November 29, 2022

When covid strikes: no reading, no writing, no editing, no work

I had been wondering when it might happen and it did: having avoided catching Covid during the 2020 pandemic, and even during the second lockdown last year, coronavirus has finally got caught up to our household. My hubby and I are very ill with it. For me the symptoms are: no taste or smell; nausea; tinnitus; fever and sore throat. Fun. I’ve been sleeping my way through these past few days, and the electronic babysitter is having to take control in our house.

Anyway, these lovely reviews came at a great time as a pick-me-up yesterday: a 5 star review for The Blue Man in the UK and a 4 star review for The Buddha’s Bone in Canada. If you’re reading this, thank you for those. I know reviews are aimed at readers, but in this case they brought me some much-needed cheer.

I am unfortunately not up for much this week other than typing out this post on my phone. I’m very behind schedule with some commitments: I won’t have the Winter Wonderland 2023 Bindweed anthology ready for pre-order on 1st December, as intended. Good health permitting, it will still be published on 21st December as planned. I’m not fit for work or writing of any kind. Such is life, I guess.

Oh well. I expected that covid might pay me a visit at some point. No point feeling sorry for myself either. Self-pity doesn’t help anything. On that note, I’m off to make some more chicken soup. Ta ta for now.

Posted by on November 29, 2022 in Biography and tagged , , , .

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November 22, 2022

Top 10 for The Fairy Lights on Amazon and Ingramspark

My fourth novel, The Fairy Lights, is on day thirteen of publication and sales have been off to a good start. My Christmas ghost story has already made it into the Top 10 for Psychological Literary Fiction and Ghost Fiction and Top 100 for Ghost Horror.

The eBook reached #10 in Amazon’s Top 100 Hot New Releases for Psychological Literary Fiction yesterday.

The hardcover also reached #8 in Bestsellers for Ghost Fiction on Ingramspark.

The eBook has also reached #21 for Ghost Horror on Amazon’s Top 100 Hot New Releases.

To all the folks who have bought copies so far, or are reading it on Kindle Unlimited, I hope you enjoy it – and please do leave a rating or even a short review. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Posted by on November 22, 2022 in Novels and tagged , , , .

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November 20, 2022

Autumn leaves and books: some glamour shots

Although summer is my favourite season, I can’t deny that the beauty of autumn is a time of year that I love. I’m a sucker for autumnal book photos and I do a book glamour shot every year. As a psychological fiction and ghost horror author it goes without saying that I love Halloween, so I couldn’t pass up the chance to throw in a few seasonal glamour photos too. So, here goes:

A horror author and her novels

Isn’t this tree gorgeous? I took this photo last week before it lost all its leaves and they were so vivid against the twilight that I had to capture it. Here I am doing my witchy best.

What to do with all those stunning yellow leaves after they have dropped? Why, another book photo, of course:

Rolling around in yellow leaves with my books

Here I am with my books and autumn leaves. Gods of Avalon Road was my debut novel in 2019, followed by The Redundancy of Tautology (poetry) and The Buddha’s Bone (second novel) in 2021, then The Blue Man (third novel), A Model Archaeologist (poetry) and The Fairy Lights (fourth novel) in 2022.

I’m proud of all my books and I like each one more than the last. As soon as one is done, it’s onto another. There’s always a new story to tell.

Posted by on November 20, 2022 in Books, Novels, Poetry and tagged , , , , , , , , , .

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November 17, 2022

Calculating customers from Kindle Unlimited reads

Back in October 2021 when The Buddha’s Bone was released, I had not included it in Kindle Unlimited as I had ‘gone wide’ with the eBook, publishing on Kobo, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, etc. It was easy to track sales of all three editions: eBook, Paperback and Hardcover versions as the sales showed on my dashboard as 1 sale per 1 customer.

When The Blue Man was released, I decided to include it in Kindle Unlimited to reach more readers who, like myself, have a subscription. If you’re unfamiliar with KU, it feels like an online library service: you can download up to nine books at a time which the author gets paid for according to the number of page reads. As a reader I always feel good knowing that I’m trying new authors that I wouldn’t know about otherwise, and the writers are still getting paid for their work. Win-win.

As an author, the service is also great: I’ve had enough page reads for The Blue Man to convince me to include other books from my back catalogue in Kindle Unlimited and reach new readers for those too. I’ve also listed my latest book, The Fairy Lights in KU too. However, tracking the number of customers has been harder.

How so? For a start, page reads do not equate simply to customers. For example, the eBook of The Blue Man is 286 pages. In three months, I’ve had around 9000 or so page reads. If we break that down by simple division, that would work out at 31 readers, supposing all 31 finished it in its entirety. The reality is much more muddled: some readers may have tried it, decided it wasn’t for them, and returned it. Such is the beauty of KU, but it makes for a tracking condundrum for writers. Just how do we equate page reads to customers?

I admit, I’ve been guessing on this one. To make life easier for myself when guesstimating customer numbers, I’ve simply been adding page reads up each day and starting a new customer tally each time 286 pages is reached. Pretty simplistic, I know, but otherwise it’s too complicated to work out.

All in all, KU is a great service for both authors and readers, and whether customers are fully or partially reading a writer’s work, it’s helping to connect readers with new authors, so you can’t go wrong with that. Of course, there’s also one final thing: it’s a lovely moment when you see someone binge-reading your book in pretty much real time. When the page-reads counter on your dashboard updates on the refresh and you can see the page count jump in real time, it’s really a great feeling.

Posted by on November 17, 2022 in Writing and tagged , , .

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November 14, 2022

A gripe about spam marketers and unsolicited promotion requests

Okay, so you’re going to have to indulge me a bit as I have a groan. Recently, after many, many long and tiresome months of being spammed, I have had to remove my email address from my About Leilanie Stewart Author page. I put my contact email address on that page to allow readers, or fellow bloggers, to get in touch. Instead, I have been harangued by unsolicited requests from unverified spam marketers EAGER to get my money in exchange for… I don’t know. Claiming to boost my SEO web presence? Tweeting about my books, or writing a review of one of my novels – in exchange for extorting ££ from me, of course. The bottom line is, if an unsolicited spammer contacts an author about unverified marketing services, then they need the author more than the author needs them – period. I personally never pay money for unknown promotional package services from people who may or may not do what they claim to advertise. I use trusted, tried-and-tested services to promote my books and gain reviews (my ARC reader team and book bloggers). I happily send free epub or paperback proof copies of my books in exchange for a review, but I never pay for reviews – authors shouldn’t have to – unless they are paying for editorial reviews, like Kirkus reviews, or listing ARCs on sites such as Netgalley (I haven’t used either, but I know authors who have, and who vouch for these services).

As an author, I spend my money directly on advertising on sites where people shop for books: namely sponsored ads on Amazon among others. To spend my money on anything else would be a waste of cash that I simply can’t afford.

So, there you have it, gripe over! Thanks for bearing with me, legitimate readers. Hopefully by removing my email address from my website the spammers will stop. I sincerely hope so. I also hope that genuine readers will keep contacting me, even if it’s more hassle by having to drop a comment until I can reply with my email address. Or, you can also contact me through social media, as follows. I always reply to legitimate queries, so I hope I haven’t put you off getting in touch.

Posted by on November 14, 2022 in Resources and tagged , , , , .

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November 10, 2022

The Fairy Lights is published! Belfast Ghosts Series Book 2

Happy release day for The Fairy Lights! My fourth novel is a strange and surreal yuletide ghost story, set in Stranmillis, Belfast. Ever been to Friar’s Bush Graveyard, Belfast’s oldest cemetery? It’s a setting in this ghostly novel, perfect for Christmas.

The Fairy Lights is now available for FREE on Kindle Unlimited and in paperback and hardcover. Here are the Amazon links:

Kindle UK
Kindle US

It’s also available from other retailers too:

Waterstones
Barnes and Noble

Hope you can celebrate with me today, and if you read it and like it, please do share a review or rating with others – it helps other readers find my book.

Posted by on November 10, 2022 in Novels and tagged , , , , , , .

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November 8, 2022

3 days until The Fairy Lights is published!

This week is the countdown to publication of my fourth novel, The Fairy Lights. Here are a couple of reviews posted two days ago, to give you an idea of what the novel is about. It’s a yuletide ghost story, a supernatural horror that gets quite strange and surreal along the way.

I’ll be posting some video excerpts on my Instagram page over the next couple of days and on YouTube on launch day, so make sure to check in and listen to those.

The Fairy Lights is part of my Belfast Ghosts Series of standalone novels that are related in theme. Here’s a bit more about the series:

Book 1 – The Blue Man: A haunted friendship across the decades

Book 2 – The Fairy Lights: The ghost of Christmas that never was

Book 3 – Coming in 2023. Stay tuned!

Posted by on November 8, 2022 in Novels and tagged , , , , , .

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November 6, 2022

Countdown to publication checklist

The five day countdown is on until publication of my fourth novel, The Fairy Lights. It’s available for pre-order until the 10th November and will be listed on Kindle Unlimited where it will be free to read, if you have a subscription. With that in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to share my countdown to publication checklist in the months before each of my books is published. If you aren’t a writer, or even if you are and your morbid curiosity is piqued, you might be interested in my behind-the-scenes preparation. Since I haven’t posted about this topic before, even though I do it with all of my novels, I thought I’d share my process with you. Curious? Read on…

Continue reading →

Posted by on November 6, 2022 in Publishing and tagged , , , , , .

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November 3, 2022

Room for interpretation: why I like ambiguity in novels

When I’m reading a book, I don’t like the author to take me along on an easy journey where everything is explained; simply there on the page for you to read about it and that’s that. I like to be challenged as a reader and to be thinking about a book long after I finish it. Better still, I like to be so wowed by a book that I absolutely want to read it again to see if I missed anything, or if I would interpret it differently on the reread.

As a writer I try to leave some wiggle room for interpretation in my books. I don’t want to insult my readers’ intelligence by handing them the story on a silver platter with a bit of side salad for garnish. If you have read my latest book, The Blue Man, you will know what I’m talking about. I loved some of the review comments about how readers interpreted it. Some readers have even contacted me to ask how much of the story I intended as supernatural and how much was other factors that the characters believed to be ghostly themselves. To be honest, as the writer, I’d rather ask the reader: what do you think happened?

I can understand if some readers out there feel that ambiguity in books is frustrating, or not satisfying though; but for me as a reader, I love it when there’s room for interpretation at the end of a story. Got some recommendations of books that leave room for interpretation? Feel free to let me know, especially if they’re on Kindle Unlimited. I’m always on the lookout for new novels and I read widely in pretty much any genre, even though horror is my favourite.

Posted by on November 3, 2022 in Writing and tagged , , .

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October 31, 2022

Happy Halloween, Blessed Samhain 2022

Hi, I’m Leilanie, the good witch of the North. Look what I conjured up with my magic wand.

Happy Halloween! This is my author proof copy of my forthcoming novel, The Fairy Lights. It will be my fourth novel, and the second of my Belfast Ghosts Series. Wanna know what it’s about?

The Fairy Lights: the ghost of Christmas that never was

Belfast Ghosts Series: Standalone Book 2 of 3

When Aisling moves into an old, Edwardian house in the university area of Stranmillis, Belfast, she soon discovers that her student digs are haunted. The house, bought by her grandfather decades ago, is also home to a spirit known by the nickname Jimbo.

As yuletide approaches, and Aisling’s Christmas fairy lights attract mischief from Jimbo, she seeks to find out more about the restless entity. With the help of a local psychic and friends from her History with Irish course, Aisling uncovers dark, buried truths. What is the connection with Friar’s Bush Graveyard just around the corner? What does Jimbo’s dusty book of the Oak King and Holly King, hidden in the attic, have to reveal? What will Aisling’s journey into the darkness of the spirit world reveal about Jimbo – and herself?

Stay tuned… It’s coming soon on 10th November 2022

In case you didn’t know it, Halloween is my favourite themed season; what kind of horror writer would I be if it wasn’t? All of my novels pictured are suitable Samhain reads. From left to right, here’s why:

Gods of Avalon Road is an urban fantasy novel set in London with pagan and occult themes.

The Buddha’s Bone is a dark psychological story set in Japan.

The Blue Man and The Fairy Lights are ghost horror books 1 and 2 of 3 from my Belfast Ghosts Series.

If you are currently reading any of them during this spooky season, then enjoy, and of course~

Happy Halloween!

Posted by on October 31, 2022 in Novels and tagged , , , , , , , , , .

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