An interview with Paul Kater

In early July I was contracted by a new publishing platform to write some blog articles. Unfortunately the deal fell through when the client didn't pay for the test article as promised and failed to produce any kind of contract. Therefore as I own all the rights to the material I have decided to publish it here first. On Wednesday I will publish the second article, an interview with none other than Valerie Douglas.

There aren’t many writers out there who can say that they published their book because a fan demanded it. But in 2010 that is exactly what Paul Kater did after he wrote the first of his Adult Fantasy series “Hilda – the Wicked Witch” during a friendly writing competition.

Three years on and his first book still continues to do well on popular book retailers notching up a total of 78,000 downloads. And there is little doubt that the character is a firm favourite with readers as Hilda has her own e-mail address that regularly receives fan mail. This kind of desire from readers for more has prompted the writing of a twelfth book. And it is the writing of a series that Paul feels is part of his success.

“I think a good series is a great way to build a platform where people know you.”

The author considers Hilda, as well as many of his characters, an extension of himself. Being able to see and talk to them has created an environment in which storylines easily flow forcing Paul to type fast to keep up with their conversations.

But Paul hasn’t always had it easy during his writing career. One of the lowest points for an author is when you receive your first one star reviews.

“I think the lows are mostly the first few negative reviews on books. Those are the sour apples you need to get through.”

Despite these negatives Paul has certainly strived to achieve better with each book and his latest, Hilda - Magic on the Rocks, has only received glowing five star reviews.

This bounce back attitude helped him most during his early writing days when he approached Traditional publishers about buying his book. He was turned down at every corner when the publishing houses didn’t think there would be a market for such a character or genre.

Since he joined the world of self publishing Paul has noticed there has been a large influx of new writers. While some of writers are skilled in their craft, some of them lack the basic skills needed for industry such as spellchecking and proofreading. To him part of his success (and any author) is having top quality books. There should be no taking shortcuts when it comes to storyline, grammar, spelling or formatting. Any errors and readers will pick up and scold you for them.

Paul also has his readers in mind at every point of his creative process; giving updates regularly through his webpage and Facebook. He added that every author needs to keep their readers up to date with what they are doing. This reminds readers “...that 'the author' is actually a real person that talks back, responds.”

It is certainly a policy that is serving Paul well as demand for new books continue.

You can find out more about Paul Kater at his website

My Top 6 Self Promotion Posts!

So in the third part of the “my top 6 countdown” series: I am going to talk about my top three self promotion blog posts.

Self promotion is very important for authors, because no-one else is going to do it for you. But over doing your promotion can be just as lethal. I think that is why I tend to be very careful in my self-promotion. A lot of my guest posts are marketing based. There is a very good reason for this; I studied Management at degree and masters levels and I concentrated my studies on Human Resources and Marketing. With both I had the opportunity to take it further, but I am someone who doesn’t want to do research the whole of his life so I thought I would get into the working world. Now several years later I am an author.

So how does my top six look like?

6. This post

Surprising to you or not, I don’t have a lot of self promotion. In fact, I had five posts! The top 6 needed a... well 6^th. And what better post than a post that combined all my other posts? Of course there is very little new material here for old readers to enjoy. But for a new fan this would be a great place to start to read about me.

5. Meet the Author on Girl who Reads

This was a fantastic post which I loved doing. But unfortunately it didn’t for me. However it wasn’t because of the post. My first release was delayed – having family problems in the month before really set me back and so there was nothing to show for my hard labour over this post. However what really makes me smile about this was the day after the release of this one of my kids’ school teacher approaches me and tells me he saw my post last night on the blog. So exposure gained, promotion of book failed.

4. Interview with Bublish

Okay so this isn’t really a blog post, it was a live interview on Facebook. It was a great experience and I enjoyed it immensely. However it is a shame it didn’t have a high attendance at the time; mostly because of my time commitments. If I could do it again, and I would because I loved it, I would perhaps go to their twitter system.

3. Juggling the Responsibilities - Being a Full Time Parentand Full Time Writer

This is an excellent well received post that spoke about some of the tough aspects of being a writer and a parent. I loved writing this and I managed to get in some of my humour in the post. I am surprised no-one mentioned that I must drink about 6 cups of tea a day. Perhaps I am more normal that I thought?

2. My interview with Paul Kater

Paul Kater is a great man, an excellent writer and a good person to know. And this interview was a lot of fun to do. I hope to work with Paul in the future on other projects, but right now I am happy to listen to his pearls of wisdom.

1. “The PredatorSwoops In” Fourth-Wall Friday

This was great fun adn Kriss is such a wonderful person to work with. The post itself is an interesting take on one of my characters and it has brought them back into my mind on how I could work them into other projects. If you read nothing else listed, read this!

Well that is my list. I hope that you agree with my order, if you think another item should have been higher or lower let me know!

If you have enjoyed this article or any other part of my blog please take the time to follow me on twitter and my facebook page

Latest Interview Excerpt

Here is my latest interview excerpt. This interview was conducted by Paul Kater.

Dear David, can you offer us a little insight into who you are?

I’m a Science Fiction, Paranormal and Supernatural author from Essex in the United Kingdom. I am married with two gorgeous children and a house overrun with animals. And when I am not looking after my monkeys or the pets I am often found crabbing. There is a perfect little crabbing spot less than 5 minutes walk from my house (picture below), as long you don’t mind being hassled by the ducks and you go down at low tide.

Originally I wanted to work in the recruitment and personnel industry and studied hard earning a degree and masters in Management specialising in HR and Marketing. After university I worked a number of roles, mostly temporary positions but also ran my own CV writing company for two years. But in the end I was bitten by the writing bug and had to let the voice inside my head tell the stories it wanted to.

What is the reason that you started writing? When did you start writing?
I made the jump into writing while I was on holiday in the middle of Norfolk. It was raining and was sat twiddling my fingers wanting to get out to a beach. Suddenly an idea for a series came into my head. As soon as I got home I sat down and hammered out the novel onto my computer. Unfortunately I have yet to publish that story, but you never know it may be in a while, if I ever got round to re-writing it.

You can read the full article here

Six tips for being a productive writer

Production for a writer is key. Without producing your books, you have nothing that your readers can get their hands on to. Therefore getting your production levels to their best is paramount. Here are my tips to getting those levels high.

1.       Get up Early

I start my writing day at 5 am every morning. If you follow my twitter account you can see days when at about 6:30 (when the rest of the household get up) I have achieved a lot. I aim to do at least 500 words each day at this time with an extra 1000 words throughout the rest of the day.  This means it would only take me about a month to write 50,000 words. Getting up early can be difficult. But by doing so I am alone and free of distraction, meaning that some days I can write my daily target before I even have breakfast. Whereas in the evening I have people call me for chats, the wife wanting to discuss her day and kids who don’t want to go to bed. Its easy to see why I find it more productive in the morning.

2.       Turn off the Internet

The internet is not a writer’s best friend at times. In fact it can be the enemy. If I feel particularly unmotivated for writing and would rather play on the internet; I turn off the modem. I’m not saying the internet is completely useless. It is great for research and for promotion. But it all has to be done in moderation.

3.       Social Media

I am someone who is a firm believer in social media. It can be useful for promotion and keeping in contact and making new connections in the writing world. However I am a firm believer in using tools to make sure that you can do it easier and spend less time on it. For instance I use Hootsuite to manager my Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. It allows me to plan when to post things and interact over a wide spectrum of social media without leaving one website. Plus I find Hootsuite easier to use than twitter. However I would caution of using social media anymore than 1/3 of your time. I plan to use it less than 20%, but some people prefer more spend while others prefer little or no time.

4.       Getting your head out of your book from time to time

You’ll be surprised that I would recommend not spending all your time at the computer typing. But I find that sometimes going for a walk gives me energy to keep going or even ideas. For instance I got an idea for a new book taking a walk down on the beach. When I get stuck I go for a walk in the countryside and by the time I get back I have normally sorted out my problems.

5.       Reward your hard work

Sometimes the best thing to do is to give yourself a little present for doing well. But set a goal to do this. I always say that when I release a new book, I will have a Chinese to celebrate (I just love Chinese). Whatever your reward, make sure you get it only when you achieve your goal.

6.       Time for tea

There is nothing better than having your favorite tipple. For me that is tea. But others enjoy coffee, coke or squash. Whatever it is that get you writing, use it.

I hope some of these have been useful to you. I hope that you take the time to follow me on twitter and my facebook page.

Remember you can also read more from be at The Indie Ebook Review site and their Facebook Page

Interview with Bublish Excerpt

Here is an interview excerpt which took place on 18th April 2013

Welcome to our chat with paranormal and science fiction author David Lowbridge who is joining us from the UK today. How are you David? Any sunshine on your side of the pond? We know it has been a long winter there.

• David Lowbridge Hello Bublish. I am doing great thank you. How are you? We have had lovely sunshine today - its been a long time coming - but hopefully spring is here to stay.

  
  
• Bublish We will cross our fingers.

  
  
• Bublish You just published your first collection of short stories, Ghost Stories, in March. Congratulations. I know you’re going to be running a special on your work this weekend, so I’ll let you share the link at some point during our chat. In the meantime, tell us about your journey to this first published work.

  
  
• David Lowbridge It all started in July last year when I saw an advert for writers to submit ghost stories for a free magazine. So I sat down one night and wrote one, that was the short story Heavy Shrapnel. I showed a few of my friends, my wife and they suggested that I wrote more. And that is how "Ghost Haunts" started

You can read the full interview here

Meet the Author: David Lowbridge Excerpt

Hello my name is David and I’m an aspiring author. I found this post incredibly difficult to write without it sounding as if I was a member of an addiction support group. However I think that analogy that suits me well, writing and being an author is an addiction for me. As with all obsessions there is a certain need that the act satisfies us with; for me that need is to entertain readers.

Writing is something that I have wanted to do since school. My favourite assignments were always creative writing. However I tended to find the constraints in which we were given too restraining. What I really wanted to do at the time was to write science fiction, not modern day love stories based on “Romeo and Juliet”. I always thought that stipulating those restrictions was not a particularly good exercise for developing fiction writing. There was no advice on character creation, dialogue or plot lines. Yet despite the lack of direction; when I was thirteen we had an assignment to write a six part ghost story. I remember the buzz I felt when my classmates wanted to hear the latest instalments of my story; hanging on to every twist and turn woven into my series.

Read the full article here