Gillian Andrews's Blog

After a very difficult time, I am really happy to be able to announce that the new book, set in a completely new universe to the others, is out, both in digital and trade paperback formats.

I hope you like Remeny’s story as much as I enjoyed writing it.  Let me know, and please consider leaving an amazon review … they are ever-more important!

THE STORY:

AN EPIC JOURNEY ACROSS AN ENTIRE PLANET …

… TO SAVE A NATION

… TO BRING A LEGEND TO LIFE

A 13-year-old slave girl working as a drudge finds herself catapulted into the centre of attention.

Remeny has no idea why she and her ill-assorted group of companions must undertake such a heart-stoppingly dangerous quest. But, as they flee brutal pursuit, she soon learns that

You can be a hero at any age

Can they ever reach Kelfor, and the astonishing secret it has kept safe for thousands of years? Will Remeny fulfill a mysterious destiny she doesn’t understand?

… Or will all the sacrifices be for nothing?

“A book the whole family can enjoy”

Here is the full paperback cover:[image error]

Here is the back cover of “Kelfor”, all ready to go for the book launch in a few weeks.  [image error]

Advance sales should be up and running on Amazon in a few days.

At last I can give you some news.  The new book, Kelfor, is slowly progressing again after a long break.  Publication is scheduled for July 2017.  Here is a sneak preview of the cover:

I absolutely love this cover.  Hope you do too.  Comments very welcome!

I have been having a lot of trouble figuring out which tense to write the new masterpiece in, so here is a (fun) way to figure it out. Not to be taken too seriously, but hope it helps somebody. I still don’t know, so it hasn’t really done me much good!!

ALGORITHM TO help you DECIDE between present and past TENSE AND first and third PERSON FOR WRITING A NOVEL

1)  Is the main character(MC) actually present for the whole book?  (Is MC going to be in place to witness all we need to know?  Is the action we need expressly to know about going to be done when MC always present?)

YES – 8 points

NO – 0 points

2) Do you want to show other peoples thoughts and opinions, give their inner reasonings, get deeply into many points of view? (As opposed to being able to show everybody by dialogue and observation through MC’s eyes)

YES – 0 points

No – 6 points

3) Are you writing for the young adult market?

YES – 4 points

No – 0 points

4) Are you writing for a series which will have the same MC in all the other books?

Yes – 8 points

No – 0 points

5) Is the book an action-packed movie type scenario or is it more intellectual and slow moving?

Action packed – 4 points

Intellectual and slow moving – 0 points

6) Which 2 of these 4 writers do you prefer to read? (If you don’t know any of those given below, substitute writers you like who write in the third person (0 points) or first person (4 points)

J K Rowling  0 points

Suzanne Collins 4 points

Trudi Cañavan 0 points

Veronica Roth 4 points

Yes 6 points

No 0 points

No 0 points

Yes 4 points

RESULTS third or first person:

0 to 23 points …  Initially try writing in Third person, change if you feel uncomfortable.

24 to 48 points … Initially try writing in First person, change if you feel uncomfortable.

NOW, PRESENT OR PAST TENSE?

Jo Thomas 4 points

Victoria Aveyard 4 points

Rick Riordan 0 points

Janet Evanovich 0 points

2 Are you writing for the modern young market or an older, more mature reader?

Young market  4 points

Older reader  0 points

Connect aggressively 8 points

Alternate with descriptive passages then up to crescendo 0 points

4 Do you want to keep the book as simple as possible (as opposed to using more tenses, more grammar) or do you enjoy using complex tenses and grammatical structures?

As simple as possible  8 Points

I enjoy using all the verbal tenses  0 points

5 Have you published with great success before in present tense?

Yes  +4 points

6 Have you published before with great success in past tense?

Yes  -4 points

7 Did your results in the first part advise you to start writing in third person or first person?

Third person 0 points

First person 6 points

RESULTS present or past tense

0 to 20  Start writing in past tense, change if you are uncomfortable

21 to 38  Start writing in present tense, change if you are uncomfortable

@Gillian Andrews 02/04/2016

I remember seeing a Nathan Lowell post years ago, when he reached 500,000 downloads on the Podiobooks site. I immediately envisioned the day I would be doing that very same thing. It would be the day I would be as popular a writer as he is, I thought. It seemed the epitome of success.

Except it never quite works out as you think, does it? About ten days ago I finally reached the magic half a million downloads. As dreamed of, here I am bragging about it. I should feel a success, surely?

Well, not so much. Of course I am delighted to reach that (for me) magic number. But I have learned that success is ALWAYS relative. It is like riches … wherever you are on the ladder, there are always more rungs to be climbed.  And my 500,000, four or five years later, has not put me anywhere near the rarified air Mr. Lowell – very deservedly – breathes.  But it IS a step on the way.

What constitutes success? Is it only to be measured in monetary terms? By that standard I am a VERY long way away, still. Or, these days, is it by download numbers?

Or perhaps, writers should only hanker after just a couple of good reviews. After all, from there to infinite sales may only be a matter of scale!

To all those of you have downloaded Valhai … and the rest of the series … THANK YOU! You have helped me to climb one more rung on the way up my own personal ladder!

=D

I read quite a lot on the kindle these days, but I still love my bookshelves. To actually have my own books mingling in there still gives me a boost every time I see them.

I don’t think anyone has the slightest idea of just how long it takes to record and edit an audiobook.  … Except me, of course!  I can tell you.

A 40 minute episode takes me nearly 8 hours to record, edit, add music to and then tag. And that only takes care of about 20 pages of a book.

Which means … seven books, at around 20 episodes per book … around eight MONTHS of work.  All that to give away the finished product on the Podiobooks site.

So why do I do it, you may well ask.  And believe me, sometimes I wonder myself! Especially when I am dragging myself out of bed at 6.00 am to get the recording in before the dawn chorus starts up.

There are two major … MAJOR … reasons.  The first is that I pick up around two to three errors PER PAGE doing it.  Since I don’t use a professional copy editor this is important. Recording really is a valuable tool if, for whatever reason, you have no choice but to do your own editing.  Even so, some things will slip through … but the finished product will be SO much better for that attention to detail.

The second reason is that I have found that the listeners who find you as an audiobook author are incredibly loyal.  They stay with you, your voice stays with them and although you don’t know them, they become part of your book “family”.  I am a marketing disaster and have never managed to make a “tribe” out of any of the people who have given me feedback about my books, but they have all become part of my Ammonite Galaxy family.  That doesn’t put bread on the table, but it does give you a warm feeling, and enough encouragement to go on when the days are long and the sales are short.

And here is the second one: Ammonite Stars follows on from Ammonite Planets by combining Pictoria and The Lost Animas. Books four and five in the Ammonite Galaxy series as a Kindle special.

There are now two Omnibus Editions out.  The first is called Ammonite Planets, and the second Ammonite Stars.

Here is the first.  It is over a thousand pages, and contains all of Valhai, Kwaide and Xiantha, so it is a good starting point for readers who don’t know the series.

Both these editions are Kindle-only specials.

The Namura Stone (Book Six in the series) is finally out.  At last!

Here are the links:

Audiobook

Kindle(US)

Paperback(US):

The next book in the series, Book 7, is called The Trimorphs, and will be out some time in 2015.