Archive | 09:00

Parisian Daydreams

15 Jun

I have a dream.

A very specific dream.

It involves a Parisian apartment with French doors opening onto a little terrace with wrought iron furniture, a cafetière of fresh coffee and a view of cobbled streets along the Seine, a skinnier and more stylish version of me (I’m always skinnier in my daydreams, and in this one I’m dressed in agnés b) and three months of uninterrupted time in which to write a novel, haunt Shakespeare and Co. and have a fun-filled lust affair with a young French photographer.

(Why a photographer? There was an especially cute French guy on Sunday night’s episode of The City, and he was a photographer. So there.)

Once I came really, really close to moving to Paris. I was going there to learn to teach English as a foreign language in a school in the suburbs, and after the eight week, live-in course my fellow newly qualified TEFL teachers and I would be set up with jobs in the city and left to our own devices. But the day after I paid the course deposit, I got an email about a job in Walt Disney World, and that was the end of that.

But I never stopped wanting to move there, at least for a little while. I’m sure I’ll get there one day. In the meantime, I’ve been torturing myself with these Parisian treats… (more…)

Self-Printing Promotion: The 1st Chapter

15 Jun

A very easy way to ensnare potential readers for your book is to release your first chapter into the wild. It costs nothing, it can be a great advertisement for your book and if it leaves readers wanting more, it will translate directly into sales.

(That’s if it good, of course, but let’s assume for the purposes of promoting our self-published book that it’s an absolute blinder.)

I’d recommend doing this as soon as your first chapter is locked down. Us self-publishers can be editing up until the eleventh hour if not beyond, so me saying you should do it x weeks before publication doesn’t really mean anything. Instead I’ll say release it as soon as you know it’s not going to change. This isn’t going to work if someone reads your first chapter, buys the book and discovers the two have nothing in common, now is it? (more…)