publishing – M. L. Mackworth-Praed

Beware the keen reviewer!

I learned this one the hard way. Hopefully by sharing my experience I will spare a few indie authors the sting of the keen reviewer – you know, the Goodreads reviewer who has some sort of ranking, a blog, and seems to get an awful lot of novels for free; the reviewer who messages you and asks if they could pretty please have a free copy of your book in exchange for an honest review. Some want PDF formats only (my e-reader is broken, so I’m having to use my computer), others insist on paperback (my computer is broken, I can only accept paperback), and the ones that will accept .mobi or .epub just, somehow, never get round to reading it (my life is so busy right now, I just can’t cope with all these novels I’ve requested).

Despite any reservations about dishing out your novel for free (and not only that, but in the case of paperback, paying for it), it’s impossible not to consider the what-ifs of sending out your novel to unknowns because, if they do review it, it will hopefully generate book sales. There may be the added risk of the reviewer disliking your novel and slating it (or worse, leaving you with a DNF), but that’s the part of the deal referred to as ‘honest’. The latest obstacle is Amazon’s updated Terms of Service – Authors can no longer send out their book for free with the agreement of a review, only with the possibility of one (they can’t demand, or expect, or request it: only hope). I gave away copies of my novel before these ToS came into force, and have yet to actually see a review from a reviewer who requested to review my book.

At first I only sent out .epubs and .mobis, refusing to distribute PDFs. Anyone with a phone or a computer can read PDF, and if the only version you have is the one you formatted to print, you’d be giving them free rein to print and sell your own novel for you. Ebook files feel more controlled, excluding when it appears in a ripped version, helpfully created by the people who make their living converting self-published ebooks into PDFs for distribution around pirating websites (side note: society demands to be constantly entertained yet bemoans actually paying authors, artists, writers, directors and musicians fairly for it). The ebooks went out to two or three people early last year, and I’m still waiting for the promised reviews a year later.

Not yet stung by the above agreements involving ebooks, and still believing the reviews would materialise in time, I sent out a couple of paperbacks. I’ve come to admire the cheek of the emails essentially declaring that the person can’t be bothered to pay for your book themselves, but that they would like to read a hard copy, and can you please send it to them posthaste. Usually accompanied by the excuse of a broken e-reader, a few do have the honesty to admit to just preferring paperbacks. Telling them a paperback is currently impossible due to lack of funds, I offer an ebook instead – but no – they brightly insist they are happy to wait until I have more money. After a bit of research to determine that, yes, they did have a reviewing blog, and yes, they were regular reviewers on Goodreads, I decided I was willing to shoulder the cost for the promise of a few more reviews, and sent them the paperbacks.

The reviewers received their paperbacks last year. If a review doesn’t materialise within the first six months the whole process feels like a waste of money – yes, the review may happen eventually, but once you approach the one year mark the reviewers could have arguably just bought the book themselves.

One particular reviewer sent me an email telling me there would be an extra charge to pay if I wanted my book read within a year. They had received my novel a few days before, and were just too busy to read all the books they had requested. I wasn’t the only author stung by this – several complaints appeared on Goodreads from other affected authors. Not only was this reviewer essentially ransoming books for money, they were suddenly declaring themselves a paid reviewer (which is against Amazon and Goodreads’ terms of service), so if a review did materialise there was a very real possibility that Amazon and Goodreads would assume I had paid for the service (I hadn’t), and that I might then be banned.

Three months pass, then six, then nine. Ever hopeful that a review may still appear, you send polite emails prompting for updates, only to be met with radio silence. The ones that do get back to you seem to all be reading off the same script – this year has been manic – I’ve been unwell – your book is next on my review pile – I started reading it but something came up – I’m hoping to get back into it soon. Reasonable excuses, if given the once. Less so, and less believable once given again, and again, and again.

These reviewers need to be aware that when they are asking for a free paperback, most writers probably can’t afford it to send them one, even if they agree to send it anyway. Margins will already be minimal, if there are any profits at all. Just because a book is published does not mean that it is selling, and just because a book is selling does not mean it is profitable. If the reviewer receives the free book as discussed but then doesn’t produce the honest review in return, as discussed and agreed, it is essentially stealing.

Of course this doesn’t apply to the legitimate reviewers on Goodreads, of which there are many. I’ve sent paperbacks to several reviewers who were gracious, kind, prompt and considerate – all of which I, or a friend, approached. If someone approaches you, however, and asks to review your book in exchange for a ‘free’ copy, my advice would be not to do it. It may be tempting, but my experience so far shows me that the review will never materialise. If they’re trying to build their portfolio as a reviewer there’s no reason why they can’t start with free books in promotions, offers from Kindle Unlimited or even just purchase the novels themselves.

If you’re one of the reviewers I sent a free copy to and you happen to read this – I’m still ~~waiting~~ hoping.

10 things I have learned whilst promoting my novel

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Advertising works, even when you are not getting clicks. Spend sixty dollars on a Goodreads campaign and play with the text every now and then to test the traction. Link straight to your retailer page – you want people be directed to where they can buy your book. If they click, the fund goes down. If they don’t, they’re seeing the cover of your novel, even if they’re not directly looking at it. Thousands of people will see your book advertisement each month. Never underestimate the power of the familiar subconscious.
Get on Goodreads. Without Goodreads my novel would be sitting sadly on Amazon, all alone, with two or three reviews. Granted, it only has six now but lots of people are seeing it through my regular giveaways and over 1,400 people have added it to their ‘to read’ list. That means something, right?
With reference to the above, run regular giveaways. Just list one copy of your book, make the eligibility worldwide and let it run for a couple of months. Then when a winner is chosen put the next one up. It’s not exactly free advertising but it’s pretty cheap advertising – your book is being continuously advertised in the giveaway section. People’s friends will see when they enter thus spreading the word.
Tweet! I do not Tweet nearly enough, but I try. If you’re doing giveaways or Kindle Countdown Deals let the users of social media know. Make a Facebook event, mention it in blogs, email group organisers on Goodreads and (responsibly) ‘spam’ the relevant folders in the forums. Just let readers know what’s happening, when; and share your excitement about your book as often as you can.
It seems to be the thing for authors to follow five thousand people on Twitter in order to get five thousand people to follow them back. Except at some point they start to unfollow those five thousand people to make themselves look established. If they’re all doing it, it probably works, but it’s entirely false. Mostly they’re all just DMing each other asking one another to read their currently free book (yes, I know they’re probably selling more novels than me).
Time is money, money is time. Do you have the money to splurge £500 on your latest advertising campaign? Can you pay for verified reviews from top reviewing/endorsement agencies? No? Do you have 36 hours a day to make the posters and find the reviewers/endorsers yourself? No? Do you have the money to get someone else to do it all for you instead?
Promotion is time consuming and time spent not writing, but it works. 17 ratings on Goodreads may seem a low amount to most authors (shh, I’m going somewhere with this), but there are plenty of self-published (and agency-published) books out there that go their whole first year without. one. single. review. Oh, the horror.
Visual aids help even the most learned of readers. Have a promotion? Then declare: FREE EBOOK! Now let’s try something more visual:

FREE EBOOK!

Slightly more eye-catching? no?
Free ebook giveaways are better than discounted ebook sales. Whilst this is true for unknown authors like myself, someone like J. K. Rowling would probably benefit more from a discounted ebook giveaway bonanza. When I ran my Kindle Countdown deal with a discount on my novel, I achieved a grand total of 3 downloads. Better than none, obviously, and those people are probably more likely to leave a review. When I ran the free equivalent I got over 500 downloads. Have any of those people read my novel yet? There’s no way to tell. But it got me in the top five of the Arthurian books category for a couple of days at least (side note: Harry Potter is NOT ARTHURIAN!).
Try to keep up with your social media appearances. Homely images of your novel next to coffee on Instagram will draw attention, or pen a declaration of how actively you are living the life of a writer. Share something like: New ideas for new scenes today. Writing from the heart, with a picture of you gazing out of a coffeeshop window. I haven’t tried it yet, but I see other people posting such stuff on Instagram and they get more likes than me, so they must be doing something right.

An update.

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Hello, hello. Yes, it has been horribly long since my last blog post or update. I suppose this is the point where I rattle off the relevant excuses – work and life in general – reasons why I have not penned anything much of late. Blog posts are usually low down on my list of priorities and I do admire those authors who manage to fire one off daily (monthly would be an achievement for me). They are important, but when you have your next novel pushing to be written or artwork needing to be produced, it’s difficult to fit them into a routine.

So, a quick summary of where I’m at. Logres Volume One: Book Two – still not fully drafted. My children’s book – where it was about 6 months ago. I think it’s safe to say that 2016 was not a good year for me creatively. There was far too much going on and not nearly enough time to focus on the projects I wanted to see finished. Being knocked into the cycle of ‘working to afford somewhere to live close to where you work so you can afford to live somewhere you can work‘ absorbed more recourses than I anticipated, and any free time that I did have left me feeling uninspired and unable to produce anything of any real substance.

It’s been over a year since I self-published The Future King: Logres, and though reviews are still trickling in it’s been tough accumulating them. I’ve learned a lot about self-promotion and advertising this year, have been burned by one or two ‘reviewers’ (be weary of the ones who approach you asking for free copies of your work), and understand well why people prefer to have publishers. Had I not had to do all the promotional work myself I’d have had more time for writing. Well, no excuses this year – I’ve done what I can. The reviews will hopefully come in eventually, more (with some luck) once I publish Book Two. This year it is my goal to kick myself past my own goalposts.

My new year’s resolutions list is expanding and ever-changing like some organised hydra (scratch one thing off, three more appear), but the core aspect of it is that I need to write, I need to draw and I need to get my next novel properly drafted. It has to be extracted – no ifs, no buts – and it needs to happen sooner rather than later.

The first step is to be more transparent about my writing progress, it’s the only way to hold myself to my new goals. It worked the first time round, posting word count updates on Facebook like some race against myself, so I’m hoping it’ll work this time if I update my homepage with daily (being optimistic here) word counts.

So you’re aware I’m starting my next draft from scratch, starting on Monday (that’s the 16th), working with what I already have and refreshing myself by reading The Future King: Logres from a new viewpoint. If you’re feeling impatient and think I should be working faster – you’re probably right, but in the meantime you can help by spreading the word about The Future King if you enjoyed it. Then if the reviews keep coming in while I’m writing my next draft, it’ll be at least one thing from my new year’s list that will be taken off my mind.

Untitled

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So things have been busy lately. Not busy in the sense that I’ve got mountains of work done, am now half way through to publishing book two (or indeed that children’s book I was working on), but busy in the sense that real life has got in the way. New job, new home, and a new schedule that so far has left little time for anything else other than working and sitting in the sofa each evening, thinking about how much you should be doing with your evening time versus how little you are actually doing (LOTRO, I blame you).

That said, I have managed to get a couple of things done and will get back into the swing of working on projects evening and weekends soon enough. I’ve just organised another Goodreads Giveaway for the months of June and July and, feeling festive, have sorted out a Kindle Countdown Deal for the Spring Bank Holiday. Ironically in order to do this I’ve been shut inside fiddling with graphics and promotional material rather than actually sitting outside enjoying said spring weather, but so far I’m pleased with what I have planned. The phrases I’ve used to make the promotional posters come from the pages of my novel itself; lifted straight off of the New National propaganda posters that Arthur walks past on a regular basis.

“Smile and the world smiles with you, read one. A happy worker is a happy person, read another. You have the things in life you deserve, proclaimed the next. And, would you know if your neighbour is housing illegals?“

These posters will be released randomly in the run up to the Goodreads Giveaway I’ve organised, hopefully to rally up some excitement, so watch this space. In the meantime I’m hoping to break through book two syndrome, you know – something halfway between blank page syndrome and where the hell do I start syndrome. Don’t panic if you were expecting me to have already drafted book two by now – it’s all there, ready to go and planned on paper – I just want to start it right.

Except then I remembered that book two isn’t book two at all. I don’t need to worry about starting a new novel – it’s a series. And more specifically the second instalment of the series was always intended to be the second half of Logres, married entirely to Volume One. In fact, they’re not even separate: they should be the same book, just divided into two publications. Suddenly I don’t have to worry about new novel syndrome. Now I can just pick up where I left off – start a new chapter – without worrying about the final finished polished package.

Meanwhile I’ll keep working working, will adapt to my new routine and continue to anxiously await reviews from my read-to-reviewers, the people who are offering an honest review in exchange for a free copy of my novel. Yes, I now know I should have organised all of this before my release date way back in December last year, but I’m new at this book-writing book-promotion thing, and really I’m learning as I go along.

14 things… The Future King: Logres

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With many thanks to Mlpmom (blogger, reviewer, and all-round nice person), I present to you my very first guest post: 14 things… The Future King: Logres, as hosted on Mlpmom’s amazing blog, My Guilty Obession!

14 things… The Future King: Logres

I’m excited to bring you a very special guest post from new author M.L. Mackworth-Praed and her fantasy book, The Future King Logres.

This looks like it is such a fun and interesting read and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

Thank you so much Meredith for being here today!

Please do take a moment to visit My Guilty Obession to see what I’ve been up to. In my post I offer insight into what led me to the Arthurian Legends, how my characters first emerged and 14 things I learned whilst writing my debut novel. So check it out!

Want some links? Here are a couple:
My Guilty Obession (Mlpmom) on Amazon
Mlpmom (My Guilty Obession) on Goodreads

The Future King Logres is available to buy on Amazon!
Just click here.

Got to No.5 in Arthurian – and a tip or two!

January 7, 2016Leave a comment

So it’s over! My five day giveaway has come to an end, and downloading has gone quite well. Well enough for The Future King: Logres to shift up a spot and make it to number five in the free Arthurian charts on Amazon (see below)! Now that it’s no longer available for free, it’s been removed from the charts temporarily, and will probably be slotted back in much lower down until the paid sales start to trickle in.

Giving away your work for free isn’t something that is instinctive, and given the amount of work and time that goes into producing a self-published book it is compelling to have readers actually buy your book, especially after launch. You’ve got to earn back all those hours spent working for nothing but the love of your craft somehow. However, the reality is that a reader is more likely to give less for the work of a complete unknown than someone with an established track record, so despite any reservations I had it suddenly seemed instinctive to take the plunge and give my ebook away for free.

The whole five day thing worked out well (Amazon allows you to supply your ebook for free for a maximum of 5 days out of every 90 days), as it gave me time to build up momentum and get word around. Despite my modest social media following I managed to top 260 downloads, which quite honestly is many more than I was expecting.

If you’re in the same boat as me and you’re considering promoting your book (particularly if you’re about to or have just released it), then I would definitely recommend offering it for free for a short period. Obviously I’ve yet to see what number of reviews my giveaway will ultimately produce, but the more people who read an unknown book (and hopefully like it) the better – it should result in increased circulation and future sales.

If you are considering a free giveaway with zero budget I suggest the following:

Prepare some eye-catching graphics that you can present across all your social media channels, a new one each day with a similar look and feel – sort of an e-flyer.
If you have WordPress or a Facebook page, spend an afternoon preparing all your promo material and schedule your posts in advance – they’ll appear when you want them to and will give you more time on the day itself for actual book promotion.
Ask your friends and family to reblog/share your posts to their friend networks – the more eyes that see your free ebook giveaway the better.
Make use of the Goodreads website (or equivalent). I’ve only recently joined Goodreads myself, but there are thousands of members on there who are all looking for their next read – and they all appreciate a free book! Spend time posting in forums to build up your contacts, but more specifically look for groups that have specific threads where you’re encouraged to post news of your new book or free giveaway – I did this and it really helped circulate my ebook and gave me a boost on downloads.
If you are on Goodreads you can create an event on your author page (good idea to set one up – just add your self-published book to the site, then declare that you are the author through your regular account – Goodreads will merge your account with your author account for you) and invite your friends. Send out as many invitations as you can, because the people you invite can also invite others to attend the event, maximising exposure.
Don’t let things rest for too long. If you’re running your promo for multiple days, advertise, share and keep posting on every single one of those days. Don’t have a day off. Eventually your deal will get noticed by people outside of your regular friend sphere, and someone might be kind enough to share it.
Make your offer very clear with exact start and end times, along with instructions on how use the offer. I found that a lot of people were having problems with the Amazon extensions. I was supplying a UK link, which meant that US or French customers couldn’t get the book for free because they were trying to make a purchase through the UK link. In the end I linked to those regions as well and detailed how to find the book when using a different Amazon site (you just change the site extension to your relevant region – e.g. .fr or .com).

Now that the free ebook promotion is over, I’m going to take a short break to a) apply to jobs, and b) continue with my other projects. Book promotion will have to be ongoing, but part of it is now a waiting game to see how those 260+ readers will take to TFK Logres and what sort of reviews they will leave (assuming everyone reads it!). I am hoping of course that they will love it enough to share it, but time will tell, so in the meantime I shall keep my head down and perhaps get back into writing book 2 instead.

Now to end with some more promotion as per my own advice. Though the 5 day deal has ended subscribers of Kindle Unlimited can still pick up TFK Logres for free, whilst it is now also listed at its regular price of £3.99. Still a steal for a 517 page book, no?

A self-publisher trying out self-promotion.

January 3, 2016Leave a comment

So it’s going well! This whole “promote your own book” thing. After realising that as an unknown I was going to have to do some serious book promotion once my Kindle was out (that list I made is now redundant, with Dreamweaver everything became so clear), it was apparent that some sort of deal had to be offered – and when you’re doing a deal to get your book distributed as widely as possible, why bother with Amazon’s 0.99 cent approach? May as well go all the way, and offer it for the maximum amount of time at the maximum discount, five days, absolutely free.

With a reasonable amount of downloads amassing, I have entered the Amazon Best Seller Kindle charts. The most notable being in the Best Sellers list in Arthurian Fantasy – no.6 out of 100, evidence of which can be seen below!

This is of course terribly exciting, and now I am waiting with baited breath to see if my debut novel will crawl any higher. The Future King: Logres is also in the top 100 Free Contemporary Best Seller chart, but is still a long way off being in the overall top 100 best selling (free) list on Amazon. My main excitement however comes from knowing that my book is now available to many people and will soon be read by them, which hopefully means that a few more reviews start to surface. Hopefully this will help other readers find the first instalment in The Future King series!

In the meantime if you haven’t yet taken advantage of this free deal, do so here: Amazon UK, Amazon US & Amazon FR. This offer is available worldwide!

Happy reading, and Happy New Year!

10 things I have learned whilst exporting to Kindle

December 19, 20151 Comment

There are many more file types than I thought. .rtf, .htm, .epub… but it’s .mobi that you want. According to Amazon, .mobi is the one.
Making your book available on Kindle isn’t as straightforward as it seems. A quick conversion of your .pdf, and then you’re done? So. I. thought.
Actually, the above requires a) removing all formatting from your original Word document that you exported for print, b) keeping any formatting as simple as possible, c) exporting your Word document as a .htm/.html file, d) running said .htm file through a converter, e) downloading Amazon’s Kindle previewer, f) downloading Amazon’s Kindle reader because the previwer doesn’t preview well, g) realising that your document hasn’t exported quite as you would like and, h) running through all the former to try and suss out where you went wrong.
Oh, and on top of that you’ll read all sorts of blogs and tips about what you shouldn’t do (i.e., forcing a certain font type on your text), but do them anyway, because firstly you don’t know how not to do it, and secondly ‘Normal style’ completely undermines any alternative fonts you have made use of in your book (who doesn’t like Garamond, anyway?).
At several moments, in desperation, you will break from your formatting to look into companies and services which promise to do all the hard work for you.
You will bemoan, ‘but I just want it to look like a book!’. Specifically your book, which you just spent months perfecting in print.
It comes to your attention at some point that perhaps you should have sorted out your Kindle file first, before your book launch, but then you remember that Createspace and Amazon told you that it would be easy.
Perhaps this is easy, you then think, as you export your book for the third time wondering why your TOC (that you made in Word, as you were told), still isn’t working. Why? Why?
After downloading independent software to export your book to .mobi for you, you realise that it is the conversion itself that has broken your TOC, and that you could have just edited your .htm document in Dreamweaver in the first place to fix all the links and the formatting issues instead.
You find random things in the block of your book text (like a hyphen between two paragraphs) and then think, God, has that always been there…? then don’t want to look to double check just in case it is (you’ll do it later, or forget, or a reader will find it for you).

The Future King: Logres, now available on Amazon!

December 6, 2015December 6, 2015Leave a comment

Britain, 2052. In a world of war, disease and hunger the UK stands alone as a beacon of prosperity under an all-powerful ruling party. Life at new school Logres seems promising for fifteen-year-old Gwenhwyfar, and quickly she falls for the school’s handsome catch, Arthur. When Arthur’s rival, Lancelot, returns after a suspension, her heart is soon divided. Realising that behind the UK’s prosperity lies unspeakable cruelty, Gwenhwyfar sets off on a path to dismantle everything the government stands for. Suspenseful, raw and awash in a dystopian setting, The Future King: Logres is a story of identity and discovery against this backdrop, the second coming of the Arthurian legends.

The Future King: Logres: Volume 1

It’s out! It’s available to buy! Finally, after many hours of proofreading, formatting and double-triple checking my files, The Future King: Logres is live on Amazon (and also on Createspace). Soon to be released on Kindle, I thought I would share with you an extract from the middle of novel to whet your appetites.

She was knocked out of Arthur’s grasp in a second, pushed aside by one scrambling body and then another, and suddenly she was being carried along with a stream of faceless figures, fighting against them, trying to get back.

‘Arthur!’

A tear gas canister propelled past her, splitting the protestors. Someone pushed her hard in the back. Gwenhwyfar didn’t realise she had fallen until she was on the tarmac. Instinctively her hands flew up to protect her head. Someone trod on her leg, another person tripped over her stomach. The shouting was frightening. Grabbing hands pulled her up, and then another protestor was asking if she was all right, helping her away from the scene. When she fought against them they abandoned her.

‘Arthur!’ she yelled again, cutting through the crush. He was tall; she should be able to find him, and at the same time she half-hunted for Gavin, who was tallest. She daren’t jump to try and see better; if she did she would go down again, and this time she might not get back up.

She longed to take her mask off; it was hot and hard to breathe. They had been told to go to Marvin’s meet-up spot if one of them got separated, but with her phone at home she was scared to leave when she knew that Arthur was here somewhere, just a few feet away.

The crowd struggled the only way it could—back into itself. Gwenhwyfar waited, alone and small as the road around her cleared, but when the police charged in with handcuffs and batons she shrank away, knowing she shouldn’t linger. A sudden heat seemed to melt against her with the brightest of lights. Someone had thrown a Molotov cocktail.

Of course none of this would have been possible without the support of my family and friends, and I would like to take a moment to thank everyone who has already ordered The Future King: Logres and who have supported me throughout this process. If you do buy a copy then I encourage you to leave a review on Amazon – it will help others decide if this book is for them and I would love to hear your feedback!

With TFK published I can now concentrate on other endeavours, and hopefully also continue writing Book II which will be the next in The Future King series.

Time is running out!

October 5, 2015Leave a comment

Work, work, work. I haven’t been doing much of it lately, mostly because I’ve been tied up in an (unsuccessful) stint at Paris Fashion Week. Those of you who know the industry will be aware of just how fickle it is, how options and confirmed jobs can evaporate at the final hour, leaving you with nothing but a hole in your pocket and a sense that perhaps you shouldn’t have bothered at all. Though of course, it is human nature to always be happier with the fact that you tried – that way at least opportunity is something that isn’t left unexplored.

With my time in Paris came the inability to do much else but castings and go-sees each day, which inevitably impacted on the progress of self-publishing. Now I am fairly certain that my release date of The Future King is premature, and am having to readjust my expectations to early November instead. This is no disaster given that I have no contract binding me to a completion date, and the few who are waiting with baited breath for the book release can be easily updated via Facebook. After all, I never released an official release date, so I have some time to consider when exactly it should be made available. A lot is influencing this date – awaiting news from my proof-readers (and re-reading it myself) is one, making any changes is another, and then adding hyphens into the whole document is an unexpected third. In a way it is good it has taken me so long to get myself organised, otherwise I would have made the mistake of releasing a formatted novel that has only been justified, and not amended to look pretty with the odd sentence strategically hyphenated here and there. Apart from that there is the “tax interview” to sort out through Amazon, the amending of my spine width to match the new page count, the finalisation of the book cover, and then the ordering of the first printed copy to check that all is as it should be. This is all pressured by an immediate move, scheduled for the end of this month.

The text for my children’s book is finalised however, and I am halfway through drafting the illustrations. In the meantime I have started writing the text for another children’s book (I’m excited about this one), and have identified yet another written project which is pressing prominence in my head as probably the most important and most lucrative idea to run with next – and I was considering writing something unrelated to TFK over the Christmas holidays before I start on book two, anyway (sorry, fans).

Here in Belgium the leaves are turning despite the glorious sunshine and hot weather we’ve been enjoying. The park is filled with the usual reds and golds, splattered amongst the still-deep greens, but also with bright fuchsia – a colour I had previously not expected to be possible in a leaf at this time of year. My to-do list has peaked at the annoying number of 14, and though I have stormed through some of it already it is one of those lists with points that take months to strike off. My priority for today however is to get through another hundred pages of TFK (still noticing missing speech marks and a few comma/full stop swaps), and to hopefully organise a few more illustrations for my picture book. Oh, and I need to milk the plants. The apple trees have powdery mildew, and an effective treatment is to spray them with part-milk part-water. So far it seems to be working, and for the first time in weeks there is new, undamaged growth. They’re still a long way away from being proper apple trees yet, but as I have no garden currently in which to plant them, I won’t be hurrying them along too much.

FREE EBOOK!