A day out and other doings...

Boy, has it been hot recently! We're struggling to keep ourselves from wilting - let alone the pot plants and lawn. (Especially since the kitchen was done - we discovered that the outside tap has stuck 'off' and we can't access the connection in the kitchen because the fitter fitted a cupboard in front of it. *sigh* Negotiations are ongoing...now with the small claims court. But that's another story.)

It's been awful to see the huge moor fires around Saddleworth - and even worse to think that some of them were started deliberately. And yet it doesn't look as though we're in for rain any time soon to help the firefighters...

It's been quiet on the Scribbles, but you know me. I'm beavering away behind the scenes, up to all sorts of things, so here's a catch up for you.

Gin Trip!
For my 50th and Squidgeling J's 18th last year, we were bought an Experience; an open top London bus pass, and gin and cakes at Mr Fogg's Gin Parlour. Now, have to say I'm not a huge fan of gin per se. It's far too dry on its own for me. But I don't mind the odd one when it's flavoured with something other than gin, if you see what I mean?

Anyway, we headed off to London on the Megabus - we arrived around lunchtime (neither of us could face the 6.30am pick up, so opted for a later one) and found a rather good picnic spot;

The bus tour was great - we sat up top (well, you have to, don't you?) and listened to Dave tell us all about the London landmarks. The only problem was that the traffic was really heavy, so our initial plan to go all the way to Tower Hill, get the boat back down the Thames and THEN go on to Mr Fogg's didn't happen...we had to get off much sooner to make our designated Gin Time. Think we'll have to go back another day, do the whole bus route. The highlight was seeing Big Ben. Well, not really 'seeing' it;

We had a mooch around Covent Garden, found the gin parlour and - oh my! It was literally the upstairs room of a pub, decked out like a Victorian lady's parlour, and we were waited on by girls in saloon-style outfits and gents in waistcoats and top hats. There was a very steampunk vibe about the outfits, which I loved. We had two hours to enjoy ourselves - which we did!

Cakes, with Showtime and Chorus Line cocktails

Oh, and a couple more complimentary Showtimes,
because we were both celebrating birthdays!

Only slightly tipsy, we had a wander through Chinatown, Leicester Square - and there we found The Lego Shop! And finally saw Big Ben.

It's not a very big shop at all, but it's got some fabulous models built into it - you could've had your photo taken in a life-size red telephone box, but the queue was so long, we didn't bother. The mural on the stairs was amazing - the London landscape, built in 3D.

And on a staircase - difficult to take without any random tourists!

We had a leisurely walk down to Trafalgar Square, along the mall and through Hyde Park, taking in the sights and watching the teeniest ducklings on the lake on the way. 

We got the Megabus back home - eventually. Who knew that Victoria Bus Station departures was in a totally different building to Victoria Bus Station arrivals? Not us...we had to ask the mechanics at the arrivals depot where the outgoing buses were...

Got back late and tired, but it was a lovely day.

Flowers!
We helped to do the flowers for a wedding at church - I knew the bride when she used to come to the church mums and toddlers group I helped to run some years ago, so it was lovely to be able to help out for her big day. The look was country-casual, and we had the most wonderful flowers to work with, courtesy of Fleurs en Fleur. The church smelt gorgeous on the Saturday morning, when - as a new church warden - I went up to see what had to be done specifically for a wedding as opposed to a normal Sunday service. The bride was radiant, and the flowers weren't bad either!

The peonies had the most delicious scent...

Faith.
The lovely Jody Klaire recently posted a picture of a cross that her partner had made for her, and I commented how lovely I thought it was. Em offered to make me one too, and earlier this week, a parcel arrived... Inside was my own beautiful cross, made by hand 'with joy, love and focus'. I was moved to tears.

My gorgeous cross, alongside my Anne Lamott 'bird by bird' reminder

Things have been very busy and a little difficult at this end faithwise recently, and this particular cross reminds me that the way of faith isn't smooth - it has its winding ways, but ultimately, it's still the way of the cross. And you know what, I think I can see the word 'love' written into the loops and swirls when I look at the cross sideways on - the absolute core of my belief.

Review and Interview.
Kingstone has recently been reviewed on Everybody's Reviewing, a blog site run in conjunction with Leicester's Everybody's Reading Festival. Of course I'm biased about my own book (though I try to be objective!) but I thought it was an excellent review, written by Evie who I know wants to be an author herself and was managing the blog as part of her work experience. Evie was also prepping an interview with me for the blog - lots of questions about Kingstone that really made me think about why I'd written certain things into the novel. I'll post a link to that, too, when it appears.

And finally...Writing.
The WIP's progressing - slow but sure. The hot weather isn't really conducive to lots of brain powery stuff, but I've been taking myself off to the garden room where I'm shaded and getting a few more hundred words down every time. It's been lovely to discover a blackbird's nest in a bush beside the garden room, so I keep nipping over to watch the babies through the branches whenever I hear the chirping that means mum or dad blackbird has returned. Those babies grow fast!

And that's probably caught you up with everything... I'm off to enjoy a bit more sun, and I hope you are too - but do take care of yourselves and those around you. 

Bye for now!

#sfh2 - Paperback release

Did you know that:

* According to Shelter, 65,000 families will be homeless this Christmas.

* At least one more family becomes homeless in Britain EVERY TEN MINUTES.
* There are 250,000 homeless people in England. That's a quarter of a million!
* 300,000+ in Britain.
* In the worst hit areas, 1 in 25 people are homeless.
* Last year, the lowest number of socially rented homes were built in 71 years. 71 YEARS!
* Tory austerity is linked to 120,000 deaths, according to a study in BMJ Open (medical journal).

These figures are shocking and unacceptable. The numbers seem too big for us 'little people' to do anything about. We are left feeling helpless and hopeless in the face of such desperate need...

Except... Today, you CAN do something to make a difference. YOU can help Shelter, the charity which helps and supports people suffering from bad housing and homelessness. And all because a collective of wonderful people have given their time and skills for free to put together and publish a second anthology of short stories on the theme of home, with every penny of the profits going direct to Shelter. 

Today is Paperback Launch Day:

Stories for Homes, Volume 2 (#sfh2) contains over 50 stories in paperback for £12.99. Already out on kindle, (£5.99) the book has received nothing less than 5 stars in every review it has received so far. We - the folk who've been involved in both the book and the online anthology, as well as everyone who helped with the cover artwork, blog tour, publicity, and line up of events to launch the book - are hoping it will be every bit the bestseller that the original Stories for Homes anthology was.

The paperback - looking good

And we'll achieve it, with your help. Please - buy the book. For yourself, or as a present. Tweet. Share. Retweet the tweets you see. Buy the ebook. Blog about it. Read it. Make a noise about it! Do all of it, knowing that you - yes, YOU - are making a difference and helping Shelter to ensure there's help for those caught up in bad housing or homelessness both now, and in the future. We already know they appreciate it: 

To finish, there's one other statistic I'd like to share with you. 

71 - the official number of deaths at Grenfell Tower; the anthology is dedicated to the victims of that tragedy.  

 

Stonking stories and Rave reviews

Spent the morning with a group of local, homeschooled children, writing stories!

It was great - I love the way that children don't limit their imagination like some of us adults.

The younger children took three objects from my story bag and we ended up with... a dragon who loved baked beans and he stole the princess's necklace. She managed to get it back by trading the necklace for beans. Or... the queen who needed to rescue a flying elephant who was in prison, and afterwards they went home for tea and she had a shower. (Sweaty work, rescuing flying elephants!) Or the bad king who stole the good king's heart, and the policemen had to put on swimming goggles to go down into the ocean to catch the bad king and make him hand the heart back.

Each of these stories - by the end of the morning - had been made into teeny illustrated books!

The older children got the story starter 'The antique glass bottle contained...' and built their stories around a framework of questions. Sure, we had some stories that took their influences heavily from film or TV, but there were some pretty unique ideas. In fact, sometimes I wish I could pinch a few and 'grow' them myself! I can't remember all of them in detail - but inside the bottles there was crushed unicorn queen horn, spider venom, the spirit of the Spider King, poison, medicine...

As these older children started writing, we got chatting too, about how the first draft doesn't have to perfect, how some people like to go at a story full tilt and some like to think about it a bit, how some stories use the same ideas but develop them differently and all sorts of other writery things.

It was certainly different leading a session in someone's (rather gorgeous) kitchen rather than in a school environment, but it didn't stop me or the children enjoying ourselves.I'd certainly consider running sessions for homeschoolers again.

Then this evening, I was tagged in a review of StarMark. It's posted on here, on Everybody's Reviewing.
To say I'm overwhelmed is putting it mildly... Have a read, see whether you agree if you've read the book yourself. Or maybe read the review if you haven't, and see if it makes you want to give StarMark a chance...

Either way, right now, I'm one very happy Squidge.

News and musing

News item, the first.

Remember, back in 2013, I had a story accepted and published in Stories for Homes, the best-selling anthology which has raised over £3,000 to date for the housing and homelessness charity Shelter?

This year, the SfH community began to stir again. Was it time for a sequel, they wondered? A new batch of stories, a new anthology, another opportunity to fund raise for Shelter?

Yes. It was.

256 submissions were received for SfH2. 55 pieces were selected for the book, and another 29 for the website. Mine was one of the latter, so sometime between now and September, you'll be able to read Potato Soup online, in the company of some other flash fiction, short stories, poetry and real life stories about housing and homelessness.

I'll keep dropping links on my facebook page as the project progresses...


News item, the second.

I don't usually enter competitions, because they can be pricey. But the inaugural Leicester Writes Short Story Prize caught my eye - not least because I got a discount for living in Leicestershire!

This week I was delighted to discover - by chance, when the shortlist came out - that one of my stories, The Pink Feather Boa Incident, was longlisted for the prize! That means publication later in the year in the prize anthology...

Unfortunately I didn't make it onto the shortlist, but good luck to everyone who did.


News item, the third.

In an attempt to get a few reviews onto Goodreads in advance of publication of Kingstone, I offered a pdf ARC to a few folk I knew had read StarMark, in exchange for an honest review.

Within 24 hours I had the first one back. (You can read it in full here)

In summary; 'All in all, a highly recommended page-turner suitable for pre-teens upwards.'

*One happy Squidge*


News item, the fourth.

Effie Purse, the new story which has pushed Crystal Keeper's Daughter to the sidelines, is flowing well. I'm hoping to finish the first s***y handwritten draft (I've already used up two biros!) by the end of June, and first type by the autumn. 


Musing.

For the SfH2 publication I needed to update my bio, so I looked to see what I'd written for SfH1. Back in 2013, I was apparently still fine tuning The Ring Seekers (shelved for the time being, having gone through many, many incarnations and edits but never quite making the grade...), had only just started writing these Scribbles, and had only just seen the publication of Granny Rainbow and the Black Shadow in a charity anthology.

It made me realise that most of the 'success' I've had so far in writing has been in the four years since then. In fact, there's so much that I can't really list it all in a bio - and if I did, it would sound like I'm bragging! Probably more accurate to say that most of the advancement in my writing has occurred since then.

This time round, I can include the publication of two Granny Rainbow books, StarMark and (by the time the bio goes live) Kingstone. I can also include the several short stories published in various anthologies (I think there were twelve or so when I added them up) and the visits I've been making to schools to run creative writing sessions. 

It seems almost unreal to think that all of that and more has happened in the last four years. It made me realise it's good to sit back and take stock sometimes, to give yourself a pat on the back for what you've achieved, and then determine to do more of the same. 

So today, I'd encourage each and every one of you to take a minute or two to see what you've achieved in the same time. Don't focus on what's not happened - life can be a pig sometimes and get in the way of our dreams and desires. Instead, look for where you've made progress - even if it seems like it's only baby steps forward - and if you'd like to, share it in the comments below. 

Let's celebrate progress!

ARCs and POD

One of the disadvantages, I think, of being published using POD - Print on Demand - for physical copies is that it is very difficult to get ARCs - Advance Reader Copies - to the reader before publication for early reviews. (POD is also a beetle when it comes to planning a launch party, especially when you can't guarantee when the copies will arrive...but that might be the subject of another blog! There are advantages to POD of course - for example you don't have to stockpile large amounts of books in your spare room...)

As any author will tell you, it's reviews and recommendation that seem to help most in terms of creating interest in a particular title, and once you get so many reviews on something like Amazon, the book can gain a momentum it would not otherwise have had.

To try to get a few reviews in the past, I've offered giveaways on Goodreads. However, out of the seven copies of three books I've sent out on giveaways, only ONE recipient has ever bothered to post a review in return. (I only ever did the giveaways because I understood that if you were lucky enough to 'win' a copy, it was sent on the understanding that it was in exchange for an honest review. Not in my experience, unfortunately. Maybe I need to include a note in the next lot to remind the reader?)

On Amazon, the majority of reviews I've received for StarMark were only placed after I'd plucked up enough courage to ask the person who contacted me to say how much they enjoyed the book, to post one - but always stressing that if they didn't want to, that was fine! (Have to add that some of the reviews have been left by people I don't know, so they aren't all 'friend' reviews...)

With Kingstone coming out this summer, I've been thinking of how I can improve things. (Yes, I will probably do a giveaway on Goodreads - but that can only be done once I've got the physical copies to give! ie, after publication.)

I did have one idea. Remember my visit to Stamford High School last month? Where I met the Book Club? We talked about Kingstone as part of the Q&A session, and the girls sounded very keen to read the book and asked if they could get hold of it early. I said I would see what I could do.

Because of the limitations placed by POD, I plumped for sending them a pdf copy of the first-edit version of the book. I checked it with Bink first of course, to make sure I wasn't doing anything uncontractual. And the pdf was sent out on the understanding that it wasn't the final version (there are still some tweaks to be made) and with a request not to let anyone else outside of Book Club read it (don't want to affect potential sales!). In exchange, I asked for their reviews and thoughts on the story.
The first review is already in from speedy-reader Hazel, who apparently read Kingstone in one sitting. In her words:

"It's so gripping, I couldn't put it down!" 

"Hooray!" says Squidge.

So it seems like this might be a good way of getting ARCs to readers, whilst relying on POD for printed copies. But doing this has left me with more questions than answers. Like;

Will any serious book reviewers or bloggers take a pdf version rather than a kosher paperback?

Will Amazon allow advance reviews to be posted before publication? (I don't think they do, to prevent...what was the expression? Puppeteering or something like that? Where the author and their mates post only good stuff to big up a book?)

Can you post an ARC review on Goodreads before publication?

Is there anyone reading this blog who is a book blogger or reviewer or librarian and would give an honest review in exchange for an ARC copy of Kingstone?

I think there's a bit more research to do to answer all of these, but in the meantime I know I have one happy reader, at least.

(Seriously - if you are reading this and you are a book blogger or reviewer or librarian with a fondness for children's books, message me! And if you're not one of those but fancy getting your hands on Kingstone as soon as it's published, advance orders are being taken on Amazon right now...)

Where to leave a review of Granny Rainbow?

I had a bit of a surprise today - I received an unexpected email, copied here:

Hi Katherine, hope this will find you, Can't find where to leave a review.
Granny rainbow should be in every kids story box, a lovely selection of stories about someone that could be your own dear granny. My G kids loved it and I thought it was great WHAT NOW! is there more from Granny rainbow 

It's an anonymous comment. At first sight I thought it might be spam, but I don't think it is; it was added to an old post about Granny Rainbow and is too specific for a spambot. 

But it set me thinking about reviews. 

Reviews seem to be very important in selling books. I can have the best cover in the world to catch your eye, the most enticing blurb which promises you a fabulous story, but at the end of the day it's what you, the reader, thinks of what lies between the covers that's important to a book's success or failure. A review - whether by word of mouth (Have you read x? My son really enjoyed the action in it) or on the internet (How many stars? I didn't like it at all!) - is what prompts people to see what all the fuss is about or give a new author a try. 

Amazon is one major source of reviews but as I'm direct selling at the moment, Granny Rainbow is not currently listed there. 

Instead, there are two other options for anyone who would like to post a review.  

1. Goodreads. Granny Rainbow is the only book with that title, so it's not difficult to find - feel free to leave a star rating if you don't want to write a 'proper' review. 

2. Email me. For emailed reviews, I've got to work out whether it's best to have a separate page for reviews and whether it should be here on the Scribbles or over on my website, but I will find a way of publishing them to a wider audience. 



Thank you to everyone who's already told me what they think of Granny Rainbow. The positive response to the book so far has been a huge boost and there are around 160 copies already 'out there', being read!

To everyone who's considering writing a few words (and that can be young readers too - I'd really love to know what the kids think!) please, please do!

And to Anonymous, who sent me the email which sparked this post - YES, there will be more Granny Rainbow stories! Probably next year. (And don't forget to check out the competition on the website, where YOUR idea for a Granny Rainbow story might make it into the next book!)

And if you still need to purchase Granny Rainbow to see what Anonymous is on about...buy it here. 

That 'squeee!' feeling...

I have to share...

I've been getting verbal feedback about Granny Rainbow and so far it's all good - thank heavens! But there's nothing concrete yet for people to see, apart from two rather lovely reviews on Goodreads and one on mumsnet.

I've been asking folks who've read the book/read it to their kids or grandkids to drop me a line and let me know what they think, with the idea of putting a selection of comments on the website...nothing's come through as yet, but I have several promises of 'when the book's finished...'

Well, today, I received two bits of feedback that made me go 'squeee!' But not very loudly or the vicar (in the first instance) and my neighbours (in the second) would've thought I was mad!

The first...remember I said I'd been to my local primary school for World Book Day? I left a copy of Granny Rainbow with each of the classes I'd visited. I was informed today by a member of staff at the school (who goes to my church) that whenever it's storytime in Year 4, the current book of choice is...Granny Rainbow! Squeee!

The second...a friend bought the book for his son. I'd already been told that this lad had elected to take my book in the car last weekend *big smiles from me* but today...the friend and his son popped round and I was told in no uncertain terms that I needed to write more stories because the book has been read twice and it's so good! Squeeee!

Add to that another nine copies sold this week...my day could not get more 'squeeee-ly' if I tried!