I Forgot to Tell You About This Mackarb Story

Usually, when I write a book, I’m good at marketing it because marketing can often be more important than writing the book in the first place.

But for some reason, and I can’t for the life of me remember why, I didn’t market my latest book at all. I did have it listed on the home page of my website as being available in 2024, but that was the only mention of it online until it went live on the publishing site at the end of March.

So when I received the sales report a few weeks later, I was surprised at how well it was selling. I thought that maybe it was just the sort of horror novel that people are eager to read.

It’s called Mackarb, “A story so frightening that it cannot be told around a campfire near the woods, or worse, in the woods.”

So in an effort to actually start marketing this new novel, here are 3 things you might find interesting about it:

1. It’s the first in a series of 3 horror novels that are collectively called, Campfire Stories. Although it’s a set of 3, each novel is completely independent from the other books.


2. The cover image of scary eyes in the woods (see below), is a photo that I took from my balcony. I looked up at the trees one afternoon, and saw that the orange sunset was shining through like two evil eyes, so I quickly snapped a photo. Photoshop was used to highlight the ‘eyes’ and darken the sky and remove a couple of unwanted things in the foreground (like a telegraph pole), but the photo is mostly as the original. As I was writing Mackarb, I remembered the photo and used it for the cover.


3. Mackarb is the name of the town where the story is set, hence the different spelling of the word, macabre. It took me a while to come up with the name because it’s an important element of the story. It wouldn’t have seemed as sinister if I’d given it a happy name.

My next book in the series is called Jackolantern, and as you can probably guess, will be available for Halloween.

The third book is called Magenta and is about a woman who is engrossed in a novel she’d reading, then realises she’s trapped in it and can’t get out. I used a lot of imagination and creativity to write this one.

Anyway, if you’re interested in this series, Mackarb is available to buy or download from any book store.

Or you can borrow a copy from a library. If your library doesn’t have a copy, fill out a request form for them to purchase a copy.

And then relax and have a good read.

You can find out more about Mackarb here:

https://www.cheritonhousepublishing.com/books/mackarb.html

Why Most Writers Are 100% Wrong In The Way They Use Their Time

One thing writers often talk about is time. They think it’s all about working out how many words they can write in an hour, multiplied by how many hours they set aside for writing every day. 

They think that this alone will tell them how much writing they can do, how many articles they can write, and even how many books they can write in a week/month/year.

But they are completely wrong for looking at their time this way.

I’ve been a writer for over 20 years, and I earn all my income from my writing, so I know what I’m talking about.

Don’t get me wrong, knowing how fast you can write is important, but there’s one thing that’s crucial.

If you want to get more writing done in the time that’s available to you, you must protect your time. You must preserve your time. And you must not, under any circumstances, let anyone steal your time.

Let me explain what I mean.

When I first began writing, I had a full-time job and a family to look after, so I had to squeeze my writing in whenever I could, which usually meant writing in the evenings or at weekends.

Eventually, I managed to earn enough money from my writing so that I could change to a part-time job, and when I was earning enough from my writing, I quit my job altogether.

It was a long and laborious process, and the hardest thing was protecting my writing time.

It seemed like every time I wanted to write, the universe had other ideas. One of the kids would get sick or an emergency home repair needed doing, or the dog had to go to the vet, or a friend or family member would need my help with something.

There always seemed to be something to interrupt my writing time. And let me tell you, if you try and say to someone that you’re too busy writing to help them, they do NOT like it.

Friends and family were quite scornful and mocking about my wanting to be a writer. Even now, so many years later, no one ever wants to talk about my writing, and if I mention it, they quickly change the subject. It’s as though it’s taboo to mention my writing.

One day, when I was visiting my father, I saw a magazine on the coffee table. I opened it to one of the feature articles and said, “Look. That’s my article. I wrote that and it was published this week. See?”

My father’s wife leaned forward, closed the magazine, and said, “Right, who wants coffee?”

I was so hurt (and confused). I thought surely when I pointed out one of my published articles in a magazine they might have at least been interested or maybe even smiled. Instead they gave each other a quick sideways glance and pretended I hadn’t said anything.

And it’s this attitude that other people always seem to have and they think that your writing time isn’t important. So they think nothing of taking it from you and using it for their own gain. For a long time, people that I knew thought my writing was a joke, even though I was being published regularly, had set up and was running a writing website, and had thousands of subscribers. Try telling your friends you don’t want to go out drinking with them because you want to go home and write a short story and see what happens. They won’t like it at all.

This is why it’s important to train your friends and family to respect your writing time, and don’t be afraid to tell them that you’re too busy to talk on the phone, or to go for a coffee or to go to lunch. Once you start saying no to them it’s amazing how quickly they stop asking.

And when you’ve trained them to leave you alone, and you get to write more, the most amazing thing happens.

As you write more, it gets easier and faster. It’s just like anything we do repeatedly. It takes far less effort, and becomes quicker.

Having a strict writing schedule helps too because it not only makes sure that you have time to write, but once others know it’s your writing time and that it’s off-limits to them, they’ll leave you alone.

Don’t let others steal your writing time. They’ll never give it back. And it’s far too precious and important to lose.

P.S. Don’t let emails and social media steal your writing time either.

https://www.cheritonhousepublishing.com/books/MCWS1.html

This is better Than a Writing Prompt

Writing prompts are such useful things for getting our creative minds working. They also give us a starting idea of what to write about which is all a writer needs to get going.

But writing prompts are just that. A bump to get you started writing. Nothing more.

So, what if, instead of using random prompts, you look for paying markets and writing competitions and use them as prompts?

You don’t have to submit them, just use them as writing practice. There’s a lot of advantage of doing it this way.

1.    You’ll be practicing writing what the industry is looking for, so you’ll know what kind of writing sells         and what subjects/topics are currently popular.

2.    You’ll get used to writing to deadlines. Having a limited time to write can give you the bit of pressure you need to get your writing done. Writing to tight deadlines can also help improve your writing by not giving you time to second-guess yourself or to try and edit as you write, both of which are fatal to good writing.

3.    You can submit your writing if you want to and earn money. And because you’re only practicing your writing, it doesn’t matter if it gets accepted or not or if it wins a free competition or not. You’re just getting used to being a regular writer.

There really are no disadvantages to using writing markets and competitions as writing prompts.

It’s great practice, gets you writing regularly, and gets you used to deadlines.

Plus, you can submit your work if you want to, and even if it’s not accepted, you can find another market for it later. Or not.

And it can really get your creative mind working, which is what using prompts is all about.

Monthly Challenge Writing Series

https://cheritonhousepublishing.com/books/MCWS1.html

Why Successful Writers Make Plans

"If you don't separate yourself from distractions, your distractions will separate you from your goals."

~ Steve Harvey

I love reading about other writers’ goals and how they plan to achieve them. This is something that’s always fascinated me, probably because it reassures me that I’m not alone.

But what is a successful writing plan?

I’ve learned a lot about how other writers’ minds work and it can be inspiring to read about their successes as well as their failures. Mostly I love their tenacity to keep going no matter what.

Working as a writer is extremely isolating because I have to work completely alone and cannot stand the smallest disturbance when I’m “in the flow,” deeply absorbed in my writing.

Thankfully, the Internet, books, and podcasts, gives me access to other writers, and seeing them go through the same struggle I do gives me hope.

When I first began writing professionally, I went openly online talking about what I was doing. The reaction from some people (through blog comments and emails) was hostile to say the least, and I used to get upset about it.

But eventually I discovered that I wasn’t the only writer getting criticism. In fact I was far from it. I found out that even the most prolific and successful writers received hate mail. Most writers put it down to jealousy and moved on, so I did too. I still get a few haters now and again, but thankfully it’s easy to report them and block them.

It turned out that even hugely successful authors like Stephen King get people telling him how he could have written his books better, even though they’ve never written anything and his books are not only best sellers, but many have been made into high-grossing movies. He wrote about this in his book ‘On Writing.’ 

But trolls like these are the type of thing that can be distracting, especially if you’re just starting your career, like I was at the time. Back then, even other writers would tell me that I’d never make it as a published author because I self-published my books when no one else (or not many) was doing it.

Then the self-publishing industry boomed and I was already way ahead of the rest, who’ve since failed and seem to have fallen out of the writing universe, yet here I am - still!

And it’s probably due tot he fact that, like all the successful writers I’ve read about, I’ve always had a plan of what I wanted to achieve and how I was going to do it.

My original plan was to set up several websites and us them to earn money through advertising and affiliate marketing. At the same time, I was also doing freelance writing and submitting article ideas to magazines and other websites all the time. And it worked well.

My next plan was to write a novel, which I did . I self-published it (which took a lot of research back then to figure out how to do it), and when I started making sales, I wrote a book about how I did it so that others could do it too, and that’s when I got trolled by the haters. Yet at the same time, my books sales took off (and I swear the trolls helped me with marketing by talking about me all over the Internet), and my websites were all earning me a good passive income.

Since then my plans have changed a few more times because the online and publishing world have changed so much. I’ve always been constantly learning the whole time so that I can keep up with everything. Even now I’m trying to keep up with AI and how it’s making even more changes to the way I work.

My plan now is to write and publish as many books as I can, as well as still doing freelance writing.

But no matter what, having a plan is important because without one, how can you achieve anything?