Some rules for writing.

1. Don't pretend there are rules for writing.  At best there are rules for your writing, but even then, they are probably just rules for writing the book you have just finished.
2. Don't think that writing fiction makes you a guru.  Just because you can tell a story doesn't qualify you to pepper the internet with platitudes and aphorisms and lists.
3. Don't take credit for your book jacket unless you did it yourself.  The designer doesn't take credit for your prose.
4. Don't bang on about what a terrible job it is to be a writer.  You sound like an idiot.  Many of your readers would sell their souls to get a book published, or to even have written something worth publishing.
5. Write every book as though it were your last.  Otherwise it might be.
6. Don't take pleasure in bad books.  A bad book doesn't make your book any better.  
7. Don't dismiss bad reviews because they are bad.  Not all bad reviews are wrong.
8. Don't set limits on your achievements.  
9. Don't set yourself goals.  Goals are just another kind of limitation.
10. Be jealous of the achievements of others, but don't resent them.  It's not personal.  They aren't selling books to spite you.  They don't know who you are.
11. Don't be a jerk.  
12. Don't listen to other writers.  They lie for a living.
13. Believe in yourself, but stop well short of worship.
14. Don't tell complete strangers how many words you've written that day.  The postman doesn't tell you how many letters he's delivered.  No one cares.
15. Don't tell everyone you work every day including Christmas Day and think anyone is going to believe you.
16. Don't go on about how J K Rowling isn't a very good writer, because it gets on my nerves (see 10).
17. Don't make an enemy of your editor or your agent.
18. Don't wear your lack of sales as a badge of pride.  Low sales do not necessarily mean that your work is an under-appreciated work of genius.
19. Trust your own judgement.  But not too much (see 11).
20. Listen to other writers.  They tell the truth for a living.

The undead book

I've just had a royalty statement for a book I wrote some years ago.  It is called Witch Hunt and was published by Hodder.  It is a piece of narrative non-fiction about the Salem witch trials.  It is, I firmly believe, a very good book.  It is also out of print.

Royalty statements are a bit of a mystery to everyone outside the publishing industry and, to be honest, they can be pretty confusing even if you see them every six months.  They are the kind of documents that seems designed to make the information they contain as hard to ingest as possible.

The writer of a book receives a share of the sale price, agreed on contract.  Royalty statements are sent to writers from their publisher and detail the sales of books and the money due - if any - to the writer.

I say 'if any' because royalty statements can just as easily show a negative figure as a positive one.  This is because when the writer signs a contract with their publisher, they will almost certainly be paid an 'advance'.  This advance - the amount of which varies from publisher to publisher, writer to writer - will have to be 'earned out' before the writer will receive any royalties.

The bigger the advance, the harder it is to pay off.  But because a writer cannot control the sales of a book - although they can obviously help, by attending events, promoting themselves online an so on - most writers (and their agents) will want to try and get the best advance they can.

However, most writers will also want to 'earn out' their advance.  Not just because they want to earn royalties, but because if you don't pay off that advance, you will be in a weaker position the next time you negotiate with your publisher.  But more than that - books that don't earn out their advance drag behind you like the links on Jacob Marley's chains.

Good writers don't just churn books out (and yes I am saying I am a good writer).  We have to balance our artistic needs with the requirement to pay bills, but mostly, I have a real emotional commitment to anything I write.

When a book does not sell it hurts.  I mean it really hurts.  It may be a disappointment to your publisher, but it is often far more than just a financial disappointment to the author.  When a book that you put your heart and soul into does not sell, it can be really upsetting - and unsettling.

A book generally has a limited window of opportunity to sell - or two, if it has a hardback release initially.  In a perfect world, there will be a sales and marketing budget behind your hardback book and it will appear on tabletops in Waterstones and get reviewed in a couple of national papers and those (hopefully positive) reviews will decorate the jacket of your paperback.  Maybe you'll be nominated for an award.  Or even win one.

Your book needs to sell whilst this wind is in its sails.  It needs your other books to sell too.  You need to elbow yourself some room on the shelves.  The book's life - or half-life - will be extended on Amazon, and maybe it will get another chance if your next book sells well.  But maybe it will - gulp - go out of print.

Meanwhile those royalty statements keep coming, reminding you of that failure, telling you exactly how little a dent you have made in that advance.  Its a pain that cannot be cured, because the book, if it out of print, cannot sell any more copies.  I think many writers feel guilty about this.  They feel as though they have let the publisher down.  They feel they've let themselves down.  But that's not necessarily the case.

We all want to believe that quality will out, but experience tells us this is not the case.  We see it in our own work, and we see it in the work of others.  Good books (movies, plays, whatever) do not always do well.  Bad books (movies, plays, whatever) often do very well indeed.  Part of this is explained by the subjectivity of the term 'good', I should add.

So what do I think went wrong with Witch Hunt?  I'll start with what I think is right with it.  I think it's well written (well I would say that., wouldn't I) and was well edited by Anne Clark (who is now an agent).  The subject matter is a strong one - there is a perennial interest in witches and in the Salem witch trial.  It also links to the Communist witch hunt of the 1950s and to Arthur Miller's The Crucible.

What, in retrospect, may not have worked was the idea of narrative non-fiction.  It is a very successful genre in books for adults, but is perhaps confusing for children's booksellers.  The cover - which I actually quite like - is designed to look like fiction, I think, but the girl's face effectively rules out boy readers.  It could have been a bit less tasteful too.

Add to that the fact that the budgets for educational books are relatively small, and it becomes harder to promote the book.  It did get reviewed and had a couple of really nice ones as I remember.  But the fact remains that a book like this has a very small chance to get noticed before it sinks - as this one sadly did.  I remember seeing it in only one bookshop - and when I did, it was in the fiction section.

It is humbling to accept, that the success of your book may have as much, if not more, to do with the quality of the cover, the publicity, or of the sales or marketing budget, than about the quality of the prose.  But unless the audience know its there, the book cannot sell.  It is really as simple as that.  And so the writer can feel the book did not sell because the publisher did not back it with sufficient zeal.  The writer can grow bitter.  But who is to tell where the blame - if that's even the right word - lays.  There is always the possibility - however unlikely it seems - that the book you wrote, the book you loved and devoted so many hours to, was actually a bit dull, a bit derivative - not very good.

These undead books that come back to haunt us are reminders of something that went wrong in the mix of writing, editing, design, sales, marketing, publicity, but unfortunately they don't tell us which specific aspect failed.  As dispiriting as it may be to have a book that refused to sell, as a writer all you can really do is put it down to experience and go on and write the very best book you can - every time.

Crying over unsold books is the silliest of all writerly self-indulgences.  Let it go.

And the loser is....

I had a very good morning in Tooting yesterday at the Wandsworth FAB book awards, marred only by the fact that I didn't win.  Alexander Gordon Smith was the only other author there of the seven who were shortlisted.  We looked on nervously as the books were listed in ascending order, breathing a sigh of relief when ours did not appear in seventh place (he finished second and I finished third, by the way).  Blood Read Road by Moira Young was the winner.

It was fascinating as always to talk to the young people who came along to the event and to hear a little about why they had enjoyed Mister Creecher (they were far too polite to tell me if they hadn't enjoyed it) and to get a chance to ask them about what they liked to read and why.

What was really heartening for me was the fact that they talked about Mister Creecher they really picked up on the friendship aspect of the book.  The possibilities and limitations of Billy's relationship to Creecher were at the heart of all my thinking when I was writing that book.

In many ways I saw both characters as teenagers.  Although Creecher is a giant physically, he is a boy emotionally and psychologically.  He has been rejected by his 'father' and is looking for love, just as Billy, hurt and scarred by his life, is also looking for love.  They want love but neither know how to give it.  Both are wary and suspicious.

I think the relationships between teenage boys can be complicated even without such damaged individuals.  Teenage boys are very conscious of their maleness and are hyper-sensitive to how they are perceived by others.  Boys are full of questions they dare not ask for fear of revealing their ignorance and appearing to be inexperienced - which they are, most of the time.

Neither Billy nor Creecher know as much as they pretend to.  None of their experience is of any use to them in gaining the lives they dream of having.  Their friendship is a dangerous one, shot through with lies and suspicion and resentment.

Portuguese ships

A couple of Portuguese editions of Tales of Terror from the Black Ship turned up in the post yesterday.

And the winner is. . .

I am delighted to be able to tell you that Mister Creecher has won the BASH 2013 yesterday!

BASH stands for Book Award St Helen's and is voted on by the young people of St Helen's, Merseyside.  I was in very good company on the shortlist and I am very proud and pleased that Mister Creecher was voted the winner.

I want to thank all those voters and the organisers of the award.  I was sadly unable to attend the ceremony due to other commitments, but maybe I'll get a chance to come up there and meet some of those involved before too long.

The mask

The Mask was the original title for Through Dead Eyes, and for good reason - the whole story hinges on an antique mask that Alex buys when walking round Amsterdam with Angelien.

The mask I had in mind was a wooden Japanese noh theatre mask.  Hanna's father was a Dutch merchant with trading links to Japan and brings it back with him.  Through Alex, it returns to the house he lived in with his daughter - the house that is now the hotel in which Alex is staying with his father.  It is via the mask that Alex makes contact with Hanna - and she with him.

Whether the mask was cursed before Hanna wore it, I will let you decide when you read it.

Publication day

Through Dead Eyes is now published by Bloomsbury.  I have had copies of the book for a while now and I have already moved on in my mind, editing the next book and writing the one after that.  But publication day is still very exciting.  Any writer who doesn't find it exciting is possibly in the wrong business.

So what is Through Dead Eyes about?  I have already said a little about how and why I came to write it, but I have said very little about the plot.

The story concerns a teenage boy - Alex - who visits Amsterdam with his father.  His father is a writer and in the city hoping to get his history of Amsterdam during the Second World War made into a documentary series.  But we quickly learn that there are complications.

Alex's parents have separated and Alex has not adapted well.  He has had some trouble at school and he and his father are doing their best to avoid talking about it.  Added to which his father's editor in Amsterdam - Saskia - is an old girlfriend from his university days.  Saskia's daughter, Angelien is roped into being Alex's guide whilst Saskia and Alex's father talk business.

Angelien is older than Alex, intelligent and attractive.  They become closer as they start to investigate the mystery behind a strange Japanese mask Alex feels compelled to buy at an antiques market, and Alex starts to fall for her - despite the attentions of her aggressive boyfriend.

The mask has something to do with Alex's sense that he is not alone in his hotel room.  When he puts it on he sees the world as it was in the seventeenth century.  More than that, he sees the world through the eyes of the girl who used to wear it - a girl called Hanna.

And it is a very dark world indeed. . .