Eww - there's some Geology in my Fiction.
Coming soon - an anthology of Earth Science short fiction containing my short story Permafrost, which originally appeared in Issues in Earth Science.
The anthology will be released on May 13th but is available for pre-order now.
Find it HERE.
Earlier this year I looked around at potential platforms to use for a newsletter. Several authors that I’m acquainted with send these out sporadically and it seems like a good way to build and keep in contact with their readership. So after a bit of deliberation and looking at what other people were using I decided on Substack.
It’s been interesting. There’s a vibrant community on Substack but also a cohort of people who are vehemently against it, although I’ve yet to see any evidence to back up their claims. Personally I’m finding it very friendly and useful. There’s all sorts of publishing insights and interesting people there.
I started my newsletter back in February and slowly started to build traction. Substack has an interesting setup where you can write articles which will be sent out to your subscribers – the newsletter part – and also has notes which are pretty much like all the other social media platforms where you can follow people and they can follow you, separate from actually subscribing to receive your articles by email.
I started with a monthly newsletter but then I noticed that several of the people I was subscribing to were sharing their fiction, some short stories and some serialised novels which they then went on to self publish. In fact the more I looked the more I found.
And so I’ve decided to join in the fun. Let me introduce you to Flashes of Strangeness where I will be sharing a piece of flash fiction or a drabble every few weeks for the foreseeable future. I’ve built up quite a collection of short stories over the years so I can’t wait to share them with you all.
Here’s the link if you’d like to subscribe. Flashes of Strangeness
And then along came Ficstack. This is a brand new venture – a website that logs and lists Substack fiction. It’s searchable by genre and vibes so you should be able to find exactly what you like to read. Defiantly work taking a look. Here’s the link: Ficstack.
So far this is proving to be a good decision. Subscribers are increasing, which suggests to me that people are actively looking for fiction to read on there. I will keep going and see how it develops. Who knows, I might even serialise one of my own novels at some point in the future.
For the past few years, in fact, ever since I received my rights back for Red Rock and dipped my toe into this alternative world, this alternative route for my books, I’ve been working my way through the Science Fiction backlist and self publishing those novels through Amazon under my SF author identity Kate Kelly.
It’s been an interesting project and the latest, and probably the last of these for a while is Permafrost which comes out officially today. Permafrost is a post apocalyptic SF thriller exploring themes of climate change and geoengineering. It’s a story I’ve very much enjoyed writing, and I’m glad to be sending it out into the world.
So what of self publishing in general? Well I’ve learned a lot. Firstly the actual production of the book is the easy part. Holding the book in your hands, flicking through the pages, looking at the cover you designed – it feels so satisfying.
But creating the book is only part of it. The really tough part, the bit I’m particularly useless at, is marketing. I’ve been experimenting with different things and for me, finding a community has been the most rewarding part. I’ve done this by participating in indie competitions such as SPSFC (Self Published Science Fiction Competition) which introduced me to the indie SF scene and I’ve met some great authors through this. I’ve taken part in group sales and Stuff Your Kindle events, and all these have helped shift a few copies of my books, but I have yet to truly find my readership.
And this is the key thing. Who are my readers? Where do they hang out? How do I make myself known to them?
If I ever manage to find the answers I’ll let you know. But in the meantime do check out Permafrost, and if you enjoy it please leave a review.
My latest short story, They Meet by Moonlight, has been published in the most recent issue of Leading Edge Magazine.
An alien detective sets out to solve a human murder but learns a few things he hadn't bargained for along the way.
You can find a copy here: Leading Edge Issue 85
Here is my latest update on the various promotional activities I have undertaken to try to spread the word about my self-published books, and how successful or otherwise these activities have been.
1. Social Media
I joined a number of reader and author groups on facebook and did my best to contribute as far as possible. Most have very strict ‘no promotion’ rules but some do offer opportunities such a monthly post where people can post kindle sales or new releases. Apparently the way authors game these groups is to team up and then talk about each other’s books. Unfortunately I don’t have a team of author friends willing to big me up, so I just have to play by the rules. Where I was allowed to I advertised the kindle countdown sale for The Arid Lands and my ARC signups for Dragons of Dunmoray. The main benefit from joining these groups was the helpful advice on offer.
Other social media activities continued as normal.
2. ARC Readers
In the run up to self publishing my new book, Dragons of Dunmoray, decided that, rather than approaching review blogs, I would reach out for ARC (Advance Review Copies) readers. I set up an ARC signup form on google forms and included one important question – Why do you want to read Dragons of Dunmoray? This deterred non humans very effectively. I only had one signup who was clearly a bot.
So far I have sent out 20 review copies. Hopefully this will prove to be a better approach than my previous efforts of approaching review blogs directly.
3. Readers Book Club
The Arid Lands was chosen as book club read for April/May and the organiser sent out six free copies to the participants. There was lively discussion but then one of the participants warned everyone than Amazon frowns on authors leaving reviews for other authors’ books and will cancel your KDP account if they catch you. So this immediately killed off anyone leaving reviews for anyone else, which was a shame.
I did ask the participating authors if anyone would be happy to let me have quotes that I could use in my promotion, but nobody responded.
As of now this group appears to have fizzled out.
4. Indieverse awards
This has come to nothing and I won’t be pursuing it any further.
5. SPSFC4
I plan to enter The Arid Lands into SPSFC4. I thoroughly enjoyed taking part in SPSFC3 and although Red Rock didn’t make it past the first round I feel it raised my profile plus I discovered some fantastic new authors and books.
6. Kindle Sale
I ran a two day kindle countdown deal for The Arid Lands in June. Sales had tailed off over the preceding couple of months so I hoped that this would give it a boost. I did my best to promote it wherever I could but only picked up a handful of sales.
So in conclusion the approach I took to find ARC readers has been significantly better than pitching to review sites. Final tallies for how many ARCS I will send out at the proportion that translate into reviews are yet to be determined.
Today I am delighted to share with you - the cover of Dragons of Dunmoray!
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I have a new novel in the pipeline, a dark fantasy set in Scotland. I'll be telling you more in the coming weeks, so watch out for my cover reveal! Not long to go now!
Details of the rapidity and nature of this flood remain up for debate but recent studies of deep gully like incisions in the seabed near the Straits of Gibraltar and extending out into the Mediterranean Sea itself, suggest that this could have been a catastrophic event.
Although initially discharge was low, and this may have continued for thousands of years, about 90% of the water returned in as little as a few months to two years. Such an abrupt flood would have seen sea levels in the Mediterranean rising by as much as 10 metres per day.
So how does this fascinating event influence Inez’s story? You will have to read The Arid Lands to find out.
The Arid Lands is available from Amazon in both kindle and print format.
The construction of this dam, along with several others at strategic locations, would have the effect of controlling the inflow into the Mediterranean from the Atlantic. It would have generated vast amounts of electricity as well as causing the Mediterranean Sea level to drop by 200m, so freeing up large areas of land for colonisation.
Sorgel saw this project as a gateway to forming a peaceful Pan-European utopia, although critics found many faults with his proposals, including the detrimental effects on coastal communities who would become stranded as the seas retreated, as well as the problem of finding agreement amongst all the counties which border the Mediterranean.
The project was largely forgotten after Sorgel’s death.
But what if it really had happened? What if the dams really were built? Of course, in The Arid Lands the capacity for generating hydroelectric power was never realised, for reasons you’ll have to read the book to find out. This resulted in the Mediterranean inflow being completely cut off, and as a result, some 600 years of evaporation later, the world of The Arid Lands where Inez and her people struggle to survive, has come into being.
The Arid Lands is available from Amazon in both kindle and print format.
The desiccation of the Mediterranean Sea would have a number of knock-on effects for the climate of the surrounding lands as well as creating a unique environment in the basin itself.
The climate of the basin can only be speculated for no equivalent environment exists on Earth today. But it is likely that as the depth of the basins increased so did the temperatures, possibly reaching summer midday highs of as much as 80C at its deepest points. This would not allow the existence of permanent life and it is likely that temperatures were nowhere near this extreme. But they would have been elevated enough to make life there extremely uncomfortable and difficult.
The surrounding areas would also experience climatic changes. Currently evaporation from the Mediterranean Sea provides moisture to the atmosphere which drives rainfall across much of the surrounding areas. With the Sea drying up there would be no input of moisture to the atmosphere and these rains would fail, resulting in a significantly drier climate over most of the central and eastern mediterranean belt.
In fact, the Mediterranean climate that we associate with Greece, Italy and the Levant would exist only in the Iberian Peninsula and NW Africa.
The desiccation would result in the extinction of much of the marine flora and fauna native to the basins, but the fusing of the two land masses would allow dispersal of terrestrial animals across the region.
Inez’s people survive by fishing for shrimp in the brine pools. In truth such a hypersaline environment would be hostile to life, but life is adaptable and my poor basin dwelling people have to eat something. Hence the shrimp. But apart from that I’ve tried to keep the environment in which they live as plausible as possible.
So how did this scenario arise in the world I have created? That will be the subject of a future post on this blog.
The Arid Lands is available from Amazon in both kindle and print format.
My newly released SF novel, The Arid Lands is set some 600 years from now, in an alternate future when the Mediterranean has almost completely dried out. It is in this inhospitable landscape of salt flats and occasional pools of hypersaline brine that Inez and her people struggle to survive. Inez knows no other existence. But all that is about to change.
You may think that the idea of a vast sea such as the Mediterranean almost completely evaporating is pure fiction, but let me tell you, it is not. For the Mediterranean Sea did indeed dry out, albeit a long time ago.
About 6 Million years ago (Ma) the Mediterranean Sea became disconnected from the Atlantic Ocean. During the period that followed, known as the Messinian Salinity Crisis the sea almost completely evaporated.
The closing of the connections between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean, which is now the Straits of Gibraltar, was caused by the shifting tectonics in this region. This isolation of the Mediterranean from the main inflow happened several times, between 6 and 5.3 Ma.
The initial phase was one of repeated cycles of evaporation and replenishment which led to the formation of thick sequences of evaporite deposits, minerals such as halite and gypsum, deposited from the evaporating seawater.
The connection was then cut off for a prolonged period of time. During this later episode of desiccation, the Mediterranean became a dry basin, as much as 5 km deep, with only a few hypersaline pockets of water remaining. This process of drying out the Mediterranean Sea is estimated to have taken about 1000 years.
The Mediterranean remained dry until 5.3 Ma when the Straits of Gibraltar were finally breached, and water flooded back into the Mediterranean basin in the form of a cataclysmic flood, and so the Mediterranean Sea as we know it today was formed.
But the thick evaporite deposits and the presence of deep canyons in the seabed which cut down into the abyssal plains as water returned to the sea are testament to this arid phase in the Mediterranean Sea’s history.
This is the setting for The Arid Lands. A hostile environment that once really existed. I will talk more about this geological event and how it inspired the world I describe in The Arid Lands in future posts on this blog.
The Arid Lands is available from Amazon in both kindle and print format.
Here is my latest update on the various promotional activities I have undertaken to try to spread the word about my self-published books, and how successful or otherwise these activities have been.
1. Social Media
I continued to promote Red Rock and The Arid Lands on Twitter/X, IG, my Facebook/Meta page, Threads and Discord. I did pick up sales of The Arid Lands on preorder and downloads of Red Rock from my free promotions, as well as the occasional sale of both outside of promotion.
2. Red Rock free kindle deals
The first free deal which ran for 3 days to coincide with the ten-year anniversary of Red Rock first being published resulted in a modest number of downloads but at least I was reaching potential new readers. I will have to wait and see how many of these translate into reviews.
The second 2 day free deal for Red Rock was run to coincide with the launch of The Arid Lands and produced a similar result.
3. SPSFC3
This contest (The Self Published SF Competition) will run for a year and the first phase, where I fully expect to get culled judging by the quality of some of the other contestants in my group, will run for 5 months. Initially there was no uptick in sales but it is likely that this is where my new downloads during the free offers came from. However, the contest did enable me to gain more visibility for my writing, which is always a good thing, and may well have contributed to those sales I did gain.
4. Review bloggers
I started approaching reviewers with The Arid Lands as soon as it was live for preorder on Amazon and I had set it up on Goodreads. My first observation was how many are asking for money for reviews. I’m not interested in paying but it’s clearly a lucrative industry. I passed over these guys and pitched the book to anyone who looked as if it would be a good fit. It takes a long time to thoroughly check out each review site so I sent these out in dribs and drabs throughout the preorder period. At launch date I had pitched/submitted to 20 reviewers. It is impossible to tell how many, if any, will result in reviews at this stage.
So in conclusion, of all the activities so far, it looks like free deals and participation in SPSFC3 have been the most worthwhile. I will have to look out for more opportunities like this.
Today I am announcing a very special launch Day deal.
To celebrate the launch of The Arid Lands I am making the kindle edition of Red Rock free for two days only, today and tomorrow, so why not grab yourself a copy.
Red Rock and The Arid Lands have a lot in common. They are both what might loosely be referred to as Climate Fiction although the themes involved are very different, and they may also both be referred to as SciFi thrillers with a dystopian setting.
The Arid Lands was originally written as my second book after Red Rock. However it went out on sub just as the market for YA dystopian fiction collapsed, and because it has a somewhat dystopian feel to it nobody wanted it.
So it sat on my hard drive, but I still loved it. I’ve reworked it to age it up, although it will still appeal to a YA audience. And I’m so happy to make it available at last.
Dystopian fiction is still popular among readers if not among publishers. All I need to do is find those readers.
So if you have read and enjoyed Red Rock, then why not give The Arid Lands a try. And if you enjoy it please take a moment to leave a review, however brief.
It is now ten years since Red Rock was first published.
Red Rock remained in print for nine years until my rights reverted and I self published it so that it would still be available. I’ve enjoyed the process. It’s good having control although I do now realise how much my publisher did with marketing and promotion. They fixed me up as a speaker at conferences and placed Red Rock into libraries (from which I still get a modest income in PLR).
My main market was through those travelling book fairs that do the rounds of schools in the UK, and through these Red Rock sold quite well. It’s a book I am very proud of. I hope my readers, past, present and future, enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
So to celebrate Red Rock’s ten year anniversary I am making it free on kindle for three days only – 12th, 13th and 14th September.
If you would like to grab yourself a copy, now is your chance.
This blog has been quiet recently for a number of reasons. Firstly I never have much spare time during the summer months, life takes over and there are so many places to see and things to do. I’m very much an outdoor person and can think of nothing worse than sitting indoors at my computer when the sun is shining inviting me out to play.
But in between all this sunshine and frolics things have been happening and progress has been made. The new thriller is coming on well, and I have decided to self publish my next Sci Fi book, just because I can.
Originally I felt it was important to have a proper release schedule for my self published books in order to increase visibility, but the sorts of schedules that people advise are well beyond my reach, and even if I did save up my books to release in rapid succession, there would still be a cliff edge when I stop.
So I have decided to release them as I am ready, not worry too much about schedules and simply enjoy the process.
So I am delighted to announce that my next book, THE ARID LANDS, a Sci Fi Thriller with a dystopian feel to it, will be released on the 19th October.
I will be telling you more about it over the coming weeks, starting with a cover reveal – watch this space!
In case you are wondering, a drabble is a short story of exactly 100 words. And I'm delighted to share with you that two of my drabbles, 'Afterwards' and 'Oak and Ash' will be appearing at Wyldeblood Press in the not too distant future. I will let you know when they go live.
The results of the Red Rock publicity and promotion experiment are in, and I’ve been analysing the results. Hmmm.
Red Rock was originally published in September 2013 through a traditional publisher and I had all the advantages of having a marketing team and a designated publicist helping me. I have spoken elsewhere on this blog about the promotional activities which we did.
For the re-release I avoided repeating those, although with future books there are definitely options I can pursue. But I did take the opportunity to try out a few other publicity activities largely geared towards the e-book, and focussing on what I could achieve online. This was mainly through the medium of social media. For example:
1. I set up an author Instagram account and make regular posts about my writing
2. I promoted Red Rock on twitter with a cover reveal and in general increased my interactions on that platform
3. I increased my activity in the various writing/author groups to which I belong and talked about Red Rock and what I was doing about re-releasing it
4. I revived my author facebook page
5. I enrolled in a Kindle countdown deal setting the price at 99p for one week
6. I timed the countdown deal to coincide with Earth Day
7. I participated actively in #IndieApril on Twitter
Of course, there is the disadvantage that most of my immediate network have already read the book (if it is to their taste) so I was really trying here to extend my reach outwards to find new potential readers. I certainly learned what doesn’t work, (pretty much everything listed above) and I found the whole exercise an interesting if rather depressing experiment.
What is clear is that producing a quality product, editing, formatting, cover art, is the easy bit. Finding readers is a lot more difficult without the backing of a publisher. Even those who expect the author to do a lot of legwork can still make a huge difference to sales through their review networks etc.
So where do I go moving forwards? Well I still intend to self publish my Science Fiction novels, but I’m going to keep aiming at the mainstream market with my thrillers and I will be giving them priority. I have a new novel on the go, but you will be seeing one of my SciFi novels hitting the virtual shelves in the not too distant future. But more on that later. For now I have some writing to do.
I don’t intend doing a great deal of marketing and promotion for Red Rock. This is a re-release and in my mind it’s already had its day. But rather than simply press publish and leave it there to gather dust, I’ve decided to do a few things to give it a boost. It will be interesting to see which, if any of these, result in an uptick in sales.
1. Author social media accounts, twitter, Instagram, other? In the end I decided to set up an author Instagram account. I then generated a set of promotional graphics using Midjourney and Canva which I will publish to this account at regular intervals.
2. Run a giveaway. (Unfortunately Goodreads only allows this for US authors so I will run it from my author IG account and try to boost on Twitter) The giveaway will be for an e-copy – that way I can run it internationally. It might be good though to have some additional swag or a prize to make it more interesting. The easiest thing for me to offer is a chapter critique.
3. Countdown deals on Kindle Unlimited. I could offer it free or at 99p to coincide with a special event such Earth day.
4. Review copies. Offer review copies in various ‘groups’ I belong to in the hope that they will enjoy it and give it a boost.
5. Participate in indie author events eg #indieapril on twitter
I will report back on these and what effects they have, which appear to be the most useful, and which don’t appear to make any difference to sales. This will be useful for me when I come to self publish my next book, which won’t be a re-release. The next one will be something new.
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