It doesn’t happen very often, but it’s been a good week for reviews. Reviews are the lifeblood of the writer, especially the self-published author, but they’re not easy to come by.
I ran a free promo on The Family We Choose over the bank holiday weekend, hoping to drum up some interest. Unfortunately, the heady days of thousands of downloads during a promotion are long gone. I think I hit 31 copies over 3 days. But no matter, because I received two lovely reviews.
The one that touched me most ran under the headline “Will take you right back if you have ever been there.”
It’s always dangerous writing about difficult emotive subjects. When I wrote Baby Blues & Wedding Shoes, I had plenty of first-hand experience of postnatal depression. And while I do also have some knowledge of what it means to have a turbulant childhood and an overbearing father, it’s nothing like it is for the characters in my book. A whole heap of research filled in the blanks.
So, to know that the story resonates true for those with more experience is unbelievably rewarding, as well as being rather daunting. Should books come with a Trigger Warning?
On a completely different note, I received this lovely review from a nine-year-old who read and enjoyed Moon Pony.
It’s really special to get feedback from the people I write my children’s books for. What’s nicer is the depth of thought in the review. Not just “I enjoyed it” but an awareness of the book being about the idea that sometimes people need a bit of extra love.
Perfectly timed too, as I got printed copies of Hope Glimmers through this week. A tiny bit proud of how the illustrations came out, as only the second book I have illustrated. I’m itching to write another so I can illustrate that, too. Unfortunately the summer hols are more conducive to painting than writing. Still, only a week left. 😊
I published two books this week. The children were at a music camp for five days last week, 9am-4pm, so I had time to get some work done. Although I may have bitten off more than I could chew.
At the same time, I was working on finalising the sequel to Moon Pony, called 
Still, I have published two books in a week, including illustrations, cover design, proofreading, and everything, which isn’t to be sniffed at, even if it is unlikely I’ll sell any copies of either, since my Amazon sales seem to have dwindled into nothing recently. Even Baby Blues & Wedding Shoes, which was always my ‘cup of coffee a month’ earner, has dropped off to nothing.
So I jinxed the weather with my last post. That lovely chill wind that made the heat bearable? Stopped the next day. It has been like living in a sealed attic. Sorry to anyone local to me! Mea Culpa. Forecast says it might rain this afternoon though, hurrah!
Talking of community feeling, I had the chance to spread a tiny bit at the Walk-In centre yesterday, where I spent two and a half hours after an accidental run-in with my mum’s dog.
Not sure how much more book work I’ll be able to get done this week, though, since my thumb still hurts like heck. At least I can file the information under ‘how to write about a dog bite’.
I decided to research the market to give it the best opportunity, including the title and cover. Having posted this selection on Facebook, the choice is between the bottom left and bottom right title/image. What do you think? Which would you find most compelling? I like the title ‘The Family We Choose’ taken from the phrase ‘Friends are the family we choose for ourselves’. I’m also more drawn to the right hand image because it’s cheaper 😂. I’ll have to make a decision this week since it’s my last available for work until September.
I have, however, finally cut off my pesky hair. I’ve wanted to do it since I turned 40, but the kids were rather anti (my daughter said she’d never leave her room again, but that has become a rather tempting prospect recently). Anyway the heat and an impending karate exam made me take the plunge. And I love it. Although, contrary to expectations, it’s no cooler. Definitely needs to be shorter still!
If I’d written that title a decade ago, I would have had only one thought: that working and anxiety are non-compatible. My life as a marketing manager was full of terrible moments of anxiety, inadequacy and much sobbing. It’s taken ten years for me to even contemplate having a ‘proper’ job, rather than freelancing, parenting and farting about writing books. And even though the job I finally got was casual shift work, I still nearly didn’t turn up on day one.
Recently, it seems I haven’t been able to pick up a major-publishing-house book without finding that it’s littered with editing errors – missed quotation marks, extra words, wrong character names being used, someone present in a scene when they can’t be (because they’re in hospital), or, my favourite, the find-replace. I’m particularly guilty of this – I once replaced a name and didn’t notice that it had replaced the same three letters wherever they appeared, even in the middle of words. And yes, I published it by mistake. Not my finest hour (thankfully noone bought it). But in a seriously published book? Not good.
You don’t see an Oxford Press or HarperCollins book getting review headers like, “no real grammar/spelling mistakes” (yes, that’s from one of my reviews, and the reviewer offered to edit future novels of mine free of charge) or “A couple of typos but not enough to take anything away from this great love story.” You certainly don’t ever find books published by big publishing houses with reviews that blame the author for any mistakes, or worse still make it clear the reader has gone looking for them.
Back in November 2016 I was working for a friend of a friend, typing up audio files, and she asked if I would help one of her dream writers with a final edit of their autobiography. My first response was to say no: I didn’t feel qualified to edit someone else’s work, especially when I pay someone to do a final edit on my own novels. In fact, I recommended that the author speak to my editor, and assumed that would be the end of it.
writermummy 