The waiting is over!

This week my Flossie Bonce proofs arrived. After last week's trauma of not being able to upload the artwork to my Printer's Dropbox, I received the proof copy on Thursday. 

The front cover isn't quite right; the Isle of Wight sticker is in the bleed area and not printed out, but they are fixing that and then we are good to go with printing.(My fault, not the printer's.)

Here they are.

And this is my favourite spread of the whole book! It's the front endpage.

If you'd like to pre-order a Flossie Bonce, you can do so HERE.

Really looking forward to showing Flossie off at the Isle of Wight Literary Festival. I'm doing two fairy workshops on Sunday 20th October 2013. If you want to book tickets, you can do so HERE and go to the bottom of the page to find my bit.

Thanks for reading! Bright blessings!!

I'm waiting.......still waiting.

I'm not very good at waiting. There's a lot of toe tapping and huffing going on at the moment because I'm waiting for the proof of Flossie Bonce to come through my letterbox. I've got a digital copy, but it's not the same. You can't tell if the colours are right and I reckon I read text differently on screen. It's easier to slip a typo or spelling mistake into somehing on screen. Case in point. 

So Flossie is nearly ready for print and I have been whiling away the days cutting out fairy wings for the workshops that I'm doing at the Isle of Wight Literary Festival. 

I'm doing 2 FAIRY WORKSHOPS on Sunday 20th Oct, where we will be making the wings look gorgeous! Come dressed as a fairy if you like. Whilst they wings are drying I will read, for the first time ever, Flossie Bonce. Books will be on sale at the pop up Waterstones shop at the entrance to Northwood House and I can sign any that come my way. Check the link for lots of interesting stuff going on that weekend. Every time I look at the website, more authors have been added. It's like the Magic Porridge Pot!!

In other news, the dogs are in a foul mood because I washed their blankets yesterday and made them smell of apples and daisies (according to the Comfort bottle) and they think it is an abomination. The keep giving me withering looks of disapproval. Ho hum. You live in MY house, you've got to SMELL nice.

www.isleofwightliteraryfestival.org

Me and my School

I've been thinking about my school teachers of late. Strangely I can't really remember anyone from my Primary school apart from the Head, Miss Shepherd and the song we used to sing in assembly which went "I am The Lord of the Dance Settee". Never worked out what that was.

Mr Draper

At my middle school there were two classes for each year. Although I wasn't in his class, Mr Draper took us all for Drama. I was in the after school club too and I have him to thank for the beginning of my journey into story making. He had such a friendly face and a beard that you could have hidden a small gnome in. Hello Mr Draper!

Mrs Fenton was my class teacher in the Second Year. She was incredibly glamorous and for the first half of the year she looked like Farah Fawcett in Charlie's Angels. Her hair was huge and curly and she wore fabulous clothes and lots of lip gloss.

Mrs Fenton aka Farah

Then one day she came in with brown straightened hair, in the days when such a thing had to be done by a professional with CHEMICALS! We barely recognised her; she now looked like Agneta from Abba with her fringe flicking up at the sides and the rest of it dropping straight down like a sheet of shiny paper.

Mrs Fenton aka Agneta

Most of the teachers who made an impact on me were from my Secondary School. I went to the country's first Ecumenical school, where we had both Anglican and Catholic upbringing. For this I can truly thank for my subsequent and wholehearted interest in Buddhism. Miss Jackson was the Head of my first year there (confusingly called The Second Year) in the Annexe away from the big kids in the Big School. She really did look like this. 

Miss Jackson

My Mum objected to me playing hockey because my sister had her teeth bashed in by a hockey stick in a rough game and Miss Jackson's response was that I'd be better at hockey than say, Netball, because at 4ft something, I was closer to the ball. We had a lot of names for her, none of them repeatable.

Mr Cooper

Mr Cooper taught us English. He looked like how I imagine Heathcliffe, handsomely scruffy, hair in his eyes, broody. Us 13 year old girls found it difficult to concentrate on anything at all whilst he was in the room. 

Mrs Woodcock

At about this age my Mum taught me to sew. I thought it was going to be my career for some time, until I discovered that Fashion didn't like me, but prior to this illumination, Margaret Woodcock taught me Dress Making right thought to A level. 

Me and Mrs Woodcock had a rather nice friendship and I was always pleased to see her and go to her lessons. She left about 6 months before I took my A level to have a baby. I only saw her once after that, when I took her a present for her newborn, but I shall never forget her. She was a star.


I had some wonderful art teachers; Mr White, who must have been named after the colour of his hair; Mrs Groves who reminded me of an ancient Oak, gnarled but grandly fantastic.

But the two teachers who I have to thank mostly for some richly fantastic lessons, brilliant shows and the foundations on which my work now stands - Geoff Sayers and Susie Gibbons.

Right from Mr Draper's drama club, I loved performing. I'm not saying I was much good at it, my timing was all wrong, I kept corpsing and I found it hard to BE someone else. But I still loved it.

Geoff Sayers was, as one might say, a confirmed bachelor and gosh, didn't we all know it. It was so refreshing to know someone like him who didn't conform and wasn't like the other teachers. 

We studies Equus on the quiet: I have no idea if anyone else knew about that, but it made a change from Shakespeare. We looked at Chekov and at A Taste of Honey and Dostoyevski. I was a fairy in A Midsummer Night's Dream and sang loud and flat while Puck was played by none other than Michael Greco aka Beppe from Eastenders.

Geoff Sayers

At some point during my O level in Drama, Geoff's mother became very ill and he took some time off to look after her. He shipped in his good friend Susie Gibbons, who became known as Susie Gubbins to us. What twits we were. She was like a little woodland pixie, short hair, small frame, gorgeous. She came into the room like a tornado and filled us all with a special sort of energy that only some teachers have the ability to give. I would love to meet her again.

Susie Gibbons

She was in charge when I took my O level and by some fluke I passed it. Although I am nothing of an actor, it gave me something that I use these days when I am reading my books to children. I guess you'd call it Luvviness.

Thanks to all you lovely teachers for shaping my future and for putting up with us 'orrible teenagers!!

SCARLETT INC WEBSITE

VERY EXCITING NEWS ALERT!!

My new website is up and running. There are illustrations to look at, books to boggle at and fun stuff to download and doodle. You can buy direct and email me for specific messages in the front of your book.

http://www.scarlettinc.co.uk/

I'd like to say a MASSIVE thanks to James who built the site. He's a genius!!
Here is a link to his website.
http://www.jameslorddesign.co.uk/

Cake and Earfluff seeds.

The last spread of Flossie Bonce is driving me CRAZEEEEE.

Everything else is looking great: front and back cover - done; endpages - done; dedications - done. Last and final spread of the book - ahhhhhh. Not done. That's not to say I haven't been trying. It just isn't going according to plan at the moment.

At times like this I find it best to eat vast quantities of chocolate cake and think about something else. I have every faith that it will come to me.

In other news, Maisie chihuahua has taken up a new hobby - collecting seeds in her earfluff. I think our garden must have produced more seeds than last year, possibly due to the significantly better weather. She likes those little round ones that are like the sticky side of velcro and she just LOVES getting them tied up in as much fluff as she can.

Wally has cracked 'The Case of the Interesting Smell'. Maisie has been hiding her doggie biscuits in his bed and he has found them. Clever Wally.

The next month is going to be a busy one. I am in Waterstones on Friday 16th Aug doing a book signing and the Lord Louis Library in Newport on Tuesday 20th as part of their Spooky House Reading Challenge, from 2.30. If you see me, come and say Hi!

Today....

Today will be very much about attacking the last 3 spreads of Flossie Bonce. 
And the endpages. 
And the front cover.

Journey to the Centre of Publishing...

I've been reading a bit about the pros and cons of Self or Indie publishing recently. Some of it useful, some of it twaddle. My own journey into publishing independently has been like crossing the Himalayas using a map of the Isle of Wight. Unexpectedly bumpy.

I see my career in two distinct eras. BC and AC. Before Children, the world of publishing was as it had been for a couple of hundred years. You take your idea/ portfolio to a publisher and they publish your book, or more likely, say nice things about your work and then DON'T publish your book. There was also the slightly distasteful world of Vanity Publishing, which I quickly concluded I did not need in my life. It meant ordering 10,000 copies of the book and then somehow selling them. I didn't have a clue how to do this and didn't want to spend my time trailing around shops hoping they'd take some of the huge amount of stock I'd have in my sitting room so that I could make a tunnel to the kitchen.

After Children, things had changed. Traditional publishers were no longer the only route - there was another option; Print on Demand. It seemed like an option worth looking at. I chose to do my first book with CreateSpace because the process was easy to understand and follow. They are an offshoot of Amazon, and this meant my book goes straight onto Amazon with one tick of a box. CreateSpace do everything else, so when someone orders Vincent and the Vampires, they print one and send it off. Simple. Print on Demand.

However, I was beginning to realise that people often wanted to buy a book from an author they could see and have a conversation with. There's something quite special about having a book signed to you from the author, rather than arriving in Amazon packaging. I knew I needed to do some book events and have my own copies with me for sale. I knew I needed to go to schools and read to children. I took a very very deep breath. Then I accidentally hyperventilated.

With my second and third books, Royal Fleas and Wally and Bert, BFF's I bought my own ISBNs, employed a printer and did the whole shabang myself. I now have a trading relationship with Waterstones which couldn't happen when I was Printing on Demand. Luckily I have found a printer who will print short runs, so I have several boxes of books, but also a house to live in.

So, what are the pros?

• You can go at your own pace. No deadlines, other than the ones you give yourself.
• You can earn more royalty per book as you don't have to split the profit with anyone.
• You can do exactly what you want (so long as it's legal). I'll come back to this.
• You will learn lots of new skills and become very adept at doing boring things quickly. 
• When you have finished, you can be ridiculously smug and proud of the book you have made.

And the cons?

• As you aren't printing a huge quantity, the cost per book is higher. This can be a problem when supplying stores like Waterstones.
• You might need to find a bit of space to store a few hundred copies, but at least it isn't 10,000.
• You need to know your way around a computer, or find the time to learn. I had to learn how to use In Design (Adobe) to lay the book out. MS Word WILL NOT DO!! 
• You need to know what a good page looks like and be ruthless about work that isn't quite up to standard.
• You several somebodies to copy edit everything. And don't rely on the spellchecker!!

As I said in the Pros, you can do whatever you want, although you won't make many friends if you write something inciting violence or nasty in other ways. This does, however, mean that you can make a complete pigs ear of things if you're not careful. I was shown a particularly shoddy book that had been printed on demand and was on sale in a local bookshop. The author had made a poor choice of cover photo, the typography was unattractive and the copy was laid out badly. I made a mental note not to make those mistakes. 

I am grateful that I studied Graphic Design at Uni, and although I would never suggest I was brilliant at designing a super page, I did know what looked right. Visual Literacy, my old tutor called it. I've always tried hard to make the pages exciting to look at and do the job required.

At present, I spend more time than I would like doing marketing type things... Trying to figure out how to sell more books online, filling in my tax return, or application forms or risk assessments. When I am rich and famous, I will employ someone to do that stuff for me while I paint all day but the reality is that until my stories start to sell themselves, I am the skipper of their tug.

The journey has led me down paths of learning that I didn't know I needed to know -  how to fill in the dreaded US tax identification number form (for selling on Amazon.com), getting shipping costs right so that I don't end up out of pocket, how to write a press release, how not to look like I just swallowed a wasp when being photographed, how to control nerves when on the radio (no TV as yet) and most importantly how to draw like me.

Today I have been working on page 18/19 of my next book Flossie Bonce. It's been a really good day because I've been painting a lot, so here's a quick preview, minus the text. Don't want to give everything away yet!!

My books can be purchased via my online shop etsy.com/julesmarriner. This is a better way than Amazon as I can sign and leave a personal message in them.