Getting bad reviews? I've got the answer.

Myself and my novel, 'A Graveyard Visible', had... well, we had a falling out. We've been on an extended break. I couldn't take it any longer. The abuse, the emotional turmoil. I had to get away. Somehow it had all turned so sour.

But now I'm back. And I've got some things to say...
(This is an update to an earlier post regarding reviews. Take it as proof that I haven't thrown myself off a bridge.)

This damn book!

Are you like me?

Have you written a book? Perhaps it's just come out or is coming soon. Either way, you've got your reviews trickling in, and all of a sudden a couple of absolute howlers land. It's bad. Real bad. The world has caved in. It's the end of the road for your precious novel. You worked so hard. So many hours. So many words. So many edits.

What do you do?

You want to give up, that's the first and most overwhelming sensation that hits you. It's beyond hope. There's no point. Why bother promoting the bloody thing when everyone will see the terrible things being said by actual readers?

But wait. I've got the answer.

Be brave.

Seriously. Chin up, chest out, deep breath, and smile.

I wanted to give it all up. I looked at those reviews, then looked at my book and considered playing a game of Can I Throw This Pile of Crap Out Of My Bedroom Window and Over the Roof Opposite? No one will blame you for feeling like that. But... think of all those hours, and words, and edits. All that effort. All that belief. You have written a book! And - this is especially true if you have a publisher or some kind of external backing - you don't give up on belief.

I spent days wondering - Why bother? Then one day I finally got myself bothered. The book was out, no matter what.
So, chin up, chest out, deep breath, and type. I got to work. By the end of the day I had another 8 reviewers lined up. It seemed scary, it seemed risky, it seemed totally worth it.
It's been a real mixed bag, and it's so easy to focus on the bad reviews, on the negatives (really, really, really easy!!!). But there's good stuff in there as well, and when I give those positives the attention I've been giving to the negatives, I start to see my book in a different light. Here's some quotes - and I'll paste an equal amount of good and bad here, for the sake of balance (if not my sanity).
All review quotes taken from the fantastic Netgalley.

Way back at the beginning, all those years ago...

I really struggled to get through this book. The premise was good and similar in many ways to Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children which I loved, but I just couldn't follow parts of the story. I found the plot confusing and it was just missing something for me.

(This is fair enough, can't win 'em all.)

First of all: it was clear that this is not a happy story from the cover and blurb, and I was certainly not expecting sunshine and rainbows. But the level of constant hate, self-hate, bullying and just negative emotion was incredibly frustrating to read.

(Another one that's fair enough, it's down to personal taste. I didn't think it was that much about constant hate in the novel. But you know, I'm taking this stuff way, way better than I did a few months ago. Personal growth! Go me.)

Of course, we can’t all be Neil Gaiman, 

(Ouch. Just give it to me real and raw.)

An odd duck of a book. Every time I thought I knew where it was headed it changed directions on me.

(Ha ha! Odd duck. This pleases me.)

(Next snippet is one of those that gives me a real boost. Can't thank the reviewer enough.)

What looks like an odd, quirky mystical read on the surface unfolds into that and far more, like a dismantled creeping skeleton reassembling as it reanimates. Claustrophobic with much left to the reader's imagination and assumptions, Steve Conoboy's book pairs a steady dry-mouth dread of the supernatural with all too universal themes of childhood pains and fears.

(The next one was actually a three out of five star review, but I still really appreciate that they got this out of the novel.)

They were some supernatural and creepy things about this book and I loved that part of it. The story was a little sad, but I know all about losing a parent. I think this story was a little about dealing with the sadness that comes with that.

Whatever else I say about 'A Graveyard Visible', it definitely has it's own personality. It's incredibly individual. Some parts drag my reading and viewing history with them, but as a whole it is unique. I can look at the novel now and, from that angle at least, be happy with it. I honestly believe it would be difficult to find anything quite like it. That feels like quite the achievement, that after hundreds of hours of work, I've created something that is recognisable as mine.

Your book has its own voice too. It will sound like you. Friends and family who read it, they'll recognise you, it will have imprints of your personality all over it.

Reviews (real ones from real readers) can be bruising, but take heart from them! Don't focus on one single review, because there isn't only one view in the world. Everyone has their own. Take all the reviews as a whole. Give the positive as much attention as the negative - this is so very important! If you've got a lot of reviews and only one says a particular aspect is bad, then that can be ignored. Most reviews will be constructive. Take on board what they say, reflect on it, apply it as you see necessary. After all it's your writing.
And move on! Write the next thing. Learn from the constructive criticism, but make sure you keep your voice.

But you must write. Do it for the reason you did it in the first place: the love of it.

Laters.

A Graveyard Visible is out RIGHT NOW and RIGHT HERE

Is it okay to write two novels at once?

Back to writery stuff about writering.

I've gone back and forth about this question over the years. A long time ago I used to write two novels (unrelated) in parallel, but as none of those have ever seen the light of day, it seemed safe to assume that this was not the world's greatest writing technique. I enjoyed it and got plenty done... but you've never heard of Dog Dinner, have you? No. And yes, that is a bad title. What of it?

We all have our different writing styles, favourite places to be, our preferences regarding paper or word processor, which underpants we should have on. But, should you ever take on two projects at once?

For clarification, I'm not talking about the writing of a series of books all in one go. If you plan from the outset to do a trilogy or whatever, bang 'em all out from the outset, don't pause. I wrote a sequel to Macadamian Pliers, but only after writing a couple of other books first, and man was that a task, so difficult to pick the threads up (and if people think A Graveyard Visible is dark, I'd love to dish them up a slice of Mac 2). What I'm discussing here is two completely separate stories with no characters or settings in common.

The closest I've ever come in the last 5 or 6 years to writing two stories at once would be during the creation of my latest novel A Graveyard Visible, which is currently undergoing an incredibly interesting pre-release process of review gathering - that's code for 'the reviews I'm getting are all over the place'. Halfway through, I stopped writing it. Couldn't go any further. It was dead. Tens of thousands of words in, I buried it (only ever happened once before, with a pirate story called Shanty for the Soulless which I'm currently considering for revival). So, after a period of glumness (we writers a miserable bunch of bastards) I got stuck into a new novel. I was most of the way through that when A Graveyard Visible dug itself back out of its admittedly shallow grave (one of those big light-bulb moments came out of nowhere - you gotta love 'em) and I hammered on until the end.

This is what you want - 

a bloody big idea

Since all of those shenanigans, I've finished another novel called Ten Doors Down (about a girl who breaks her phone and has to take on an incredibly strange job in order to save for another), and started my current project, Polka. It's about pigs. Oh yeah, a city of them. A whole society of pigs, a complete world, and everything a world is made of. It's become way bigger than I expected. I'm usually pretty good at getting a novel wrapped up in 80k or under, but with Polka and his personal journey I'm sailing towards eighty thousand words pretty rapidly and the middle is nowhere in sight. Now, I think the realisation of that fact freaked me out. There's a lot of work to do, and everything has to remain consistent. Polka, the titular pig, has led a small life in the walled (and guarded) city when we meet him in the first chapter, but when there's a dramatic change at the library where he works and a rebellious friend returns, his whole world flips and he starts to see what's on the other side. It's far more political than anything else I've written. It's about the disconnect between politicians and the people they govern. It's about loss, how large the pain can feel and yet how small it can seem to the world around you. It's about personal empowerment. It's about what a drop can do to an ocean. In some respects, 'Polka' is almost a playground for me to grab hold of a lot of the issues that affect me, to turn them round and hold them up in new lights.

Two months ago, it slowed to a near-stop. Not a complete halt, mind you. There were still a few words trickling onto the page. This was not a catastrophe of A Graveyard Visible proportions. The story was still there, and I knew where I was heading (or at least a had a piece of the map). But the weight of it...

We writers are always looking 

for that ray of hope.

The usual stuff - a change of activity, leaving it alone for a day or two, going for a walk, trying a chapter from a new angle - wasn't really giving me the bump start I needed. The only thing for it was a holiday. Not merely a real-life trip away for me (although by all the known gods I love getting away somewhere new). I had to get myself off to a new world.

The sneakiest and peakiest sneak-peak

of Flip.

The new one's called Flip (this flipping is a lot more literal than Polka's series of revelations), and for now I won't say much more, other than there's humans, and magic, and monsters. Starting a new story is always brilliant, and even though I'd had a false start with this one back in NaNoWriMo, a second attempt at the start of February went very quickly indeed, and I got a lot done (for me, anyway) in a short space of time. Now, I had a bit of a concern here. Writing lots is great, but what if I just kept writing Flip, and Polka died? What if I couldn't go back? The thing is, I was writing again, the energy was back, and as soon as I returned to Polka, the pages started flowing again.

Now, if they were both set in similar human fantasy worlds, and both had magic, and both had horror elements, and both were from the same point of view, then I don't think this would be feasible. There would be bleed between the two pieces. There would be forgetfulness, there would be a stylistic blur, and it would simply become too difficult. However, the fact that Polka and Flip are so very different actually helps me bounce from one to the other. Flip may never be finished. But if it's only reason to exist is to help me get to the end of Polka, then I will be forever grateful.

To conclude, I think it's possible to pull off this two novels at once thing... but only if both stories are very different. There can be little-to-no cross-over in regards of character type, theme or, if possible, style. Otherwise, everything could blend together and you'll end up with two indistinct piles of mess.

The moral here? Go on holiday, real or imagined. It's good for you.

Laters.

P.S. A Graveyard Visible is out soon - April 27th 2018. The horror novel that reviewers love to love, or love to hate. Go pre-order it now. The dead won't wait much longer...

Bad review, what do I do?

I got a couple of bad reviews, and now I'm in freefall and I don't know what to do.

This is a particularly painful post, and I've thought long and hard whether to publish it. I promised myself, however, that if I wrote a blog then I would be honest about the writing journey. With that in mind, this is going to be a very honest post, possibly to the detriment of my unreleased book. But what can you do? The bloody reviews are out there now. No hiding those.

Way back when I started this bloody thing,

I never thought it would be so much trouble.

It all seemed like a pretty good idea. New book A Graveyard Visible is due for release at the end of April, and I was feeling confident about it, thought it was about as good a piece of work as I could put together (after all, I sent it to a publisher, and they accepted it, so, you know...) Why not drum up a bit of interest for my YA horror nice and early? I stumbled upon a scheme to garner a bunch of reviews. So I went for it.

Yeah. Pretty good idea.

First review came in. I checked it out nervously. It was great:

'This book goes from “good” to “great” to “I can’t put this book down until I have finished it”. If you want creepy, edge-of-your-seat page turner, this is for you!'

In the spirit of honesty, then, here are some direct quotes from the negative reviews, and this is the stuff that broke my heart:

'Ok, I did not get this book at all. I love suspense and horror, but this was a mangled mess of confusion. The alternating third person perspective and stream of consciousness just left me confused. This would have been a DNF for me except I felt guilty...'

And even worse:

'The story started off strong and I was captivated by the idea of what could be happening within the graveyard. The narrative soon became really difficult to follow. Each chapter switched between many characters’ perspectives and it often took me reading a paragraph or two to understand which character I was reading about.
This was a difficult book for me to get through. I ended up quitting with only 70 pages left because I was just uninterested and not invested in the story. '

Never in my life thought I'd write a novel people didn't want to finish! I can't imagine a review being any worse.

This is what my cat thinks of the whole situation.

Again, being honest, I got defensive when I read these. When you've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours creating something you believe in, anyone would get a tad bristly, I suppose. So let's get the stroppy author bit out of the way. The main beef here seemed to be the multiple perspectives. But what's wrong with that? I whined. It's hardly the first novel to have multiple bloody viewpoints. It's standard stuff for telling big tales! It's meant to give proceedings a touch of the ole epic scope. It keeps the story fresh, lends a bit of unpredictability to how it all unfolds.

Look, there's not that many viewpoints! There's our two leads Caleb and Misha, some flashback stuff (which is all in italics, by the way), some very brief stuff with the grandparents, and some short sequences with the villain of the piece, and he's really obvious because he has all these dark thoughts 'n that. That's it. Caleb is a very normal boy, Misha is a bit odd, it's all signposted quite clearly.

I've read a ton of books that switch viewpoints. Grab one of Stephen King's bigger epics - The Stand, Under The Dome - and you'll be switching all over the place. I don't think it's that hard to keep up in my novel. Really I don't. Maybe I'm too close to the story though. After all, it did take longer than usual and more effort to get it done. Maybe I've buggered it up far more than I think.

Anyhoo, my defense is all well and good... but so far two readers don't buy it. That there is bad news, bro.
It could be that multiple viewpoints just wasn't to these readers' tastes. Having two of them say the same thing though? Oh man...

Like I said at the beginning, I don't know what to do. It feels like the damn book's been murdered before it's anywhere near release. Is it fixable? Do I dare get more reviews? I have to, in the hope I can get some balance, get a few good ones in, so that at least it looks like a divisive novel. That would be a good sell, the book that you either love or hate. But... what if more reviewers hate it? What if that's all AGV gets? I don't know what to do....

Oh yeah, I'm comfort eating these days. You wanna see how big I can get? Keep posting them bad reviews, guys. Reckon I could end up a whopper.

Laters.

Love it or hate it, They'll come after you anyway.

Pre-order here. Release date 27th April 2018