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

#ReadAroundtheRainbow: How to romance a romance writer

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.

When we were deciding what topic to pick this month, half of us were really twitchy about this one. It turns out that lots of romance writers are really cynical and don’t much like hearts and flowers in their non-fictional lives. There was a general flurry of oh, I’m not sure I can write about that! And then one of us confessed that they weren’t romantic at all and lots of other people followed suite.

Reader. It was me. I was the first.

A very long time ago I had a couple of screwy relationships where there was a lot of performative romance in public and a lot of unkindness behind closed doors. It turned me off the whole caboodle. It hardens your heart to declarations of love and devotion when a the same time you have someone chucking you over the sofa at home.

Mr AL and I have been married twenty years this year. I didn’t want to get married for the opportunity to float down the aisle on a cloud of orange blossom. I wanted to get married so if I ended up on life support, he’d be the person who got to decide when to turn the switch off. We talked it over for a few months and eventually, he proposed.

I’ve told this story before. It was New Year’s Eve and we were walking home from a friend’s house. It was sleeting sideways and we were both very drunk. He got down on one knee under the No Dogs Fouling sign on a lamppost on a backstreet and popped the question. I was so unsteady on my feet I had to hold on to it to stay upright. The next day we were both so hung over neither of us mentioned it for ages because we weren’t sure we hadn’t hallucinated the whole thing. Then the day after that, we went and posted the banns and booked the registry office for three months time. We asked a dozen people along and afterwards we went to the pub.

I wouldn’t have a wedding ring for a decade because I was sure I’d lose it and then become convinced the marriage was jinxed. I’m not sure that’s anything to do with romance though, more paranoia?

To me, romance is the doing of small things, not big performative gestures. It’s a smile across a room full of people when you catch each other’s eye. It’s a bunch of flowers you’ve picked from the garden because the sun was out and they caught your eye and you know they’ll make someone smile. It’s making a sensible supper when you’re both tired and beat and no-one has eaten a vegetable for days. It’s noticing someone’s in pain and finding their medication for them. It’s a proper letter saying you’re missed when your loved one is away from home.

Those are the things that count. Grand gestures are just that, gestures. It’s being there when it counts that’s truly romantic.

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

#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

Gallbladder Summer followed by Children’s Respiratory Illness Autumn

Nenna, smiling in her new pyjamas with pineapples on them.

If you follow me on social media at all, you’ll know that Littlest has been in hospital for a couple of weeks now. She went in with a respiratory infection that necessitated us flying back from our holiday/respite break and she’s having trouble throwing it off. She’s been in and out of the local ICU, swapping between there and the children’s ward HDU. There isn’t a dedicated PICU locally and we are waiting for a bed in the children’s hospital in Bristol. They are snowed however, because the Children’s Respiratory Illness Season ™ has come early this year.

She doesn’t currently need non-invasive ventilation and is on nasal oxygen of either the high-flow or low-flow kind; IV antibiotics; and having a lot of chest physio and suction. Her SATS keep swinging up and down and she is getting very tired. Last week we had a very difficult conversation with her doctors about the pros and cons of invasive ventilation. It needed to be had, but it was emotionally gruesome.

I’m updating every couple of days on tiktok, more for myself than anyone else really–it feels good to talk about it a bit, it releases some of the pressure inside me. She’s a strong-minded little girl–not so little now at fourteen–and we are hopeful she will throw this off. But also, we have been living with the knowledge that she is life-limited since we were first referred to the children’s hospice when she was four.

Every time she is poorly like this, her overall health and wellbeing steps down. Even if she throws it off, it’s probable she won’t ever regain the strength she had before. One of the reasons Bristol want her there is so they can assess her for overnight non-invasive ventilation when she is well enough to come home.

I am swinging between bursts of activity on social media and managing to write as displacement, to not being able to do anything. My own health still isn’t back to normal after my Gallbladder Summer and I’m having to pace myself. Consequently Mr AL is spending most of the time in hospital with Littlest–because of her communication issues and special needs she needs someone who knows here there pretty much all the time. I’m trying to do a few hours in the morning and early afternoon and he’s doing the late afternoon and evening; and when we don’t have help from one of her lovely carers, the night as well. No-one needs me overdoing it and having a seizure on the ward, although they’ve been very nice when I have.

Talking Child is bottling it all up, as are we all I suppose. Every so often they have a meltdown, completely understandably. We are taking it in turns.

That’s the news, anyway. If you’d like to contribute to a crowdfunder to help with additional carer costs and for hospital food when we don’t have enough spoons to take sandwiches and a thermos, I have set one up here. Alternatively if you’d like to support us by buying one of my books, you can find them here. Any help is very gratefully received <3.

#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.