How I found my first author (hint: enter writing competitions!)

It's been so long since I posted but I have an excuse: I've signed my first author for Louise Walters Books. She is Laura Laakso and we have signed a one book deal for her debut novel, Fallible Justice; which is the first story in Laura's paranormal detective series Wilde Investigations.

Laura and her dogs

I first became of Laura's work while reading for the 2017 Retreat West First Chapter Competition. Amanda Saint, who runs Retreat West asked me if I would help her read, and I jumped at the chance. She duly sent the stories through to me, and I started to read through them (I wrote a blog post about it here). 

I was bowled over by one of the chapters in particular (well, actually two of them were spectacular) but I was also confused by it. Was it brilliant or was it bo****ks? I just couldn't tell. So I asked Amanda this very question and she said it was brilliant. So we put it through to the long list. Then we put it through to the short list. Then it was picked as one of two runners up in the competition. By this time identities of the authors were revealed and two things struck me: I rather wistfully thought how great it would be to get a submission like Fallible Justice for the imprint I was then forming; and what a brilliant writer's name: Laura Laakso. It's a writerly name if ever I heard one.   

Fast forward a few months: My imprint was up and running, my boiler-plate contract drafted (that took hours of my life, I can tell you) and I was receiving submissions. One day a submission from Laura appeared in my inbox. I was thrilled but didn't want to get too excited. I read the submission and decided it wasn't right for me. So I turned it down, while asking to see the whole of Fallible Justice instead. Laura sent that through to me, I got it onto my Kindle before you could say #amwriting and I read it. Then I read it again, just to be sure. When I offered to publish it, I did point out to Laura that she could (should!) consider trying the agent-bigger publisher route. I feel her work is more than good enough to warrant attention from bigger players. Laura surprised and thrilled me by saying she preferred to work with a smaller outfit. 

The Society of Authors vetted our author agreement, and then Laura and I signed it early in November. I still can't believe I'm working with such a talented author from the very beginning of my publishing adventure. And I really can't wait to publish Laura's work. She deserves to garner an army of loyal fans and I will work my socks off to make that happen. It's going to be an exciting year. 

Fallible Justice by Laura Laakso will be published by Louise Walters Books on 8th November 2018, in paperback and e-book.  

      

The Road to California extract

I'm kicking off my promo of my third novel today! It's up on my website for pre-order here and the manuscript is currently being converted into an e-book. Once that has been completed I will put the e-book up for pre-order on Amazon and elsewhere.

All copies sold via my website bookshop will be postage-free; they will be signed and be sent with a handmade fabric bookmark.

So, I am delighted to share with you today an extract from The Road to California. This passage is our first introduction to my character Joanna, and her work... my fabric bookmarks are a homage to Joanna really, and I think she would heartily approve! Joanna is a single parent to her troubled teenage son, Ryan. She's principled, dynamic, caring and creative. She can be a little too "earnest" in sharing her principles, at times. But I love her! Hope you do too...

***

‘How much for this?’

      She breathed in the familiar scents of history and age and storage. She crumpled the fabric and buried her nose in it, as she always did with fabric new to her. It was rarely brand new, of course. She only used new fabric as a last resort. This was one of the tenets of her business. She took great pride in using the used, a characteristic of almost all her work. Road to California: her business, her life, her living. Reusing, reclaiming, recycling, upcycling: whatever you wanted to call it — it was what she did. She looked carefully at this latest find, enjoying the funky clash of orange, purple, and green, in dreamy psychedelic swirls, pseudo-flowers, clouds, a strange repeated pattern with a fluid figure that might be a fairy, a girl, a woman. And was it silk? Nylon? She wasn’t sure. The fabric smelled of tobacco, but that only added to its charm.

      ‘It’s a nice big bolt,’ said the beer-gutted stall holder. Bob, she thought. He was a softie behind the gruff exterior. And the most unlikely person she could conceive of to be running a vintage fabric stall. ‘A good five yards, I reckon. Genuine seventies, that is. Twenty quid?’ Bob took a long, thoughtful drag on his cigarette. Joanna effected not to notice. But it smelled good.

      She tried to get to the market most weeks, to pick up interesting finds. She had wanted to get out this morning, for an hour or two, just to get away from the sewing machines (she had two, plus an ancient Singer). She loved her work, but it was important to be healthy about it; and besides, new-to-her fabrics always inspired fresh ideas, exciting new projects. Her business thrived on it, and so did she. So these jaunts to the market were not a waste of time. They were essential.

      ‘It certainly looks to be genuine seventies, doesn’t it?’ said Joanna, in her husky voice. She narrowed her eyes. ‘I’ll give you ten quid. How’s that?’

      Bob looked at her. She knew he remembered her, although they had never engaged in chit-chat. People did tend to remember her. She knew her bright green eyes and wild blond curls were striking.

      ‘Fifteen?’ he said. ‘But I’m giving it to you.’

      ‘You can’t find your way to ten? I do come here practically every week.’

      Bob raised his eyes to the sky and gave a little nod. He took another drag on his cigarette. The smoke drifted towards her.

      She smiled and flourished a crisp note. Bob took it. He didn’t offer her a bag, but she didn’t need one. She had enough bags of her own.

      ‘Thanks so much,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you next week.’ She checked her watch. There was enough time for a quick pit stop. She’d go to her favourite coffee shop, a small, independent outfit that sold no-nonsense coffee and tea in pretty vintage teacups with pot luck saucers, accompanied by a vast array of homemade cakes and biscuits.

As she turned from taciturn Bob and his wonderful stall, her mobile phone rang. She rummaged around for it in her handbag. She saw the caller ID and her heart didn’t know whether to leap into her mouth or sink down into her toes. So it did both, in rapid succession, and she felt sick. There would be no coffee, no homemade cake today. Oh, no, no, no, not again. What now? What now?

***

Thanks for reading!

The Road to California will be published by Louise Walters books in paperback and e-book in 2018

Not at all secret self-publisher

I stumbled upon yet another "Let's all laugh at self-publishers" blog post this week on Twitter. It purported to be an advice post about how to, and how to not, approach book sellers if you have written a book and are publishing it yourself. I clicked on it as it looked useful.

But there is no advice. There is just a string of arrogant insults and inaccurate statements. And assumptions that are so wrong it's mind-boggling. I won't list them here, but if you do stumble upon the blog post, they should be apparent. It's the same old, tired old bullshit that snooty types like to trot out for the benefit of their own egos and to delight their acolytes. It's meant to be "funny". You get the picture.

This "bookseller" above all implies that if a book has been self-published, it means the book is bad. Fact is, there are many bad self-published books, and many awkward self-published writers who do approach bookshops in the wrong way. Of course, it's disingenuous to tar all of us with that brush, but more important than that, it's mean spirited to ridicule any self-published author in this way.

Why? Because it takes guts to walk into a bookshop and ask if they would consider stocking your work, knowing in your heart you are probably going to make a hash of it and, crime of crimes, annoy the manager. But do you know what? Simply by TRYING, the self-published author is a better person than this (anonymous, of course) bookseller will ever be, because it takes a lot of time, dedication, and hard work to write, publish and attempt to sell your book, no matter how bad (or good) it is. You are trying to be the best a human can be: creative, brave, enterprising, passionate, vulnerable.

By all means, (anonymous, of course) bookseller, please do give advice. By all means do tell the rude (or just plain inexperienced) self-publishers where to get off. By all means refuse to stock any book you want to refuse. I've no issue with any of that. But don't take the piss out of people who attempt something truly admirable. Something that, by your own admission, you can not do.

Louise Walters (reader, writer, trade published author, self published author, and former bookseller. Not anonymous.)

Reading for a writing competition. My observations!

I recently had the great pleasure to read for Retreat West's First Chapter competition. Amanda Saint emailed me in April and asked if I was available to help her. I jumped at the chance, as I've recently started critiquing novels (writing editorial reports) and reading for a comp seemed like a great opportunity. And was it ever! I loved reading all the chapters, even those that weren't working too well. I firmly believe that as writers we learn and improve all the time, and reading something that doesn't work can be just as instructive as reading something that works well.

The long list was arrived at reasonably easily. We had 29 chapters (out of the original 133) that we both felt merited a place on the long list. Whittling those 29 down to the final 10 this week was a little harder... but we did reach a consensus quite easily.

I scribbled down a few observations as I read, and I thought I'd share them with you. Things that worked, things that didn't. No specific examples and no names, of course.

Some of the chapters that didn't make the longlist were, quite simply, badly written. Not all of them, of course. "Competent" was a word I found myself ascribing to many of these chapters. But to go further in the competition, the chapters needed to be more than competent. I had the feeling that some of the writers don't read much; or don't read attentively; or haven't studied at all, at any level, how to construct a story. There is an art to it, a craft. It takes time, effort, huge attention to detail. It's not a case of just pouring words onto the page. It was easy to spot the no-hopers. And there weren't that many.

So, the next level. Why didn't some of the competent stories get onto the long list?

Some of the chapters, many of them in fact, suffered from over-writing. My pet peeve is a list of adjectives that all more or less mean the same, separated by commas. Like this: She was tired, fatigued, exhausted. Just pick the best one and stick to that. It's more concise, and has more impact: She was exhausted. Pace suffered when over-cooked description took over.

Typos. There were typos in all but a handful of the submitted chapters. I was flabbergasted by this. Why would you do that? Check, edit, re-check, re-edit. A typo-free chapter was refreshing and I was more inclined to put those on the long list even if the writing wasn't amazing. OK, amazing writing will always trump a handful of typos. But if the writing is borderline, typos could tip it in the wrong direction. Do everything in your power to remove all typos from your chapters. Seriously. There is no excuse.

Cliches. A surprising number of stories mentioned characters' breathing. It happened a lot. Don't. It's one of the biggest cliches going. Let your reader imagine how a character is breathing in the circumstances you have described. We all know how we are likely to breathe in certain circumstances. Don't ram it home. Also, Rolex watches. Almost without exception the rich characters wore a Rolex. Try another brand. Patek Philippe?

OK, I have to tell you now, clip art was in evidence. I kid you not. DON'T. It's the height of unprofessionalism. You each paid £15 per chapter to enter. That's a lot of money. If your entry is decorated with clip art, it screeches, "This writer is not trying to be professional." It is not getting onto the long list. You wasted £15. I say again, DON'T.

Titles. There were very few good titles. A good title is gold dust, a great opportunity to get readers interested. In some ways it's more important than a good cover. People love a good title. They want to repeat it, talk about it, READ it. BUY it. Always, always do your best to come up with an amazing title, if you can. There were a handful of honourable exceptions, and more than one of them is on the short list. Good titles tell the reader A LOT about the story. They are part of the story. A good title intrigues. Titles should evoke, if possible. There were many bland, meaningless titles. Work on this aspect.

File names.

Umm.. Say no more? Please use the chapter name in your file name. Now, this didn't make any difference regarding getting onto the long and short lists. But it was a pain in the arse and made me lose patience a little quicker than I would have done if the name was obvious. It was hard to find a particular chapter. Remember, as an author a huge part of the job is to consider the readers' experience. You have to strive for clarity from the top down, and that starts with clearly naming your work.

Rules. It clearly states in the rules that prologues can not be entered. There were prologues. OBEY THE RULES. Again... you paid £15. OBEY THE RULES. The rules ask for double spacing. There was single spacing. OBEY THE... you get the picture!

So, I need to talk about the positive stuff too. Why did the final ten chapters make it to the final ten? Well, to begin with, all ten are very well written. (Yes, there are typos here and there!) The writers know how to open a story well, they know how to include enough info to whet the readers' appetite, without over loading the chapter with too much info (another frequent fault). The ten chapters are fun to read! They have a certain confidence... you have to believe in your work and believe in your ability to write. It's that quiet confidence thing. It's how you carry readers along with you. Gotta have it. Believe me, it really shows. You also have to be self-critical. I got the feeling these ten chapters had been well edited, looked at, re-written, re-visited. I felt the writers had been a little hard on themselves, which is essential.

***

I hope these tips help! It was a great experience to read the entries, and I'm already looking forward to doing it all over again next year.

Good luck to the writers of the ten short listed chapters. They are all worthy winners of the competition and I can't wait to see which one is finally chosen by Laura Williams.

Third novel title reveal and blurb!

Today I'm thrilled to announce the title of the novel I will be publishing on 1st March 2018.

Drum roll please.... my third novel is called... The Road to California

Here's the blurb:

Proud single parent Joanna is accustomed to school phoning to tell her that Ryan, her 14 year old son, is in trouble. But when Ryan hits a girl and is excluded from school, Joanna knows she must take drastic action to help him.

Ryan hasn’t seen his dad Lex since he left home when Ryan was two years old. Ryan doesn’t remember Lex, but more than anything he wants a dad in his life. Isolated, a loner, and angry, Ryan finds solace in books and wildlife.

Joanna, against her instincts and better judgement, invites Lex to return and help their son. Lex is a drifter who runs from commitment, and both Joanna and Ryan find their mutual trust and love is put to the test when Lex returns, and vows to be part of the family again...


I hope you like the sound of it! Last week I posted this photo on Twitter as a clue to the title:

This is a patchwork pattern called Road to California. In the book, Joanna is a talented textiles entrepreneur (think wannabe Cath Kidston!) who specialises in recycling and upcycling. She calls her company Road to California, which is her favourite patchwork pattern. It seemed only natural that I should name the book accordingly.

The Road to California is not an easy story to categorize. It's women's fiction; literary(ish) fiction; book club fiction; a romance; definitely a weepie!! And it could be read as YA, as there are really two protagonists, Joanna and her teenage son Ryan. I quite like the fact it doesn't slot neatly into a genre. Somehow that seems right for this novel.

There will be more news to follow in the coming months, including a cover reveal, character profiles, a look at the opening few pages, and news of a giveaway - which will include the piece of patchwork pictured above, made into an upcycled book bag (oh my, how Joanna would approve!)

More anon!

Louise x

Louise Walters Books

This week I was thrilled to announce news of my latest venture. I've set up my own imprint in order to publish my third novel. It's a scheme I've been cooking for quite a while, held back of course by a myriad of doubts.

I love my logo! Designed by the wonderful Jennie Rawlings

I self-published my second novel, A Life Between Us, in March via assisted publishing company Matador (Troubador Publishing). That was an exciting time, and consumed most of 2016! My sales have not been wildly exciting... but of course they were never going to be. Sales are steady, and regular. I've sold 27 copies through my website (admittedly, at a loss. I'm not charging for postage which is £2.90 per book, 2nd class) and through hand selling. I've given away about 50 copies. My book was left in the wild on Indie Author Day via Books on the Underground. I've heard from libraries and indie bookshops that they are going to stock A Life Between Us. I've also heard from Waterstones, who are not going to stock it. I've been awarded a Chill With a Book Readers' Award (recognising excellence in indie books). I've had lovely support from book bloggers and fellow authors.

There are a couple of other positive things coming up which I can't yet reveal, but I'm chuffed.

I check my Amazon ranking daily hourly, and it fluctuates, but it's OK. More important than ranking, I've been fortunate to receive positive reviews on Amazon, Goodreads and Netgalley. Readers seem to be responding to A Life Between Us in a positive way. Some of the reviews are overwhelming. That keeps me going, it really does. There was a dark time just before the book went up on Netgalley where I feared it was a huge pile of tosh and I was about to make the biggest fool of myself, ever.

In the great scheme of things, my second novel is doing OK. Literally, OK. I'll take that!

The idea of bringing out my third novel is just as daunting. It's going to be hard work. It may do "OK", it may not. But if I don't bring this book out it won't do anything at all. I'm 50 this year and I've realised, finally, that life is short, so precious and fleeting, and it's not a failure to try something, even if you fail. The failure is to give in to fears and doubts and not try things. (Paraphrasing Bruce Lee here!)

So here I am, running my own company, setting up my own imprint, and bringing out my third novel.

Life is sweet

xx

Wear the hat! 

Indie author Kathleen Jowitt

Today I'm delighted to welcome indie author Kathleen Jowitt to my blog. Kathleen is the first indie author to be short listed for the Society of Author's Betty Trask Prize, with her debut novel, Speak its Name. The Betty Trask Prize is awarded each year to a first time novelist under the age of 35, writing in a traditional or romantic style. This is an exciting development for all indie authors, and I was keen to hear more about this exciting news. Here's Kathleen...

Could you tell us about your decision to self–publish your novel Speak its Name? I wonder if you tried the agent/publisher route first; or if you always intended for this to be an indie book?  

I did try the agent/publisher route, but I didn't get very far with it. I think everybody – myself included – was a little confused by the genre, and didn't know how to go about selling it. I tend to blame Section 28 for killing the emerging genre of LGBT teen fiction. If I'd been trying to sell to American publishers then things might have been difficult.

When it came to it, the decision to self-publish wasn't particularly difficult. Or, rather, it was absolutely unthinkable until the moment that it was the obvious next step. I found that the confidence, to take responsibility for everything that went out under my name, landed just after I turned thirty. By then I'd already put in a lot of work into making the text as good as it possibly could be, and I was free to concentrate on all the practical considerations that I'd blithely assumed somebody else would be dealing with, and when I dealt with those one at a time they turned out to be much less hassle than I'd feared.

Kathleen

Could you tell us a little about Speak Its Name?

It's part Barchester, part coming-of-age, part coming out. It's the story of an evangelical Christian, and closeted lesbian, trying to navigate the troubled waters of university politics; it's about identity, and faith, and integrity.

What are the advantages of self-publishing?

You can write absolutely anything you like. There's no need to self-censor, to keep half an eye on what somebody else thinks is going to sell. You can go at your own pace, too, setting your own deadlines.

And the disadvantages?

You have to do everything yourself, or, if you don't do it yourself, you have to arrange for someone else to do it. I've had to be my own typesetter, cover designer, secretary and publicist. Fortunately, those are all skills that I've developed in the course of my day job – but there are still only so many hours in the day.

Yours is the first self-published book to be short listed for the Betty Trask Prize. How does that feel?

It's amazing. I've talked about having to develop the confidence to take ownership of my own work, but I must also admit that having had such a prestigious judging panel say such complimentary things about that work has been massively reassuring.

I can't overstate what a surprise it was. I was on holiday in northern Spain when I got the news; I checked into a hotel after a very long day on the narrow gauge railway, connected to the wi-fi, and, among the dozen emails that had accumulated while I was out of range, there was the notification. Reading the header out of context, I didn't immediately remember who or what Betty Trask was. I'd better not repeat what I actually said when I read the email itself! I spent the next week worrying that they'd made a mistake, that they hadn't noticed that I was self-published and that they'd change their minds when they did. That lasted until the press release came out, making it clear that the fact that I was the first self-published author to be shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize was a feature, not a bug!

Did any aspects of self-publishing surprise you?  (For instance, I found the marketing to be more work and more time consuming than I’d imagined…!)

I was surprised by how much it's changed in the past couple of decades. My parents have both self-published and my childhood memories are cluttered with stacks of books and rolls of bubble wrap. Print-on-demand technology and online ordering mean that somebody else deals with all that – which is a great relief.

Self-publishers talk about the “freedoms” of being an indie. They undoubtedly exist, but what about the limitations? Are there any? Or is the publishing world really our oyster? 

I think our reach is always going to be more limited than that of those authors who are represented by publishers with multi-million pound budgets. We have to fight harder for our credibility, too, though I'm hopeful that things will change there. Whatever happens, though, I think that the thick skin I've developed in the course of self-publishing can't help but be an asset.

The Alliance of Independent Authors runs a campaign, Open Up to Indie Authors, encouraging bookshops, book prizes and reviewers to include and embrace self-published books. What do you feel we as self-publishing authors can do to seek inclusion?

I think we just need to keep plugging away, to keep knocking at the doors until they open up for us. There seems to be a new openness, a new willingness to accept the idea that self-published authors can be producing good work. My own experience is evidence of that.

What’s next for you?

I'm working on a novel called A Spoke in the Wheel. The narrator is a professional cyclist who's been banned for doping. He's trying to re-establish his life in a place where nobody knows him and he never has to look at another bike. But of course the first person he sees is a cycling fan...

At the moment I've got some knowledgeable friends reading it for me, checking that I've got things right. Apart from all the bike stuff, I'm very keen to make sure that I haven't messed up anything around disability and the way the benefits system works, which is a major theme.

And finally, what are you reading at the moment?

I've nearly finished Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time of Gifts – the first volume of an account of his epic hike from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. In this one he gets as far as Hungary. It's a fascinating portrait of Europe as it was between the wars, with a flamboyantly rich descriptive style, and it makes me want to be out on the road to somewhere.

Thanks to Kathleen for joining me today, it's been fascinating to hear from her. 

Kathleen's blog can be found here, and she tweets @KathleenJowitt

The Betty Trask Prize winner will be announced on Tuesday 20th June 2017. Good luck Kathleen!