One of The World's Tiniest Book Launches in One of The World's Tiniest Cocktail Bars.

#StartSmallDreamBig

I'm heading off to UTOPiA in a month and having been nominated for a couple of awards for my book 'When Sorrows Come' and my series, 'Beautiful Freaks', I was feeling under increased pressure to find a drop-dead gorgeous evening gown (not that I need any encouragement, I love evening dresses) 

However, several weeks later and having tried on over 40 different dresses, every single one somehow wasn't right - either that or it looked pretty much the same as one of the 5 I have already hanging in my wardrobe. 

I was sat having a coffee, feeling a little deflated when I got to thinking that £200 / $300 was a hell of a lot of money for a dress I was going to wear just a handful of times. I began to think of ways that I could perhaps spend that money more wisely on attaining my life-plan. 

Coincidentally, the very next day, we stopped off at a new shop that had opened in my home town. It is the HQ office of a cocktail hamper company, founded by an interesting female entrepreneur. She wanted to create an office that was a joy to work in rather than the industrial unit office she had currently been renting. She chose one of the cute little Victorian fronted shops that had once been a florists, and now, as well as having a pretty office, she opens up the front of it as a tiny miniature cocktail bar. 

EUREKA, I would take that £200 and hold a perfectly miniature book launch party / signing. The cocktail bar will take just about 10 people - the perfect number of people as one of my very first solo signings. 

Then, life is strange; there are several other creative projects happening in my life at the minute, and for some reason, they all seem to be connecting with one another. One of these projects is working with women in the local community who have turned their back on traditional, patriarchal corporate jobs and professions to pursue their own path, create their own companies, and to sell their own services. TAP (The Academy of Possible) has recently been established, and it's a social evolution project that aims to connect women with skills with one another, so we can become cheerleaders and supporters for each other, both on a very practical sales level, and on an emotional, motivational level. 

As part of these two strands of my life, I had the idea that I would use the miniature signing in the miniature cocktail bar to make a miniature documentary on the theme of #StartSmallDreamBig, with the aim of inspiring other people to take that first step into doing something bold, social and extraordinary.

I'm not going to lie, the thought of a signing, where I will be reading, petrifies me. I'm still coming to terms with my identity as an author - which by 8 books down, I should have nailed already. And yet, there are reasons why I am 8 books down and never done a social launch party for one of my books... reasons that are complex and reasons that I know many others share. 

That's the aim of this project, to inspire folks to step outside of their comfort zones, but in a safe way - a bit like a controlled explosion, only just not with quite so much wreckage - although who knows what will happen with the added ingredient of cocktails. 

I'm being ultra brave, and fighting the fear by inviting a local journalist, the manager of a local national book store, and a high profile blogger to attend and be of the 10 guests that will be invited. I don't know if they will come, but I do know that if you don't ask, they definitely won't come. 

And if the filming is rubbish, if the reading is wobbly, if the whole thing is a little less than perfect, it doesn't matter, it will be perfectly imperfect and I will have learned a whole lot of lessons. 

Watch this space for more updates on this project, and I really look forward to hearing where you arrange your miniature signings having been inspired by this idea. 

Drop a reach out in the box <3 nbsp="" p="">

Precious Things.

It's only taken 5 years for me to finally claim the cupboard under the stairs as my own, but now that we are moving and have had to get the house ready for viewings, I've done it! And the thing that I love about it the most is that I finally get to have an author shelf.

Here it is. A lovely shelf of purple loveliness.

I love it and I thought you might be interested to hear a little bit about it. So from Left to Right here is a tour around my shelf.

Far Left: This beautiful hand-pressed woodcut is from the Witches House in Salem Massachusetts U.S.A. This was brought back from Salem this summer by my very dear friend Alison Stacey. We taught together for fifteen years and became more family than friend. She has been alongside me on this crazy journey right from the very start. She has never doubted. Always believed and I can't wait until she retires next year so that she can come on many U.S author road trips in the years to come.

The reason it is here is because my newest series, The Meadowsweet Chronicles is partly set in Salem, and the main character, Jeremiah Chase is a descendent from one of the original Salem Witch Hunters.

Middle: This small laser cut piece of paper art is from the Porte du Secrets exhibition centre in Paimpont, The Foret de Broceliande, Brittany. It depicts the forest and standing together in conversation, the wizard Merlin and Morgan Le Fay. The Forest of Broceliande is one of the primary settings of book 3 of the Knight Trilogy. Home to Merlin's Tomb, The Crystal Lake, The Knights Templar Chapel, The Valley of No Return, The Fountain of Eternal Youth, the forest of Broceliande and Paimpont is a magnet for all those who follow the Arthurian legends.

We go camping each year in Paimpont (Or Paint-Pot as it's affectionately become called by my family) and I drag the hubby and the two Mud-Puddles around all the various Arthurian landmarks, much to their excitement LOL.

Right: This selection of semi precious stones, Rose Quartz, Amethyst and Cornelian are some of my favourite stones. I'm a believer in Earth energy and I find them both beautiful to look at and calming. I like to be surrounded by beautiful things, and for me, semi-precious stones are some of the most beautiful things to be found in nature.

Right Top: This is where my author life began, with the writing of 'The Forest of Adventures'. When I began writing it, I truly believed that this was my one and only novel. It was a story I had been wanting to write since my own teenage years and there is so much of myself and my teenage experience woven into the pages of this dark fairy tale. I had no idea with the writing of those first words that I would go onto write and publish a further 8 books, countless short stories, travel around the world as part of an amazing book world, become the founder of a really special publishing company and the creator of a UK book convention.
For a long time I hid this book away. It's not the very best of my craft, little could I have known how much I would grow and develop as a writer, but I've come to acknowledge that it is the very best of my soul - and now it sits proudly as a reminder of where I started and where I have travelled to. This book will always be the most special of all of them.

You can find out more about me and my books over at my official website www.katiemjohn.com

So what's on your special shelf? I'd love for you to share in the comments box.

Utopia 2 months on

This post is a week early, but as I am going on holiday next week, and I am really rubbish at scheduling posts, here goes.

UTOPIA and TRIBE: A POWERHOUSE OF AWESOMENESS.
So the effects of Utopia have calmed a little. Fellow Utopians are busying away with their WIPS and other cons, and all the other craziness of life that is the life of an author. However, what has happened out of that great explosion of socialisation is the cementing of some extraordinary friendships.

I have found a tribe, a sisterhood, and we speak most days and at least a couple of times a week via Facebook messaging, and we're getting brave enough to even attempt a proper video call -  I know, crazy social cats that we are.

This is what ultimately Utopia has given me - the feeling that I am not alone, and for someone who doesn't really mind going it alone, or at least that's what I have convinced myself over the years, the effect of friendship, understanding and shard vision has been quite transformatory. (Yep, making words up again)

BUILDING CHAPTER.CON: THE POWER OF THE TRIBE
It's this sense of tribe that has allowed me to embrace my fears and charge forward with Chapter.Con in a way that has made some crazy dream a few months ago into a serious reality. When I look at website, how full and rich the con promises to be, I am excited -- and I am proud of what I have built. However, it would not have been built without the love, belief, encouragement and spirit of my tribe.

My Tribe is AWESOME! Get used to that phrase because I am going to be using it a lot over the coming year. It was there willingness to reach out a hand and step up that has allowed Chapter.Con to take flight. They have promised to fly half way around the world to stand by my side, to share their knowledge, expertise, creativity and love with a UK book community.

And because of their faith and their willingness to tread this journey by my side, others have joined us. Seriously, you should check out the panel for Chapter.Con - it's mind blowing. And because of the panel, I have managed to entice a truly amazing Key Note speaker, who I can't wait to share with you at a later stage.

There's a Utopian core statement, 'Lift as You Climb' and I can not tell you how engraved this is in my heart. Creating Chapter.Con has been a real chance to payback to some people in the book world who have been there from the early days of my writing career. For example, I am so honoured to have Megan Mc Dade (From Reading Away The Days) to be our Official Chapter.Con Blog Co-ordinator and I know we are both extremely grateful to Jo Michaels who is acting as a Mentor and Guide (as well as one of my soul-sisters). Having Megan on board has allowed me to hand all of that side over to her and for a great blog team to be created. Utopia taught me to do that - to trust, to collaborate, to hand over to others. Something I've never really been very good at.


Then I get a reach out from the lovely Dena Ellis Oneal - a chance meeting at Utopia caused a spark of creativity. She wanted to know about Readers, and whether there was a special place for them at Chapter.Con - hell yeah! Without readers there are no authors (well not ones that eat) so between us we created the Chapter.Con Book Club, 'Reading My Way to Chapter.Con'. This is a brilliant idea on so many levels. You can find out more about it at the official website Book Club page (linked) or by visiting the Unofficial Facebook Page (linked)

Oh, yeah, about that! So because Megan and the blogging team, and Dena are amazing, they are establishing the joint fansite and book club group page for Chapter.Con so that the community can really start building.

So that's Chapter.Con and I guess you can tell from how much of the post it has taken up just how much life time it has taken up too.

However, other great things have been happening too. I have embarked on a currently secret project with two of the most phenomenally inspiring women I have ever met. It's a really exciting project and one which I am going to take immense pride and pleasure in sharing with you in a few months time when details have been secured. All I can really say is I AM EXCITED and INSPIRED!

WRITING LIFE.
Book Three of The Meadowsweet Chronicles is half written; progress has been a little slower than hoped, but I'm still perfectly on schedule according to the XCEL spreadsheet. I love spending time with my WIP - at the moment, with everything else going on, it's a perfect escape. Because it is Book Three, the characters pretty much write themselves; they are living real people who live and love and battle inside my head.

Planning out the next three books in the series has given me the confidence to just sit down and write without worrying - as a result, when I do get an hour or two, the word count jumps up. it is a direct result of listening to the UTOPIA panel on series, and the advice of Rachel Higginson and Bella Roccaforte that inspired me to take that goat by the throat and plot it all out. See, panels aren't just about ideas, they are about action.

However, due to the explosion that has been Chapter.Con, my plans to serialise 'Beautiful Freaks' are a little delayed (only by a week or so, but with my spreadsheet, that could be a problem.) I have a rescue plan in mind though.

10 TIPS TO REDUCE YOUR EDITING COSTS: Preparing your MS

This is going to be a short and sweet post because I am currently undertaking the second round of edits on 'Vengeance'. Any of you second + bookers will know how consuming this is. For you newbies, rewrites and edits take almost as long as the original writing - if not more.

Writing 'The End' at the end of your story is a bitter sweet triumph. Seven novels in, I now reserve the popping of the champagne cork for the actual publish date; instead I buy in the quality coffee, a bulk supply of Jaffa cakes and A4 plain paper.

So editing. It's a difficult beast to wrestle. Everybody I've ever spoken to in the indie publishing field agrees that a professional edit is essential to avoid public devastation in the review game. I agree absolutely. Readers have an amazing ability to spot a type error or grammar error at a hundred paces.

But here's the real pain of an edit, and it's not that someone helpfully rips apart your beloved MS, it's the cost. For a full professional edit on an 80,000 word manuscript you can pay anything between £400 and £1000.  A perfectly reasonable amount considering how many hours of somebody else's life a complete edit and commentary takes.

But...

The sad fact is, most indie published books will be lucky to sell 30  copies a month, and because of a whole other blog post of reasons, most indie books have to fight their way on the $0.99 platform, which Amazon penalises with a 30% royalty. I guess, by now, those more mathematical than me have worked out that to just cover the editing costs alone, you need to sell ..... one hell of a lot of books! I mean, you have to be selling at the same level as the blockbusters.

So what can you do? You can reduce your editing costs substantially (I pay around £200 for an 80-100 word edit) because I have proved with my editor that I'm not a big job. I ensure that my MS is in a state that makes it a relatively 'easy' job that doesn't take a lot of their time.

Here's how I do it, and as ever with my 'advice' posts, I'm still living and learning, and making those big old mistakes, so this isn't expert and I haven't perfected it all yet - not by a long way, but the more I do it, the better I get at it.

1) I PLAN and PLOT out my books carefully, minimising plot inconsistencies as much as possible.

2) I accepted my weakness in never learning formal grammar (80's empathy, write a diary entry type of English education) I purchased  a grammar book and I tried to learn it, cover to cover. I learned why we actually use commas and punctuation - and no, it's not where you naturally breathe or pause; it's all to do with clauses. LEARN YOUR CLAUSES!

3) Follow, with diligence, the their / they're / there / its / it's / you're / your checklist - every time any of these are used in a sentence, stop and double check - and then triple check. These are the MOST COMMON ERRORS, and unless you consciously attack them, they will slip through.

4) Put your MS onto 140-150% ZOOM and edit it big - I know it will look ugly and you'll want to look away, but it makes you read your MS sentence by sentence and makes smaller, minor errors like possession apostrophes and the list above, a lot more obvious. It stops you scanning, which we all inevitably lapse into.

5) Complete your primary edits AS YOU GO. At the beginning of each writing session, start by heading back over the section you read before. This will not count as a full first edit, but it is great for the first stage of snagging those pesky errors, putting you in a much better place for your first rewrites, and it is relatively painless.

6) Make a proper CHARACTER LISTS / NOTES as you go, you'd be amazed how hard it is to keep track of those minor extras. Note any details you give, such as eye colour, hair colour, tattoos - you'd be amazed how you can slip like that.

7) Get some A4 paper and after the first edits of each chapter, write out a quick set of notes on what is happening and any threads that need to go throughout the rest of the MS. UNDERLINE THREADS in red, so it makes easy reference, these threads might be symbols, objects, concepts etc. Don't write too much for each chapter; just a few lines 5-10.

8) Eradicate any non necessary words. Read sentence by sentence. Is every word needed? Can you SIMPLIFY and REORDER the sentence structure so it reads with more clarity and simplicity. This doesn't mean you should eradicate some of the longer, more poetic imagery or sentences, but use them sparingly to create the biggest impact; they're precious.

9) Check that DIALOGUE PUNCTUATION. If you're not sure then learn once and for all how punctuation works in dialogue clauses.

10) EDIT SOBER and fresh. As Hemmingway once reportedly said, 'Write drunk, edit sober'. To be honest, I try to do both sober now; it's less of a hangover in all senses. Of course when I embarked on my first novel it was the romance of the paperback writer, late nights into early mornings, bottles of red wine and glasses. Now, you're most likely to find me writing early in the morning with the fresh coffee, freshly showered and ready for 'work'. As a result, my writing is much cleaner (in all respects LOL) I now save the red-wine for the inspiration moments, the note-taking and the poetry first drafts :)

When all of this has been done, then it's time to find an editor who will be brutal and honest. If you've already been brutal and honest with yourself, then their lives will be easier and it will cost you less in all senses.

Remember, it is NOT your editor's job to take your drunken, inspired, creative outpourings and tidy them up into a novel that is readable and five-star worthy; they're there to edit, not re-write.

 Also, a small caveat, this post has not been edited, and so the errors in it go to serve my point LOL.


So, fellow writers, I'd love to know how you approach your edits? Drop your advice in the box. Feel free to disagree. Living and Learning.

Help! Everybody Is Doing Better Than Me! #Authorchat

You know those days - you're trying desperately to focus down on your WIP, the deadline is looming, it's the next book in the series and you've been trying to crack on with it, but you find yourself constantly heading over to Facebook and Twitter, where you're assaulted with all the brilliance of your author friends.

You're pleased for them, genuinely you are, but it makes you question yourself even more. You look longingly at their Facebook posts; citing new glittering 5 star reviews, becoming finalists in The Best Indie Book on The Planet; there are pictures of them at signings and conventions, and in the local press, and you....

...well you feel like you're treading through mud. You've worked just as hard, just as smart. You've done everything that every writing and publishing blog has told you to do - but the sales are quiet, the reviewers all see completely buried under TBR piles and, worse of all, you're plagued by thoughts of quitting.

Well don't - don't ever give up, because 90%* of success is down to sheer bloody mindedness.

TOP 7 TIPS FOR BREAKING THE CYCLE OF GLOOM - (because 5 wasn't enough and it's not as complicated as 10!)

1. STALK (clearly in a non threatening or creepy way) your author buddies by visiting ALL of their social media platforms; maybe they are doing something that you aren't - it's easy to be standing so close to the trees that you fail to see the forest. Maybe you're missing something really obvious - like not properly engaging with your readers. (Make notes! I'm serious, this is like homework.)

2. REVAMP your blog, your website - create a logo, update your bio: remember you are a professional and maybe your 'tiredness' is being reflected in the state of your social media platforms. Who wants to visit and engage in a blog that hasn't been updated in a month, or a website where everything seems so static?

3. PLAN; make it pretty and use coloured pens. It doesn't matter if you never look at it again, but it will help you focus on your end goals and remind you of all that marketing stuff you already know but aren't putting into practice.

4. RECONNECT with your fan-base, your author community, your FB page followers. It can be really difficult when your esteem is low to keep a public face. Many of my author buddies are introverts - myself included, and one of the recurring patterns I see is a negative self-fulfilling cycle of disconnection. Because we feel that we aren't as shiny and glittery as our fellow authors, we retreat.

5. ADMIT it, you know there are flaws in some aspect of your publications; it maybe the blurb, cover, ending, you've never quite been happy with. Change it. Simples!

6. GIVE to others and the karmic nature of the universe will come full circle. If you don't feel that you have much to shout about your own work, then showcase and spotlight your buddies. Cheerlead and support them. Become a totally engaged member of the author community and watch as the love is returned.

7. WRITE your WIP. A lot of the most successful indie writers out there are doing so well because they have momentum. By writing a lot, and getting more publications out there, they've got more to talk about, there's more energy, more excitement for potential readers to engage with. It keeps their marketing profile fresh and energised. It also keeps readers invested.

Now these tips are not coming from some kind of sanctimonious self-appointed expertise, (heck, I've even made some of the stats* up) but they come from my own broken ego. It's hard, and the longer you've been doing it, the harder it becomes in some way. It can be hard to maintain the youthful optimism of when you started out, and things are getting tougher.

Thanks for stopping by. I'd love it if you shared your own tips for pulling yourself out of the inadequacy doldrums. Let's connect and engage :) x