Well, I've been somewhat absent lately.

There's a reason for that, and it's probably best summed up by a Reddit post I just made regarding the third book in the Martin Chalk series:

"Well, my amateur-detective hero Martin Chalk is hot on the trail of the third piece of a five piece wand (super original, I know, but there's more to it than the simple McGuffin) and I wanted to show the rise and fall of a mortal paladin who held the third piece.

The only logical way to condense a life story into a book was to use time travel as a device and to hit the salient points of the antagonist's life. I thought I was so clever, until I was some way into it and things really started to bother me.

For example, how to deal with the butterfly effect?

What about temporal paradoxes? Martin is the cause of something that he'd deeply like to undo, the death of an obviously good and positive character. What's to stop him from going back in time from where he finds out his advice doomed her, and giving her different advice? B-bu-but then he'd have remembered doing that!

What about predestination? If everything turns out as it should, then that sort of implies the lack of free will, which sucks to both me and Martin Chalk, who deeply cherishes causality.

ARGH. And it sort of snowballs from there.

Honestly it probably would have been easier to restart the tale, except for that I'd done some (to my mind) particularly fun and entertaining writing and didn't want to lose that work. This book was supposed to have been finished in April :D It was also supposed to be novella sized and I'm pushing 80k words with a probable 100k in sight.

Iirc JK Rowling banned and wrote out the timetwisters Hermione used, and a jolly good thing it was too. I bet she also regretted messing with causality ;)"





If I manage to keep a rigid writing schedule, then Martin Chalk and the Quest Through Time should be out in a month or two.

Reddit Writer of the Day

Today is my Reddit Fantasy Writer of the Day slot, and it's viewable here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/b2ge12/rfantasy_writer_of_the_day_bruno_stella/

Hopefully I get some interesting questions and have some fun. :)

Writing Music - Battleroar

Here's a different sort of post related to writing.

I personally find myself more productive when I'm listening to some sort of music.

My poison of choice is heavy metal, but not just any sort will do for writing. Staccato rhythms and rap-like lyrics are straight into the garbage bin. That's because I need to think of my own words without some guy screaming the same phrase into my ear over and over.

I tend to look for stuff with sweeping melodies and grand narratives, while still retaining the energetic guitar work that is typical of good metal. Excellent vocals are a must, but the vocals mustn't overwhelm the music, but complement it. Some sort of unusual instrument, like, oh, I don't know, a violin, perhaps, adds interest to such a band. :)

I've lent an ear to this band from Greece for some time now, and Battleroar's latest offering is Codex Epicus, to be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=700GDzPu3_w

It fulfils my writing music requirements very well, and is a masterpiece to be listened to at other times as well.

For what it's worth, I recommend them highly.

Getting Amazon Reviews

This has to be one of the hardest things to do.

The Ebook and Indie publishing market is absolutely saturated with titles, and Amazon is bursting at the seams with new books being squeezed into the published sausage like so much mincemeat every day. Newly published books sink like stones. Forget the "I published a book and got drowned in a truckload of money as a desperate publisher recognised my unique snowflake talent and hit me up for a contract" stories. I literally think that winning the lottery is both easier and less arduous.

One of the few things that one can do to try to stand out is to have a book with some (hopefully) positive reviews. That in itself is a very difficult thing to achieve. Amazon (understandably) cracked down big time on the paid review scene, because there's an inherent bias involved in reviewing a book that somebody just paid you for. Amazon wants reviews to grow "organically".

Sounds good.

But what does that mean? It means that people buy your book, and the subject matter within moves their soul and they just have to write a review for you on Amazon. Except for that people won't buy a book with no reviews if there's an equal title next to it with a bunch of 5 star reviews. They'll buy that one instead. So would I.

So, what can one do?

Free KDP giveaways are touted as one of the best ways to get people to read your work and to slowly accumulate those little golden nuggets. That's right. That book you just wrote? Ya gotta give it away for free if you want to be read. But wait! You didn't just think you could give it away and thousands of people would download it, did you?

No. Everybody is doing that, so you have to advertise your free book. Once you get over the fact that you have to pay folks to give your book away to an audience, you come to the next realisation that they don't want your stinkin' book with no reviews, you have to have at least ten or so good ones before you get the honour.

I had a bit of a laugh at the chicken - and - the - egg situation, but its a situation a shedload of authors find themselves in with no easy solutions.

Book 3 coming along

Well, I have been fairly humming along with the next book in the Martin Chalk series.

Now that there’s some momentum behind it, I need to push through. I’d sketched up such a complicated plotline that the first time I’d left it for a while, it took me a week of reading through the backstory to remember where the heck the story was headed and why.

I found Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ very useful. He says 2000 words a day, every day, no excuses. At first I was like, “Pfft! Is that all?” and proceeded to knock out 3500 words the first day on the job. I felt like a hero. The next day, just over 2000. The day after … 1500 and those came hard.  The last two days have been fruitless, and I’ve been telling myself that marketing is work too.

LOL.

Sometimes, writing is just not easy, but you have to sit and shovel the words regardless. You can always edit out later. But you can’t edit out if there’s zero.

Sales, but from where?

Interestingly enough, I've had a small burst of sales lately.

As a self-pubbed author, it it pretty important to know what caused those sales, and unfortunately, I don't have a clue.

I've been pursuing two forms of advertising lately.

One is the Amazon keywords thing where your book appears as "recommended" below other books with hopefully the same characteristics. I've received a modest amount of impressions (times that people have seen the book) but rather low click through rate. None of those clicks have resulted in sales. Yet, sales I am getting.

The book Martin Chalk and the Case of the Underworld King was recently on free promo. Again, only a modest number of people downloaded it, and it seems strange that all the sales I've had were from that book, which folks probably picked up for free anyway.

Head-scratching time.

Either the folks that downloaded it as free came back to buy it, which was cool of them ... or they possibly recommended it to friends who then bought it. 'Tis only 99c after all.

Anyway, I wish I knew what was pushing the sales :)

Martin Chalk and the Underworld King on free promotion

Martin Chalk and the Underworld King is on free promotion from the 18th till the 22nd. That is from today until Tuesday. First free promo I've done so I'm hoping for downloads and especially for reviews. Getting traction on Amazon is pretty much as hard as pulling teeth unfortunately.

Martin Chalk and the Search in Sheona published

Well I'm pretty chuffed that the latest in the Martin Chalk series has just been published on Amazon, last night as a matter of fact.

The story is starting to hit its groove and is becoming more fun to write. It feels less like me pushing events and more like the events are unfolding and I'm merely documenting what happens. A narrative often feels like a train to me ... slow to really get going fast but once it does, hard to stop.

The city of Sheona is, to me, a natural evolution of lawfulness being carried a bit too far, and I had fun with putting the straight-laced Martin into a situation where he was the guy that was the rebel and flirting with ending up on the wrong side of the Law.

I also had fun in creating the Nightcleaner, and something tells me we'll be seeing him again ;)

Martin Chalk: The Search in Sheona coming soon

The second installment of the Martin Chalk series is coming out soon.

It's been finished, edited and re-edited. Cover done, and that's going to look a little different from other covers. More on this later.

Why so long, though?

Well, for one reason, its financial.

Writing hasn't so much as paid for an ice cream so far and unfortunately real-life hassles like paying the electrical bill and putting food on the table have interfered with writing for fun. I'm now in a position to give my writing some much needed attention and to see whether something that I do for the love of it can't become a viable sub-career.

The second reason is my own tendency to devolve into complexity. Nothing I do (except for one-off short stories) seems to be simple and to the point.

The Martin Chalk series was originally meant to be knocked out in a year (LOL) and then I was going to get a move on with Book 2 of Tergin's Tale. It's burning in the back of my mind and I need to write it.

Unfortunately I can't turn out porridge and be happy with it.

My characters took on a life of their own and needed back stories. The plot linking the 5 books needed a thoroughly worked out backstory. That plot developed subplots. I ended up having to hack my way out of the spider's web through sheer dint of effort. Now that I've re-ignited the Chalk series I'm not going to stop till it's done, in case I forget who was doing what and why.

Getting back into it

After quite a while of treating my writing as a fun diversion from my usual activities (metalwork mostly) I've decided to actually go for it in a serious manner.

Writing a book is the easy part. Hell, I've been doing it since I was 12.

Actually getting anybody to read it is another entirely. Getting people to read them thar books means marketing, and if there's anything I'm not a fan of it's punting my stuff as though its something special - the same as all the other 21 350 000* authors out there. For some reason marketing has been my achilles heel since forever.

But apparently that's how its done, so Tergin and Martin Chalk will have to do their little dance and juggle some flaming balls on the street corner. Sorry, Martin, I know you have better things to do, but, just this one jig and that's it**.

* Figure entirely sucked from my thumb.

** A lie, obviously.