Ruth’s Blog
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The ‘Unbound’ contract is signed, so what now?
How did this happen, and now that it has, am I up to it? I started to write relatively late in life: going on a course on 'How to Write a Novel' was my 60th birthday present to myself. Four years later I published my first novel 'A Good Liar' and four more have...
Recording an audio book: lessons learned?
This week I finished the recording of 'A Good Liar' and here are a few things I learned, in case you fancy doing it yourself. Find a good studio with a decent mike and a proficient engineer. Mine was the Music Farm in Egremont, only 20 minutes from home, and exactly...
Crowd-funding – what’s it all about?
Last year I heard about Unbound publishing for the first time. At first it sounded like a scam, reminding me of when someone I know went to work for an insurance company and pestered all her friends relentlessly to buy a policy so she got the commission....
Do ‘special deals’ on books really work?
I've just put the ebook of 'A Good Liar' on a Kindle store special deal for a week, starting April 1st. I have mixed feelings about doing so, but it's just for a week, and we'll see how it goes. If it encourages people to read the whole trilogy, as ebooks or...
Reading your own audiobook: is it a good idea?
I've been reading a piece in this quarter's 'The Author' from the splendid Society of Authors, about the frustrations of listening to a reader making a poor job of recording your book, and being powerless to intervene. And another piece from Alice Jolly about the...
Is the end in sight for the ‘psychological thriller’?
A year or so ago, it seemed as if the psychological thriller was destined to overtake most other sub-genres of crime fiction. There'll always be a market for 'cosy crime', but the best-seller thrillers were at the other end of the spectrum, featuring graphic violence...
I’m asking again – do I need an agent?
I'm sure I've blogged about finding an agent before: I certainly think about it 'ad nauseam', but until this past week I've done nothing about it since about 2012. Aversion, avoidance - for whatever reason I've put it off, until a necessary change in my route to...
Wishing I’d mentioned ‘Bindoon’ in my novel ‘Cruel Tide’
Whenever I talk to local audiences about the two crime books, Cruel Tide and Fatal Reckoning, I explain that the institutions where the abuse of children occurred were not on the Morecambe Bay coast of Furness as is portrayed in the stories, but elsewhere. I also...
Preparing the audio book: what am I learning?
Preparing to produce the audio book of 'A Good Liar' is turning out to be an interesting experience. The first task, before any other planning or costings can be undertaken, has been to re-read and abridge the original text. Actually, even further back, the very first...
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