Book Review: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

I read this for my local book club, and I was quite excited at the prospect because it had been on my to-read list since I first spotted it in my local bookstore. Anyway, I have to say I ended up with a sort of confused response to the story. In the beginning I was full of enthusiasm, even when I was confused by the first few chapters. It took a little while for me to make any sense of it, and I found myself thinking throughout “what is the point of this whole ‘game’ storyline?” I enjoyed the love story element, and the descriptive text was beautiful in places, but all in all I would only ever say this was a good  book, not excellent. I had to read it to the end, but I never quite connected on an emotional level.

The Darkness of Love Book Tour #PurpleXmas

It is very exciting for me this Christmas. Not only am I celebrating it with the newest addition to our family, our baby daughter Georgina (4 months), but I am celebrating the release of The Darkness of Love with a fabulous international book tour! And even better, I don't have to leave home, because my book is touring via the amazing power of global media. A huge thank you goes out to my publisher Chances Press, and to Literary Nook for organizing the event. Check out the tour information here, and I look forward to seeing you during December while I am on my travels... Merry Christmas!

Christmas with the Vampires #amreading

To compliment my new novel The Darkness of Love, I have released a special edition Christmas short story called Christmas with the Vampires. I succumbed to the charms of my favourite mischievous vampire Marcus Scott, and here is the result... Enjoy!

With his blond hair, ice blue eyes and sculpted physique, Marcus Scott immediately turns the heads of everyone he encounters upon his arrival in London at Christmas time. Unbeknownst to all the women and men who fall under his spell with just one glance, Marcus is a vampire with a desperate need to feed from the young and the beautiful. When he unexpectedly encounters the Lady Amelia Richmond, the vampire instrumental in his own transition, the two begin to plan a holiday feast to satisfy their deep hunger. 

You can download the story at Amazon US or Amazon UK.

A Not So Triumphant #NaNoWriMo

This is quite difficult to admit, but I am not going to win the #NaNoWriMo challenge this year. I didn't honestly believe I would get very far with the project, since I have a 3 month-old baby and a 3 year-old toddler to contend with. But somewhere in the back of my mind was the little voice  that said 'we can do this!' Well, actually, I am not superwoman. There, I said it! And I'm OK with that.

Yes, we still have a few days left of our precious National Novel Writing Month. But I have no chance of writing upwards of 30,000 words in that time. Not unless I were to completely abandon my family and not sleep for a week while I furiously bashed the keys of my computer. No, that would just end up in a scenario reminiscent of The Shining, and we really don't want that to happen. Instead I will take pride in what I have achieved and take it from there.

You see, for me #NaNoWriMo is about motivation. Without the contest I would still be talking about writing my fourth Redcliffe novel, but I wouldn't have actually written any of it. I am too busy being distracted by my family, and the upcoming Christmas festivities, and ooh, was that something shiny over there... Ha ha! No, I used #NaNoWriMo as a method to get me started and to call out my Muse from wherever she has been hiding these past six months. She seemed to disappear when I was pregnant, and now I have an abandoned manuscript for a separate novel that will be revisited in 2014.

So ultimately I feel that my #NaNoWriMo was a success, and will be a success, because I got started. Now my story is in progress, my Muse knows that she is wanted again, and the ideas are beginning to flow. The story must be written, and it will be written. I also intend to have the first draft finished by 1st January 2014, with the intention to use the early months of next year as a time for editing and submitting three manuscripts for publication. I have a plan. Thank you #NaNoWriMo!

The Importance of #Hashtags for Social Media Networking

Following on from my previous post, Explorations in Social Media, I would like to explain my perception of the importance of using hashtags, and I will suggest some networking groups that I have found as a result of my studies. It has taken me a good few years to even begin to comprehend how to use social media in a professional and useful manner. I joined Facebook when it became the Next Big Thing, and I subsequently joined Twitter when I began to explore the possibility of becoming a 'serious career writer.' The other networks sort of followed on naturally as I was introduced to them, and now I have settled on those that seem most suitable. My current regular platforms are Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and Facebook.

All four of these social media websites now offer the use of hashtags to correlate information and bring people together. To my knowledge it was Twitter that first started this trend (although please correct me if I am wrong). Somebody, somewhere, came up with the idea to put a hashtag in front of a word and voilà! Other people picked it up, liked the idea, and began sharing it around the internet. Personally I think hashtags are great, especially on Twitter. My news feed tends to be clogged up with tweets that mainly tell me to buy one person's book or another (I know, I am one of them!). Now I can narrow down my searches more easily by asking Twitter to show me the tweets I want to see. Then I can interact with different people about different things, and I don't need to open several different Twitter accounts and confuse myself even more.

On Twitter I am only just beginning to explore a lot of hashtag groups that I recently discovered. It seems that one leads on to another, and while this all very exciting, it can also become very time consuming. I have to be interactive as much as possible, but I fit it around my family life, and my children will always come first. Anyway, a couple of hashtag groups that I am active in are #bizitalk and #PurpleBiz. In fact, just recently I was a #PurpleBiz Business of the Day, which gave me a huge confidence boost, not to mention a lot of new followers that will eventually translate into more book sales. I just have to keep up the good work.

My next task is to explore some other hashtag Twitter groups. These include #TwitterSisters, #ConnectFriday and #PinHitsHour among others. I love meeting all of the diverse small businesses and fabulous people that meet in these groups, and now I am also finding myself added to various Twitter lists (something I am still learning about so more to follow on that later). If you are exploring Twitter for the first time, or you are unsure about hashtags and what they can do for your business, just try them out. Put them in your Twitter search or click on them in messages on your news feed, and you never know where they might take you...

My novels are adult paranormal with equal amounts of dark romance and contemporary English Gothic. Sign up now for special offers and book release news.

Book Review: The Darkness of Love #ReadMe

Here is my first review of The Darkness of Love... http://www.tony-paul.com/

Explorations in Social Media #bizitalk

I am currently experimenting with social media networks as a method to sell books and build my author platform. Truthfully I wish I had spent more time researching how the industry works before I went ahead and got my books published. The common knowledge is that anyone can publish a book these days, but only a select few (or rather a lucky few) gain the fame and fortune that we all seek. Yes, I know, there are lots of authors who say they only write for the pleasure and joy of creativity. This is true for me, but I also want to earn a living from my writing, and after a very long moral battle, I accept that there is no shame in this desire.

Now, I am a working mother who spends 90% of my time being the 'housewife and mother' and the remainder is spent trying to write more books and promote the ones I currently have in the marketplace. I have no money to put into an advertising campaign, but I do now have the support of a publisher as a result of my fourth novel The Darkness of Love. This is very exciting, because Chances Press have organized a Christmas blog tour for me, and they are planning another one in 2014. It makes me feel very special as an author, actually, that someone else is prepared to put in the work for me without demanding immediate repayment. They have great faith in my work, and they clearly appreciate my writing. This is a huge compliment.

Part of my networking experiment has been to explore the use of hashtags, mainly on Twitter, but also on Google+, Facebook and Pinterest. These are all my main platforms of choice, and I am spending some time on each in turn trying to speak directly with a variety of people, and reading articles and infographics that might explain how best to use these fabulous resources. Therein lies part of the problem. These networks are so vast, so complicated, and so busy, that I need to spend every spare minute of my time working on them with no guarantee that I will actually sell my books as a result of my efforts. The other issue is that they can become addictive, and I need to allocate time for writing and freelance projects alongside my self marketing.

Anyway, it is a long, slow process. I know that with social media we have become a 24/7 culture. We expect results immediately because we can send out tweets, messages, photos and web links at the touch of a button, and we all have portable media devices in the form of smart phones, tablets etc. Even if we do not have such sophisticated personal technology, we can usually find a library with free computers, or find a friend or relative with the media technology on which to work. I now have to accept that I need to become a recognised name in publishing. People need to know who I am and what the titles of my books are, and maybe then they will begin to read them, possibly review them, and better still recommend them to friends and family. Ultimately it seems word of mouth is still the best marketing tool for an author. I am just taking it global with social media... See you out there!

My novels are adult paranormal with equal amounts of dark romance and contemporary English Gothic. Sign up now for special offers and book release news.