If you don’t attempt things, granted you’ll never fail, but you’ll always be one of those ‘cold and timid souls’…
I shudder at the mere thought.
Book one needed to run free.
Amy Grace: Payne needed to make all those mistakes, highlight all those errors and omissions that we hopefully won’t make with Amy Grace: Magic.
Magic won’t be without fault or failure, but hopefully it will build on the lessons of Payne.
Payne will of course be amended, updated, and corrected – indeed the joy that is KDP.
Magic will now follow in short order.
A manuscript will be searched and searched again for those traits, failings and peculiarities that existed with Payne.
Please don’t get the wrong idea, Payne is not a book riddled with unreadable prose, it isn’t. It is a good tall tale. No, it’s not just a good tall tale, it’s an imaginative and different tale, it’s the opening salvo of a saga, it carries four finished books on its narrow shoulders, it introduces the reader to the world of Miss Amy Grace, and it does it very well.
The errors under discussion mustn’t be taken out of context, nor my annoyance with them.
I spent years upon years writing Payne, and the version offered to the world is an incredibly enjoyable read, it is, it’s just not perfect.
I see the few errors and once seen the simplicity to correct them being missed annoys somewhat, but doesn’t detract, doesn’t drag down the adventure being described.
So, yes readers of my scribbles the errors are noted.
It’s an almost contradictory thing to sate, but it’s also true.
The deed is done, the book long written is now out there in the wilds of KDP for a reasonable fee.
Now patience is the key.
Patience and perseverance (if not indeed the self-same thing).
It is true, only after the event do you notice the errors flaws and imperfections – all magnified a hundred-fold.
A punctuation error, the stating of a rank/position more than once… errors indeed, but worthy of my angst?
Book one was never meant to be the hook for a series, but now it is.
Just as the opening paragraph of “Payne” must set the scene, take you to Africa, explain who the protagonist is, create a little opening tension, so too now must it become the opening salvo whets your appetite for “Magic”.
The reader must salivate for ‘what happens next’.
But first the MUST be a reader.
Ah, the glitch in the matrix, the flaw in my plan, the single point of failure…
The plan (such as it was/is) was for book one to pull you in, and through sales pay for the release of book two and so on and so forth as each new adventure was released.
Book one is indeed carrying an enormous weight on its shoulders.
If Amy Grace: Payne fails so too does everything.
Unbearable.
Unfair.
Yet also unavoidable.
Readers MUST be found.
Happy readers are needed.
It took a long time to get from script to book, so I must reset my timeline expectations.
The passion I have for these tall tales won’t magically manifest into sales.
So, dear reader of my musings, with ZERO budget, how indeed to we stand out in the maddening crowd?
Strangers – how do we entice them?
Hug those you love, hug them close and accept and relish in the happiness of the simple things, and do your very best to remain sane.
My book is running free in the vastness that is KDP.
Amy Grace: Payne is out there (Kindle, Paperback & Hardback).
If writing a book is hard (and it can be), marketing is most definitely a struggle on another level.
The cover was/is a deliberate attempt to stand out in thumbnail scanning, the lack of a title on the front and the cropping away of Amy’s face all deliberate too.
The face – that’s easy, I wanted the reader to let their imagination create a face for Amy.
The lack of a title on the cover – again this was a deliberate attempt to let the image talk to the reader, the overly simplified art my attempt to give free reign to the imagination of the turner of pages – maybe it works, possibly it doesn’t, but that’s why I did what I did.
Critique only works AFTER the event, first you must do, and only then can you review.
Maybe I’ve taken the ‘Man in the Arena’ too much to heart…
Back to the plot.
To publicise my work, I’m hamstrung on many levels, not least in that I have a small social media presence AND I have zero in the budget to pay for highly skilled marketing folk to assist me.
The answer?
I don’t know.
I wish I did, but I don’t.
Does my book have a USP that would help it stand out; help it jostle in such a crowded marketplace for attention?
Yes, I think it does, but again how do we let folk know?
Amy IS an interesting character, she has strengths, she has weaknesses, she is flawed, she is human.
She is gay, do we lead with that?
I haven’t because (in my mind) it’s just who she is, one facet of her life – it creates situations, but so too does her diminutive stature at 5’2” tall.
I wrote Amy as a gay character, for no other reason than in my mind as I was typing away it just seemed to be the right thing for her – no political point scoring, no following a trend, no attempting to ride the rainbow, she’s just gay because that’s what she is.
But mostly she’s a young woman in pain, she’s suffering and attempting to come to terms with the events of chapter one.
Amy is driven, she is singular in her focus to seek a redress, and for this she suffers and she struggles – that’s the story, that’s the tale I’m attempting to tell.
Trauma isn’t neat, you don’t simply ‘get over it,’ for some it consumes with a ravenous appetite that destroys everything and screams loudly that ONLY vengeance will give it peace – it is a liar.
And then we have the villain, we have Thomas.
He has growth, he seeks redemption after finding love, but his character arc cannot be neat and clean, all Hollywood soft focus, because life just isn’t like that.
Hopefully, the reader (when they appear) will appreciate the human conflict that both Amy and Thomas experience – I hope they do.
The book, for whatever faults it has, is an attempt to be sympathetic to all in the tale, maybe that’s the USP.
So, how do we let the world know, how do we let the reviews and the stars decide the success of my attempt to tell a tall tale?
In a perfect world one of my many unsuccessful attempts to land a ‘literary agent’ would have been successful and skilled assistance would manifest…
Ah, so many shots fired, and all failing to hit the mark.
So, as we hit week two of the book being available will the opening book of the adventures of Miss Amy Grace be a slow burn?
Will organic word of mouth succeed?
Do I need a gimmick?
Such are the trials and tribulations of a writer such as me.
Hug those you love, hug them for no other reason than right here and right now you can, tell them of the love you have for them, and in a topsy-turvy world do your very best to remain sane!
Climb the mountain, acknowledge the enormity of the effort it took to get there, sit on the peak, drink some tea, and then have a good long and hard think about what to do next.
That is me, this is me, here we all are with nowhere else left to go.
The feeling isn’t like While E Coyote eventually catching the Road Runner, but it isn’t too distant a cousin not to be invited to family gatherings.
The act is done, the curtains have swished across the boards and now we occupy that infinitesimally small space, that pause between velvet touching itself and the hoped for gasp and then clap of an appreciative audience (double entendre?).
If only.
I have no idea if my one-man show will sell or indeed if those that attend will like the show, and so the spiral ever tightens – not knowing is insufferable.
The cover format is incorrect – this will be rectified, but the process is almost becoming a punishment (political satire?).
The book isn’t perfect – no book ever is.
Imperfect as it is, it does deserve a reader, and the reader truly is a lesser being for not having followed Miss Amy Grace.
A strong no nonsense female character, flawed, contradictory, obsessively focused on her own plight, always brave, emotionally vulnerable and oh so in need of a loving hug…
And we have Thomas Payne, not a one-dimensional matinee villain twirling his moustache while he ties a woman to the railway tracks… he grows, he evolves, he becomes so much more than he was on page one. Redemption exists for all.
Four hundred or so pages.
Page turners each and every one.
The first of July cometh and with it our release of the first volume of Amy’s adventures.
Hug those you love, stay safe, and do your very best to remain sane.
I started writing the first iterations of the Amy Grace adventures many years ago.
Version 1.0 Amy Grace: Khartoum started life sometime around 2015.
The central tale has remained unchanged; the telling has hopefully improved with each review and addition.
I now sit with Amy Grace: Payne (10.1) as the latest version of that original tall tale.
The words we can count, the hours taken to create them, at these we can only hazard a rough guess.
We’ve gone through the full range of emotions, all the highs, and a lot of lows.
Euphoria has shone at the joy of our creation, self-doubt kicked away at my heels and done its very best to try and drag me down.
Yet here we still stand.
We’ve adapted to the feedback from Beta Readers.
Chapter one was rewritten, scenes amended and some deleted.
We’ve had a developmental edit recommend changes – again most of these we’ve incorporated.
Polish polish polish… rinse and repeat.
At some point, now that I’ve firmly taken the decision to self-publish, I’m going to have to do just that.
Its not poor reviews, or indeed any negative reactions that I fear, it’s the NOT offering the very absolute most polished version of this tale to the world that worries me so…
If I fall flat on my face, then so be it, but let it not be due to poor preparation and presentation.
Titivate, titivate.
At what point do I have to just let go?
Statistics tell us that a debut novel (self-published) will sell between 100 – 250 copies.
If I continue with third party assistance (editing/formatting/cover) I will need to sell 400 to break even.
The odds are NOT in my favour.
Bugger.
Bugger, bugger, bugger.
Procrastination is indeed killing me.
Amy Grace: Payne WILL hit the world April 2026.
I will pay for a cover – it was always the plan; copy edit as best I can and then set Amy free into the big, crowded world of KDP published novels.
Maybe she’ll thrive, maybe the world wants to read the tale of a flawed heroine, who gets knocked down, but rises back to her feat every time.
Or back yourself or back down or… and so it goes on, we all know the premise being discussed.
At some point the music stops and you MUST act.
For me such a time is now.
Is it the ultimate and expensive folly – or a justified exercise in creative expression?
Both, neither?
Only time and participation in the process will tell.
I know the statistics, the possibility of my book, my debut novel, making me untold millions are somewhere in the range between slim to nil.
I get that, I do.
So, I’ve engaged an editor – splashed the cash.
My first foray will be Amy Grace: Payne – a book I started writing in 2017, and now a tale that sits in four volumes and some 500,000 words.
Book one is a standalone tale – it has a beginning, middle and a definite ending.
It introduces the world to the red-haired wonder that is all 5’2” of Miss Amy Grace of County Leitrim in Ireland.
We take the reader into the world of Celtic mysticism and the warrior priestess that is Babd – we take that same reader on an emotional roller coaster of pain suffering and the struggle to recover from trauma.
We offer up a genuinely bad man (Thomas Payne), but we also allow our nemesis to have depth, to grow, to find true love and to evolve…
We anchor our story around a Cairo brothel – The Dove House, and we spin it around the Anglo centric man’s world of 1884.
We have the failed relief of Khartoum, fighting in isolated forts in the Noth West Frontier and we end with Cowboy’s in Missoula in Montanna USA.
Is the world ready, am I?
Never met the editor (IRL) and now I’m trusting him with all those hours of my blood sweat and tears.
Terrified I indeed am.
But the die has been cast- so we must follow through.
Hug those you love – stay sane, and if you can say a little prayer for me.
You write the book, clap yourself on the back, and then instead of cherubs scattering rose petals at your feet and heavenly hosts singing your praises, it all kinda goes pear shaped…
It turns out that all they warned you about is true, they weren’t ghost stories, they are cold hard facts that have zero consideration for your artistic sensibilities – your feelings be dammed!
It’s hard, its cold, and it is indeed true – the cosmos doesn’t care how much blood sweat and tears you’ve invested in your scribbles – not a flicker is recorded.
And those who backslapped and cheered by your side as you wrote your opus – conspicuous by their absence indeed they all are for the next stage.
Its lonely.
What so dominates your life isn’t even a mere ripple in theirs.
Get used to it.
The cliché it seems isn’t one.
Writing was indeed the easy bit – so if you cried doing that bit, strap yourself in the rest of the ride is wilder than a wild thing and it follows no rules, has no constricting factors, it goes where it pleases, and what pleases it is mostly your pain.
It’s not that your book is or indeed isn’t well written – again the cosmos doesn’t care – utter tripe will sell by the hundred weight, and literary genius will die in obscurity – it isn’t fair, but it is how it works – accept or die frustratedly and futilely screaming into the void that will never answer back.
The game is rigged against you, the dice most assuredly are loaded in favour of the house, and unless you are a media accredited celebrity you are indeed going to have to put in the hard yards.
Acceptance of this reality isn’t a complaint; it is just a realisation of the uphill struggle that is now.
The deposit on the castle in Scotland hasn’t happened just yet – we’ve a few more hurdles to go before we become the living embodiment of a Halmark film.
We reserve the right to occasionally feel somewhat down, to at times scream our frustration into the afore mentioned uncaring void – we must vent, for if we don’t, we will explode with all the pressure.
Fall seven, stand eight.
Resilience is lubricated by tears.
Ever onwards, chin into the wind.
Stay safe, hug those you love – remind them whenever you can and do you very best to stay sane!
Things you do, things indeed you don’t do, and discussing politics it seems is one of those things.
I think we are the poorer for it, especially writers.
Stories are the near obvious vehicle for commentary, for exploring narratives, and yet it seems that this is now a taboo. Sexuality and relationships are fine – violence never in question, but the ‘P’ word – nope, never never never.
Where have all the angry young men, those Young Turks, the social commentators, the satirists, and holders of mirrors to society faults failures and darker traits gone?
What has become of those writers of dystopian social commentary?
Does the burning of information, the destruction of yesterday’s knowledge in ‘Fahrenheit 451’ still resonate – do we still grimace at the thought of those ‘Firemen’?
Can we see the alienation and inherent loneliness of perpetual self-indulgence in ‘A Brave New World’?
Is ‘1984’, still the clarion call for freedom and the warning of the abuse of power, is it still read as a horror story and warning to us all – or is it just no longer read, instead reduced to a glib reference?
I’m NOT saying that you must discuss the human condition through a prism of political debate in your writing, but it would be nice if a few more did.
I just feel somewhat adrift from a world that seems to see political discourse as the only social taboo worth obeying.
Is it the fault/failing of social media, is it the fear of a pile on and cancel culture if you mock, deride or merely allow daylight to fall onto modern absurdities?
My woe is for the self-censoring of an art form, an expressive outlet for which any creative restriction is the very antithesis of telling compelling/challenging/interesting stories.
While I weep, while I weep…
Maybe I should tubthump a manifesto novel – maybe I should, maybe I will.
Side profile picture to the world, chin up, hand on lapel, distant and determined look in my eyes…
Hug those you love, stay safe, and try your best to remain sane!
Do we want to read to be entertained, and if so, then surly ONLY the story being told counts?
Naïve – seemingly.
Full Disclosure – I’m a bit of a long-term fan of Stephen King. IT, The Green Mile, Misery – these are books that I have loved since the first creak of the spine, the receipt of that new book smell, and the joyous anticipation as the first page was read all the way to the immense satisfaction as the last one ended the tale.
His political views have never been a consideration, nor should they ever be.
Be entertained – enjoy it in good faith and move on with your life.
If I found out a writer was a fan of Eugenics, or a devout Christian, I may find this information interesting when thinking about any themes in their work – but nothing more.
This I thought was a near universal mantras, yet it seems I’m wrong.
Purity tests now seem permissive in their prevalence – and unflinching in their dogma. Yet this dogma flickers in the wind like a proverbial weathervane, and it must be exhausting keeping up to date.
Have we always been at war with Oceania – I’m not too sure…
Many on social media (yes, I know it’s not real life – but it is a snapshot) routinely declare that they won’t follow such and such because of an opinion that they hold (or often are thought to hold or accused of holding) and when I see this I am at a complete and utter loss.
I sit bereft, truly bereft at it all.
How can you live your life like this?
Would these people genuinely burn the books that brought them such joy because of an opinion that is different to theirs?
We aren’t talking about people who have raped or murdered, we are talking about folk who just see society from a different perspective and therefore have solutions, from their point of view, that may be at odds with our preferred option.
The near automatic assumption of malicious intent on those who challenge or differ from our world view is madness – it truly is.
So, I’ve written the elusive novel that we all have inside ourselves.
I’ve written that novel, the sequel, the one after that, and then scribbled volume four.
Half a million or so words taking a young twenty-two-year-old woman from Dromahair County Leitrim, taken her around the world, through deserts and across vast mountain ranges.
Amy’s flown through thunderstorms, danced with lightning, had gunfights, swordfights tweaked the nose of many an assailant.
She’s done this in Egypt, The Sudan, India, Canada, North America, before finally coming back to Ireland as a 29-year-old whose heart has been broken too many times.
She’s danced with those she loved, lost them too.
Revenge and vengeance have driven her; magic and a gossiping fairy accompanied her.
Evil men, cruel men, truly sadistic men have cut her, tried to kill her, imprisoned her and stolen her child from her, but by her own hand all who have stood against her have died.
Her story has been written.
The tales of her adventures neatly typed up.
Typo’s, run on sentences that go on and on and on, these where we’ve noticed them, these have been corrected.
Scenes have been polished, the superfluous removed, the remaining tied tighter than a drumskin.
It flows.
No gaps exist, no whatever happened to such and such left unanswered, the beginning meets the middle, and the middle neatly flows to the ending.
I love her tale, her adventures, her journey.
They have merit, and so I’m backing myself and self-publishing.
I looking to unleash Miss Amy Grace unto the world Q1 2026.
Pennies have been saved, the services of an exceptional editor booked, ideas for the cover confirmed.
The best possible version is coming soon, and with the clock ticking so too is your chance to be swept away by five feet and two inches of fierce determination under a crown of flame red hair getting ever closer.
