Joan Fallon
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WHAT'S IN A NAME?

30/11/2014

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At a recent Indie Book Fair, I met some people from Ingram Spark who print and publish books for independent authors, among other things.  As sponsors of the Book Fair they were interviewing individual authors that day.   Now, I have used Lightning Source, a business unit of Ingram, for a number of years, so when they told me that they were based in Milton Keynes I asked if they knew Lydia. 

 ‘Yes,’ was the reply, ‘Lightning Source are on the floor above us. We know Lidia well.’

Now Lydia has been my customer service contact with the company since I first started using their services.  I have never met her and never spoken to her; our only contact is via email but I have a clear picture of her in my mind, small, slim, young with a pleasant face and fair hair.  I have no reason to suppose she is like this except that this is the image that seems to go with her name.

Imagine my surprise when the people from Ingram Spark commented, ‘That makes sense as you live in Spain; Lydia is Spanish.’  But why should I have been surprised?  When I think about it, Lydia has a Spanish surname and has often told me she has been to Spain on holiday.  But in my mind Lydia was not a Spanish name and so the imaginary image of her that I have constructed over the years is not of a Spanish woman.


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Choosing names for your characters in a novel is always tricky.  Most of the names that spring readily to mind are of friends and family and they are not always pleased to find their name attached to a less than sympathetic character.  But even when you find a name that has no personal connotations it is not always suitable.  In my latest novel, 'The Memoirs', which is due to be published early next year, the villain of the piece was called Nick (maybe I was subconsciously thinking of Old Nick) but there was another minor character called Dick.  My editor pointed out that it would be a good idea to change one or other of the names, so I changed Nick to Phil but, as I read through the draft I could no longer see my character.  Nick had disappeared and Phil had not replaced him.  This abusive, lazy man was not a Phil; it just didn’t fit.  So now I have changed Phil back to Nick and need to find a new name for Dick.  Oh, the problems of creating characters.

When my daughter was born I had difficulty finding a name I liked; I could think of hundreds of boys’ names but not a girl’s name that we could agree on.  Then I came across Andrea; it was fairly short, had a nice ring to it and if it was to be shortened it would be to something like Andy.  A few months later, I discovered a book on the meanings of forenames and to my horror found that Andrea meant ‘manly’.  She was in fact quite a tomboy as a youngster but I put that down more to her having an older brother than the influence of her name.

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The images we construct of people we read about in books become very real.  This is one of the reasons that films based on books can sometimes be disappointing.  Recently I saw the film Anna Karenina starring Kiera Knightley and, although it was a beautiful film, it wasn’t the Anna of my imagination and I felt I was watching an imposter - apologies to Keira Knightley.  I love watching films but in a film the characters are the same for everyone watching it; in a book the characters are what you conjure out of the author’s descriptions.  They are yours alone.  I remember my husband complaining bitterly when he saw Tom Cruise playing the role of Jack Reacher.  'But he's a big man,' he said.  It wasn't his Jack Reacher.

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MY FIRST INDIE AUTHOR FAIR

21/11/2014

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Last Sunday I was lucky enough to take part in the first Indie Author Fair, part of the Chorleywood Literary Festival.  It was a small event held in Chorleywood Memorial Hall, right next to the beautiful Chorleywood Golf Course; there were forty independent authors present, displaying their books and giving selected readings.

I hadn’t taken part in an Authors’ Fair before so had high expectations of selling some of my books - as did many of the other authors, judging by the number of copies on display.  This didn’t happen; but it still proved to be a most worthwhile experience, allowing me to meet (face to face, not on the internet!) other likeminded writers.  It was interesting to see how people had approached the task of self-publishing in different ways.  Some, such as myself, had gone down a completely solo road, some had been lucky enough to start their career by being traditionally published and then chosen to self-publish while others had banded together and formed a small collective of authors.  Triskele Books is one such collective; five writers have formed a self-help group who edit, proofread, give each other feedback and finally publish and market their books under the name of Triskele Books.  It seems an excellent idea and the standard of their work is extremely high.  Whether they plan to stay small and selective or expand in the future one can only speculate.


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One thing that everyone had in common was the desire to show the world that being self-published did not mean that your writing was inferior.  It was obvious from the readings that the authors gave that the standard at the Fair was good.  But how do you get people to read your book in the first place?  Most people had made sure that not only the quality of the written word was high but the visual aspect of the book was of the highest standard - many of the covers were eye-catching and professional, as were the supporting marketing materials on display.  (I have now decided to revisit all my own book covers with a view to making them look more professional.)  


The organisers had suggested that the participating authors might like to enliven their displays with some item that related to their book, an idea that quite a few took on board.  And none was more successful than Geoff Gudgion’s Saxon helmet, which he used to promote his contemporary thriller, ‘Saxon Bane’.  More than one passer-by was tempted to try it on.

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One enterprising young man, Mark Farrell was there promoting his web page Ascribe Novel Solutions.  An independent author himself, he soon realised that independent authors had to have some way of proving their worth; in other words a type of accreditation was needed.  To be listed on his website each author must have some professional in the book world who can vouch for them and their writing; this can be an editor, a professional writer of repute, a traditionally published writer or a professional reviewer.  Kind words from your mother will not suffice.

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Another organisation that has been set up to help independent authors is the Alliance of Independent Authors.  This professional association for independent authors and publishers provides a wide range of services and contacts and offers the self-published writer a creditable platform for their work.  The founder Orna Ross was at the Indie Author Fair promoting not only her own novels and poetry but also the association’s guide ‘Opening Up to Indie Authors’.

Writing is a lonely business and when you look at your sales and see poor returns it is easy to get depressed and think of giving it all up.  Taking part in an event such as the Indie Author Fair can be reinvigorating and is a good way to revitalise your work.  The old saying is true; ‘a problem shared is a problem halved
’ and one great thing about Indie authors is that they are a very helpful bunch, willing to share ideas and offer suggestions to fellow writers.

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AUTHORS’ CORNER talks to writer and chef Debs Jenkins

20/11/2014

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Good morning Debs. Welcome to Authors’ Corner.  I know that you live in Murcia.  When and why did you move to Spain and what is it that attracted you to this part of the world?

I moved to Spain over 9 years ago now with my husband Marcus after 3 years searching for the right place. We bought our land and cave house in 2002 and moved to La Murta in Murcia in 2005. We visited Spain for a few years looking for our perfect place - we almost bought in Extremadura and the Alpujarras before settling on the mountains in Murcia. For us it has all that we wanted - it’s remote (we’re both very noisy!), not at all touristy (the village has 101 people and we’re the only foreigners), with wonderful, wild countryside and still close enough to the sea to indulge our scuba diving interests. 

That sounds wonderful.  So, having spent some time looking around the country do you have a favourite city or region in Spain?

It’s so difficult to choose, but we adore the city of Cartagena here in Murcia. It’s a port city with the most fantastic architecture and more historical remains than any city I’ve ever visited. It also has an excellent food and drink scene - very important for me!

You co-edit a very interesting on-line magazine for ex-pats in Spain.  Can you tell us something about it?

Our www.NativeSpain.com website / magazine has been around for a few years and is our place where we share our favourite places to visit, restaurants, walks, beaches and of course recipes! 

PictureDebs' apron says "Si a La Murta vas, sin comer no te vendras" - basically if you come to La Murta you don't leave without eating - it's our village motto.
You seem to be very fond of cooking.  Is this something you have always been interested in?

Well I’ve always been interested in eating (!) resulting in over 20 years being obese which I’ve almost got under control  ;-) I’ve also always been keen on entertaining people and that usually includes feeding them (I also used to be a stand up comedienne, but I don’t think I was very entertaining then!), so I had to get OK at cooking and developed some interesting recipes. 

I have to admit I don’t like following recipes myself and prefer to start with a recipe and then make things up as I go along. 

Living here in La Murta I had to quickly get used to cooking for large groups of people - when we entertain our friends and neighbours there are often upward of 30 people. We built a special outdoor kitchen to accommodate the need for “catering” for them. 

Whenever I’ve travelled I’ve booked myself on cookery courses - Thailand, Hong Kong and Yorkshire (!) to name a few exotic places.






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I know you have written and published a super dual-language cookery book called SPANISH VILLAGE COOKING.  What inspired this particular book?
We’ve been on the fiesta committee four times for our small village over the nine years we’ve lived here and each year it’s been more difficult to raise funds to pay for the fiesta we have in May. The committee needs to raise quite a few thousand euros to pay for the party. So we decided to make something that the committee could sell that would make money. Also, very selfishly, I have eaten at so many of our neighbours homes and had awesome food, and none of it was documented anywhere, so I wanted the recipes!

I went down to our local bakery (we have 3 in our tiny village) and asked the owner did she think the chefs of La Murta would be interested in cooking their favourite dishes and letting us photograph them and of course taste them? Within a week we were inundated with offers of food - heaven! By Christmas, just a month later we had over 150 recipes written up, many of them tasted and photographed. 

By the middle of February 2014 I had typed up all the handwritten recipes, translated them into English and pulled the book together. We were selling it on behalf of the fiesta commission by March. In total we made over two thousand euros after costs for the fiesta for May 2014.

Then we were “volunteered” to be on the fiesta commission again! So, for our fiesta in 2015 we have already made profit of over two thousand euros. We need to sell more though. Every copy, Kindle or print, that we sell makes money for our fiesta - we love partying in La Murta.

Tell us about your working day?  Does your schedule vary when you are writing or do you keep to a strict routine?

I have a strict routine because of our animals - the writing comes after the dogs are walked, the cats and chickens are fed and the horse has been ridden. Then I will cook something fresh for lunch before finally getting down to some writing.

Most days I will write or work on marketing all afternoon till about 7pm. I have lists of articles to write and books that I’m in the process of writing or updating. I use a tool called workflowy.com to manage all my ideas. I always have more things to write than time to write them.


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In the present climate, an author has to spend as much time marketing their books as writing them.  How do you feel about that?

I started a business doing marketing and websites for clients back in 1995 - marketing has always been my first thought. If I don’t think I can market (in other words SELL) a book then I won’t write it. I have made mistakes and some of our books sell much better than others. One of the keys for me is having more than one book - that way each book can help sell the others.

Remember I’m a non-fiction writer - business books, guidebooks and cookery books - I think it’s a little different for fiction writers that have a story they desperately want to tell.  It’s much more challenging for you guys. However, the principles remain the same - write something that people want to read and then let them know about it!

Which marketing tool have you found the most useful for your books?

My own newsletter is my best marketing tool. I forgot that lesson for a while and put my time and attention into facebook, twitter and social marketing. Which are all great tools, BUT, you don’t own anything that happens on them and they are fleeting. If someone signs up to my newsletter I have permission to email them and communicate with them. If facebook suddenly decides that it doesn't like me or my business page it can decide not to show people what I’m doing - this has happened to lots of brands on Facebook.


Make your own newsletter, ask people to sign up to it and then communicate respectfully with them. My newsletter is here: http://nativespain.com/shopping-malls-of-murcia-free-ebook-guide-to-shopping-in-murcia-cartagena/ please sign up if you are interested in Spain or Spanish food and want offers on my books!

Have you written any other books and what have you planned for the future?

I started off writing about marketing, with my first book being The Gorillas Want Bananas, a marketing book for small businesses. I’ve also written books about writing books!
My next books, probably in this order are: 4th Edition of Going Native in Murcia, Paleo Spanish Cookery Book, Holiday Cooking For Kids: Feed Your Kids When In Spain...




Thank you Debs for talking to us about your life and your books.  If you want to know more about Debs and her website go to www.nativespain.com.  It sounds a lot of fun living in La Murta.

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AUTHORS’ CORNER talks to writer Lucinda Clarke

11/11/2014

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Good morning Lucinda. Welcome to Authors’ Corner.  
Lucinda is not your real name.  Why did you chose to write under a pseudonym?

My book ’Walking over Eggshells’ contains a lot of sensitive material, and I not only wrote under a pen name I changed all the names in the book as well. I waited until my mother died as I had no desire to hurt her, and I also waited until my ex-mother-in-law had passed on too. My main purpose in telling the story of my relationship with my mother was to reach other victims and spread the word about personality disorders. If only I had understood the syndrome earlier in my life it would have been so much easier. I hope over time that maybe younger readers who are still living at home, will read it and it may help to make their lives easier.

You seem to have been a writer for many years but not necessarily writing novels.  Can you tell us a bit about your writing career.

That’s a comedy of errors! It all began after I was fired from my job teaching at a very posh 
school for girls in Pretoria, South Africa. I couldn’t believe it! I had always been so conscientious, and I never found out why they shoved me out either. I had mentioned to the drama teacher that I had worked on the radio in Benghazi, Libya and she just happened to be married to a producer at the South African Broadcasting Company and she arranged an audition as a continuity announcer. I failed it spectacularly and then went for a drama audition, also with less than flying colours! The drama teacher told me they had been impressed with the material which I had written especially for the occasion and here was an entry form for a play writing competition. I wrote a one hour radio play and won joint first prize. After that there was no stopping me. I wrote for radio, short stories then magazines, had my own newspaper column and then I was commissioned by the SABC for educational radio programmes. This led to scripts for television and eventually I ran my own video production company writing, producing and directing.

I see that you were born in Dublin.  The Irish have a number of wonderful writers.  How much do you think your Irish heritage has contributed to your success as a writer?

Oh yes, the Irish have a way with words. I remember reading Brendan Behan under the covers when I was a child. As a race we’ve always had to take jokes against ourselves. Do you remember:

 ‘What do the Irish have written at the top of their ladders?’ 

‘Stop!’  


and ‘What is printed on the bottom of a bottle of Guinness?’ 

‘Open other end.’
 

So I grew up learning to laugh at myself with the consoling thought that we Irish were good with words even if we were not supposed to have any brains. 

Tell us about your working day?  Does your schedule vary when you are writing or do you keep to a strict routine?

Oh I wish I could have a proper schedule! When I was earning my living with writing and producing it was often a 16 hour day when we were out on location.  Then I retired and I thought, freedom, no fixed hours! For a while I threw myself into the social whirl and the ‘learn more’ groups. But I believe that writers are born not made and I just couldn’t help myself and I started writing again. At first it was power point presentations to local history groups and a couple of talks and then came the books. Now I have to fight for time! Wednesday is ‘me day’ as my husband goes hill walking and all my friends know not to email me or phone me or call by on a Wednesday! Then I grab every opportunity I can to write, when I am not doing housework or marketing the books or asleep. I’m very driven, but I am like that with everything I set my mind to if I’m passionate about it. I’ve had the dream since I was 6 years old that I wanted to lie in the old folks home and look up at a shelf and see a row of books written by me.

What made you decide to self-publish?

In the 1990’s I was commissioned by a major publishing house to write a book and they gave me a sizeable advance. By the time I had ‘earned that back’ I was left with the princely sum of £4.10. I’m not sure to what extent they promoted it, but it hardly hit the big time!  A year ago, when I finished ‘Walking over Eggshells’, I didn’t even look for an agent or a publisher and decided to do it all myself.  I can’t believe now that we have the freedom to self-publish, though the marketing is very, very hard work. Writing is so much easier! I am also mercenary enough to want to keep as much money for myself as I can!  You can check every ten minutes to see if you have to made a sale, and that’s nice too! While I’ve been writing this I made another sale!

PictureBOOK SIGNING
In the present climate, an author has to spend as much time marketing their books as writing them.  How do you feel about that?

I first published in July 2013 and sold very few in the year, but no one told me you had to market! Along, I am sure, with all other authors, it is the downside and takes up several hours every day. I think most of us hate it. I am naturally a shy person, but I’ve had to take a deep breath before a book signing, and I’m not looking forward to the local Christmas Fair where I have booked a stall. But if you want to succeed, then you have to do it. On the upside I think I have made some great on-line friends and they are from all over the world. We all have the same thing in common, a love of writing and a love of books. I find I can relate to them so easily. I hope they think the same about me.

I’m amazed that everyone is so supportive, helpful and friendly.

Which marketing tool have you found the most useful for your books?

I’ve only been marketing properly for four months, and I started with Facebook. I joined lots of groups. Then I branched out to Twitter, but I am struggling with that, not the efficiency but the technology; I’m a bit of an idiot, no, I’m a lot of an idiot when it comes to this. I’ve got a blog, and I’m waiting for the award for the worst presentation blog on the web. I’m green with envy at how beautiful some of the others are, they even have bits that move around the screen. But give it time; I hope to improve. I’ve got a Facebook page for each of my two books, but now I am stuck as book 3 is due out and book 4 early next year.  I can’t manage five pages with my own. 

So firstly, making friends, giving reciprocal reviews, [but I am brutally honest I’m afraid, as an ex-lecturer in scriptwriting] I can’t say something is good if I don’t think it is. But I would never post a bad review and trash anyone, I just wouldn’t post. It appears my friends and family don’t feel the same way, as the lowest stars I have are from my brother-in-law and my best friend!



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Tell us a little about your other books and what you have planned for the future.

My second book was ‘Amie an African Adventure’, a novel set in Africa, as I lived there over 30 years. They say to write about what you know. 

My next two books are also memoirs, following my career from the classroom to the television studios, ‘Truth, Lies & Propaganda’, and ‘More Truth, Lies & Propaganda’.  There are a lot of funny and a few sad stories and it takes you behind the scenes in the media. 

After that I am going back to Amie and I’ve not decided what misery I will put her through this time! We have a love-hate relationship.

Thank you Lucinda, for talking to us and the best of luck with your new books.  You can find out more about Lucinda Clarke and her work on the following links:

Blog: http://lucindaeclarke.wordpress.com

Twitter
 @LucindaEClarke

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 Walking over Eggshells

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E8HSNDW


http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00E8HSNDW


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Amie an African Adventure

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LWFIO5K

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00LWFIO5K

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    Author

    Joan Fallon is a writer and novelist living in Spain.

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