​I can now report that pushing the ‘Publish’ button is both a terrifying and exhilarating experience for a first-time indie writer. It's an action I delayed through fear for such a long time. But now it’s done and I'm wondering why I was so hesitant.
I won't lie and say that Gods of Fire hit the market hot and flew off the e-shelves like a rocket. It didn't. For a solid 48 hours I sat at a single sale. I knew who bought it and I love her for it (and no, it wasn't my Mum). A week later, sales aren't meteoric, but a steady trickle of people have paid over their money and purchased my book.
MY BOOK.
​I still love those words. I love being able to tell people how they can buy my book. It's thrilling!
I know I haven't done the launch quite right. I didn't do a proper cover reveal, I didn't set up pre-orders, I didn't send out advance reader copies for reviews on launch, and my marketing plan consists of scribbled notes on a piece of paper that is drifting around my desk somewhere. To make matters more interesting, I launched in a week when my calendar was full of pre-Xmas social events, leaving me little time to write up material for my lovely author friends who'd offered to host me on their blogs.
I've tried not to become a one-dimensional social media publicity machine. Instead, I'm drip feeding my “buy my book" plugs in and around my usual tweets and updates, and advertising on promotional pages and feeds one at a time, rather than flooding them all at once.
I've ordered some postcards with the cover and buy link on one side and the blurb and my bio on the back. I intent to drop them around the cafes, restaurants and shops I frequent. I'm also planning to send press releases to a few of the local newspapers, not sure how successful that'll be, but no harm trying!
I'm not driven by best-seller lists, what I want is to find my readership and achieve steady sales to people who will come back for more.
I'm sure I've made some standard rookie mistakes, but I've published my book and am building my confidence and gaining experience, so I do it better for the next one. This is my marathon, not my sprint.
But...if like 1000 of you decide to buy Gods of Fire tomorrow, read it and leave a review, then I'll be delirious with joy!

I’ve been thinking about the role of the antagonist in stories. A super quick search of the interwebs revealed four main types of antagonist: Evil, Opposing, Superior and Internal (honestly, I’m sure there are other classifications, but this serves my need for now). They’re all interesting and worthy of deeper consideration, but it’s the evil antagonist who is most relevant to where my musings have been taking me.
The evil antagonist is the one who is evil for the sake of being evil. This character may have a back-story that gives them some excuse, but generally it’s not critical to understand their why. All that matters is how they satisfy their greed, hunger for power and uncompromising drive to achieve their nefarious goal at any cost, and how they torment the hero of the story along the way.
Often, we feel nothing but hatred for this character, they represent the worst traits of humanity distilled and concentrated for effect. No-one feels empathy with the likes of Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter, Sauron in Lord of the Rings, Darth Sidious in Star Wars, or Doctor Smith in the revamped Lost in Space. They have no redeeming features.
But there is another kind of evil antagonist—the trickster. They’re usually a secondary antagonist to some greater evil, either facilitating the main antagonist, or confounding the hero for their own means. Yes, they’re evil, but they have moments of vulnerability that fool not only the hero, but us as well, into empathy. We can almost see ourselves in their place, even if just for a moment.
My favourite examples of the trickster are The Master/Missy from Doctor Who, Loki in all his incarnations, Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes and, most recently, Ms Wardwell (otherwise known as Lilith or Madam Satan) who was the sole reason I watched the entire first season of the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina in one sitting!
Of all the antagonists I adore tricksters above all others! What I love most about these characters is their intelligence and wit. So, it’s really no surprise that I’m incorporating one into my current work in progress (known for now as ‘The Japanese Story’). My trickster is a white fox who acts as a messenger between humans and Gods. He’s a fun character to write and I hope I do him justice as his role develops.
 

I’m a very visual person and appreciate good art.
Famous artists feature in my ancestry and many of my immediate family paint and draw well. I don’t!
While I have some skill at technical drawing anything requiring a free hand and colour is beyond me. I can compose a visually attractive photo—but it has to stand on its own as, to my eternal chagrin, I’ve never mastered the art of Photoshop, Gimp or any other image manipulating software.
Anyone who follows me on social media knows that I have a particular eye for imagery. I know what works and what doesn’t and have ruffled feathers in the past when it came to the cover designs for a series of anthologies I was involved with.
With all that in mind, today I went ahead and tried to make a cover for my upcoming novel ‘Gods of Fire’. This was a bad, terrible, not at all good idea, because:

• I have a VERY clear idea of what I want the cover to look like
• I don’t have any images that are remotely close to what I want, nor can I find any
• I thought I could learn Canva in a morning
• I can’t even find a font I like

All I’ve managed to achieve is to make myself frustrated and grumpy.
This is clearly an aspect of self-publishing that I need to leave to the professionals, just like I did with the editing (shout out to Bowlerfern in that department). So, I’m now waiting for a few book cover artist/designers to get back to me.
Back to writing for me.

For over a year I’ve been sending the manuscript of my first complete novel, “Gods of Fire”, out to agents seeking representation. To say that it has not been a success is a wild understatement. Yet, I remain convinced I’ve written a good story that will appeal to readers who love both fantasy and erotica.

So, I’ve launched myself into the unknown, but thankfully well-charted, waters of the self-publication process.

A complete novice, my first step was to send out a call to my writerly colleagues on Facebook and Twitter. This resulted in a mixed bag of responses, most of them encouraging and many with some great advice on how to get started. I also spent at least a day poking around the internet, looking for resources and recommendations for success.

The two main pieces of advice that have popped up over and over again are:

1. Get a professional editor to work on your manuscript;
2. Your cover is critical, and again professional help is highly recommended.

I patted myself on the back for already having ticked off number one, and I’m chasing up a cover artist to help me with number two.

My next challenge was to convert my Word document into the right format for a book. Again, two main recommendations emerged, Vellum and Draft2Digital. Vellum is for Mac users, which I am not, so the decision was easy. It took me a day of trial and error, formatting my manuscript and testing the different options in Draft2Digital to get a look I’m happy with.

Within the space of just a couple of days, I’d gone from terrified and completely ignorant, to sufficiently confident in my ability to create a product and get it into the market. But of course, that’s just the beginning of the process.

So watch this space!