A peek into my next book

I’ve been writing the third Two-Natured London novel for a few weeks now. It’s coming along nicely, though it doesn’t have a name yet. I’ve decided not to stress about that; I’ll come up with one when I have to. I hope. Titles really aren’t my forte as a writer, be it a blog post or an academic essay, and with books they matter even more.

I return to the Greenwood wolf-shifter clan I introduced in the first book, The Wolf’s Call. The hero is Kieran Garret, the clan tracker who has tirelessly worked against discrimination of his kind for all his long life. So when a woman shows up to accuse his clan of killing her sheep, he is not exactly pleased.

The woman in question is, naturally, the heroine of my book. Gemma Byrd has been brought up on a sheep farm, but hating it, she has fled the country life for the big city. As a favour for her brother, she returns to look after the farm for a couple of weeks. When she discovers that wolves have killed some of his pregnant ewes, she knows exactly who to blame: the Greenwood clan shifters.

Nothing is ever simple or straightforward in romances. It takes twists and turns to figure out who is responsible for the kill and, more importantly, to bring the lovers together. Set in the countryside, the book has a slightly different feel to it than the more urban books before it. There will be some returning characters from the previous books too – the Crimson Circle will definitely make an appearance for those who like the vampire warriors.

If all goes according to my schedule, the book should come out in October. Here’s the blurb:

Is a common enemy enough for them to overcome centuries of distrust?

Gemma is a vampire and a city girl through and through despite having grown up in a farm. She likes working indoors, not mucking about in a pigsty, and a night out means clubs, not staying up with a ewe in labour. But when her brother Tom asks her help on the farm, she agrees. She soon wishes she hadn’t. Not only does the horse hate her, wolves kill some of Tom’s sheep.

Kieran is a master tracker of his wolf-shifter clan and an ardent speaker for equality among species. He’s proud of being a shifter and in his opinion only openness will make humans accept the two-natured. He most definitely doesn’t understand Gemma hiding hiding her true nature from humans.

When Gemma accuses his clan of killing Tom’s sheep, Kieran gets furious. He sees it as a return to lynch mentality he has worked so hard to erase. But he knows that if humans find out about it, his clan will be in the first line of fire. So he agrees to keep it a secret.

Kieran and Gemma have to find the wolves responsible for the crime before humans learn about it. But shifters and vampires are naturally distrustful of each other and their temperaments are too different for them to get along. So what should they do about the attraction that begins to draw them together?

Then the rogue shifters kill again and this time it doesn’t go unnoticed.

Catching up with my reading

I’m back from my great, relaxing holiday. I visited family and recharged my batteries by reading some of the books from my ever increasing to-be-read pile. Ever since I started writing, I’ve been behind on quite a few series I follow that I now had time to catch up with. Among those was my current favourite series, Charley Davidson by Darynda Jones.

I read the books four and five back to back, which turned out to be good, because there was a continuing plot between them. I guess there’s something to be said for not reading every book the moment they are published.

Charley Davidson is the Grim Reaper and one of the funniest characters out there. Her charm is based, rather oddly, on her ADD personality that manifests as a narrative that jumps from topic to topic according to whatever catches her fancy, be it naming her body parts (like Barbara, her brain) and furniture (we were left hanging on the names of a couple of chairs in the last book) or coffee and the endless stream of food she should have ordered instead of what she did.

Despite her concentration issues, Charley is a PI. She’s helped in this by Cookie, her assistant, Uncle Ubie who is a cop, and an ever-growing cast of ghosts who flock to her, drawn by her light only they can see. It’s easy to solve murders when you can ask the ghost who did it; less easy to explain it to the living.

The first three books in the series revolved around a story of a bad-boy Rayes with whom Charley shares a metaphysical connection – and a sizzling physical one. He’s convicted of a murder she’s convinced he didn’t commit and tries to prove his innocence. The showdown at the end of the first trilogy is gruesome. Incidentally, contrasting with her ADD character and laugh-out-loud incidences, the stories usually have a very violent ending, with Charley as the sufferer.

Books four and five start a new cycle, with Charley recovering from the events of the previous books in her unique style, in this case with compulsive shopping from the home shopping network. The bigger story concerning what Charley is and how she is connected with Rayes gets new dimensions, especially in book five that has quite a few revelations, building a storyline for many books to come. There’s a murder or three to solve in both books; in book five the twenty-seven ghosts of women that are the victims of a serial killer show up in Charley’s apartment, too badly traumatised to tell her their story. She solves it, in the end, like she always does, but not without a personal cost.

The books are an intriguing mix of funny and grim, absurd and deadly. There’s a smaller case in each that is solved during the course of the book and then there is the continuing storyline that is interesting and unique enough among all the UF out there. The books are filled with likeable characters whether dead or alive, and all of this is told with Charley’s attention deficit narrative. So far, every book has been good, no weak ones among them. If you’re looking for a new series to read, I warmly recommend this one. Meanwhile, I’m eagerly waiting for the book six. I hope it doesn’t take long.

It's time for celebration!

This month marks the first anniversary of my indie author career. I published my first book, The Wolf’s Call, on June 2012, plunging pretty much headfirst into all this. June is also the month I began writing this blog, my first steps into building a social media presence. So it’s time for a recap.

In numbers, my year has been something like this: I have published four books, two with each pen name; I’ve started two blogs, opened a Twitter account, created a Goodreads author profile, and established a presence on Google+; I’ve posted on various writers’ forums and joined a few communities. But numbers don’t really tell the whole truth about my year.

In a word, it’s been great!

I started things slowly. Most advice I read about building an author platform says that you should do it before you start publishing. Well, I didn’t. So, after I’d pressed publish button on Amazon KDP for the first time I had to start from the scratch. All I can say is that those who advise the other approach are probably right. It’s much easier to launch a book with an established following. They may not buy your book, but at least you’re not shouting into a void.

Knowing myself rather well, I had the sense of not reaching everywhere at once. I noticed that many beginners rushed to all social media platforms to make sure they’re noticed, only to exhaust themselves in the process without making the most of any of them. I had my webpage – the only thing I had created before I began publishing – and this blog. Neither are very interactive platforms, but I wanted to start slowly. I didn’t have delusions of striking it big with my first book so no need to overwhelm myself. Luckily the book sold well enough without my input, giving me a sense that I wasn’t a total failure.

In fact, the book made enough in the first couple of months for me to have it edited. I know; another piece of advice I didn’t follow. And I should have. There were almost a thousand unedited copies of The Wolf’s Call out there by then – and the reviews reflect that. I found myself a great editor, Lee Burton, and had him work his magic with it. Ironically, the book hasn’t reached similar sales after it was edited than it had before. But that’s not Lee’s fault. For some reason, the sales of indie books began to dwindle towards the fall, at least according to the upset posts on KDP Forums.

I published my second book, At Her Boss’s Command, in October. I had a good sense to have it edited first, but it never took off as well as the first book had. I blamed the cover so I changed it a couple of times before settling with the current one. Around the same time, I created a Goodreads profile, judging that I finally had energy for it. But I’ve never quite got the hang of it so I don’t use all its potential, I’m afraid.

Instead, I use – overuse? – my Twitter account I opened then too. I decided from the start, having observed authors on Twitter for some time, that I wouldn’t use it as a one-way info-dump about my books. Nobody reads those tweets. In fact, most tweets will go unnoticed, so if I want people to react to what I say, I have to have something to say. I also have to react to other people’s tweets. But it’s paid off. In eight months, I’ve made acquaintance with some interesting people with whom I enjoy exchanging tweets more or less regularly. Twitter is definitely best enjoyed socially.

Right before Christmas, I released my third book, Which way to love? but it has never been very popular. I tried with it at first, but gave up and concentrated on writing the fourth book instead, the second Two-Natured London novel Warrior’s Heart. It took me longer to write than I anticipated so it came out only in March. It has found some readers so I’m happy with it. However, my first book still outsells it 2:1. I don’t know why.

Around the time I published Warrior’s Heart, I opened a Google+ account and instantly joined a couple of communities there; groups for writers mostly. I’ve been very happy with G+ once I got the hang of it. It’s like Twitter in the sense that you can interact with strangers there, but with more space to do it and longer time to react to posts. I’ve met some truly interesting people there that are extremely helpful, willing to share the knowledge on how to make the most of the social media. The key, surprisingly enough, is to be sociable. Share and be shared in return. Comment and your posts will be commented on. Be friendly and people treat you friendly back.

And now we’re in June. I’ve begun writing the third Two-Natured London book, but it won’t be ready until September the earliest. But that’s not important right now. The important thing is that my year as an indie author and self-publisher has been a positive experience. I may not be a best-seller or even on my way to become one, but I’m happy with my books, and happy with all the new skills I’ve learned along the way. And above all, I’m happy with the people I’ve met during my year and the friends I’ve made.

There isn’t much room to give advice here, but this much I will say: make your writer platform about social contacts and interaction with actual human beings, not about forcefully selling your books in any and every opportunity. I have no way of knowing if I would have sold more books if I’d marketed them more aggressively. But I’m absolutely positive I wouldn’t have made the contacts I’ve made if my message had only been that of a marketer.

With this post, I’ll retire to summer holidays. The next post will appear some time in late July, but I'll try to show up on Twitter and G+ so look me there. Happy summer, everyone!

Search engine optimising

I confess: for a person who relies on people finding the content I provide online, I haven’t really paid any attention to how well I’m found there. Surely, I’ve thought, if my name is on it and people search my name, the content shows up. Therefore, I haven’t actually googled my pen names to find out if they are there to be found. I know, I know, but it simply hasn’t seemed important. Not until this week.

This is a cautionary tale.

I began to pay attention to how people found me a while ago when I noticed that I got huge traffic to both my blogs from one website. It seemed legitimate enough – it had the word ‘blog’ in it – but I wasn’t born yesterday so I checked it up. And what do you know, it turned out to be a porn site. What they thought to find on my blog, I have no idea. However, it made me wonder how they ended up on my blogs. I don’t provide adult content, there aren’t any risky photos – unless you count the covers of my books, but those can only entertain for so long – and I write mostly about books.

Was there something wrong with my search parameters?

So, after procrastinating for a couple of days, I finally googled one of my pen names, Susanna Shore. I chose it because that's the name on my G+ profile so I figured it would show up first. The results were somewhat dismaying. While the first link led to Susanna Shore’s web page, most of the links on the first page – and we all know only the first page counts – pointed to other Susanna Shores there are, an academic and a singer among them. Link to my G+ profile was only on the second page and even long dead Susanna Shores from the 17th century came before it. Not good.

So what to do?

There’s plenty of information about SEO out there and most of the time you don’t even have to look for it; I get tweets at least once a day about how to optimise my online visibility. And I actually read most of those posts. I just haven’t done anything about it. Now I would have to.

I started with my G+ profile. I really believed I had it optimised already, but apparently I had done a blotchy job. This timely shared infographic served as a reminder of what exactly needed to be done. I didn’t follow it to a t, but I took a good look at my profile and made some changes. Then I looked at my Twitter profile and my blogs. My Twitter profile is made for my publishing name, Crimson House Books, so linking it with my G+ profile isn’t very straightforward; I actually considered changing the profile name to Susanna Shore too, but that might be confusing. That wasn’t such a great problem though. It turned out my blogs didn’t mention my pen names anywhere. No wonder the search engines couldn’t find them.

Another timely share taught me about Google Authorship. It allows you to link your online content to your G+ profile – or the other way round; I haven’t really figured it out properly yet. However, I signed to it and added a by-line to all my blog posts. I also changed all the search parameters that were, quite frankly, lame. The results weren’t mind-boggling, but more of my blog posts appeared when I searched my name, with my G+ profile photo attached to them. Also, my G+ profile moved to the first page. And as a bonus, the porn site can’t find my blog anymore. Of course, another spam site has taken its place, but one can’t always win.

I still have quite a bit of work to do optimising my search results. Next, I’m going to link my G+ profile to my web page. The instructions are here; now I only have to follow them.

I’m fairly sure that optimising everything through Google+ will work the best for me. I have absolutely no data to back this claim up, but – let’s face it – Google is the biggest search engine there is and they’re bound to prefer their own content. I think you should try it too; it’s not as much a chore as I may have made it sound. Just open your G+ account and follow the instructions.

So, this was my cautionary tale. If you’ve done better with your SEO efforts, I salute you. If you’ve been lazy like me, take a look at all your online profiles. Perhaps you could brush them up too. Here are the links again, but there is a lot more information out there.

• Google Authorship
• Rel="Author"
• Profile optimising

Do you have tips to share for SEO? Please do. I’m sure I could do better. 

Into Darkness

I finally saw Star Trek Into Darkness yesterday. It wasn’t by my own choice that I didn’t see it earlier. The local movie distributor has decided that we don’t need to see it in this country until in the first week of June. An insufferable wait for a movie that the rest of the world has seen ages ago already. So when I noticed the local cinema having a preview of it, I immediately seized the opportunity.

I loved it, which isn’t always given with sequels. It wasn’t what I expected; the trailer led me believe there would be an explosion extravaganza. What I got was an ensemble move unlike the first, where most of the main cast had meaningful roles that contributed to the whole. The previous movie was more of a two-man show between Kirk and Spock. The plot wasn’t terribly complicated, but it carried through the two plus hours and didn’t cause me roll my eyes in disbelief at any point. What more can I ask, really?

I predicted going in that I would like Benedict Cumberbatch the best and I was right. Others were good enough in their roles, but he was brilliant. A quintessential charismatic villain you can’t help rooting for.  This was made easier by the fact that his wasn’t the only bad guy in the movie. I guessed the other one immediately – a consequence of Hollywood typecasting – and since the other bad guy wasn’t as charismatic as Cumberbatch, I knew how things would end almost from the beginning. I didn’t let that bother me but just enjoyed the show.

I saw the 3D version. As always, I can’t say it gave the movie anything that I couldn’t have done without. The movie had many close-ups between two people and in 3D it constantly seemed like one of them was sitting on my lap, which was really annoying. The compulsory ‘wow’ effects didn’t really work either. So you won’t miss anything if you see it in 2D. Though chances are you’ve seen it already.

All in all, a great experience. I may see it again even, once the movie opens here officially. In the meanwhile, here's the trailer.

Grabbling with the grammar

I’ve come across a few grammar-related posts the past couple of days. There was, for example, this test on the BBC news website. According to it, I’m a grammar guru with 8/10 points. I would’ve got nine, but one question was truly bizarre. I won’t tell you which one it is so as not to spoil it for you.

Getting a good score in a playful grammar test may not seem like much to you. However, English isn’t my native language; it’s Finnish, a language with a very different grammar, syntax and lexicon from English. For example, in Finnish, you can have the words in any order you like in a sentence and only seldom does it make you like a Yoda sound. Everything I know about English I’ve had to learn the hard way. Therefore, my writing is a constant struggle for good language and correct grammar.

Because of this, I’m a quibbler when it comes to correct grammar in any language. After four books and a number of blog posts, writing correct English has become easier. It feels like that, at any rate, though my editor had to make just as many corrections to my latest book as he made to the first one. Partly the sense of ease comes from having actually learned the rules. Mostly though, it’s because I’ve learned to avoid complicated sentence structures. But while this makes for more understandable – and more likely correct – language, it doesn’t make for very exciting language. Unlike native speakers, I don’t feel comfortable with deliberately breaking the rules either. Every grammar error I make is just that, an error.

Of course, it’s not only the grammar I’ve had to learn. I need words too. Dictionaries help where my memory fails. Unless I can’t remember the word I want in Finnish either; that has happened often. A good thesaurus is a great help too. Often, authors are advised not to use thesauruses – though I cannot understand why. For a foreigner grabbling with the different meanings of words, a thesaurus is indispensable. And still, I have to compromise, as with the grammar.

Because I’m not able to write the way I would want to, with similar complexity and richness I would write in my native tongue, I’ve learned to express myself more simply and effectively. Some argue that simplicity is good when it comes to language and that could be true; it’s definitely my editor’s adage. However, according to another test I took, it also makes my writing like that of Stephanie Meyer. I’m not entirely sure I’m happy with that. Another try states that I write like Anne Rice.

Despite the difficulties – or because of them – I actually felt pretty smug about my ability to write books in a foreign language. Then I came across a brief interview with Emmi Itäranta, a Finnish author who wrote the same book in Finnish and English – at the same time. What had begun as a writing exercise turned into two books, for both of which she has found a publisher. She tells in the interview that it wasn’t easy, but writing the same chapter first in one language and then in the other forced her to think about the plot and language in more depth than she would have done otherwise. In the end, she believes the book is better because of the way she wrote it. The two languages are truly different so being able to juggle between them without losing one’s mind is very impressive.

I haven’t even tried what she's done. In fact, I've neglected my native tongue and I’m starting to feel the consequences. I’ve noticed that my grasp of Finnish grammar is loosening, because I don’t write enough in Finnish. And that’s not good. I think in my native tongue so the language has to remain as complex as ever, even if I’m not able to express the same in English. Otherwise even my English will suffer. I’m not going to follow Emmi’s example and write my books in two languages; it’s enough to get them written once. But I will have to start writing more in Finnish too. If I could just find time for it.

All authors are not created equal

Self-publishing as a profession is so new that we haven’t got established words for calling authors who publish their books themselves. There are several options though. Which one do you prefer?

The tweet above prompted – deliberately, I’m sure – yet another debate on how to call self-published authors. I’ve followed and participated in a couple of them and they’re mostly the same. This time, too, some opinions were for being called an artisan author and some were against it, calling for other options, and some were so bizarre I couldn’t quite follow the reasoning so stopped reading.

I personally dislike the name artisan author. I understand that it’s supposed to convey the idea that we do everything ourselves, by hand, if necessary. I do, but that’s not true for all. Most of us buy the editing services at least; many buy the cover design and maybe even the formatting for their books. What remains, then, is the writing itself, the ‘author’ part of artisan author, and marketing. And I defy you to find a marketing person who’d allow themselves to be called an artisan. So why should we?

I oppose the name artisan for another reason also and that may be cultural. I understand an artisan to be a skilled craftsman that (often) employs otherwise forgotten techniques to produce artefacts that, regardless of their beauty, aren’t quite art but products to sell for a living instead. There is, then, a two-tiered system of artists above and artisans below.

Making a living is important for everyone, but if that were a factor when giving names, all authors would be called artisans. It’s the idea of a two-tier system that bugs me in this. It brings home so clearly that artisan authors are lower tier authors. Moreover, it gives me a notion that some books aren’t art because of the way they’ve been published. That it would be factually true – that my books aren’t very good – is beside the point; it's not the publishing system that makes them so. Besides, there are those among us who are actually very skilled and deserve the chance to be recognised as such.

When I published my first book, I found the name self-published author slightly annoying too, but I’ve grown more accustomed to that one over the course of the year. It’s a factually true definition: I publish my books myself. Nevertheless, I like the name independent author, or indie, more. The word independent has such a lofty ring to it. I’m not dependent of anyone or anything; I’m independent. But some participants in the Twitter debate yesterday objected to that one too. According to them, it would disdain independent publishers. The argument that there have always been indie artists outside the system didn’t seem to carry any weight. I like it though.

I’m also developing fondness for a new word authorpreneur. I’m not sure where it came from, but I find it clever. It seems to have both sides of the occupation covered, writing and marketing, without being negative. As a neologism, it also lacks the burden the old words have when being used in new contexts. Of course, those that cherish the purity of language and don’t want new words – especially such bastardised word – to be created may find authorpreneur annoying too.

What is wrong with all these definitions, however, is that they are given to a group of people by people who don’t belong to that group. It’s a basic tactic with which majorities always treat those in minority: trying to make sense of the other by giving it a name; deminishing the threat the other poses by defining and marginalising it. Human race has done the same for millennia. It doesn’t really matter if the name is accurate or not, it’ll always convey a sense of being labelled for those thus named; being looked down to by those who do the naming. 

We, the authors outside the system, are the other. We are the different and the not-quite-acceptable. In this case, acceptable into the community of authors. It isn’t a unique way to treat minorities in the literary world either. Everyone knows we have authors and women authors. Nothing has happened to that labelling either, so indie authors can’t really expect to be free of labels any time soon. 

It’s a nice dream that we would all be called authors one day. Until then, the best option would be that we don’t let others define us but do it ourselves. So what would you like to be called?