Publishing: A lot of Smoke and Mirrors? By guest author Jan Ruth (@JanRuthAuthor)

In May 2015, I had the pleasure of hosting author Jan Ruth (who is firmly up there in my top ten favourite British authors) to talk about her publishing journey.  I therefore thought it would be interesting (as well as my great pleasure) to re-post an article Jan wrote for her own blog recently entitled Publishing: A Lot of Smoke and Mirrors, giving us the fascinating sequel to that journey. Here it is:

In which I’m made to eat my words as I come full circle through the maze of publishing to discover that the grass isn’t necessarily greener over there; it’s still mostly desert scrub from every direction…

Last year I wrote a general post about the publishing industry which resonated with a lot of independent authors.

It came about through sheer frustration at the lack of visibility and the cost of producing books. A turning point came when a small press offered a contract for Silver Rain. This is it, I thought. This is the change of direction I need… but be careful what you wish for! Don’t get me wrong in that I had huge delusional ideas at this stage. I was simply seeking greater visibility and some respite from the nuts and bolts of self-publishing.

And all the outward signs were good: they took five back-catalogue titles and one new title, to make six contracts.

This material represented several years of my life, several thousand pounds’ worth of investment in terms of editorial advisory, editing, proofreading, designing, formatting for ebooks and paperbacks, advertising… I could go on. Producing a quality product and promoting it to its best advantage doesn’t happen by accident. If you don’t have these skills yourself, then one needs to employ freelance professionals, as I’ve reiterated many times. Of course, we know there are a lot of ‘home-made’ books out there which don’t quite cut it, but this is certainly not the case for all self-produced work. What is slightly disconcerting is that I discovered this isn’t necessarily the case for traditionally produced work, either!

If this is you and you are maybe considering that contract from a small press, think carefully. This is of course my specific experience over 12 months but my advice would be to submit one, stand-alone title before you make a decision to move completely to traditional publishing. I’d been used to working on a one-to-one basis with professional freelancers who knew my material well. But the change of pace and method of working may come as a shock. Your book becomes a commercial product held in a queue, maybe dropped down the enormous cliffside of titles waiting for attention if a more promising book or a more glamorous author comes along in the meantime. This is a hopeless situation when the previously hard-working self-published author has a substantial back-list waiting to be dealt with.

The process of trade publishing has less to do with the quality of material than you might presume, but it has a lot to do with what is or isn’t marketable at any one time. This isn’t bad business, it’s about making money to stay afloat. Small publishers are in exactly the same boat as the independents, but with far more overheads and problems with staff. Some of these staff may be inexperienced or learning ‘on the job.’ These small companies are up against the same fast-moving on-line industry as any independent but perhaps without the resources to manage it effectively, let alone build a lively following on Twitter; a following which has the power to engage.

Traditional publishing, by its very nature, is painfully slow and this produces a massive clash with the shifting sands of on-line business. We perhaps don’t realise how fine-tuned independents have become in this respect. We all know marketing is a full-time job. Looking after the detail which includes fine tuning those book descriptions and keywords, sustaining an active presence on social media sites, writing articles and taking advantage of the best days to run a promo deal for that new political saga set in Scotland… it’s not going to happen. Imagine trying to handle the marketing at this level for 500 authors with several titles each… Impossible. And publishers have no magic formulas or special concessions when it comes to on-line sales. A high degree of luck is still perceived as par for the course. So, no specific sales strategy, then…

And while we’re wading through these muddy waters of what defines a self-published book from a traditionally produced book, let me mention yet again two common misconceptions that seem to linger on despite the glaring facts: that traditionally published books are somehow superior, and that those high-ranking, best-selling books on the virtual shelves must be better somehow than those books bumping along the bottom of the Amazon rankings, or boxed up for a rainy day in the back of someone’s office. Wrong!

Over the course of a year, my sales dropped lower than they’d ever been. My branding was confused and I was losing the tiny amount of traction I’d managed to gain in the market. Overall, I was left feeling enormously let-down and misinformed. Despite this, the experience was invaluable as a means to recognise exactly who I was and where I needed to be. Needless to say, I parted company with my publisher and I’m relieved to be back as an independent. My sales have increased, where previously they’d been depressed. This includes both ebooks and paperbacks (in a local shop). The overriding conclusion has to be that whatever I was doing before, was in fact more successful than I’d presumed!

Authors who’ve started their journey with a small publisher may know very little about the huge network of independent authors out there, let alone the complexities of social networking. ‘Oh, I’d rather leave all that to my publisher,’ is a common cry but maybe a mistake to ignore the bigger picture.

Orna Ross: The Alliance of Independent authors:

http://www.selfpublishingadvice.org/opinion-every-author-should-self-publish-at-least-once/

The independent network of freelance writers remains a growing industry. Many traditionally produced authors are making the move to publish themselves and cross to the dark side – although there are still problems with visibility, the overriding comfort is that there is never a compromise with the work you’ve produced and personal satisfaction cannot be left out of the argument. I’ve heard nightmare stories where authors with agents or publishers have been asked to re-write their books to a different genre or incorporate a different setting, because ‘Cornwall is trending right now.’ Bland covers, hit and miss advertising and the general lack of cohesion is not uncommon. The industry is flawed, floundering, and fluctuating. This is because there are real choices open to writers to maintain their individuality and creativity, and boats have been rocked.

I also think independent authors tend to be tremendously supportive and understand the value of teamwork. I’m not sure this carries over into the trade arena where a lot of authors there are happy to let their publishers assume the responsibility, in whatever capacity. Lots of first-time authors who’ve landed that coveted contract for a first book are struggling with the on-line media. 

Trade publishing, no matter its size is still something of a closed-shop and this is where the vast majority of authors are unaware of the basics because they’ve come in at a level where the opportunities to learn, are restricted. The days of hiding in a garret and leaving it all to the agent or publisher ceased to exist when the Internet happened. Now, readers, customers, clients or whoever, seek out that social interaction which goes beyond selling the product. There’s only one person who can sell your personality and that is you. There might only be one person who can sell your material on-line, and guess who it is… the good news is that you get to keep all the royalties!

http://authorearnings.com/report/november-2015-the-uk-report-author-earnings-on-amazon-co-uk/

So, before you sign on the dotted line, ask exactly what the publisher can specifically do for you which can’t be accessed in any other way. And above all, be careful what you wish for.

Jan Ruth. Dec 2015.

My Publishing Journey by Tara Fox Hall (@TerrorFoxHall)

It's always an especial pleasure and privilege to welcome Tara Fox Hall to my blog and today she's stopped by to tell us about her personal road to publication.  I can't wait to hear it, so over to Tara...

I’ve been a published writer of fiction for the last five years, and have written non-fiction for the last fifteen. As the other authors writing to this topic have already said, getting published wasn’t easy.

Like my dear friend Jenny Twist, I began with articles in a local print publication; my articles were on nature and animals, and published in a little magazine called Catnip Blossoms! which sold—you get one guess—catnip via mail. From the beginning, I was very good at putting a message of hope and inspiration into a page or less, and I wrote many articles over the next ten years.

And that’s how it likely would have stayed forever, until my mom suddenly got sick and was given six months to live in 2006. The book I’d always said I would write for her but hadn’t gotten past the first ten pages was suddenly my number one priority.

I hated novel writing at first. Not only was I unable to think of a good plot or exciting characters, I had never been great with grammar or all the rules of contractions, punctuation, etc. I hated simply sitting STILL for hours on end. Out of desperation, I wrote about what I knew, which was vampires, romance, and horror mixed with farm life, pets, faith, and self-reliance in the face of fictional supernatural situations that my everyday normal life hadn’t equipped me to handle. When I gave my mom the first draft of the beginning two chapters, she hated it because it “wasn’t exciting enough.”  So I revised it, adding some gunplay/explosions, general mayhem, deceit and a lot of suspense and hot sex. The latter, which I had always found difficult to write, was suddenly easy, as I had just gone off The Pill after close to two decades and my hormones were raging out of control along with my moods. I poured all that energy and emotion into my novel, which quickly went from a few measly pages to 200K, and then beyond, as Mom demanded sequel after sequel (Her cancer was a VERY welcome misdiagnosis).

I hadn’t planned on publishing my new “epic”, but with both my mother and husband pushing me, I sent the final draft to an “official editor”—read paid editor—and she proceeded to trash it and gave me a long list of recommended fixes (remember above where I said I had plot problems and grammar was not my friend?). I revised further, and then began to send out queries to multiple agents at this editor’s advice. This phase lasted for years, as I revised and submitted, and received thousands of rejection letters (okay, just about over a hundred really, but it felt like thousands). I further revised my queries, my synopses, my first novels (by then I had three: Lash, Promise, and Immortal Confessions), and with the help of a small non-profit, Wolf Pirate Publishing/Wolf Pirate Project, went thought a very-intensive 6 month writing workshop with the book Promise, hacking it to ribbons which I eventually wove back together into two complete and polished books, Promise Me and Broken Promise. 

While that experience gave me the skills to successfully handle the editing stages of writing, I was no closer to getting my books published; more queries netted only more rejections. I even tried hiring a submission service, which just netted me a few nibbles but no bites and yet more rejection letters. BUT…this service suggested something I hadn’t thought of before: taking an excerpt from the book and making it a novella, then submitting THAT. They also suggested trying to publish other short works, to give my queries for my longer works more credibility. Suddenly, all my experience with my non-fictional short stories was useful, and might make the difference; the rub was I needed new works to submit, not previously pubbed articles. Energized, I cranked out a plethora of short horror stories— that genre had the biggest market in print, and online flash fiction was all the rage—and I had a lot of nightmares to provide material. I published a few short stories every month in the spring and summer of 2011, then finally was able to place Surrender To Me, an excerpt from my novel Immortal Confessions, with Mélange Books. Mélange also contracted for Promise Me and its first few sequels.

Happy ending? Kind of. I am still with Mélange Books these 4 years later, and the Promise Me Series is on its 11^th book, with #12 coming out in a few months (Immortal Confessions is book #5 of that series). Lash evolved into its own series. My fantasy paranormal historical series detailing my weresnake antihero-protagonist adventures is on its fourth book and its second publisher, Double Dragon (the first small press, Bradley, went out of business). My horror stories have found a home at Hazardous Press in their various multi-author anthologies and my own single authored The Tightening Spiral. A new paranormal series will also debut at Mélange in 2016; the first book is called A Good Year. But my joy now is tempered by burnout. 

Jan Ruth mentioned the two kinds of writers in her blog a few weeks back. In 2011-2012, I was firmly in the know about everything current, and I devoted all my spare time to learning my craft, and putting out as many works as fast as possible (Writer type B). Now I’m in the other camp (Writer Type A), which is where I initially started out on this journey. 

Can I self-publish? Yes, and I have. Those nature stories that started my career are now their own anthology called Deep Breaths: Tales of Hope and Inspiration. I loved putting that book together with a lot of help (thank you again, Su Halfwerk and Jenny Twist J). But do I see myself doing that for all my future works? Probably not, as I just do not have enough spare time anymore. My publishing rate has also slowed tremendously, both from increased workload from my day job, and sheer lack of desire to write stories just to get my name out there. As any writer will tell you, promotion is a huge part of writing, and it takes its toll until finally you crack under the strain. As of this writing, I am officially burnt out. I also have not written anything new just to write since 2014. Am I stopping writing? No, I just need a short break, to ignite my fire again. 

And I thank you for listening to me, as reliving my hard-won publication here has created a much-needed hot spark to get me writing again.

Tara Fox Hall is an OSHA-certified safety and health inspector at a metal fabrication shop in upstate New York. She received her bachelor's degree in mathematics with a double minor in chemistry and biology from Binghamton University.

Her writing credits include nonfiction, erotica, horror, suspense, action-adventure, children’s stories, and contemporary and historical paranormal romance. She is the author of the paranormal fantasy Lash series and the paranormal romantic drama Promise Me series. 

Tara divides her free time unequally between writing novels and short stories, chainsawing firewood, caring for stray animals, sewing cat and dog beds for donation to animal shelters, and target practice. All of her published children’s stories to date are free reads on www.childrens-stories.net.

Contact Tara here:

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Why I had to Leave Self-Publishing: The Truth About my Affair, by Jan Ruth (@JanRuthAuthor)

Today I'm handing over my blog to an author for whose writing I have nothing but admiration.  If you haven't read any of her books, do so now - you are in for a real treat.  Over to Jan Ruth.

I don’t regret a minute of being with John. Our imaginations have been virtually married for two years now. We’ve shared a lot of words and he knows more about my literary fantasies than my husband ever did. And people talk, don’t they? Not only about how good we were together but how would this relationship end? Would there be tears or jubilations? Well, as is usually the case, a little of both.

So, poised on the brink of something new to begin in 2015, this is an overview of my publishing journey so far, from its shaky start to its exciting, bitter-sweet finish. It’s also a final testimonial to my wonderful editor, John Hudspith.

Snakes and Ladders

My self-publishing journey has been up and down, round the houses and back again. It’s a different experience for each and every author. Any perceived failure or success is dependent on a lot of individual criteria, how you measure it and what you learn from it.

Throw into this mix, hundreds of online experts clamouring for your attention and offering advice – most of it speculative and out of date in less than a week – from how to market your book, how to design its cover, why you need a click-through Contents page, why you don’t need a click-through Contents page and why a dark blue fancy font with pink dots says hysterical, not historical.

Waiting somewhere along the line is a Comma Buff; offering to proofread your material at £1.50 per 1,000 words. For a joining fee you can be a member of his gang, appear on an incredibly popular site or be included in a brand-new advertising strategy called the Pay-it-Forward-Tweet-Team. Not sure? You can bet your last dangling participle that someone, somewhere, has written a blog-post about it. You may be swayed by several writerly pieces about publishing, but I’m not sure I was ever convinced that anyone has that top-secret information about the Amazing-Amazon-Algorithms, or the reason one book sells dozens of copies on every third Friday in October on Nook, but never on Kindle although occasionally on the Spanish version of Scribd, if the wind is blowing from the east. And as soon as you’ve got to grips with those new sub-genre keywords – juggling the dice all the way to IndieBooksIndia – that hot new site –  the goalposts change again, and oops… everyone’s been pirated on IndieBooksIndia. There’s no time to work on your new novel, you need to dash-off an angry email, or two, or three, or four and have a good rant in each and every one of the 42 groups you’re in on Facebook – and a tweet for good measure. Confused and  utterly exhausted yet? Take a deep breath, there’s more…

For varied fees, you can enter your books to win badges: the coveted Golden Cuckoo, a Silver Songbird maybe or – oh, the shame of it – just scraping a Bronze Blackbird. Will it help sales? Will it help readers find you? Writers are always seeking validation, and awards and reviews are a major emotional player in the game. To put these awards and maybe more than that, into some perspective, consider the journey of Book One:

He was born a humble paper copy 15 years ago and adopted by a London agent. He was praised and patted on the head by Pan Macmillan and other notables throughout nursery school. He was a trier, re-inventing himself many times in order to please but eventually, he was declared non-commercial and almost destroyed.

Then King Kindle came to Slush-pile City.

Smoothed out and loaded-up, he became self-published, where he suffered an abused spell as a badly behaved electronic copy, running with the wrong crowd. He was rescued just in time and re-educated in his late teens by John Hudspith. Loved and reviewed positively after this by many readers, he even rode high in the Amazon rankings with BookBub. Despite all of this, he was rejected outright by Blah Blah Award, but he soldiered on. Finally, his fate was sealed, he was signed with Accent Press and the book lived happily ever after. True story.

So, maybe you’d be better investing in 50 reviews? You’ve heard that the magic number is 40 and then huge sales and mass visibility happens of its own accord. Maybe you should give that nice friendly author a five-star review and then maybe… Oh, hold on that’s unethical, isn’t it? Well, yes… to some authors, but not to others. And if I upset said author on a later date with my political views on Facebook, he might change it to a two-star review.

The problem – and rather conversely the joy too – is that there are no rules, but self-publishing is sometimes more difficult to navigate than a re-write of War and Peace. Ask a simple question and you will get fifty different answers.

It’s certainly a game of hissing snakes and slippery ladders.

There is money to be made in self publishing, but not always by the authors. 

Who are you?

Camp One. You write full-length fiction, which can take anything up to 12 months to produce in its polished form. You write because you have something unique to say and hopefully to not only entertain but to inspire and inform. You may have been traditionally published before. You write because you are inspired, and challenged by the craft of writing, and strive to improve and develop. Your only keyword is quality. You struggle to sell, but your reviews are numerous and positive. Your audience tend to be mature and still enjoy paperbacks and bookshops. You might be seeking an editor to work with, who has the skills to teach where necessary, and nurture your positive traits. You dislike self-promotion and trying to run with the crowd. You’ve likely learnt the craft over many years but struggled to get published or agented because your work fell between traditional genres, or didn’t quite cut it. You’d love to attract a publisher.

Camp Two. You enjoy writing but you wouldn’t be doing it if it didn’t pay for itself. You approach self-publishing as a commercial venture. You are prolific, you write popular serials, novellas and novelettes; often across several genres with a specific market in mind, keep up to date with the latest promotional sites, know how to play the system with keywords, and buy all the ‘how to’ books. You tend to make your own book covers, format everything yourself, and your books are available on every obscure platform you can find. You write ‘how to’ books. Your audience are young, read stuff on their iPhones and probably enjoy whatever is current, like American steampunk fantasy, or fetish erotica. It doesn’t bother you that the camp is set on moving sand, you are quick-thinking and adaptable. Your books sell well. You’re not seeking a publisher and you don’t need an editor.

These are wild extremes in self-publishing. Of course, it depends who you are, the adaptability of your camping equipment and how well you can handle a variety of cooking pots and pans when the chips are down, rain is pouring through the canvas roof and wait, there are enemies on the horizon… a huge semi-colon with a machete!

Who is John Hudspith?

If you are poised on the brink of self-publishing your first book, or if you already have a row of these beauties on your virtual shelf but maybe harbour a niggling doubt they could be better… please consider talking to JohnHudspith first and listen to one, clear opinion. If you spend on nothing else or have limited funds available, editing and proofreading is King and Story-is-everything-else. I’ve worked with well established literary agencies and respected agents in my distant past and in my opinion, John’s advice and editing is on a par with London prices, at a fraction of the cost. I could have saved myself heaps of time, dead-ends and cash.

Who am I?

I’m Jan Ruth, I’m a self-published author and I’m in camp one. I’m glad I self-published, although I may not sound as if I enjoyed the experience. Publishing my own work was a steep learning curve but it’s now at an end for me. Visibility is increasingly difficult over in camp one and there’s only so much one can do before some sort of burn-out happens. But one man’s burn-out is another man’s fuel… it rather depends on which camp you thrive in.

I’ve had forays into camp two but without lasting, or consistent success. This is why I have made the decision to leave self-publishing and I’m very happy to announce that I have signed a 5-book deal with Accent Press. After my family, I have to give massive thanks to my editor John Hudspith, because without his support, both professionally and as a friend and mentor, I would not have arrived at this point. I’d have given up, Once Upon a Long Time Ago. So, on to new beginnings for 2015. And keep the camp fires burning.

ABOUT MY BOOKS

Fiction which does not fall neatly into a pigeon hole has always been the most difficult to define. In the old days such books wouldn’t be allowed shelf space if they didn’t slot immediately into a commercial list. Today’s forward-thinking publishers - Accent Press being one of them - are far more savvy.

As an author I have been described as a combination of literary-contemporary-romantic-comedy-rural-realism-family-saga; oh, and with an occasional criminal twist and a lot of the time, written from the male viewpoint.

No question my books are Contemporary and Rural. Family and Realism; these two must surely go hand-in-hand, yes? So, although you’ll discover plenty of escapism, I hope you’ll also be able to relate to my characters as they stumble through a minefield of relationships, family, working, pets, love ...

I hesitate to use the word romance. It’s a misunderstood and mistreated word in the world of fiction and despite the huge part it plays in the market, attracts an element of disdain. If romance says young, fluffy and something to avoid, maybe my novels will change your mind since many of my central characters are in their forties and fifties. Grown-up love is rather different, and this is where I try to bring that sense of realism into play without compromising the escapism.

First book released by Accent Press: SILVER RAIN

Book Description: Black sheep meets good shepherd - can black and white become silver, or just a dangerous grey?

Alastair Black has revealed a secret to his wife in a last ditch attempt to save his marriage. A return to his childhood family home at Chathill Farm is his only respite, although he is far from welcomed back by brother George.

Kate, recently widowed and increasingly put upon by her daughter, sister, and mother, feels her life is over at fifty - until she meets Alastair. He's everything she isn't, but he's a troubled soul with a dark past. When his famous mother leaves an unexpected inheritance, Kate is caught up in the unravelling of his life as Al comes to terms with who he really is.

myBook.to/SilverRain

A Very British Blog Tour - 2013

Welcome to A VERY BRITISH BLOG TOUR 2013 – a collection of blogs, books and authors who are surprisingly very British.

The lovely author Jenny Twist invited me, and a hand-picked group of British authors, to take part in ‘A Very British Blog’ by visiting and supporting the websites of authors involved in the tour, and who are dedicated to turning out some of the finest books available in Britain today. Each author, named at the bottom of the page, has been asked the same questions, but their answers will obviously all be different. You merely click on the author’s link at the bottom of the page to see how they have answered the same questions.

But, before you begin reading, it's important to know that we Brits have certain conventions, traditions and procedures that are expected. There is a dress code in the reading of this British blog and you are expected to comply with it.

For example…

Gentlemen will wear suits, white shirts and dark ties. (Military ties are expected wherever possible). Ladies will wear dresses (one inch above the knee, no higher, no lower) and floral summer hats. A break for tea and cucumber sandwiches is expected at some stage, and is permissible. The list at the bottom the page is not a queue. We British hate queues, and will accept them no longer. It is an invitation, and you are expected to accept that invitation and support the home-grown product. Now then, let us proceed in an orderly fashion. As you know, we are all very boring and staid in Britain, aren’t we?  

Of course not!  So let's dispel the myths and get straight to the questions put by A VERY BRITISH WRITER, together with my answers:

Q. Where were you born and where do you live at the moment?

A. Born in historic, leafy Yorkshire, I now live in historic, leafy Surrey in a very old (and very cold) partially-listed cottage.

Q. Have you always lived and worked in Britain or are you based elsewhere at the moment?

A. I left England during the eighties for about six years to live and work in Greece.  Part of that time was spent in Sparta and the rest in Athens.  I'm now home for good...I think.

Q. Which is your favourite part of Britain?

A. Do you know, I have a sneaky suspicion that you actually have to leave Britain for a while to truly appreciate it.  I know I began to be much more aware of its beauty when I lived abroad and began to consider it more objectively.  Britain is brim-full of wonderful places and great national parks, like The Lake District, The Peak District, Dartmoor, Exmoor, Snowdonia and many more - each of which is stunningly beautiful. 

I have particular soft spots for Robin Hood's Bay in North Yorkshire, and Polperro in Cornwall where I spent happy childhood holidays fantasising about being a pirate long before Johnny Depp made the life quite so glamorous.  I'm fortunate that my parents loved their homeland and we spent every holiday and many weekends exploring all those places in between so there's very little of it that I haven't seen, known and loved.

Q. Have you ‘highlighted’ or ‘showcased’ any particular part of Britain in your books? For example, a town or city; a county, a monument or some well-known place or event? 

A.  Oh yes, every novel takes place in a specific area, even though I often change the names a little.  In Loving Hate, Wishful Thinking and Killing Jenna Crane are all set mainly in a London which is very recognisable (Regent's Park, Baker Street, Waterloo Bridge, The Thames, Knightsbridge, Hampstead Heath and many other places all appear).  Shopping for Love and Unworkers are set very much in the area I live now in Surrey, while The Apple Tree is mainly set in a hybrid of places that are Yorkshire through and through.  Only the short sci-fi story (Surveillance), co-written with my son, is based in a purely fictional place.

 

Q. There is an illusion – or myth if you wish - about British people that I would like you to discuss. Many see the ‘Brits’ as ‘stiff upper lip’. Is that correct?

A. If it ever did exist, then it was probably only as a Victorian ideal or piece of propaganda and I sincerely hope that it doesn't exist any more because it's depressive behaviour.  People in other countries seem to get on perfectly well without repressing their emotions and according to so many surveys, they do a lot better than us in the happiness-stakes too! 

Q. Do any of the characters in your books carry the ‘stiff upper lip’? Or are they all ‘British Bulldog’ and unique in their own way?

A. If I'm honest, I confess I did have one male character (Nicholas in The Apple Tree) who could perhaps have been described as such in that he believed his head could control his heart and his emotions could be kept in check - but he learned the hard way that the heart follows its own rules.

Q. Tell us about one of your recent books?

A. I'd love to!  Here is the blurb for Killing Jenna Crane

This is not a story about a murder, but a dark journey inside a writer's mind.  Commitment-shy Ellis Crawford, creator of the famous and highly successful Jenna Crane mystery series, finds his comfortable life swept away when he meets Emily, his perfect woman. 

Despite his deepening love for Emily, Ellis finds himself haunted by painful memories of a previous love whose heart he broke, and begins to regret his past behaviour.  On top of that, Emily wants him to kill off his beloved heroine Jenna Crane - against fierce public opinion.

But life is too short for regrets and when his own rapidly spirals out of control, taking his reputation as an author with it, where will Ellis turn for help?

I'm quite excited about this book because it marks a departure from my usual style of romance, dealing with darker psychological themes and containing quite a bit of suspense.  Those who have read it have been pleasantly surprised. 

It's written from the male perspective of the author Ellis Crawford, who is not the most endearing of heroes, but his flaws are explored and gradually explained - hopefully garnering a little bit of sympathy for him.  He's always treated women inconsiderately and is quite callous with Chloe, breaking her heart.  It isn't until Emily turns the tables on him that he begins to realise the extent of his own past actions.  However, Killing Jenna Crane is far from being a conventional romance and takes some surprising twists and turns.

Q. What are you currently working on?

Unworkers is my next release and I've been working on this (on and off) for many years.  Again, this is not a romance but a ghost story involving five women who come together through Chichester Court, the sinister house in which three of the women live with their young children.  The house is filled with mysterious whisperings urging unspeakable acts, strange and disturbing dreams and bizarre events which affect them all as the forces in the house escalate out of control. 

The novel is about poisons and potions; about relationships, past lives and the painful secrets between men and women which spread to permeate the private spaces of their lives and homes.

Q. How do you spend your leisure time?

When I'm not writing or catching up on writing-related activities, I'm usually reading and thinking about writing.  I enjoy experimental cooking, so escape to my kitchen when I feel the need for a change.  I'm forever trying to grow my own herbs and vegetables, though not with any great success, unfortunately.  I love the theatre and cinema and enjoy losing myself in a good film or drama.  I'm also learning to speak Cat - weird language!

Q. Do you write for a local audience or a global audience?

The more people I can reach with my stories, the better, although these do tend to have a local flavour or setting.  However, like many writers, I have to say that I write the sort of stories I enjoy reading - so you might say I write for myself - that's a very local audience.

Q. Can you provide links to your work?

Here is my UK Amazon author page  and my US Amazon Author Page where all my publications are listed.

And my website, with links, excerpts etc.

To see how other authors respond, just click on an author named below:

Rosemary Morris
Sherry Gloag
Jan Warburton
Jan Ruth

Wednesday's Writer - Jan Ruth

Having always had concerns that my books don't sit easily in one specific genre, I was interested to hear that publishers - despite loving Jan Ruth's novel - were unsure where to 'place' it when they were offered it a few years ago, and therefore turned it down.  Well that simply confirms my opinion that publishers often get it terribly wrong.  They certainly made a big mistake in letting Wild Water slip through their nets.

From the very first page I knew I was in for my favourite kind of story written in my favourite style - literary, witty, incisive etc.  And at no time throughout my reading (which was practically in a single sitting) was I disappointed.

Book description

Jack Redman, estate agent to the Cheshire set. An unlikely hero, or someone to break all the rules?

Wild water is the story of forty-something estate agent, Jack, who is stressed out not only by work, bills and the approach of Christmas but by the feeling that he and his wife, Patsy are growing apart. His misgivings prove founded when he discovers Patsy is having an affair, and is pregnant.

At the same time as his marriage begins to collapse around him, he becomes reacquainted with his childhood sweetheart, Anna, whom he left for Patsy twenty-five years before. He finds his feelings towards Anna reawaken, but will life and family conflicts conspire to keep them apart again?

Pan Macmillan Books; “It has a good combination of humour and poignancy. The characters are well portrayed and Jan delves shrewdly into their make-up, gradually allowing their traits to become evident and appreciated.” 

WILD WATER is the WINNER of the Cornerstones Literary Consultancy, 'Most Popular Self Published book' Competition. December 2011.

Wild Water

This is a truly delightful tragi-comedy that will draw you into its enchanting world from page one and keep you engrossed to the last page.  I defy you not to fall a little bit in love with the long-suffering Jack Redman and positively loathe his selfish, ungrateful and avaricious wife.  Life, work, marriage and kids chuck all the slings and arrows imaginable at poor Jack, but he fends them all off with consummate skill, keeping him out of the victim class and well up there with the best and most memorable heroes.  I would really love a sequel featuring this engaging character.  Oh, and the dogs of course, who become endearing characters in their own right - take a big bow-wow Benson and Hooper!

Jan Ruth is a writer at one with her characters and her landscape and her amazing talent as a story-weaver makes the reader grow to know and love both aspects with equal passion.  Her writing is intelligent, humorous and skillful and her story flows so well that there is no place to say `well this is a good place to stop for today and pick it up again tomorrow' - you just have to continue reading. 

I thought her style was slightly reminiscent of Clive James in what I always considered his best novel ('Brilliant Creatures' starring the long-suffering Lancelot Windhover) but - and sorry, Mr James, although I love you to pieces - rather more approachable generally speaking. It isn't too highbrow but at no time does it ever become trite or predictable (well, maybe with the exception of the obnoxious Philipe's true nature and his revelations at the end - but then I think that was cleverly executed dramatic irony and we were meant to guess those quite early on anyway). 

At the time of reading, I felt the story could benefit from slightly sharper editing, in terms of grammar, punctuation, spelling etc because I happen to have the sort of eyes that refuse to just skim over glitches of this nature. Such a perfect story deserves to be faultless in my mind.  I was therefore delighted to hear that since my reading of it, the novel has been re-edited.  It was a minor niggle anyway considering that this story entertained me so thoroughly and delightfully from start to finish.  So, Ms Jan Ruth - I happily give you my full five cute cats award!

Wild Water has been through twenty years of format changes! It began life on a typewriter (remember those?) Recently re-edited, a second edition is now available.

Also by Jan Ruth, Midnight Sky & White Horizon.

About Jan Ruth

Jan lives in North Wales and writes contemporary, romantic women's fiction. Love stories with strong, identifiable characters. Her feel for the Welsh landscape is evident in all of her books. Her style has been described as between two genres - not light enough for romance but not literature either - it sits somewhere between the two. Her books convey some serious threads with a good blend of humour, a balance of light and dark. They are slightly different from the majority of romance in that she often writes from the male perspective.

Her first attempt at a full length novel attracted a London agent struggling to start her own venture, that of publishing love stories with a difference. When chatting with author Gilli Allan recently, Jan was surprised to learn that they had both been in on this venture (many, many years ago!) which alas came to nothing. Her second novel, Wild Water, attracted another London agent (Jane Judd) but again failed to find the right niche with a publisher. Eventually, along came e-readers and indie publishing, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Amazon kindle has changed the face of the publishing industry and specific genres and publishers budgets, are no longer in the driving seat. It is an amazing platform for writers, in that all books, successfully published or not- are available to a worldwide audience, but most importantly to the reader, who is after all the most important judge.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wild-Water-ebook/dp/B004JF4LHK/ref=pd_sim_kinc_1