A lovely present from my wonderful hubby to celebrate my third novel forthcoming in a fortnight. I love this! “Leilanie’s writing” is a reusable leather notebook cover that is now my new chapter planner for my novels. The 3 yellow labels mark the 3 books in my Belfast Ghosts series: ‘TBM’ stands for ‘The Blue Man‘ which is coming out on 29th July. The final draft of ‘TFL’ (novel WIP#5) has been finished this week and a print proof copy ordered for my editor to give the red pen treatment to. I’m working on ‘MT’ (novel WIP#6) this summer and it’s up to 10,000 words so far. I’ll keep you updated!
It’s 14 days until publication of my third novel, The Blue Man, which will be released on Friday 29th July 2022. Since the 2 week countdown is on, I thought I’d share with you a bit about how this novel came about.
The Blue Man started life as a short story that I wrote back in June 2020 during lockdown. It was about 6000 words long. I submitted it to a few literary magazines and in May 2021 it was published by Scarlet Leaf Review.
However, even after it was published as a short story, I had ideas to expand it into a book-length project. I wanted to delve more into the backstory of titular enigma, The Blue Man. Writing a novel allowed me to do this. In November 2020 I began expanding the short story, outlining my ideas and making a chapter plan. I completed the first draft a year later in December 2021. Now it’s going to be released in a fortnight!
If you like literary horror, ghost stories or psychological fiction, please feel free to pre-order a copy.
Or, if you want to listen to me reading the back cover blurb and prologue, check out my video on YouTube:
Are you a horror fan looking for something more disturbing for your summer read than the usual light-hearted books being promoted at you? Well, look no further than the disturbed imagination of Leilanie Stewart!
The Blue Man is a psychological horror/literary horror about a haunted friendship through the decades. Megan and Sabrina were eighteen when they learned the Irish urban legend of The Blue Man. Twenty years later, can they put the horror of the past to rest?
It’s 21 days until publication of my third novel, The Blue Man, which will be released on Friday 29th July 2022. Since the 3 week countdown is on, I thought I’d share with you a bit about why I wrote it.
I wanted to set a story in Northern Ireland: Belfast to be specific. All the books I’ve read that are set in Belfast are all about ‘The Troubles’. I hadn’t read a book set in East Belfast, which is where I grew up, nevermind a horror. Why are there no ghost horror novels set in Belfast? If there are, please feel free to let me know. I’d be happy to be corrected.
Anyway, that’s why I decided to write one; I wrote the book I wanted to read. If you like literary horror, ghost stories or psychological fiction, please feel free to pre-order a copy.
Or, listen as I read the back cover blurb and prologue on my YouTube channel:
School is out for the summer and that means I am off work for eight weeks. My little one is also off school for summer, which means I’ll be spending the bulk of each day away on day trips, though I plan to squeeze in some writing time here and there. Here are my (vague) literary plans for July and August:
1. The Blue Man will be released on 29th July, so I’ll be busy with lots of promotion for it, starting with ARC reviews, which are currently ongoing.
2. Chipping away at horror novel WIP#5 which is kind of, sort of, almost done…if you squint and look at it through sunglasses. (Yep, I’m being silly.)
3. I’m planning to release the full collection of one of my published poetry pamphlets later in the autumn. But which one? (Twiddles fingers, willing brain to work, but it won’t…not enough caffeine).
4. Reading the Bindweed submission pile of poetry and stories submitted from every corner of the globe. (Wait, it’s a sphere, there are no corners…) Submissions are open for our Winter Wonderland 2022: Bindweed Anthology. There’s no theme, but I’m hoping for more genre fiction – would love to see some more horror or speculative fiction sent our way!
5. Read, read, read! And review. I’m doing a Goodreads challenge on both my author and reader accounts. I’m at 8/20 on my Leilanie Stewart account and 16/20 on my Indie reader account.
And that’s it. Ta ta for now, as I’m off to ride a Ferris wheel.
Much has been going on this month for me. I’m still chipping away at horror novel WIP#5, which is up to around 43,000 words. I released an ebook version of my 80 poem poetry collections, The Redundancy of Tautology, which Dr Agarwal at Cyberwit Publishing (who published the paperback version of the collection back in April 2021) kindly supplied the cover artwork for. My hubby and I also released Midsummer Madness 2022 as the first creative writing anthology after the big rebranding of our literary journal, Bindweed Magazine, that we’ve been running since 2016. In between all of these things, I still made time for reading. Here’s my latest book shopping haul:
Did you know that I have an author account on Goodreads, but I also have a separate reader account that I use to post my reviews of Indie books? Yep, and I keep this account separate from my author brand for two reasons: 1) It allows me to post honest reviews of the books I read; 2) It keeps my own books as an author separate from the ones I review.
I’ve had a few requests for ARC reviews through my reader account, all of which I do under a pseudonym. A lot to manage, but I enjoy it, and like to help Indie authors out by reviewing their books. It’s hard enough to get people to review books in the first place, so I like to do my bit to help other authors gain more visibility for their books.
Of course, most of the books in the picture above are by well-known authors, and my personal policy is that I tend to review books with upwards of 100 ratings on my main author Goodreads account, which isn’t connected to my Amazon account (the Indie reader account that I run is connected to Amazon and I post all Indie reviews on Amazon too). Why do I do that and not post on Amazon for big names? For the simple reason that they already have thousands of reviews: I’d rather post reviews of Indie books on Amazon to help smaller, unknown authors to spread the word about their books. After all, that’s what I like other readers to do for me too. Writers are also readers, and as a literary community, can’t we all help to boost each other’s books? We can certainly try.
A couple of months ago, a writer connection of mine released her debut novel, which was speculative fiction. She had amassed a couple of dozen ARC reviews prior to release, all of which were four and five star ratings. Within her first week of launch, a three star review appeared and the author was gutted. She took to social media to discuss how she was having doubts that anyone would want to read her book, and that she was at a low point as a result. On a professional level, I felt that personally I don’t consider three stars a ‘bad’ rating. But on a personal note, I felt for her: what author doesn’t want only four and five star reviews?
But are reviews for authors?
Yes and no. Let’s start with ‘yes’. Good reviews, as in four and five stars, give an author validation that they have written a story that customers want to read. Critical reviews, as in three stars, show authors how their book was received, and a reader’s opinion can sometimes be different from what they, as a writer, might have been thinking.
So let’s look at ‘no’, and start with bad reviews, as in one and two stars. I’d read in some articles on the topic of reviews that authors shouldn’t read negative reviews. To be honest, I think negative reviews say more about the reviewer than the book they are reviewing; especially if they are offended by something in the story. Negative reviews serve readers more than authors. They help readers decide whether or not to bother buying a book. So long as the negative reviews aren’t about typos or plot holes in any given book, then I’d say they are there to help readers decide, ‘is this book for me, or not?’.
Personally, I think that even if reviews are positive, they are still there for readers, not authors. They serve to help other readers decide whether a book would suit their tastes, or not. Poor or critical reviews also help readers decide if a book may be a worthwhile investment of both time and money. Unless reviews are intentionally malicious, either by a reviewer with a personal grudge against the writer, or in a blackmail attempt (there’s an article about extortion scams here) most reviews are not aimed at attacking an author personally, or vilifying a book; they’re one person’s opinion on whether they liked a book or not and should be taken as such.
As a writer, does it mean that I personally don’t read reviews of my books? No: I read all reviews of my books, both critical and good. But I take it all as food for thought; after all opinions on books are subjective. What one person may love, another may hate so whether you’re a reader or a writer, it’s good to read reviews and think, is this a well-balanced opinion, regardless of the star rating?
Recently someone asked me about how many words I tend to aim for when I’m writing a novel. Generally speaking, I tend to aim for 80,000 words as a good benchmark, which works out at about 330 or so pages in a 5.5 x 8.5 paperback book.
There are so many different opinions about how long an adult fiction novel should be, particularly depending on what genre you write. I’ve heard that speculative fiction should be on the longer side – up to 120,000 words, though around 100k is a good aim, especially if it’s a debut.
Of course, if you’re a children’s author or write YA fiction, your books can be on the shorter side: I’ve heard that between 40-80,000 words is a good length, with a 60k word count a decent goal to aim for.
As for my own books, my debut novel, Gods of Avalon Road, was 102,000 words. My second novel, The Buddha’s Bone, was 90,000 words. My forthcoming third book, The Blue Man, is the shortest of the three at around 81,000 words.
What about for any budding Indie writers out there? As a general rule, I’d say aim to write above 40,000 words as that is the baseline for what constitutes a novel. In a KDP paperback of their smallest template size (5 x 8 inches) this would work out at maybe 180 printed pages.
My poetry collection, The Redundancy of Tautology, is now available for free on Kindle Unlimited. The paperback was published on 4th April 2021 by Cyberwit; thanks to Dr Agarwal for providing the cover artwork for the ebook as well as the paperback.
