In Conversation with Katherine Roberts

           This month's conversation is with my good friend, Katherine Roberts...

          Sue Price:- Kath, I've often told the tale of how we sat in the garden at Charney and talked about the traditional publishing industry's coming doom and what we could do about it. And it was you who first alerted me to the possibilities of self-publishing on Kindle, and started Authors Electric - and then, not so long after it started, you got a four-book contract with Templar and left us to plough our independent way alone. But now you've self-published your wonderful I Am The Great Horse,  so you're working both sides of the street - or field, if I continue the ploughing metaphor. What are your thoughts on the whole trad vs indie thing?

Katherine Roberts

          Kath Roberts:- Well, the four books with Templar - the Pendragon Legacyquartet about King Arthur's daughter - are all delivered now (three are published, the fourth "Grail of Stars" comes out in October). But with two books coming out each year and associated promotional duties, the deadlines came thick and fast and left me very little time to think about anything else. I also wanted the focus to be on my new series rather than my backlist, and so I hopped over the field gate - sorry! Meanwhile, it seems Authors Electric grew quite happily without me.

          I'm not sure the doom we spoke of applies to the traditional publishing industry, which still seems to work brilliantly for the right sort of books. It more applies to authors, who just don't seem to have long term careers in traditional publishing any more. And that's where indie publishing comes in... to fill the gap. If you want to stick to the field metaphor, I see us all ploughing the same earth, just on different sides of the hedge and in different ways. Traditional publishing is the farmer with the big machinery and all the chemicals and hormones he needs to make his crops grow. Indie publishers have wonky furrows and a couple of stubborn mules to pull their hand ploughs, and they're probably organic so have to do a lot of back-breaking weeding. But books and authors can thrive and grow in both types of field. It's when you get cross-pollination, things start to get interesting...

Sword Of Light

          Sue Price:- Cross-pollination? Do you mean when a big publisher gives a contract to an Indie?

          Kath Roberts:- That’s one interesting thing that seems to be happening. Authors are bypassing the agent or slush pile routes, and testing their work on real readers. It seems a scary route to take, though – you need to be pretty confident in your material, and you also need to make sure it has been edited and proofread, which requires more time and expense than simply sending your manuscript to a list of agents/publishers. It obviously works for some, and a best-selling indie title must be very attractive to publishers. But it remains to be seen if authors taking the indie route to a publishing contract have any more of a long term publishing career than those traditionally published authors being sidelined to make way for them. Cross pollination can work both ways.

          Sue Price:- Yeah, the formerly published are going indie, and the indies are signing with big firms – a-a-and all spin round and face the other way!

          And then, as soon as their sales drop a percentile, the big firms will drop the ex-indies and take up a new crop – who will quickly be dropped in their turn. Everybody will have a book contract for fifteen minutes! Is that how it will work?

          Katherine Roberts:- Fifteen minutes of fame? Maybe. But I actually think not much has changed. I've noticed the same disillusionment among indies on the KDP forum, just as you get disillusioned writers who have been traditionally published but not made their first million yet. The difference is the indies don't have anyone to blame except themselves.

          Susan Price:- So, do you think, when the dust settles, that the same people are going to be left standing there, rubbing their eyes? – I mean, the ‘in it for the long run’ writers who want to write more than they want success or money.

          Maybe the publishing firms will cherry-pick the few they hope will have a big success – quickly dropping them if this proves not to be true – and what used to be the ‘mid-list’ will self-publish. But the crowd presently jostling for space on the self-publishing platforms will thin out as those who were expecting to get rich quick fall away and search for other routes to riches. (Which will still leave a pretty big crowd of ex mid-listers!)

          Do you think new e-publishing firms will emerge from the dust-cloud? One of the Authors Electric, Stephanie Zia, started by publishing her own books and now has turned into a small e-publisher, Blackbird Digital Books.

          Katherine Roberts:- I actually think the mid-list vanished a few years ago in traditional publishing, and Amazon cleverly stepped in to fill the gap. But in another reversal,  I hear that publishers who used to lock their doors against unagented authors are now opening up the slush pile again (Macmillan being one of the latest to do so).

          So it seems to me that while publishers and booksellers are busy changing the rules, authors are carrying on doing what they do best... success is meant to be 5% talent and 95% hard work, after all, so yes if you discount the "lottery winners" like J K Rowling etc, I think the same authors will succeed in the end. Some are doing this by creating their own publishing lists, others are adapting to market forces, whatever works best for the current climate, I suppose. What I've noticed is that there is a very large pool of new authors out there and far fewer authors with a career lasting 10 years or more. Once an author has been publishing for 10 years, I think it highly unlikely they'll give up trying to reach readers, whatever external challenges they may face. I for one love the way e-books have opened doors for us, even if I haven't cracked the secret of selling them myself yet! 

          Susan Price:- I’m really pleased to see the Great Horse out as an indie, though – it was (and is) such a good book, and deserved better treatment. I firmly believe that your publishers didn’t know how to market it, because it’s an original.

          And now it amounts to an original work of art!  Not only written and self-published by you, but with a striking new cover – very like a Greek vase painting – designed by you. Tell us something about that.

'I Am The Great Horse' by Katherine Roberts

          Katherine Roberts:-Thank you for your kind words! Yes, looking back I'd agree I Am The Great Horse is a book that's hard to place on a traditional shelf, and I'm grateful to Chicken House for publishing it once they realised this. That was a brave thing to do. Since they are essentially a children's list, they decided to aim the original book at the (girly) horse market, which made sense at the time - yet it seemed a shame to miss out on those adult historical readers who might enjoy a novel about Alexander the Great, as well as boys who might like to read about his adventures.

          When I published the Kindle version I wanted to make it more adult/boyish in feel, but without losing the horse angle. Hence the new cover, which was actually inspired by an ancient coin of Alexander riding Bucephalas. If you're interested, there's more on my blog about how I created the e-cover, as well as a whole series of posts I wrote about this book while it was still in print, including guest posts from my editor and the illustrator who drew the map.

           And, after going into hiding from the Black Dog last week (as if!), Blott is back!

The End of the Sterkarms

     I’ve worked hard on Sterkarm 3 for three years and until a couple of days ago, never knew how it would end.

     I had a vague idea, a mood – but nothing more.

     I’ve asked myself many times: How do I want it to end?  And also, How do my readers want it to end?

     This hasn’t been a lot of help.  For myself, I drew a blank.  I didn’t know.  I wanted it to end right – that’s all I could say.  And, of course, that’s subjective. What I feel is the right ending, someone else will think wrong.

     Much as I appreciate my readers – and I do – I suspected that many of them wanted S3 to end with a big wedding for Per and Andrea and ‘happy ever after’.  And all their dogs and horses happy ever after too.  And it’s not that I’m against this, so much as it never felt right. The Sterkarms’ world was violent and unsympathetic. They wouldn’t know what to do with happy ever after.

     Wouldn’t it be easer to just give my readers what they want anyway?

     No! Because if I didn’t feel it was right, I couldn’t write it.  Its lack of rightness would nag at me with every word.  It would be like trying to swim the Channel in a meringue wedding-dress (and I’m not a good swimmer anyway.)

     But where could I find the right ending?  Will those shops that stock ideas sell it?  Will they deliver?

     I considered story arc. I looked at twists and turns – I think ‘reversals’ is the fancy term.  I constructed coloured diagrams and looked hard at them, noting how the colours parted and joined.  I consulted the runes.

     It did help. I mentioned the difficulties with the time-line last week.  Although I’d been aware that the time sequence of the book was perhaps, well – a bit approximate – it was the mapping that made it apparent how and where.

     None of this helped capture an ending. 

     So I was watching stupid-telly the other night when my hand reached for a note-book and my favourite fast, scribbly pen.  (A pentel energel, recommended by Davy, which floats over the paper and gets thoughts down almost as fast as you can think them.)  The daemon had tapped my shoulder and I started writing almost without stopping to think.

     I scribbled down what I thought the first book in the series, The Sterkarm Handshake, was about.  Not what happens in it, which is mere plot, but what it was about.

     I think it’s about treachery and betrayal.  The Sterkarm badge, the Handshake, is an emblem of their treachery – but they are treacherous because they see themselves as alone in a hostile world.

     The Company makes what seems an honest deal with the Sterkarms, but knows it is selling them short – indeed, as a capitalist business, it must, to make a profit.

     Joe, the 21^st Century homeless man, has been betrayed by his society – but finds a home with the treacherous Sterkarms, who see him as one of their own, and, like the Devil, they look after their own.

     And A Sterkarm Kiss? – Treachery and betrayal again.  Andrea thinks she will be returning to her love affair with Per, but finds herself betrayed both by the Company and her own fantasies – and, in leaving the 21^st for ever, betrays the loving partner she leaves behind.

     The Company broker an alliance and a marriage between the feudal enemies, the Sterkarms and Grannams – but it is all a huge, deliberate deceit which leads to murder.  (Pure fantasy, of course: this kind of political manipulation never happens in the real world outside of conspiracy theory.)

     Marriage, murder, deceit, treachery - as I scribbled, the ending of Sterkarm 3 leaped into my head.  Calloo!  Callay!  Glasses of   Festival Ale all round!  Boil a haggis!

     Of course, I’m not going to tell you the ending; but I will give you this assurance – No dogs or horses were harmed in the concluding of this novel.

You wouldn't lose your place on a Kindle, Blott!

The Sterkarm Relativity

The Sterkarm books by Susan Price

          I’ve finished summarising every scene in Sterkarm 3, in different coloured inks, with emoticons, and many notes to self.

          It has been very useful: and has made clear that the time-scale, in places, is impossible.

          I have different parties heading off in different directions to roam the soggy, midge-ridden hills while having varied adventures, before finally meeting up again… but the timing just doesn’t work.  Everything that happens to Party B just couldn’t be crammed into the time that elapses before they join Party A again.

          I have to admit that I haven’t worked out in enough detail where the places in the story are in relation to each other, how far apart, and what the terrain between them is like.  And, most importantly, how long it would take my characters to get from one place to another, do what I want them to do, and get back again.

          I have to do this for six different groups of characters, who’re all in different places, doing different things.  Trying to kill each other, mostly.

           The ‘terrain’ option on Google Maps has allowed me to hover over Sterkarm country, looking down on all the burns and waters, the fells and laws.  I could decide where to site the towers and the Time Tube.  So many streams!  It brought back memories of tramping those hills, meeting deer in the twilight.  I could hear the burns splashing down the hillsides and smell the heather; could hear skylarks and whaups as I hunched over my laptop.

          Some of my characters are riding the tough, strong, sure-footed little reiver horses – but how fast could they travel?  I’ve read that rievers could cover 40 miles in a night, but surely that was only in desperation?  Or would they, as Davy suggested, take spare horses with them?  Would 20 miles be more usual?

          The riders were ‘light cavalry’, but would have worn helmets and heavy leather ‘jakkes’ stitched with pieces of metal, and carried lances and swords.  Other equipment too: blankets, food, bows, arrows, axes.  And the country was difficult – steep slopes, boulders, scree, thickets and many streams and rivers.  Come on, Karen (aka madwippit) and Kath Roberts, those expert riders– and any other expert riders out there - what’s your opinion?  (And Kath - wow! I like your website's new look!)

         Another party’s on foot.  If they were all fit, strong men, I could use the yomping experience of my ex-army acquaintance, but some of my characters are ill, or unfit - and they’re not all suitably dressed for scrambling over border hills either.  (One is dressed like a 16th century lady, in clothes that would hamper you walking across a room. I should add, this character is a 16th century lady. I've no doubt the rievers had their cross-dressers, but that's for another book.) My guess is that, under the circumstances, they’d be lucky to cover much more than six or seven miles in a day, if that. Walking that country is hard work.

          So, can I cut some of the events?  I’ve read through them with a hard eye, while asking those damning questions: Is this scene introducing or developing a character?  Is it introducing or developing something important to the plot?  Is it necessary?  Even so, it’s hard to see what I can lose.  Maybe I just need a good editor.

          Can I reduce events by combining  them?  Kill two Sterkarms with one arrow, so to speak.  I’ve already divided the parties differently, so one character doesn’t have to go to and fro so much.

          Time, distance, speed - I’m beginning to see what Einstein was on about.

          Davy, unable to put his cup down because of my sketch maps scribbled in coloured inks, my laptop open on a satellite scene of empty moors, my index cards and beat-sheets, said, “I dunno why you’re doing all this, getting yourself all of a fash.  You can bet other writers don’t bother.”

          Tell him, people, tell him.

          And to get you in the Border reiver mood, here's the wonderful June Tabor, from her album An Echo of Hooves -           

And here's Blott:

BLOG DARLINGS

          Well, here’s a lovely thing – and just in time for Christmas!  I’ve been given a Leibster Blog Award, which is given to ‘up and coming’ blogsters who still have fewer than 200 followers.

          When you are given the award, you’re asked to give 5 other Leibster Awards to blogs you think are interesting/beautiful/funny or in some other way outstanding, and should have more viewers. So, I’m on the look-out.

                      First I must thank Jen Alexander, who gave me the award.  Jen is the author of many books and has the most soft, soothing voice too, so it’s somehow fitting that she knows a great deal about how to use dreams in writing, and other ways of contacting that dreaming, imaginative side of us.  She blogs about dreams here.

Katherine Roberts

          When it came to handing out my five Leibsters, my first thought was Kath Roberts and her reclusive unicorn, who has gathered together several other writers’ muses under the heading of ‘Muse Monday’ – but Kath had already been given a Leibster  - and gave one of her 5 to Blott.  Blott and I thank you, Kath.  (But does that mean Blott has 5 Leibsters to give away too?)

Katherine Langrish

          So then I thought of Kath Langrish, writer of some terrific books, and also the blogster at the wonderfully named ‘Seven Miles of Steel Thistles’.  Not only wonderfully named, but a fascinating and often beautiful blog about legends, myths and fairy-stories.  But I was too slow – Kath has already, and deservedly, been given a Leibster.

          So who do I give my first Leibster too?  I’m going to be cheeky and give it to Do Authors Dream of Electric Books?  This is a team-blog of 29 UK writers, who blog about their experiences of self-publishing e-books.  Some are previously published writers – some are accomplished and dedicated writers who have never published conventionally.  They are from all parts of the UK, from Scotland to the West Country, and of all ages.  They take it in turns to blog every day for 29 days and, at the end of the month, there are guest bloggers.

          It’s cheeky of me to give a Leibster to Do Authors Dream of Electric Books? because I am one of the bloggers, so I expect I’ll be accused of self-promotion.  But I don’t care – the fact is, I am only one of 29 bloggers, and if my blog was withdrawn DADoEB would still be a lively, ever-changing, interesting good read, with jokes, news, tips, friendly arguments and chat between 29 very different authors and their readers.

Rhianna Pendragon by Katherine Roberts

          The drawing here is by Kath Roberts, and can be seen on Do Authors Dream, with more about the book that inspired it.  Such talent in one woman, eh? Makes you want to gnash your teeth, doesn't it?
          So there!  My first Leibster goes to Do Authors Dream of Electric Books!

          Who should I give the other four to?

          And Blot is back! - Without, of course, any explanation...