Fairytale Bubbles, Pricks and Rejections

If you're one of my 'friends' on Facebook you might have noticed that over the course of the past few weeks, culminating in a freebie giveaway this weekend, I have edited, designed a particularly beautiful cover for and e-published my latest 'baby' onto the Amazon e-book/Kindle site.

Only 'Reconstructing Jennifer' isn't  strictly my latest baby.  This book was the first book I ever wrote 'the end' on and was completed probably something like 10 years ago. 

It spent a further year being hidden in my document files on a very prehistoric pc (I even have the original on a floppy disc somewhere) before I summoned up the courage - aided superbly by the lovely writerly interweb friends I'd made at the same time and to whom I have dedicated the book at the start - to send it out to agents and publishers.

Which made the following year a very very fraught one indeed.

You see I hadn't planned on writing a whole book to begin with and when I started to get such positive feedback from the writing group I belonged to, I quite imagined it could be plucked from relative obscurity (a.k.a the slushpile) and jettisoned into the dizzy heights of publication.

Oh how simple were my beliefs back then.

I even did the ridiculous thing of printing off my chapters, writing my covering letters and synopsis and sending it trepidaciously off to ONE Agent at a TIME - not fully appreciating the length of time it takes an Agent to respond.  I got very little sleep that year, I can tell you.  And if it hadn't been for some sensible suggestions from my dear writerly friends then I'd have gone quite insane.  I'm not the most patient of people.  I may appear calm on the outside, but it plays havoc with my internals.

At the last count, 'Labrats' did 2 rounds over the course of 18 months and met with approximately 58 rejections.  Some of them were lovely and encouraging, some of them came back with a "NO!" scrawled in blood *could've been red ink* on my original covering letter  but none of them came back complete with pubic hair (that actually happened to somebody but I can't tell you who).

'Reconstructing Jennifer' was called 'Labrats' back then - titled such because it's how the main character feels, being trapped in a marriage where she has a cheating husband, a new baby to contend with and parents you couldn't rely to pass you a piss-pot if you happened to catch fire. Just like a Lab Rat. Only then some TV people called a new and lame sitcom the same thing, so I felt obliged to re-name mine.

And I never thought that Jennifer would see the light of day until the other week when I thought, bless her and flip it all, she deserves to get some fresh air about her pasty cheeks, let's see what the world will make of her.  As I started to read through it and re-format it and edit it here and there, I found I loved her and her story as much as I ever did. 
And so she was revealed.
I do hope you've managed to have a wee 'look inside' as the Amazonians like to tempt.  And if you like what you read, then do, please download it.  I'm crap at marketing and terrible at encouraging people to do things they really don't want to do, just because I say they should, so don't feel bad will you - if you don't like it or want to buy it I mean.Okay?

300 downloads this weekend.  I'm very cheered by that.  And I love that my Labrats is finally 'out there' - it's been a long time coming.

Meet my latest baby!

I'm not even sure this book would be termed Young Adult or Teenage because it's mainly set in 1979 which is where today's Middle Agers started out.
Anyway, if the book wasn't an E-book and had been printed on proper paper and bound and stuff, the blurb on the back would read something like this:

"Although she hasn't thought it through comprehensively, Casey Summerfield has had enough of her fiercely independent mother and her cheating boyfriend so she  decides to run away.  The one thing she hasn't factored into her plan is being knocked unconscious by a bus and waking up in her teenaged mother's bedroom in 1979.

And she's seen enough episodes of 'Life on Mars' to know that there must be a perfectly rational explanation for her being 'here' , so all she has to do is ride it out until David Bowie dressed as a clown comes to take her back to 2012.  Isn't it?"

And for 24 hours - from midnight tonight - it's FREE!So if you feel like being transported back to the days of vinyl 45's, Pink and Jackie Annuals, first-time flares and John Travolta overload, then THIS is the book for you!

(I'm such a marketing slut, me!)

Bucking Hell!

Ah puns, you make me giggle.  (*post title).

Some things never change.  Not only have I NOT done anything I vowed on my New Years' Resolutions List, but I have done things in the space of 30 days I didn't even know I was considering.  Even though they might have been on the back-burner of my mind.

So... let's get to the 'bucking' point, shall we?

Even though I knew full well at the age of 15 what the term 'vanity publishing' was, and even though I went straight on through my 20's and 30's and (eeep, almost all my 40's now) denouncing every 'self-publishing' advertisement that screamed at me from the pages of various writing magazines, I have gone and done it.

I'm just so contrary, me. But you can rely on me to buck a trend - even (actually especially) if the trend is self-imposed.

I'm the same with housework (that's a 'trend', right?)  It's there; it screams and expands and demands attention, so I do my level best to ignore it.  How dare it demand of me - don't I have better things to do with my life? Damn right!

So, Vanity Publishing.  It's always had a bad press (ha) and in a similar fashion to the very misunderstood microwave, I think it's now about time we started to embrace it. *ANALOGY ALERT*  In true Cooper-fashion, I have had enough of spending my precious time standing over a pan into which I've carefully and blended and chopped; added to, stirred, folded, creamed, and pureed to a pulp - watching expectantly as  little bubbles begin to surface, the aroma intensifying and embracing the kitchen (of my mind, keep up, keep up) only for the gas to turn off right at the crucial moment. It's upsetting.  It's demoralising.  It's soul-destroying, frankly. And as I've been standing at this metaphorical 'cooker' for the past 10 years, watching my lovely little dishes simmer and just reach boiling point before... well, you know... the gas... I've decided to soddit and just stick it in the microwave instead.  It pretty much does the same job in a hundredth of the time, does NOT melt the brain and if anything comes out tasting weird, then I've only got myself to blame.

I don't feel desperate. Even though I've published under a pseudonym (D A Cooper) which is more in case of any future representation problems.  I don't feel like I've let myself down; but I do feel oddly liberated. Like a mother Starling having just eased her little fledglings out of the stale nest they've been cooped up in for far too long, and I'm just excited to see how far they can fly now. 

Technology is a wonderful thing.  I usually embrace all things technical, after all, if it's been invented why the heck not use it?  And although I shall continue to buy proper, published, printed books in ink on paper, I shall also be downloading the occasional e-book once I have my shiny new tablet-thingy (oh I'm all up with the latest jargon, me) and relishing in how far we've come since Dickens' day.

Things are looking bucking good for the first month of the New Year - I now resolve they shall stay that way!