A week in the life of an indie author
The Spider is almost ready. Come and see!
This week I’ve been working solidly on the manuscript of The Spider—fishing out those annoying little typos and other bonkers things I hadn’t seen in the word document. It is, to my mind, as good as it will ever be. Now I can start working on book 2: The Kiss Of Death.
If you’d like to be given a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review, you can read the details here.
Cover design:
As a devout Canva user, I really enjoy designing my own book covers. This cover isn’t quite finished yet, but it’s going in the right direction. My husband thinks I need to add a bit more mist, but I’m just looking forward to smacking the barcode on the back and calling it a day. What do you think?
Formatting work
I wasn’t sure if adding any graphics to the inside of the book would be a good thing or not. It’s an adult book, but I see a lot of pretty books out there and I thought I’d try something. This is how each chapter looks in the manuscript.
Weekend reads
Last weekend, it was time for us to return our books to the library and take out something new. I raided the local history section and was thrilled with what was available. Next to my bed I have books on murder, mystery, local politics and a book about all the 19th century pubs that once stood in my part of the city—there were so many in one village that it was enough to warrant a fat book about them. Here’s something interesting too: absolutely all of the Liverpool ghost stories that the library stock are either reserved or loaned out already. This is music to my ears seen as I’m writing a book series of supernatural mysteries set in Victorian Liverpool.
As Liverpool belonged to the county of Lancashire (along with Manchester) until the 1970s, I also took out a book on Lancashire tales from the 19th century.
Inspiration is all around me.
Ever since I set out on this project, Victorian Liverpool is everywhere I look. Many of the iconic landmarks that stand today are from the Victorian era or the Edwardian era (however, the two iconic cathedrals were not completed until well after World War Two, and that’s probably a good job considering the volume of bombing the city endured.) Did you know that the arch of Chinatown here is the largest in Europe? Chinese people settled here from the 1860s and made Liverpool their home, with many more Chinese seamen settling the late 19th and early 20th century. The arch was put here in 2000 to commemorate the strong links with China during the industrial revolution and to celebrate the country's oldest Chinatown. Chinatown has already been lightly featured in The Spider, but there’s more to come.
Chinatown is easily recognised by the beautifully crafted Chinese Arch that adorns the entry. The arch was imported piece by piece from Shanghai, a city which Liverpool is twinned with.
The ceremonial arch stands at 13.5 metres tall and is the largest in Europe, in fact it is the tallest standing arch in any Chinatown outside of mainland China.—Visitliverpool.com
Everywhere I look, there’s an old pub, an old lodge, an old cottage, or a mansion just sitting there with modern houses surrounding them. My life will now mainly involve putting a supernatural spin on all of this. Oh well, it’s a good job I enjoy it!
I discovered a very funny (even if a bit crude) blog post about this very building. The guy who writes it explores abandoned buildings as a hobby, and likes to learn about the people that lived there. You can read the post here.
The blurb of The Spider:
When Frances Bryant and her family arrive at their new home at number five, Percy Street, she doesn’t feel welcome. Something lurks within the house, trying to catch her at every turn. What Frances discovers will force her to uncover the unforgivable, shattering the life she craves to pieces.
What begins as an encounter with the paranormal soon reveals itself to be a tangled web of secrets that Inspector Daniel Muldoon must get to the bottom of. Many lives hang in the balance, with two already claimed. Muldoon must compete in a race against time to save those who are still caught in the spider’s web.
I’m so excited to share this novel with you. The serial is still running every Sunday on Substack, but you can pre-order a copy of the e-book on amazon today! The book will be available in all formats on Friday 10th January.
I think that even from only the first few chapters of intro you have created an instantly engaging character with this Muldoon. I do have an image of him in my head but I can't for the life of me remember the actor's name. And he does play a detective. Sort of gritty. Grrr. Can't remember.
But it does make me realise what a wonderful series of Sunday night detective stuff these Muldoon books would make (preferably BBC rather than ITV then you don't have to put up with bloody adverts - and also preferably with a Chinese takeaway). So if I was giving you careers advice I would definitely advise you to go for the adaptation potential. If you don't know anyone in the production business then the best thing is I'd imagine is to find the right agent (a local/Liverpool based one would be ideal of course) - having your book ready to go as it were would, I imagine, be a massive advantage there - that's one of the advantages of self-publishing initially I guess. So if you find an agent who is really enthusiastic and immediately sees the potential for adaptation then you will be almost there. I'd do it in 12 parts, so you could have Act I starting in October, so you get the spooky stuff in the Hallowe'en season, then November/December you get the mystery, with the great denouement happening over the Christmas season. How cool would that be - listed in the Radio Times! I remember getting the xmas radio times and diligently going through it to plan all the xmas viewing and what things would have to be videoed cos of clashes. Sorry, mustn't digress.
But yeah - definitely play the Liverpool card too.
This might just be a me problem but one thing I notice straight away with cover design is alignment. If it’s not perfectly centered I can see it, even if it’s slight. Now, not centering can be a design choice but the cover looks like the slug line, your name and the title are all slightly to the left towards the spine, leaving a light of “white space” on the right. Then there’s the back cover. The spider between both paragraphs is closer to the bottom than in the middle. Again, could be intentional. In which case ignore me. If not, might want to look at those things, especially if you’re making print copies, which I imagine you must be or you wouldn’t be making the cover wrap the way you are. Otherwise, I love everything else about it. Oh and one last suggestion that I learned the hard way when it comes to printers and each book being slightly “off” from each other, if you can make the spine a part of the full wrap around (ie front cover and back cover) then do it. We unfortunately run the risk of any difference, such as a different color box that helps us separate the three parts of the wrap, can end up on the front or back cover in the printing process. It’s happened to me and I hated it. But there are small tweaks that can be done to prevent that from being an issue when a book leaves the printer.