August 5, 2024

Happy August! Lughnasadh blessings

August is here. The first of August, known as Lughnasadh to Pagans, or Lammas to Christians, is traditionally the start of the harvest growing season. This weekend there were a few events to celebrate Lughnasadh in Belfast.

Traditional dancing from various cultures

Yesterday, the Feile na Habhann, or Festival of the River took place in Belfast. This was a family friendly event of traditional music, dancing from a variety of different cultures, activities for kids and our little dude’s favourite – the touch tank from Exploris aquarium at Portaferry. The activities took place along the Lagan Walkway in Belfast between Ormeau and Lanyon Place station alongside the River Lagan.

A rare blue lobster from Exploris aquarium

On Saturday we also attended a riverboat handfasting ceremony which celebrated the launch of the Éalú rowboat. Éalú is Irish for ‘elope’ and the handfasting was very romantic. For those folks who don’t know what handfasting means, it is an ancient Celtic ceremony where a rope or ribbon is wrapped around the hands of the couple, binding their union; the couple then let go, pulling the rope/ribbon which ‘ties the knot’. A handfasting ceremony also features in one of my novels: Gods of Avalon Road sees a resurrected Celtic God handfasted to a reincarnated Briton warrior, now in the body of a twenty-first century woman called Kerry. It’s an urban fantasy novel with plenty of pagan debauchery; strictly over 18s only!

The happy couple tying the knot in a Celtic handfasting
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Posted by on August 5, 2024 in Opinion and tagged , , , , , , , , .

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August 1, 2024

The pressure to be productive all the time

I don’t know about you, but I feel an incessant need to always be doing something. It’s hard for me to simply sit down, put my feet up and do nothing. Even if I manage to have a quiet moment with a cup of tea, my imagination is always full throttle. I very rarely can completely switch off. It’s probably why I value the meditation sessions at the end of my yoga classes as they give me permission to flip the on-off switch to off.

Drifting along

I’m not sure where the pressure comes from. Maybe it’s the way society is structured; working adults spend so much time in their day job that when they have time off, it’s hard to know what to do with it. It’s probably why when someone retires, instead of enjoying a new hobby, or travelling, many people end up doing temping work or taking up a new profession altogether. I’m going to stop there before I go off on a tangent about financial implications for many and why retirement isn’t often an option for everyone. Maybe that’ll be for another post – hopefully not, thanks to having a Labour Government here in the UK.

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Posted by on August 1, 2024 in Opinion and tagged , , , , .

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July 28, 2024

Managing privacy as an author with a public profile

A couple of days ago, I received a number of phone calls from a mobile number I didn’t recognise. As someone who hates speaking on the phone (I’m an introvert, so it goes without saying that I prefer text/email) I reluctantly answered after the third time, only because I wanted to check in case it was something important. Turns out it wasn’t. Quite the contrary, actually. The caller was a man from London who was relocating to Northern Ireland for work and had been given my number by a mutual acquaintance, someone I had worked with a decade ago in London. He explained that our mutual acquaintance had said we were ‘like-minded’ people and wanted to meet, now that he is based in Belfast, for business reasons.

When life gets thorny, just hang on – grove snail on a prickly bush

As an author, I cultivate a public profile. My public author accounts are separate from my single private account for friends and family. I am careful about how I come across on social media; my image and book promotion is all carefully planned. Ask any author and they’ll say the same thing. Our public image, whether real or a gravatar/ logo, is our brand. But giving out my phone number is different. That is reserved only for people I know, and have met, in real life. I didn’t ask what business the caller did, but I can only assume that if he was contacting an author (don’t worry, I’m not going to say he’s a literary agent, and I’m about to be ‘discovered’ lol) that he was a digital marketer. I have had more than my fair share of unsolicited digital marketing scammers sending me DMs over the years and I even had to remove my email address from this website because I was getting harassed so much. (You can read my gripe about digital marketing harassment here.)

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Posted by on July 28, 2024 in Opinion and tagged , , , .

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July 24, 2024

Do most people buy books online? My author view

Last week someone asked me on Instagram whether or not I do any book tours or festivals. I replied that I no longer do book signing events. Apart from the odd token fair, mainly for promo, I stopped doing live events several years ago. Want to know why?

Book signing events versus selling online:

If an author wants to do a book signing event, first they need to purchase copies of their book(s) at author price – in my case, half the retail price including shipping. You then need to think of prices that might attract readers, not necessarily your retail price. For example, at my last book fair, I sold copies like this:

4 books = £20

3 books = £18

2 books = £14

1 book = £8

Winter book fair in December 2023

If you don’t sell all your stock, depending on how many you bought, you’ll need storage space in your house/garage/somewhere to keep them. In my case I only buy a handful of each at a time, knowing that they don’t all sell upfront at any given event. The rest go to public libraries or cafes that participate in book swaps. I don’t have a big house, and it’s already spilling over with books.

On the other hand, selling online costs an author nothing. With POD the online retailer simply prints a copy whenever a customer orders one. In my case, I use Amazon KDP for my paperbacks and Ingramspark for my hardcovers. Amazon and Ingramspark deduct printing costs, shipping costs and then pay royalties at around 60% for print. The only thing I pay for is sponsored advertising fees, which are optional – not all authors choose to pay for advertising, and may rely solely on their own social media marketing. I do both advertising and social media marketing. It seems to work. Last year I sold 166 books online: 129 paperbacks/eBooks and 37 hardcovers, as well as 15,903 KU page reads. That may not seem a lot to more commercial authors, but the numbers add up each year and I made more in royalties in 2023 than I spent on advertising.

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Posted by on July 24, 2024 in Marketing, promotion and tagged , , , , .

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July 20, 2024

Holiday over – back to the writing desk

Our family holiday abroad is over for another year, but that doesn’t mean I’m back to the day job yet. I still have another 6 weeks off while school is closed for summer. A week of sunshine in Spain was lovely, especially since Belfast has been mostly rainy and grey in July. Some much-needed vitamin D worked wonders on my body and gave me a chance to have a reset.

Reflection time

I tried to have a digital detox too, but wasn’t especially successful. The lure of checking into my KDP and Ingramspark dashboards for sales and KU page read updates proved too hard to resist, especially when I had a few sponsored ad sales for The Blue Man, The Buddha’s Bone and Pseudologia Fantastica while I was away. Still, I did manage to limit screen time and reflect on 2024 so far, both good and bad, which really gave me the perspective I needed. We also limited TV time too apart from the little dude insisting on watching the Euro final. I also didn’t bring my laptop so I didn’t write at all for a week, though I got caught up on some of my reading.

This week I have been getting back to my manuscript WIPs and also tackling my TBR pile. After I finished all the holiday laundry, of course.

Posted by on July 20, 2024 in Biography, Writing and tagged , , .

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July 16, 2024

Why my Kindle Unlimited subscription is worth it – ghost novel research

I’ve subscribed to Kindle Unlimited for about five years, but only in the past month have I discovered the variety of magazines in the ‘newsstand’ section. I think it was because I was so focused on reading novels that I didn’t bother to look at the other categories.

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Posted by on July 16, 2024 in Reading, Resources and tagged , , , , .

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July 12, 2024

Holiday reads – a break from the daily routine

I’m fortunate this week to be away for a family holiday in sunny Spain. I’m spending some quality family time with my hubby and our little dude away from rainy Northern Ireland. July temperatures back home have been around 13 or 14°C, so we’re all glad to be getting some much-needed vitamin C. Costa Dorada has been 30° or thereabouts everyday. Lovely.

When your holiday read matches the colour of your bikini!
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Posted by on July 12, 2024 in Biography, Reading and tagged , , , , , , .

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July 8, 2024

Typos in print – when a word search gaslights you

‘enny’ instead of ‘envy’

The other day I went for lunch with my family. Our little dude kept himself busy with the kiddy activity page while we were waiting for our food. He got through the majority of the ‘Ocean of emotion’ words in the search as pictured but asked for my help with the last one – envy. Thinking this would be an easy feat, I scoured the search upside down while opposite him at the table. After no success, I then turned the search around for a more serious check. Still no luck. I managed to find ‘enny’ but not ‘envy’. Stumped, I then highlighted ‘enny’ in pink, determined to complete the search. Imagine being gaslit by a word search, ha ha.

The above situation was merely a bit of silly fun (hence my silly expression) but speaking now as an author, I think worrying about typos in print must be my biggest concern when putting any new book baby out into the world. I’m sure other writers out there can relate. It also happens rarely, but on occasion, I’ve stumbled across typos in big publisher books by some big name authors. Cringeworthy. Still, such things are reassuring for an indie author like me, especially having no publishing team, or even a street team – other than myself. If even the big publishers can make mistakes on occasion, considering how many people and how much money is involved in their big business book production, then it gives a bit of perspective to little folks like me. Aren’t we all human at the end of the day? Editing is as big a task as writing, in terms of literary endeavours.

Posted by on July 8, 2024 in Editing and tagged , , , .

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July 5, 2024

Unboxing my hardcovers for Pseudologia Fantastica

Are unboxing videos a thing? It’s something I’ve only happened upon recently, but you know what? Why not get in on the action? Here’s my unboxing video for my hardcovers of Pseudologia Fantastica.

The funny thing about the video above is that I chose to do it in the garden to keep my little dude company while he was outside blowing bubbles. He was silent while I recorded it, but then my neighbours came out at the wrong moment, arguing about their baby. I couldn’t re-record the video as you can only unbox once, so they have inadvertently aired their dirty laundry publicly here. They’ll be cringing if they stumble across this video, ahahaha.

Another legal deposit copy posted

I do love using Ingramspark for my hardcovers as they produce quality products with lovely dustjackets. I got two copies: one for my author book shelf and the other for legal deposit at the British library. I may do another video reading at some point from my hardcover, just to show it off. Why not?

Posted by on July 5, 2024 in Books and tagged , , , , .

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July 1, 2024

School is out for summer – holiday plans

Well, it’s officially July, but you wouldn’t know it from the weather. School is out for summer here in Northern Ireland and that means I have seven weeks off from the day job. Does that mean more writing time? We’ll see. The little dude is also off for summer so we’ll be having lots of day trips and getting involved in kiddy activities. Speaking of which, check out the silliness in these photos. I couldn’t resist the lure of an inflatable horse race, even though I wasn’t dressed suitably for such horseplay. At this point in my life it’s safe to say I will never grow up!

I wrote in another post how I think staying young at heart is typical of a creative writing sort, whether that be having a curious mind, or a physically playful nature. I have both. I’m very much motivated by ‘what ifs’.

Anyway, I’m not sure I’ll have much to say in my upcoming posts. We shall see. I could well be away on an adventure of sorts. If so, you’ll no doubt hear about it later. Ta ta for now!

Posted by on July 1, 2024 in Biography and tagged .

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