We got to Preston a little later than expected because of a mishap with the air pump at the local garage. I was checking the tyre pressures, and discovered that the first one was at only a quarter of its proper pressure. I duly pumped it up, and was surprised that it seemed to be taking a lot. It wasn't like I could hear air leaking. It was then that the heat from my hand melted the ice on the gauge, and it flicked from 20PSI to 65PSI in one go. Ooops; especially as the tyre is supposed to run at 40PSI and has a maximum safe pressure of 50PSI. I let the air out, but I'm glad that it is a tyre that I'll be replacing for a new one soon.
We still got to the Waterstones on time, but not with much time to spare. We had to park in our secret free parking location which was about twenty minutes' walk away, which din't help, but it was all right in the end. They put us to work immediately at the signing table by the door where I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had sold a few copies over the last week or so. That's always a good start.
Preston was a tough crowd yesterday. I signed no books for the first two hours and that's a pretty poor record to take. We even tried moving the table around, but to no avail. It's a real sinking feeling when no-one is interested in stopping to take a look, made worse by a mound of books smiling on the table in front of you. At a shop that we had never been to before too.
Luckily the lunchtime crowd were different and the signings turned from nothing to a lot in the space of an hour. It was actually quite amazing, and I beat my hourly signing record at around 3:00pm. I also had an interesting experience with one person who stopped for a chat and to take a look at the book. I knew that I recognised him, but couldn't place him. He was a large fellow, with a serious expression as if thinking deeply about everything. He asked if I was a local author, asked about the writing process; how long it all took. He then asked me about how long a book took to plan out. He was a very pleasant chap; very polite. All the time I'm thinking "Where do I know him from". He wished me the best of luck, we shook hands, then he left the shop. I then discovered from the shop's manager who had been close by that I had spoken to and shaken the hand of Lenny Henry. I can only assume that he was doing a show somewhere in Preston that evening.
We finished at 5:00pm with every copy signed. It's always nice to be at that stage. We've been told we can come back again, and will hopefully arrange something in April this year. Afterwards we tottered off to a coffee café (that's hard to say I guess if drunk) and had a cuppa and a chat before having a browse of the shops. I don't get a chance during the day, so it's nice to take a look just before they close.
We were off to a friend's 50th birthday party in Chorley that evening, so headed straight down there and had a really good night. Happy birthday Malcolm! It was an excellent party and the perfect way to wind down from a busy day.
Next stop on the tour is currently booked as Wigan Waterstones on the 19th of February; I get a couple of weekends to myself again. I'm going to be concentrating on the meantime with finishing off the Kindle edition of 'Orb of Arawaan' which should also be a prelude to it becoming at some point the first of my back catalogue to be reprinted for a hard edition. However, the follow-up to 'Bringing home the stars' will appear in hard copy before it.
Many thanks to all of you who continue to support me and my work!
Sunday, 30 January 2011
Friday, 28 January 2011
Preston Waterstones book signing.
I'm getting ready to head out now to the book signing at the Waterstones in Preston. I'm a little pushed for time, so I won't type much, but I'm looking forward to seeing people there today!
Thursday, 27 January 2011
Kindling for the fire!
After the signing at the Trafford Centre last Saturday I've been working hard to prepare some of my back catalogue for the Kindle reader. As I've said before, it seems that a lot of people have received one of these over Christmas 2010 and they look set to do for books what downloads did to music. To that end, I've sold more Kindle copies of 'Bringing home the stars' for the Kindle reader in the last week than I did in the last six months, according to the publisher.
I was already doing a lot of editing for new editions, but that got stepped up a pace. Today the finished edit of 'The Atlantic Connection' was uploaded today for the Kindle, and should go live to buy by the end of tomorrow. All-in-all that bodes well for the signing in Preston on this coming Saturday. My hope is that people who buy on the Kindle will be tempted to buy more than one of my books, and there should be a resultant increase in Kindle sales as a result.
With 'The Atlantic Connection' done, I'm working hard on a Kindle copy of ''Orb of Arawaan' which was always a bit of a behemoth of a book, coming in at nearly twice the length of my other books. It's early days, but I'm pleased to say that I'm actually pleasantly surprised at this one. I'm reading through it, and there isn't an awful lot of changes that I feel need to be done, other than to correct a few of the usual typos that seem to get into first editions. It's a really good story, even if I say so myself! If I can continue the pace today and tomorrow, there's every chance that the publisher can get it uploaded over the weekend so that by the Wigan signing I'll have three books on the Kindle.
I'm quite excited by it all - a new dawn of selling books! The last book that I definitely intend to go through to put up on Kindle from the back catalogue is 'Countdown to Extinction'. This will be the earliest book on there, and might need a lot of editing to make me happy enough to re-release it. Writing is like anything else: the more you practice at it, the better you get. My style has changed, and I have got better. That's one of the reasons that some of the other books might eventually get completely rewritten rather than just a heavy edit. I feel a little about my earlier work as to how Terry Pratchett seems to have felt when he went back to do a new edition of 'The Carpet People'.
I was already doing a lot of editing for new editions, but that got stepped up a pace. Today the finished edit of 'The Atlantic Connection' was uploaded today for the Kindle, and should go live to buy by the end of tomorrow. All-in-all that bodes well for the signing in Preston on this coming Saturday. My hope is that people who buy on the Kindle will be tempted to buy more than one of my books, and there should be a resultant increase in Kindle sales as a result.
With 'The Atlantic Connection' done, I'm working hard on a Kindle copy of ''Orb of Arawaan' which was always a bit of a behemoth of a book, coming in at nearly twice the length of my other books. It's early days, but I'm pleased to say that I'm actually pleasantly surprised at this one. I'm reading through it, and there isn't an awful lot of changes that I feel need to be done, other than to correct a few of the usual typos that seem to get into first editions. It's a really good story, even if I say so myself! If I can continue the pace today and tomorrow, there's every chance that the publisher can get it uploaded over the weekend so that by the Wigan signing I'll have three books on the Kindle.
I'm quite excited by it all - a new dawn of selling books! The last book that I definitely intend to go through to put up on Kindle from the back catalogue is 'Countdown to Extinction'. This will be the earliest book on there, and might need a lot of editing to make me happy enough to re-release it. Writing is like anything else: the more you practice at it, the better you get. My style has changed, and I have got better. That's one of the reasons that some of the other books might eventually get completely rewritten rather than just a heavy edit. I feel a little about my earlier work as to how Terry Pratchett seems to have felt when he went back to do a new edition of 'The Carpet People'.
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
Sunday, 23 January 2011
Saturday, 22 January 2011
Trafford Centre debrief and news of the Kindle.
Today's signing at the Trafford Centre went extremely well. We did very well signing books and it was great to meet and talk with so many people. It was a good crowd, and a talkative bunch. One thing that surprised me is the number of people buying Kindle editions. I can only assume that these have been very popular devices for Christmas 2010! If you roll into the number that I signed on hard copy all the ones sold today for Kindle, you would have a new record daily number sold. What is clear to both myself and my publisher is that it is high time that a Kindle edition of my currently out of print books appeared as a stop gap before a hard copy print run. To this end I have been instructed to complete the editing of 'The Atlantic Connection' (should be done by next weekend and the signing in Preston) as well as running my eye over 'Orb of Arawaan' and 'Countdown to Extinction' so that all three can be formatted and uploaded to be available to Kindle users.
Bedtime beckons, but I shall be a busy little girl tomorrow.
Bedtime beckons, but I shall be a busy little girl tomorrow.
Friday, 21 January 2011
A potted history of making your own luck.
Prompted by debate elsewhere over CVs, interviews and jobhunting in today's job market.
Over the years I've had more job interviews than I can remember from punting around my CV. The number of jobs I've actually had from all these interviews is precisely two. I found that a lot of companies wanted the moon on a stick, but didn't want to pay for it. More often than not they expected a candidate to come to the role ready trained, ready qualified, ready experienced, but no-one was particularly keen to actually provide any of that to applicants. Over the years I've had a lot of unusual jobs, mostly got via networking and getting to know people. Do favours when you easily can, because there are a lot of people who appreciate it and will return the favour at a later date which can be very useful. There is no substitute in the jobs market for working hard to better yourself and move up taking opportunities whenever they come. Some people claim not to be lucky. That's rubbish. Luck is about recognising opportunities when they come and making the most of them. 'Lucky' people are merely those who look at what's going on around them and make the most of it.
My Father was a transport manager, though he had moved on to become a consultant by the time I came out of University. He gave me a piece of advice: "Get an HGV licence, because you will always find work driving trucks when the job market is a little thin". He was right, and I've odd-jobbed trucking through agencies all through my working life when between other jobs. Even now I escape from the keyboard to go rig-jockeying once every couple of weeks, because it makes a change and everyone needs a hobby. Having an unusual skill that you can fall back on is very useful, and it looks interesting on your CV too even if it isn't relevant to the job you are applying for - it shows a prospective employer that you actually do something interesting outside of the daily grind. I also added sailing and power-boating qualifications and a CPC National certificate in my spare time too, just because they seemed like fun and they made me a more interesting person to employ. It also meant that when I did time freelance at the BBC, I had the advantage that I could drive any of the OB vehicles which was something that none of the other people applying for the job had.
I did unpaid work experience whilst I was a student. It involved a summer of commuting into Manchester at my own expense to work at an ad agency penning adverts to sell tat to the country. I never got a job out of it, because it turned out that the company was happy to get a steady stream of work experience people through to work for free, such was the demand for jobs working in what was actually a fun industry to work in. That taught me a lot about how a lot of companies work in the UK.
I kept networking, and that's meant that over time I could bin all of that and work for myself as a writer. It doesn't make mega money, but it's enough to live on and I'm happy doing it. That's taught me the biggest lessons of my work career: A job that you are happy doing is worth a lot more than one you hate, even if the one you hate earns more money. It also taught me that success doesn't come knocking on your door hand delivered on a silver platter by a flunky. If you want to be successful at something, you can be but you have to work hard and make it happen.
Over the years I've had more job interviews than I can remember from punting around my CV. The number of jobs I've actually had from all these interviews is precisely two. I found that a lot of companies wanted the moon on a stick, but didn't want to pay for it. More often than not they expected a candidate to come to the role ready trained, ready qualified, ready experienced, but no-one was particularly keen to actually provide any of that to applicants. Over the years I've had a lot of unusual jobs, mostly got via networking and getting to know people. Do favours when you easily can, because there are a lot of people who appreciate it and will return the favour at a later date which can be very useful. There is no substitute in the jobs market for working hard to better yourself and move up taking opportunities whenever they come. Some people claim not to be lucky. That's rubbish. Luck is about recognising opportunities when they come and making the most of them. 'Lucky' people are merely those who look at what's going on around them and make the most of it.
My Father was a transport manager, though he had moved on to become a consultant by the time I came out of University. He gave me a piece of advice: "Get an HGV licence, because you will always find work driving trucks when the job market is a little thin". He was right, and I've odd-jobbed trucking through agencies all through my working life when between other jobs. Even now I escape from the keyboard to go rig-jockeying once every couple of weeks, because it makes a change and everyone needs a hobby. Having an unusual skill that you can fall back on is very useful, and it looks interesting on your CV too even if it isn't relevant to the job you are applying for - it shows a prospective employer that you actually do something interesting outside of the daily grind. I also added sailing and power-boating qualifications and a CPC National certificate in my spare time too, just because they seemed like fun and they made me a more interesting person to employ. It also meant that when I did time freelance at the BBC, I had the advantage that I could drive any of the OB vehicles which was something that none of the other people applying for the job had.
I did unpaid work experience whilst I was a student. It involved a summer of commuting into Manchester at my own expense to work at an ad agency penning adverts to sell tat to the country. I never got a job out of it, because it turned out that the company was happy to get a steady stream of work experience people through to work for free, such was the demand for jobs working in what was actually a fun industry to work in. That taught me a lot about how a lot of companies work in the UK.
I kept networking, and that's meant that over time I could bin all of that and work for myself as a writer. It doesn't make mega money, but it's enough to live on and I'm happy doing it. That's taught me the biggest lessons of my work career: A job that you are happy doing is worth a lot more than one you hate, even if the one you hate earns more money. It also taught me that success doesn't come knocking on your door hand delivered on a silver platter by a flunky. If you want to be successful at something, you can be but you have to work hard and make it happen.
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