It’s been a long and slightly irritating road. A road that has led me down a distressingly large number of side roads leading to dead ends, but Watcher on the Water, the second of the main series for Ice Age in Scarlet, is finally ready for pre-orders.
So that means waiting 48 hours before it appears on Amazon I suppose.
I’ve got a couple of learning points out of this experience.
The first is that there’s always going to be changes you want to make when you’re getting a book out. Particularly if you’re a Pantser and there’s no written plan for what the book’s supposed to be. The changes seem entirely sensible and you’re undoubtedly pretty enthusiastic about them. Yet all they’re really doing is adulterating what’s already there and wasting sales time.
For me I’ve been threading and unthreading extra ‘clever’ plotlines through Watcher for what seems like, and is actually, months. Very few of them worked, and very few of them have made it into the story. Other than Tony. Tony’s still there, bless his little cuboid socks.
It’s back to that over complication thing. All of those ‘but what about it I add this twist’ sort of points tend to end up putting you back ten steps in getting your book out which is after all what you were trying to do. And to add insult to injury the version of you who wrote the book had some pretty good ideas about it too.
You’re adding coffee flavouring to a cheese soufflé, for God’s sake stop!
The second learning point is around social media. One of our friends is knocking it out of the park with TikTok at the moment and that’s reflected in her sales.
If you’re going to sell books, get a TikTok presence, and go at it hard.
Having found that I don’t actually need to do a silly dance or appear in person I’m seriously considering starting down that route. After all, who doesn’t overly fussy writing quotes set to random pop music playing on their phone?#
And incidentally if you get a chance to buy a book called ‘Kill Sequence’ by Steve Griffiths – do it. Wonderful thriller from a great author. I’ve submitted a five star review which is also caught in Amazon review hell. Link below!
Signing off. Pre-order link for Watcher to follow once it’s jumped the Amazon hoops.
Ice Age in Scarlet 