Nell Grey's Blog - Posts Tagged "fiction"

Solstice was downloaded 140 times over the two days it was offered free as part of its Kindle Select promotion - hopefully someone will read it and give it a star or two.

I wonder though, with so many free books out there, whether I can hope for actual sales in any significant number - perhaps not. As a risk-free way for readers to try out authors new to them it might work, although the 'Look Inside the Book' feature is usually enough for me as a reader to decide if I'd like to buy the book.

Only time will tell, I guess.

Well, Memoirs of an Ostrich picked up its first Goodreads rating of one star - apparently on Christmas Day. Didn't like it is fair enough - I've read many books I didn't like - and looking through the reviewer's bookshelf I decided that I'm happy to be in the company of the other single-starred authors, most of whom seem to have an average rating of 4+. It would have been good to have a word or two to keep the little star company though.

Made a start today on editing and formatting Solitary Pleasures to publish as a Kindle book. It has been out of print a while now - it'll be good to give it a lovely new cover and a fresh lease of life.

I began reading through the file this afternoon and at 10.30pm I'm more than half way through, editing lightly on the way. It's wonderful how time allows one to see more clearly what needs to be done - not much, but as this was my first published novel and written a good few years ago, a slight polish is definitely in order.

It strikes me how concerned I was with causality when I wrote Solitary Pleasures - perhaps I still am. The butterfly flapping its wings. Mattie and her damaged family live on between the pages, but aren't we all damaged to some extent? I think I'm in love with some of them all over again...

This week I've been re-editing The Golden Web, the first book in what was intended as a pagan trilogy. I've been reading and making slight alterations to the print copy rather than the file, and finding the process very strange - as if coming across the work of an unknown author for the first time and recognizing myself in a past life, which is of course exactly (well, maybe not exactly), what's happening. I'd forgotten many details, many twists and turns and the strange atmosphere created by the voice of the narrator. No wonder I was exhausted - paganed-out - when the final page had been completed. I'd lived it.

But that's the point and why I feel compelled to republish as a Kindle book. Because I realized fairly soon after the second edition had been published that I'd got it all wrong. I should have rested and waited until I'd finished the sequel so it could become the second part of the original book, between the same two covers.

As for the planned trilogy, the ending of Three Magic Women rendered a third book superfluous, although a character from it spoke to me and I began a new and separate work, yet to be completed.

So today, and not without some trepidation, I'll open the pages of Three Magic Women and hear again Una's odd voice, walk with her through the land and relive her journey. Wish me luck.

It has been a long journey, interrupted by both life and death, but at last Incarnations of Crow has been published as a Kindle. I think this will be my final novel - my eyes have suffered in the writing, editing and formatting of this one, and I still have art projects to complete. As yet I have no reviews, probably due to my dislike of social media and self-promotion in any form, however well-disguised. It doesn't help that Amazon assumes that if an author chooses to tag their work as occult, then that work must come under the designation of horror which, although there are some dark happenings, this book is not. No matter, it is out in the world now and can simply be what it is - imperfect no doubt and certainly idiosyncratic - peculiarly mine. :)