December 25 update
I’m getting ready to say farewell to 2025.
It’s been a cold but mostly clear Christmas. All the ‘kids’ were here with Pearlyn and me, but they’ve now departed to the more exciting opportunities of London for the New Year. (I greet the New Year when I wake up on the 1st Jan). The house is very quiet!
The ‘kids’ – the youngest is 27. Way to feel old.
How on earth did you get here?
I have told the story in bits before, but I guess I have some new readers and a few of them have emailed me recently to ask this question. It makes sense to have a place to point people, so here it is.
I always wanted to write, but I also wanted a family, house, car, food, wine, hobbies, holidays, etc. and in the 1980s, getting those aspirations to line up was difficult. So I designed computers and business systems, then became an entrepreneur. I sort of forgot the writing.
In the early 2000s, I sold the business I’d established in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sector, and worked for the purchasing company, managing one of the healthcare support systems that I’d helped establish.
In December 2010, I was, absolutely literally, walking out of the office door for my Christmas vacation when I got a call. The division I was managing was being sold to the British Medical Association, and they wanted all the staff. Except me. This was my termination notice and a warning that I could not tell my staff. The deal was to be dated on the first business day of the new year. I would still be on skiing holiday in Canada at the time.
I insisted that the staff could not hear it from some impersonal email, so I was given permission to call them just before the email, as long as I told no one else, not even my wife! The cell signal in the Canadian apartment was crap, and I had to call my team managers early in the morning in the UK, so in the middle of the night I crept out, went down the admin center where the signal was reliable and made the calls.
My wife, Pearlyn, was waiting when I got back. “Who were you phoning?” Lol!
I explained I was going to be jobless and was surprised when she took it so calmly. “You always wanted to write,” she said. “Well, this is your chance.”
And it was the chance that it hadn’t been in 1980, because the environment for writers had changed with the introduction of the Amazon self-publishing schemes. In fact, with 20/20 retrospective hindsight, I should have resigned my job and started writing soon after the Amazon scheme was launched in 2007-8.
On the last day of June 2011, I left the BMA’s office, got on a plane with Pearlyn and we flew to Denver, where my first novel would be located. We stayed a couple of weeks. I wrote early in the mornings and late at night. The days were set aside for exploring, and if I took research notes, I did it surreptitiously. 😁
Six months later, the book had to be split into two, but Sleight of Hand was ready by Christmas. Again, with 20/20 hindsight, I shouldn’t have spent the early months of 2011 trying to interest traditional publishers first, but by the summer, I’d had enough. SoH was edited and I had a cover, and Hidden Trump would only be a few months behind. I released SoH on the 1st August because that was my late father’s birthday. Hidden Trump followed on 20th December.
They did well enough that I knew I wasn’t going back into any other employment. Even if some of my decisions since then have been ‘non-optimal’, I’m glad Pearlyn dared me to take the leap in the early, early morning of 1st January 2010, and that I took that leap.
(If there’s something like the above you want to know about, ask)
Progress
Slow and steady on book 9. My latest prediction is that I will be finished by the end of Q1, but I can’t schedule editing until I know when I’ll be done, and Lauren, my editor, is very busy with her own writing career. (I’m one of only two people she’s kept on in her editing business, and she’s related to the other one!).
Why so slow? There are just so many threads to start to gather back up for the series arc, and yet I have to keep the pace going for each individual book. I can’t do an info-dump and just tick things off on the list.
End Q1. As ever, take my predictions with a handful of salt.
Translations
The big debate in translations at the moment is AI. There are translation programs which claim x% or y% accuracy. So far, what I’ve found is they fail at around z%, where z is a much lower figure.
To take examples, German, French and Spanish are all gendered languages. AI always has problems from English into these languages. Then, all languages have idiomatic use in both dialogue and narration. Very seldom is the same phrasing used in the target language.
As a trivial example, from SoH: ‘It was hot, maybe one of the last few days of Indian summer, with the heat coming off the asphalt in waves.’ AI will translate ‘Indian summer’ literally as ‘verano indio’. For the Spanish translation my editor, Cinta, changed that to ‘veranillo de San Martín’, which Google understands when translating from Spanish to English, but will not offer when translating from English to Spanish. Major or minor, these sorts of errors or idiomatic failures in the target language will reduce the appreciation, possibly to the point where the reader gives up.
The next step up is to pay a native speaker to edit the translated text, and that is the way many translators now work, but you’re getting what you pay for.
My German Urban Fantasy is translated by Ute. She works the old-fashioned way and my feedback from readers is she really gets into the story, and she is top class, so I’m not going to change her. My German Science Fiction is done by AI and editing, and again, the feedback from readers is that Norbert is doing an excellent job, so I’m happy there too.
My French Urban Fantasy translators are the same contractors who worked for Bragelonne to translate the first 7 novels & the prequel, and their work is top class. I’m not going to change. I did test out AI+editing for one of the novellas (Change of Regime), and now I have to get that fixed. I have a couple of contacts for French translators to work on my Science Fiction series, and I’ll be talking to them in January.
Bite Back Book 8, Snake Eyes in English, L’Oeil du Serpent in French, is ready and my team is working on a launch plan for February.
Audio
I’ve asked Emily to schedule a re-recording of Sleight of Hand. The initial narrator isn’t up to the standard of the rest of the series. It will mean I lose my reviews etc., which sucks.
I’m also looking at the Science Fiction series. I had Maria Askew narrate A Name Among the Stars, but I’m not really happy and I don’t want to get into a similar situation as I have with SoH.
If you listen to SF audio, who do you think would do the best job? All recommendations welcome. Or… would it be weird if I just got Emily to do it all? What do you think?
In my head, Zara and Jan are quite different. If you’ve read the books, please give me your take on how the narrators should sound. (Where the later books have multiple points of view, I would like multiple narrators, but the cost is prohibitive.)
Format
You probably don’t notice how books are formatted. Mine are idiosyncratic. 😊
I can’t find any system that completely suits me, but Vellum seems to get most of it and once set up, it is easy. All my books will go into Vellum during the course of next year, and that will allow me to have one single source text, whether the output is required for an eBook or print book. That is a huge saving whenever an edit is required.
Series outlook
Bite Back – Amber Farrell Paranormal PI – 8 major books written of 11 planned. 4 novellas written, and I may create a couple more to tidy up loose threads.
Bian’s Tale – 1 written and 6 planned.
Among The Stars – 2 written and 4 planned.
The Long Way Home - 4 written and 6 planned.
(If you want more details about any of the above, just ask)
It’s been a cold but mostly clear Christmas. All the ‘kids’ were here with Pearlyn and me, but they’ve now departed to the more exciting opportunities of London for the New Year. (I greet the New Year when I wake up on the 1st Jan). The house is very quiet!
The ‘kids’ – the youngest is 27. Way to feel old.
How on earth did you get here?
I have told the story in bits before, but I guess I have some new readers and a few of them have emailed me recently to ask this question. It makes sense to have a place to point people, so here it is.
I always wanted to write, but I also wanted a family, house, car, food, wine, hobbies, holidays, etc. and in the 1980s, getting those aspirations to line up was difficult. So I designed computers and business systems, then became an entrepreneur. I sort of forgot the writing.
In the early 2000s, I sold the business I’d established in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sector, and worked for the purchasing company, managing one of the healthcare support systems that I’d helped establish.
In December 2010, I was, absolutely literally, walking out of the office door for my Christmas vacation when I got a call. The division I was managing was being sold to the British Medical Association, and they wanted all the staff. Except me. This was my termination notice and a warning that I could not tell my staff. The deal was to be dated on the first business day of the new year. I would still be on skiing holiday in Canada at the time.
I insisted that the staff could not hear it from some impersonal email, so I was given permission to call them just before the email, as long as I told no one else, not even my wife! The cell signal in the Canadian apartment was crap, and I had to call my team managers early in the morning in the UK, so in the middle of the night I crept out, went down the admin center where the signal was reliable and made the calls.
My wife, Pearlyn, was waiting when I got back. “Who were you phoning?” Lol!
I explained I was going to be jobless and was surprised when she took it so calmly. “You always wanted to write,” she said. “Well, this is your chance.”
And it was the chance that it hadn’t been in 1980, because the environment for writers had changed with the introduction of the Amazon self-publishing schemes. In fact, with 20/20 retrospective hindsight, I should have resigned my job and started writing soon after the Amazon scheme was launched in 2007-8.
On the last day of June 2011, I left the BMA’s office, got on a plane with Pearlyn and we flew to Denver, where my first novel would be located. We stayed a couple of weeks. I wrote early in the mornings and late at night. The days were set aside for exploring, and if I took research notes, I did it surreptitiously. 😁
Six months later, the book had to be split into two, but Sleight of Hand was ready by Christmas. Again, with 20/20 hindsight, I shouldn’t have spent the early months of 2011 trying to interest traditional publishers first, but by the summer, I’d had enough. SoH was edited and I had a cover, and Hidden Trump would only be a few months behind. I released SoH on the 1st August because that was my late father’s birthday. Hidden Trump followed on 20th December.
They did well enough that I knew I wasn’t going back into any other employment. Even if some of my decisions since then have been ‘non-optimal’, I’m glad Pearlyn dared me to take the leap in the early, early morning of 1st January 2010, and that I took that leap.
(If there’s something like the above you want to know about, ask)
Progress
Slow and steady on book 9. My latest prediction is that I will be finished by the end of Q1, but I can’t schedule editing until I know when I’ll be done, and Lauren, my editor, is very busy with her own writing career. (I’m one of only two people she’s kept on in her editing business, and she’s related to the other one!).
Why so slow? There are just so many threads to start to gather back up for the series arc, and yet I have to keep the pace going for each individual book. I can’t do an info-dump and just tick things off on the list.
End Q1. As ever, take my predictions with a handful of salt.
Translations
The big debate in translations at the moment is AI. There are translation programs which claim x% or y% accuracy. So far, what I’ve found is they fail at around z%, where z is a much lower figure.
To take examples, German, French and Spanish are all gendered languages. AI always has problems from English into these languages. Then, all languages have idiomatic use in both dialogue and narration. Very seldom is the same phrasing used in the target language.
As a trivial example, from SoH: ‘It was hot, maybe one of the last few days of Indian summer, with the heat coming off the asphalt in waves.’ AI will translate ‘Indian summer’ literally as ‘verano indio’. For the Spanish translation my editor, Cinta, changed that to ‘veranillo de San Martín’, which Google understands when translating from Spanish to English, but will not offer when translating from English to Spanish. Major or minor, these sorts of errors or idiomatic failures in the target language will reduce the appreciation, possibly to the point where the reader gives up.
The next step up is to pay a native speaker to edit the translated text, and that is the way many translators now work, but you’re getting what you pay for.
My German Urban Fantasy is translated by Ute. She works the old-fashioned way and my feedback from readers is she really gets into the story, and she is top class, so I’m not going to change her. My German Science Fiction is done by AI and editing, and again, the feedback from readers is that Norbert is doing an excellent job, so I’m happy there too.
My French Urban Fantasy translators are the same contractors who worked for Bragelonne to translate the first 7 novels & the prequel, and their work is top class. I’m not going to change. I did test out AI+editing for one of the novellas (Change of Regime), and now I have to get that fixed. I have a couple of contacts for French translators to work on my Science Fiction series, and I’ll be talking to them in January.
Bite Back Book 8, Snake Eyes in English, L’Oeil du Serpent in French, is ready and my team is working on a launch plan for February.
Audio
I’ve asked Emily to schedule a re-recording of Sleight of Hand. The initial narrator isn’t up to the standard of the rest of the series. It will mean I lose my reviews etc., which sucks.
I’m also looking at the Science Fiction series. I had Maria Askew narrate A Name Among the Stars, but I’m not really happy and I don’t want to get into a similar situation as I have with SoH.
If you listen to SF audio, who do you think would do the best job? All recommendations welcome. Or… would it be weird if I just got Emily to do it all? What do you think?
In my head, Zara and Jan are quite different. If you’ve read the books, please give me your take on how the narrators should sound. (Where the later books have multiple points of view, I would like multiple narrators, but the cost is prohibitive.)
Format
You probably don’t notice how books are formatted. Mine are idiosyncratic. 😊
I can’t find any system that completely suits me, but Vellum seems to get most of it and once set up, it is easy. All my books will go into Vellum during the course of next year, and that will allow me to have one single source text, whether the output is required for an eBook or print book. That is a huge saving whenever an edit is required.
Series outlook
Bite Back – Amber Farrell Paranormal PI – 8 major books written of 11 planned. 4 novellas written, and I may create a couple more to tidy up loose threads.
Bian’s Tale – 1 written and 6 planned.
Among The Stars – 2 written and 4 planned.
The Long Way Home - 4 written and 6 planned.
(If you want more details about any of the above, just ask)
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