Showing posts with label New Year. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Year. Show all posts

New Year, New Editions


Bird of Passage is finally out in paperback. It's print on demand only, and you'll have to go to Amazon to find it, but once book events begin again, I'll have a few more copies to distribute myself. 

I've blogged about this book a few times, but you can read a longish account of its history, here, written back when we were first in lockdown. And here we are again. This is one of two or three books from my past that somehow or other, even though I've also been happily traditionally published, slipped through the net. It's also, oddly enough, one of my favourites among all the books I've written. 

The book had been edited to within an inch of its life, so I had very little trouble in publishing it as an eBook, in which format it has been available for some time. I still wanted the satisfaction of holding a paperback copy, but I knew I wasn't up to the task of doing the necessary design and formatting, even though I wanted to maintain control over it. 

Hunting about online,  I found a small, well reviewed Scottish business called Lumphanan Press. I can wholeheartedly recommend them. They did an excellent job of designing and formatting a PDF, at a very fair price and when a couple of sample copies of the book arrived from Amazon, I was very happy with them. The upload process on the site is pretty simple, but what was reassuring was the way - as the software went through various important checks - each box was ticked. I can only imagine the chaos if I had tried to do this formatting all by myself. Sometimes we have to know our own limitations and employ professionals! 

I could, of course, use this same PDF to have other copies printed elsewhere, but for the moment, in the middle of this second lockdown, I'm happy enough. 

Meanwhile, I'm working on a new book called The Last Lancer, hopefully for my publisher, but I'm also doing a little editing of two more novels that never saw the traditional light of day: The Amber Heart and Ice Dancing. The Amber Heart has, if anything, an even more chequered past than Bird of Passage! 

Ice Dancing, on the other hand, is an unashamedly contemporary love story, and yet it isn't really a conventional romance. It's an odd, quirky novel, about love at first sight, and inadvisable attachments and painful pasts, and about Scottish lowland village life. Those who like it seem to like it a lot. I'm not surprised. I'm still very fond of my two main characters. Another one I plan to get out in paperback this year. 

So. Lots to do. Between the state of the UK (horrible) and the US and the virus, I'm keeping myself reasonably sane here in Scotland with lots of writing writing, playing the piano and learning Spanish. Soon it will be spring and I'll be able to get into the garden again. It all feels a bit like those visits to the cinema in the olden days where you would sit down in the middle of the B movie and then stay on till you thought 'Oh - this is where we came in.' 

Our local medical centre has just flagged up that vaccines are coming. My husband will be in an earlier cohort than me. Bring it on. Can't wait. 


Not here just yet - but they soon will be!




And a Very Happy and Successful 2015!

My lovely haunted cupboard.
One of the nice things about living here in a small Scottish village is that for a few days and sometimes weeks after New Year's Eve, every time you meet a friend or acquaintance for the first time, they will shake hands or kiss you (or both) and wish you a 'happy new year!' There's something quite cheering about getting so many good wishes in such a short space of time.

Have just spent two good working days when I ought to have been writing, taking down and putting away Christmas decorations. And cleaning up the resulting chaos of dust, pine needles, dried up holly leaves and general domestic disorder. And trying to come to terms with the slight feeling of let-down because I love Christmas, coupled with the overwhelming sensation of panic at the amount of writing I now have to do.

It will get done. It always does.

Have also, however, been distracted by the EU and its new VAT regulations on digital downloads. Fortunately, Amazon and D2D, my distributors of choice are handling the nuts and bolts. Not quite sure what my trad publishers are doing about it yet. But it still means higher prices for eBooks for which I apologise now, to my readers and potential readers. I'll still keep them as low as possible, within reason.

There's also a certain amount of work for me while I decide how much of this price increase I can afford to absorb, and lots more business for Amazon, which I suspect was not really the intention of this bad, stupid, ill thought out law. It was no doubt developed by a bunch of Brussels fat cats who haven't a scoobie how digital sales work, and whose salaries are so monumental that it never crosses their minds than anyone might have to supplement their meagre incomes with a micro-business or two. And even if it does cross their minds, they will probably be of the 'let them eat cake' persuasion.

Meanwhile, if you want to know the kind of thing that really goes on in a small Scottish village in winter, you could always read Ice Dancing.  It's very authentic!