Monday 6 June 2016

I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something...

I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged. Erica Jung




I was looking for a quote for today's blog post and I came across this beauty. It's not really relevant to my post but I love it and I am sure it will resonate with writers out there.




So what is new? Poison in the Water is out and the paperback is beautiful. There is something hugely satisfying in putting your hands on a copy of your latest book - how are the sales going? I'm not quite sure. I could ask my lovely publishers at So Vain, but it has not even been a week yet, so perhaps I will give it some time. In my experience with books I have published they seem to be slow burners. Under the Coconut Tree is now selling brilliantly - oh  a good 8 months after publication.




With So Vain working with me though I would like to think that sales for Poison will be sooner rather than later although reviews to date have been slow. But I suppose you need to give people the time to read the thing! One thing that has got me wondering is this genre of Romantic suspense - in all honesty I think GT was a romantic suspense but I just put it down as a suspense book, not knowing much about the genre of Romantic Suspense and from a review on Poison someone said they didn't like the ending because it was not a happy one (trust me it is happier than it was before my publishers saw it). My books rarely have happy endings unless they are the Chupplejeep ones - because I don't really like happy endings. I don't think that life is all about happy endings and I always like a little bit of a twist at the end - a final quirk to get you thinking. But I get that people may want their fiction to have a happy ending the same way you kind of want to movie to go...But even though it was just one review I cant help but thinking whether the Romantic Suspense reader just generally wants something a little more than I am willing to give (Happiness?!)


It reminds me that to sell books successfully you need to know your reader. Yes, the review could be a one off - but it is something I need to investigate if I am to go down this Romantic Suspense route. Am I?


Marketing, publishing and promoting... we writers never stop.




I will of course be doing a Goodreads book giveaway in June so watch this space. As well as that I will be at a stall at a writer's festival in the not to distant future selling my books. It's a new experience so I'm looking forward to it.




And what of the new MS I was working with? Well I am still working on Splinter. I broke through the - is this working, or not? phase and I am ploughing on. It may fail, but at least I have tried.