Artists Town, my coming-of-age novel, is currently part of a free book promotion at Hello Books. Here’s the blurb…
First love—it will change your life for ever…
Daisy has been dragged along on a family holiday against her will. Still, the holiday has its compensations. Katrina, the resident ‘cool’ girl who takes Daisy under her wing, and her gorgeous, older cousin who sends smouldering looks in Daisy’s direction.
Is this holiday about to change her life for the better?
The escape from London has affected Daisy’s dad. He has madcap schemes in mind for how he’s going to invest in the town’s small businesses and improve them. But where is all the money for this coming from?
Daisy finds love, a close friendship and freedom in her new life but the secrets that lie buried there are about to surface, and their revelation will be explosive and life-changing.
Set in the early 1990s, Artists Town is a heart-warming coming of age tale that explores friendship, first love, learning to be cool and navigating life’s challenges. Featuring relatable, engaging characters and situations, the story will suit anyone who remembers growing up in the 1990s in the days before mobile phones and social media, those with a fondness for small-town life and those who like love stories with a twist.
Here’s what the reviews said:
“This is such a great story, full of real characters who I could really picture in my head, I felt like I knew all these people by the end if the book, and I’m desperate to know ‘what happened next’, which I don’t get too often.”
“Took me only 3 nights to start & finish this book. I absolutely loved it. Took me back to my teens, it was funny, uplifting, and also very sad.”
“YA Fiction at its finest and COMPULSORY for diabetic teens’ parents.”
There is something very satisfying about owning a physical copy of your own book—a LOOK WHAT I DID moment that never comes from staring at a thumbnail of the cover on a screen.
Draft2Digital recently launched a super-easy and free print service for indie authors, so I’ve created paperbacks for the remainder of the Highland Books series, which had previously only been available in e-book form, and two of them were delivered this week.
Although the proof copies I ordered are not as pretty as the custom-made ones I have for Highland Fling and Highland Heart, the interior I formatted using Atticus software is just as good, if not better.
Because we don’t have the purchasing power of big publishers or the economies of scale, indie authors like me can’t sell paperbacks cheaply, so our print novels must be priced in the region of £12-£15, if not more, which is why most of our sales are e-books (95 per cent for me in April so far, which is about standard).
But when one kindly soul emailed me the other week asking whether there were print versions of the other Highland Books because she had enjoyed the first three so much, that spurred me on.
I live for those comments…
I still need to create and order copies of two of my other Highland Books, so that I can add them to my vanity book shelf, which is pictured below.
What I’ve read recently
As I raced through two books that I took out of the library this week, I’ll plug them here: Matt Haig’s How to Stop Time, and Rose Tremain’sLily.
The first book’s premise was intriguing—a historical fantasy about a man who has been alive for centuries—and I borrowed the second because I remembered how much I enjoyed Restoration by the same author.
Reading is a personal and subjective experience, but both books have sold plenty of copies, so what makes them so popular?
I’m about to embark on rewriting one of my books with the lofty goal of trying to create a best-seller (more on that later), so I’m analysing everything I read right now, trying to figure out what makes it resonate with so many people.
(This, incidentally, doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of reading.)
Here are my thoughts on How to Stop Time and Lily:
They are page-turners (both professional and Amazon reviewers agree on this). Short chapters, with a hook at the end of each and plenty of tension (i.e. a sense of something bad about to happen).
They are immersive—on the pages, the worlds of Elizabethan London (How to Stop Time) and Victorian London (Lily) come to life.
Because the main characters evoke our sympathies, we’re rooting* for them to find happiness/succeed.
The character’s actions make us wonder what we would do in similar situations.
*For my Australian readers, I know this word has a different meaning in your country… 😉
What I’ve watched (spoilers ahead!)
We came to The Last of Us a bit later than the rest of Western Civilisation, but once there, it took us less than a week to binge through the nine episodes, me occasionally with my fingers in ears, a habit that dates back to when I was a child and the Daleks appeared on Doctor Who.
Again, I’ve been attempting to analyse what made the series so popular:
Pedro Pascale. (I’ll leave that there… feel free to disagree and I’ll fight you in the comments).
The character arcs, particularly Joel’s, who goes from hardened, cynical mercenary to someone who will fight tooth and nail for Ellie, and Bill’s, who moves from survivalist loner to compassionate carer in episode three.
Ellie’s kick-assed-ness.
An ensemble cast—it keeps things interesting by flitting between a variety of characters and their backstories.
The tension is there in bucketloads because you’re on the edge of your seat the entire time waiting for something horrible to happen.
The focus on humanity and their adaptability to the reality in which they find themselves, rather than the infected, prompts the viewer to ask themselves, “What would I do under those circumstances?”
Re the above bullet—the ending. Was Joel right to save Ellie at the expense of humanity? And would Ellie have been able to provide the cure anyway…?
Where to go from here… I’m in the middle of an existential writing crisis.
I muddle along, writing fiction that doesn’t sell enough to recoup the money I spend on covers, critiques, proofreading, etcetera.
There has been a lot of talk about Substack and its benefits for writers, with famous names (Salman Rushdie) publishing novels on there, not as famous names serialising their books and becoming success stories (Elle Griffin) while others treat audiences to their amazing insights and wisdom (Dominic Cummings*).
[*That was sarcasm, by the way.]
I’ve been blogging on and off for 12 years now and have never really got the hang of what to write about/how to position this blog. If I was starting now, I would do things very differently.
Substack is supposed to make it easier for you to monetise your content, providing you can persuade enough people that is worth paying for. That’s a big ‘if’, though.
As a writer of only middling success, I don’t want to publish a novel on there but I came up with the idea of a regular newsletter—the How to Write a Bestseller Experiment, where I embark on a mission to produce one and document what I do.
It would focus on craft—turning the first draft of a book I’ve already written in a popular genre (crime/thriller) into something that is page-turning, gripping and enjoyable—and building a ‘platform’.
I know, horrible, horrible word but it does seem as if you make life easier for yourself if you build anticipation and then launch your book, rather than the other way around, as every celebrity who gets a book deal can tell you.
I’m very much a LOOK, THE SHINY NEW! type of person, forever jumping on bandwagons, convinced the next big thing will work for me. Only for it not to.
But to use the old cliché, it is better to try and fail than not to try at all.
Wish me luck! And if anyone reading this is on Substack, let me know in the comments and tell me about your experiences there. Thank you!
Here’s a fun fact for you… I share the same birthday, 17 March, with King James IV of Scotland. This was news to me, something Sandy and I discovered over the weekend while staying in Stirling for a couple of nights.
We are members of Historic Environment Scotland, which cares for Stirling Castle, so we paid the castle another visit. Whisper it… Stirling Castle is far superior to Edinburgh Castle in my opinion. For one thing, it doesn’t get the same volume of visitors. Second, the history behind it is absolutely fascinating, and it is more aesthetically appealing.
Anyway, the point of our stay in Stirling was to have a mini-break for my birthday, and when we arrived at Stirling Castle on Sunday, Historic Environment Scotland had put on special festivities commemorating the 550th anniversary of the king’s birth.
Bonus!
James IV is recognised as the most successful of the Stewart monarchs (albeit this is not particularly high bar–two Stewarts managed to get their heads cut off, another was forced to abdicate after only three years on the throne). He was in charge of a significant expansion of the Scottish royal navy, included the founding of two royal dockyards and the acquisition or building of 38 ships.
He was an avid supporter of the arts and was interested in the law, literature and science, even dabbling with dentistry and bloodletting. With his patronage, the printing press arrived in Scotland, and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the University of Aberdeen were founded.
Education act
He oversaw the construction of the Palace of Holyroodhouse and Falkland Palace, as well as substantial work at Linlithgow Palace, Edinburgh Castle and Stirling Castle. The education act passed by the Scottish Parliament in 1496 introduced compulsory schooling.
At Stirling Castle, we watched a musket demonstration. Turns out there are a lot of sayings that originate from late Medieval musket use—a flash in the pan and scraping the bottom of the barrel being two of them.
The James IV castle tour revealed he was only 15 years old when he ascended to the throne, having fought his father, James III, to claim it. Medieval Scottish rulers tended not to live long, happy lives and James IV himself died in battle, during the disastrous Battle of Flodden in 1513, in which some 10,000 Scots were killed.
Renovations
Nowadays, the castle’s great hall has been renovated and the exterior painted with ochre-coloured limestone to resemble what it would have looked like the early 16th century. The royal apartment has also been designed to resemble what it would have looked like it did in those days, and two restoration projects have restored the Stirling heads, wooden carvings of James V’s family members and the local nobility that he commissioned to show off to the world his right to rule, and a recreation of a 15th century tapestry, The Hunt of the Unicorn.
Both projects, which used 15th century techniques, colour palettes and materials, are quite something to see.
The views from the castle are spectacular and it is easy to understand why our ancestors picked Castle Hill for a fortification.
We stayed at The Allan Park, a B&B that is also serves as a pub and restaurant. Blimey, the breakfasts… the Eggs Florentine (poached eggs on a muffin with spinach, mushrooms and Hollandaise sauce) reminded me yet again why the egg is the most magnificent food stuff known to humankind, while the vegetarian fry-up included veggie haggis too, a very nice touch.
We ate out on the Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, returning to The Allan Park on Sunday evening for another delicious meal, and where the waitress asked me if I was a Mum, winking when I said no, and suggesting I change my answer because they were offering free glasses of Prosecco to all mothers in honour of Mother’s Day in the UK.
(Do fur babies qualify?)
When it came to finding people to land on, the travel bug gave me a wide swerve. Mini-breaks in the UK are far and away my favourite type of holiday. Castles and museums, pubs and restaurants, not too far to travel and with a much lower carbon footprint than flying…
Our next holiday is the Peak District in the summer, and I can’t wait.
I based it loosely on the Great British Bake Off show. Years ago, the programme’s hosts were Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc, who were notorious for their dreadful baking puns and sly innuendo.
To give you a flavour of the book, here are some of the ones I came up with for my book. Don’t groan too much…
Sue, fluffy pink jumper clashing with her bright orange hair, stepped forward, beaming at us. “Welcome, contestants, to this year’s Best Baker UK! Why was the ninja so good at baking pastries?
“Because he had a black belt in martial tarts, of course.”
A strawberry tart
Kimberly and Sue cosied up to Rob as he chopped up a large handful of pistachios, tiny flecks of green flying off the chopping board. “Ooh,” Kimberly said. “I do love a chunky nut or two, don’t you, Sue?”
Sue, straight-faced, shook her head. “Nuts ground to a paste are my preference.”
Playing along
Kimberly and Sue rocked up at my bench. Sue picked up a sausage, letting it dangle from her fingers. “Ooh, I love a sausage early in the morning!”
Sue’s joke might be the most obvious one in the entire world, but I played along. “Absolutely, Sue. The bigger the better too, eh?”
“No, no, no,” Kimberly chimed in. No-one but me could see the tightness in Sue’s jaw as she waited for the reply. “The size of the sausage isn’t important. It’s what you do with it that counts.”
She tipped her head in Rob’s direction. To the left, a camera zoomed in on him.
Bread, bread, bread
As I kneaded the dough, punching into it, Kimberly glided up. “Woo, Lissie!” she exclaimed, helping herself to the sultanas piled up in a bowl. “Are you imagining a certain someone when you hit that bread?”
She added an exaggerated wink, directing her head to Rob’s bench.
Deciding that I might as well give Graham what he wanted, I thumped the dough harder for effect. “Not at all, Kimberly. Though it feels therapeutic. Do you want to try?”
“Oh, yes!” she said, digging her knuckles into the dough I handed over. “It’s the yeast I can do.”
“Amazon keeps sending me Rich Tea biscuits even though I don’t like them,” Kimberly said, picking up the tin of condensed milk on my bench.
Spending so much time with them in person meant you could anticipate the jokes.
“But everything’s okay now,” I replied, retrieving a tin opener from the utensil drawer under my bench. “As you’ve updated your cookies preference, right?”
She high-fived me; the move caught on camera. “Ha! Lissie, you should replace Sue. You’re much better at this than she is.”
Sorry about that! If you’d like to buy the book, you can do so by clicking on the button below.
Some years back, I went the book launch of Stonemouth, written by the late (and extremely great) Iain Banks, where he admitted he made up the town where the novel is situated because he despised doing research.
That little titbit lodged in my subconscious, as I did the same a few years later when I wrote Artists Town and the Highland Books.
If you create a fictional town or village, there’s no need to worry about confusing the site of the town hall with the derelict church or placing two streets close together for narrative purposes (and risking a chorus of criticism in the reviews from the town/village’s real inhabitants).
Nor need you fret about people from those places presuming you’ve used them somewhere in the novel and portrayed them in an unfavourable light. The author Brooke Magnanti at another book event I attended stated that she made up the setting for her crime thriller, The Turning Tide, so as not to offend her Lochaber neighbours.
Artists Town, a coming-of-age tale set in a small Scottish town, was inspired by Kirkcudbright, the small Scottish town where I spent my formative years.
Once upon a time, Kirkcudbright had a creamery. When it was demolished, the council built social housing in its place, and named one of the streets, Baird Street, in honour of one of the creamery’s founders, my grandfather.
Let me let you into the secret of Kirkcudbright’s pronunciation. Those of us born in this tiny town nestled far from the madding crowds in the south-west of Scotland grew up chortling whenever the rare occasion of it meriting a mention on the national news arose and presenters mispronounced it Cur-cud-bright, when it’s—clearly—Cur-coo-bree.
Other Scottish place name minefields include Milngavie, pronounced Mull-guy, Strathaven, pronounced Stray-ven and Bearsden, pronounced Brendan.
(Kidding, Bearsden is pronounced exactly as it is written.)
Like Brooke Magnanti, I didn’t want to offend the locals, so I changed the name Kirkcudbright in the book to Kirkinwall. But because Kirkcudbright is one of the few places in the UK with a castle in the midst of it, any locals reading it will recognise the location straight away.
Mackies Fish and Chips plays a key role in Artists Town, and I based the establishment loosely on a sadly no-longer there chippie, Polar Bites, which had an excellent (and well deserved) reputation for its take on the UK’s favourite dish.
Since I couldn’t find a picture of the now defunct Polar Bites, I’ve treated you instead to a drool-worthy pic…
The Highland books, a series of romantic comedies/feel-good escapist novels, are set in the imaginary village of Lochalshie, which is a loose mix of Arrochar in Argyll and Bute, and Lochcarron in Wester Ross.
The Lochside Welcome, the local pub/hotel, is an important setting in the books and it resembles the Village Inn in Arrochar, appearance-wise, anyway. As far as I’m aware, it’s never played hosted the wedding of a reality TV star—also made-up—but given that she’s a member of a family who’ve been on MTV for many years and a ‘self-made’ billionaire whose fortune comes from a make-up and skincare company, there is no prize for guessing who she’s modelled on.
When you set your novels in bigger towns and cities, it´s okay to go with the real version, and I´ve used Glasgow, London, Norwich and even Great Yarmouth in my books, but small town settings will always be my preferred choice because it´s much easier to create a sense of community, which is why books and TV series set in smaller places appeal to so many people.
The Bakewell tart was made by my own fair hand for a party. Retro dishes can be very popular…
My latest novel, Baked with Love, is now available for pre-order. The book features a fictionalised version of a well-known and loved baking show, so there are a lot of descriptions of cakes in it.
In general, there are a lot of descriptions of all kinds of foods in all my books, reflecting my other passions in life, cooking and eating. If I were any good at food styling and photography and filming, I’d run a food blog for sure. I toyed with the idea at one point and came up with the snappy (not) title, Emma Cooks the Books! along with fancy-schmancy graphics too, see above.
Anyway, as that did not happen (food blogs and vlogs look like a tonne of work – and many of them take place in immaculate kitchens, using state-of-the-art equipment that seems as if it’s being used for the first time), I’ve rounded up a collection of foodie pics and quotes from my books…
Highland Fling – a romcom set in the Scottish Highlands.High Heels and Pink Glitter – a chick lit novel available to read for free on Wattpad.I would love to claim credit for this beautiful chocolate cake, but my sister made it…Highland Wedding – a romcom set in the Scottish Highlands.A Leap of Faith – a Covid-19 lockdown love story.Beautiful Fighters – a NA vampire novel.Beautiful Biters – a NA vampire story.I made the carrot cake and decorated it, using my mum’s tried and tested fork method (lines across and then down).Highland Chances – a light-hearted, feel-good book set in the Scottish Highlands.
How to spend creative hours productively – part one
To format your book’s paperback edition, use a pre-made template. It takes approximately an hour.
How to spend creative hours productively – part two
Use no templates. Insist on formatting word documents yourself because you know the measurements and you want to do fancy-smancy things. Get yourself in a pickle trying to work out page breaks, section breaks, odd page headers, even page headers, numbering, and so on.
Waste five hours + one hour uploading the document to KDP Print – time you will never get back – only for the system to reject it repeatedly because the margins aren’t correct, despite the fact that YOU HAVE USED THE MARGINS SPECIFIED BY KDP IN THE FIRST PLACE.
How to spend creative hours productively – part three
Skip part two.
Anyhoo, the paperback edition of my latest chick lit novel, Baked with Love, is now in the system and will be available in mid-March.
Adventures at the BBC
On Tuesday, I took part in a pilot show recording for BBC radio. Because the show is about books and reading, a small panel of us, led by Scottish author and broadcaster Damian Barr, discussed Kazuo Ishiguru’s sci-fi novel, Klara and the Sun.
I was the only one who found the book a chore to read. For me, there wasn’t enough description, making it hard to imagine the world he’d created, the dialogue felt awfully stilted and the characters weren’t particularly sympathetic, but everyone experiences books differently, which is why book groups are so fascinating to be a part of.
The others were drawn in by the simple prose and lack of description, and two mentioned binge-reading the book, whereas I read it as part of my ‘to-do’ list for the day.
A few words were bandied about that I had to look up afterwards, having no idea what they meant, and I’m afraid I’ll come across as the panel dunce when (or if) the show is eventually broadcast.
But, as a long-standing admirer of Aunty Beeb (an affectionate British term for the BBC) and almost everything she does, it was a privilege to be involved,
What I’m baking/eating
For years, I followed a low-carb diet. Bread was the thing I missed the most. These days, I eat low-carb-ish, but a small amount of bread is a daily staple because…
… bread is the GREATEST foodstuff known to (wo)mankind.
Like almost all foodstuffs, it is far superior made from scratch. Kneading, on the other hand, is tedious, especially for those of us with butterfly attention spans. But after seeing someone tuck into ‘no-knead’ bread on YouTube, I decided to make two loaves this week.
You’ll need to plan ahead of time because the bread takes fourteen hours plus to make (dough rising time)—but it’s so easy and so tasty*.
Best served with lashings of butter and a thick layer of Marmite.
We’ve recently discovered Detectorists on BBC iPlayer and binge watched the three series. The programme follows the fortunes of a small group of metal detectorists and was written and directed by Mackenzie Crook (left in the picture above). It’s sooooo lovely – great characters, acting, the setting, the wildlife. If you haven’t seen it, you’re in for such a treat. I don’t know if it’s available outwith the UK, but if you are reading this and you’re in another country, I hope you can find it!
*As energy prices are through the roof at the moment, bread-making at home is a real luxury because you need the oven at a high temperature and the loaf takes an hour to bake.
Picture (or rather, hear) the following scene. You choose an audio book, press play, and an American voice narrates the story.
No harm in that—there are plenty of American accents that send the heart a flutter (Stephen J Dubner could talk about the science of watching paint dry and I’d listen, transfixed) but what if you’ve specifically purchased a book set in the UK, featuring UK born-and-bred characters, and the story is read with a voice from across the Atlantic, rather than a home-grown accent?
I’m asking because I received an email from Draft2Digital this week. The company acts as an aggregator, distributing e-books to all the e-retailers, including Amazon, Kobo, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and library services.
Draft2Digital has been collaborating with Apple Books on their digital narration technology, in which the programme generates audio books from e-books already published on the platform, which is currently free.
That’s a biggie. If I wanted to create my own audio book, it would cost at least £1,500. And audio books are the fastest growing book market. But here’s the catch. Apple currently only offers English with an American accent.
I’ve listened to it; it’s not bad, and it lacks that robotic quality of Word dictation, for example. And you could argue that in the western world, we’re all used to hearing American accents, so it wouldn’t be so strange.
However, the characters in my books frequently speak in dialect. Is digital narration up to the task? Ideally, I’d like the late Victoria Wood to narrate my stories because she would throw herself into the story with gusto and use different voices for the various characters but that’s not going to happen…
Anyway, I’ll give it some thought.
Quote of the week
As it was Burns Night on Wednesday, the quote of the week is by Robert Burns. While I didn’t attend a specific event, I did host Book Group friends for an afternoon of eating, drinking wine (the non-driving, non-Dry January some of us…) and discussing books and the environment, which seemed like a fitting tribute.
What I’m eating
Saturday Kitchen on the BBC is regular viewing in the Baird-Birnie household. When a celebrity appears on the show, usually to promote something, they are also asked what their food heaven and food hell are. Viewers of the live show vote on what the show’s professional chefs prepare for them at the end.
Whenever I watch this, I wonder why no-one says macaroni cheese for their food heaven. Isn’t that what everyone would want for their last meal on earth…?
For the Book Group, I made a big batch of it, and unleashed the secret ingredient. Was it a fancy cheese, you ask? Did you make the sauce with cream? No, I picked up this tip from Nadiya Hussain. Crumbled up cheesy wotsits. (In the US, these are known as cheese puffs).
Game-changer. I promise…
What I’m watching
Tonight’s the night—Happy Valley series 3. There are only two episodes left, and according to the press, the producers filmed five different endings in an attempt to keep the ending secret, and even the cast is unsure which ending will be used.
Waiting a week for episodes feels peculiar in this day and age, and last Sunday, Labour MP Jess Phillips tweeted: Moves a bill in parliament that a week is too long to wait for Happy Valley, and it received over 6,000 likes.
What would be your food heaven if you appeared on Saturday Kitchen, and what would you hope voters didn’t choose for you? And how would you feel if a book set in the UK with British characters was narrated in an American accent?
This week in creativity, I’ve been wrestling with characters shaking/nodding their heads. Human communication relies heavily on head nods and shakes. We all do it, and we do it constantly.
While characters may bolt, dash, dart or flee rather than simply running away, there is no other way to say nod or shake his/her head. At a pinch, you could say, ‘made a shaking notion with his head’ and…
No, you couldn’t. It sounds ridiculous.
What’s a writer to do? So far, 34 head shakes and 38 nods have popped up in the 64,000 words I’ve written so far. That’s five head bobs too many*, though on the plus side, at least my characters are more positive than negative.
Other physical actions that are difficult to describe in any other way include:
Raised his/her eyebrows (quirked them?)
Shrugged (raised her shoulders up and down?)
Grinned (the corners of his mouth lifted upwards?)
Smiled (as above)
Opened/shut the door.
Here’s an illustration…
Nell opened the door. Daniel glanced up at her and smiled. “Are we going out for dinner?” she asked. Daniel shook his head. “Too busy, sorry. How about tomorrow night?” Nell shrugged. “Let’s see how I feel after work. I might be too tired.” He raised his eyebrows. “Too tired? You do nothing at work.” He grinned to soften the insult.
Or,
Nell fastened her hand to the door and swung it open. Daniel glanced up at her, the corners of his mouth tilting upwards. “Are we going out for dinner?” she asked. Daniel turned his head from side to side. “Too busy, sorry. How about tomorrow night.” Nell lifted her shoulders up to her ears. “Let’s see how I feel after work. I might be too tired.” He piqued an eyebrow. “Too tired? You do nothing at work.” He widened his mouth to soften the insult.
Creativity part 2
After reading a post about Pinterest for authors on a blog about writing, I’m revisiting the platform.
This paragraph stuck out:
For those of us overwhelmed by conversations and connections, Pinterest is a refreshing platform. You can spend hours (or minutes) looking at pretty things and not have to talk to another human. It is an introvert’s dream: a social platform where you don’t have to be social to be successful. This also means that it’s really easy to get started with Pinterest as compared to other platforms.
Kirsten Oliphant, Jane friedman blog on writing
Hooray! Permission granted to ditch Instagram and TikTok, where my feeble attempts to build a platform have failed miserably. Does anyone in the world put down their phone after scrolling through Instagram, and think, Well, I feel TONNES better now…?
So, after spending two years creating zillions of square and horizontally-shaped graphics, I’ve reverted to Pinterest-friendly rectangular ones, like the ones below.
And this one is for a board about my Highland books
This week’s Google searches related to writing
What weekday was May 28 in 2016
Waldorf doormen uniform
Photos of Waldorf reception (hard to come by, but I did chance upon the magnificent ‘swan’ bath towel pictured below)
Industrial estates in Anniesland, Glasgow
Pegasus in Greek mythology
Jobs in tech
What I’m reading/watching
Last year, the book group I belong to participated in a reading challenge set by the Booker Prize’s organisers. You can find out more about that here. We did not win (boo!); however, taking part led to other things…
BBC Scotland consulted us about a new radio programme about books and reading, and as a result I’m reluctantly excitedly taking part in the pilot show, in which a group of us discuss Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro.
According to the blurb: In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?
Fingers crossed I don’t come across as too thick… If any of you have read the book, what did you think of it?
Bank of Dave. Picture: Netflix
Do you need something cheery and not too brain-taxing to watch? The Bank of Dave on Netflix is delightful. The good guys win, the bad buys get their heads to play with and there’s a message about how the ‘establishment’ works only for a tiny minority of the UK’s population. (The Rupert Murdoch-owned Times critic described the film as ‘alarmingly simplistic’, proving the point oh-so-flipping well.)
*Characters in the novel Twilight are notorious for repeatedly nodding/shaking their heads.
You might think for someone who has managed to write a first draft of at least twenty novels, writing the blurb (otherwise known as the book description) would be a piece of cake…
Not so. This week, I’ve been struggling with the blurb for a chick lit book that will be coming out in the spring. For inspiration, I copied and pasted book descriptions from three of Amazon’s best-selling chick lit books into a word cloud generator, which resulted in this image…
Right then, EB, I told myself, try to incorporate some of the words mentioned here into your book description.
A common mistake when writing a book description, especially your own, is to reveal what happens, so my first attempt was to try to focus on what people might feel when reading the book, or what they might be looking for when seeking out books (escapism, romance, etc).
The second approach is more traditional. Which one do you think would would make you want to read the book more?
This week in creativity part 2
As someone who scraped a ‘C’ in o’grade art many moons ago, I’ve never been particularly good at artsy stuff, but this week I also added A+ content to all of my Highland books’ product pages.
A+ content is the information under the book that says ‘from the publisher’ and Amazon allowed indie publishers to use this facility in the same way traditional publishers have always used it two years ago.
Here’s what I created for mine…
This week in creativity part 3
This week, I have also been doing some creative accounting, ensuring that I cling on to all my hard-earned dosh as tightly as I can…
The Stephen King quote above shows how books differ from films and the intimacy of reading. When you read, your imagination that fleshes out the world and the characters in your head, which is why no two people will read the same book in the same way.
What I’m reading this week
Still ploughing my way through A Place of Greater Safety and have now reached the part where journalist and politician Camille Desmoulins delivers his impassioned call to arms, which inspires the Storming of the Bastille a few days later.
What I’m watching
Happy Valley, which as discussed with one of my fellow bloggers last week, is SO GOOD.
Thanks for reading and let me know in the comments which of the book descriptions you think sounds the most enticing.
Emma Baird - author 