Books don’t write themselves, they are often dragged kicking and screaming to the finish line.

 Picture book brewing!

September finds me knee deep in paint.

 

There is still a picture book brewing, and at this point I have to remind myself that
books don’t write themselves, they are often dragged kicking and screaming to the finish line. There is always a technical issue of some kind; in this case it has been a dead scanner. I battled with the old scanner to no avail, before giving in to the inevitable and buying a shiny new one.

Shiny new things can often be very nice, but in the case of technology I find that new usually means different, and that means working out how to get the new appliance to do what I want it to do, but we have now come to an agreement, and seem to be speaking the same language.

A few draft scans have been done and inserted into the text of the book, so the first draft is now taking shape and the magic of pictures and words merging together to tell a story has begun…

When spinning plates fall...

 It seems that spinning plates was not the best way forward… they all came crashing down and are now going down with the sinking ship that was my website. And why did I allow my website to sink, well, because the shop was an expensive experiment that didn’t bring in the sales I had hoped for. And so for now I’m settling back into my blogger account, where I’ve shared so many of the ups and downs over my years in writing, illustrating and self publishing.

So what is next? I have a book finish! There I’ve said it, so it will have to come true because I am nothing if not stubborn, and I have a gem of a story to tell… The characters are a little different, and consequently harder to pin down into illustrations, especially as drawing is not my first language, but they are well on the way, and now that I’m not spending so much time playing with my website, I have more time to bring this project to a finish line.

The hardest thing about self publishing is having to do everything myself, and sometimes a writer just needs to write, and draw, and paint… and figure out why the scanner no longer scans… OK that feels like more than enough to be going on with, I’ll see you all at the other end of the paint box.

Crash! What was that you might ask? Well it was the sound of plates falling, plates that I am supposed to be spinning...

 Crash!

What was that you might ask? Well it was the sound of plates falling, plates that I am supposed to be spinning, but frankly it is hard to paint illustrations while spinning plates, so a few of them have crashed to the floor, making a dreadful mess behind the counter in my online bookshop. So, as I crunch around on the broken crockery I see that my website has become invisible, and as invisibility is not the best way for a shop to make sales, I’m here sweeping up the broken plates and setting some new ones off spinning.

So if you have just come across my website, and are wondering what the circus act is all about, well, may I redirect you to my shop, where all is calm and the books are waiting to be browsed at your leisure.

There are picture books, bursting characters and colour. There are early reader chapter books where words and picture come alive and jump off the page… and one for the animal lovers… the real life story of how I became outnumbered by cats.

Crash – oh no. there we go again.

Self Publishing is all about stubborn

 Self Publishing is all about being stubborn… why?

·        As a self publisher you’ve likely already come up against some sort of barrier in traditional publishing: not securing an agent, not finding a publisher to publish your work, or simply decided not to send any more work out to squelch about in a slush pile.

·        Finding out that writing the story is not the end of the process, there are more skills to learn: editing, formatting, illustrating and making all of this stick into a memory stick to send to a printer.

·        Then there’s the promotions and marketing, and generally getting the word out there, about the amazing new book that you now have to sell.

·        There are websites, and blogs and a whole host of ways to get a book noticed online.

·        And pretty soon you realise that writing the book is just the beginning, and learning curves keep hitting you, sharper and steeper than you thought possible. The sense of achievement at rising to each new challenge is amazing, but also exhausting.

So what keeps a self publisher going? Sheer stubbornness and an unshakable belief in the book or books, that have to find their way out of the boxes and into the hands of readers…

So that’s where I’m at, feeling exhausted but stubbornly carrying on…