Tag Archives: New Book

The Faith & The Fear

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I’m not entirely sure about this blog. I mean, basically it’s me crying ‘what if you don’t like me!’ into the void. Which is both slightly unattractive and plain daft. However, I think it’s a feeling a lot (all?) writers experience to some degree as launch day approaches (and after, but I’m living in a universe where ‘after’ isn’t allowed to exist yet). So let’s talk about it, shall we?

You see, this is all just a little bit scary. I wrote this book, you may have heard me talking about it. And I thought it was pretty good; in fact I still do. I had enough faith in it to send it to publishers, after all, which takes guts. Only … now it’s up to you guys whether you think it’s any good, and apparently I’m not allowed (by my bank manager and by privacy laws) to send you all bribes to make you say nice things?  

At present, I have had two amazing cover quotes from two wonderful authors, Yvonne Battle-Felton and Will Dean… and ARCs of the beast are out with gazillions (almost) of reviewers, including a blog tour’s worth of book bloggers. How fabulous is that? All those people willing to give up their time to read and review my own words. *melts*

ALSO, as if that wasn’t enough, my fabulous publishers have taken a huge leap of faith on the book, and produced a Limited Collector’s Edition hardback. This is truly fantastic. It moves me deeply that they see such potential in my story, and I feel deeply honoured and very, very excited to see it. Each copy is going to be unique, with an individual quote from the book, personalised messages to the buyer and my very own name (HALP – I need to decide how to sign it… Raine? Lorraine? Lorraine Wilson?). Check it out here. Isn’t that something quite special to happen to your book?

Painting of fox and forests overlaid with text saying 'Fast-paced and emotive, echoes of ghosts and promises of redemption make this a breathless read' Yvonne Battle-Felton, author of 'Remembered'
Photo of a scarce swallowtail butterfly feeding on a lavender flower stalk.
A lucky bug (Scarce swallowtail)

And honestly, I can’t wait to see what other people make of my book – how they interpret the characters and the themes, who they love, what they connected with. In the author panel I did with Yvonne Battle-Felton a while ago, Yvonne said that she loved Kai, and wanted to know more about him, and that was … wow, someone loved a person who used to exist only in my head … how fabulous is that? What a strange and magical thing to happen. I am a lucky bug.

…so anyway, that’s the FAITH. People willing to volunteer reviews of my book. A publisher gambling on special editions of my book…

And HERE’S THE FEAR:

Black and white close up & head-on photo of an Oak hawkmoth.
Oak hawkmoth looking, I think you’ll agree, fearsome

What if all those reviewers hate it? What if no-one (other than my mum) buys the special edition, or the hardback for that matter, or – hell, paperback or ebook? What if my lovely editor is in actual fact the ONLY OTHER PERSON IN THE WORLD who likes my book? It is statistically unlikely, I’ll grant you, but not impossible.

Now, in my more rational moments I know that a) these fears are understandable but equally b) shut up, you fool.

But my rational brain seems to have decided that the lead up to release is a really good time to hibernate. (It’s called aestivating in the summer, did you know? It’s a good word)

It feels weird to talk about this. I feel like I’m meant to emanate a kind of confident, enthusiastic expectation of success, or something. But isn’t it more normal to talk about being nervous before an important event? Isn’t it okay – and more honest – to say ‘hey, I’m feeling the fear, but I’m also really looking forward to hearing what other people think’ because the fear doesn’t stop that other bit being true. In fact it makes it more true. If I truly wasn’t nervous, it would be because I didn’t care what you thought of This Is Our Undoing, and I do care. Very much.

close of up a figure of eight moth on wood, looking very well camouflaged.
Me (or a Figure of eight moth) pretending I’m invisible.

So wish me luck in the weeks ahead, would you? And please, if you read This Is Our Undoing and like it, let me know?

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Photograph of a male Beautiful Demoiselle damselfly on a leaf. The sun is catching the vivid metallic blue of the wings.
Me (or a Beautiful Demoiselle) emanating confidence and success.

Real Author Stuff & Spoons

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May seems to have filled up with what my mind insists on calling Real Author Stuff. Namely, interview blogposts, a newsletter highlight, live & recorded reading events, and a book club visit. I’ll give you the details in a moment, first I’d like to squeal quietly at you, if that’s ok.

*me squealing*

I am loving it, in case you were wondering. Each one of these things is a shiny brass weight in the ‘Yes, you are an author’ half of the scales and a pigeon feather in the ‘haha, good joke, yes?’ half. Which is nice. I’ve mentioned in passing before that getting to this point involved a few set-backs. In summary, they included having and then losing an agent (book1), having two publishing offers (for book2), one of which I accepted but that then fell through, dozens and dozens of full requests (books 1-4), several phonecalls and similar near misses (books 2-4), some blatant prejudice, some amazing encouragement… and then This Is Our Undoing (book3 btw) found its true home with Luna. Add in the chronic illness palaver and it’s been an occasionally challenging process.

So being asked to take part in Real Author Stuff is … it’s magical frankly. I am stopping to smell the roses.

Photograph of wild rose bush covered in pink blossoms.

Sadly, aforementioned chronic illness doesn’t entirely agree.

This is one of the things with living with disabling illnesses – that everything, and I mean really, literally everything has a health cost. Gardening for half an hour? That’s a spoon or two please (for an explanation of the concept of spoons and being a spoonie, read this). Walking down to the chemist to get prescriptions? Worrying about a poorly cat? Cooking tea? A few spoons should cover it. Doing a live reading/author chat in the evening? SO MANY SPOONS.

black and white close-up photo of a moth with droopy antennae - it looks sad.
brindled beauty pulling a sad face

Spoonie life is a juggling act, a walking on eggshells existence.

It is a constant bartering of ‘I really want to do that on Thursday, so I can’t risk doing this today’, or ‘I’m doing this on Wednesday, so Thursday and Friday are written off.’ And that’s fine. I’m lucky that with planning and recovery time, I can generally do things. (I mean, it’s not really fine, but *shrug* that’s life, you get on with it.) However, it’s been brought into sharp relief with the advent of Real Author Stuff, because I love being asked to do things, and I love doing them, and want to do more (please) so I am … undergoing a shift, I guess. Which includes taking writerly things more seriously. It has always been effectively a ‘hobby’, so in the spoons bartering it’s been hard to justify paying too much for it, when my ‘payments’ (days of ill health while I recover) affects my family as well as me. But writing isn’t a hobby now. I’m an author, I’m allowed to give Real Author Stuff value. Which is both a very complicated equation still, and also contrarily incredibly liberating.

Statue of a woman with head bent, holding something on her shoulders with one hand. It's very soviet and very striking. There is also a pied flycatcher sitting on her head.

On the other hand, I’m still allowed to protect my health, even with Real Author Stuff. And one of the absolute greatest things about publishing with Luna Press is how unconditionally supportive Francesca has been. Honestly, I cannot put into words how bolstering it is to know that my publisher has my back and that in my health bartering, I do not have to add in the stress (goodbye spoons) of worrying about annoying my publisher if I cannot do something.

This blog has turned into … something more complicated than a ‘YAY LOOK AT ALL THESE EVENTS I’M DOING’ blog. But then, living with disability is complicated, and I don’t want to smooth over the nuances and difficulties of that. Yes, it makes for a messier ‘YAY’, but also it makes the good stuff that much more precious. I am smelling the roses, gently.

…And here are some of said roses…

Publishing Scotland’s newsletter Books From Scotland includes an extract from This Is Our Undoing … it contains bears and the very beginnings of All The Trouble. Read it here.

The book blogger Janet Emson – From First Page To Last – published a wee Q&A where I talk about why I wrote This Is Our Undoing, why I love graphs and what I owe Oscar Wilde. Read it here.

I did my first ever live reading & chat with Yvonne Battle-Felton and an eclectic, fascinating mix of other debut authors. My reading is around the 1:20 mark, watch it here, admire my fairy lights & see if you can spot the cat.

…More to come soon, thank you for reading. Wishing you all the spoons you need. This is a slightly psychedelic photo of me (not me) smelling (drinking from) the roses (geraniums).

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Photo of a hummingbird hawk moth drinking from a wild geranium flower whilst hovering.
Hummingbird hawkmoth

The Art of Waiting

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Being a writer involves a lot of waiting, doesn’t it? I’ve been living on tenterhooks for the past couple of months, and finding it (along with everything else going on) really affecting me. More so than normal, which has annoyed the hell out of me because I guess I’ve previously felt a little smug about how good I am at compartmentalising and getting on with stuff rather than obsessing over inboxes. Oh how the mighty are fallen, or the not-so-mighty-at-all, in my case. So instead of staring at my inbox, doom-scrolling Twitter or whinging to the cats, I figured I’d write a post about things that can make the waiting easier. And I’m going to fill the post with flowers because they’re nice.

First, in case you are new to writing/not a writer, you might be wondering what all this waiting is for. Well, at first it can be small things like waiting for some alone-time to write, or waiting for the cranky old laptop to decide whether to start, or, a little later on, waiting for critique partners to get back to you. Then comes the big one: Waiting for agents/publishers/magazines to respond to submissions, which they might never do, of course, leaving those not-answered emails in a Schrodinger’s state of rejected/not-read-yet for the rest of eternity. That sucks, by the way. I’d rather a rejection, however formulaic, than radio silence. But there we go. This stage – the ‘being on submission’ stage is horrible and happens throughout your publishing career over and over again, so buckle up.

flowerhead of an allium against a backdrop of meadow flowers.
Wild allium in meadow

I’m currently in the ‘on submission’ hellpit for two books with various agents/publishers, (and some short stories actually, but I find them easier to forget about once I’ve sent them off). I’m also, though, in an ‘out for review’ limbo for This Is Our Undoing. This is a whole new world to me. I am waiting for early reviewers, my first ‘professional’ readers, to let me know what they think, potentially for quotes to go on the cover of the book. This is nerve-wracking in a whole new way and to be honest, I wasn’t prepared for it. I was so honoured and delighted and excited that these authors who I hugely admire were willing to read and provide a review for the book that I didn’t really brace myself for how agonising it would be waiting for them. Waiting for these people you admire so much, the first people outside of your publisher to read the actual finished book, knowing that they get asked to read other books by (better) bigger names and how can you possibly compare to that? Fun, huh? Anyway, that’s where I am. Please send hugs. And then read this collection of things that have helped me cope in the past…

a yellow banded skipper butterfly sitting on a corn marigold flowerhead.
Yellow banded skipper on a corn marigold
Mystery pink species from a montane meadow, Bulgaria

1.Be honest with yourself about your wider situation. For me, I know that other factors are at play at the moment – my health is not great, I’ve just done another term of homeschooling and am suffering some serious pandemic fatigue. My resilience is lower than normal, and my ability to concentrate on tasks is rubbish as well, making it harder for me to dive into other things. How is your mental health at the moment? If it’s a wee bit wobbly, you’ll be finding the uncertainty of waiting harder. Accept that, cut yourself some slack. Give yourself treats.

2. Work on something else. I’ll repeat that, cos it’s really important. WORK ON SOMETHING ELSE. Not only does it provide a distraction, it also spreads the load of your hope and expectations. If your submitted project doesn’t go anywhere, then all is not lost – you have this shiny new thing you’re developing & perhaps that is The One which will succeed. It doesn’t have to be a whole book, it can be flash fiction, short stories, research for an idea, revisiting an old idea. It could even be writing a blog post 😉

3. Get physically away from your inbox. That thing clings doesn’t it? It’s right there on the computer screen, it’s on your phone, it’s like a little devil on your shoulder whispering ‘Check me! Check me!’ Turn your notifications off so you aren’t getting buzzed & fleetingly excited for every Kinde Daily Deal email or whatever. Go do some gardening or walk the dog & don’t turn mobile data on. Take some photos instead & then when you come back & your inbox still hates you, you can post a nice photo instead of endless crying emojis.

4. Remember the person you are waiting on is only human.

They really are. Even the agents. And they’ve endured the last year too, and are suffering for it too. I’m struggling to read more esoteric books & am re-reading a lot instead, so others are likely struggling to keep up with reading too. Be kind even in your own head, it makes a difference.

5. Drink Tea.

Close up & backlit photo of a wild blue delphinium flower.
Wild delphiniums, Crete.

6. If it’s a circumstance where it’s okay to prompt, be realistic about when you can do so, and stick to that. Again, the other person is only human, and if you pester them, they’ll respond the same way you would if someone was pestering you. You don’t want that. The situation will determine a lot of this – if it’s a service you’ve paid for, you are allowed to expect timely delivery; if it’s an unsolicited submission, the agent/publisher website will often tell you what timescales to expect & whether it’s okay to prompt. If, as in my current case, it’s an entirely voluntary, generous favour, you need to make sure you remember that.

7. Work on something else. Hell, submit something else. If you’re obsessing about B, then you’re not obsessing so much about A, are you? Ha.

black and white photograph of stems of a bellflower.
Peach-leaved bellflower, the Pyrenees.

8. This is veering into The Art of Handling Rejection which would be a whole other post … but remember it’s a numbers game sometimes. If you’ve sent out six submissions, you frankly won’t hear back from all of them & some will take several months to respond (if it’s publishers, they can take up to a year for heaven’s sake). That leaves what? one or two? which you might realistically hear from soon. If you send out twenty submissions (could be different short stories or the same novel), then your chances of hearing something from someone has just gone up. (Obviously though, each submission has to be taken seriously – so don’t spam, it’s not that kind of numbers game).

9. I feel like I ought to round the list off at 9. Buy yourself a new notebook. Don’t check your phone until you’ve written something in it.

So there you have it. Waiting sucks, it makes you powerless, and when you have invested so much of yourself into your writing it is hard to step back from it enough to be patient with a world that isn’t all *grabby hands*. But you’ll get through it. They’ll respond, or they won’t, but either way you’ll keep writing because that’s what we do. Good luck, and know that you’re not alone. Now go make a cup of tea and write something pretty. 

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Close up of a cornflower flowerhead.
Cornflower

Cover Reveal for This Is Our Undoing

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Did you see it on the homepage? Isn’t it pretty? Just in case, and because I want to, here it is as a spread so you can see the way the curlicues in the physical book will extend over to the back – a facet I am particularly fond of!

Cover spread of This Is Our Undoing. Art by Daniele Serra

I wanted to talk a little bit about the process of developing a cover, as it was something Francesca at Luna was lovely enough to involve me in and it was a genuinely fascinating process.

The first stage for me was when Francesca told me they had approached an artist about the cover art (see Luna’s blog about it here). This happened way earlier than I expected and so I hadn’t had a chance to mention some of my thoughts on a cover, or to ask what my level of involvement would be. I was, if I’m completely honest, a little nervous at this point, worried that the artwork would really, really not be what I wanted. There was one thing in particular I was not wanting, and one thing I was…

The Not Wanting was human figures or faces. I love these on other covers, I have nothing against people’s faces in general, and I cannot even articulate why this felt so fundamental to me. I think part of it is not wanting to see how someone else visualises ‘my’ characters, and also not wanting readers to go into the book with someone else’s versions in their minds. The funny thing about publishing a book is that it ceases to be yours. But I do believe it ceases to be any one person’s, so I guess I was just leery of having one person define the characters for others. Does that make sense? Possibly not.

The Wanting on the other hand was (ironically) a different figure … a fox. I know. Isn’t that awesome? Why I wanted a fox is tricky to explain without spoilers so I’ll just say this: That to me foxes came to symbolise that dichotomy of fierceness and fragility which I think lies at the heart of a lot of my characters. They also capture a sense of the wild – the intangibility of the forest and the night. Plus they are cool. There is no carnivore more adaptable or resilient, few as floofy, and none that can pounce into snow banks with such perfection.

So, as should now be clear, when my publisher sent me through the artwork … I was stunned. Because without knowing, she had given me exactly what I had been hoping for. She said she had mentioned poetry and darkness, the fox and the forest to Daniele Serra (find him here), and I realised two things – that she saw the very same heart in the book as I did, and that seeing beautiful art that is going to be ON MY ACTUAL BOOK makes me cry.

So we have a beautiful piece of art that it would be sacrilegious to stick words all over … and then we started sticking words all over it. This was the part of the process that I was deeply involved with, and I can only be grateful that Francesca was so patient with my (many) suggested tweaks, minor worries and last-minute second-guessing. We settled on a font pretty quickly because squiggles. Then it was all about placement, and man, are there a lot of possible ways to position words on a page. A. Lot. And then, just when you think you’ve nailed it, you have to do the hardback version (I am still very excited to have a hardback version), and then an ebook version (as you can see above, the physical version has curlicues passing over the spine, which in an ebook 2D version looks a little odd. So back to the shuffling words and squiggles (and more last-minute second-guessing), until we had the version you can see on the homepage.

THEN I got a little carried away putting together pretty graphics like the one on the homepage, and the ones I’ll be sharing on Twitter and Instagram. But the story of that particular procrastination device/learning curve is for another post. Let me just finish by saying that it is an honour to have such beautiful art on my book, and seeing it makes the whole seem so much more real and precious. Yes, there may have been tears at seeing the final versions too, and also some slight dancing.

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How To Be A Debut Author – The Basics

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So I have a book deal. This is a truly wonderful thing. But now what?

Now I have to become an author. Not in terms of writing a series of words that someone wants to print (and other someones hopefully want to read), but in making connections both within the publishing industry and with potential readers. Half of the publishing world will tell you that having an online presence makes no difference; the other half will tell you that you will get as much out of publishing as you put in. *Shrug* Perhaps if you are publishing with one of the big five houses, and if they have chosen your book as one of the ones they exert particular marketing effort on, then you can rest easy that your tiny Twitter platform is the least effective part of that marketing process.

… But most of us are not in that fortunate situation. And frankly that is not necessarily a bad thing – there are advantages to indie publishing. Perhaps I’ll write a blog about that some day.

So what have I been doing this last month? Learned friends have shared their wisdom on what helps you reach the right readers (ooh alliteration), and although there’s a whole discussion around whether they work, I’m going to focus on the what here rather than the why. First thing to mention is that this is proving to be an ENORMOUS learning curve, and more time consuming than one might wish. But I am hopeful that this learning/establishing period will soon stabilise and require less time and less flailing around in the dark.

…tortoise interlude, because that’s about my speed…

…back to it. What have I been doing/learning/panicking about?

  • Author events. These are a thing I need to get used to. They’ll build up as I get closer to, and after, book publication. But the first one might be in the spring and I need to think about two key issues:

How personal I am willing to be in public. And,

Whether to buy a ring light so I am not plunged into gloom.

  • Early Reviews. This frankly is terrifying. Not just the prospect of people I admire (and don’t really know) reading my book, but also APPROACHING PEOPLE TO ASK A FAVOUR. Terrifying. There are two stages to this – one is asking for cover quotes, which has to happen super early, and I did last week. Aren’t I brave. The second is in the build-up to publication for which my approach so far is to draw up a list of people I at least vaguely know & who write/read in roughly overlapping genres … and that’s it. For now. There will probably be begging…

Did you know it’s really important that your first few Amazon reviews are by readers who read in your genre normally, so that the Amazon algorithm shelves you in the right place & recommends you to the right readership? I did not know this.

  • Instagram. (I’m here) I had resisted joining this, despite being a photographer, because I felt I really did not need another online procrastination tool. However, it is a great way to find book reviews and book reviewers, and perhaps more importantly, to learn what makes good visuals for a book. Which cover reveals, prettily arranged book photos, shelfie photos etc catch the eye and which ones do you skim past. I am mostly using it at the moment to share some of my gazillions of nature photographs, but I am also following and learning and (hopefully) storing away lots of information on how bookish IG works. Once I have a cover, I can really start to do more authory things on this. And that cover is coming soon…
  • Twitter. (I’m here) I have been on Twitter for a while now. Initially to stalk agents and publishers, and to follow authors I admire. At the time I had barely published a thing so my own twittering mainly involved science, folklore and sharing writerly friend’s successes. Over time I have become more engaged with another key subject that I am particularly passionate about: Diversity in publishing. As a spoonie, mixed race, ex-working class writer, this is personal; but it’s also just plain common sense. Now though, I have a book to promote too & the question of how much of that to do. A very helpful friend told me to get good at hashtags, and to find quotes, moodboards etc from your book to share. I’m working on both those things… But my feed is mainly nature, science, boosting writerly friends and boosting diversity opportunities. And actually I think that’s ok.
  • This website. I’ve been doing A LOT of work on this. Which is a stark contrast to years of sad neglect. I’ve been learning how to add social media widgets, static/feed pages, add contact forms, add links within pages (!) … and how to present myself. I am still working out that last. I see websites as only really meaningful if you have a book(s) for readers to find out about…

… AND if you have something to offer…

  • …Be that book reviews, free content or author services. As I said above, I want to do something to support diversity in publishing and am currently thinking about what I can offer to other writers from under-represented backgrounds. Keep an eye on this site and my Twitter for more of that.

There is more (isn’t there always). There are Booktubers to get to know, YouTube videos to record, book shops to write to, launches to plan, conventions to book myself into and volunteer sessions for … but for now, website, social media and reviewers are about all I can handle. And now I can tick write a new blog post off my list. Make a list of possible blog subjects is next…

… This statue eloquently expresses how I feel …

Upside down and severed statue head from greco-roman ruins in Turkey.