Warning: the following has content of a highly disturbing nature.

‘A girl is urged by her mother to let her brother take her virginity and become sexually active. She is ready to become sexually active but doesn’t want to give in to her mother. Her mother decides to demonstrate how good her brother is in bed and lets him take her in her daughter’s bed while her daughter watches every day for weeks causing the girl to have dreams of having sex with her brother.’  *

Well, what do you think of that as a synopsis for a novel? Me, I laughed until I stopped. And that isn’t as easy as it sounds. I think that whoever could conceive of such a ‘plot’ is quite simply unhinged or in layman’s terms seriously fucked-up. And I am no prude by any stretch of the imagination. Look at some of my blog posts if you doubt me and I just used the ‘f’ word didn’t I?

I was confronted with the above when I logged on to the Smashwords homepage for the twenty-fifth time today to check my download figures (still a healthy four. No new ones since Saturday. Maybe the Smashwords server is down.). The book to which this refers had obviously recently been uploaded because it was sitting there staring back at me (oh, so their server must be working then. Bugger.). I’m not going to name the book title that it refers to. I wouldn’t want to give the man any free publicity on my blog. I’d rather remove my own eyeballs with hot spoons, or vote Conservative.

The book has been listed under ‘erotica’ (no I wasn’t perving my way through the genre’s latest entries. Every new upload shows up on Smashwords home page) Perhaps it should have been listed under ‘sick and twisted’ or ‘in need of therapy’. (My nan used to say, ‘being a bit judgemental is better than being just mental’.)

I believe in free speech. I don’t like censorship. I know that some people want to read this stuff. I just think that perhaps Smashwords should start a partner site called Trashwords and that they should have a team of synopsis readers sifting through the influx of new material to single out the raw sewage from writing that is not written by and pandering to freaks of morality. I, for one, would be a regular subscriber to Trashwords because I haven’t laughed so much for ages. It’s not just prurient, puerile rubbish. Some of them are just plain rubbish.

It got me thinking about the brief outline – the synopsis – that one is obliged to submit with one’s offering. They are very important. They shouldn’t be underestimated as a means of encouraging readers to give writers a closer look. They should be worked on and refined (not necessarily in a moralistic way). I hope that mine works for browsers. I’ve copied and pasted a couple of others that I have selected for my own reasons and posterity. Would they ensure that you paid good money to download them to your reading device? None of these books were free to download.

‘A ballsy couple’s cozy lives are upended when the zombie apocalypse strikes Glasgow, and every day becomes a battle for survival as they team up with a band of misfits in hopes of starting civilization anew.’  That’s a no from me. Sorry.

‘The year is 2795 and after their ship was commissioned early and uncompleted to rescue a lost Confederate vessel 14,000 light years from home, the crew of the GCV Winchester have only just escaped with their lives with the dreaded Dimion. Their only hope now to return home is with help from a local race. However it is only a matter of time before the Dimion strike again. Will the crew survive.’  I’ll pass thanks.

‘Dark dreams, love, betrayal and a battle to save the world. ‘xxx’ tells the story of Cassie as she sets out, across the medieval and magical lands of Tarraneia, to prevent the terrible future she has foreseen. Is the future already set? Or can it be changed?’ A bit confusing.

‘Some are happy. Some aren’t. Yet everyday I go on with a face that is as plastic as the smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.’ Could you rephrase that, please?

‘Ronald didn’t expect his experiment to have quite the effect that it did. When it turned him into Ronnie, she didn’t expect to be changed quite that long, but mad-science timelines have a way of changing a person’s mind. “xxx” is erotica sci-fi that is unsuitable for those under the age of 18.’ Or those with a brain.

‘Born between the sexes, Jamie must leave behind a young girl’s dreams to become the man her family expects.’  Again, please?

‘The devil in us all set loose to do wickedness at the expense of all that is pure in our hearts. Four stories where the ending is bitter sweet painful, but the sex is erotic enough to turn wood to rock hard, sweaty horny stone. Broken, teased and used as nothing more than a toy for the amusement of the evil in all of us. xxx is for the firm of heart and soul. xxx is for you.’ Actually, it really isn’t. Sorry.

I could go on all night, but a) I’ve just seen the time b) it’s all getting a little depressing c) why am I doing this anyway?

* Copyright 2011 – 2012, John Edgar Jay

The following is lifted from John’s author page and I fully acknowledge his ownership of the material. (I wouldn’t touch it with a barge-pole, mate.)

John has edited stories for other authors and offers his services to anyone who needs help. (That made me laugh a lot) Many writers have very good story lines but their work is diminished by poor sentence construction, misused words, extraneous words, missing words, lack of subject verb agreement, incorrect use of contractions–in particular confusing the possessive pronoun “your” with the contraction of you are “you’re”, confusing the possessive pronoun “its” with the contraction for it is “it’s” misuse of the verb “to lie” and other such problems. (OK, so maybe he has an understanding of the finer points of grammar, semantics and syntax; he’s just missing his morality gene and a dash of common decency. Maybe he’s writing from memory of his home-life. Maybe he’s from the deep-south of the US of A or Dungeness where that kind of thing is perfectly normal. As a school friend of mine who travelled in daily on the RHDR from Dungeness used to say, ‘At least I know who my mum is. She’s my sister.’)

Still, John’s mum must be so proud. I wonder if John has children. Does he ask friends and family to proof-read his output for him? Now I’m laughing again. Cheers, John. Thanks for brightening my day. Get some help.

This post is dedicated to a self-publisher who made it work for him. He is an example to us all and I hate him already. That’s him, the sworn enemy of shaving on the left.

I want to share this. It’s something that all aspiring self-publishers should have a look at. It’s proof that it can be done. I know he’s not the first, but I have a tenuous personal interest in this guy’s achievements. Check out the link below first then come back to me and read the rest of this post. Or don’t. I couldn’t care less.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment/celebrity-interviews/scots-farmer-became-internet-sensation-1414034

When I was deciding to go down the self-publishing route a couple of months ago I started doing some research. Part of that research was to download a few free books from Amazon’s Kindle website. I wanted to see what I would be up against. I wanted to find out more about how to go about it all and what I should do and include. What was involved?

I actually downloaded this guy’s first Inspector Mclean book, Natural Causes. It was doing rather well in the free download chart at the time. I even read it. Then I stalked him for a bit. I was able to do this primarily because within the covers of his e-book he provided his blog and web addresses. He wanted people to track him down and see what else he was responsible for. That way, if they enjoyed his first book they might be encouraged to part with some money and buy one of his others (I didn’t). At least they would have known that he had others to buy.

I learned that he narrowly missed out on getting a publishing deal and so had thrown his lot in with self-publishing. And it worked for him spectacularly as you can see. Hats off to the man. (Grinding of teeth.)

Out of unsolicited interest I just happened to check up on his blog yesterday (I have him on my blog’s blogroll, even though he hasn’t condescended to reciprocate, despite my repeated begging emails. If he doesn’t add me soon he’ll end up on my bogroll, although with the money he’s probably now wiping his arse with for fun he has no need of us ‘little people’ anymore) and saw the article and learned something else from his experience.

One thing that I hadn’t been able to make my mind up about with my own impending self-publishing venture was how to price my books when I put them out there. Initially, I thought of putting them on for free, or at least the first one and then having a sliding (upwards) scale of purchase price for the others. People will want them. (Oh, God, please, let the people want them!) Then I thought, bugger it. I sweated blood on these. If people want to read them they can sodding well pay for the privilege.

But people won’t. People – like me – want their books for free like they don’t want to pay for anything. Read the article in the link and see Oswald’s experience. He says that when he had the book on the web for 99p he sold about 15 copies. When he made them free that download figure went up to about 50,000 copies. It’s just become a no-brainer for me. One has to appeal to the cheapskate masses. Why do you think that The Sun and The Mirror are so popular? All right, maybe it’s because they have big pictures of women with their breasts out. But maybe it’s because they are cheap! (Yes, in every sense of the word.)

Anyway, back to the hero of the hour. Those numbers ensured that he got seen and noticed and famous; on a list (the good kind) and with publishers fist-fighting each other in the street for the rights to his books. International rights. He must be rolling it. Bastard. The book wasn’t even that good. (Anyone else smelling sour grapes?)

If he can do it we can all do it. Let them eat cake. Give it all away. I’m going to. The greedy grabbing public will gobble up my free output. I’m going to make all three in my Romney and Marsh series downloadable without charge. I’ll get famous and hunted by the suits with their fountain pens.

I shall be dreaming about Bodrum nights again tonight.

I could never look at Charlton in the same way after watching this scene. I still think that he made a big mistake. I mean, Dude! It’s a monkey. I don’t care how long it’s been!

Walking home after work today, I felt like I’d achieved something. I’m coming to realise that this self-publishing lark is a bloody time-consuming and involved process. A veritable labour of love. It is so much more than jotting down what’s in your head and uploading it to Amazon. It’s all about little steps and they need to be celebrated – if one wants to remain sane – hence I put an extra sugar in my hot chocolate tonight.

I’ve just finished my final, final proof-reading-then-computer-version-updating-emailing-the-document-to-Amazon-to-have-them-ping-it-back-to-me thing of my second Romney and Marsh book. So I now have the first two in the series on my Kindle awaiting my attention. For the record I will be reading them on the device with a hard copy next to me and any alterations or corrections that I feel I need to make I can record them on the hard copy with a highlighter and then do the whole process once more with feeling.

I have mentioned here previously the value of proof-reading using various and varied outlets. It helps to bring a new and novel perspective, something that one needs when one is reading a book for maybe the fifth time or more for errors that one missed in previous readings.

I’m still learning about writing as well. I mean the physical presentation and arrangement of my output as much as anything. All I’ve done in the last few weeks is ride the merry-go-round of edit and proof-read and update and do it again. (The only ‘new’ writing I’ve done is this blog.) And the whole revision process, while at times I would have to admit has been pretty tedious, has also been really educational. This might sound less than encouraging to any would-be readers of my books (I don’t know about anyone else, but I want to read the work of people who have some mastery of their craft before they write a novel and expect me to read it) but even with the final drafts of the books ‘finished’ (inverted commas because they are never, ever finished) I still was not sure about/comfortable with the way that I had chosen to layout the text. I need to clarify that for myself.

My biggest issue, specifically, was paragraphing where speech was concerned. I think that I’d been educated to conform to the model whereby one writes a bit of something and when a character then speaks a new line is started. When the character stops speaking a new paragraph is started. But I’ve realised something over my reading years that jars when I’m reading; that interrupts the flow of the reading experience for me and I don’t like it, so I have changed my layout so that I don’t do it. When I re-read my stuff it now flows better, I think.  Here is an example of what I’m talking about.

The Old Way

‘What do you reckon? Holiday snaps?’ said Romney.

Marsh was disappointed not to have stirred something more in the DI. She had amends to make.

‘Might not even be Emerson’s. Could be his son’s. If he ever stayed over here, this probably would have been the room that he slept in. Better check it out, anyway.’

He wrapped it in the little plastic sack, handed it to Marsh and checked his watch.

‘There doesn’t seem to be anything here. Come on. They do a very nice bacon sandwich and proper coffee at the De Bradlei centre in the next street. We’ve just got time before we meet the girlfriend, if we get a move on.’

The New Way

‘What do you reckon? Holiday snaps?’ said Romney. Marsh was disappointed not to have stirred something more in the DI. She had amends to make. ‘Might not even be Emerson’s. Could be his son’s. If he ever stayed over here, this probably would have been the room that he slept in. Better check it out, anyway.’ He wrapped it in the little plastic sack, handed it to Marsh and checked his watch. ‘There doesn’t seem to be anything here. Come on. They do a very nice bacon sandwich and proper coffee at the De Bradlei centre in the next street. We’ve just got time before we meet the girlfriend, if we get a move on.’

It’s a personal thing, I suppose. I could be breaking writing conventions (just to clarify, I don’t ever have two people speaking in the same paragraph. I’m not that reckless.) But I don’t care. Plenty of authors create their own writing style. They must have their reasons. Some don’t even put inverted commas around speech, choosing to indicate that someone is speaking by italicising the font. By the way, I’m not saying that I’m a pioneer in this. Others write like it. Better authors than me.

Something else that this ‘style’ allows me to do is to dump dozens of ‘saids’ and the like. If I were splitting up those paragraphs into the old way I would definitely need more ‘saids’, but keeping it all together I don’t.

In a previous post I also mentioned that I was changing all my qualifying adverbs into ‘saids’. I’m not going to explain it again here. It’s just down the page a bit if you’re interested. But I’ve also gone further. I had a lot of ‘saids’ following the speech. Example,

‘What is that stink?’ said Romney, sniffing loudly.

Too many. It was boring me to read them all. I’ve changed a lot of that sort of thing to something like below.

Romney sniffed loudly. ‘What is that stink?’

Again, I prefer this. It is a personal preference. I think that it makes the reading more interesting. Looking over the texts I would say that the reader has got to concentrate more, work harder at understanding who is speaking (or still speaking); who is performing what action. Is that a bad thing?

I wonder – am I making any sense today?

I’m also in a good mood because I stayed late at work under the pretence of sorting out some fresh straw for the monkey enclosure tomorrow, but really I printed off the first hard-copy of the third title in the series. I’ve not read it all the way through yet and, like shagging someone for the first time, I’m really looking forward to it. (Didn’t think that I was actually going to write a whole post with nothing rude in it did you? I don’t like to disappoint myself.)

Eons ago, I received a comment from another blogger. It felt a bit like first contact from outer-space (and incidentally it was the last). The gentleman concerned was commenting in response to my post that I was engaged in the final, final proof-read of my book. He described proof-reading as a humbling experience. Astonished and excited to receive a comment I then commented on his comment. My comment (that’s a lot of comments) was rather flippant and, as is my bad-habit, I tried to be funny. I said that proof-reading the book was more embarrassing than humbling. The implication being that I had found a number of school-boy errors. If memory serves, I think that I even spelt embarrassing three different ways just to make my point and demonstrate how funny I am. How that has come back to haunt me. Talk about self-fulfilling prophesy. Talk about foot in mouth. Talk about dumbass.

My last blog post detailed contact made by me with an artist who is going to design some e-book covers for me.  Among other things (like money) he asked me for a sample of each of the three books that I was commissioning covers for. I duly sent them off. I did add the note that the latter two samples were still in the stages of editing and proof-reading (I was trying to cover myself for typos and the like that he would see) but that the first was ‘Kindle-ready’. I believed it was.

I had read the book in both computerised form and hard-copy. The book had gone through several drafts and edits. I had proof-read it at least five times (yes really. I would look at it again and see something that I wanted to change; an errant speech-mark, or lack of; two speakers in the same paragraph (HOW THE HELL DID THAT HAPPEN?). In the end I had to leave it or it would have consumed me. One has to say enough is enough at some point, doesn’t one? I should add here that I live in a place where I do not have the luxury of being able to call on (plague/annoy) other native English speakers to read my books for me to help me out with things that I just can no longer see because I’ve become blind to the text.

I’m so familiar with this book I could probably recite it off-by-heart. And therein lies my problem regarding proof-reading. I can’t concentrate. I can’t focus on the writing like I should and I must. I was so sure that it was ‘perfect’ and typo free that I had formatted it for Kindle and sent it off so that it could be dinged back to me and I could read it on my Kindle to check how the layout had survived the changes before pressing the publish button.

Now, picture me in bed. Sorry, let’s try that again. I’ve learned another lesson for future self-publishing: when proof-reading the book use as many formats as you can because each one can give you a different and valuable perspective not to mention the novelty value that just might see you more engaged in your task.

I didn’t see my humiliating error on the numerous read-throughs of the computerised version; I didn’t see it on the three hard-copy drafts that I printed out and went through with a fine red pen and I obviously didn’t twig when I first penned the sentence. I only saw it when I was lying in bed with my Kindle, propped up on several pillows, shawl draped around my shoulders, hot-chocolate cooling down on the bedside cabinet and looking forward to the novelty of reading my ‘finished’ book on the device (even if it was just the result of me emailing it to myself).

Enter the first chapter of the ‘Kindle-ready’ edition of the book that I sent to the cover artist. In fact make that the first effing page (talk about first impressions – excuse me while I hang my head in shame for a moment).

Can the horror and the disgrace be imagined? Can the hot flush of embarrassment that I experienced when I got to the bottom of page one and read the following be felt?

Marsh came to meet him as he stepped out of the vehicle. ‘Evening, sir.’

‘Sergeant.’ Detective Inspector Romney busied himself with his overcoat, trying to hide his disappointment. ‘Where’s Sergeant Wilkie?’ As a casual enquiry it failed.

Marsh’s features hardened a little at the implication. ‘As of this evening, sir, Sergeant Wilkie’s on maternity leave. His wife had the baby an hour ago. Also he’s a man.’

Do I have to explain it?

It took all of a nano second for my thinking and imagination to explore the probable scenario that played out in the home of the cover-designer. It probably involved lots of laughter and the summoning of friends, family and neighbours to ‘come and read this hahahah…’

I turned off the Kindle, then the bedside lamp. The hot-chocolate was left untouched. In the darkness I huddled myself down under the duvet and assumed the foetal position. I think that I might have wept before finally succumbing to sleep.

At the weekend I’m going to find some peace and quiet, some space and time.  I’m going to get myself comfortable with another hard-copy of the book, power up the Kindle again, take a deep breath. Then I’m going to read the Kindle version and annotate the hard-copy and then I’ll have to correct the computerised version and send it to myself again.

As Jesus probably said at least once, when is enough enough? So another lesson learned to pass on to myself. Thanks me. I’m welcome.

Coming soon. I’m going to enter a competition……

I’ve recently finished reading something factual about chemical and biological warfare. I’m looking for ideas for my next Patrick Sansom book in which he will have to travel in clandestine fashion to Iran on a humanitarian mission. Crikey!

Anyway, after that depressing venture into Man’s darkest hour I felt that I needed something ‘light’, a bit of swashbuckling adventure to cheer me up. That is how I found myself reading ‘Treasure of Khan’ by Clive Cussler. It was a book that I picked up off the staff table at work where it looked like it had been placed having been read and was being passed on in a sort of unofficial lending library fashion. Either that or I stole it from someone who inadvertently left it there after their tea-break. We don’t get many English language books in the staffroom at Istanbul City Zoo, so you don’t ask questions if you see one lying around.

I’ve only read one other Cussler. That was ‘Raise The Titanic’ and it was many years ago. Many, many years ago. However, I will never forget something that I read in that book that I still believe is one of the most absurd descriptions that I’ve ever come across. The hero of the book ends up shagging the woman, naturally, and when the dirty deed is done replies to her enquiry after her performance that she made love like a ‘spastic tiger’. I still have no idea whether he meant it as a compliment or not. Cussler must like the word spastic because I came across it again in this book. Maybe that’s what reminded me of that quote from RTT.

So, what’s this got to do with hope springing eternal? Well, I’m on page 124 and I can’t actually believe how appallingly this man writes. There’s a long way to go – nearly 700 pages if I can tough it out – but to be honest I’m beginning to wonder if life might just be too short to persevere with it and that battered copy of ‘Brighton Rock’ keeps winking at me from my bedside table. But it might turn into one of those reading experiences where one just keeps going because a) it can’t really be that bad all the way through, can it? and b) I have to find something of merit in it somewhere and c) every awful page that I read makes me more optimistic about my own writing.

Cussler has over two dozen titles to his name – some are collaborative efforts, admittedly – and he is so famous that he must be a multi-zillionaire. He has legions of fans. Some of his books have been made into films. But if the writing in this particular book is characteristic of his writing generally then he is dire. Honestly, I found myself thinking that if I was reading this as a first draft of something that I had written I’d have pressed select all and delete and gone and mowed the lawn.

Everything about the writing is just so bad. The descriptions of people are so bad, the ‘quality’ of the writing is so bad, the plot, such as it is so far, is so bad, the dialogue is atrociously bad. It’s just all-round bad. And I know that any one of my five books is better than this rubbish. I am not exaggerating when I say that when I was an English teacher I marked stories of ten year-olds who had a more engaging writing style than what I’ve read so far.

So, hope springs eternal. If this crap can get published surely I can. Can’t I? Bodrum mansion here I come.

By the way if you’re still wondering what the hell a picture of a golfer is doing in this post the answer is: Tiger Woods putting a bit spastically, as Mr Cussler might be tempted to pen.