News and views

When asked how she came to write Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling said ‘The idea just came into my head…’ I guess that is the same for many of us who follow this lonely trade. Ideas just pop into our heads and we have to let them out by writing them down.

The idea for Harry Potter came to Rowling on a train, she did not have a pen and so she developed the story in her mind for the next four hours before ever putting anything down on paper. I work in a similar way. Ideas just seem to pop into my mind from nowhere and, if I like them, I turn them over and over letting them ferment, sometimes for days or even weeks, before either discarding them or  starting to write them.

Not all ideas born in this way work out. For every novel I have out there I have another that is either unfinished or which, when I got to the end, I was not happy with. I don’t throw these away, I put them on a back burner to keep warm and sometimes I go back to them, do a complete rewrite and then maybe produce something I think is worthwhile.

Of course simply writing books is not the only hard part of the craft these days, the author also needs to market his wares and that takes a lot of time and effort, time that would be better spent on the next book. I’ve advertised on social media and various groups, I’ve offered books for free, I’ve touted them wherever I can but I can only reach so many people and to attract a wider audience I, like most of my peers, need you, the readers, to not only spread the word but hopefully to leave reviews on sites such as Amazon.

Recently I gave my novel “Guilty?” away for free. More than three hundred people downloaded it, a significant number of them then downloaded further books but the vast majority did not leave a review so come on guys, if you liked it please put pen to paper and tell the world, if you didn’t then put pen to paper and tell me, I relish feedback.

I have two pieces of news before I close this. On Saturday, June 27, I will be selling signed copies of my books at the Tamarack here in West Virginia. I will also be doing a short reading of some of my work around lunch time so if you’re around the area please look in and say hello.

The second piece of news is that the four books in the Dean and Steph detective series are now available on Amazon as a boxed set for only $2.99 so, if you liked the first one take a look at the rest at:

http://www.amazon.com/Dean-Steph-boxed-set-Beneficiary-ebook/dp/B00Z4N2EJS/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1433808399&sr=8-3&keywords=derek+coleman