Tag: romance

Self-publishing, Writing Romance

Crazy September and Blurb Take Two

by Sam Russell2 Comments on Crazy September and Blurb Take Two
Crazy September and Blurb Take Two

Harvest is over, the kids are back at school, and the world gets back from their holidays ready to hit autumn with refreshed vim and vigour.

September has been a crazy month for me so far. Ending the year’s farming accounts, FINISHING THE FIRST DRAFT OF MY MANUSCRIPT FOR BOOK TWO, and moving on to the hard miles; edits, rewrites, loose ends. Covers to be designed (two of them because A Bed of Barley Straw is also getting a makeover), ISBNs to be purchased and allocated. Tag lines, blurbs, synopsis (the latter of which I think should have been written before the novel, but hey I’m still a rookie accidental rebel). Formatting, uploads and tracked changes lurk ominously in my future, with the threat of highlighting all the skills I have forgotten since writing book one.

Today I’m working on the blurbs for both of my books, and I would love to hear your thoughts.

Do the words catch your interest and draw you in? Do they leave you wanting to know more? Leave a comment or email me – writersamrussell@gmail.com (You can also drop me a line there if you would like to be added to my email list for updates on the release).

Here’s where I’m at…all critiques welcome (steady GG)

A BED OF BARLEY STRAW

You can bury the past, but can you ever forget it? Hettie Redfern has no time for men, other than for the most basic of needs. She has learnt from experience that her career is more rewarding, that horses are more trustworthy and her are dogs easier to love.

 So when Alexander Melton returns to Draymere Hall, where Hettie manages the stables, she quickly works out that despite his drop-dead good looks, his arrogance and manners leave a lot to be desired. Unfortunately, that isn’t enough to stop Hettie desiring him.

 Proud, judgemental, downright rude at times, Alexander uses women for his own careless pleasure and rarely gives them a second thought. So how has Hettie Redfern got under his skin? A dangerous and idiotic obsession, given her reputation.

A clash of characters, a physical attraction too strong to resist. History unravelling in a perfect storm of frustrated passion.

 

THE SEQUEL

(There is a working title but you’re not getting it yet. I do learn from some of my mistakes)

Hettie and Alexander are back at Draymere Hall, and it was never going to be a conventional love story, no hearts and flowers here.

Proud, passionate, wilful; they are alike in so many ways. That has to be a good thing doesn’t it? Or it could be very bad…they both carry scars, and old wounds have a habit of bringing new pain.

 Their bodies know what they want, and that attraction pulls them together. Hearts and minds can be thorny, less easy to satisfy. One thing is certain, together or apart their lives will move on. Alexander and Hettie’s clashes of passion and spirit will only be part of the story. 

New beginnings which give you the chance to make things right. Or the chance to make the same mistakes all over again.

Thank you for reading.

Farm and Family Life, Inspiration

A Very British Seaside Tradition – deck-chairs, ice-cream and sandy bottoms

by Sam Russell2 Comments on A Very British Seaside Tradition – deck-chairs, ice-cream and sandy bottoms
A Very British Seaside Tradition – deck-chairs, ice-cream and sandy bottoms

There were seven of us on that first beach hut adventure. Six adults and one tiny-eight-week old baby. My nephew. We lounged in deck-chairs as we read our books, and brewed cups of tea. Strolled along the coast and swam in the sea. Twelve arms to share one precious bundle.

Polly 05

Within ten years, the adults were outnumbered. Rumbustious kids, adventurous toddlers and sandy-bottomed babies. Buggys, pottys and sun-cream. We hauled a hand cart up and down the steep and winding path, heavy with picnics, towelling jackets, swimming suits. Buckets and spades. Saucepans, nappies and home-made cakes. Lounging became a dream of the past, forsaken to the glorious chaos of toddler pursuit, life-guard duties and feeding a hungry swarm. We cooked up fish fingers and baked beans on the gas stove in the hut, strung a mosquito net to fend off angry wasps. Embraced the weariness as we settled our gaggle of salty-haired offspring onto child-sized plastic chairs. As the beach cleared and the sun dropped, we sipped mugs of tea and smiled as they ate with an appetite born of a well lived day. Babies slept on impromptu beds spread on the beach hut floor. A weary-legged tramp took us back up to the top of the cliff. The sleep of the rosy-cheeked, sated child. Heads lolling in car seats, drunk on fresh air.

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Tots grew into children. Bikinis and body boards, chips and arcades. Windy days brought waves to ride and kites to fly. Even when it rained the beach never failed to work its magic. Sandcastles became more adventurous. Shells gathered for bracelets, plaits beaded in hair. Granddad’s faithful frisbee, beach-boules and cricket. Suntan lotion glistened on youthful bodies which had evolved between our visits.

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The whistle on the kettle changed its tune and more mugs were needed. We spread, our chairs spilling across the promenade. We took more than our share. Behind dark glasses teenage eyes watched passing talent. Youth swooped from angsty adolescent to playful child and back again with dizzying speed. Fireworks, air shows and smart phones. They might not want to come next year. Can they bring their girlfriend/boyfriend? But go without them, and oh they are pissed off.

cliff view

We must buy our fish and chips from the very same place. Park at the cliff-top to take in the view of our beach. Ice cream cones, mugs of tea and rock cakes are compulsory. Change is good, but who can argue with those traditions. We number sixteen now, there is a new tot on the beach. My great nephew – sandy-bottomed, salty-haired and very precious.

Farm and Family Life, Inspiration

Swallows, migration and ploughing serendipities, all on a Saturday morning

by Sam RussellLeave a Comment on Swallows, migration and ploughing serendipities, all on a Saturday morning
Swallows, migration and ploughing serendipities, all on a Saturday morning

Swallows circling the tractor and plough – dozens of them. We wonder, are they playing, or harvesting the flying insects which are put up from the stubble.

There’s a lot more like that, but my editing skills are worse than my filming skills and I had my finger over much of it.

It looks like a game, they swoop dangerously close to the tractor, as if surfing the thermals rising off of the engine, and dive across the plough to come around again. Maybe this is fitness training for the arduous journey ahead of them. Migrating birds, with hundreds of dangerous miles to cover. Topical at the moment. I wish all who embark on such fearful travels could be offered Godspeed and safe arrivals.

swallow

Here’s what the RSPB  says about their journey:

By early September, most swallows are preparing to migrate. They flutter about restlessly, and often gather on telegraph wires. Most leave the UK during September, with early broods of youngsters being the first to go. But a few stragglers may hang around into October. 

The return journey to Africa takes about six weeks. Swallows from different parts of Europe fly to different destinations. Ours end up in the very south. They travel down through western France and eastern Spain into Morocco, before crossing the Sahara Desert and the Congo rainforest – finally reaching South Africa and Namibia.

Swallows migrate during daylight, flying quite low and covering about 320 km (200 miles) each day. At night they roost in huge flocks in reed-beds at traditional stopover spots. Since swallows feed entirely on flying insects, they don’t need to fatten up before leaving, but can snap up their food along the way. Nonetheless, many die of starvation. If they survive, they can live for up to sixteen years.

Hard to believe that a small bird can conquer such an endeavour.

We unearthed a horseshoe too.

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Every year the plough turns up interesting treasures, but this one intrigued us because it is round. Remedial shoeing for a horse which once pulled a plough? Or possibly more recent, it looks small for a heavy horse (5 1/4 inches across). Like many of our finds, it throws up more questions than answers.

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It must be autumn.

Marketing and Promotion

BookBub, Kindle Countdown and crossing those dastardly time-zones

by Sam RussellLeave a Comment on BookBub, Kindle Countdown and crossing those dastardly time-zones
BookBub, Kindle Countdown and crossing those dastardly time-zones

I’ve been so stuck into writing my new novel, and with harvest upon us as well, that I have to confess to my marketing efforts throughout July and August have being poor (verging on dismal). No surprise then that I have witnessed a drop in sales: For the last few weeks I’ve been flat-lining with only the occasional one-or-two books perking up the sales chart and keeping me from despair.

It was that despair, however, which urged me to bung off a submission request for a BookBub UK Featured Deal. Reading the BookBub submission guidance, I didn’t rate my chances. A Bed of Barley Straw has limited reviews, and the e-book is only available on a single platform (yes, it is Amazon, no surprises there). My personal Magna Carta carries an edict which states that I must embark on at least one marketing foray each month. To be frank, submitting to BookBub felt like an easy way to tick off a checkbox, with no further effort required when my submission was rejected.

To my utter surprise and delight the book was accepted!

BookBub Abobs

My promotion was scheduled to begin on August 20th. A mere seven days from receipt of the acceptance email, with seven days prior payment required. Clearly I wanted to seal the deal and get my $40 off in rapid quick time. (Ideally within half an hour, as I’d promised the Gallivanting Granny that I would take her to market. [PS – I wasn’t selling her])

The first flappy panic – the question “when do you want your deal to end” – involved a trawl through the BookBub Ts and Cs to find out if there were any rules governing this. The information was easy to find in their FAQs (in my haste for rapid solutions I also fired off an email to the BookBub partners, who I’m pleased to say were quick to get back to me.)

Having successfully straddled that hurdle, I decided to complicate things for myself by running a Kindle Countdown Deal concurrently with the promotion. (July’s marketing tick-box checked retrospectively).

Kindle Countdown clock

I have to admit that it was luck rather than planning which enabled me to do so. If your book is enrolled in KDP Select you are permitted to run one Kindle Countdown Deal, lasting a maximum of 7 days, during your 90 day enrolment period. The price of your book must not have been changed in the 30 days prior to the Countdown commencing, and the Countdown must conclude 14 days before your enrolment period ends. Also there are price criteria, and you must be willing to discount your book by a minimum of £1 ($1 US).

That’s a pretty specific set of rules, but luckily KDP enforce them for you. So your book will not show as eligible for the deal if you are sitting outside of their criteria. Phew! It would have taken me more than half an hour to work that out for myself.

The next flappy panic involved TIME ZONES. Simple for some maybe, but my brain was having none of it.

BookBub stipulate that the e-book must be available across all platforms (phew again) at the promotional reduced price (£0.99 in my case) at 12.00pm PST (Pacific Standard Time) and that price must be in place up until 11.59pm on the day the deal ends.

My Kindle Countdown must be scheduled in GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) and I’m living in BST (British Summer Time). As someone who still hasn’t grasped the intricacies of changing my clocks twice a year, this could be a disaster. Luckily I’ve got 7 days of Kindle price reduction to span a 5 day BookBub promotion. Gotta be possible right? Flappy panic two.

(I’ve emboldened the numbers to allow you to share my hysteria, not as a useful aid to your own cross-time-zone promotional dilemmas. Sorry, but it’s no use looking to me for help with this.)

I read the blog of a fellow author who had scheduled Kindle Countdown Deals to run simultaneously across multiple time-zones. A dizzy spell ensued, which necessitated the use of smelling salts.

I scribbled vague numbers and arrows on to scraps paper for twenty minutes, before bringing in my support team – The Farmer, The Engineer and The Gallivanting Granny. To be fair, they had bigger things on their minds (harvest and market stalls) but between them they failed to allay my confusion. The GG was indignant that there wasn’t somebody else who could do this work for me. Bless. She thinks I’m corporate.

I got there eventually, with a prayer and a whistle. Flappy panic three when the Kindle price didn’t drop at 6pm on the 19th. BST of course, it dropped at 7pm (and yes, I know now, I was way ahead of myself. At 7pm in the UK it was only lunch time in America. I think).

By accident, my over-generous over-lap did provide some feedback. I followed the advice on the ALLi Self-Publishing site, and posted about my Countdown deal on Twitter, Facebook and here on the blog. Those efforts produced three sales from the Countdown Deal alone, in the hours between my price reduction and the issue of the BookBub email. (And I’m not knocking that. Three sales was more than I had achieved in the previous seven days.)

What happened next speaks for itself – screenshot taken at 9am on day two of the BookBub promo (that’s BST if you’re interested).

Amazon sales chart

Glory halleluiah, my best day of book sales to date (although I have done ‘better’ when giving them away). Interesting that I’m also seeing a rise in my Kindle Unlimited pages read.

And look how pretty my Amazon #rating is! (There’s a #39 in there somewhere, in case you can’t see it)

Amazon ranking #39

I fully accept that this is a temporary promotional blip, but I’m not going to let that burst my delusional bubble.

Today’s plan was to push on by shouting about my Kindle Countdown Deal on social media, as per the guidelines in the ALLi blog. But Unfortunately my internet is dead. I am blocked from obsessively checking my sales figures, from posting to Facebook or Twitter. I’m writing this instead, but you may not get to see it. Our internet provider tells me that we have used up our monthly data allowance. It’s only the 21st of the month for mercy’s sake!! Oh yes, YD is home from Uni, and she’s over-fond of NetFlix.

Now, should I fork out more cash to get us reconnected? Or should I take advantage of the downtime and write like a dervish?

If you’re reading this, I must have made my decision. #ammarketing

Inspiration

Inspiration

by Sam RussellLeave a Comment on Inspiration
Inspiration


A Bed of Barley Straw Cover MEDIUM WEB

A Bed of Barley Straw by Sam Russell
The inspiration for A Bed of Barley Straw was multi-layered, but there were three things in particular which stirred my creative juices and got me writing.
The characters were my initial motivation. I saw Hettie, my heroine, as strong-willed and captivating, but far from perfect. Someone who hadn’t always got it right and still makes mistakes. I knew that Hettie would be no shrinking violet and that her history with men would be chequered. Complicated to the point that she had abandoned romance, Hettie would find it easier to love the quirky dogs and horses that she shares her life with.
My hero, Alexander Melton, is more darkly flawed. I enjoy a challenging character, but there had to be morality at the core. Finding the damaged decency buried in his heart was the crux for Alexander, a test of character development. To take a man with too much pride but create him worthy of love. Events which occur through the story were intended to shake both Alexander’s and the readers’ preconceptions. Leading him through his journey of discovery was deliciously infuriating.
The clash came next. I love a glorious mismatch. A freefall into lust with absolutely the wrong person; the gritty struggle which ensues between chemistry and reason. My idea was to delve into the minds of two people who are struggling against formidable attraction, and to find out if the wrong person can ever become the right one.
I had a lot of fun exploring that dilemma. The sparring, the spats, the stand-offs and the battles of will. The moments of physical and emotional connection. The stimulation to write became boundless!
And finally to the setting. My passion for the countryside and my background in horses and farming dropped the tale in rural England. I could clearly envisage the picturesque Cotswold village and the grandeur of Draymere Hall. Villages can be a wonderful stimulus, spurning a wealth of colourful characters, intrigue and gossip. Add to that the joys of a cosy local pub in which to play out the antics and my scene was ready to tempt the characters in.

Giveaways Events and Special Offers

I’m virtually in Scotland this week

by Sam RussellLeave a Comment on I’m virtually in Scotland this week
I’m virtually in Scotland this week

I’ve popped over to Mac Logan’s blog this week. I met Mac on twitter, he writes poetry and thrillers (Angels’ Cut & Dark Art).

We struck up a cross-genre relationship, and being the generous bloke he is, Mac offered to host a guest post from me.

Mac is a crafter of words and there is some great stuff on his site if you shoot over there and take a look. His most recent post ‘Cafe on the Edge‘ is a good place to start.

p.s. That isn’t Mac in the image, just a nice pic of a cow.

Writing Romance

We’re all romantic fools at heart…

by Sam RussellLeave a Comment on We’re all romantic fools at heart…
We’re all romantic fools at heart…

As a writer of contemporary romance with a novel to sell I am clear about my target market.  Now I’m not a fan of pigeon holes. Or of sweeping judgements which attempt to predict character by demographic. But having issued that disclaimer, please bear with me as I litter this post with offensive generalisation. It’s the grubby truth of marketing, and I accept that having a criteria on which to base your marketing efforts does make sense.

To ensure the best response to my own marketing, I carefully researched my target audience. Ok, that’s a lie. I gave it my best guess. I mean we’re talking contemporary romance. How hard can it be? Young women of average intelligence education. We all know that it’s the dreamy lasses who want to read about gorgeous hunks – men who will love them completely, and whose hearts they will mend. Passion, adoration (and a soupçon of scorching-but-meaningful rumpy-pumpy). The cynical mid-lifers (of which I am one, which should have told me something as I am writing this stuff) have been there, done that and thrown away the t-shirt. Some have nurtured ill will against romance ever since the departure of husband number three. And the highly educated know enough to understand that it’s all a load of fanciful tosh, they are busy improving their literary minds with important books.

The elderly? Please. You need to ask? As for men, well we all know that their perfect relationship is straight-forward (willing woman – leg over – meat pie for dinner. Depart to watch the match). If the match is showing widescreen at the pub, we have our happy-every-after. I warned you that this would be offensive.

If you are ranting at me right now, please take some solace in knowing that I now understand the folly of these collective ‘isms’. They are wrong, wrong and wrong again. We are indeed all romantic fools at heart. Take if you will as an example, the lovely letter I received this week from a farmer. A man who I happen to know is the wrong side of 60 (strike that, let’s make it the right side of 60!) He qualified his letter with the fact that he wasn’t much of a book reader, preferring the Farmer’s Weekly. He reads, he tells me, one book a year, on his holiday. He usually chooses a romance (did you see that coming? If not – shame on you.) That letter made my week. And there is the card I received in the post from an octogenarian. The photographs sent to me of my book in exotic locations, despatched by a woman who holds rank in City banking. The builder I met in Tesco who apologised for having not read my novel yet. I countered his apology with one of my own; “It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, what do you usually read?”  His reply – “Mills & Boon.” I misjudged, again.

One of my closest friends is on husband number three. I realise now that this fact alone is a credit to her faith in true love. Isn’t that really the message of every romance? And she’s read the book three times. Happy endings, I find, can bring a tear to the most hardened of eyes. Boo sucks demographic. You don’t know us at all.