a day off

After two sleepless nights I began yesterday morning anxious and tearful, but things improved. It’s amazing what a loving family, a good friend and two spirited grandsons can do for a person.
Zoe brought our grandsons to visit, and while Dave taught the older one to make a stained glass piece, I took the younger one on a super bike ride on the Trail, up through a tunnel, and then down to you-know-where for refreshment. That boy can get more ice-cream on his face than anyone I’ve ever met. But who cares, when he enjoys it as much as he does?

Technorati Tags: stained glass,sleepless nights,ice-cream

Sue Hepworth is a ratbag - again

Sources close to Hepworth Towers say I’ve been grumpy and snappish, lately. This may be true. It’s sometimes hard to judge from the inside whether it’s you that is being irritable or whether other people are being particularly annoying and exasperating.

Whatever, I have been feeling stressed. At the height of tussles with Amazon and worries about the book, I saw an advert for a pot-washer in a local cafe, and it looked like an attractive option. I know, I know – I have no experience of being a PAID pot washer - but what I thought was – Oh, how restful, how undemanding -  a job with no decisions or anxieties. I’d be able to drift off into a quiet reflective reverie.

Yesterday afternoon, I filled in a US tax form concerning ebook sales on Amazon.com, and realised with horror that I’ll be contributing to America’s military aid to Israel. But it’s just as bad that my taxes over here are subsidising an arms industry exporting war and terror all over the world. Britain is the second largest exporter of weapons, which makes us complicit in wars all over the globe.

Yes, I know I said this is strictly a non-political blog, but sometimes, sometimes, the news is so awful, I just have to say something. You can be sure that Parliament isn’t listening to me, or any other voter.

Technorati Tags: ratbag,pot-washer,stress,arms exporters,arms industry,Parliament not listening to voters

Honey-pots

You’ve probably read here, or in one of my books, that the Derbyshire Peak District has millions of visitors a year, and is thought to be the second most visited National Park in the world.

This is never more apparent than on sunny Bank Holiday weekends. The tourists do tend to gather in hotspots, though, so it’s easy to find places where they aren’t.

Yesterday I cycled up the Monsal Trail very early before the visitors arrived. It was sunny and quiet and blissful.

On the way to the Trail -

A view from the Trail -

And another -

Technorati Tags: Derbyshire Peak District,Monsal Trail,Bank Holidays,National Parks

An open invitation

Look what Lesley Draper – a journalist on the Sheffield Telegraph - tweeted about my book last night:

Yay! I am so chuffed!

Why don’t you come to my book launch for Plotting for Grown-ups at Hassop Station on Tuesday September 24th, 7 - 8.30 p.m ?

It would be great to see you.

This is what’s on the back cover….

“At sixty you’re a dust bunny of society.”

But don’t let the b******s hoover you up. Stand up and fight!

On the eve of her sixtieth birthday, Sally Howe is hit by a double whammy – not only has her long-haul marriage ended, but her agent can’t find a publisher for her latest book, so it looks as if her writing career is also on the rocks. Although her best friend Wendy is scouring singles websites, and her brother Richard is obsessing over the Cupid Column, Sally is determined to avoid the dating inferno, resolving instead to stay single and to self-publish. But going it alone gets complicated when she tangles with irascible printer (hot-as-Daniel Craig) Kit Wyatt, a man with six Christmas trees and a fetish for Helvetica Neue Ultra Light. Wry and intelligent, Plotting for Grown-ups offers insights into what happens when you hit sixty and find yourself out in the world without a parachute.

The story is set in the Derbyshire Peak District.

Why I will never make it big through social marketing (rewritten)

“Lucky old Charlotte Bronte, not having to consider her web presence, not having to bother with blogging and tweeting, not having to justify to her agent why she wouldn’t do Facebook.”   Sally Howe in Plotting for Grown-ups 

All the internet sites giving authors tips on how to market their books say you must get lots of followers on Twitter by following as many people as you can in the expectation that they will follow you - and then you sneak in subtle marketing for your book.

The experts say you mustn’t use Twitter like online advertising, as in “THIS IS MY BOOK! IT’S GREAT! WHY DONT YOU BUY IT?” or it puts people off. Well, it certainly puts me off when people do that.

The trouble with this strategy is that your twitterstream becomes cluttered with tweets from people you are not interested in, whom you are following only so that they will follow you. If I did this, it would take the pleasure out of Twitter.

I like Twitter for the occasional chats I have with friends and with people I have “met” on Twitter, and I also like it because I can follow my interests in writing, culture and politics, by following the links to interesting articles that people tweet about said topics.

If you are using it to market your book, you are advised to “engage” with your followers i.e. have conversations with them, reply to things they have said, retweet their tweets.

If you do this properly with hundreds of people it zaps your brain and take hours out of your days, days when you could be/should be writing or even doing normal things like living in real time in the real world – you know, like actually doing things with your body (such as walking, trying out recipes to find the perfect Bloody Mary, cycling, playing with your grandchildren, gardening, eating a curry with friends and laughing, playing table-tennis, knitting, playing the saxophone, sewing, visiting the sick, making jam, demonstrating against fracking or Israeli apartheid, etc, etc.).

I don’t want to waste my sunny days on a torrent of online blather in order to get peeps to buy my books. My sunny days are finite, and I’d rather have them than an exponentially burgeoning bank balance. Yes, I really would.

 

Technorati Tags: social marketing,Twitter,Facebook,friends,real life,real time,sunny days,selling books through social marketing

Post-strop

OK, I am over my strop.

After my aggravation and outburst yesterday, I did a smidge of work and then bunked off with Dave down the Monsal Trail to Hassop Station Cafe, where we sat outside on the terrace and drank coffee and chatted in the warm sunshine. When I am 75 I shall walk down the Trail and have breakfast there. Then I’ll walk home and mess about. Then go down for lunch, walk home and mess about some more, and then cycle down for tea. Who needs to be a writer? Who needs to be a publisher?

An old friend came for the afternoon and we caught up on news of our respective families, and then at teatime I cycled up the Trail to my favourite thinking spot.

I climb over the fence and sit amongst the wild flowers and look at the view of wooded hills, limestone cliffs and the river below, and I listen to the silence. Then I feel whole.

A similar view from the Trail but not one with wild flowers…

Kafka-esque Amazon (with update)

I had an interesting post to write today about how I hate shopping, but now I am in too bad a mood.

I have had a lot of trouble with the listings of all my books on Amazon. When there’s a problem, you’re supposed to email their help people, if you can’t solve it yourself from their FAQ section. So I email them, and they tell me they have solved the problem and I check and they haven’t. So I email again. Actually, you know what? I’m not going to bore you with all of this. It’s bad enough that I have to go through it, and I am going through it on a daily basis.

But what happened last night is that after failing to solve the linking and listing problems, Amazon has now lost the listing of the paperback edition of Plotting for Grown-ups altogether. I can no longer find it on their site. It does not exist!  AAAAARRRGGGHHH.

They say they are looking into it.

They will get back to me.

They always do get back to me.

But you can bank on this – I am never, ever going to publish another paperback myself.

P.S. I just calmed myself down by reading Mary Oliver’s poem “For example.” I will not post it here. I will not breach her copyright. But I do recommend it.

Truth vs Fiction

A friend asked the other day if Plotting for Grown-ups is autobiographical, and I said “Aren’t all my books?” and then, after mulling it over and realising the import of what I’d said, I hastily corrected myself -  “Well, in this book, just the stuff about publishing.”

So the easiest way to tell you how I felt on Friday when the books arrived is to give you a quote from  the book itself -

“Oh – almost forgot – I’ve got something in my car you might like.” He jumped up and went to his car and brought back a jiffy bag. I looked inside. It was my book! The approval copy of my beautiful book!

“Thank you! Thank you!” I shrieked. “Isn’t it fab? Isn’t it, oh, isn’t it...”

I stroked it and sniffed it and opened it and flicked it, and put it to my cheek to feel the smoothness and the newness, then I stroked it again and laid it carefully on the patio table on top of the jiffy bag. And then I flung my arms round his neck and kissed him as if I hadn’t seen him for weeks. (Which I hadn’t.)

“Well, I don’t know,” he said between kisses. “I tell you it’s ‘game on’ and you sit there as limp as a left-over lettuce leaf, only manage a smile as paltry as PG Tips, and speak in a voice as quiet as a mid-list novel, and then I give you a book and you more or less ravish me. I’ll make a note for future reference.”

Reader, I took the book to bed with me.

Last night Isaac sent me this beautiful photo of Lux and Cece, which filled me with a different kind of joy.

no longer lost in space

Lost in space

The 400 books didn’t come.

Who knows where they are?

The one consolation – and it’s not insignificant - is that whatever went wrong is not my fault.

Watch this space (like me).

Bullet points from Hepworth Towers

• I will see the first FINISHED FINAL HARD copy of the paperback of Plotting for Grown-ups today. Scary or what? Actually I’ll see 400 of them. These are the ones I’ll be selling locally. The others are going to the warehouse.
• You can pre-order your copy now from Amazon, or from the Book Depository and the latter gives you free worldwide postage and currently 25% off as well! Follow this link! 

• I have two cataracts, which explains why night driving has become so difficult, and maybe why proof-reading was such a pain this time around?
• Dave and I are itching, but we can’t see any fleas. What has the cat brought in?
• I can’t bear to open emails from Amazon Help any more because they are only sometimes helpful.
• My niece has had her first baby – Arthur Frederick. I’m so happy for the proud parents.

Rural backwaters

You have no idea how great it was to be away from the book and the PR for the book and the lawns that need mowing and the bathroom that needs cleaning and the list of jobs on my desk, at the top of which was RING PLUSNET.

Plusnet is our broadband and phone provider. They’ve been great for 4 years but lately we’ve been getting slower speeds as well as disconnections. I can never, ever, ever find the wallet file that contains our Plusnet contract and our scribbled password. After ten minutes of charging between Dave’s filing cabinet upstairs and mine downstairs I rang them anyway and after Dave had been hauled out of the bath to have a miraculously successful stab at the password, and to say it was OK for them to speak to me (the contract is in his name) a calm tech support chap with a soothing manner explained that we probably need a new router.

So that’s what we’re trying. But we are never going to get a download speed greater than 8mbps, because that’s all the village exchange will support. That’s living in the sticks for you.

The next thing on the list is to source some strong, clean cardboard boxes in which to store the 400 copies of PLOTTING FOR GROWN-UPS that will be arriving here tomorrow dressed in nothing but shrink wrap. (The majority of the books are going to the warehouse, and storing them there is not my problem.)

Away

I’m going to Wensleydale for a few days  with my big sister. See you next week.

For publishing geeks…a long story about perfection, and more haste less speed

The last five days have been devoured by book production issues. (The paperback edition of Plotting for Grown-ups.)

A piece of advice for self-publishers – never, ever send a book cover design to the printer unless you have seen a hard copy and approved it. Things look so different on the screen to how they look on paper, and I’m not just talking about the colour.

If you are foolish enough to do this you may end up agreeing that it is fine when it’s really not, because your head is muzzy and your eyes are sore, because you’ve spent the last three days proof-reading, discovering tiny glitches in formatting in the text that you never noticed before, and you’ve been worrying about how much it will cost to get the printer to make alterations in the text at this late stage. Does it really matter that for some reason Neighbours is not italicised(Neighbours) as it should be? and does it matter that several of your co-author’s apostrophes are lurking in the text –(her apostrophes being straight and yours being curly)? or that a page which is a list of bullet points has weirdly appeared in Lucida Sans and not Palatino Linotype?  – will Jo Public notice?????

Wondering how the hell it happened is a luxury you don’t have time for.

For the record, I went for the perfection option. (Despite the motto Dave gave me – Perfection is our aim. We must learn to tolerate excellence.) It costs £8 per page alteration on a print-ready proof, but £21 if you supply the printer with a brand new PDF. I did the latter.

Then I spent a sleepless night fretting over the cover because I’d realised that someone in a bookshop with no reading glasses would have difficulty reading the back cover text. By  3 a.m. I’d decided on the perfection option again. It’s bloody expensive being a perfectionist. It’s also expensive NOT thinking clearly and taking things slowly and dealing with each issue properly the first time round.

The nice friendly buffer between me and the guys in the print room told me that the printer had already made the plate for the cover but had not pushed the button yet, so it was not too late. But it would cost me

 HEAPS 

for them to make a brand new plate. I went for that option, and fortunately the lovely, patient and skilful Juliet Arthur, graphic designer to the stars (well, me and some others) was available and willing to make the changes. Her cheque will be in the post today.

So last night I slept.

I’ll worry about my mounting costs another day.

Technorati Tags: book cover production,book cover design,proof reading,printing,print ready proof,perfection,expense

 

Book cover blues

I am wrestling with book production issues, and a bad night and a bad headache, and lists and lists of PR jobs, not to mention 6lbs of blackcurrants in the fridge awaiting their sticky fate. When I am less beleaguered, I will blog.

Real life? Fiction? There’s so often a confusion

From Plotting for Grown-ups, written last year…

I asked Richard again what the woman looks like. “What colour hair does she have?”

“Medium.”

“Is she fat or thin?”

“Medium.”

"Does she have a weird nose?"

"Maybe."

Absolutely hopeless. It’s a good job the woman isn’t a criminal with Richard expected to give an eyewitness account to the police.

From real life at Hepworth Towers last week…

Sue: What does he look like?

Dave: I have no idea.

Sue: You spent four hours with him! What does he look like?

Dave: Really – I haven’t a clue.

Sue: What colour is his hair – is he dark or blond? Is he tall or small? Does he have a fat face? A flat face? You must remember something.

Dave: He has a blue anorak.

Technorati Tags: fiction,real life,identification,eyewitness account

 

And another reason…

….for liking grandchildren, is that they tell you you look “epic” in your new rock chick sunglasses.

Schedules pop out of nowhere

I’m sitting in bed relishing the fact that nothing is scheduled today until 2 p.m. Dave is in the shed and the house is quiet, though there’s a crow outside, making a fuss about something.
On Tuesday I was sitting at my desk with a day of work ahead of me, fretting over the new estimate from the printer, increased because there are more pages in Plotting for Grown-ups than I originally told them. Then the phone rang and it was the family member who declines to be named, wanting to come out for the day. Unscheduled - but who cares? It was so nice to see them.
Yesterday I was planning on working, but then Zoe was ill so I said I’d have Tate and Gil for the day. What a treat. I never thought I would be a doting grandmother. It’s taken me by surprise: ten years ago I thought women who droned on about their grandchildren were sad creatures and should get a life. Now I see that being with grandchildren IS life.

When I tell people that we have two grand-daughters in California, they usually say “Isn’t Skype wonderful?” and I say “Yes.” And it is when it works. But so often we get cut off. Yesterday, we managed to sing Happy Birthday to Lux, and then we got cut off. Connected again, I saw Lux with my present, about to open it, and we got cut off. It was precious to see her excited and happy, but the whole episode – after so many disconnections – left me feeling bereft. I never thought I would miss a granddaughter. I never thought I’d be sad I couldn’t be with her on her birthday. But aren’t I lucky to have any grandchildren at all?
Lux with her cake -

Cece -

Jam today for Lux

It’s jam-making season at Hepworth Towers. I know some long-time readers will be sick of jam posts, so follow the asterisk at the bottom. (For new readers, you might enjoy this jam post or this one.)

But today is Lux’s birthday.

Happy Birthday, Lux!

And this jam-making sequence is for her.

She is 3. And just choosing the photo of her to put on here made me miss her. I can’t be with her in California till October. She loves our jam, and she wanted to pick “berries” with me when she was here in May when the blackcurrants weren’t.

So here is what happened this week, Lux…

 

Dave had to to get the sticky labels off the old jam jars that wouldn’t come off with soaking in water…

 

And it will be happening several times over the next few weeks: this was just the first batch. We have far too many blackcurrants.

Note to eagle eyed adults – no, Dave didn’t change his shirt during the process. I used pics from several years for the sake of clarity, so suck it up.

P.S.

Lux’s Dad, Isaac Hepworth, tweeted today -

asked what she wants to do for her birthday today, @thebeean declares "I want to be three"

*(Those who aren’t interested can read my bunny club postings in July 2010. Start with The Bunny Club – a late-night posting and then read the one above it.)

Tweeting from the brink of death

No doubt you’ve all read about the violent mysongyny abroad on Twitter.

If you read my blog last week, you’ll have seen the use of Twitter to get some action from a company that was dragging its heels.

Twitter is used in all sorts of ways. As I write, there is a National Public Radio presenter, Scott Simon (@nprscottsimon), tweeting bulletins from his mother’s death bed in Chicago. When I saw his tweetstream it reminded me of me, writing at my father’s bedside when he lay dying. I wrote in The Guardian about this. And I also used the material in my novel, Zuzu’s Petals.

Here is the latest (as at Monday 11.15 GMT) from Scott Simon.

You have to start from the bottom and read upwards.

Things have moved on since I took this screenshot. If you’re interested in the developing story, you can look at his tweetstream for yourself.

Who’s who

Whenever she’s reading a book I’ve written, one of my sisters-in-law always asks who – amongst friends and family – a particular character is based on.

The truth is that most of my characters are fantastical concoctions and bear little resemblance to anyone I know. There are some exceptions. For example, some of the members of the writing group in Plotting for Beginners were tweaked people from a writing group where Jane and I first met. No-one recognised themselves. And one person, whom Jane and I are both fond of, said he was sad that he wasn’t in the book - when he was.

Also, there are a couple of minor characters in But I Told You… who are based on unknown people I frequently see around Bakewell. But that is just their looks – not their personalities.

The other exception is Dave. Many of my characters are based on him. I’ve told him more than once that he has far too many interesting traits to use up on just one character. So all of the following characters have something of Dave in them – Gus, Sam and Richard from Plotting for Beginners; Gus and Richard in Plotting for Grown-ups; Rob in Zuzu’s Petals; Sol in But I Told You Last Year That I Loved You.

Kit in Plotting for Grown-ups bears no resemblance to anyone but I did get the idea for his liking for wearing white shirts with suit waistcoats from a photo (of a less attractive man than Kit) in a Saturday Guardian.

I’ve reported the following interchange before, but you may not have seen it -

Sue: “You were the hero in my first three novels. You can’t expect to be the hero every time.”

Dave: “Of course. It would be too exhausting.”

Hero with hair -

Hero without hair -

Technorati Tags: Characters,hero,Plotting for Grown-ups,Plotting for Beginners,Zuzu's Petals,But I Told You Last Year That I Loved You

My lazy Friday

The clematis is out:

The Crocosmia Lucifer is out:

And whatever this is, is out:

And the weeks are busy. So many people want to visit, which is lovely – of course – but even so, when it gets to Friday and nothing is booked in the diary, it feels like wall-to-wall luxury.

I love padding around in my bare feet and pyjamas and not getting cold. I love playing the sax in my pyjamas, taking my breakfast back to bed, getting up late, and then walking down the Monsal Trail with Dave for a coffee at Hassop Station. Yesterday we sat at a table outside, under a blue sky with pretty cirrus clouds and a welcome breeze. It was heavenly. Isn’t this summer fabulous?

Then we came home and I blasted out a few more take-down notices to internet pirates, and played my sax again. I’m working on an attractive new arrangement of Fly me to the Moon, which is hard enough to be a challenge, but not so hard that I curse and want to hurl the music in the bin.  

I did do some publishing work – but I took it slow and easy. I am feeling so smug about completing my accounts for my tax return - another annoying job ticked off the list.

At teatime I cycled up the Trail and back, and then in the evening went to the local for a meal with a close friend, and we caught up on the last 6 months of each other’s lives.

A good day.

A very good day.

Technorati Tags: Monsal Trail,Hassop Station,internet pirates,saxophone,a good day.

The headlines this Friday (with a tiny update)

1/ Kobo has promised to remove Plotting for Beginners from their site within 24 hours.
It’s taken a two week stream of emails from me and Snowbooks (the original publisher). Yesterday, in desperation, Isaac and I contacted them via Twitter.
In an apologetic email I received at teatime, Kobo said:
“Just as a bit of context for the delay on removing the book from the site: we are legally obligated to obtain permission from the entity that supplied the book to Kobo before we can remove it from our website”
That is fine, but I am puzzled as to why it took so long for my enquiry to be escalated to the next tier up where someone could actually do something.
Now there are other dragons to slay. It’s becoming a full time job chasing people on the internet who are “file-sharing” a book they have not written and to which they do not own the copyright. Why would someone (and I do not mean Kobo – who were acting in good faith with what they thought were legitimate copies) assume that because they can copy a book, or a piece of music, it is OK to offer it to the world for free – or for money? Do they think artists and musicians and writers live on fresh air?
2/ The Aging Hippie informed me that she can rarely comment on my blog because Blogger loses her comments. If this has happened to you, I am very sorry. If you are desperate, you can email me at infoatdelicatelynuanceddotcom, but I only respond to people I haven’t met, on the subject of my blog or my books.
3/ The strawberries are almost finished, and it’s time to start picking the blackcurrants and making jam.
4/ My elder grandson has become an archaeologist.

I need your help

I’m feeling better today. I realise now that what was wrong with me yesterday was exhaustion – so will you please suggest this to me, next time I put up a bad-tempered post?

But I need some help from you, dear readers, in another direction.

In trying to get Waterstones to stock the paperback of PLOTTING FOR GROWN-UPS I need to tell them who my likely readers are – not just intelligent women, but which other authors do these intelligent women like? If you were sorting and categorising your bookshelf, which authors would you put me next to? How would you describe my fiction?

Please, please overcome your resistance, your shyness, your modesty, your desire for anonymity, and tell me in the comments section below. It would be a HUGE help.

Your comment will appear as soon as I’ve checked that it’s not from a spammer. A friend emailed today to say that she has tried several times to leave a comment and her comment has got lost. If this has happened to you, I am sorry. I have no idea what the problem is.

 

lower case bits and bats a la giovanna – a bad tempered post

the kobo team who answer plebs’ emails have escalated the problem. watch this space.

i was invited to a charity hog roast at the weekend and could find no-one to go with. I have too many friends who are either busy, or who are squeamish veggies. sometimes no-one but a sibling (who grew up on a farm and is unsentimental) fits the bill. it’s a shame mine all live so far away.

(i am the one in the pretty dress at the front.)

there is nothing else to say this morning, as I am feeling both under the weather, and also pretty dyspeptic. you are so, so lucky I don’t do politics on this blog: there is so much in the news at the moment that is driving me nuts. OK, if you insist, try this headline. and this one.

i just read this on twitter

It is said that authors become grumpy when they are not writing.

i wonder if that’s what’s ailing me….

 

Technorati Tags: siblings,hog roasts,veggies,poverty,vulnerable children,kobo.