon didn’t pick up the book and push it to their readers. There was no post-launch bounce. It climbed as long as I spent money, then it disappeared.

Ugh. What to do?

Well, retreat into a cave and write seemed a good idea, so that’s what I did – writing two Chris Wren thrillers and re-working 3 of my zombie books. Now I emerge from the other side freshly invigorated, like a beautiful butterfly freed from its spun-silk cocoon, to fly high as the mountains on gossamer winds of inspiration.

And the truth that has finally set me free?

Box Sets

In particular, one box set. I’m wary. I’m branching out. But hands down my most successfull book, which currently makes double the money for whatever ad spend I put into it, is my Box Set books 1-9 of the Last Mayor series.

I’d been planning to do this for ages. It seemed like a 20% activity though – fiddly busywork not likely to yield any real return. There were no books after this to go onto. Discounting it wouldn’t help.

Except.

There are so many complete box sets in the zombie genre right now, many 9 books and longer, that it’s hard to look competitive without doing this. And those other bumper box set? They’re predominantly on sale at the perma-low price of 99c/p.

This makes no sense. I get that. When I launched my set I did a Countdown down for 7 days to 99c/p, to try it out. It went well. Nice boost in rank, page reads, a good number of sales. It took me a few weeks more to take the plunge and drop the price perma-low to 99.

It’s been there for a month now. Sales are through the roof. 60 copies a day is standard. Page reads steadily climb as I steadily inch ad spend up. Currently something like 14,000 pages a day. That’s amazing, and by far my biggest earner.

The reason is pretty apparent. A 9-book box set just looks like phenomenal value. Drop that to 99c/p, and people are just predisposed to click BUY. It’s a steal. Combine that with streaming culture, where folks are accustomed to Netflix binge a whole series in a weekend, and surely this is where we are all going?

Who wants to mess around picking up book by book, each one with it’s own nuisance charge? Of course Kindle Unlimited is a way around this, Amazon’s own ‘streaming’ free read program, but there are still plenty of people who aren’t in that who want to ‘stream’ a whole season in one go.

A 9-book box set will do that. It scratches an itch. And with all the competition doing it, it’s becoming the price of entry. but it’s no price – I’ve never regularly sold this much, day on day.

So I want to expand this. Next up for the treatment is Soul Jacker. Maybe this series which has been a hole in my heart for so long can finally find an audience as a perma-low box set? Lower the barrier to entry far enough, and people may start climbing on board.

We can only hope. Fingers crossed. Here we go.

Chris Wren 3, Last Mayor Rewrites & Mentoring – Writing Update 2019 week 39 & 40

Mike GristWeekly Writing Update, Writing Leave a Comment

Hoo boy.

It has been 24 weeks since I last updated this writing blog! What have I been doing?

  • Wrote book 3 of the Chris Wren thrillers, Reparation.
  • Substantially rewrote and released book 4 of the Last Mayor series, The Loss.
  • Just now (an hour ago) got done rewriting book 5 of the Last Mayor series, The List.
  • Mentored another writer on marketing 1-1.
  • Spoke to a writer’s group on marketing.
  • Released books 1-3 of the Chris Wren thrillers.
  • Ramped up Facebook and Amazon ad spend such that I’m now making around $40 profit a day.
  • Put all the Last Mayor books together in a box set, dropped the overall price to 99c (!!) and am now selling 60 copies a day with 10,000 pages read (my main earner).

A lot of crazy stuff there.

With Chris Wren, I’m not doing any advertising right now, with book 1 wide and hoping for a Bookbub. If it doesn’t come, I’ll go back in KU and ramp up ad spend for a while, until I try Bookbub again in a few months.

With the Last Mayor, I’ll keep on rewriting the books through the series. More on that now:

Rewriting the Last Mayor

I finished the series with book 9 18 months ago. Honestly, I thought I was done. Through that time I ran some ads to book 1, then to books 1-3, but didn’t get great take-up. Then, on a whim and after looking at what competing zombie authors were doing, I put all books into a 9-book box set.

Boom. Sales rose. Reads rose. I had it at $9.99 and I was getting organic sales, without any ad spend. I turned some ads on, it got a little better. I figured, fine. Go 99c and keep it there, see if page reads increase.

They have. I’m stunned. It’s a great value proposition. 60 sales a day keeps the book at a decent ranking, which helps KU readers pick it up, which helps with page reads, which helps with rank.

I’m slowly increasing ad spend. At the same time, I’ve been rewriting. A year ago I rewrote books 1-3. They were the biggest drop-off points in series readthrough to start with. Remember I did that poll?

Book 1 was biggest drop-off. Then book 3. Then book 5.

It’s funny, because all the books get good reviews. Yet readthrough to book 9 is sub-10%. Maybe sub-5%. Poor.

Why? I asked people. Reasons involved repetitiveness, slowness, too many dream sequences, too much tech babbling, too much violence.

I know how to fix that. I sped up book 1 first with a new opener, less dreaming and navel-gazing, and fewer interruptions – with a new epilogue directly teasing book 2. 2 got most of its dream sequences removed, along with the Interludes gone completely. 3 lost a massive chunk of far-back backstory, with a faster start and cleaner tech.

4 I knew was a beast. Lots of tech, lots of backstory. Much of that is now gone. It was 100,000 words. Now it is 70,000. Mostly that was backstory in the Interludes – all gone. Repetition gone. Dreams gone. It is way faster and cleaner now.

5 I just finished, from 90,000 down to 60,000! It’s fine. Many long dream sequences that could easily be summed up as ‘Anna had a nightmare’. Done. Tech stuff simplified. Backstory bits sped right up and trimmed.

Phew. It means fewer pages, but I’m hoping people with stick with it.

Is that happening? Well – I got a review recently saying ‘books 1-3 sped along manically, then at book 4 it slowed right down.’ This person read the new version of books 1-3, but the old version of 4-6. Pretty telling.

Now it should be full speed ahead through 1-5 at least. At some point I’ll tackle 6-9. A lot of violence and tech stuff to thin out. I’m up to the job. But first I need to-

Write Wren book 4

This is the next big thing. My goal should probably be to get it done by the end of the year. I’m not feeling a lot of pressure though, as it’s still early in the series. It’s only been 3 months since book 1 came out, and there are already 3. Few people will have read all the way through. I’ve got time.

& Mentoring

This is a thing I’ve been toying with for ages. Do I know enough? Do I sell enough? I don’t have a unique gimmick – one thing I’m an expert in. I just follow best practises of the experts. But maybe I could be an expert.

I gave the talk this week to the Tufnell Park Society of Authors group, and the section that was perhaps most engaging and best received was about ‘knowing your genre’ with regard to covers. I’ve got lots of experience in this area. as a photographer and designer of my own covers, I know a thing or two about this. Add that to blurbs, and you’ve got the essential marketing package.

Maybe I could be an expert on that. Write a calling card book – ‘Know your genre.’ Lots of cool examples. Misfires. A deep understanding kind of thing.

I’ve got a mentoring session today with a real-world marketing pro. I’m doing the mentoring. It will be interesting to say the least. Also gathering some testimonials for when I get round to making a dedicated page:

“Mike’s presentation on self-publishing for the Tufnell Park Writers was brilliant. Some of us are complete beginners, others know more about the topic, a few have self-published – but everyone found the session a complete eye-opener. We all gained a new appreciation about the wealth of digital technologies and services out there, and how to make them work for you as an author. I appreciated Mike’s easy-going, clear, and jargon-free teaching approach, but especially his openness: he was unflinching in answering questions about money (e.g. “How much did that cover design cost you?”), generous with details about some of his mistakes along the way, and candid about the pros and cons of different service providers. Probably the best session our group has had since it started.”

– Andrew Wilson, author of Translators on Translating: Inside the Invisible Art

“Michael Grist is a powerhouse of knowledge and energy when it comes to indie publishing, and in particular to marketing. His knowledge comes from his own experience as an indie author and in our one-hour session he was able to lead me carefully through the process of setting up an email list, together with reader magnet and landing page and all that jazz. He is patient and understanding especially when it comes to techie stuff. There is nothing like a one-to-one tutorial as we are all at different stages when it comes to marketing and IT expertise, and Michael seems to understand algorithms as much as they are humanly understandable. He also makes sure he keeps up to date with the latest goings-on at Amazon etc.”

– Patsy Trench, author and scriptwriter for TV, radio and theatre, co-founder of The Children’s Musical Theatre of London,

Pretty sweet. I’d love to run workshops for larger numbers, get a pro room with decent wifi and no distractions. Maybe in the future.

A Shadow Intelligence by Oliver Harris – Review

Mike GristReviews, Thriller Leave a Comment

Get on Amazon

As a big fan of Oliver Harris’s Nick Belsey police thrillers, I came to this book loaded for bear, expecting a rollicking ride in the grips of a dark hero operating on the fringes of legality/lethality. I ended up getting scooped up and swallowed whole. Damn, Harris knows what he is talking about, and damn if he doesn’t stream that knowledge hard and fast through a sniper’s ricocheting trickshot of a plot.

We begin with MI6 agent Eliot Kane, man of many identities and worlds, getting pulled from a mission and furloughed in London for reasons unknown – in the midst of which he receives a mysterious video file showing some CGI-rendered deep fake of himself appearing in a place he’s never been and meeting someone he’s never before seen – sent by his spy ex-girlfriend who’s now gone missing.

Damn. Kane slips his MI6 handlers, activates protocols to go dark for a while, and absconds to Kazakhstan – where his ex-gf was last seen and where the footage came from. Thus begins the Belsey-esque pinballing of Kane between his multiple cover identities past, present and future, between private and government intelligence agencies, state actors, environmental groups and more, following the trail of his deep-fake mock-up and his ex-gf, who of course was mixed up in something bigger and scarier than anyone expected.

I know for a fact that Harris went to Kazakhstan and drank deep from the local experiential trough – the details he parses out throughout this story are utterly convincing, and when combined with the level of tradecraft on display I’m starting to think Harris the author is actually a deepfake of himself, covering for a spy identity unveiling his cryptic, fast-moving world for us norms to see.

The storyline races at a hectic pace as Kane pursues his off-book investigations throughout the Kazakh capital Astana, all the while trying to keep MI6 off his back and unpuzzle the threat his own deepfake image poses to him, to his ex-gf, and who knows, maybe the world? The writing is spare when it needs to be, full-bodied when we’re ready for more, and deeply in command of the facts.

If you like Belsey this is definitely for you. If you like Fleming, Le Carre and Rankin this is for you – but come loaded with heavy-gauge munitions and be ready to dance – you’re in for a helluva ride.

Get it here – https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Intelligence-Oliver-Harris-ebook/dp/B07JL2TDNR

Writing Update 2019 week 15 & 16

Mike GristWeekly Writing Update, Writing Leave a Comment

Hardly anything has happened with my writing in the last 2 weeks – it’s all been focused on getting Soul Breaker (Soul Jacker book 2) ready to go out the door, then Soul Killer to follow it. Now Soul Breaker is out, Soul Jacker is up to full price at $2.99, and I am still tallying up sales…

Otherwise, as I finish up the third pass on Soul Killer, I’m also looking ahead to my new incarnation as a thriller writer. I’m reading thrillers and studying their covers and blurbs to get a better idea how to market what I already have.

It is absolutely all about marketing in this crazy old world. It is a wonderful thing to ‘write from the heart’ as I heard somebody on a podcast say, but it is very hard that way to reach people. As much as we all clamor about wanting something original from Hollywood, we really don’t.

We want something just like something we already liked – maybe with small changes. We like the same stories set in the same worlds told in the same ways. That’s people. To tell them stories they want to hear, you have to harness your ‘writing from the heart’ to a frame they already love.

I’m applying this lesson wholeheartedly to my thrillers. They do crazy things, but so much of them is familiar. As the writer I amped up the uniqueness. As the marketer it’s my job to take some of those edges off and present them in a familiar, yet exciting way.

Let’s get it on. Updates on this to come!

Writing Update 2019 week 13 & 14

Mike GristMarketing, Soul Jacker, Weekly Writing Update Leave a Comment

It’s been an overwhelming week with the launch of Soul Jacker. I’ve sold more books faster than ever before, got influencer testimonials like never before, and heard back from readers like never before.

  • Yesterday I hit 1,000 sales
  • 2 major influencer plus 2 medium influencer testimonials
  • Reports from all readers that they couldn’t put the book down

SALES

I looked back at my track record to get some sense of perspective here – The Saint’s Rise, which was my next most successful launch and itself also a relaunch of an earlier title, sold 800 books in the first 4 weeks. Some 500 of those were at 99c when I was pushing it hard, and the next 300 came at full price of $4.99.

I lost money in the first week’s promo. By 4 weeks, with some 100,000 page reads on top, I’d made my best profit yet. Along the way I got the attention of Amazon and they kept the book selling, I presume with recommendation emails to their hordes of shoppers. I ‘tickled the algorithm’.

Have I achieved that this time? Only time will tell. I have sold 1,050 copies at 99c in the first week, holding bestseller ranks on both the US and UK store in various categories the whole time. Page reads are minimal thus far.

I spent a whopping $1700 to achieve this. $400 on a Bookbub New Release ad which brought in maybe 300 sales over 2/3 days, $1000 on Facebook ads which brought in another 300, $200 on Bookbub ads which brought in none (grrr…), and the rest on promo emails that brought the remainder.

It’s a long way to go into the red – but then this is the launch of a fast-release trilogy, and it needs to be as big as I can make it. I’m actually all out of budget now, so have dialled all ads down and am hopeful Amazon recommendation emails will start firing out today or tomorrow. Either way, I’m confident enough people will read and enjoy this book then go on to buy books 2 and 3 to push me into profit.

And if Amazon does recommend it? The sky is the limit, really.

INFLUENCER TESTIMONIALS

I never thought I’d get anything, when a few months back I sent out requests to fellow authors, some major and some medium, to take a look at my book and offer a blurb. I was amazed as several responded.

  • Pat Mills, creator of legendary British SF comic 2000AD which featured Judge Dredd, called Soul Jacker ‘Superb, a Fantastic Voyage into the Soul.’
  • Michael Marshall Smith, bestselling SF author of ‘Only Forward’ said ‘MJG proves that cyberpunk is alive and kicking.’
  • Leland Lydecker, author of ‘Necrotic City’ called it ‘one of the most unusual and thought-provoking cyberpunk novels out there.’
  • Cameron Coral, author of ‘Altered’, called it ‘Mind-bending cyberpunk. An incredible start to a new series.’

That’s pretty phenomenal, considering I’ve never had a testimonial before. 4 at once! And all for this book which has only ever sputtered like a damp firework in 5 years of attempts to market it.

Why the change? I think it comes down to the changes to the book and marketing package I made, which in turn come down to the ways I’ve learned to see a book from the readers’ perspective.

READER REPORTS

Readers have said they’re loving it. They can’t put it down. Before, people did not say that about this book – praise was qualified by how confusing the book was, how difficult the concepts were to follow, how it dragged in places.

I think I’ve been looking at story and narrative in a cleaner way recently, probably since writing my thrillers. I read my own work with a view to what readers will think as they read it. Will they get this? Will they put up with this much exposition on the route to something exciting?

Many of my early books I wrote with only myself in mind. I can’t get upset about this – it was the only way I knew how to write. I just wrote. I didn’t know what would go over well or not. Now I’ve got a feeling. When I edit, I can feel for the first time where the reader will start to switch off – and I know what to do to fix it.

Usually it’s cut and simplify. Align the words on the page with forward movement along the line of narrative thrust. Make it exciting, not interesting. Concepts get a few lines of explanation and that’s all. They can’t stack on top of each other – they have to come interspersed with movement.

Beyond that – it’s not enough that readers get through the book and feel satisfied. I think all my books do that – there’s plenty to fill up the reader’s brain. Too much. I need them lean and mean and wanting more. They don’t just find the book interesting, they really enjoy it. It’s an experience they want more of.

I think I’m getting better at delivering that. That’s exciting. Craft is what it all comes down to, really, though marketing is essential. I always want to make the best book I can. Fingers crossed not only Amazon will start sending out recommendations soon, but also readers will do the same, letting their friends know about this new book they read called Soul Jacker.

Time will tell. I’ll be here with the report when it does.

Soul Jacker is out!

Mike GristSoul Jacker, Writing Leave a Comment

After a year of rewriting Soul Jacker is finally out, and on sale for just $0.99 in launch week, so pick it up now!

I’m far too excited about this launch. Hard to sleep. Jittery. I should stop drinking coffee as I’m already wired enough! With 2 stellar testimonials from giants in the field, it’s drawing more attention than I’ve ever had before.

REVIEWS

“Superb – a Fantastic Voyage into the soul. Grist has produced a taut, clever cyberthriller that messes with your mind. Blending hard science, metaphysics and high-octane action, SoulJacker had me gripped from the start. If you’re a fan of Stephenson and Gibson, and you love interweaving narratives that keep you guessing, you must read Soul Jacker.”

– Pat Mills, creator of 2000AD featuring Judge Dredd.

“With head-turning ideas and tight prose, MJG proves that cyberpunk is alive and kicking – and going fascinating new places.”

– Michael Marshall Smith, bestselling SF author of ‘Only Forward’ and ‘Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence’.

Pat Mills! Michael Marshall Smith! Go get your copy now ;)!

Soul Jacker review from Michael Marshall Smith!

Mike GristMarketing, Soul Jacker, Writing Leave a Comment

This is immense news for my author career, as well as being an amazing personal accomplishment that I probably was distantly dreaming of 20-odd years back, when actually writing and publishing novels seemed very far away.

I gulped down Michael Marshall Smith’s novels back then: Only Forward, Spares and One of Us. I loved them. Re-reading them recently, I’ve come to realize how much his work has influenced my own writing. Soul Jacker definitely owes a debt to Only Forward. There are certainly similarities – in tone at times, in world, in the concept of hacking into a mind/dreams.

So I was amazed when Michael Marshall Smith replied with interest after I reached out to him about Soul Jacker. He didn’t usually read and give blurbs, he said, but my book description grabbed his attention so he would give it a go.

I sent the book a month back and waited with bated breath. 2 weeks passed and I reached out – he said he was 20% through and enjoying it. 2 more weeks passed and I reached out again – no response. 3 days went by and I thought I’d blown it – then he came back with a quote!

This is awesome. It’s on my amazon page already. I’m making ads to incorporate it. It’s kind of a dream come true – and all for this book which, as Mr. Ruin, went nowhere, sold no copies and has only lost me money hand over fist in new edits, covers and failed marketing bids.

I think this time is the charm. Here’s what Michael Marshall Smith had to say:

“With head-turning ideas and tight prose, MJG proves that cyberpunk is alive and kicking – and going fascinating new places.”

It’s short and sweet. Alive and kicking! Here’s the Bookbub ad I’m going to run in a few days:

Only 3 days ’til launch!

I’m excited to start running the ads. For the first time ever I’ve got some real, authoritative social proof, and it feels great.

Michael Marshall Smith’s ‘Only Forward’

Mike GristBook / Movie Reviews, Reviews Leave a Comment

I first read Only Forward 20 years ago when I was 18, shortly after it came out. Now I’m 38 and just reread it, and it blew me away just as much as it did back then. For a debut it is phenomenal. For any book it is phenomenal – there is just SO MUCH STUFF in it, all of it cool, fascinating, prescient – I highlighted a section and got my wife to read it too and it made us both smile – about a tablet screen that shows where you are on a map and gives you directions and flashes up relevant information with little beacons. Published in 1994. Come on!

It’s about a badass detective type of noir sci-fi guy Stark, whose snark is worse than his bite, who we get to see in 3 sort of incarnations. First up is the City, superb sci-fi following the puzzle of a kidnapped ‘Actioneer’. Michael Marshall Smith (MMS) whizzes us around various Neighborhoods, like Colour and Cat and Turn and Idyll and others, all of which contain people who live for certain things and certain things only. Colour is fashion. Turn is, uh, violence? Idyll is peace and calm. Cat is cats. Etc..

It’s a great premise and great fun to whomp around in. Then at the midpoint things shift dramatically. We leave the City and enter Stark’s area of true expertise, the mind. There’s a whole bucket load of cool, dreamy stuff in here. It goes fantasy, kind of, and spiritual dream wandery, and what we might call litRPG these days. The pace may slow a little, the horror grows pretty nauseating and we do spend a lot of time questing, but it’s all inventive and it holds me through.

Finally, we get the third story – I won’t lay it out as that would be a major spoiler – it’s more a short story than a novel-sized section, but it serves as the spine of everything that came before, gives us Stark’s backstory, and connects both the previous story-halves to the real world in a way that kind of presaged everything MMS (and Michael Smith and Michael Rutger – the author’s latter incarnations) would go on to write: fantasy, sci-fi, and how these things underlie ‘real’ reality like dreams beneath a frozen wave.

A major trip. I love it. As another reviewer on Amazon said – I’ll leave it another 20 years and reread. There’s so much here I probably didn’t fully grasp the first time round – like Stark’s world-weary comments on his own life choices, displaying some real understanding of ‘the human condition’. I look forward to it – and in the meantime, I’ll be picking up One of Us for sure to reread, then moving on to Hannah Green, and pretty much the rest of MMS/MS/MR’s ouevre.

Read it now, and then 20 years later too!

Writing Update 2019 week 11 & 12

Mike GristIgnifer Cycle, Marketing, Weekly Writing Update, Writing Leave a Comment

Another 2 weeks gone, and I’ve been hard at work setting up my:

I was also lucky enough to get that awesome blurb from Lisa and Pat Mills.

So what else has been going on? I’m in the run up to tomorrow’s US 99c Bookbub on The Saint’s Rise. Today it’s a BargainBooksy promotion. For the past few days I’ve been ramping up my Facebook ads- $70 today. I also set up AMS and Bookbub ads, but they don’t spend…

I hope today it sells 100 copies. Well below 10k rank, maybe sub-5k? That might be too ambitious. Then tomorrow I want the Bookbub to blast it into the top 100. I don’t know how likely that is. Have I ever achieved that before? I’m not sure, but probably not… I’ve been in top 100 free for sure. I had the Bookbub 2 years back on my zombie series box set.

But paid? Sub-100 would be amazing. The goal will be the same for Soul Jacker in a week. I have way more promos lined up, plus I’ll run the rest of my budget on ads.

How much have I got in the tank? Two months ago the writing account had 3,000 GBP in it. I spent about 700 on my big FB ad experiment, at least 1,000 setting up these Bookbubs and other promos, and also some 600 on editing, with another hundred or so on covers and art.

Maybe 500 left now. That’ll go into FB ads for Soul Jacker, to juice it before the Bookbub New Release. I’ll keep you apprised!