Monthly Archives: October 2012

Every author is an island

Posted on by

I’m quite fortunate, in that I’m also a graphic designer and a web developer, and I have a very good (if somewhat technical) copyeditor and proofreader.

And if we were to use an island analogy I read earlier, I’d encourage people to rely as much as is practicably possible on their own skills, to continue their toil in isolation (which is good practice for those times when you have almost no choice), and channel your inner autodidact.

I’m a firm believer in self reliance, because you cannot trust that you’ll have the support you need, when you need it most. I’ve learned this lesson at some considerable cost.

On those occasions where you need to broaden your skills, don’t roam too far, and instead build your own archipelago of suppliers and partners.

I say this not just as an author, but as a business owner since 1999.

Colourful words

Posted on by

Race. As they say in the noble game of cricket, it can be a sticky wicket. But it’s a subject some, like me, approach fearlessly.

Not that I’m approaching the subject of race as if it were a contest or a battle, but as a subject of complexity and nuance, without trying to hide the ugliness it harbours, or over-enhance the equality argument.

I attempt to present the subject as it is for what it is, rather than how I — or anyone else — might imagine it to be.

Is literature turning colour blind? That’s the question posed by The Independent, to which I replied:

Ultimately, you can only write from your own experiences. Yes, fiction allows us to extend that reach with our imagination, but there are practical limits and key differences when writing about people.

You can’t guess and just make things up when it comes to people as you can when considering the future — people exist and their cultures are a known quantity.

I had the same issues when writing A Darkening of Fortune, where Joe — a guy of Arab extraction — is the protagonist. In part, I write from my personal experiences of the people I have known of different races and cultures, but there were limits to what I could write before running the risk of speaking / writing out of bounds.

If, as a topic, you avoid race, you run a greater risk of either simply avoiding people of any race other than your own, or aligning yourself with stereotypes. Neither option is agreeable.

Start / Fail

Starting is like failure, but in reverse. You’re either trying to escape from or are tumbling towards something that has gravity. Either way, if you do manage to escape, your trajectory tends towards that of success. Can you escape?

Rank outsider?

Posted on by

So the question of whether I’m any good at promoting my books on the web came up. Hmm, kind of.

The thing is, I’m in that enviable position of knowing how to market a thing — be it a product or a service — which I routinely advise my clients on, through my business, Octane. However, it’s because I know what’s involved, and the amount of effort required, that I often hire people to do it for me. Lazy? Not really. I have better things to do with my time — like write.

So, in answer to the aforementioned question, I had this to say…

Earth Day — my first novella — has it’s work cut out, competing with an internationally recognised day of hope of unity. A big ask any day of the week.

Lucidity — another novella — faces a similar mountainous challenge, going up against a slew of definitions and expositions on dream interpretation, therapy et cetera. Dream on?

On a lighter note, A Darkening of Fortune — my first major novel — fares better, which is to be expected, given it’s uniqueness (I’m not aware of anything else occupying that particular wording or phrase), and I rightfully dominate page 1 of Google, through Smashwords, Goodreads, Twitter, my own website, and Amazon.

By day, I’m a web developer with a background in SEO, so I know what I’m up against. However, even though I know what makes for a good ranking, I’m not going to “sculpt” the name of my novels to game the rankings, because that’s kind of placing the cart before the horse — no-one is going to become a best seller because they rank high on Google, but they’ll sell more via a good Google search results ranking once they’re a best seller.

Of course, you may have very different results.