A story is never really finished…

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book series, books, Isle of Larus

It’s always difficult returning to old haunts. It’s particularly difficult, as I discovered last year, when the old haunt is a figment of your own imagination.

The last novel in my Larus series was published back in 2016, so it had been quite a while since I’d thought about those characters and that setting. In between times, I had written another novel and a series of illustrated books; the Larus novels were out of print and I thought I’d left it all far behind.

But the creative imagination is a wilful creature, and as we came out of the last lockdown (in the UK), I found there was a story determinedly forming, a prequel to my old Larus tales. It was strange to reimagine my grumpy old parson, the Reverend Pontius, as a callow young man just setting out in life; but reimagine him I did, and the story, as they say, wrote itself. It took a great deal of effort to remember the original tale, and, indeed, I went back and rewrote some of it as I went along. Even so, I soon had a neat little novella, and an idea for another. And another.

My lovely publishers, Veneficia Publications, have now issued Call of the Merry Isle, as I titled it, in paperback, and I am hopeful that the other stories and the original novels too, will all be published in due course. Merry Isle is a delightful story, though I say so myself, with the serious young Reverend Pontius encountering some unlikely people and even more unlikely events as he seeks his way in life.

It just goes to show that a story is never really finished. I had thought the series complete with the third book, but here it is bursting out again. It feels good to have the Isle of Larus and its quirky inhabitants back in my care once again. I have more ideas for them than I can cope with, but that, as they say, is another story!

Call of the Merry Isle is available from Independent Publisher | Veneficia Publications| United Kingdom

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The Point of Writing

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books, writing

‘What is it all for?’ asked a writer friend not long ago. ‘If your books aren’t hugely successful, if only a few people read them, if they – and you – will be forgotten when you’re gone, what is the point?’

A fair question. It’s so easy to publish a book these days – and even easier to publish one that hardly anyone will read. So is there any point? We all start out with dreams of becoming an acclaimed writer, even perhaps acquiring a touch of immortality. For most of us, it quickly becomes clear that even modest success can be hard to come by. There’s an awful lot of competition, after all.

For me, liberation from this thought came when I began to view success as nothing more than a possible by-product of writing the stories I love. The alternative is to write books designed specifically for commercial success, and I never felt able to do that. Besides, great success would undoubtedly bring its own pressures and limitations. I find it pays to be careful what you wish for.

So, to answer my friend’s question – the point of it all, for me, is the process; the journey not the destination; the struggle of finding the right words and knocking the tale into shape. The writing itself is the point. If you think that’s lacking in ambition, I beg to differ; the ambition lies in writing the best stories I can, and I’ll continue doing that as long as I can put finger to keyboard. My writing will still be ‘out there’ for anyone who wants to read it, even when I’m no longer around. That’s immortality enough for me!

My new novella Call of the Merry Isle, a prequel to my Larus series, is available from veneficiapublications.com

What’s on Your Mind?

Tags

social media, writing

I read an interesting article the other day about the ‘conscious uncoupling’ of writers with social media.

When my first novel was published in 2013, I was told that social media was the way forward – access to an enormous potential readership. And it was free! What’s not to like, they said? Well, like many authors, I’m a fairly private person, and the thought of chit-chatting with total strangers online made me uneasy. But my publisher insisted it was the thing to do, so I tried. The result was that I got to know many other writers – people I had much in common with – but not many paying customers.

I facebooked, I tweeted, I blogged myself silly, providing vast amounts of free ‘content’ for social media, while my book sales remained minimal. My reward for all this effort was social media demanding money for ‘advertising’ while making it ever more difficult for me to reach the elusive readership. Yes, I even tried the advertising, with zero results.

In the meantime, I was bombarded with fluffy kittens, chain posts containing veiled threats, ‘click-bait’ and political rants. I have never been outspoken enough to be trolled, but like many other writers, I have had enough.

So, here I am in the process of deactivating my Twitter account. It takes a whole month to convince the chief Twit that I really mean it, but I shall persevere, and ultimately delete the account. Facebook is trickier, since I do use it for friends and family purposes, and I want to be able to support my current publisher.

Nonetheless, I looked at my friends list, and found it full of fellow writers I’d never exchanged a word with. I had a clear-out and reduced it by half, keeping only people I know in person, other local people and writing friends I have corresponded with. I tightened up my privacy settings. I am now working through the enormous list of pages I’ve ‘liked’ over the years. I was assured, at one time, that liking other authors’ pages in return for them liking my page would make me more visible. It didn’t, so most of them can go. Sorry about that. There will be more tightening up and cutting down to come. Facebook stays, but in a much-reduced form. My LinkedIn account has already gone. Thank goodness I never bothered with Instagram.

The question remaining, of course, is: if social media failed as a means of promoting my books, what else can I do instead that will succeed? Now that is really what’s on my mind!

PS My reward for the diligent tidying of my Facebook page was to be slapped into Facebook jail. Apparently they thought I might be a robot!