Ad results

 All my ad campaigns on Amazon were scheduled to end  on the last day May 2021.

All 34 of them! What has my dabbling achieved? 

I have spent less than £25 and earned roughly double that. No vast fortune, I agree, but then I didn't throw myself into it with gay abandon and create 200 plus ads as some do. But it was enough to make me want to do the stats, and confirm that though there were no sales in the US the whole exercise gained me more dollars from Amazon than I have in a while using other methods. 

I haven't spent a huge amount of time on it, either.  And a big plus is that I have not been dodging about on Facebook and Twitter with book ads, which does take up a lot of time. I used that time profitably, too.

So I shall take a little break, see if I can spruce up my Hooks, and start again. Meanwhile, there are book descriptions to check, blurbs to polish and keywords to collect. At least I now have all my book prices in line over the last month!

False Figures

I picked up my new glasses yesterday and wore them this morning from first waking up. Every blade of glass was crystal clear during Tim's walk, and I saw two white tails bouncing up and down as deer escaped through the bracken and trees. Only saw their tails, but I was pleased, because deer bones have been found in the last couple of weeks. A hind leg has made the rounds of the field as different dogs found it and trophy-carried it around for a while. Another dog-walker tells me he's seen a couple of heads in a different part of the wood. Coupled with the tyre tracks across the grass I've seen  recently, it looks very much as if poachers have been at work. I was relieved to know that there are still some of the wary creatures around.

Came back and checked my blog stats and was truly amazed to find that today's total was less than yesterday's total. Very odd. I can only assume I misread Friday's total, so perhaps it's just as well I've got new glasses!

On the other hand, it may be Blogger that is at fault. Out with Tim yesterday, I spotted the rabbit (see pic)  and Tim, who was a good deal closer to it, did not. He loped off in the opposite direction without ever sensing it while I took a couple of pictures. Just shows the value of sitting still, saying nothing and minding your own business!

Dialogue can be tricky

No doubt about it, Dialogue is tricky. Some people have the happy knack of getting it just right first time. Others struggle.

If you don’t notice dialogue, but zip through the story with great enjoyment, chances are the dialogue is good. If you spend a lot of time grimacing while reading, chances are the dialogue is poor.

My personal hates are when authors use dialogue tags such as “he gritted, he spat, he opined” – don’t ask me why, I just hate them.  OK then, I hate them because they sound forced. Also, you cannot easily speak through gritted teeth. Nor do I want to read of heroes, or heroines, for that matter, who spit at people.  As for opined – well, really, it just sounds so false. If you are going to give an opinion, then get on with it and give it.

The best and simplest dialogue tags are "he said," and "she said." Sometimes they’re not needed at all, especially in a two-part dialogue. At other times, an Action Tag will identify the speaker.  (Putting the chicken on the table, she glared at her husband. ‘Where were you last night?’

There’s no doubt who is speaking. 

 

OK, so that’s the simple stuff. But there’s a lot more to dialogue and I can’t do better than point you to Freda Lightfoot’s blog in which she discusses this very topic. Find Freda here:

http://fredalightfoot.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/what-should-dialogue-do.html?showComment=1369470043627#c478218133802999811

When I started my historical novel (Matho, to those of you who know him!) I had him speak in our local dialect. Now while I'm happy that everyone within a hundred miles of me would be perfectly happy with phrases  such as "Gan off hame. Ah dinna want out to dee wi' ye!" the sentence brought my American critiquers out in hives. They didn't understand. Stubbornly, I pointed out that it was usually only a vowel sound change, and that it was really easy to understand. (What I actually wrote translates as Go home, I want nothing to do with you.) See? Really easy. But they were not convinced. In fact they finally convinced me and my hero now speaks much more er, properly.

While you ponder the delights of dialect, I’m off to ready the house for guests this evening. I have to have a flying start because we have – wait for it – a play date for Tim this afternoon at three o'clock. The neighbours have a Jack Russell staying, and the two dogs got on so well last night that we have decided to take them both out to the Allendale Estates at Stocksfield were they can run and play together. Puppy socialisation is so important!

Writing Time

Morning? Afternoon? Late at night?

When do you write? I used to write when I had time and when the mood took me, and the combination didn't happen very often. Seventeen years is a hell of a long time to write a first book, but it is proof positive that you need several things working for you. Now that I have the luxury of choosing when to write, I've found a few things that surprise me.

First of all, you need time to write. That's almost a given. Then a place to write. I know some people write amid the hubbub of family life, but I get irritated when the tv pricks my bubble of concentration, or the phone rings, so I retreat upstairs to a converted bedroom which now proudly bears the name Jen's study. It's OK - dh has one as well.

Then I need a tidy desk, because I can't work in chaos. It only takes a moment to tidy things away, and then I'm good to start.

I've tried writing all day, and it is wonderful when the story flows, but however good it is, after a few days I drift to a stop, as if the story supply has slowly run dry. A few days doing nothing, and it starts to filter through again. so that means pacing the flow is important for me.

I tried various ways of limiting how much I do in a day. Walk first, when the weather is often best and write after lunch? Yes, its OK. Good to sit down after the exercise.

Write in the morning, and walk in the afternoon? Turned out to be more productive for the writing.

Go out with friends, a day out, and write in the evening? Didn't work well at all. Conversation and new things must have tired my poor brain.

Write late at night when the household is asleep? Sometimes works very well indeed, but it has to be when I can't sleep, when the brain is raring to go at the wrong time of day. I can't sit there after a busy day, feel tired and make the story work.

It seems working in the morning is best for me. It doesn't have anything to do with biorhythms or anything like that. I'm an autumn baby, and if anything, a night owl. I do not wake up in the morning bright eyed and raring to go; it takes me time to wake up and if rushed I can get really grumpy. But by half nine or ten o'clock, I'm usually at my desk, poised over the laptop and my brain, awake at last, is fresh and ready to go. A coffee on the hop mid-morning and I don't stop till noon. That's when my best, most productive writing takes place.

Things will interupt it, and of course I can adapt to suit. But it is handy to know what works best for me and to stick to it if I can. I salute anyone who must write in and around fulltime work and family...it is hard, really hard.

Changing plots

I quite like choosing titles for my novels, though I fully accept that they may change if they ever reach publication. The current work is tentatively titled Silver Age, which is the Russian name for the fin de siecle, and I'm happy to report that SA is now at 60K and progressing nicely.

I have some of my best ideas in the middle of the night, and that happened this week. I hung onto the idea (so many are forgotten by the time morning rolls around) and when I got up the next morning hurridly made the alterations before I forgot all about it. So the nice young man angling for his first kiss metamorphosed into the dastardly Aesthete attempting a seduction of the heroine. I think it both tightens the plot and strengths it, for the encounter sparks off a reaction from the hero that....well, I don't want to give away the plot, but generally it was a good thing to do.

The secret of the vast improvement in my writing in the last few days is that I have switched all those e-groups to Read Only on the Web. Now they don't come cluttering up my e-mail system, I have saved so-o-o-o much time and yet I always thought I could whip through the e-mails, stay up to date and still find time to write. Not true! This has been a valuable lesson. I'm staying No Mail until I get this wip right to the end. Then, and only then, I might indulge...and I'm going to linit the time I spend reading other people's blogs, too!