Doesn't time fly when you're having fun?

A year ago tonight I stood in the Reivers Fish Bar in Duns, waiting for our fish suppers and scrolling through Twitter on my mobile. Suddenly a tweet came in that mentioned me. It was from my good friend and fellow Borders writer Peter Flannery saying he'd just bought a copy of my first novel, No Stranger to Death. 

I paid for the takeaway and wandered out in a bit of a daze. I was a published author!

The last 12 months have been great. I've not made a fortune (I didn't expect to) but I’ve earned more than what I spent on the book’s cover design, editing and formatting. There have been more thrills than spills, far more highs than lows, and I feel optimistic about my future. So here’s a whistle-stop tour of what has happened and what I've learned.

A few things that have happened to No Stranger to Death

• Has 35 reviews on Amazon UK, 32 of them 5 stars, and an average of 4.17 from 24 ratings on Goodreads.
• Highest UK Kindle ranking at full price was 17 in Scottish crime fiction on 26^th December 2013
• Highest UK Kindle rankings on 99p Kindle Countdown Deals were 2 in Noir crime fiction, 5 in Scottish crime fiction, 7 in British crime fiction and 902 in the entire Kindle store on 27^th July 2014.
• Has sold enough copies for me to join the Society of Authors.
• Has been awarded an Indie B.R.A.G. Medallion.
• Has been reviewed on numerous websites and blogs, even being made Book of the Month by Crime Book Club.
• Was the 14^th most borrowed title in Scottish Borders libraries in May/June 2014.
• Has gained me four appearances in my local paper, the Berwickshire News.
• Has been read by a local book group who invited me to attend their discussion about it (they liked it ­– phew!).
• Its wonderful cover, designed by Kim McGillivray, received a gold star and high praise in a prestigious ebook cover competition.
• It has been read by my 80-year-old Dad, who never reads fiction and was a bit shocked.

A few things I’ve learned

• Once the actual writing is done, self-publishing is about decisions on countless issues such as pricing, layout, cover design. And only you can make them. This is both empowering and terrifying. 
  
• As with many things in life, publishing a book takes far longer than you expect, if you want to stand any chance of getting it right.
• Amazon moves in a mysterious way, its wonders to perform. Trust no one who claims to fully understand it.
• Small details are important. For example, ebooks are subject to VAT in the UK. If you input your price at £1.92, the price the customer pays is actually £1.98, whereas to achieve £1.99 you have to input £1.93. What difference does a penny make, I hear you ask. Well, a book can’t be on a Kindle Countdown offer if it’s priced at less than £1.99, so some authors (cough) have had to delay promotions because of that penny.
• Self-promotion is hard. I do it with what a friend calls ‘a very light touch’ because I don’t want to annoy people, and as a result probably don’t promote my book enough. But I can live with that.
• We all know not everyone will like our books. But knowing this and experiencing it are entirely different. I’ve not had a 1-star review yet but even that 3-star one, describing my baby as ‘pretty average’, hurt at first.
• I’m already developing a thicker skin, or maybe I’ve gained confidence now that readers are telling me they’ve enjoyed my book. Not long after No Stranger to Death came out, I was kindly offered the chance to have it reviewed by an online book group, but turned this opportunity down. I wouldn’t now!
• There’s a tremendous camaraderie between authors which transcends the published/unpublished and indie/traditional divides. I’ve been touched by the generosity of other writers who have supported me.
• You can’t force people who’ve enjoyed your book to leave a review. However, I’ve found that giving readers other ways to show their appreciation, like putting my Facebook page and Twitter handle at the back of No Stranger to Death, has paid dividends. I’m thrilled every time I receive a message saying someone has read my book and enjoyed it. Sometimes they even use the word 'loved'.
• I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how many men have told me they enjoyed No Stranger to Death, including Nigel Adams who wrote a lovely review on his blog.
• I don’t sell many paperbacks but I’m glad I went the extra mile to make them available. They are invaluable for signings, giveaways, thank you gifts and review copies. And I'm hoping a few people who've enjoyed the ebook may buy paperbacks for their crime-fiction-loving friends and relatives at Christmas. 

A few things I’d like to say

• If you’re one of the many, many people who have supported me over the past year by buying my book, reviewing it, spreading the word about it or by any other means, I'd like to say ...  

  

  
  

• If you’re thinking of self-publishing, go for it! It’s not easy and the results are unpredictable, but it is tremendously satisfying.  
• And finally, if you’re wondering what’s next, I’ll be publishing my second book, working title Too Soon a Death, in June 2015. 

(All pics courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net)

Spoiled for choice?

Gaps on bookshelves? In my dreams.

I can honestly say that reading has made me the woman I am today. It's not a hobby, it's a way of life, something I do every day in a variety of places. However tired I am, it's impossible to settle down to sleep without picking up the book on my bedside table. The prospect of a train or bus journey without something to read is unthinkable. And yet recently I've had to downgrade myself from a 'voracious' reader to an 'enthusiastic' one, due to a lack of time. 

Taking all this into consideration, why is it that when I finish a book these days, I find choosing which one to read next so challenging? Am I overwhelmed by sheer numbers (500 or so on real and virtual shelves), like when I try to buy shampoo in a big branch of Boots? Or has my selection of what to read next become more critical because I don't have time to waste on a book which may prove disappointing?

I’ve experimented with different ways to tackle my vacillation. Sometimes I stand in front of the bookshelves, close my eyes and put out a hand. I’ve even resorted to asking my husband to pick a title, but for some reason I’m never happy with his choices. Most recently, I declared October my Scandi-crime month. And this seemed to work.

Pulling together all the physical copies of qualifying titles, many of which I'd owned for years, I piled them on top of the filing cabinet. Books by Sjowall & Wahloo, Larsson, Mankell, Indridason and Fossum stared at me every time I entered the study. And I started working through them.

This makes it sound like a chore but how could it be? I enjoyed some more than others, and haven't managed them all yet, but I've definitely read more this October than I have for a long time. So I plan to continue reading by monthly 'theme' for a while.

Inspired by this year’s Book Week Scotland (24-30 Nov), November is my Scottish Crime Fiction month. I've already started the Frederic Lindsay.

December’s theme is going to be friends’ books. I’m privileged to know a lot of writers yet rarely seem to get round to reading their books. Because Christmas will be spent lounging on the sofa reading while John cooks to his heart’s content, I should be able to make good progress through the list I’ve come up with for this.

And then in no particular order, I intend to spend a month each on:

Non-fiction:

Short stories:

Later on in 2015 I shall revisit old favourites and the few ‘Golden Age’ crime novels I possess, and take in some crime fiction debuts.

Do you ever feel spoiled for choice and if so, how do you choose what to read next? And can you suggest any reading themes I should consider? Remember, my aim isn’t to buy more books (aye, right!) but to read the ones I already own.

Catching up

It's been a longish, hottish summer in Scotland, and lots has happened. I won't bore you with my holiday photos but here is some news I'd like to share.

READING NEWS
I've declared October 2014 my personal Scandi-crime month, because this pile has looked accusingly down at me from my to-be-read shelf for long enough. And because I couldn't wait, I've started already, with Mankell's Faceless Killers. I've heard varying opinions on Twitter and Facebook about several novels in this pile. I'll let you know what I think at the end of next month.

WRITING NEWS
No Stranger to Death has received two very different plaudits recently. Firstly, it has been awarded a B.R.A.G. Medallion, an award for quality self-published books. 

B.R.A.G. is an acronym for Book Readers' Appreciation Group, and books which are chosen for the Medallion go through a rigorous selection process. This involves an initial screening then reading by members of a global reader group who judge them on creative criteria like plot, writing style, characters and dialogue, as well as the professional aspects of copy editing, cover and interior layout. The required standards are very high: only 10% of the books considered are awarded a B.R.A.G. Medallion.

One of the criticisms of self-publishing is that it's hard for readers to find quality books among all the titles being put out there. The B.R.A.G. Medallion scheme is helping address that.

Find out more at this link.

SELF-PUBLISHING NEWS

I've written here and here about the process which led to No Stranger to Death having a cover design by Kim McGillivray that I'm truly proud of. While researching cover designs which work (and ones that don't!) I spent a lot of time on Joel Friedlander's website The Book Designer. As well as offering invaluable advice on many aspects of self-publishing, Joel runs a monthly e-book cover design award. Competition is fierce and some of Joel's verdicts can be even fiercer, so I held off from entering for months. But I did finally pluck up the courage, and here's what he thought: 

"I love the way the designer has used a minimum number of elements, colors and fonts to create this high-impact, moody cover. "

He also awarded Kim's design a coveted gold star, which gives us the right to display this image: 

NEW WRITING NEWS

All this excitement hasn't let me forget the most important task in hand: writing the sequel to No Stranger to Death. I'm about a third of the way through now, and once the first draft is complete, I'll share a little about it. All I can say to those of you who have read the book and are anxious to know if a certain character comes back is . . . probably, though not how you might expect.

Thanks for reading!

Throwing down the gauntlet

“Let’s see who can sell the most books.”

As soon as those words were out of my mouth, I couldn’t believe I’d said them. Least of all to my mate Peter Flannery, whose first novel, First and Only, has had over 60,000 downloads since 2011, received ecstatic reviews worldwide and is now in the process of being turned into a film. But when I discovered we were both planning a Kindle Countdown Deal at the same time, a bit of healthy competition – as if there isn’t enough from all the other books out there – seemed like a good idea. And so, from 21^st to 27^th July, Peter’s novel and No Stranger to Death will be slugging it out to see which can sell the most copies at 99c on Amazon USA and 99p on Amazon UK. The loser will buy the winner a decent bottle of champagne.

Why are we doing this? Peter has nothing to prove with First and Only, but he’s just given it a lovely new cover and there are still plenty of people out there who haven’t read his novel, although it did hold the Number 1 position in Kindle Psychological Thrillers for nearly two months during 2012. I’m very pleased with how well No Stranger to Death has been received in the UK, but it has yet to get off the ground in the USA. I’m also curious to test the theory which is now being bandied about that “99p is the new free”.

Unlike most of my writer friends, Peter lives in the Scottish Borders as I do, so we regularly meet up in real life. He was very generous with his time and advice when I decided to self-publish, and we have pooled our knowledge when planning our Countdown Deals. However, our starting points and approaches are very different, and this is where the results will be interesting. Will Peter’s investment in book promotion sites like BookBub trump my heavy reliance on Twitter and Facebook to publicise my book’s temporary reduction in price? Will more readers be willing to risk 99c or 99p on a relatively new and unproven novel which is clearly in the mystery genre than on one that has lots of reviews yet is harder to classify?

Like the entire self-publishing experience, the next week is going to be exciting and a bit scary as Peter and I try not to look at our sales and Amazon rankings too often. We’ll let you know how we get on. Peter is blogging about the experience over on his website too. You'll notice that the bubbly he's pictured there is Bollinger*. I look forward to holding him to that!

In the meantime, if you’d like to find out more about our books, here are the links.

No Stranger to Death: Amazon UK or Amazon USA 

First and Only: Amazon UK or Amazon USA 

*My champagne photo is courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net

Meeting my readers

There's no such thing as an average reader

I was privileged to spend time with the novelist Sylvian Hamilton in the years leading up to her too-early death in 2005. We talked about books and writing, and she shared some of the exciting aspects of being published, like the creation of the cover design for what was sadly destined to be her final book, and her scrapbook of fan mail. Back then, if a reader enjoyed a book, the only way they could communicate this to the author was by writing to them, usually via their publisher. I remember Sylvian’s delight whenever a new card or letter arrived, and how carefully she added them to her collection.

These days, readers have a plethora of ways to contact authors and give their verdicts on books they’ve read. No Stranger to Death has been reviewed on Amazon (all 5-stars, so far), GoodReads and blogs, and I’ve received messages from readers via my own blog, Facebook and Twitter. I also have friends who live locally who’ve told me to my face what they thought. However, last week was the first time I met total strangers who had read my book. I attended the monthly get-together of a local book group, and a few days later, I stood up in a village hall to do a reading and answer questions. Here are some of the things these experiences taught me.

Readers don’t care how a book gets published

None of the book group members realised I had self-published No Stranger to Death. Some had bought it from a shop, others had used Amazon, one had taken it out of a library. Their motivation for choosing to read it was that I was a local author and ‘it looked good’. While I was selling and signing copies in the hall, no one asked who my publisher was. That said, an elderly gentleman expressed concern that he had ‘only’ borrowed a copy from the library: did I get any income from that? I was happy to reassure him that Scottish Borders Council had purchased the libraries’ copies from me, and told him about PLR. 

You can never know your characters well enough

Although I don’t go as far as noting my characters’ shoe sizes and favourite foods, I‘ve lived long enough with them in my head to know how they would react in most circumstances. But I was completely thrown to be asked what Zoe Moreland’s star sign is. My confession that I didn’t know earned the response that she must be a Scorpio, due to her ‘emotional strength’.

Everyone experiences a book differently

I asked the book group if anyone had guessed whodunit. They had all suspected different characters, one of whom was a kindly doctor, the least likely killer you could hope to meet. And that was why it had to be him: he was ‘too good to be true’. The legacy of multiple murderer Dr Harold Shipman obviously lives on in some people's minds.

Readers can develop feelings for your characters too

I love reading and getting caught up in a story, so this shouldn’t surprise me. But I never expected anyone else to feel so strongly about the people I created. A book-group lady was particularly upset at what a bully one of Zoe’s fellow doctors was, given all the other awful things happening to her at the same time. Another reader said that when she got to the part where Zoe’s car goes out of control she found herself saying, ‘No, no, no’ out loud. And as for what everyone wants from the book’s sequel: I’ve been told to bring Neil back, make sure Mather and Kate end up together, and tell what happens to Zoe in the light of her mysterious visitor on the very last page.  

How readers choose their next book is a mystery

Remember the book group said they chose to read No Stranger to Death because ‘it looked good’? I asked them what factors contributed to this, but they couldn't point to a single aspect, such as cover design or blurb. Others, however, do have specific criteria by which they select a book. During the second event, I met a lady who enjoys crime fiction but will only buy a book if she doesn’t think it will be ‘scary’. I was happy to reassure her that although I deal with dark themes, she won’t find extreme violence or graphic descriptions of blood-soaked crime scenes in anything I write.

It was amazing and gratifying to hear how characters, places and situations I have created are now in other people’s heads. If I learnt one lesson from meeting readers it is that No Stranger to Death was a different experience for each of them and they all had unique responses to it. These responses are impossible to predict, proving that one of the best piece of advice for writers is ‘Write for yourself’. Write something you would enjoy reading and there’s a good chance others will enjoy it too.

Photos courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net

Agatha Christie had it easy

Jonathan Creek recently returned to British TV screens and, being fans, we watched the first episode. It contained one of the worst motives for a character’s actions that I have ever encountered in a work of fiction (if you’ve not watched it but plan to do so, look away now). A terminally ill wife planted fake evidence she had been having an affair, so that when she died her much-loved husband would be less sad at losing her. It was preposterous, not a motive but a mechanism designed with the sole purpose of explaining away a mystery.

Had the rest of the programme been excellent – which it wasn’t – I would still have groaned in disappointment. Readers and audiences allow themselves to go along with fiction, suspending their disbelief at the depiction of all kinds of unlikely events. For example, I’m currently catching up with – and loving – Game of Thrones on Sky Atlantic and am captivated by a girl who can withstand fire and is raising several dragons. But this only works if writers give their characters credible motives for the way they behave.

Modern society is (thankfully!) far more forgiving than when Agatha Christie started writing. Back then, things like illegitimacy, divorce and bankruptcy were considered unacceptable and shameful. Homosexuality was illegal in Britain until 1967. Fictional characters could credibly be depicted going to desperate measures, including murder, to avoid the scandal of their private lives being made public.

Bad day at the office, dear?

These days, however, we are not so bound by convention. If a couple no longer get along, there’s little need for one of them to kill the other. Although still painful, divorce is now rightly regarded as no one’s business bar that of the people involved. And, according to the press, by 2016 the number of children born ‘out of wedlock’ (how quaint that sounds) will be greater than those born in it.

A more tolerant society is a good thing. Except for crime writers like me, who face the challenge of providing their miscreants with plausible motives. This is probably one of the reasons for the rise in popularity of psychopathic serial killers in crime fiction. They are motivated by their own internal logic, which readers still find compelling despite not sharing it.

Luckily, for all writers, while society may change, human nature never does. We’re always going to want what we can’t have and act in ways it would be wiser not to. Universal motives like love, hate, greed and jealousy will endure. A writer's skill lies in persuading an audience to buy into a character and their story so that their actions – and the motivation behind them – are believable. Whereas anyone can create a puzzle then manufacture a witless motive to explain it.

Images courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

My writing process

My Writing Process is a series of blog posts in which authors ‘tag’ each other to answer some questions about their work. Thanks to my good friend Bea Davenport, who writes both adult crime/suspense and children's fiction, for inviting me to take part.

What am I working on?

I’m in the very early stages of writing the sequel to my first novel, No Stranger to Death. It’s six months on and my main character, Doctor Zoe Moreland, is still living with the repercussions from events triggered by her discovery of a body in a Guy Fawkes bonfire. The second book opens with Zoe being called out by the police to identify a young Asian man who has apparently been thrown into the River Tweed from the historic chain bridge linking Scotland and England.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Although my books are crime fiction, at their core they’re about relationships, though not simply romantic ones. Friendships are important in real life, especially to women, and I try to reflect that. I loathe the expression ‘amateur sleuth’ but after working in a GP surgery I decided to make my main character a doctor rather than a police officer. GPs deal with people in extremis and hear their innermost secrets. They are also well-placed to interact with the police and other authorities. Perhaps most interestingly, they are bound by confidentiality, which can lead to moral dilemmas and conflict.

Why do I write what I do?

Wearing my other hat, as a professional copywriter I’ve written on subjects I started off knowing nothing about, like care homes for the elderly and school federations. However, when it comes to fiction I can’t imagine writing in genres I don’t read, such as romance. Judging one’s own work is hard enough; I wouldn’t know if it was any good if I had no idea what readers’ expectations are. And having readers enjoy what I write is my primary aim.

How does my writing process work?

I’m a slow and reluctant pantser who starts off with a corpse and wings it from there. I dread being asked that perennial question, ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ because I simply don’t know. I’ve even coined a term to describe the process: imagication.

Thanks for reading about My Writing Process. I’m now passing the baton on to Vivienne Tuffnell, who will blog about her own process next week. Our writing could not be more different, but we’ve got to know each other on Twitter, where her bio describes her as writer, poet, explorer and mystic. Vivienne has written stories her whole life, even before she could actually read, as she explains.

“My father mistakenly allowed me to use his typewriter from an early age and I was hooked. I'm not sure the typewriter survived very long having me bash out strings of letters in the belief that what I had in my head would magically transform into words others can read. I've got better at that.”

Vivienne writes novels, short stories and poetry, and her wonderfully named blog is Zen and the Art of Tightrope Walking.

Photo courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net

Things they don’t tell you about being an author ...

... Number 1: Writing a sequel isn’t easy

The River Tweed on a summer's day

When I started to write No Stranger to Death, I had no intention of it being anything other than a standalone novel. Bad things would happen in the Scottish Borders village of Westerlea, my heroine Zoe Moreland would save the day, and that would be that. But when I got to the end of the first draft, Zoe’s story was far from over. Of course, I had the power to change this, but I didn’t want to. So, instead of editing out situations which couldn’t be resolved or creating over-neat outcomes, I decided to write a sequel.

What bliss, I thought, to be able to pick up where I left off. I could use the same settings, and those characters I already know well would be waiting for me to prod them back into action. Also, what better way to build a following than have readers put down No Stranger to Death so desperate to find out what happens next that they rush to buy its follow-up?

Silly me! I’m now faced with decisions to make and challenges to meet that might not be necessary if I was creating a fictional world from scratch. And I’m not just talking about remembering the colour of a character’s eyes.

Does Book 2 work on its own?

This is the big one: a sequel must not rely on the first book to be enjoyable. In that respect, all books are standalones, especially as readers don’t necessarily consume them in the order in which they’re published. Knowledge of what went before can increase the reader’s pleasure, but a story which relies on this to entertain is a cop-out. To that end, Book 2 will involve Zoe getting caught up in entirely new and very different crimes to those in No Stranger to Death.

How much back-story to tell?

Back-story is a tricky thing to get right at the best of times. Too much can slow up the action and risks spoiling the enjoyment of readers who then move on to the first novel. But too little could raise questions which distract from the narrative, even in a crime novel aiming to intrigue the reader. I’ve found this testing from the very first page, when Zoe is visited by the police asking for help in identifying the body of a young man found dead on the banks of the River Tweed. She reveals something about herself that anyone who has read No Stranger to Death will find significant but which readers who are encountering Zoe for the first time will simply take at face value. Should I fill in the gaps about what has happened during the intervening six months and give away some of the secrets of the first book?

Shhh ... it's a secret

  

Which characters will make it into Book 2?

Any character who features in Book 2 is patently neither killer nor victim in the first book. Sadly, this means I can’t re-use some perfectly good characters, as their presence would spoil things for readers who come to Book 2 first. In this respect, police procedurals have an advantage over books like No Stranger to Death because readers expect police officers to stay roughly the same in subsequent books but to investigate different members of the public. Look at Midsommer Murders on TV: most episodes focus on different villages for exactly this reason.

How to be different while staying the same?

I look upon writing in a specific genre as a promise to the reader that you’ll give them a book which broadly (and it can be very broadly) meets their expectations. Put simplistically, readers expect a crime novel to start with a crime, proceed with some sort of investigation, and end with a solution. Writing a sequel makes another promise: ‘If you enjoyed the first one, you’ll enjoy this one too although it’s different enough to be worth reading’. Keeping these promises while at the same time coming up with a novel which isn’t a rerun of what has gone before is going to be a challenge. I’ve already scrapped my plan for what happens immediately after Zoe is taken to see the body because I realised it followed too closely the chain of events in the first part of No Stranger to Death.

Poor Martin

Does all this matter? Am I worrying unnecessarily? The makers of The Bridge II, the latest Scandi-crime shown on BBC4, were faced with similar challenges. They chose to ignore the possibility that viewers would watch the series out of order, and fully incorporated the revelations and outcomes of the first series into the action of the second. Although I enjoyed Series II as much as Series I, and it was a far richer story by examining Martin’s response to his family’s tragedy, I can’t help thinking that decision will deter viewers who came in at Series II from watching what went before. Or will it?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this matter, especially as readers. I would also be interested to hear how other writers tackle the challenges of writing sequels and series novels. Do leave a comment below or email me via the contact form on this blog, tweet me (I’m @JanetOkane) or post on my Facebook author page.

('Shhh' pic courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net)

"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted . . .

. . . Now, if I only knew which half."

I started off not knowing what to blog about this week. Not due to a lack of subject matter but because there is too much to choose from. You see, I’m planning the marketing campaign for No Stranger to Death.

Many people will probably equate marketing with paid advertising, but it’s actually so much more. And thank goodness for that. Like most self-published authors, I don’t have the money to spend on above-the-line promotion, so instead I must be inventive.

There’s no end of information on the internet for self-published authors. I use the term ‘no end’ purposely. Google ‘book marketing tips’ and you’ll get more than 58 million results (that’s more than Downton Abbey, though less than Miley Cyrus). Even working through the excellent post on the Your Writer Platform blog, ‘101 Quick Actions You Can Take Today to Build the Writer Platform of Your Dreams’, is a challenge. Of the 46 ideas I marked as worth considering, so far I've done . . . seven. 

As well as having to be inventive due to lack of budget, the self-published author must also maximise another scarce resource: time. This means I mustn’t waste my time telling people about No Stranger to Death who would never want to read it anyway. Quick Action number 4 of those 101 is ‘Research your target audience’, but I would put it at number 1. If I ruled the world, reading at least one book each month would be mandatory from the age of six. However, hard though it is hard to fathom, not everyone reads for pleasure and – even more shocking – not all readers enjoy crime fiction. So before I can start connecting with my potential readers, I need to find out who they are.

Here’s a question for you. Which of these people is most likely to be a crime (or, as they say in the USA, mystery) fiction reader?

It’s hard to find concrete evidence of exactly who reads crime fiction most avidly. I even searched the Open University digital library (which has information on everything) and came up empty. I’m sure large publishers have researched this, but they’re keeping such valuable information close to their chests. However, an article on the HarperCollins Killer Reads website, ‘Why are women so attracted to crime fiction?’, suggests it’s a given that far more women than men read crime. This is backed up by a survey carried out in 2012 on behalf of the Crime Writers’ Association, which states that the typical crime reader is ‘a woman, aged sixty-plus, married but with no children living at home . . .’

Although slightly older than I expected (until I remembered how old I am now), the CWA’s findings confirm what I suspected. I’m basing my assumptions on personal experience: years of meeting fellow crime fiction fans at events like CrimeFest and through social networking sites like Twitter. So the answer to my challenge is the older lady in turquoise (it’s not just crime fiction we have in common).

Now I know who my target audience is, but guess what? Turns out that’s the easy part. I need to decide how I’m going to reach them. That’s another challenge. And material for another blog post, as this one has gone on long enough.

Do you recognise this ‘typical’ crime reader? I’d like to know what you think. Please leave a comment below, or tweet me: @janetokane.

All pictures this week are courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net, and the quotation is attributed to John Wanamaker, a 19th-century pioneer in marketing.

I ♥ books

1992: Reading with a cat. What could be nicer?

When I set out to do the Eclectic Reader Challenge last January, reading 12 books in 11 different genres in a year seemed achievable. However, I hadn’t then decided to embark on the final year of my Open University degree. When I signed up in early September to study Course A300: 20^th Century Texts, it became obvious I wouldn’t only be sacrificing writing time. The course has 16 set books, ranging from 1930s poetry to 1960s science fiction, and an infinite number of reference books. The amount of reading this requires reminds me of what a tutor said when I studied for a year at Edinburgh University as a mature student: “Reading for pleasure? We’ll soon knock that out of you.”

I hoped then, and still do, that he meant we would have so much course reading we’d have no time to read anything else. Because I can’t imagine ever not wanting to read. How dreadful it would be not to relish choosing the next book to take down from my shelf or select from the list on my Kindle, to no longer feel the thrill of starting that first page. Even if a book disappoints, I still get a sense of achievement at finishing it, and as a writer, it’s instructive working out what went wrong. And if it has been a satisfying read – what joy!  

Reading is a way of life for me, and when I look back to my childhood I can see why. So many memories connected with reading stand out in my mind.

This was c. 1967, so pardon the decor

My parents were (and still are) avid readers themselves, so they knew that with the right groundwork I could develop into one too. Admittedly, growing up as an only child in rural Dorset at a time when there were only three TV channels, I had little choice in the matter. I had to read or take up a sport (I’ll pause briefly for those of you who know me stop laughing at that idea.)

Mum worked as a hairdresser from home in those days, her ‘salon’ a room at the end of the house kitted out with a sink and two hairdryers on wheels. This being the 1960s, she mostly did shampoo-and-sets and the occasional perm, and when each customer’s hair had been put into rollers they sat under a dryer. When I was very young I would persuade some of them to forgo the pleasures offered by the magazines provided and instead read my storybooks to me. As I grew older I got pushier and insisted on reading out loud to a favoured few, the word ‘loud’ being apt – those hairdryers were very noisy.

The books in my primary school’s library – a large cupboard, really – were augmented by fortnightly visits from Dorset County Council’s mobile library or, as it was known then, the Library Van. I’d feel very grown-up climbing up the steps unaided, making my own choices, then cycling home with a basketful of books. Enid Blyton’s Famous Five were my heroes for a long time. I once announced to my parents that I wanted to be called George, though I don’t remember their response. 

Then I progressed to Blyton’s Malory Towers series. This resigned me to having a girl’s name but left me hankering after a boarding-school education with all the lacrosse and midnight feasts that came with it. Mum and Dad took me every Saturday to Beeches Bookshop in Salisbury. The lovely building is still there but Beeches closed down long ago. In the early ‘70s, though, it was stuffed to the rafters with books old and new, most in rows on open shelves, some so precious they were kept in locked glass-fronted cabinets. You could buy four hardback children’s books for £1, and they’d take them back later in part-exchange for yet more. Angela Brazil’s schoolgirl adventures, with titles like The Nicest Girl in the School and A Fourth Form Friendship, were already past their heyday by then but I didn’t care.

1969: I was a swot

When I was a teenager, there being no such thing as young adult fiction back then, I started reading what Mum read: crime fiction. The rest, as they say, is history.

I started this blog post intending to examine the difference between reading for pleasure and reading for study. It’s been hijacked by my childhood recollections, which probably means I’m older than I like to think. Anyway, I have a subject for another post now. In the meantime, what memories of childhood reading do you have?