Trying to get over this disgusting cold I’ve acquired.  Today I’ve researched how best to use Scrivener (pro writing tool – http://www.literatureandlatte.com/) across a series, such as my Scott Cullen one.  It’s a great product, allowing you to outline and structure your work in a way that a linear tool like Word just can’t (imagine the document map in Word is a looking glass into Wonderland, and Wonderland is full of outlining tools and so on and you’re there).  The downside is that it’s possibly too flexible.
I used to use MS Office to write – Word, obviously, but also using Excel to plug the outlining gaps.  Most of the reason I used Excel for is that I’m a trained spreadsheet monkey at work and, even though I’m a Programme Manager now, I do my staff’s collective heads in by insisting on using Excel to catalogue things, rather than Word tables (which are just shite).  It’s a very flexible programme – possibly too flexible.  Oh.
My main bugbear since moving to the Mac a few weeks ago has been the shoddiness of the spreadsheets in OSX.  I’m not prepared to pay £80-130 for MS Office when most of my work will be done in Scrivener and I doubt I’ll actually use Word (outputting to Kindle files from Scrivener is bloody good, much less frustrating than the tear-soaked nights in April trying to format my manuscript).  I’ve tried Apple’s Numbers (part of iWork) but it’s feature-poor (no pivot tables – eh?).  I’ve tried the Open source ones – OpenOffice and its forks LibreOffice and NeoOffice – which are just clunky and unusable.
So, my solution is to try and get everything inside Scrivener as much as possible.  And it turns out that best practice is having all your books in a series in one project.  It doesn’t seem to kill performance, either.  So far, I’ve got GHOST, WHISKY and the rough outline for ALL IN A NAME in there together.  I’ll have to put DEVIL in, too.  It will hopefully help significantly when I’m writing DYED IN THE WOOL – questions such as “does McNeill have a brother or was it her friend’s brother’s floor they stayed on?” can be answered a lot more easily (it was her mate’s brother).  I need to consolidate the notes from the various spreadsheets and tag the files, etc, but it will really help for future projects.  It would have really helped for WHISKY and DEVIL.
Note – I have no affiliations with Literature and Latte, I’m just falling in love with their product.
So, I’ve got WHISKY off to the alpha readers now, time to focus a lot of attention on DYED IN THE WOOL (does that need a new title?), housekeeping and bothering to do the DEVIL IN THE DETAIL paperback.
— Ed

Just had the fifth FIVE STAR review for DEVIL IN THE DETAIL just now.
It’s very nerve-wracking having a new book out there and not knowing if I’ve made a glaring blunder or if it is not as good as book one, etc. Thanks to everyone who has read it and fed back!
— Ed

I know I’ve been all about DEVIL IN THE DETAIL recently – it only seems that way, other than doing the print version, it’s all yours as I’m focused on the two novellas and DYED IN THE WOOL – but at some point last week I broke the 500 sales barrier.
It’s absolutely staggering – bear in mind I’ve given it away 3,500 times – but 500 people have bought my book. Wow.
Now go and buy DEVIL IN THE DETAIL – that one ain’t never going for free!
— Ed

DEVIL IN THE DETAIL, Scott Cullen book two, is STILL 1.99 (GBP) today only – it will be £2.99 from tomorrow. Get in there now!
The initial price was a thank you to all those who bought and loved GHOST IN THE MACHINE.
Check out the following links:
Amazon UK – http://bit.ly/EJDevl
Amazon US – http://amzn.to/EJDevU
Thanks!
— Ed

Excellent article in the Guardian today on how he writes by Ian Rankin –
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/19/ian-rankin-how-to-write-book
Very interesting. Curiously, I am the opposite – I get easily distracted at home and seem to be more focused on the train.
Rankin is pretty much the number one reason that I’m writing. I can still remember reading BLACK AND BLUE in 1998 and being blown away – I still think it’s his best novel and is the bar which the rest of us set ourselves against.
I’m just about finished THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD, his second Malcolm Fox novel – it’s very strong and slow and measured. It’s a refreshing change from the wham, bam, thank you ma’am of most detective fiction but features a lot of the tropes of Rankin’s earlier work. For those who haven’t heard, his next novel, STANDING IN ANOTHER MAN’S GRAVE will feature Fox meeting a certain John Rebus (there’s a nice allusion to the old bugger from a SOCO in THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD).
There’s a whole section devoted to it today.
–Ed

The last two projects I’ve worked on – DEVIL IN THE DETAIL and WHISKY IN THE JAR – both started out as much shorter pieces.
DEVIL was a novella I wrote in 2010 set to bridge to gap between GHOST and the then second novel, BEAST IN THE SHADOW (now subsumed into DYED IN THE WOOL). I made the decision to expand it into a full novel, going from the 21,000 words to the eventual published 103,000, but with many more characters, subplots and – yes – detail.
I submitted WHISKY as a 3,000 word short story for the Bloody Scotland competition – I didn’t win and can see why. I had crunched a full case into their limit and it was a bit compressed. I’ve just finished the second draft as a novella and it’s sitting at 23,000 words. I expect the dodgy start to be rewritten and push that closer to 30,000.
But there you go, I’m ploughing on and I expect it to come out sometime in November – let me just say the 19th as that’s when I have a few other things planned.
I’m writing it at the same time as plotting out DYED IN THE WOOL, and I think I should be able to finish ALL IN A NAME in roughly the same exercise. It’s another novella but it might get deprioritised to early next year.
Anyway, DEVIL is out, WHISKY isn’t far off, GHOST is selling well and things are good.
— Ed

DEVIL IN THE DETAIL, Scott Cullen book two, is STILL 1.99 (GBP)! It will rise to 2.99 at the weekend so you want to get in there now!
The initial price is a thank you to all those who bought and loved GHOST IN THE MACHINE.
Check out the following links:
Amazon UK – http://bit.ly/EJDevl
Amazon US – http://amzn.to/EJDevU
Thanks to everyone who has bought it – I am blown away by the sales so far. Let me know what you think of it!
(In other news, WHISKY IN THE JAR [Scott Cullen book 2.1] is nearing completion of the penultimate draft – on track for publishing some time in November. Book 3 proper, DYED IN THE WOOL, is currently in outline and I’m down to level 2 on the plan for 40% of it. It’s going to take a few more weeks before I’m ready to start writing it but I have ALL IN A NAME, book 2.2, to actually write. Seems like I can do two things at the same time…)
Thanks again for all your support!
— Ed

Today marks six months since GHOST IN THE MACHINE was published. Makes me feel quite light-headed how it has gone.
In that six months, I’ve had 50 reviews on Amazon UK and it is all positive – 32 five star, 17 four star and a single three star.
I’ve sold 450 copies and I did a promo weekend where I gave away just over 3,000 books – my sales have been better since I did it, averaging over 4 per day, rather than two-ish.
I’ve got 4,446 followers on twitter, 61 people follow this blog and I’ve had over 3,000 hits here.
The biggest thing for me is getting DEVIL IN THE DETAIL out in time for the six month anniversary (and I managed to beat it by five days) – I will see how I go but I might try to get DYED IN THE WOOL (book three proper) out for the year anniversary. Most importantly, there are over 190,000 words out there that I’ve written and people can buy and read.
Thanks again to everyone who has supported me – it is mentally tough being a writer and you help me through it. I do love writing and it gets me up in the morning but having you guys enjoy my scribbles makes it worthwhile.
Cheers!
— Ed

So I finished DEVIL IN THE DETAIL today and my reward was a new computer. I popped into John Lewis after work and bought myself a MacBook Air, 13″ and 128gb model. Got it out on the train and it is perfect for writing on the train – the screen is lovely and high resolution. I just know I’m gonna get some good writings done on it!
Now, off to fiddle with it and maybe get tucked into WHISKY IN THE JAR draft 3…
Oh, currently 1,726 in the overall UK Kindle charts thanks to day one sales on DEVIL!
— Ed

That’s it, it’s done – DEVIL IN THE DETAIL, Scott Cullen book two, is OUT NOW!
It is 1.99 (GBP) for week one only then will rise to 2.99, as a thank you to all those who bought and loved GHOST IN THE MACHINE.
Check the following links:
Amazon UK – http://bit.ly/EJDevl
Amazon US – http://amzn.to/EJDevU
(International links on the Books tab)
I’m off to collapse somewhere and buy a new computer.
— Ed

So I’m at 30% on the proof edit of DEVIL IN THE DETAIL and I’m battering through. My proof reader (thanks Pat!) is over 50% and I’ve committed most of her edits but I’m also going through myself to make sure I’ve not made any blunders like last time – biggest tip I can give just now is to do a proof edit…
Anyway, I’m doing this edit and it’s going well so what happens? Aye, my netbook decides to develop a habit of freezing and not even going to the blue screen of death. It did it ten times yesterday as well as needing the bios backed up on Monday. And my deadline of next Sunday looms. Fortunately, it’s behaved itself today but it is most definitely on its way out.
So – me gets noo komputah!!!!1!1!
The use case for me and this new machine is that I want to use it on the train for writing and editing my books, but I also want to get away from paper and pen for planning and use mind mapping and, as confused long term readers will attest, I’m using scrivener for my projects post-DEVIL.
So, this has lead me to the following – I want an ultrabook, as it’s small and portable, and boots in five or so seconds. I want a high-ish resolution screen. I want an SSD as I will carry this beast everywhere and don’t want a hard drive dying. It doesn’t have to be my main machine in the house (I’ve got a Windows laptop for admin stuff and it’s got Office on it). Scrivener Mac version is 1.2 ahead of the Windows and has loads of features I want.
So? That leads me to a MacBook Air. I’m tempted as hell by the 128gb 13″ model.
Tell me if I’m making a mistake…
— Ed

There’s a little featurette on GHOST IN THE MACHINE on Good Kindles just now, it’s a very different blurb than I usually use – might make for an interesting read on this horrific weather day:
http://www.goodkindles.net/2012/09/ghost-in-machine-crime-thriller.html
— Ed
 

Here is the cover for DEVIL IN THE DETAIL – out October 14:

 
— Ed

So I’m apparently an indie books bargains author. Here are some badges – thanks again for the publicity!






— Ed

The latest tip is to let yourself go mad.  Writing a book is seriously mind-bending.  I think I’ve probably aged myself about five years in the last one by focusing on writing so much (hopefully I can reset the clock by chilling out over the next few…).
I spent five years going down the write -> submit to agent -> get a teaser -> get a rejection route – I did have three agents express interest in GHOST, mind, which is pretty good going.  On one hand, it helped me get better as a writer (my first book was shite, my second was flawed) but it’s a really stressful and dispiriting process.  When I got my rejection from the agency I was banking on, I made myself determined to tear GHOST apart and restructure it based on their criticism.  I spent a few weeks replotting it and got it to a decent state, then I gave up when work became really busy in late 2010.
Last summer, I decided to go solo and publish with Amazon direct.  I picked GHOST up again and got it pretty far down the line.  But the following blog post shows where my head got to a year ago –
http://edjamesauthor.com/2011/09/04/polishing-a-turd/
Ironically, I quickly got fed up of DEVIL and had pretty much given up on writing.  I got encouraged by a mate – he’s a policeman – saying that my book was really fresh and told a different sort of story to the usual.  I picked GHOST up and changed the ending, fixed the problem with the baddie and so on.
If I hadn’t let myself have those loopy moments, I wouldn’t be as strong as I am now.  Losing your mojo is hard but you’ve got to find it again and there’s no point in pushing it when you can’t push it.  (I realise this may sound contradictory to WT002 but that’s about getting through the writing cycle much quicker).
Sometimes the turd needs polishing and you can always throw away the shitty hankie…
— Ed
Buy GHOST IN THE MACHINE –
UK Kindle – http://amzn.to/Ih2ros
US Kindle – http://amzn.to/IzknfQ
 

GHOST IN THE MACHINE paperback finally out – apologies for the price, it is Print on Demand:
http://amzn.to/PEsCZH (UK link)
Other links are available internationally.  Phew.
— Ed

That’s me just had my 40th review of GHOST IN THE MACHINE on Amazon, and it’s yet another five star. Currently I’ve had 25 five star, 14 four and a single three star (which was that it was a bit slow – police procedurals generally are, but I can take that one on the chin).
I didn’t expect to get this many so quickly – just approaching that six month anniversary soon, which of course marries together with another important date…
amazon reviews
Only frustrating thing is that amazon uk and us don’t share the same review database…
— Ed
Buy GHOST IN THE MACHINE –
UK Kindle – http://amzn.to/Ih2ros
US Kindle – http://amzn.to/IzknfQ

Yeah, you read that one correctly.  Write rubbish.  Write crap.  Write utter shite.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever read was a quote from, if I recall correctly, Hemingway.  The gist of the quote was to write anything rather than nothing.  If you sit and stare at the wall and don’t write anything then you’re no further forward.  If you write something, no matter how bad you think it is when you put it down, then you can edit it, you can change it, you can even accept that it’s not utter shite, as well.
I’ve found that there are two schools of thought to writing crime fiction – “plot everything out beforehand” and “let the magic happen”.  I have tried the latter but it was utter bilge, so I do the first, though I have a high degree of improvisation in there.  Regardless, both methods require a high level of iteration – you don’t start at a perfect word one and finish 90,000 words later on a perfect word 90,000.  You have to savage it, pull it apart, destroy it, like it, change it, add to it.  To do any of that, you have to have something there.
If you’re reading this as a first-time writer, the best advice I can give you is just get that first draft done.  Finish it.  Race through it.
You’re nowhere near done, though.  Go through it a few times – try reading it as a reader, not you.  Which bits don’t work?  Which bits don’t flow well?  Which bits did you skirt over the research (ahem)?  Tackle it a few more times, then get someone else to read it, someone who will be honest.
To get a book as good as you can, you need to just get on with it.  The process of writing and rewriting and editing and proofing will give you everything that you need.
— Ed
Buy GHOST IN THE MACHINE –
UK Kindle – http://amzn.to/Ih2ros
US Kindle – http://amzn.to/IzknfQ

Had a great day in Stirling yesterday – my blogging stopped at lunchtime as my afternoon schedule was pretty full-on.  I’ll give my honest thoughts here of the rest of the day – it had some logistical problems that they should be able to sort out for next year, but it’s given me the hunger to go to these things.
After my chilli beef nachos in Beanscene (I could have sworn that chain was extinct), I headed to the debate on whether a crime novel could win the Man Booker prize.  Ian Rankin and Peter James were arguing for it but unfortunately managed to change my mind – the point that I took from it was that the Booker Prize is to give some “worthy” literary novelists a wad of cash to live off.  I’ve delved into pwoper literature – you won’t find a bigger fan of Ian McEwan than me – but I think it would devalue crime fiction – with its rough edges, tight plots, real world issues and, let’s be honest, high sales – to win or be considered for the Booker prize.
Shortly after, Stuart MacBride and Christopher Brookmyre (both inspirations to me) headed off against people who dealt with murder as a day job, a Central Division DI and a Forensic Scientist.  It was both incredibly entertaining (Brookmyre corpsing as he read the infamous opening to QUITE UGLY ONE MORNING, with the jobby on the mantelpiece) and harrowing (the photograph of an almost severed arm in a real murder case in Stirling).  I took down eight A4 pages of notes during that session.
Finally, I went to see David Wilson and Jean McLennan give a talk on true crime.  Jean is, strangely enough, the sister of my mother’s best friend and someone I’ve talked at great length about the highs and lows of writing.  The session was stimulating – Wilson was a former prison governor turned academic, Jean is a retired lawyer who is an Associate Sherriff in Wick.  I’m going to read Jean’s BLOOD IN THE GLENS next (Amazon link) and track down some of David’s work.
The last two sessions were the biggest challenges to me.   My writing has so far tended to focus less on the forensics of an investigation, though it’s for valid reasons – both cases are personal and need to focus on that side of things.  I do want to delve into that side of things and DYED IN THE WOOL will feature that more prominently, though tightly integrated into what I write.
Overall, a lot to think about and a tremendous inspiration.  Will definitely be back next year.
— Ed
Buy GHOST IN THE MACHINE –
UK Kindle – http://amzn.to/Ih2ros
US Kindle – http://amzn.to/IzknfQ

Just ticked off another item in my to-do list today and set up a mailing list – The Friends of Scott Cullen:
http://eepurl.com/pyjv9
This will be a light mailing list.  I’ll commit to a monthly newsletter – which may or may not contain exclusive Cullen material – plus I’ll send a mail when important Cullen things happen, such as DEVIL IN THE DETAIL coming out, sneak peek of the first chapter, preview of the artwork, and so on.
Go on, sign up!
— Ed