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

Seeing your novel in real life!

Bit of a weird one today, but have you ever found yourself inside a real life version of your novel, after you've actually written it?

Now, we writers, odd-bods that we are, all live for incredibly long periods of time inside the worlds we have imagined. We know the characters as if they are real people (or should do), we know the locations, walk around them in our sleep, experience every development in the story as if they're actually happening to us. This next bit depends on what you're writing: if you're scribbling down your biography or basing your story firmly in the real world around you, then you see those places all the time, you know the physicality of them, you know the atmosphere, can breathe it in. If, however, you are working in fantasy like myself, if the geography of your tale is a construct of part-truth and part-make-believe, then you can't really have a wander round, getting a feel for the location.

However, I did just that.

Sometimes in life you find yourself doing a double-take.

This scene caused me a triple.

You simply don't expect it. I certainly wasn't out looking for it.

All the images in this post are, to me, a real-world representation of Daisy Hill in my new novel A Graveyard Visible. The hill in the book is a lot steeper than this one, but this idea of burials all the way up the gradient, of a graveyard that isn't flat but on levels ever-upwards, is the notion that spurred the writing of the novel in the first place. I feel like I've seen the inspiration long after the writing is done.

I'm unlikely to see my first novel Macadamian Pliers in reality. It's based in a made-up American town. I don't live in America, I have yet to visit. and this restricts my chances of seeing anything resembling Cherry Raine's haunted home town. Mac Pliers is based in part on places I have actually been to (isn't everything we write?), Gateshead and Chesterfield are incredibly hilly in parts.

Seeing Daisy Hill, though... it was like the story was saying, We were here all along. It all really happened to us. All you did was report it. And we'll be here when you're gone. 

I wonder what I might have written if I'd seen this place first.

Caleb's up there somewhere, getting into

serious trouble.

This is in Bowness, on Lake Windermere. We were there for a few days, to celebrate a birthday, to get away from the mania of normal life. What a beautiful place it is, so much so that you will want to walk and walk and carry on simply so you can see more of it. There's a joy that all of this exists, and a pain that I haven't seen more of it, and that one day I won't be able to see any of it at all.

I love the place. The calm of the water, the hills and peaks, the morning mists that shroud the swooping ranks of trees... At no point do you feel any temptation to check social media or scan through a million nonsense news stories (the pathetic excuses for reporting that are considered newsworthy these days show how pathetic modern times are). I had no clue for three days that Syria had been bombed. I was probably better off not knowing. Such was my delight at connecting so thoroughly with nature and disconnecting so completely with the society I loathe, that I slipped into a pretty severe funk upon return to real life. Isn't this why we go off to our other worlds, because we deem them better than this one? Windermere is better than the real world, much better. And it's real. It's there. Go to it. Bring a camera, turn off your Wi-Fi, turn off your data, do yourself a favour while you can.

The railings that Caleb peers through,

convinced they're expanding.

The timing is so weird too. Two weeks before A Graveyard Visible's release date of 27th April 2018. So close to that moment when the book is finally out there for readers to either love or hate or be completely confused by (which is exactly what's been happening in the pre-release reviews). Serendipity? Sure, why not? It certainly made me rethink my attitude towards the novel. With everything going on regarding reviews during the lead up to release, I've found myself feeling very distant from the work, unsure of what it is, what it represents, why I wrote it in the first place. There are those who can't finish it. There are those who can't understand why it's been slated. There are those who think the writing is awful. There are those who think it beautiful, lyrical. Between all these sharply opposed opinions, I've lost my way. In this moment, in Windermere, when I wasn't looking at all, my book came to find me. That graveyard, that boy, that girl, they're a part of me, no matter what. Discovering them, writing them, everything that came after, then finally finding the graveyard is real... It's been an adventure like none other.

I know that there's no other book like it. The sadness inside its pages, the yearning for acceptance... It is the horror of things coming to an end. It's my attempt to put my greatest fears into words. Whether the reader is capable of deciphering the code... That is up to them. I have to accept what it is, and move on.

But I'm sure glad I saw Daisy Hill for real. Without that, I would have turned my back on my work for good.

Back home, I've taken to watching 4K videos on Youtube of people walking around lakes and driving scenic routes while trying to work out how on earth to promote this book before it's too late. These videos tend to be around four hours long. Yes, it's loopy, but I can't tell you how relaxing it is, and it beats the hell out of Netflix, evil Facebook, and (non) news.

A Graveyard Visible, out 27th April 2018

Go get my book. It's all real, it all actually happened. Honest.

Laters.

Ever found the plan for a novel years after you lost it? I just did...

Here's a surprise and a half.

So, at the minute I'm deep into my biggest writing project in over a decade. It's called Polka, and it's about a pig who lives in a walled city and finds his small life magnified in ways he never wanted. At the same time as scribbling away at this novel, we are doing a lot of home improvement, and we've just turned the shit-tip of an outbuilding into a craft room. This has meant a lot of lifting and shifting of old stuff that hasn't been looked at in years. It's terrifying the amount of stuff you can gather over time. There was a street-ful of all kinds of mad things in that one building, including a spare sink, a selection of Easter bonnets, a disco ball, and something that once upon a time might well have been alive.

(Before we continue, can I say that obviously you haven't read this novel of mine that isn't anywhere near finished yet, but don't worry, this whole piece has a little point at the end, I promise. It wouldn't be like me to write something totally pointless.)

There was a box. In that box were some notepads. One of those notepads was this little feller:

This is volume 2 of my original 4 year old plan for Polka.

Modelled with my lovely Karen's fluid painting artwork.

I wrote about 120 (admittedly small) notepad pages of unusually (for me) detailed scene notes for Polka before I lost them. Some of these scenes are written as whole chapters, almost ready to drop straight into a book. There is no sign of the first notepad full of planning. The way things go round these parts, that may not be seen for another four years, and won't that make a nice prompt for another lovely blog post?

It has been somewhere between four and five years since I saw these pages. My heart hurtled into my throat. I almost didn't read it. After all this time, after writing 80,000 words of this novel, did I really want to look at this lost plan and discover that the route I was now carving through the story was inferior?

There are so many differences between what I had done then and what I'm writing now. It's like two people in completely separate places were given the same basic premise, the same opening scene and left to their own devices. In fact, that's exactly what happened.

There's a moral to all of this. Stick with it.

Character-wise, Polka (the main pig) is a bit more sure of himself. That's not a big deal, but in my current version, he's more introverted, not quite shy but definitely happiest when in his own world. This gives Polka a better arc, as against his wishes he is drawn out of this inner existence and into real life and it's challenges. A bigger change is in the character of his best friend, Nayt, who in the early version is a lot more brutish (hogish?) and ends up turning against Polka. Their relationship is far stronger and more nuanced in the new version, I'm pleased to say. There are characters in the old plan that aren't in the new write, and vice versa.

It's amazing to see how differently all the events in this later section of the book pan out. Without that first notepad of scene planning, I will never know quite how I got to the situations I scribbled out in notepad two. The only thing I know for definite about the lost notepad number one is that the first two scenes are exactly the same. There is a flashback to a young Polka being locked in the cellar by his particularly hardcore Grandfather Pig (known as Grandhog), and then the story picks up with Polka and Nayt heading to a public speech by the leader of the city. After this, the tracks diverge.

 Beware: spoilers for a novel that doesn't exist.

The biggest difference by far, however, is in the matter of good and evil. The antagonists are very clearly bad from the outset, Polka doesn't seem to ever make a bad decision, the forces of good are unquestionable. In the version I'm writing now, everything's shaded in greyscale. Even the 'goodies' have done things they aren't proud of, or are prepared to do unpleasant deeds to get where they need to be, or it's simply difficult to tell which side they're on. There are those who would overthrow, but can we believe that they would do a better job?

I feel, in a way, like I've made contact with an earlier version of myself. Much has happened in real life between Then-me and Now-me. Then-me seems a little more idealistic than Now-me (although that too is shades of grey - I've always been something of a cynical bastard). I've long held the belief that the past is gone, it trundles away as soon as it's been seen, but I've stumbled upon myself from the year 2014, and although it's a bit of a one-way conversation, it's fascinating all the same.

So, what am I trying to say to you here? I want you to know that your work is incredibly rare (unless you are copying something someone else has sweated over and simply changing a word or two here or there - shame on you!). There is only you who could write exactly what you are writing in this moment. Even the you from four years ago, four months ago, four weeks ago, maybe even four days ago couldn't do what you are doing today.

Don't wonder whether you would write better in the future. There are other stories waiting for you there. This story you have is for the Here and Now.

Get on with it, and let us all see what you've got.

Laters.