Chilling and Spine Tingling

 

I'm never in the business of denigrating my fellow writers, so I don't usually give negative reviews. But it's depressing how many times these days I find myself downloading onto my Kindle a sample of a new novel with vast numbers of glowing reviews and recommendations. I read it, and think 'aargh no' and delete it. The last one was punted as 'the most chilling and spine tingling ghost story you'll read this year.' In this case, I did actually soldier on through the whole thing.

It wasn't (the most spine tingling etc)  and I'll tell you why. Because as I laboured on through a long novel that really wanted to be a novella or a short story, in a Scottish setting about which the author seemed largely ignorant, I suddenly realised that it was heavily inspired by one of the best ghost stories ever written: Henry James's The Turn of the Screw.

And that really is chilling and spine tingling.

I've read this classic novella several times, including at university, but this time I decided that I would read it ultra closely, paying attention to every nuance, to every word. In fact, I read it as a writer, trying to decide how the author had done it. 

It was still chilling and spine tingling in every way. It haunted my dreams. But most of all (and if you haven't read it, this isn't really a spoiler) I still, after all these years, couldn't make up my mind whether the ghosts were real or not. And which of those two possibilities was the most horrific. Which was obviously James's intention. Genius. 

There is just too much hype out there. I know, because as a published author myself, the pressure to find glowing cover quotes is intense. We treasure positive reviews, knowing that we can quote them. I've done it all too often! 

But when those cover quotes don't seem to reflect the quality of the work, as a reader, you can feel cheated. For the last few weeks, I've felt very very cheated.

Sometimes, a good entertaining story well told should be enough, shouldn't it? Is that why so many crime stories are so popular? Because that's what so many of them unashamedly are? Good, entertaining stories, well told.

Invisible Fictions (And Non-Fictions Too)

‘Many women complain the moment they turned 50, people stopped seeing them. People push past them in queues, men look through them, and shop assistants ignore them.’ 

I came across this excellent post only the other day. It’s well worth reading in full. 

I’ve blogged about this phenomenon before – you can read my most recent post here – but at that time, I concluded that I wasn’t (yet) invisible. Just able to be ignored, like a piece of furniture. Now, I’ve changed my mind, bowed to the inevitable. I am invisible.

50 was certainly when the process started. A bit like that wonderful Tove Jansson story, the Invisible Child, except in reverse. In Jansson’s story the child starts off invisible and gradually becomes visible when she is treated kindly.

For older women, it works the other way. You just grow ever fainter, until people ignore you altogether. Men certainly notice you when they want to tell you that you’re wrong, but in the publishing industry, many young women also tend to ignore older female writers as far as possible. I sometimes feel that there's a weird sense of embarrassment on their part, as though they have no idea what to make of you and would rather you didn’t exist at all.

Writers are so afraid of repercussions that we tend to keep quiet about our experiences. But since, professionally at least, I have now achieved almost complete invisibility, I may as well shout into the void.

Here’s what happened just this year.

In February, I had a new book published. It’s called The Last Lancer and it was very close to my heart, a companion to my previous book about a murder in the poverty stricken Leeds Irish side of my family: A Proper Person to be Detained. 

This one is about my grandfather’s eccentric and tragic family history in Poland and Ukraine. I’d researched most of it throughout lockdown although my late father had also written down some of his memories. The story would – I hoped – be entertaining, harrowing and informative. But with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it suddenly became all too horribly relevant as well. Or so I thought.

Dad was born into the szlachta – the Polish nobility, more Mitford than Downton, I always think. After an idyllic country childhood in what was then Polish Galicia, but which is now Western Ukraine, he lost everything in the war (although he was luckier than his father who lost his life as well.) My father arrived in England as an unwelcome ‘refugee alien’ at the end of WW2, with nothing but a handful of photographs, a tiny silver mirror that had belonged to his mother, and his army identity papers, on which, under ‘next of kin’ he had written the Polish phrase meaning ‘closest family to nobody.’ He literally had nobody and nothing.

You would think, given Ukraine's current fight for existence, alongside our preoccupation with migrants, that the book might have received a modicum of attention. It was praised by no less a person than Neal Ascherson, who has forgotten more than most of us will ever know about Poland and Ukraine and the complex, troubled history of that region.

Well, you’d be wrong.

On publication day, back in February, nothing happened. No reviews, not so much as a postcard to mark the day.

In fact, if a couple of Polish friends hadn’t turned up with chocolates and flowers, whereupon we opened a bottle of cava and ‘wetted the book’s head’, there would have been nothing to make the day special at all.

I had launched a number of previous books in our local Waterstones, so I was hoping for another launch there, because lots of friends and acquaintances always turn out and buy books, but no word came from my publisher, who had organised previous launches. To be fair, if I’d known, I would have organised my own launch party - almost certainly in this village. But I didn’t know, because I had made assumptions based on past experience. Silly me.

Meanwhile, I was doing my best to promote the Last Lancer online. I did a long interview for one of Emma Cox's excellent genealogy podcasts, which you can listen to here. The book is only tangentially about genealogy, although the podcast is certainly interesting for anyone researching their Eastern European family history. I wrote blog posts and shared them. I posted photographs and links on social media.

Spring and the brilliant Boswell Festival came along. Like Brigadoon, I became happily visible. I spoke about my father’s experience, sharing the stage with a young Ukrainian woman, a refugee as my father had been. She related her heartrending escape from her home, under Russian bombardment, with her five year old daughter. The event was well attended, well received and very moving indeed. Afterwards, somebody said to me ‘I could listen to you speak all day.’ Which was a relief, because I had begun to wonder if I had become boring as well as old. But I think we could have listened to the Ukrainian woman all day too. And wept with her.

After that came silence except for another all too brief period of visibility on stage at the excellent Tidelines festival in Irvine.

I tried contacting my local libraries, offering to do talks. No response. Not one. I sent out a great many copies of the book, at my own expense, including some that should have gone as advance copies to people who would have reviewed it. So much so that I’ve almost run out of my own copies, and now – hilariously, if it wasn’t so irritating – my book orders have been ignored as well. Emails and phone-calls remain unanswered.

I had high hopes when my publisher went to the London Book Fair, but when she reported that the focus there was all on Ukraine, I wondered if anyone had pointed out what the book is actually about: the terrible, troubled history of - you know - Ukraine, as experienced through the eyes of one family.

I’m told it’s a ‘niche market’ but a Polish diaspora of 20 million people worldwide is a pretty big niche. You'd think somebody might want to publish a Polish language version, but apparently not. 

This is just the tip of the invisibility iceberg. There are so many examples of my current invisibility that it would become monotonous to continue to relate them. So I won’t. Like a passing comet, or a blue supermoon, I may become briefly visible again at some point in the future, but I can't say when. 

Most people in the book trade will tell scathing tales about ‘needy writers’. Very few will admit that there are invisible writers. Well reviewed writers. Older female writers. Angry writers. But it’s OK to be angry when you’re invisible, because nobody at all will notice. 

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Promoting Your Books on Social Media - Only Connect.

This is one of a series of occasional posts about the more practical aspects (or should that be pitfalls?) of writing and publishing. 

For many years, I wrote for radio, TV and the theatre before turning to fiction and non-fiction. I'm traditionally published, but I also know something about self publishing, and have published several backlist titles and collections of short stories under my own imprint: Dyrock Publishing. I've taught creative and academic writing for years, from one off events to long courses. For most people, even after publication, discoverability* is the biggest problem. 

How do people hear about your book?

This post has been gnawing away at me ever since I tried to say something about using social media on one of those big professional Zoom meetings, only to have a man interrupt me with such casual rudeness that I'm still irritated about it. Not just because of the rudeness, but because I could see a genuine need for advice in the group - and could see, moreover, that some people were going about it in the most counterproductive way. 

The debate in this particular group turned to the use of social media for promotion: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Goodreads and various other platforms. The variety is confusing, and the demographics of each platform tend to change over time. There's no point in me reinventing the wheel and trying to describe to you what each site does best. There's plenty of information out there already and the best advice I can give you is to set aside some time, and have a look for yourself.

One thing struck me about the debate though: so many people, in a meeting aimed at writing professionals, said that they 'didn't like social media'. 

Now, that's fair enough. There are some social media sites with which I have a troubled relationship, in the sense that I find them not particularly user friendly. Or in one case, a bit of a bear pit. But you can't say that you want to learn how to promote your own work without spending at least some time engaging with one or more social media sites. If you feel so strongly about this dislike that you avoid them altogether, you're going to have to employ a publicist. There is a piece in this season's Society of Authors magazine, all about getting the most out of 'your publicist'. I found myself wondering just how many writers, even traditionally published writers, actually have them. Publishers do what they can, but publicity budgets are small, unless (paradoxically) you're so famous that you don't need the publicity. And if you're not famous to begin with, publicists don't come cheap. 

The second thing that struck me about the debate was just how many professional writers seem to think that landing on - for argument's sake - Facebook, and plonking down 'buy my book' posts and nothing else, will make people want to buy the book. There is nothing more off-putting than the Facebook 'friend' who never engages with you, or anyone else, until - fanfare of trumpets - they have a book to sell. 

So here's the big secret that is no secret at all. 

If you're going to use a site like Facebook, and are hoping that at some point people will be interested enough to buy your books, you have to actually engage with those people. 

It's fun. Some of them will be old friends you'd maybe lost touch with and that's a bonus. Some will be new friends. Some will be people you've met online and find that you like. Chat to them. Post photographs, Make them laugh. Make them cry. Let them admire your dog/cat/garden/recipe collection/model railway/full size Dalek made from egg boxes, or whatever else you love. Like their pictures. Reciprocate. Enter into debate. 

Join a few groups, not just to promote your book, or even primarily to promote your book, but to meet like minded people and to contribute. You don't have to give your whole life history away and you don't have to spend hours on there. You just have to engage and enjoy it. Ask for research help if you need it. Facebook is wonderful for this and in my experience, people are generous with their expertise. 

Then, if and when you have a new book coming out, some of these nice, interesting, witty people might be inclined to buy it. And if they don't, well, does it matter? It's the equivalent of a big, friendly book festival event, where there's a willing audience, whom you're happy to entertain, followed by a good question and answer session during which people often enlighten you, at the end of which, some of them will probably buy a copy of the book. Except that on social media, you don't need to wait for an invitation.  

Dip a toe in the water. Find one or two social media platforms that suit you.  Facebook is good for books as well as all kinds of other interests, so if you want to start somewhere, that would be the one I'd recommend. But other platforms are available. Watch for a while. Chat about this and that. Post some pictures. And eventually, yes, talk about what you're writing. Because people will often be interested in whatever went into the creation of the book. I know I am, where other people's work is concerned.

Only connect, as E M Forster would have said. 

 *This word, discoverability, when used in a recent publishing trade journal, seemed to cause a good deal of angst among a few men on social media. They wasted a huge amount of time and effort, trying to denigrate it. Ironically enough by using very long words in opaque sentences, presumably to demonstrate the elegance of their prose. It's a perfectly good word. And if you're a serious writer, aiming for publication, you need to know about these things. 

 

Facebook for Writers

Dreaming of a white Christmas - or maybe not.

Over the past year, I've attended a few professional Zoom meetings with my fellow writers, and the subject of social media comes up fairly regularly. Some of us are happy to wade in and engage with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc, and others aren't. Some think that Facebook is the work of the devil. It may be, and you will need a long spoon to sup with it. It is also a huge time suck. A veritable sink hole of time suckery. 

But it's still a useful tool for writers. And there are some very nice people on there. I've made contact with many old 'friends in real life' as well as making some new ones. 

The truth is that, much like real life, all these sites are a mixture of the good, the bad, and the truly ugly, but if you want to sell books, or help your publisher to sell your books, (as well as keeping sane during a pandemic) you are going to have to learn how to do a little interacting and Facebook is probably the easiest place to start.

What surprises me is how many writers still claim to know nothing at all about using social media and are quite nervous about it in general. 

So here are a few pointers about Facebook in particular. And since I don't claim to be an expert, do feel free to add your own comments and recommendations below. This is an ever changing world, so if you are reading this in some hypothetical future, it may all be very different! 

1 Practical matters. There is no point in my reinventing the wheel, so if you want to set up a Facebook profile, go to the site, press the buttons, and follow the instructions. They make it pretty clear and I'm not going to be able to add very much that's useful to it. 

There are a couple of provisos though. When you are setting up your Facebook profile, you can search for - or Facebook will show you - potential friends. You can send friend requests. Don't send too many at once, (the Facebook Gods don't like it) and begin with people who are friends in real life. People will also send you friend requests. You don't need to click on them all at once. Or at all. You're in charge. Gradually, you will build up a circle of people who know you, on and offline. Or people with mutual friends. You will even meet some lovely, interesting new people.

Look at the tab marked 'Privacy'. You can make your account quite private. For example, I don't let anyone else post stuff on my pages. By which I mean that they can comment on my posts all they like, but I don't want them dumping unwanted stuff straight on my page. It's why I have comment moderation on my blog. You might be surprised by how much spam crops up on here, but never makes it onto the blog, because I just report it and delete it.  I relax my privacy settings in time for my birthday though! You can post things only to your friends, or you can make them public. Facebook explains all this much more clearly than I can, so again, do read the instructions. 

2 Once you have a Facebook account, you can also set up a dedicated author page. Or you can just focus on that, if you want to. Again, Facebook will tell you how and give you options for the kind of page you want. I'll come clean here. I use my private Facebook profile - with some privacy settings tweaked - far more than I use my author page. But I do still use it. I post links to blog posts such as this one, and other professional news, and information about the book I may be working on at any given time. That also links in to Goodreads, which I find a difficult site to 'work' so at least it keeps my profile current on there as well.  It also gives me the facility to set up details of events. In a normal year I would probably use it more than in a Covid year. 

3 Groups are where it's at with Facebook - increasingly so. If your books are set in ancient Rome or 19th century London, you can be sure to find a group of like minded individuals - not writers, but just people who are interested in that time and place. Join them. Join in. There are many writers' groups out there as well but remember that you are more likely to find your readers in special interest groups. Writers read a lot, it's true - but they also work a lot, and find themselves reading for work. I for one don't read very much new fiction when I'm deep into a book, although I often reread old, much loved fiction, Dickens and the like, mostly as a means of escape from the intensity of my own work. 

4 Probably the most important point of this whole post - be generous. Much like in the real world, you have to interact with other people. One thing that stands out to me is how many beginners will join a Facebook group and instantly dump a 'buy my book' post on there. No interaction, no chat, no likes, no sympathy, nothing. I attended a professional Zoom meeting earlier this year and while the speaker was speaking, there were people in the chat facility posting 'buy my book' links. Not sure if they would have got any takers, but for most of us, it's a bit irritating. Some groups don't allow it. There are people on Facebook who I never see or hear of from from one year's end to the next, unless they have a book to sell. Then it's 'oh, look, here's my book, you have to buy it.' No. No I don't. 

There is, to be fair, a whole spectrum of engagement. I'm on there a lot - too much probably. But I blog a lot as well. And I'm interested in what other people are doing and thinking and saying, whether it's online or out in the real world. 

In summary, Facebook can be good for writers. But if you put very little in, you'll get very little out. Much like computers, it's a case of garbage in, garbage out. We've all been to those parties where you meet somebody and try to talk to them, only to find them peering over your shoulder, in case somebody more interesting or useful comes along. Social media is much the same. You don't have to like everyone, but you do have to be interested in human nature in all its many manifestations. 

After all, isn't that what being a writer is all about?