I've been thinking about my post titles and have decided to dispense with the music thing.  Sooner or later I would run out of ideas for songs or end up repeating myself.

So from now on the blog post titles will be a little more direct.

I guess this is all part of today's blog post subject;

Platform building

"...the group of activities you engage in that get your name and work noticed by the public. It's marketing, not of a specific work, but of you as the author. It's everything you do to build your brand."

This is something I have come into quite late in the process of publishing my novel.  So in some respects I feel I'm playing catch up.  But, I'm a quick study and probably have a few weapons in my arsenal that other writers may not.

Firstly I already pay for sever space for an unrelated website and, using WordPress, I have previously designed my own website.  This means when it came time to create my own website I already had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to achieve.

The result, although still a work in progress, is:  www.philiptolhurst.co.uk

The second thing I did was to start a blog, this blog no less.   I already started blogging on a different blog called: The Words Escape Me

However, I can't remember the details I used to log into it so instead I just started from scratch.

I've tried as much as possible to keep posting to the blog with stuff I think is relevant and that people who read this blog will find interesting.  I think I'm averaging about five posts a week which I am quite happy with.

I'm still experimenting with blogger.  I recently added a nice gadget to show my most recent Pinterest pins on the right hand side of the blog.   Pinterest is the most recent of my Social media forays.  It's also one I've been finding a lot of fun to get to grips with and I have created quite a few albums now.

You can find me on Pinterest here:  www.pinterest.com/philiptolhurst/

By adding the Pinterst panel to my blog I am linking the two together in a more permanent fashion.  Which helps to tie my platform together.  Imagine, if you will, several Train stations with no track to link them together.   You can visit them each individually but you can't travel between them.   The goal is to lay more and more of that track.




About the same time I started this blog I also started to build my Twitter account.  I've recently topped 2200 followers and am maintaining a steady increase.  My attempts to build rapport with my followers builds a base from which I hope to bring people further into my platform.

I also have a Facebook page:  facebook.com/philtolhurst  and a Google+ account

Although I confess I've never really been sure what to write to those two.  I guess it's something to work on.

One of the least used aspects of my network of social sites is my Goodreads account.

I guess I still have some learning to do.   However,  I think there's an important lesson I read not so long ago.  It boils down to the fact that it is better to have three or four social networks and concentrate on those than it is to spread yourself too thinly across the multitudes.

There are lots of other sites that I'll be using more and more as time goes by and once the book is up and running.  Mainly these are authors platforms and I will work more on them once I've published my book.

For the record I'm planning an April release for George and the Dragon now due to some last minute work I've taken up following some late beta reading.

Although not technically part of my platform each of my books will have their own website and should they be part of a series the series will get a website too.  I need to create a site for the Knights of the Sky but that can wait till I've finished the book.

Hope this gives you a few ideas on how to build your platform.   The next time I discuss this I'll look at all the author sites I've decided to join and we'll see what they can do for me.

Phil

This is the second of what I intend to be weekly blog post where I look back over the week gone by.

Pinterest

If you keep up-to-date with my blog you'll know that not so long ago I joined Pinterest.  I'll confess I thought it was for people sharing pictures of cakes and cats and not that useful for me.

However, I have been pleasantly surprised.

Not only have I been able to search Pinterest itself for images that inspire my writing but I've also started to use it to Pin images I find online.  As such it solves the issue of forgetting to bookmark images I see when surfing the trippleW.

In fact I've really started to get to grips with it as you can see here:

Visit Philip Tolhurst's profile on Pinterest.

Writing

..with Madness.   How about a decent dollop of Heavy Metal from Iron Maiden to start off today's post.

As I close in on the date when I will finally e-publish George and the Dragon I found myself chatting about all things e-publishing with a friend.

He asked me if I was going to use KDP Select and exclusively list my work on Amazon.  My response to this was no.  My plan is to release my second work via KDP Select to judge how it works out but my first book I want available on as many formats as possible.

I explained my plan was to use Smashwords to target Kobo, Nook, iTunes and KDP for Amazon.

He then asked me,  "What about eBooks on Play?"



To be honest this is not something I have considered.  It's not something that is often discussed in posts I see on the topic of e-publishing a novel.  People talk about Kindle's dominance Kobo and Nook. Smashwords is often highly recommended but it's rare someone talks about listing their books for sale on Play.

This gets me to wondering why not.   Recent data suggest that there were 195 million tablets sold in 2013 and Android now has 62% of the market.  That's huge potential market but it seems under exploited.

It's really hard to determine any kind of sales figures but market share data shows Google bundled in with the 'other' crowd.  However, a survey of eBook sales in the UK gives them a 6% share of the market share in the UK.  Crucially for UK sales that figure is higher than either Kobo (5%) or Nook (no figure available).

So it has to be a consideration.  There's not that many blogs etc out there that I can find that discuss the process.  There's an old thread on Goodreads that paints a less than rosy picture of the process.

The most recent blog about it I found was here:  http://clgordonwrites.com/publishing-book-google-play/

It seems from this that Google have done a lot of work to streamline the process.

So yes I will be listing my book on Google when I publish it and no doubt I'll report back at some stage as to how I got on.

Phil

...as Led Zeppelin once sang.

It's been a few days since I've had the opportunity to sit down and write a new blog post.  The longest gap I've ever left.

As part of my day job I deal with acronyms all the time;  OHLC, MACD, ROCE, CROCI, RSI, PEG and EPS are but a few of them. (If you're clever you can work out what industry my job is related to now)

Using Twitter has opened up a whole new world of acronyms for me to learn; the world of the hash-tag acronym.

Why use acronyms for hash-tags? Simply it helps when you're trying to cram as much info into the 140 character tweet limit as possible.  Even your twitter bio has to adhere to this as well.

You come across all sorts of them while traversing twitter.  The other day I found a large number of people using #YNWA.  It helped that some also were using #LFC or #Liverpool otherwise I don't think I would have deciphered it.   It stands for You'll Never Walk Alone which is the chosen song of Liverpool Football Club supporters.

For a long time I myself used #QOTD, which is Quote Of The Day.

So I thought I'd use this Monday blog  to share some of them with you and save you the time of looking them up and maybe help you out with your posts.

#RT - ReTweet - use if you want people to specifically retweet the post.  I don't know how much notice is taken of this hash-tag to be honest.

#FF - Follow Friday, people use this in their posts to try and get more followers on, yes you guessed it, Fridays.

#F4F - Follow for Follow, people us this to indicate that if you follow them they will follow you.

#TFB - Team Follow Back, a more organised attempt at getting people more followers.

All of these can be use to garner you more followers.  I never actually used on of these instead I used the more fully formed #FollowBack.  But I am thinking of changing to #F4F on my Bio to free up a few characters.

Speaking of followers while I was sleeping I reached a major personal milestone.  I topped 2000 followers on Twitter!  Go me!


So those acronyms are generically useful here's a few that the writers among you might find more to your liking.

There's a few simple ones like:

#YA - Young Adult

#NA - New Adult

#MG - Middle Grade

Then you have more complex specific ones like:

#CR4U  -  Clean Writing For You.  I am fairly sure it's used by Clean Indie Reads to indicate books that do not use profanity or erotica.

#BYNR - Book Your Next Read.  Used to indicate a book that you used mark to read after the novel you are currently reading.

#IAN1 - Independent Author Network.  Used to indicate your affiliation to the network.

#ASMSG - Author Social Media Support Group.  I think their purpose is clear from the name.  I probably should join this group myself.

#MT4A - Marketing Tips for Authors. This comes from the marketingtips4authors blog by Clive Eaton.

There is one oft used hash-tag whose explanation still eludes me and that is:

#ArtKNB

So if you know what this means please let me know.

25/03 Update - I now know that this means Art Knows No Bounds.

Phil

...as The O Jays sang.   Money money money money......money.

So I've been looking at the upcoming VAT changes that have been pushed through by the EU.

Now I'm not an account so I did ask an account, my best friend coincidentally, what his thoughts on the subject are.  His name, for the record, is Andy.

Basically at the moment VAT is changed in the country in which the company making the sale is domiciled.

As of the 1st January 2015 it will be charged at the rate in which the purchase is made.

"What has this to do with the sale of books?"  I hear you ask.  Well you may not pay VAT on books but you do pay VAT on eBooks.  This isn't the post for that discussion but I do think it's really stupid.

Back to my point:

Amazon is domiciled in Luxembourg and charges 3% VAT on eBooks.

As of January Amazon will be charging 20% VAT on eBooks.

So lets look at a simple example.

If I sell my Kindle eBook at £2.99 via Amazon currently it breaks down as:

So that's £2.49 net 50p VAT.

I get to keep £2.09.

Amazon pay over 7.5p VAT.

So Amazon get their 40p + 42.5p retained VAT.

In total their revenue on my eBook sale is 82.5p.

After the 1st January all they get is their 40p .

So that's a 50%+ drop in revenue on eBook sales.

Discussing this further with Andy he thinks that Amazon will take the hit.  I think that's absurd.

What company would willingly or unwillingly take a 50% on part of their revenue stream?

We struggled to get figures by which to make valid calculations which makes this hard to quantify.

However, as far as I see Amazon have three or four options:

1.  Take the hit.

2.  Lower my % take to 65% or even 60%

3.  Raise the 70% stake threshold so I have to charge £3.99 or £4.99 to qualify for that figure.

4.  Do a combination of 2 and 3 so effectively introduce a 3 tier structure of steadily increasing returns for self pubbed authors.

I have no idea what they are going to do but it'll be interesting to see what effect it has on the market.

As always I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Phil

....as Pink sings.

Trying to tie my social media in internet knots.

So here's the thing I have created a Facebook group:  Dragons are not just for Christmas

I'm also at moment doing a post of a daily dragon.  This started on my Twitter account: @PhilipTolhurst.

My Twitter account is set to post to my Facebook page: Phil Tolhurst - Author.

What I want is for all three to show the daily dragon post. But now I want the daily dragon picture on my Pinterest Account; PhilipTolhurst, as well.

This evening I tried and experiment but I did it incorrectly.

I created the original post on the Facebook group.  Now it's not easy to share a Facebook post of any kind on Twitter.  As far as I can see you have to cut and paste the URL; maybe even using Bitly to shorten it as well.

You can share the post between the different Facebook accounts, however.  Unfortunately when I did this from my Facebook page to my Facebook group I messed it up as I was actually logged in on my private Facebook account.

So I've come to the conclusion that the best way to do this is:

A: Upload the image to Pinterest.

B: Copy link to Facebook group and add description etc.  Like this:

...as Elvis once sang.

Or rather stop talking about it and get on a do it.

I've been reading quite a bit about marketing recently and I've seen lists posted on various blogs about becoming an author and there's quite a lot of contradiction out there on t'internet.

So I thought to myself why not give it a go.  So here is my top ten tips for authors based on nothing more than my own common sense.  Keep in mind I'm not a published author but I have spent a lot of time recently researching this for myself.

1. There are a lot of authors out there on the world wide web.  You'll find no end of them on Twitter.  Do not let this put you off.  Not only are authors in general also readers but there are far more readers in the world than authors.  Authors in general can also be helpful and a great font of information and experience.
2. Marketing a book starts long before a book is ever published and should continue long after your book has been published.   If you want people to buy your book you have to whet their appetite, pique their imaginations and convince them to spend their hard earned money on your work.  To do so takes time and energy but not necessarily money.
   
   a:  Build a website, it's easy enough.  My own website is based on       Wordpress: www.philiptolhurst.co.uk
   b:  Start a blog.  Even if it's just on blogger like this one.
   c:  Create websites for each of your books.  Like www.georgeandthedragon.co.uk which uses the same template as my website but just concentrates on the book.
   d:  Expand your profile on Social media - I have a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a brand new Pinterest account.
   
   Even this alone is enough to start with but after that you need to start being original.  Try googling things like business card's for authors.
   
   One of the options I'm considering that involves cost is a competition for a Nook, Kobo or Kindle eReader (I haven't decided which yet) so I can build a contacts list.
   
   
3. Pricing of your novel.  I can't see why anyone would give away their book.  I know why they do it to increase sales rankings on Amazon.  But if you've spent years writing the work why would you give it away for free?  In addition to this if you sell your book for 99p/c from the outset the only way you can  go to sell it as a special offer is free.  However, if you start at £/$2.99 then you have the option to reduced the title to £/$1.99 for example and get yourself on the special offer mailing lists.
   
   Speaking of which here's a great link for you: http://authormarketingclub.com/members/submit-your-book/
4. Participate in NaNoWriMo not just because it makes you write but also because it's a great way to meat like minded people and share ideas.
5. Speaking of which Quantity trumps Quality, but only to start with.
   
   “I'm writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shovelling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.” - Shannon Hale
   
   "The first draft is just you telling yourself the story." - Terry Pratchett.
6. For the finished product Quality trumps Quantity.  Before you publish your novel it should have been edited, beta read, edited again and finally copy edited for mistakes. Only once you have build your sand castle and placed the flag on its highest turret.
7. Don't skimp on your cover.  I know people can do a great job themselves but they are obviously more talented than I will ever be.  A picture they say is worth a 1000 words, but I'm rubbish at art so I'll stick to writing.  I used ebook-designs.co.uk and I am still amazed by the results and they are not expensive.  I would advise against ever using a pre-designed cover unless of course you happen by one that's perfect for your cover.
8. Don't stop at one book.  If anything is going to get you know as an author it's writing more than one book.  Selling books, building a fan base, becoming well known, learning from your initial mistakes.  All these things take time.  It is not a sprint it's a marathon.  Although if you get published traditionally you'll think it is a sprint.
9. You don't have to write with the exception of all else to be a successful writer.  I have two other jobs, a young family and a long commute.  Somewhere in amongst all this I find time to write, edit, blog, tend to my social media and think about what steps I need to be taking next.
10. Enjoy it.  It's not guaranteed that you'll ever make enough to give up your day job so if you are going to write, write for the enjoyment.  If you want to write for profit there are many other routes via which you can do so.  Magazine submissions, copy writing, ghost writing etc.

So those are my top ten tips.

As always I would be really interested in your thoughts.

....as Sam Cooke once sang.

So yes it's Saturday night and what am I up to?  Out drinking with my friends?  Watching Saturday Night Take Away with the wife?  Watching a movie with the kids?

No.  I'm hacking at a couple of chapters of George and the Dragon following some feed-back from a beta reader.

Sometimes I sit here at my keyboard and I wonder; will this book ever be finished and available for sale.

Well I am sure it will really but it doesn't stop me doubting things.  

The problem is I really feel I need to move on.  I need to start pushing this book so I'm gaining sales while I work on several other projects.  Not to mention the fact I actually have 3 IT courses I wish to study for over the next few months.

On top of that I've also set myself the goal to write 30,000 words during April's Camp Nano.

I think I will write 'For Queen and Country' during camp.  This is my musketeer-esque, late Victorian era, Steampunk novel.

If you're not familiar with Steampunk you could do worse that check out my Steampunk Novel Inspiration board on Pinterest.

I hope your Saturday night is somewhat more exiting than mine.

Phil :)

So I've recently joined a couple of groups on Facebook dedicated to all things Steampunk and X-punk.

However, I couldn't, even though I tried really hard, find a group dedicated to all things dragons.

So I have created one:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/DragonsNotForChristmas/

Feel free to join if you too have a love of all things dragons.  If you know anyone else who may please send them our way.

It would be great to see the group grow.

Phil

...matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs.

I've recently 'discovered' pinterest.....I know I know I'm a bit behind the times.

You can find me over there by clicking here:  http://www.pinterest.com/philiptolhurst/

But I have a great time finding pictures that remind me of scenes in George and the Dragon.

So I thought I might share some of my discoveries with you, without giving too much away.


On the left is the London Herald.  I'm not sure if it's real or a reproduction of course it could also be a mock up.  On the right is my fake London Evening Mercury.  I think I did a pretty good job to be honest.


There are pilots of the RAF that feature prominently in the novel and they spend a lot of time either sitting in their dispersal hut or scrambling to meet the attacks of the Luftwaffe.

I wanted to embed a video here but it's too wide for the blog so instead I'll you the link.


Phil

...as Blur once sang.

One of the things I suffer from that most affects my writing is I'm not a finisher.  I find it very hard to see things through to the end.  Before I've even got close to the end my mind is already working on other things.

That could be the sequels to the current work, new projects stimulated by whatever has been happening to me that day, or even breathing life on old projects.

To date I have written plenty of unfinished works among which I have works entitled:

Tattoo - a cyberpunk-esque book with nanite tattoos empowering people.

The adventures of Captain Cat and the crew of the starlight endeavour.  - A Children's book about anthropomorphic space cat pirates.

1 of 64 - A book about an alien probe that lands on earth and creates 64 clones who interact with us in different ways.

Sam Dagger - Steampunk/Elfpunk escapade.

The Anomalies - The start of a Fringe/X Files-esque book series.

Topsider - A book that charts the adventures of a surface dweller who finds himself living among the undersea kingdoms in a post meteorite impact/ELE earth.

Old Wooden Boat - Murder mystery set at the docks during WW2 Britain.

Tyler Flynn - A magical post apocalypse adventure with teen heroes.

Sherrif -  The tales of the sheriff of a fantasy based capital city.

Then there are other files here called Mage wars, New Book Idea, The Time Travelling Train and that's to name but a few.

I write this because those of you that have been reading this will know I'm planning on writing a Steampunk/Musketeers type novel.  I've started character development for it and have some ideas as to how it will open as well.

Today I've suddenly got another idea to play around with.

It came from this:

Rubber band machine gun!

From that I go to talking in facebook group about Rubberband-punk and the idea was developed further by one of the group members, Jeffrey Cook, and has become more about rubberband technology used by mice.  I'm sold and think I'm going to try and write a novel based on his ideas.  

Maybe this one will get finished.

Until next time.

Phil

...as John Lennon sang.

...as Reba MacEntire once sang.

Actually that's not true I do want to mention names.  In fact this whole post is going to be about them.

This morning I've been thinking about names for the four main characters of a book idea I have floating around in my head.

When I first started writing I had a serious hang up about creating realistic and believable sounding names.  I used to think of everyone I know and try to work out if I could use a combination of their names in my writing.

It took time for me to be confident in my character's names and their creation.  I started to find sources on line, there's a myriad of name generators out there, to assist me creating names.  Now I also often think about what the name means and what imagery the name will convey with my readers.

Elizabeth and Victoria for example are both quite regal names. Being English it's hard not to associate either with the respective monarchs who reigned over us for so many years.

I also like to think in terms of time period certain names are much more popular now than they were a hundred years ago.  This isn't something I've done a lot of research into but I am aware of it.

Royal Baby Name Popularity

As an aside I've written about a short story I wrote about Wolves.  The name of every wolf in that story means wolf.

One of the pieces of advice I've read is not to have not to have main characters with names that start with the same letter.   So in my case I haven't got anyone named Gary, Graham or Gilbert to get confused with George in my novel.  I do, however, have an Alistair and an Andy.  However, they are known either by their ranks; Group Captain and Squadron leader, or by their surnames; Ford and McKnight.  There are few occurrences in the novel when they are referred to by their first names.

This brings me to a very interesting point while it 'felt' fine to name the male military personnel by their surnames the same was not true of the main female officer in the story Section Officer Caroline King.  I don't think I ever just referred to her as 'King'.  Caroline is always referred to by either her rank or her first name.

I also had fun with foreign names in my book. There are major characters with French, German, Polish and Czechoslovakian names in the novel.

An interesting point about the book is that our heroes' nemesis is called Colonel von Vogler.  He does, at the point of writing this blog post,  not have a first name!  Creating the life story of my major villain including his reasons for being bad etc is not something I have ever considered.

Going back to my original task this morning.  I have four characters they are musketeer-esque in style most significantly they are only know by their first names.

So the first name I came up with was Duval.   But it has little meaning, 'from the valley', and that for me isn't good enough so it will be changed.

This is what I have written about him so far:

Duval - "And yet my time piece still ticks."
He is the Gentleman of the quartet.  Dashing in looks, suited in attire. Never seen without his pocket watch.  Armed with a revolver and a long bladed dagger.  He does not tolerate tardiness in any way.

Next up we have the strong one of the group.  For his name I have chosen Bhaltair.  The name is Scottish in origin and means Strong Fighter.  So I'm quite happy with that, I may even make him a Scott for the purposes of the book.

Now I just have to keep looking for the rest of the group and then the ensemble of characters around them.

...must be funny, in a rich man's world....as Abba once sang.

I'm at the business end of self-publishing my first book and from here on in it's all about the money.

I've already spent money on the cover and Scrivener, I've even spent money on boosting a post on my Facebook page to see what sort of reach it had.

There are a lot of expensive questions you need to ask yourself once you're close to finished Manuscript. (If there is such a thing!)

Do I, for example, spend £100+ on a copy editor, do I spend as much if not more on an editor?

There are huge arguments that you can read on many other blogs that would support the yes argument.

Then there are questions of marketing;

1. £15-£20 for a cover reveal.
2. £80 for a blog a tour.
3. £x for pay per click advertising or ad-words.
4. £x for boosting a post on your Facebook page.
5. Press release?  I have no idea what that would cost. £30-£60 I suspect.

The question is how much do you have to spend and were is it best to spend it.  Just adding things up you could spend £1000 or more before you've even sold a single book.



So what price are you going to sell your book for?  £2.99?  £0.99p?  More?  Less?

At £2.99 on Amazon you make 70% so that's just over £2.00.

What are your projected sales? 50? 100? 10000? I'll be honest it's one of the few things I have no idea about.  If I sell 10 copies of my book I'll ecstatic but that's not going to cover my costs or class this whole exercise as a success.

Let's look at things another way. (Ignoring the fact the tax man will want a slice of your earnings)

If I spend £80 on a blog tour how many people will that reach?  How many will buy the book.  Bottom line is you'd need 40 sales to cover the cost.  But once your book has been on its blog tour the blog posts are usually permanent and so they have a long internet shelf life.  When do you stop measuring the effect the blog tour has on your sales.  How do you quantify the notoriety that this gives you?

Alternatively I could spend £80 posting a Facebook page post for a week and there's a chance I would be reaching a much larger target audience.  However, how many sales would that generate - I've some thoughts about the Facebook page thing and trying to make a post go viral I'll come back to that in a couple of weeks time.

The problem is writing a book is only a portion of the battle marketing the book and turning that marketing into sales is probably just as big if not a bigger portion of the whole.

Once you've written the book you then suddenly need to become a marketing and sales expert.....not an easy transition.

As usual I'd be interested in discussing any aspect of self-publishing with any of you just get in touch.

Phil

....as Earth, Wind & Fire once sang.

There were some really fantastic weapons developed in World War 2. The story of one such weapon will feature in the Knights of the Sky: Book3, which is as yet untitled.

However here are some that might surprise you:



Of course none of those get close to being as amazing as a dragon or two.

But I'm also guilty of using unusual technology in my book.  The most prominent of which are Hurricanes powered with Messerschmitt engines.

As odd as that may seem I didn't make that up.  I have the Yugoslavs to thank for that idea.

http://www.unrealaircraft.com/hybrid/hurricane.php

And there are other little technological changes implemented in my book before their time or that never got off the drawing board.   It's not all all about George and his dragon, Spitfire.

...as Elton John once sang...or maybe he still does.

So yesterday I revealed my book cover to the world.  Today I've been busy updating my website and other aspects of my digital footprint.

This is how the website looks now:


I think even reduced in size the cover of the book is both striking and it's easy to get a sense of the story that lies within the covers.

So this is the second phase of getting people interested in the book.  I now need to replace the teaser on the George and the dragon website with something more substantial about the book.  However, I will still have the teaser accessible as pages on the site, although they will probably be images rather than full on web pages.

There's also a new Bio on the site if you want to know more about me check it out:  My Story

I've also been playing with Calibre making sure I'm happy with the formatting of the novel when it's converted to a .mobi (the file type Kindle uses) as I'm fairly confident if anyone does buy the book it's likely it will be via Amazon.  Although I fully intend to make an .epub (the file type every other ebook reader uses) version available via Smashwords.

I've also now topped the 1500 follower mark on Twitter.  Now to reach 2000.  I'm averaging about 30 new followers a day currently so it shouldn't be too long before I top that lofty figure.

As always I'll be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Phil

...be alright   <~~ Click the link and get dancing!

Seriously you have to listen to that classic 80s cheesy song from Fame.

So this was going to the inaugural "That Friday Feeling" post on my Facebook page but I've decided I need more formatting scope than posting on my Facebook Page allows.

I think I'll still do "That Friday Feeling" posts but they'll be posted right here on my blog.

(I hope you're still listening to Friday Night!)

I intend this to be a weekly event reviewing the week gone by, looking ahead and general chatting about anything I think of at the time.

It was quite a surprise for me to find that this week we celebrated the first flight of the Spitfire.  Along with the Hurricane and maybe the Lancaster bomber the Spitfire is probably the most iconic aircraft of the World War II era.

(I'm now expecting people to bombard me with angry tweets telling me I ignored the Mustang, the Zero, the BF-109 or another of the other iconic planes of the time.)

For me though even the name Spitfire has an edge to it no other plane name has.  And so when it came to name the eponymous dragon of my novel George and the Dragon there was no other choice but to call him Spitfire.

...This is a land of confusion.



I think I've 'got' Twitter now.  It's pretty easy to grasp it's just a huge interconnected web of sound-bites.

The idea is pretty simple really you post something original and some of your followers retweet it.  Others 'favourite' it or retweet it, you follow them they follow you.  Your personal web increases more posts get retweeted by more people and things expand, hopefully, exponentially.

The direct message question about dragons is going really well and I'm starting to talk with people and develop relationships with the people who follow me.  They are not just numbers on my Twitter profile.

At the time of writing since late January I've coaxed 1400+ people into following me, some more easily than others.   I've learnt the benefits of Pluggio.  Especially as it allows me to Ghost-tweet.

I'm, also, slowly closing the gap between my 'Following' and 'Followers'.

For those that are interested of the people that have answered my a quick poll of my DMs gives the following results:

There's been others as well.  Spiro got a vote, dragons from Dragon lance got a two votes, Game of thrones got several votes as has Merlin as well.  Vermithrax also has two votes.   Anne McCaffrey's Dragonridders of Pern also got a couple of votes as well.

I need to review the data and create a proper table and keep it up-to-date so I can periodically review this.
Watch this space as they say.

But the point of this post isn't about Twitter really.  It's about my Facebook Page


I  know what I will do with it once the books released.  It's a great way to target a fairly large, but targeted audience.  Only time will tell how successful that is.

However, in the interim it's a just full of copies of everything I do on Twitter.

I've been thinking I need to maybe post something unique on the page once a week and link back to it from here and twitter.   That might work.  But other than that I'm at a loss.

And then there's Google+, don't talk to me about Google+, effectively that's this blog what my Facebook Page is to my Twitter account!

Thinking about this over night, yes I write my blog posts in advance sometimes, I think I am going to start a  'That Friday Feeling' post on my Facebook page as of tomorrow.  See if I can drum up some interest that way.

If you have ANY suggestions I would be really happy to hear them!

Phil

....or is it?

I recently tweeted a wonderful quote from Dr Seus:

"The writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.”

Let me add to that a quote of my own:

"Nothing happens in movies unless it's for a reason."

The same can be said of television as well.  When you have a finite amount of time you have to make every second or minute count.  There's no time for spurious characters or bits of plot that do not lead anywhere.

The same cannot be said to be true of books, or can it?  Sure you have a medium which is only really governed by the number of pages of text you produce so you can write whatever plot arcs you want and create and dismiss characters to your heart's content.

Especially in a digital format where the physical cost of producing a book is non-existent.

But just because you can add inconsequential plot lines and pointless characters to you book should you?

I ask this because it's one of the things that I have been focussing on as I run through a final edit of George and the Dragon.

I've already discussed killing off one character to make his existence have a greater resonance throughout the book.   I have also removed a minor naval battle that had no purpose and several smaller incidences of character conversations that led nowhere.

I hope in doing so to a: keep the novel under 100,000 words and b: make it easier to read or, as Dr Suess would put it, less of a chore.

...or not as the case maybe.


Adverbs aren't the most loved word type in the English language and yet we use them conversationally all the time.

The following are two of my favourite adverb quotes:

“I am dead to adverbs; they cannot excite me."

- Mark Twain

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”

- Stephen King

This is not to say you won't find them sprinkled among my writing.  Pro Writing Aid is happier with my use of them than it is my use of was, had or could that's for certain.

But there is one adverb that I dislike more than all the others I use and that is:


If ever there is an adjective that highlights the unnecessary use of adjectives it is this one.

I have yet to find a sentence where removing the word changes the sentence.  As far as I can tell such a case simply does not exist.  (See what I did there)

There is now only one instance of this in my entire novel and that's used in conversation, because I can't get away from the fact we use the word all the time.  But as my character says:

HAPPY ST DAVID'S DAY EVERYONE 

This blog wouldn't be complete with out a picture of 

Y Ddraig Goch! :)