Into the Lion's Den

As readers of my monthly blog will know, I started writing and researching a book about Occupied Paris in 1940. I am currently 15000 words into the story and still not sure about where I am going with it. I thought it might be a good idea, seeing as I have shelved my Emma Carney pen name for now, to consider an editor to make sure I produce a finely tuned novel. For that reason, I consulted with Reedsy.com: a well-known and respected professional organisation in the self-publishing world. They gave me a huge list of editor options, which I was able to narrow down to those most relevant to my book. As a result, I nominated five editors, supplied them with the first chapter (2500 words), and waited for the quotes to roll in. But I had to ask myself: what was I really expecting? That’s when reality bites.

I received quotes ranging from 2000 – 9000 Euros. That knocked me back, I can tell you. I felt as though I’d wandered close to a group of hungry lions. Wow! It just shows how much, or how little I know about the real world of self-publishing. There are a lot of people out there (good luck to them) making a lot of money helping wannabes like me onto the first rung of the ladder. No, I know I’m not a wanna-be, but after reading one editor’s description of my sample chapter, I felt violated. I know I am not a bad writer, but I must be on a different planet.

Let me put that in perspective for you. I had a chap working on my house, a guy I know and have socialised with. I went out front to do some work in the garden and my friend stopped me and told me he was reading my book The Boy From Berlin. He said even though he knew I was a writer; he didn’t realise what kind of writer I was but he couldn’t put my book down. He said it was brilliant and thoroughly enjoyed it. Now, this is a working-class bloke who hasn’t been to university except living in the university of life, but he enjoyed my book. He probably didn’t know (or care) that I might have put a comma in where it should have been a semi-colon. He wouldn’t have been aware of the finer details that editors expose. No, he was a reader who simply enjoyed reading my book. And this is why I get the feeling that editors will never see your book as a means of entertainment for Joe Public, but an exercise in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and phrasing and probably have difficulty in not adding the dreaded “see me” in red ink at the end of the session.

My daughter-in-law, Jackie, gave me the latest Robert Galbraith book (J.K. Rowling), The Running Grave. It’s about 800 pages long. Jackie said it was brilliant. I started reading it and really struggled. In the end, I had to give up. I probably got through seven chapters. I thought it was tedious, stuffed with all kinds of unnecessary detail and descriptions, and too many names to remember as well — most of which I’ve always been advised to moderate and/or avoid. So there you go, two different opinions. How the editors coped with the editing process I’ve no idea. However, I do accept that J.K. Rowling is an extremely talented and gifted writer and probably has a brain she should donate to science when her days are over.

One thing I’ve learned this year, and something I’ve known forever, it seems, is that I lose a lot of money on my books for one reason or another. I make more money per annum from my Premium Bonds than I do from writing. But when I sell a book, my smile gets wider each time. One of my thrillers, The Devil’s Trinity (which I have mentioned before in my blog) is still selling on Kobo through Draft2Digital. This month I have sold five, which is about par for the course and has been for well over a year now, but it always puts a smile on my face.

So where do I go from here? I’ve opened a free account with Mailerlite to see if I can rebuild a subscriber list. I used to have 1500, but they all disappeared when I picked up my digital pen three years after I lost my lovely Pat. I actually cancelled my account with Mailchimp because I couldn’t see the point in paying for something that wasn’t working. I will have to offer a book in exchange for someone to subscribe, but I expect that anyway.

On the domestic front, like most of us, my work in the garden has been seriously reduced because of the weather. I travelled up to Norfolk to see my elder brother, Jim. Had my eyes examined (should have been my head!) and my eye drops changed. Now my nose runs all the time, my eyes keep watering and I have to stay with these drops until I see the specialist in December. I have put a blue screen filter on my laptop now, which actually helps.

And another string to my bow? I had to attend a Speed Awareness Course this month. I’d been caught doing 35 mph in a 30 mph limit up in Lincolnshire. So now I am known to the Lincolnshire Constabulary. The course was good, very informative, and, in a sense, successful because I will always have it in the back of my mind whenever I’m driving through a country village after using a high-speed, empty country road.

I’ve just looked out of the window and it’s raining again. Reminds me of the song by Super Tramp. I bought a couple of their albums in the Seventies. Loved them: terrific group. Now it’s time for church and then back to the slower pace of writing.

But before I go, I need to mention my other project, which is to start collecting email addresses to add to my brand-new subscribers list. To attract them I will be giving away a copy of my Marcus Blake thriller, Where the Wicked Dwell in exchange for their email addresses. So if you want to add your name, let me know at info@michaelparkerbooks.com. Let’s see how many I can collect before Christmas. Wish me luck!

Going down Rabbit holes.

Blog post for September 2023

Once again I look back through my diary entries for September and see my daily entries are all very similar. The main difference is the amount of research I’m doing for a planned novel (maybe a series) about Occupied Paris in 1940. The books I’ve bought for my research cover the years 1940-1944, so the early stages of my research means I will only use about a third of the material, maybe less, for now. But before I talk about that, a little about what I did during September.

I took Tuppence to the vet to have her teeth cleaned. I’ve been advised on how I should clean her teeth. Trouble is — Tuppence won’t let me, simple as that. I give her a carrot or a small chew to help with the process anyway.

I took my sister-in-law, Sandy, out to lunch. Sandy was married to my younger brother, Arthur, who died shortly before my lovely Pat. Most times we talk about what we’ve been up to but invariably end up talking about our loss. We went to a dog friendly pub, which meant I could take Tuppence.

I also took Tuppence with me when I visited my granddaughter, Gemma and her family in Brighton. I took them (Great grandson, Orin, and Gemma’s partner, Max) out to lunch at the Laughing Dog Café in the marina. Lovely afternoon with them.

I decided to grow tomatoes this year. I ended up with that many I had to make soup. Not a good idea. The only thing it taught me, besides proving that I’m a lousy cook, is not to grow tomatoes again.

Another pleasing event was lunch with our No. 2 son, Terry, at Goodwood Aerodrome. We sat in the sunshine at the café beside the airfield watching the flying, eating chips and just having a thoroughly nice time. Tuppence was with us as well (natch).

But back to my world of books. I was working on a fourth Emma Carney Romance and had reached about 12000 words when I knew I was going nowhere with it; all I was doing was adding a series of events that were taking me down rabbit holes; certainly not a fitting way to find a reasonable end to a plausible story. I soldiered on for a while until I had my thoughts triggered by a film that had nothing to do with the war but referenced a fictional series about the war in Paris. This set me on the kind of research I used to do years ago before Social Media was invented. I went to the local library and ordered a book about Occupied Paris. I also searched online for more material and ended up buying four books: SOE ‘F’ Section heroines, (written by Sqdn. Leader Beryl E. Escott); When Paris Went Dark (Ronald Rosbottom); Paris in the Third Reich (David Pryce-Jones) and Americans in Paris 1940-1944 (Charles Glass). Three of the books were used, but I bought the paperback of the Library book because I knew I might have to make notations in it.

Looking through all that material might seem daunting, but much of it is repeated in all the books, and for my story, I only want to write about the early period leading up to June 1940 when German troops marched into the open, undefended city of Paris. I expect to spend a lot of time researching before I can put together a plan of how and where I want to start, and where I’ll finish. If I think I have made a success of this, I would be prepared to write a series (if I live long enough!). But the material is there along with fascinating characters and dramatic events. I have already written the opening chapter (twice), but even now I’m wondering if I should wait until I have everything written down that I need before plotting a story.

So looking ahead, my weeks will be filled with domestic chores, walking Tuppence, going to church, falling asleep in the chair, watching TV, playing my piano and missing my lovely Pat. Between all this, I hope to be writing my next full length novel.

Wish me luck!

Pressure; what pressure?

Looking back at the month of August and using my diary for pointers, I can see how busy I actually was, when I usually feel I sometimes just dribble my daily life away. Not so; I jotted down a list of pointers before starting this and ended up with sixteen bullet points without including my routine life of domesticity.

One of the major occurrences was a week with my friend, Pauline, and a visit from my grandson from the USA with his wife, but more about that later. One decision I made was to shelve the current Emma Carney Romance I’ve been writing. It was to be the fourth Romance of five I promised myself I would do this year using the Emma Carney pen name. But I soon came to the conclusion that I was simply writing a series of disconnected scenes that were supposed to lead to a well written and thoughtful Romance; not so, and as a consequence I came to the inevitable decision to shelve it despite being twelve thousand words into the story. Was I being brave or what? But there’s a twist: I started another. Brave or stupid?

For some reason, mainly due to outside influences, I decided to write a Romance set in Occupied France. In Paris actually. My heroine is a young French woman, Charlotte de la Cour. I decided to use some old fashioned research and have ordered a couple of books about the women who worked undercover with the French Resistance. One of the books arrived a couple of days ago. The other is due today. I have also registered with the British Newspaper Archives in the hope that I can add to my research. All this took my mind back to the days when my research consisted mainly of the local library and contacting other people and places for information. And although it’s of no consequence now, I met a distant family relative in 1961 who had been awarded a medal by the French for her work with the Resistance. If only I could time travel back to that meeting and get some first-hand information.

But, leaving my writing aside, let me tell you about other highlights of my month. I travelled up to Lincolnshire and brought our friend, Pauline, down here for a week. Pat and I first met Pauline and her husband, Brian, after we moved to Spain in 1997. Brian passed away shortly after my lovely Pat. While Pauline was here, my grandson, Sam, came over for a visit with his wife, Taryn. They stayed for a night and we enjoyed a meal and a pint of Guiness at our local watering hole. During that week, we went over to visit our son, John and his wife, Bryony, for a BBQ. It happened to be the third anniversary of Pat’s passing, so we raised a glass of English sparkling Nyetimber wine in her honour.

Another highlight was going to Chichester with our boy, Terry, to meet a Harrier jump jet enthusiast, Chris, who was collecting the signatures of as many Harrier pilots as he could for his collection of paintings and text books. As Terry had been a Harrier pilot, it made for a very interesting couple of hours talking about his career, the highs and the lows etc. And it was interesting to see some of the signatures that Chris had collected, even down to the late John Farley who was the Hawker Sidley test pilot who became known as Mister Harrier.

Want another highlight? Pauline showed me how to make batter. We bought some white fish and I cooked it (under supervision of course) for a fish and chip lunch. Another? I almost got caught in a WhatsApp scam for £4000. Fortunately it all fell apart before I parted with the money. But it left me feeling basically naked to realise that I could fall for a trick like that. I thanked God for looking out for me.

And there’s more: I actually flew an A380 Airbus simulator, courtesy of EasyJet and my son, Terry, who is a training captain there. EasyJet had a family day at their facility near Gatwick. Terry was given two, one hour slots, which meant one hour for his youngest boy, Freddie, and the other hour for me. Freddie flew it almost perfectly, but we won’t say too much about yours truly.

And I can’t leave my highlights there without mentioning the Lionesses World Cup performance. I watched and enjoyed them all. It was a pity we lost to Spain in the final, but as we all know; there can only be one winner. But the Girls won the love and respect of most football (and non-football) fans. Me certainly.

I’m growing tomatoes. Well, trying. Another of my brilliant ideas that will probably wither on the vine (if you’ll pardon the pun!). They might be ripe by Christmas if they haven’t rotted by then.

But back to my books. My best selling book, The Devil’s Trinity, is still selling, but the numbers are going down. Nothing else of mine is selling, but that’s because I’ve stopped advertising (wasting my money) and have no email subscribers anymore. I have to admit I’ve come to the end of trying to achieve a productive output of books and pile into promoting them; I never seem to make any headway anyway, although I have coughed up a substantial amount with another promoter to promote the book.

Going back to my change of direction with the Emma Carney Romances, I got quite excited and keen to start writing about Occupied Paris. So much so that I wrote the first 1500 words in one sitting without even having started my research. Needless to say I rewrote the sequence once I had some proper facts on which to relate. So far I’m about 3500 words in and seeing so many different ways this story can go. But unlike the real heroines who worked with the SOE and the OSS, my girl Charlotte is a figment of my imagination, and I have to be careful that I don’t wander into too many tales of derring-do, which could be something of a drag. And no, she won’t be able to save France; I can’t cram four years of German occupation into 80,000 words, but we’ll give them a good run for their money and rustle up a romance in the meantime.

Wish me luck!