RAtR: After The End

Read Around the Rainbow

As you’re probably aware, #RAtR is a blogging project I am doing with a few friends who also write LGBTQIA romance. You can find everyone by clicking here or on the image to the right.

This isn’t a treatise on dystopian fictions! This month, we are writing about what happens after a writer types THE END in capital letters, centres them, saves the file and posts all over their social media that their masterpiece has finished?

Erm. Well. Lots and lots. And I guess people work in different ways, so this is my own process. I’m looking forward to reading what my #RAtR colleagues do and how their approach differs.

I’m going to assume infinite time, here, rather than working to a deadline, which might mean steps are compressed or jumped.

I write in Scrivenor, usually with the document divided up into chapters or into point of view (POV) which are sometimes the same thing. I colour-code my character points of view so if I want to I can narrow down my view to see which part of the story individual characters are narrating. I try and write between one and two thousand words per session (every day if I’m on form), and at the beginning of each session I go back and read what I wrote the day before and tweak it.

 The first thing to do once I get to the end of the story is go right back to the beginning and search for every instance of four stars, ****, which I use to leave myself notes.

Usually past-Ally says things like ****PUT IN MORE SEX HERE or ****WORK OUT BACKGROUND AND INSERT HERE, or ****LOOK UP LENGTH OF CHAMPS ELYSEES, or ****MAKE CHARACTER MORE LIKEABLE HE’S A SHIT-HEAD or even just a bare ****400 MORE WORDS HERE. Present-Ally is always absolutely delighted to find these little reminders of how slack past-Ally has been.

Once I’ve done this and I’m happy with what I’ve got, I export the document to Word. With some judicious formatting, that turns it into a coherent draft that I can send off to my lovely beta readers with chapter headings, a rough blurb at the beginning and an index. Usually I go through before I do that and try and do line edits to remove instances of words like just, then, really and my subconscious’ current favourite, a bit. Sometimes past-Ally doesn’t do that though and I include a note to my betas to say please ignore the slacker.

At this point if I’m self-publishing, I make a cover (if I haven’t already) and put the book up for preorder on the various ebook platforms.

If I’m working with a publisher (shout-out to JMS Books!) I fill in a blurb form and I look at the stock photo sites they use to find a few images that I feel are suitable and fill in a cover form describing what I would like.

Once the beta notes are back, I go through the manuscript and take the beta feedback on board. Then I do a rough proof read.

Then if it’s a publisher-book, I send the manuscript, the blurb form and the cover form off to the publisher, who sends me a contract to sign digitally (after careful reading of course!). If it’s a self-published book, I send it off to my editor.

Then, either way I’m working, I make a load of promotional images in Canva and I put together a document with various social media posts I can use for marketing. The first line, a kiss snippet, that sort of thing. I sometime create posts and visuals with a character sketch. I update my website and social media headers with graphics of the new book.

Once I have a cover, I put together a media pack, which is basically a document with all the info bloggers and reviewers could need to decide whether they want to host a release announcement or request an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC). So, publication date, ISBN number, links to where it can be pre-ordered/bought, keywords, a tag-line, the blurb, the cover, and perhaps an excerpt. Oh, and a little biography at the bottom with my social links.

Then I decide how skint I am and either pay for a blog tour, someone to approach reviewers and bloggers for me; or I contact them myself.

All this time I am writing every morning, working on my next story. And I am doing a bit of social media activity to remind readers I exist, plus sending out my newsletter. And I am maybe tweaking my Amazon Ads and my Facebook Ads if I have them running.

After two or three weeks, then, I get the first round of edits back from my editor. I go over the manuscript and accept or reject her corrections and suggestions. She does a light proof at this point and leaves me sarcastic comments if she finds anything that doesn’t make sense. I do even more proofing and take her advice about the things that don’t make sense, leaving her equally sarcastic comments. Then I send the manuscript back.

We do that a couple of times more and when I’m happy with it I listen to it through using the Word Read Aloud function. It’s much the best way to catch spelling errors and autocorrects that have slipped by. Then, I turn it in to an ARC copy and I send it out to my ARC readers and any reviewers who have requested it and I load it up on to the ebook sales sites that I have put the preorders up on.

That’s it, basically. I spend far more time on the ‘after THE END’ part than I do writing. It’s so easy to get sucked into the marketing, social media and tweaking advertisements or your website part of the cycle than it is to knuckle down and actually produce words. I’m not unusual in this. I haven’t read any of my colleagues’ pieces at the time of writing this, but I bet my sizeable arse that they are saying much the same thing.

Obviously I publish with a small press; if you work with a larger press or are traditionally published with one of the big five, the process is different—much more drawn out for a start. However, I’m very happy with my hybrid set-up, with some of my work being all my own responsibility and some being partly the publisher. Unless you’re a mega-seller these days, you do most of your own marketing as a writer, however you’re published.

So…have a look at what my colleagues have written here!

To read what my Read Around the Rainbow colleagues have written about seasonal reads, click through below!

Nell IrisOfelia Grand : Lillian FrancisFiona Glass : Amy Spector : Ellie Thomas : Holly Day : K. L. NooneAddison Albright

RAtR: As a reader, what’s more important to you, the story itself or the way it’s told?

I’m late to this one as Mr AL and I are trying, for the fifth time in twelve months, to have a holiday that doesn’t end in rearranging because we got COVID (May22), me turning yellow with Gallbladder issues (Also May 22) or flying home because Littlest is admitted to intensive care (Oct 22 and Jan 23). So far we are on day #3 and we’re good, though, so I feel I can turn my concentration to the topic!

For me, I think my enjoyment of a story is a mixture of plot and presentation. I could end the post very satisfactorily there and leave you hanging :). However for example… I will forgive eg proofing errors and awkward grammar if the plot is sufficiently gripping. I find it hard to read through those and concentrate on the story if it’s not got me by the heart. And clunky plotting is going to stop me reading even if the prose is lyrical in of itself. So I guess we conclude that plot is more important for me.

I’m not going to give examples of books I haven’t got on with, because that’s mean and there’s a strong personal preference involved. However, I’ve got some other preferences in my reading that I occasionally get completely turned around by and then question my whole self :).

For example…I would say I don’t usually like stories written in the first person. But I LOVE S. E. Harmon’s Spookology series. And Shattered Glass by Dani Alexander. And the Dalí series by E. M. Hamill. They are all extremely well told.

And I would say I don’t like stories with neo-pronouns because my brain just has a sort of wobble and takes ages to process them, despite being quite happy using them IRL. However, I’m just re-reading Foz Meadows A Strange and Stubborn Endurance and I love it. And of course, there’s The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, which is one of my desert island books.

And I don’t like Epistolary novels, which is ironic given I’m maybe writing one ATM and also that I love A Land So Wild by Elyssa Warkentin.

So… I think we can say it’s all about the story itself for me.

Finally, here’s an image of my current view.

If you’d like to read what the other members of the webring are writing about this month, for now please click on the #RAtR link on the right and follow the links to their blogs. I’m writing on my phone and adding all the links is a bit beyond me right now, although I’ll have another go later on.

#ReadAroundtheRainbow: Writing advice I take with a grain of salt

Read Around the Rainbow

As you’re probably aware, #RAtR is a blogging project I am doing with a few friends who also write LGBTQIA romance. You can find everyone by clicking here or on the image to the right.

This month, we’re all blogging about writing advice we take with a grain of salt… and…I’m not sure about this one! Do I say I rigidly follow all the rules? And have people think I’m a formulaic work-to-rule sort of writer? Or do I say I pick and choose what received advice I follow, and have people think I’m arrogant and self-important and not a proper writer?

It’s a dilemma! Probably the first advice I should actually listen to is to ignore imposter syndrome 😊.

In all honesty though, there’s so much completely conflicting advice out there for people who write, whether they’re published or not:

 Write every day. It doesn’t matter if you write every day. Attend a writing group. Write alone. Self-edit. Always have an editor. Have lots of social media. Don’t bother with social media. Write different genres under different pen-names. Put everything under one pen name. Hone your skills in fanfiction. Take a course. Self-publish. Look for a publisher. Get an agent. Don’t bother with an agent.

And Oxford commas…well. That’s how decades long feuds begin.

I think the only thing you can say for certain is that what suits one person won’t suit another and the less you get hung up on all the dos and don’ts, the happier and more confident you’ll be.

I’m definitely not confident enough to self-edit for example. But I know several people who do, very competently. The writing every day thing…well. My life is very, very fragmented right now and that’s impossible for me. But it doesn’t make me any less of a writer. Everything is still ticking away inside my head and when I do sit down with my laptop I often find it springs more fully formed onto the page than it does if I’ve been writing every day. Not always! But sometimes.

So, I’d have to say that the only thing I’d take with a grain of salt is to follow all the advice you’re given. Pick what works for you and have the confidence to say ‘I tried that and it was rubbish for me, it didn’t work’.

It’s not a competition, there are no rules that dictate conformity or success. If you’re happy as you’re actually writing and happy with what you’re creating, then…that’s working. You’re a successful writer.

Here’s everyone else who wrote this month. Click through to read what they have to say!

Nell Iris : Ofelia Grand : Lillian Francis : Fiona Glass : Amy Spector : Ellie Thomas : Holly Day : K. L. Noone : Addison Albright

#RAtR: What were your characters like as teenagers?

This month’s topic for Read Around the Rainbow is another brainchild of  Addison Albright! As some of you already know, #RAtR is a blogging project I am doing with a few friends who also write LGBTQIA romance. You can find everyone by clicking here or on the image to the right, and I will link to everyone’s post on this month’s topic at the bottom of this page.

This month, we have chosen to pick a character and write about what they were like as teenagers. I’ve chosen to write about Kevin from As the Crows Fly.

Kevin is a veterinarian–I keep having to remember to write the word out in full as in the UK we usually shorten it to vet and I think in the US that’s more commonly used for a military veteran!–and he’s also an artist. He lives on the edge of the sea in Wales and he has befriended a murder of crows, one of which lives in the house with him.

That’s pretty eccentric, right?

When I was writing the story I didn’t work up a back-story for him, he more or less sprang fully formed from my pen/keyboard/fingers. I very rarely do a lot more than an an initial sketch for my characters anyway; any back-story usually develops as I go along. For longer length stories I usually have quite a good feel for where they’ve come from by the time I’ve finished writing. It’s not so usual for me to have that relationship with the characters in my shorter stories and it’s only now I’ve sat down and thought about it hard that I’ve worked out what Kevin might have been like in his last few years at school.

I think Kevin probably wasn’t out at school. But he wasn’t closeted either if that makes sense. He was one of the nerdy kids who concentrated on his results and getting into uni so he could follow the career path he was set on. He was very conscious that if he tanked his grades it would be much more complicated for him to get where he wanted to go.

He was also working really hard at the weekends and in the school holidays, helping at the local veterinarian so he built up relevant experience. And when he wasn’t working he spent time drawing. It was a kind of chill-out thing for him and it began when he started sketching the animals at work.

He had friends; but he didn’t have much time to hang out with them because he had so much else going on. He’s always been a bit of a loner. Not a lonely person, but just as happy with his own company and those of his animals as with people he likes.

Apologies that this is a really short post from me this month…I only got back from holiday on Monday and so far, today being Thursday, I have had two zoom meetings, one in person meeting and…erm…about eight sizeable phone-calls from various professionals about one or other of the children. I’m finding it very hard to get in back in to a post-holiday routine, let alone a blogging routine, but I’m hoping next week will be a bit less mad!

As always, to catch up with the character sketches of my Read Around the Rainbow  colleagues check out their blogs here:  K. L. Noone, Addison AlbrightNell Iris, Ofelia Grand, Holly Day, Fiona Glass, Ellie Thomas, Lillian Francis, Amy Spector.

Read Around the Rainbow. Writers and bloggers of LGBTQIA+ Romance.

#RAtR: Weird Internet Searches

Read Around the Rainbow

This month’s topic for Read Around the Rainbow is the brainchild of  Addison Albright—and I’m really looking forward to her post revealing whatever prompted this suggestion! As some of you already know, #RAtR is a blogging project I am doing with a few friends who also write LGBTQIA romance. You can find everyone by clicking here or on the image to the right, and I will link to everyone’s post on this month’s topic at the bottom of this page.

So. My weirdest internet search? For this question, I usually talk about researching butter lamps for The Flowers of Time and making my own butter from scratch and then rendering it to ghee and making a lamp in a jam-jar with a bit of string. I got a bit obsessed. I’ve downgraded that particular search to ‘only mildly obsessive’ over the last few years though, as things have moved on!

photo of brown metal cage with lighted candle
Photo by Craig Adderley on Pexels.com

I’m pretty sure that everyone who writes about murder or death has a disturbing search history story; and for The Quid Pro Quo I joined the team. I researched what a body would look like after being submerged for twenty four hours. I don’t recommend googling this for fun—I can still see some of the images in the articles I read and it was deeply unpleasant and upsetting.

When I’m researching things I know nothing about I find it very easy to get sucked into a rabbit-hole where I spend an unnecessary amount of time on subjects that are only going to be mentioned in passing in the story. I need to get the background straight in my head in order to be able to drop a couple of colourful details in there. If it’s something I know a bit about already, even if that’s only incidental knowledge, it’s much easier to know what it is I don’t know, if that makes sense?

For example, Out of Focus is set in the world of contemporary theatre. I know quite a bit about how the technical side of that works and I knew what I didn’t know…I went off and found out about scissor lifts and health and safety regulations and it took me a couple of hours. In contrast I spent two days searching and reading up on how eighteenth century women dealt with menstruation for The Flowers of Time—not because it featured in the story particularly, but just because I felt as if it was something that would impact my characters even if I never mentioned it.

I think that’s partly why I’ve set seven books in the post-WW1 period now. I’ve done my research and I feel confident with the background colour of the era. Yes, okay, I have to toddle off and read up on what treatment you’d use for migraine, or whether medicals were required by then to join the army. But I’ve got all the building bricks in place, I know where to find the resources and I’m comfortable.

It’s a very nice feeling, being able to hunker down in a setting you’re reasonably knowledgeable in and just get on with the narrative. I think that’s why I’m enjoying writing my short contemporary stories so much—the only searching I did for Surfacing Again for example, was to use Google Earth to walk the old pilgrim route to Lindisfarne.

When I have the time and inclination I try to gather my research sources together for particular books and time-periods. You can find them under the menu Interesting History Stuff at the top of the page. It’s a bit of a work in progress and it’s not comprehensive, but it also serves to remind me what I looked at 😊.

So what am I going to leave next in my browser history? Honestly, I don’t know. This year I have crashed and burned a bit as far as longer projects are concerned, but I had planned to write the final book in the Bradfield trilogy, so if that happens I’ll be going back to the 1920s. And perhaps a companion book to The Flowers of Time, which is going to take a bit of a jump-start as I’ve forgotten quite a lot about the 1780s. I feel as if I want to get those done, interspersed with contemporary Celtic myths and the Theatre Fach world, before I begin a completely fresh project. However, it might be that I just stick with the contemporaries for now rather than forcing myself to concentrate on anything longer.

Watch this space and you’ll be the first to know!

http://www.amyspectorauthor.com/blog2To find out what’s in the internet search histories of my Read Around the Rainbow colleagues, visit their blogs here! K. L. Noone, Addison Albright, Nell Iris, Ofelia Grand, Holly Day, Fiona Glass, Ellie Thomas, Lillian Francis, Amy Spector.

Read Around the Rainbow. Writers and bloggers of LGBTQIA+ Romance.