JoZebwrites

Around two years ago, I wrote this blog: http://jozebwrites.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/how-i-lost-my-agent.html  In it, I’m resolutely unfazed. (And, no, this blog is not a disguised ‘I got an agent!’ post. Trust me. You won’t miss that one.) In reality, I crawled through most of 2016 with a focus on getting my Abendau commitments done and done well, and try to sell Waters and the Wild. Oh, and retrieving what I could from the whole sorry Inish Carraig saga (which, perhaps, turned out to be my happy ending – that little book and world is my pride and joy).  I completely underestimated, misunderstood, whatever, the effect losing an agent would have on my career. I took the steps to keep going, but lacked the clear direction we need to give impetus. My focus went onto each book, not my overall career (luckily, in my non-writing professional world the ship was steady). Perhaps, after Inish, another writer would have decided the self-published world was the one for the...

http://jozebedee.com/on-identity/

http://jozebedee.com/rejection-not-dejection/

Just a quick note to those who follow my blog - I've moved it over to www.jozebedee.com, under the blog tag. I just wanted everything in one neat place, but the content is the same, the feel is the same, and I'll be linking to all the usual places. Thanks so much for reading my witterings! Please pop over to the new blog! Jo http://jozebedee.com/blog/

I think one of the hardest things, as a writer, is to become confident in what you write. Too often we seek external validation to gain confidence and, when they're missing, it can be hard.   I don't have an agent. I did but it didn't work out. I don't have someone in my corner telling me I'm great and that they've got my back. I don't have a huge sales base. I tick along, I do well enough but I'm not sitting at the top of the bestseller lists - nor do I expect to. I'm (mostly) self published, I write (mostly) weird sff set in a small region. I don't have thousands of reviews (although I probably do have a few hundred, so I'm not complaining) BUT those I do have tend to be on the very good side of the equation. That's an important one, that one - in the absence of other indicators, the fact that people who do read my work like it has been a big validation. And, once in place, that validation can begin the self-confidence process. Bu...

I enjoy writing my sff set in Ireland, not least for the research and the finding of appropriate places. One of the reasons HBO chose Norn Iron for Game of Thrones was the access to the amount of different locations, all close to each other. For Inish Carraig 2 I'm having a lot of fun finding the places I want to set the scenes. So far, I've pulled out an old airfield, Portstewart Strand with its stretching beach. Now, these are all lovely locations to use but for some of the scenes I want something a little bit special. My idea, without giving too many spoilers, was to find a place where some post-invasion survivors could have made into a compound where, survialist style, they've come together for safety. My first thought was to use somewhere remote, perhaps some of the mountains, but that didn't suit what I wanted in the end. At which point, I had a brainwave. Not too far from me there are 3 railway viaducts all meeting in a single place. That place is remote en...

Firstly, look away if you want to become a bestseller. Look away if you want to make money at the writing game. This week, on a forum, someone (I'll name and shame her, shall I? The fabulous Milly-molly-mo, although she also has a more normal name) referred to writing your own sub-genre, like Jo does. Hmmm. I wasn't at all sure about that. I mean, sure I know I can have challenges regarding writing in a single identifiable genre, to a single market etc etc, but I don't know that I'm as bad as all that. And then I wondered, why do I actually care? Why don't I celebrate that if you read a Jo Zebedee book, that's what it is. Something quirky from the dark depths of my mind. Something that I must have enjoyed writing, or I wouldn't have worked so hard at the sodding thing. And here's why I think being a one-woman twisted bookshelf is a good thing: There is a better chance of me getting a few quid on the lottery than actually making a decent living ...

Like most writers, I have a few works in The Trunk, the virtual box under my bed where works that don't work lurk. I have two, in particular. One is a YA sf thriller I started when I was still repped by a YA agent and thought I should probably write something for that market. I like it okay but I've never really got to grips with the characters or the speculative elements. It also reminds me too much of a tough time, writing wise, when I was left in a limbo that I'm only drawing out of now, and I suppose that steals the will to continue with a work.That one, I think, will stay where it is for now. My second trunked novel is a more challenging scenario. This one is a sf. I love the concept, I love the characters, but it's just not quite working. Part of that is a structural issue - this is a mother and daughter's combined story, told mostly by the daughter through a link to her mother's memories - which I have never fully managed to solve. Part of it is the n...

I'm a character writer. I can't write a story until the character chooses to appear in the black hole in the back of my mind that an entire town lives in, as far as I can tell, and starts to talk to me. I don't do character sketches. I don't muse on what type of person they'll be or how I'll add edges to them, or make them sympathetic. (That does mean that not everyone will dig the characters I write, but that's okay. I don't dig everyone I meet, after all). They just happen. Yesterday, for instance, an entirely new charactrer made themselves known to me. They're a friend of Neeta's in Inish Carraig. They're skinny and streetwise and they're going to be a handful - and I've yet to write their point of view yet. (I might never, but I still hear their voice). They're one of three new characters so far, all of whom have appeared pretty well rounded from the first instance. This means when anyone asks HOW to write a character, I...

It's been a week of online discussions about authors' income, where various friends are placed, where I am placed, who has an agent, who has a trad deal, who made nothing on their last book, who made something, who made lots (ha! haven't actually had that conversation, anywhere...). During that week I've learned lots of things. Like, for instance, if I had a big publisher I might not be allowed to bring out material, unrelated to the book the publisher has, and expand my writing output. In other words, if I went trad, I couldn't be a hybrid writer, picking and choosing the market as per the project's needs. For me, that means two things. Firstly, I would lose my freedom to publish as I'd like to - and as much as I like to. But, more importantly - all those little short stories related to worlds, the Christmas freebies, the ability to expand and promote wherever feels best, would be lost. And yet, I'd have a big publisher and a bigger income. Perhaps....

This week is, apparently, the 40th anniversary of Blake's 7, that shaky-setted, pirates in space series. Apart from making me feel incredibly old, it also made me nostalgic (Rumours of Death might go on tonight for old time's sake) it also made me reflect on where we take influences from and why. It's no secret that B7 was a huge influence on Abendau (along with a load of other sf from the 70s-80s like Star Wars, Dune, and the older, classical Space Operas). There are a number of B7 Easter eggs through the trilogy - Kare is named for Kerr Avon, my baddy was a woman because, after Servalan, deliciously evil male rulers lack smack. There are other, subtler, references - the shifting sands of Abendau were partly inspired by Sand and when I had to abandon my good guys somewhere awful where better than a quarry? But it was also a huge influence on the type of characters I develop. Characters who question, who have moral codes of various ilks, who feel real. Characters with...

I'm working on Inish Carraig 2 at the moment, and back with the characters and I wondered what a Christmas would be like in that world. And here's what it was. I'm signing off now for a couple of weeks - for all those who are doing the same, have a lovely holiday. I hope 2018 is great for all, and many, many thanks for all the support through 2017, as ever. Jo ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A COLD, HARD CHRISTMAS, a SHORT STORY BY JO ZEBEDEE John perched on the window-ledge of the house he, Josey and the kids had been allocated. Carter would have conniptions, but after a year in a house with no windows John found the centrally heated interior stuffy, almost nauseating. He stared over the flat, reclaimed loughshore to a snow-covered Belfast, its two giant cranes visible in the distance. Even the invasion hadn't seen to Samson and Goliath, although it had flattened much ...

A few days ago I got talking to the fabulous Anne McMaster about the title of Waters and the Wild. For those who know their poetry, they might recognise that I took the title from a line in Yeats' poem, The Stolen Child. To explain a little about my Yeats background. My mother is a huge fan of Yeats. So much so that she decided one year the ideal family holiday with a bunch of teenagers was visiting Sligo, and lots of his writing sites. Which sounds strange and not quite up there with Disneyland but, actually, that holiday has always stayed with me. Suffice to say if you have a childhood that incorporates a holiday like that, you'll have a passing knowledge of Yeats' poetry. (An admission: I like poetry to read. I don't write it. I wouldn't have a clue where to start and, frankly, I like my blasters, but I do enjoy a read of it.) Now, I do think a title is worth thinking reasonably hard about. Despite Inish Carraig's apparent irrelevance to science fiction...

One thing I get asked a lot when running courses etc is how to get beta readers, how many to have and what sort of skills they need to have. Firstly, though - what are beta readers? They're readers who look at the early manuscript and tell me all my horrors. Technically there are alpha readers, who look at the first-first draft, and beta readers who look at the reasonably tidied up version. But, for the purposes of this blog, I'm going to just refer to them all as beta readers. This is a timely thing to do since I've just put together a team of willing victims - cough, volunteers - for Inish Carraig 2, so it's something I've been thinking about, and the process is reasonably fresh with me. So, where did these volunteers come from. All 4 were met on one forum or another - two through the sffchronicles, whose writing community I've been a member of for some time and under whose guidance I cut my writing teeth, one through Skypen, a local forum which is now s...

MOTIVATING YOURSELF TO WRITE Sometimes going onwards can be a trial. Sometimes getting started can be difficult. Sometimes editing can be a grind. I see so many writers who can’t finish a project. They can start things, over and over. They might even be able to get to the end of the first draft. But keeping going to the end of a polished piece of work can be a nightmare. 1.        Get into the habit of writing. I know, I know, I know. Everyone says it. But, actually, until you have that habit where you think, right, now’s my writing time, it’s always too easy to weasel out. To say, ‘well, I wasn’t planning to write anyway, so where’s the harm?’ The next thing you know, it’s a week down the line and you’ve nothing written. For the first three years as a writer, I wrote something every day, except on Christmas. Every single day. Out with the computer, type something, close it down. I don’t do that now. I don’t need to – after a couple of days...

There's a lot of discussion around at the moment about authors not finishing books and series that they started (usually around Pat Rothfuss and GRRM). Now, I am generally a personal fan of trying to finish things that I start, but I think something that gets overlooked in the whole argument is creativity and how - and where - it happens. Today I got up with a simple plan. Catch up on a couple of writing emails, record a list of embarrassing moments (sort of getting there) and write the next part of IC2. I'm coming up on 5000 words now, I have a beta team in place, but I didn't have a plot. What I had instead was a sort of mish-mash of possible motivations and character interactions. A couple of antagonists whose agendas I didn't know. And a world not quite shaped. Normally I write through such small matters and hope things work out. But this time the various strands were all interlinked. I could not write the protagonists without knowing which antagonist was moving...

I wasn't sure if I'd get this blog out today or not, but things are happening on the Abendau front. Firstly, I now have the rights to the full trilogy reverted to myself. This is, I will stress, very amicable and very much what I wanted, and I'm very grateful to Gary and all the Tickety boo team for their support over the last few years. This was something I requested to happen. So why did I want to take this step? Inish Carraig is under my self-publishing arm, as will its sequel be, and I see that as the more viable option for my science fiction work. (My fantasy is still with Inspired Quill and I plan to trad publish my fantasy in future, too) When I decided to run a course in the writing business I did some fancy number crunching and the stats for Science fiction were undeniable. The market is predominantly online. The only thing I will lose is Lightning Source's distribution (I use CreateSpace for Inish Carraig and like them, so will put Abendau up with them...

This week, discussions about piracy have been rife in many forums. The usual - Piracy is theft, rebutted by the notion that downloading free pdfs of my books isn't stealing, but doing me a favour. I'll not get into that here but talk about something else that's been mentioned as a validation of pirating: getting free books from libraries is the same thing. The reader doesn't pay there, either! First, let's be clear on something. The consumer might not pay to borrow the book - but the library do pay the author. In the UK they pay both by buying the book and a small amount when the book is loaned out. In other countries, it may only be the sale that is paid for - but that is still a sale. I use libraries from both sides of the coin.I read voraciously, as most writers do, and I prefer my books to come from trees. So I use my library. My kids use the library. I like my library - it's a nice, bright clean space with friendly people who like books working there. I...

As ever, these things dovetail and I've had a couple of online interactions with writers talking about how self belief can be a barrier. This can take a number of sideroads in terms of impact: 1. I don't believe in what I'm writing, and therefore don't have the confidence to keep going. I think this is incredibly common. Few writers I know don't get to some part in the process without deciding what they're writing is the worst kind of drivel. Some jack it in at that point, becoming the perpetual never-completers, some keep going and hope to write through it, some take a bit of a break and then come back to that idea. For me, each works at different points in the process. Sometimes, too, that project isn't actually going to be a goer. The idea may not work in the form you're trying to work in. The idea might be weaker than it first seemed. None of this means the writer isn't a good writer, or that they should give up. It just means the project is...

I've been quiet for a couple of weeks. During that time, I've been struggling with my writing - and it's difficult to sustain a writing blog when you aren't actually writing. I've had a short story to do for an anthology that refused to come. I finished the novel I started last year and suspect it needs some space and then more work (the main character's voice doesn't feel strong enough yet). I started and didn't continue with some stuff. And I mused. Now I am an over-thinker and, when I turn my attention to musing, it can take some time. Thoughts that occurred to me included I might not have another book on me - and, strangely, I wasn't too concerned at that one. I came to writing to write Abendau and have the bonus of Inish Carraig and Waters and the Wild. If I have no more books out I still succeeded and I'd have no regrets. I'd take things back to being a hobby - and that has masses of appeal. Fewer hours spent promoting, only tak...