On reviews

Posted on September 3, 2021 by robjtriggs

Night Shift has hit a milestone. We have – at last count – 53 reviews on Amazon. Most are favourable, which is nice. But I wonder, why do we care? Why do authors fret so about words that are often tossed out there without too much consideration or deep thought (with apologies to serious book reviewers and, indeed, anyone who really works out how they want to help others who may be wondering if a certain book is for them)?

Partly, of course, its ego; a desire for one’s work to be appreciated and to reassure them that they can write. More pertinently it’s because we live in fear of the dreaded algorithm.

Some websites begin to promote books that get more reviews higher up on lists; they’re more likely to be shown in ‘Other people read’ screens and similar. The more reviews we get – good or bad – the more visibility our work receives. Success breeds success. It ain’t right, but there it is.

I’m no expert on these things. I just know that it’s nice to find that people are still discovering and reading. After being dropped by the publisher and having abandoned all hope of royalties or a great film/television adaptation bonus, it’s terribly reassuring to find that my little novel still has a life out there. Maybe I’m premature in dismissing my chances of earning out after all.

Human Resources, on the other hand, has only one Amazon review. That seems to have disappeared without trace.

But the thing about modern times – when books can be printed on demand, and e-books exist, and the internet seems both endless and eternal, is that these figures can only ever go up. Actually, I’m not entirely sure that’s true, but it certainly seems that way. I don’t need to fear being remaindered or my work becoming unavailable. Time can bring only more sales.

Because, as I said, it’s always nice to know my stuff is being read and I’m not simply pissing into the void. Money – material reward – is almost irrelevant. I want people to read and enjoy my stuff. And I want my future writings to find a market.

Which leads me onto asking why we do this. I love writing, except when I hate it and will do anything to avoid it, and I’m determined to make everything I do the best it can possibly be. Money, material reward, isn’t what I do this for, though – and don’t get me wrong, here – it is nice.

I digress. The fact is, reviews matter to authors. It (sometimes) makes us feel good. It helps our sales. It gives that word-of-mouth, that we rely on, a little boost. We the majority aren’t backed by great publicity campaigns. It’s generally us on our tod battling various degrees of social anxiety trying to do our best to get books into brains.

And of course they help other readers even more than it helps us.

So: do your good deed for the day. Find a book you’ve loved and tell people about it.

On blurbs

Posted on August 13, 2021 by robjtriggs

So. Blurbs. In another week of not getting anything very productive done (sick child and imminent deadline) I turn my mind to blurbing – writing the copy that traditionally goes on the back cover of one’s book. If you’re successful your blurb may consist only of a list of other notables saying great things about you and your work. For the rest of us it’s possibly the hardest thing you’ll have to write. Harder, even, then the accursed synopsis.

A good blurb introduces the scene, the major characters and, perhaps most importantly, it sets the tone. It should tell people this is the sort of thing they’re looking for, whether they knew it or not. In these days of thumbnail covers and mobile-phone screens, a good blurb is a key weapon in the armoury of marketing.

All at 150 words max.

As a baby writer, I was somewhat surprised to realise that I was expected to write this myself. I assumed the editor or some underpaid underling would take on the task. Then I was even more surprised when my putative copy made it onto the back on my novel without e’en a comma, a character, changed.

Of course, your experience may vary. But I did it all myself, and have no-one else to blame for their shortcomings.

So Night Shift can still be found with the following:

Antarctica. A mining base at the edge of the world.

Anders Nordvelt, last-minute replacement as head of security, has no time to integrate himself into the crew before an act of sabotage threatens the project. He must untangle a complex web of relationships from his position as prime suspect.

Then a body is found in the ice. Systems fail as the long night falls. Now Anders must do more than find a murderer: he must find a way to survive.

Will anyone endure the night shift, or will ice and frozen corpses be all that remains?

96 words. Human Resources’ blurb was a whole 4 words longer, coming in at exactly 100:

Antarctica. A city on the edge of nowhere.

Anders Nordvelt is chief of security in this frozen land, so, when a prominent member of a dissident group is murdered, it is his job to find the killer. Unsatisfied with the obvious explanation, Anders keeps pushing until the body of a colleague turns up in his apartment.

Could Anders really be the killer? Why does he half-remember wielding the knife? And why are the whispers of a fabled Human Resources black-ops team getting ever louder?

As for Anders, he’s about to enter a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a ruthless killer.

I’m not ready to unleash New Gods’ blurb upon you yet. It’s still a work in progress. I can’t get it right, though I’m getting close, I think.

On paper, writing a blurb is a tiny job, almost an afterthought. After slogging away for 75-80k words, what’s another 150 on top of that? But those final words, they have a weight, a difficulty, far beyond their characters. There’s so much to say and such little space in which to say it; so much to convey and such little time to create a voice.

Still, it must be done. And there ain’t no-one gonna do it for me.

No promotion

Posted on July 23, 2021 by robjtriggs

Reasons for not promoting New Gods when I self-publish in October/November:

I don’t know how. This is a rubbish reason: I can learn, after all, but right now it feels like I don’t have the mental energy to deal with the development of a new skill, especially one that might need chutzpah, front and brass neck. Don’t get me wrong, I do have my moments, but they’re few and far between and are almost always accompanied by ‘Oh god, what have I done?’ cringe-fests afterwards
I don’t like spending money. I mean, I’ll happily invest when I know precisely what I’m doing, but I don’t trust that buying Twitter or Facebook advertising will do anything but pour my funds into a big sinkhole of doom
The well-intentioned and thoughtful Tweeting of people who have gradually soaked into my consciousness is much more my preferred method for getting my work across. Not that it’s worked for me so far, but people like Aliette de Bodard, Rod Duncan and John Scalzi came to my consciousness via the medium of Being Decent People first and foremost, and that’s the model I wish to emulate. And yes, I admit that might be a stretch for me, but I’m trying. Very trying.
I’m self-publishing the third novel in a trilogy. It seems disingenuous to try and promote this to people who are unaware of the first two books. I mean, I’m perfectly happy to try and promote the first two, but just to do the third? It just seems slightly out-of-whack to me and my weird sense of fair play. It shouldn’t matter – all three novels stand alone and are complete unto themselves. But to me it does
I’m no digital mastermind. I can’t Photoshop stuff or create great images
It’ll take time that I could better use to create new writing
That mental energy thing again. I think that’s probably central here

Reasons I should be doing promotion for New Gods when I self-publish in October/November

It’s a good book. It’s the best (I think) of the trilogy and deserves attention. It gives a sense of completion to the series
It’s not that hard. A few tweets and Facebook posts go a long way. I can send off a few emails to local (in scale if not geography) press/radio and cross my fingers that someone desperately needs to fill a column/some dead air
I’m not that bad at it. I can ramble with the best of them. I have an interesting angle to come from (I’m happy to talk about getting dropped, for example). I am (hopefully obviously) literate and can send decent begging emails
I’m going to have amazing artwork, about which I will talk more in the future
I suppose it might just help me sell a few more copies – if not of New Gods then of Night Shift, the first in the trilogy. And that’s not to be sniffed at
I don’t need much to make me happy. I’m already resolved to poor sales. Why not expend a little effort to make what I can out of it? At least to try and cover my costs

What will I likely do in response to the October/November release of New Gods?

Tweet a little
Write a blog-post or two
Worry about getting the technical details of the release right
Wonder why the world isn’t beating a path to my door
Lament poor sales
Worry I’m not doing enough, that I’m missing great opportunities
Tweet a little more
Move on to the next thing

Dropped

Posted on January 8, 2021 by robjtriggs

It’s finally happened. It’s over.

How to talk about this without overstating or making this into a bigger thing than it is? First of all, the bald facts: I have been dropped by my publisher. They have decided that sales of Night Shift and Human Resources aren’t good enough to justify picking up the third novel in my Antarctic trilogy and have decided to move on from me.

This is perfectly fair and, really, it’s hard to argue against. I too have been disappointed with sales (of NS; I’ve not seen any for HR yet) and I suppose the writing has been on the wall. I bear no ill-will to the publishers and wish them well. They gave me my chance and – hey – there’s nothing to say I’ll never work with them in the future. I still want people to rush out and buy my books from them!

My publisher’s decision has nothing to do with the quality of writing; they were keen to emphasise that. It’s purely a business decision, and I respect that.

But it is heartbreaking. I feel like my career is done. I don’t know what to do with myself.

Most immediately, I have the third book in a trilogy that I desperately want to get out there. I feel it’s the best in the series and provides a neat, satisfying climax to the story of Anders Nordvelt. Without it I’ll always feel like my work is incomplete – because it is. I want readers to know that there is an ending; there is happiness, of a sort, for my protagonist.

I have also lost my safety net. I have another complete, ready-to-go novel that I’ve been unsuccessfully hawking to agents. This now becomes my primary weapon. I now should be putting it out to publishers as well – but now I feel a much greater vulnerability. Without the option of Flame Tree Press, I feel rejection to a much greater degree, especially if my primary choice, the company for whom I do most editorial work, should take a look and turn me down.

I don’t dare send it out. I can’t bear the pain.

So it feels like my career is over. And I just don’t know what to do with myself.

On characters

Posted on October 9, 2020 by robjtriggs

Greetings! It’s now only a few weeks until the official release (10^th November) of Human Resources on ebook, in paperback and in hardback! Please favour me and pre-order a copy. I happen to think it’s not half bad and would do a very nice job as a wonky-table prop or as a coaster.

To celebrate the release I’m going to do a series of blog-posts about different aspects of the novel; first off, here’s a little ramble about Character. In the weeks that follow I’ll write about things like plot, setting and POV – and maybe even more, depending on whether I can think of anything else. If you want me to look at anything in particular, please comment or hunt me down on Twitter (@robintriggs – not so hard, really) and I’ll see what I can do.

Big thanks to Fiona Glass – a lovely person and top class author – for the inspiration for these posts.

Let’s get one thing straight straight off. Human Resources is the sequel to Night Shift and, as such, features some of the same characters. Primary amongst these is our point-of-view character, Anders Nordvelt.

I don’t want to go into great detail about him as you’ll all know him from the first novel. Suffice to say that there’s a lot of me in him; socially awkward, with unresolved mental health issues, an observer as much as a participant, he’s an unusual protagonist and it’s all my fault.

I never realised this at the time of writing, of course. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I never knew what I was doing.

The supporting cast of Night Shift – those that survived – make their reappearances in Human Resources. They are, however, joined by a new cast of characters that all bring their own neuroses, obsessions and paranoias.

The story revolves around the growth of the isolated mining base from the first novel into a city and the problems that brings. Thus we have an Executive Committee that have their own motives; a new security service – headed by Anders – that are trying to work out how to enforce laws never tested in the field; and a population of immigrant labourers, not all of whom want to be in Antarctica in the first place.

How do I come up with my characters? In a variety of different ways. Some, like the executive committee, came in the initial worldbuilding prep – I knew I needed a ‘ruling class’ and thus there had to be people to occupy these roles. Others, like my own personal favourite, Sergeant Bartelli, came more spur-of-the-moment: I needed a policeman and he arrived more-or-less fully-formed in my head just in time to fill the role I’d created.

Then there’s the in-between characters like Shakil Mithu, unwilling immigrant and rebel leader. He’s a big personality and prime suspect in the murder of… but I don’t want to give too much away. For now let me just say that he’s an example of a character that I had to come up with before setting pen to paper; he’s a plot-character, integral to the story. But he didn’t really come alive until I reached him in the story and had circumstances and other characters for him to play off.

Most characters arrived before or during the first draft, and stayed fairly constant. Others were created – or at least significantly retooled – in the editing. Sergeant Nascimento was a late arrival, whilst Engineer Prashad and Professor Holloway both underwent significant revision in later drafts.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I have no set way of creating characters for a novel. I don’t sit down and draft in-depth character sheets for everyone; I don’t have everyone set before I put pen to paper for the first time. Some key figures I have pre-prepped but it’s often the ones who take me by surprise, who come from somewhere deep in the subconscious, that I end up falling furthest for. Yet others take work and require multiple drafts before they ‘fit’ properly.

Human Resources is a combination of all of these and it took time for me to get it right. For me the genius is in the editing, not in the first-drafting.

I’m always more interested in the Everyman rather than superheroes, the sidekick more than the main event. I like the underdog and favour the dogged rather than the inspired and the influence of film noir over me has far exceeded the amount I’ve actually seen.

That gives me free rein to create a cast of flawed and – hopefully – realistic characters.

Next week – Plot!

The empty well

Posted on July 31, 2020 by robjtriggs

I fear what comes next. I’ve been so far in an editing morass that I’ve not had much chance to work on anything new for a little while, and whilst it’s true that I have a few works in the bank – in various degrees of draftage, three stories are ready to be polished/rewritten – I don’t know where I’m going from here.

At some point I’m going to have to write something original and, for the first time in my life, I feel like I’m drawing from an empty well. I see other writers, some close to me, some a little further away, churning out novel after novel, and I look in the mirror and see only emptiness there.

I am a writer. But I can’t see what I’m going to write next. Worse than that, I feel like I’ve forgotten how to do it at all; all the disciple I built up, all the muscles I developed, they seem to have atrophied.

That’s the fear. That I’ve nothing left in me. That I’m a fraud, I guess, in calling myself something I no longer feel myself to be.

This is, I know, mostly bollocks. So I’m feeling a bit fallow – show me an author that doesn’t have the occasional period where the words don’t quite flow. It’s barely been two months since I finished my last first draft – that’s no time at all. Just because I don’t immediately have something to go on to doesn’t invalidate my whole existence.

Still, this is the way I feel right now. Like there is nothing left in me. It’s not a nice place to be.

There is hope. I had a dream the other day that I thought (within the dream, which is a trick) would make a good novel with a little tinkering. And I managed to write a dream synopsis before I forgot it all. Even if this is just a false blind it shows that my subconscious is still churning over the goods.

It’s a stupid thing, to put faith in dreams. This idea may well come to nothing. The positive I’m taking is that it shows there is still creativity in me somewhere.

But in the immediate future it is editing that is occupying my time. I’ve an Old Testament intergenerational epic to renovate. So if you’ll excuse me, it’s back to the Bronze Age with me.

* * *

A quick reminder that, for the next few days only, Night Shift can be yours for only 99p/99c. Head over to Amazon (I believe it’s an Amazon-only offer – sorry, folks) and grab your e-copy now! It’s, like, good. At least 99p good. The offer ends on Sunday (2^nd August), so hurry hurry hurry!

Night Shift on sale now!

Posted on July 29, 2020 by robjtriggs

Greetings, travellers! Just a quick note to let you know that Night Shift is on sale for this week only! At just 99p (or cents) for the ebook it is more of a bargain than ever, and should you be lacking a copy I obviously heartily recommend you take advantage.

For those in the UK the link is here. Those who prefer to use US currency should go here.

The proof

Posted on June 26, 2020 by robjtriggs

The proofs are in. This is the last chance I’ll have to rework Human Resources – well, ever. The last chance I’ll have to make sure I’m not sending out a pile of dreck into the great wide world, and that my reputation won’t be forever tarnished.

Early thoughts? Well it’s surprisingly not too terrible. All those drafts and ~~heartburn~~ heartache has just about paid off. My beta-readers came through for me.

I won’t ever be able to read my own work without wincing, so, aside from forced occasions such as readings, I may never pick up the book again. It can never be good enough for me, can never not cause me to flush with embarrassment.

So far in the proofs I’ve picked up on one or two very minor points – a typesetting error, the repetition of a phrase – and one bigger what does that actually mean? So it’s so far so un-terrible.

Is it actually any good? I don’t think I can answer that. Maybe there are artists who can stand back from their work and say objectively ‘yes, I’ve nailed this,’ or ‘I don’t think I’ve quite hit that as I wanted,’ but I’m not one of them. It’s been too long since I wrote it for me to have boundless enthusiasm but I don’t want to be too negative because it’s probably actually much better than I think.

I don’t hate it.

And you should buy it.

Erm. It’s actually really really good and I believe in it ~~whole heartachedly~~ wholeheartedly. That’s what I came here to say. Obviously.

No, let’s say this: I have more faith (less cheek-burning embarrassment) about this than I did in Night Shift. I’ve written some good stuff in my life and this can hold its head up.

So yes, pre-orders now available.

New book news

Posted on August 2, 2019 by robjtriggs

The briefest of all possible blog-posts today, in which I settle for giving news:

I have officially signed a contract for the publication of Human Resources in 2020. For those who don’t know, HR is the sequel to Night Shift and will be published by the wonderful Flame Tree Press, who also did book one and I’m hoping to blag into accepting book three in a year or two’s time.

This is obviously wonderful news for me and I’d like to thank anyone who’s bought, reviewed or merely read NS for without you no company would touch me with a barge-pole. It’s been hard work – and there’ll doubtless be more to come – but right now it feels like it’s all been worth it.

Extra special thanks to all my beta-readers, who I forced to read various drafts of substandardness in order to make it to publishable levels.

I’ve no cover to reveal yet; rest assured that I’ll keep you posted with whatever ramblings come out of the book-production process. Right now I’m just happy that I’m not going to be a one-hit(!) wonder.

The relief is palpable.

Nervousness

Posted on May 31, 2019 by robjtriggs

Nervous System – photograph by Daniel Kulinski

Morning all. Today I am all of a tremble because tonight I’m appearing at Earlham library in Norfolk for a tiny talklet, Q&A and, if anyone’s actually bought a copy, a signing.

What with that and finishing a big copy-edit I haven’t much to say this week. I’m currently doing a beta-read for a friend and I’ll shortly be returning my attention to the pass of the third novel in the Australis series (the sequel to the sequel to Night Shift) that I perpetually seem to be starting and having to put on hold.

And then… what then? No doubt I’ll have more editing to do, with which I can pay (some of) the bills. I also need to get back to Oneiromancer and do a big rewrite; I’m still turning this over and readying myself for the task ahead. I suspect that’s a months-long job, not just the odd half-hour here and there.

And then… then maybe, just maybe I’ll… write something new?

It’s been a long, long time since I first-drafted anything. I have ideas – so many ideas – but they’ve been percolating for so long that I’m not sure they haven’t dissolved into some formless, tasteless soup in the depths of my soup; a viscous brain-goop with fragments of character and plot floating lifeless on the surface like so much pond-scum.

But that’s the fun of writing. I’ll have to take what I can remember, and what notes I made, and reconstitute them into something better, faster, stronger.

That or I… won’t. I’ll be found out as the empty vacuous has-been that secretly I’ve been all along.

But that’s worry’s for the future. For now I have more immediate worrying to do.

Hope to see at least some of you tonight.

A Writer's Life

the unfocused abstractions of a barely published author

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