Category Archives: Culture

THE BUSINESS OF BOOKS: ONLY TAKE IT ON IF YOU CAN SEE IT THROUGH

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Jane Cable considers what it takes to organise a successful event

Never one to ask others to do what I won’t myself, I thought that this year I would focus my own articles on advice given and received as well. Except as I have the privilege of writing my own column once a month I’m planning to focus each article on something relevant to my writing life.

So let’s start with writers’ events. I don’t know whether it’s because I’m willing, or I’m bossy, or I forget to duck below the parapet, but very often it seems to be me doing the organising. Last week I was at a library in Cardiff with two other Welsh authors, talking about routes to publication. It was a bitterly cold evening and it had snowed during the day. We’d already cancelled the afternoon event due to low bookings but were determined this one should go ahead. Perhaps, between us, we did know a significant number of people in the audience, but that was probably because they were writers yet to get a book out there and wanted to pick our brains. That said, we all enjoyed the evening and the library reported enthusiastic feedback from our guests.

So, what did I learn? And what advice would I give other writers looking to try their hand at connecting with their audience in this way?

  1. Only take it on if you can see it through If you initiate an event it is down to you to finish it. You may have a helpful venue (as we did in Cardiff last week), but if you promise something you have to deliver or your reputation will be at stake. This can mean finding other writers willing to take part, pulling together publicity material, sorting out IT and refreshments. If you can’t give it the time and the energy, don’t go there.
  2. Know your audience Think about who you would like to attend and find a venue, time and topic to suit them. Sometimes at least one of these will be fixed (eg a library or a festival) but there will always be something you can control to entice people in. Last week in Cardiff we over-estimated the appeal of an afternoon discussion about favourite books aimed at readers of romance. We were targeting retired people, thinking they would enjoy the interaction and not want to be talked at. What we didn’t factor in was the weather – the same event in the summer might well have been popular.
  3. Know when to quit We had six people signed up to that afternoon event and there were four presenters so it was a no brainer that it had to go. We, and the library, tried everything to up the numbers but to no avail so we pulled the plug and made sure everyone knew about it. But quitting isn’t always the right answer. A couple of years ago Chindi Authors organised a mini litfest to raise funds for Words for the Wounded. Tickets sold slowly for the main lunchtime event and I was ready to pull the plug, but the wonderful children’s author Christopher Joyce refused to let me and as it happened we would have struggled to fit another person in – and the weekend as a whole raised almost £1,000 for the charity.
  4. Only do it if you’re going to enjoy it There is no point putting all this effort in if, on the day, you’re going to be a gibbering wreck. If you hate public speaking then find another way to raise your profile. Nothing is compulsory. Play to your strengths.

JANE CABLE REVIEWS: THE LAST DAY by CLAIRE DYER

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This is a clever book on so many levels. Just as you are settling in with the characters Claire Dyer throws a curve ball which grips you and makes it impossible not to read on.

Vita, Boyd and Honey are not a love triangle. They can’t be; Vita got over Boyd years ago, but nevertheless it is a surreal situation for them all when Boyd and Honey need to move into Vita’s home in Albert Terrace. And of course they all have secrets – there have to be secrets. In fact there is only one character in book who doesn’t have one.

As days turn into weeks, and weeks turn into months, the new normality of life in Albert Terrace is punctured by glimpses of the past which tie the characters together, yet rip them apart. As time marches on towards the last day – which the reader knows has to come – secrets are revealed and slowly the jigsaw falls into place. Just one mystery remains: will the last day in fact be the first?

The Last Day is Claire Dyer’s first book for The Dome Press and she seems to have found the right home for her particular brand of character driven fiction. Dyer is also a poet and it shows; every word in this carefully constructed novel counts and has the feeling of being deliberately placed. Yet the genius is that this is still a smooth read which carries you to the Surrey small town world of the characters and keeps you there long after you’ve finished reading.

As the story takes off you forget about the writer’s skill and become immersed. You cease to notice that one character alone narrates in the first person, that the whole book is in the present tense. This is how it should be with great writing and Dyer, with her MA in Creative Writing, slips into the background as her story takes over.

Highly recommended.

The Last Day is published on 15th February 2018 by The Dome Press. Claire Dyer is one of four writers Frost’s Business of Books column is following this year. Look out for updates on the last Wednesday of every month.

 

BUSINESS OF BOOKS: FIRST, LAST, EVERYTHING – AUTHOR JOHN JACKSON

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Kicking off a new series for 2018, Jane Cable talks to romantic novelist and former seafarer John Jackson

What was the first writing advice you were ever given?

The first piece was one I worked out for myself before starting to write fiction.

In a previous life, I spent many years preparing safety manuals, policies and procedures. In the main, these were for non-native English-speaking ship’s crew, from the Philippines, Burma, Poland and the like.

Back in the day, companies, especially shipping companies, all thought that the only good manual was a BIG one. This saw many shipping lines having massive and all-encompassing manuals that nobody read. These weren’t written to help seafarers be better at their jobs, they were written with the sole aim of stopping the Company being sued.

To me, it soon became clear that “It’s useless writing something that nobody can read and understand.”

So, clarity is everything – and it’s a trait that I hope I bring to my fiction writing. Certainly, a feature of Heart of Stone’s reviews is that it is a “fast read” and a “real page turner”

I got into writing fiction at the behest of some friends who happened to be members of the Romantic Novelists Association. Their advice to me, to try and get onto the RNAs “New Writers Scheme” was certainly the best advice I received. As a man trying to make it in a genre dominated by women writers, I can only thank the RNA and its members for the unconditional help and support I have been given.

What was the most recent writing advice you were given?

With just one published book to my name, I know I am still “learning my craft.” Publishing, with all the ancillary professions, such as editors and agents, is an enormous and diverse business.

It is also a business that is changing and changing fast. Writing is a famously lonely occupation. In many ways, we are the bottom men on the totem pole. It is also very easy to forget that this is a BUSINESS. We might write because it’s just something that we want or have to do, but for everyone else, it’s a business, and their only decision is “can they make money from your work.”

This might not be advice that anyone would give you directly, but it is true, nonetheless.

Self-publishing and the rise of Amazon has also shrunk the market for the other professionals; it has made them even more reluctant to take on any but the most immediately marketable authors. The days of a publisher taking on a young author and nurturing their career in the hope of a bestseller down the line are long gone. Self-publishing is no longer considered vanity publishing. It is a valid and popular method of getting your work to market.

What is the piece of advice you’d most like to pass on? (writing or otherwise!)

Every manuscript needs a good editor. It is someone else’s eyes giving a professional and fresh look at your work. So many self-published books show very early in the read that they have never been properly edited.

I am very lucky in that Sue, my editor, is also a friend, and we work together well. Other friends are not so lucky, especially when contracted to one of the major publishing houses. Sometimes you may have to fight for what you want, but always remember – this is YOUR story, You have to have faith in it.

That’s what we are doing Telling a story – and everything you write should be towards that end. We are not writing textbooks or reference works, we are STORYTELLERS!

Keep the faith! Your writing WILL get better, and you WILL succeed. Sometimes this is hard but you need to believe in yourself.

Keep up with John on Twitter @jjackson42

 

How To Make Your Blog Posts Go Viral Part Two

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blogIn the first post on how to make your blog, and your blog posts, go viral we covered content, social media sharing, titles, tags and keywords. Next up we have more advice for helping your hard work pay off.

Post at The Right Time

Doing a post on Christmas Day probably won’t get a lot of hits. Posting on a Friday evening is not ideal either. Have a think when people will be more likely to be online. You can research when people are on Twitter and Facebook. Use your Google analytics to find out when the ideal time is to reach your readers.

Share your post in your Newsletter

A newsletter is a brilliant way of making sure your great posts get another chance. Even your most loyal readers may miss a post or two. Build up the people on your newsletter list by doing competitions and having one of the entry requirements signing up to your newsletter.

Press Release

Writing a press release, and distributing it to the media, is a great way to get traffic and build on your reputation. The way to do this is to have an angle and then write about 500 words on that, along with a good pictures and then sending it out to the media. Channel Mum do this well by doing surveys and then releasing the results to the media, along with a statement. A lot of companies and publications do this. You could also write about a relevant subject, or have a personal story. It is all about the angle. Start building a media list. You can do this by signing up for Gorkana’s Consumer Alert or the Diary Directory. You can also find out who the editor of each publication is by looking on Twitter, the actual publication or websites. Getting a copy of the Writers and Artists Yearbook is also a good idea. It will be full of contacts.

Create Evergreen Content

One of the best ways to turn your blog into a success is to write evergreen posts. What is an evergreen post? It is a post that keeps getting hits. Even years later. These kind of posts tend to be informative or educational. Frost has a number of posts that are still getting hits up to seven years later. Imagine if you wrote an article and it still got thousands of hits years later. That is a great source of traffic and the only effort you had to put in was writing the initial post. Win win.

Get creative with Design

Creating pictures and graphics to go with your post is a great way to market them and improve engagement. Graphically engaging people can be done in many ways.  You will get more pins on Pinterest and more clicks on other social media too. Frost writer Jane Cable uses Canva to great effect. Canva is a free design tool which is easy to use. You can also create banner ads, headers, marketing material, ebooks and documents with it. Other design tools to use include Piktochart, Venngage, Infogr.am and Visual.ly

Optimise Your Images

Optimising your images is one of the easiest ways to get more traffic and also one of the most effective. Give your images a title using relevant keywords before you upload them, then add in a few more for good measure. Fill out the Title and Alt Text. This will optimise your images and you will get a lot of traffic through sources like Google Images.

Write Long Form Content 

Apparently long form content gets more shares than short form content according to Blog.visme.co in their article 10 Ways to make your content go viral. BuzzSumo did a study in which they found out that posts between 3,000 to 10,000 words were shared the most, while posts that were 1,000 words or less were shared the least. I am quite surprised at this but it is worth thinking about. It is a good idea to make most of your posts over 500 words.

 

I will be telling you all you need to know about blogging in a series of articles. You can also check out my book, The Ultimate Guide To Becoming a Successful Blogger which is available in ebook and print. 

 

How To Make Your Blog Posts Go Viral Part One

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how to be a successful blogger, blogging, writing, working from home, Catherine Balavage, freelancing, money from writing, business, Catherine Balavage, Margaret Graham,
So you have written your amazing blog post but how do you get people to read it? In fact, how do you get your blog to stand out and be successful by having your blogs go viral? Here are my tips for writing good content that gets read and shared. For more on blogging check out my blogging book The Ultimate Guide To Becoming a Successful Blogger which is available in ebook and print. 

Content is King

If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up to date information that they can explore at will. They need an opportunity for personal involvement that goes far beyond that offered through the letters to the editor pages of print magazines.” -Bill Gates.

These three words are the most important. In fact, these are the words your business should live by. Content IS king. Your posts will only go viral if your content is good enough. You have to write great posts that people will not just read but also share. You have to capture their imagination, or tell them something they didn’t know. You have to solve one of their problems or entertain them. You should write consistently good blog posts so people keep coming back for more. Your content should be good, well-written and sharable. But that is not enough, you also have to do the next step.

Tip: Be so good that they can’t ignore you.

Share Your Content

The more you share your content the more likely other people will see it, read it, and share it too. You can share your post on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and Tumblr. Phew. That is a lot of different sites and it can be exhausting sharing your post on all of them. The key is to find the ones that work for your content and then you can ditch the others. Of course, sharing on them all would be great, but you have to think about opportunity costs. Do what works, drop what doesn’t. Burning out never helped anyone.

Keep Your Title Short

It makes it easier to share on Twitter. People also have short attention spans.

Write Catchy Titles

Your title is an advertisement for your article. If it isn’t good, then people won’t click on it. The title is the most important thing because if you do not have a good one then your post will not get read. Take time on your titles and make sure they are catchy, suggest what is in the article, and pique people’s interest.  It is also important that the title tells you, or at least gives a hint, on what the post is about. No song titles or vague descriptions. I know it is irritating, but magazines can get away with that, but online you have to let people know why they should click immediately or you will lose them.

According to Peter Sandeen 80% of people don’t read more than the title. So make sure you make it count.

Tag Your Article And Include Good Keywords

Tag your post with relevant keywords. Google don’t penalise for over-tagging anymore but you don’t need to. Just add the most relevant keywords for your article so people can find it easily. Also include the best keywords in your title and in the first paragraph of your post. For example, I would tag this article “blogging” “how to make your blog post go viral” and “blogging tips”. It is also a good idea to go through your old posts and put in relevant keywords in the title and throughout the article. Optimise your old posts and your new ones. You will be more likely to get traffic this way.

This is probably the point where you realise that writing great content and making it go viral is not as easy as it looks. Well it isn’t, but it is a skill to learn and you can do it. You just have to learn how and I will give you the knowledge. Keep an eye out for part two. You can also read my article on how to make money blogging.

 

I will be telling you all you need to know about blogging in a series of articles. You can also check out my book, The Ultimate Guide To Becoming a Successful Blogger which is available in ebook and print. 

 

 

Why do women love thrillers?

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From the international bestseller The Girl on the Train to last year’s The Breakdown, the psychological thriller has become society’s favourite means of escape – and women have long made up the majority of readers. But their appetite for crime and suspense is no mystery, writes Rex Richards.

When it comes to literary thrill-seekers, women are at the front of the rollercoaster queue. But why the hunger for suspense when female characters are routinely killed off (or otherwise abused) at the hands of a male villain? To understand the attraction, let’s take a look at what makes a good thriller.

Lots of thrillers have the same basic plot: A beautiful young woman with the best years of her life ahead of her is brutally killed. Things go downhill from there until, finally, everything gets resolved at the end. Quite often, scary and perverted things happen in the interim, and in the most successful thrillers, there are insights into the killer’s mind that are just as chilling as the acts themselves.

I have to confess, in the new thriller I’ve written, The New Prophet, that’s exactly how it starts but not exactly how it ends. I see writing thrillers like baking a cake. There’s a basic recipe that it makes sense to follow, but why not sling in some chocolate too and maybe some chilli for a real surprise? Normally a thriller sets itself apart by the dreadful details of the killer’s acts. My book, The New Prophet is different to other thrillers because it’s also very funny in places, and full of social comment, taking serious digs at TV news and celeb culture. Of course, it’s got loads of suspense, amazing female characters and a seriously chilling bad guy who thinks he’s possessed by a living fire that tells him who to kill.

So, given the formula and the likelihood of a female victim, why are women so hungry for goosebumps? I think the obvious answer is because women are more creative thinkers than men. Men prefer to have things laid out for them, and see order restored. Women are more imaginative and artistic, and like to piece it all together themselves. In my book, The New Prophet, there are clues as to why the killer does what he does. I’ve written it in just such a way that your ingenious mind will start whirring early and wondering what the real truth about his childhood and background is.

Another reason is all the emotions. Women are generally more in touch with their emotions than men. The older men get, quite often the more rigid and closed-up they become, whereas women understand their emotions more as they travel through life. In my book, women can read the quiet despair behind my main character Jack’s life. Yes, he’s funny, but some men might just miss why he is that way; women will know. When there are moments of utterly concentrated experience, such as when The New Prophet kills his first victim, there’s an emotional intensity to it that some men might miss. Women won’t.

The final reason women love thrillers is because these twisted tales are so different to their own lives. Seeing the bad guy get away with something really naughty appeals to a side of all of us that wants to break the rules too. Who doesn’t want to escape from the monotonous routine of their day-to-day lives?

But it’s not just a spirit of rebellion that makes these stories so compelling. Reading about another woman coming to an unfortunate end plays on our own insecurities. We can lose ourselves in the intensity of it, imagine ourselves in that position, even wonder if the character deserved it, then we can come out the other side in one piece and back to our normal lives. Phew!

The New Prophet by Rex Richards is out now, priced £9.99 in paperback and £2.39 as a Kindle eBook. It is available for sale on Amazon UK

We have 3 copies of The New Prophet by Rex Richards to win. Just send you details to frostmagazine@gmail.com to enter.

 

BUSINESS OF BOOKS: TAKE FOUR WRITERS – INTRODUCING ANGELA PETCH

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Hi! … can’t believe I’m on here. I’m excited, apprehensive and honoured to share in this venture.

I love reading. I don’t think you can be a writer without being a bookworm. I panic if I’m coming to the end of a good book and feel bereft until I’m lost in another story. Although I loved English at school, my degree is in Italian. I lived in Rome as a child, worked in Sicily, met my half-Italian husband there and now, in our retirement, we spend six months of each year in Tuscany, where we run a small holiday business. Although I’ve always written, only now that our three children are independent have I been able to settle seriously to the craft. I self-published two novels set in Tuscany and they’ve been taken on by Endeavour Press. Last year I had seven stories accepted by women’s magazines and I enjoy the discipline of this genre too, so hopefully I will sell more in 2018.

However, this year I am becoming a hybrid author and returning down the indie route to self-publish “something completely different”.

In 2006 my best friend discovered she was suffering from ovarian cancer. We did lots together, including hunting for bargains in charity shops and at auctions, nicknaming each other Mavis and Dot. She was extremely brave, but she had her darker moments too and I tried to cheer her up by writing silly stories about Mavis and Dot. They made her laugh and she drew cartoon sketches of the characters, which I still have hanging on the back of our loo door. Sadly, she didn’t recover from this silent killer and I filed away my anecdotes. A couple of years ago I pulled one out to read at a writing group and raised a laugh. So, I decided to develop the stories and put together a novella. There will be illustrations and I’m busy searching for the right artist as I type.

I feel rather wobbly about Mavis and Dot, but I dearly want them to succeed as I intend to donate any profits to Cancer Research. Humour is notoriously hard to pull off and my usual style is literary, so I have to banish the goblin from my shoulder telling me I am writing drivel that nobody will find amusing. My launch date is mid-November, but I know time whizzes by faster than a bargain snatched off a charity shop shelf. So, I need to get down to business. And that is the main cause of my wobbles. Going indie again means getting my act together with social media and marketing. When I see telecom engineers at the side of the road working on control panels, plugging wires into holes, it makes me think of me procrastinating over algorithms, metadata, BISAC codes, author platforms and networking. Which hole should I connect with, – when and how? However, I have also made virtual friends on-line with a whole bunch of supportive authors and bloggers in the past months and, although there’s a mountain to climb, I want to scale this peak.

Time is the thing, isn’t it? And discipline. We are blessed with three children and four very young grandchildren (with another on the way), and when we are in England during our six winter months they keep us busy.   I will stop bleating about that because I know there are many authors who burn the midnight oil and squeeze their writing into fewer hours than I have. Wish me luck, nevertheless. “Live where you fear to live”, said the 13th century poet, Rumi.

 

 

How Much of Yourself Should You Share Online?

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awesome cat picturesWe live in the era of information overload. People share everything from what they eat, to pictures of their children. But how much should we share online? As a writer I have to share my experiences. Well, to be a good writer anyway. But when you write an article and it goes out into the world it is not always possible to bring it back. Nor is is possible to control who reads it, or what that person does with that information. And there is the problem. I feel we are too trusting when we are throwing information out on to the internet. I believe most people are good, but not all are.

I am not talking about criminals, although we should definitely be watching out for those. Those type of bad people are why I am careful about what I post about my children online. No, I am talking about something marginally more benign: people you know. I remember I wrote an article many years ago on the media and how they report fertility, only for some people to somehow find it and use the article in a mean and bitchy way for years. This made me very sad and is one of the reasons I stopped writing as much. Then I realised the bullies were winning, so I wrote more, but was still cautious. Hard to know whether that is a good or bad thing.

In real life I am a very open person. I will talk to most people about anything. Well, except sex or money. There has to be some limits. But the truth is: there are horrible people out there that will take your words and use them against you. There are also employers who might not like what they see on social media and decide to not hire you.

So what do I do as a writer? Should I continue to share my life, or should I stop and find other things to write about? I have not decided what is best yet. I will continue to share my personal experience, but I will be wary and think about the consequences. Mostly I will write about things I think will help other people or make them laugh. I believe that human beings have a desperate need to connect with each other, to hear each other’s stories, to know they are not alone. That is what is most important to me. Sharing and connecting with my fellow human beings.

Please share your thoughts below.