Image Credit: All images from Pixabay/Pexels unless otherwise stated. Book cover images from Chapeltown Books and Bridge House Publishing. Image of Lady and I taken by Adrian Symes.
Facebook – General
Final prize winner and runner-up prizes hand delivered locally today. Many thanks to everyone who has tweeted/sent messages to say they’ve got their “prize bundles”. Always nice to get something nice in the post/through the door instead of the usual bills etc. (See tweets at the end of tonight’s post). This is one of the nicest aspects of being a writer!).
Writing wise, I’m working my way back into my “normal” writing life with my CFT post already scheduled for this week. Am hoping to get back to my long term non-fiction project sometime this week and want to start submitting new work to Cafelit etc before long. There are other marketing things I want to do for Tripping The Flash Fantastic. So definitely not going to be short of things to do!
It can be tricky getting the balance right for writing new work, editing work so you can get on and submit it somewhere, and marketing for work you’ve already done.
My overall view is to try and get something done on every aspect in allocated time slots for them several times during the week.
Okay some weeks I will get more done than others but it is making the space available that helps so much here. Tuesday, I’m drafting blogs, Thursday, I’m marketing books etc etc. It is not set in stone and allows room for overlap but does make sure I cover as much as I can over a seven day period.
If I see an invite on a book related blog or FB group to share details of my new book, then I’ll drop things to do precisely that and resume what I was doing afterwards. But you get the idea.
I don’t think there is a perfect system for this kind of thing (and I think I’d be distrustful of anyone who said there was. What works for one person may not work for another) but what I do love about the writing community as a whole is the willingness to share ideas.
I’ve lost count of how many tips I’ve picked up over the years which have all increased my productivity/time management so I get more work done overall. (Scrivener is by the far the best tip I’ve taken advantage of here!).
Hope your Monday has been a reasonable one. I do feel a little like I’ve crashed back to earth again after the cyberlaunch for Tripping The Flash Fantastic on Saturday but I was expecting that.
Mind you, with a day spent washing, rescuing said washing from heavy rainfall, cooking and shopping, well it is definitely life as it is lived once again. Nobody said it had to be glamorous! (Just as well really! 😊😊😊).
Things to come this week. I will be appearing on #ValPenny’s blog later this week and am looking forward to sharing the link for that.
Quick heads-up to the winners and runners-up in the various little games I set on Saturday – your prizes are winging their way to you via Royal Mail so should be with you later this week. Hope you enjoy. It was a great joy to get those off at the post office today (and yes I did tell them what was in the packets!).
There are a couple of you lucky people who live near enough for me to deliver your prizes so I hope to do that tomorrow.
And before I forget, a big thanks for all the entries to the photo caption competition. All of them made me laugh and it was a hard task deciding on the winner and runner-up. This is something I will look to do again. It was great fun. (Photo I used is below. This just had “caption competition” all over it – well it did to me! Image taken by my better half, Adrian Symes).
My Chandler’s Ford Today post is going to be different this week too. It’s the first post I’ve written which is a non-fiction one (as usual) but which also incorporates a new flash fiction story from yours truly. The tale is funny but also gets a good point across. I look forward to sharing the link for that on Friday.
I can’t really say more without giving things away BUT can add I am hoping people will join in with the challenge I set in this post. Oh and the challenge is definitely “do-able” so more later in the week.
A HUGE thank you to all who supported my cyberlaunch in any way on Saturday night.
It was great fun to “chat” with so many of you and I had a whale of a time. Hope you did too.
Glad to see that the old Youtube clip of Monster Mash went down so well with everyone. It was great having a trip down that particular Memory Lane!
I’ve always loved the track and see it as a kind of a salute to Bewitched, The Munsters, The Addams Family etc. And given many of my flash fiction tales are on the quirky side, it is such an apt track to pick!
Have happily spent today getting the prizes ready to send to those lucky people who won or were runners-up in my raffle, quiz, and photo caption competition. Am looking forward to telling the good people in my local Post Office what is in the packets before posting them off! Subtle advertising or showing off – YOU decide!😂😂
And the icing on the cake today?
I’m absolutely thrilled to share that Tripping the Flash Fantastic broke into the Top 1000 on Kindle for Single Author Story Collections on Amazon earlier today. This is a first for me and am feeling seriously chuffed, as you do.🙂😉
Thank you, everyone!
PS I do offer signed copies of the paperback and am happy to post them off to you especially if you’re in the UK. Just DM me and we can take things from there. For anyone outside of the UK, I can post the book but will need to allow extra postage costs. Having said that, I do have an Amazon page in various countries so it would be worth checking those out.
Now this was a time related post on Saturday night of course! But I am leaving the link to the discussion page for my event here. Do check out the posts – and the links. I will put in shortly a couple of my videos sharing extracts from my new book.
About 20 minutes to go to my cyberlaunch for Tripping the Flash Fantastic. Hope to see you there. Have got a great pic for a photo caption competition so get your thinking caps on – oh and keep them clean! More to come on the launch page which is at https://www.facebook.com/events/1246876649024453/?active_tab=discussion
And do see http://mybook.to/TrippingFlashFantastic for more!
Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again
Twenty-FiveIt was my favourite number until I got soaked through thanks to the bus driver speeding his wretched double decker through a massive puddle.Allison Symes – 13th October 2020
Photo by Skitterphoto on Pexels.comI found a random generator to be more useful than a pair of dice for the raffle but it is hard to find a picture of a random number generator!
A new flash fiction story from me, which is funny yet still manages to get a good point across, will form part of my Chandler’s Ford Today post this week. I look forward to sharing the link on Friday.
When I started drafting my post, I hadn’t planned to put fiction into it. After all my CFT posts are strictly non-fiction but I quickly realised that what I was trying to say would work better as a flash tale in the overall post so that it is what I have done. I am also setting a challenge in this post but it is a fun one so I hope you join in!
I sometimes use flash fiction directly in marketing. (After all I include a flash tale in both of my book trailers for FLTDBA and now Tripping the Flash Fantastic. It is a great way to show people what flash fiction is as well as being a very useful “taster”).
This is where the advantage of a short form comes in useful. I can share a whole story and it doesn’t take too much in download time etc.
What a weekend! Many thanks to everyone for your support for my cyberlaunch on Saturday night.
Marketing for a book is, of course, an ongoing thing, and should always be seen as long term. Last week, for me, was the big push ahead of the cyberlaunch naturally.
Plans now are to continue to find different ways to market the book, get back to flash fiction writing (well, that third collection won’t write itself!), and I am itching to resume work on a non-fiction book too. So no danger of me becoming bored any time soon and that is how I like it!
Now on my original FB post. I did say the following!
I will just finish tonight by sharing the trailer for TTFF again. I share a story, Time For Some Peace, here, and it makes a good place to start if you’re new to flash fiction.
However, I’ve already shared this above so will share here a recording of me reading a very short piece called The Back of Beyond from TTFF. Hope you enjoy.
Am looking forward to sharing some of my flash tales from Tripping The Flash Fantastic at my launch in about 20 minutes time as I type this. Hope to see you at https://www.facebook.com/events/124687664902445/?active_tab=discussion
Note: videos included above but do check out the event posts as they were great fun. The whole Facebook post is far too long to reproduce here and it is simpler to share the link but also check out the music clips here. It was such fun and everyone seemed to enjoy it which I am so pleased about! I had such fun playing with Canva with various things for my FB posts in the run up to the launch – see in the pictures below. Will happily use Canva again.
Goodreads Author Blog – What Is It About Books You Love Most?
Difficult question to answer isn’t it? So much depends on the genre chosen too.
Overall, it has to be the characters who grip me. I’ve got to want to find out what happens to them. I’ve got to care about the outcome. It does have to matter to the character and therefore to me as the reader.
For historical fiction, I’m always keen to find out how a writer shares the information we need to know about the period without giving us “information overload”. That is they don’t give a whole wealth of information so you end up forgetting what the story actually is.
I like to see information drip fed to me in an entertaining way. One of my favourite books ever is The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey and that is a great example of how information is shared while keeping the story going and the pace up.
For crime fiction, I want to see how the author gives clues without giving the whole game away and that is not an easy balancing act.
For fantasy, I want to see characters I can identify with in terms of their needs and longings even if their species is totally alien in every sense of that phrase!
For me, a good read of whatever kind is getting the readers hooked to the characters. For non-fiction, that character is the voice of the narrator.
Happy reading!
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsWhen you said a little bundle prize for my caption entry @AllisonSymes1 I didn't expect all this! (And the chocs which have mysteriously vanished). Thank you! 😊 #BookLaunchCompetition pic.twitter.com/3wkCE9qXbY
— Fran Hill (@franhill123) October 13, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsA huge thanks to all who supported my cyberlaunch for #TrippingTheFlashFantastic, my second flash fiction collection, Saturday night. A huge thanks to Chapeltown Books. Thrilled to say I broke into the Top 1000 for Kindle under Single Author Short Stories earlier. A first for me! pic.twitter.com/ivKhWYH0D1
— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) October 11, 2020
Allison Symes: Collected Works 