Dragon Lake Books

The home of great stories

Fallen Warriors

It’s all about the story

by Leave a Comment

Fallen Warriors was a real learning experience for me. I intended the plot to go in one direction, but wasn’t totally sure how that would look. In the end, by allowing my characters to direct the story, I ended up pretty close to where I’d wanted to, but had followed them all through some unexpected journeys.

I now have a situation – as I set out to write the sequel – where none of my character journeys are complete, where each of them still has some internal demons to battle.

Unlike with Season One, I don’t yet have a definitive ending I’m heading for. Well, that might not be totally true…

I’ve been jotting down plot ideas for months and I need to revisit those. I think that at one point I did think I had an overall aim for both Season Two and Season Three, but it may have been quite vague.

I’m intending to start this writing journey by storyboarding the overall plot:

  • One main story arc to link all three books.
  • Two major story arcs for books two and three.
  • Minor story arcs for each character that may stretch over both books, or may end and then spark a new arc.

For this I’ll draw on resources like the Three Act Structure for Novelists (by Fiona Veitch Smith.)

I’m extremely nervous about tying it all together!

But, I know I can, because I’ve already done it once.

All of that sounds very analytical yet I believe people are enjoying Fallen Warriors because it is ultimately a story about real people, facing real struggles, and in the end, overcoming them… Or not!

I enjoy writing stories for much the same reasons people enjoy reading them. I get an emotional rush as I place my characters in situations that tear them apart, break them down and then give them hope. Over the summer it’s all going to be about the story!

How much can you write in a day?

by Leave a Comment

How much can you write in a day? This is a question that I keep returning to as I plan to write the sequel to Fallen Warriors. I wrote the first draft of The Great Scottish Land Grab in a month, writing an average of 2,300 words a day for 22 days in November 2011. It took me two and a half hours each day to write that.

But, then I ended up ditching half of that novel – easily 25,000 words – as I rewrote and edited the final version.

In theory I know I can write 5,000 words a day, but what is the point if I then need to discard half of that?

Well, on the plus side, you never know exactly what will work until you try. It is sometimes only during the writing that the story becomes clear, that the characters start to live. We change as writers as we become more experienced. The fact is that both for Land Grab and Fallen Warriors, during the rewrite, I added new scenes and extended existing scenes, essentially writing a new first draft that was actually good enough to become the final draft.

The hope is that having set up the background in Fallen Warriors Season One, having a pre-existing backstory and characters, that writing the sequel will be less work.

I will have child care responsibilities during the summer so am planning to get up at Six each morning, write for five hours plus a one hour break, and then leave the writing for the rest of the day.

My plan is to write 1,000 words an hour.

I expect I will take a couple of weeks off during the nine weeks that make up July and August, so I will only have seven weeks available to write.

Five thousand times five days times seven weeks = 175000 words…

Okay, I’m actually planning to write first drafts of both novels, Season Two and Season Three this summer.

Is it achievable?

I won’t know until I try, but in theory it should be.

The real benefit though is that it allows me to ensure that both plots are consistent, that there is an overall story arc connecting the three seasons and gives me more flexibility to end Season Two at an appropriate stage that will hopefully satisfy readers and leave them hooked for Season Three.

Anyway, that’s my plan for writing the sequel to Fallen Warriors and an estimate of how many words I’m planning to write each day. How much can you write in a day?

Neglecting to Advertise

by Leave a Comment

When I set out to publish Fallen Warriors, I told myself that I would learn from previous mistakes. My first novel – The Great Scottish Land Grab – did sell and continues to be sold today, but I failed to keep advertising it and so for long months, no books were sold.

It is a fact of modern life that we are bombarded with advertising all day, every day. I have no desire to contribute to that tsunami we all face, yet I know that if I don’t advertise my novels, few people will hear of them.

Last month I launched my first Amazon Marketing Services campaign for Fallen Warriors in America. This ad resulted in 66,862 impressions over five days (impressions being where your ad is shown on screen.) 43 actual clicks from those ads and 2 sales actually putting me in profit for my $5.55 total spend!

The system is quite neat. Amazon only charge you when your ad is clicked by a customer. If that customer then goes on to buy your book, it is recorded as a sale.

You can enter as many keywords as you want which can be book titles or author names and if someone searches for that keyword (or phrase) then you then compete with other advertisers for your book to be shown. Whether you win or not is down to your CPC Bid which is the maximum amount you are willing to pay for your ad to be shown. And this can be set against each keyword…

For my first campaign I entered 38 keywords each with a $0.25 CPC bid.

For some reason it’s a whole lot harder (more expensive) to advertise on Amazon in the UK. They seem to be wanting a Vendor Code before you can set up an account to advertise which costs £25 a month. I’m looking into whether it is possible to avoid that monthly payment. More on that later…

I’ve been thinking that I need to take advantage of the ability to write posts in series. This week I’m going to carry out some analysis of sales data for my novels and other books. Tomorrow I’ll look at sales of The Great Scottish Land Grab and see if I can learn some lessons.

The Sound Track to Fallen Warriors

by Leave a Comment

I listen to a lot of music when I’m writing. Sometimes to block out distractions, sometimes to get me in a particular frame of mind.

It took me ten years to write Fallen Warriors and in that time I’ve gone through a lot of albums!

Here are eight of my favourites…

The Altar and the Door by Casting Crowns. I got this album in 2008 and immediately found the theme of the songs closely matched where I wanted to go with my story. Songs for Christians who know they are sinners, who know they’ve failed and that in spite of everything, God still loves us and has a purpose for us.

Brand New Eyes by Paramore. Once I got into Paramore, I found myself playing this album on loop. Anger, rage, injustice – music to get your heart pounding!

The Lord of The Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring by Howard Shore. I don’t listen to a lot of classical music, and maybe some of you will tear into me for daring to claim this is classical… but this is such an evocative score. The string instruments are beautiful, lifting the spirit before bringing such fear and tension.

Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette. Another angry album, but with a greater sense of wit. If I’m trying to write from a woman’s point of view, I’ll start here!

Shelter by by Sons of Korah. Some music is like a gift direct from God. I wouldn’t have chosen to buy this album (I think it was a gift from family), but it is one of my all time favourites now. The haunting strings, the powerful beats and the devastating lyrics taken straight from the Psalms.

Refuge by Sons of Korah. It took me a while to look for another Sons of Korah album. I am so glad I bought this one. If anything, I find this one even more intoxicating than Shelter. At some points the singing is like a Dervish and I can imagine David dancing in a frenzy of worship.

Paramore by Paramore. I didn’t like this album when I bought it soon after I started enjoying Brand New Eyes. A very different album, not as tight, the music more eclectic and yet over the past year I’ve listened to it more and more and it has replaced Brand New Eyes as my favourite Paramore.

Battlestar Galactica Seasons 1, 3 and 4 by Bear McCreary. Battlestar Galactica remains one of my favourite TV series. The stunning story arc was everything I could have hoped for in a Science Fiction epic. Without Bear McCreary’s music, I doubt the series would have been as good. Those drums were and are incredible.

This is what I’ve been listening to while writing Fallen Warriors. Do you use music when writing? If so, what do you listen to and why?

(I’ve used Amazon Associate links above and will receive a small commission if you buy any of these albums from Amazon using these links)

Amazon Academy The Detail

by 2 Comments

Following up to my earlier post on attending Amazon Academy here is the detail…

Alliance of Independent Authors

Membership of Alli includes legal support (Legal support is an area where I suspect many indie authors could benefit from)

Alli are apparently hosting an author fringe event in Edinburgh on June 3rd, 2017. Contact them for details.

Kindle Owners Lenders Library (KOL)

I’d not heard of KOL. Sounds similar to Kindle Unlimited (KU) where the author gets paid based on page reads. Haven’t researched yet.

I asked Darren Hardy, the head of KDP in the UK, what happens to the reader when an author withdraws from KU, but they haven’t finished reading the book. He answered that the reader is allowed to keep reading and the author still gets paid for page reads.

Recommended Sites

The panels recommended several sites that may be of use to indie authors.

Ultra cheap book covers (circa $1) at
https://www.canva.com/create/book-covers/

Extremely cheap book covers at
https://www.fiverr.com/categories/graphics-design/ebook-covers?source=category_tree

Paul’s Blog with useful posts for indie authors at
https://paulteague.com/
(Look for posts on Story Beats and The Novel Factory)

A home for your books at
https://www.librarything.com/

A site for authors to introduce and promote their books at
http://www.abouttheauthor.co.uk/

Sites for managing mailing lists at
http://Mailchimp.com
http://Mailerlite.com

Poor mans version of Bookbub for US audience at
https://www.freebooksy.com/

UK version of Bookbub for £20 at
http://bookhippo.uk/

Automate your social media at
https://buffer.com/
http://www.tweetjukebox.com/

Licence free music for your book trailers at
https://www.premiumbeat.com

Movie clips for book trailers at
https://www.fotolia.com/Info/Videos#

If you love your books, let them go at
http://www.bookcrossing.com/

Recommended Reading

Save The Cat – apparently written by a minor Holywood writer and invaluable for insights to how stories are put together.

You can also search for Save The Cat Beat Sheet which seems to alude to: THE BLAKE SNYDER BEAT SHEET described here:
https://timstout.wordpress.com/story-structure/blake-snyders-beat-sheet/

Hang in there!

Murray McDonald shared that he was on Amazon for 18 months selling one or two copies a day until things took off.

General advice

For some people Facebook advertising works. For others, Amazon Ads.

‘Non-fiction is easier to sell because it is based on key words’ Paul Teague

Go into Google Keyword Planning Tool – to find out what people are ACTUALLY searching for – when deciding on keywords

Goodreads giveaways – be wary of the high cost of international postage!

On Twitter use the hashtags:
#selfpub
#indieauthors
To find other authors, get conversations going and pinch other authors best marketing ideas! 🙂

Use instafreebie.com. Organise instafreebie giveaways in your genre and build genre specific audiences.

Google “best marketing sites for authors”

Put your advertising budget against one day rather than over a month to drive yourself up the charts!

Bookbub is just the Holy Grail to become number one in your genre

Approach hotels and tourist attractions at sites that feature in your novel and ask if they would be interested in stocking your books.

Editors

The panellists had the following to say about editors.

‘I’ve not yet hired an external editor’

‘An editor should give you a demo edit, a sample edit for free. If you feel they are looking down their nose on you… you shouldn’t feel torn down by your editor.’

‘Concentrate on the relationship with your editor – is this someone you want to work with?’

‘I paid £500 for a full edit.’

The best quotes from the day
(Some of these may be paraphrased, I don’t know shorthand!)

‘Decide what it is you want from your writing career.’ Darren Hardy

‘Build in a detour when planning your novel!’ Harriet Smart (Allow room for the characters to go off on their own journey when that feels right)

‘Sometimes I’ll plan to kill a character in a scene and then someone else gets it!’ Steven McKay

‘You could kill someone on this ferry…’ Paul Teague

‘The trick is to build up relationships on Facebook.’ Steven McKay

‘Non fiction is about pain and pleasure. People buy a book on how to use Twitter because they’ve got some pain. Write your sales copy with that in mind.’ Paul Teague

‘Have to use some paid advertising to tell people about the countdown deal you’ve got or no one will know about it!’ Steven McKay

‘If people enjoy your books, they will enjoy interacting with you but they really want to read your next book.’ Murray McDonald

‘I built up my following reader by reader.’ Linda Gillard

‘I promote myself as a brand because I can’t market as a genre.’ Linda Gillard

‘The best use of my time, the most lucrative use, is writing.’ Linda Gillard

‘What they are investing in is time. Used to be, people read a book because they paid £7.99. Now you have to hook them, have cliff hangers at the end of every chapter, every page.’ Linda Gillard

kindle Instant Book Previewer

You know how you can preview a book on Amazon’s site? Amazon provide an embed option to allow you to embed their previewer on your own site! Check out this preview out for my latest novel Fallen Warriors:

You can find out all you need to know here https://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Instant-Preview/b?ie=UTF8&node=13489836011

It’s worth noting that if you are an Amazon Associate, you can link the embedded code to your account (They just do it as default) and you get commission on sales.