Five Tales of Horror

I have decided to start a new series of short story collections entitled Five Tales of ... (original, eh ;-)), in which will be packaged, um, five stories in a similar genre.

Each mini-collection will be priced at $1.49 in the US and 99p in the UK.

In the past I have released short stories individually as well as in collections (well, one so far). My reason for doing this is partly one of value for money, partly one of visibility, and partly to do with branding.

My short stories don't sell many copies so I thought I would try putting them together. Another reason is that not all of my short stories are too short to sell individually, but as part of a collection they fit in okay. There will also be a little overlap - one story in each collection that is available elsewhere.  Why would I do that?  Basically to make my shorts stretch further! I'm pretty sure I don't have enough dedicated followers to get upset about it, but in the unlikely event that you've read everything I've written and you want more, drop me an email... there's a ton of stuff on the hard drive!

Anyway, part one of the collection is titled Five Tales of Horror. These were pretty easy to choose.  I've got an old one in there (Road Stop, written in 2003), plus a couple of personal favorites (Forever My Baby and Room 666 - which very nearly sold to a pro mag a couple of years back) and a couple loosely based on places I worked/visited.

And here's the cover, one I knocked up using Picasa on my iMac.

 

I absolutely love that skull picture, which I picked up on Pond5.com. I'm already thinking about the next one, which will possibly be titled Five Tales of Space Exploration or Five Tales of Alien Worlds, depending what stories fit best. Watch this space.

So, while you're waiting for Head of Words, please enjoy these dark tales in the meantime!

CW 7th March 2013

Writing Update - Six months

I didn't post an update on November 20th (five months since the Great Reboot) mostly because around that time I had some computer issues and frustrations were getting the better of me.  Unfortunately I've had a similar problem this month to go with lots of formatting issues with older work, so this month is the first I haven't actually hit my monthly target.  In any case, here's a stats update on what I've written since June 20th this year.

	Name	Type	Word Count	Status
1	The Ship	Short Story	3793	Finished - to edit
2	Take me Back with You	Short Story	2528	WIP
3	Take me Back with You	Novel	35303	WIP
4	The Lost Train	Short Story	4352	WIP
5	The Other Set of Feet	Short Story	3749	Finished - to edit
6	The Hunter	Novella	18783	WIP
7	Once We Were Children	Short Story	2513	Finished - to edit
8	The Assignment	Short Story	8802	Finished - to edit
9	Never Give Up	Short Story	5111	Finished - to edit
10	Clones	Short Story	1323	Edited
11	Beat Down 1 - Clones	Serial Novella	19233	Published
12	Sunfall	Short Story	1271	WIP
13	The Tube Riders: Exile	Novel	90629	WIP
14	Beat Down 2 - The Heist	Serial Novella	18533	Published
15	Beat Down 3 - Badassaur	Serial Novella	19699	Finished - to edit
16	NaNoWriMo 2012	Novel	3714	WIP
17	Beat Down 4 - The Sneevla	Serial Novella	4015	WIP
18	Undelivered	Short Story	358	WIP
	Started June 21st	Word Count	243709
		Pages (300w/pg)	812
	6 month target (Dec 20th)	(183 days)	250000
		Ahead	-6291
		Total	Month
	One month tally:	33598	33598
	Two month tally:	62217	28619
	Three month tally:	119253	57036
	Four month tally:	180097	60844
	Five month tally:	217500	37403
	Six month tally:	243709	26209

It could certainly be worse.  I missed my six-month target but 243k in six months is pretty solid going.  However, in October I had been hoping to break 300k by now.

The biggest problem I have had is with flash drives.  I learned the hard way to make sure I back up my work after breaking a flash drive in November.  However that was just the start.  I actually saved that one, but since then I've had two fail on me and while I've been backing them up more regularly I still lost a bunch of words both times, most notably on my effort at NaNo, which I lost TWICE.  In hindsight, taking on an entirely new project for NaNo was a huge mistake, because I overestimated the amount of writing time I would have, plus I tried to push my boundaries by writing in a genre I wasn't familiar with.  While this in itself was not a big deal, I spent a lot more time writing it than I spent on more familiar projects.  It all started well, then I lost six thousand words.  I rewrote it, then lost it again.  That kind of bummed me out so I abandoned it, although the whole experience left me feeling a little burned out and it took time to get back the motivation I had previously had.

Then there was the formatting issues I had with the paperback for The Man Who Built the World.  I struggled with it for weeks before finally outsourcing it and paying someone else to do it for me, which I should have done in the first place.  The sum result was that I failed to get the paperback ready for Christmas, although it should be available shortly.

In other writing, I'm plot-knotted again in Tube Riders, although I'm working through it now.  My novella series, Beat Down, suffered from the flash drive failures and I had to rewrite roughly 5000 words on part three, something that was very frustrating because it is very creatively spontaneous and I think a bit of the humour was lost in the rewrite.

Overall, though, I'm pretty happy with what I've got over the last six months.  In addition, after reading a blog by a pretty successful writer which encouraged us to get as much product out there as possible because you never knew what would strike a chord with the reader, I went back and took a look at a really old novel, one called Possession, which I wrote when I was 19.  It's little more than a straightforward horror story and I have never so much as reread it, but I found it was a lot better than most of the stuff I've read by indie writers so with a couple of solid edits it might be serviceable.  So I've started to work on that as well as the edit for a book called Head of Words, which is a (very) black comedy/horror/thriller/thing.

Right, back to it.  Have a good Christmas everyone, and I'd be happy to see any comments below.  And just a reminder that Tube Riders is currently free, until the 22nd of Dec.  Click the links in the sidebar and grab a copy.

CW
21st Dec 2012

Writing Update - Month Four

On June 20th, 2012, I decided to try to write 52 short stories in a year.  Since then the challenge has become a lot more, it has become about whether or not I really wanted to push myself to achieve what I felt I had the talent to achieve, which was to eventually become a full time writer.  I have rarely had doubts about my ability, and the number of stories I've published (33) suggest I'm not being a complete ego-manic when I say I think I have what it takes.  But it wasn't just about how good the words I'd written in the past were, but how good the words I hadn't yet written had the potential to be, and whether I had the drive to write enough of them to pretty much blanket the market with my awesomeness, because, let's face it, the likelihood of getting big on just one book is very remote indeed.  In other words, I had to step up to the plate.

So my odyssey shifted momentum from 52 short stories in a year to a minimum of 1000/day and as many completed new projects as possible.  Here's what I've got so far after 4 months, or 122 days.

	Name	Type	Word Count	Status
1	The Ship	Short Story	3793	Finished - to edit
2	Take me Back with You	Short Story	2528	WIP
3	Take me Back with You	Novelisation	29914	WIP
4	The Lost Train	Short Story	4352	WIP
5	The Other Set of Feet	Short Story	3749	Finished - to edit
6	Tube Riders : The Hunter	Novella	14980	WIP
7	Once We Were Children	Short Story	2513	Finished - to edit
8	The Assignment	Short Story	8802	Finished - to edit
9	Never Give Up	Short Story	5111	Finished - to edit
10	Clones	Short Story	1323	Edited
11	Beat Down 1 - Clones	Serial Novella	19774	Editing
12	Sunfall	Short Story	1271	WIP
13	The Tube Riders: Exile	Novel	60434	WIP
14	Beat Down 2 - The Heist	Serial Novella	18533	Finished - to edit
15	Beat Down 3 - Badassaur	Serial Novella	3020	WIP
	Started June 21st	Word Count	180097
		Pages (300w/pg)	600
	4 month target (Oct 20th)	(122 days)	150000
		Ahead	30097
		Total	Month
	One month tally:	33598	33598
	Two month tally:	62217	28619
	Three month tally:	119253	57036
	Four month tally:	180097	60844

So, 60,844 words for the month, or roughly half a novel (depending on what you call a good length - for me its 120,000 words).  The big one, of course, is part 2 of my novel, The Tube Riders, sitting nicely at just over 60k.  About half of what I wrote this month was on that one project, although it stalled for a week or so on a plot knot.  Elsewhere, my other big projects are my action-adventure/comedy/fantasy novella series, Beat Down, of which I'm now on to part 3.  Part 1 will be released on November 7th.  You can read more about it on a separate blog here.  The cover art is done for parts 1 & 2, and looks great.  It's fun to write but there will only be so long I can maintain it if it doesn't start to pay for itself, so I'll probably run it for three or four episodes and see how it goes.  While I have my "art" writing, I also love having fun with creativity, and there has to be a place for situations where you have a portal into another world in which chickens have become the dominant lifeform, hidden in a giant eagle's nest and accessible only by jumping off a ski jump.  Can't really put that kind of stuff into Tube Riders ...

Elsewhere, I also got a bit done on my "romance" novel.  It's got to the point where I'm not embarrassed by it, but if I think its publishable it will definitely be under a different name.

I also got a few more words done on my Tube Riders novella, which I think might end up as a companion novel set in London during the period of TR2, and featuring almost all different characters, some of which will show up in TR3 ... maybe.  It's really dark, and there's nothing I like more than writing dark fiction.  It might even appeal to a different audience to TR, but I don't really care because I'll write what I like, thank you...!

You'll notice I haven't got much editing done.  I'm perfectly happy with this, because I hate it when people rush off to edit their work immediately after finishing it, or worse, send it straight out to an editor to do the polishing for them.  Let it breathe.  Give it time to rest, time for your eyes to get a fresh view on it.  Any completed manuscript needs at least a month on the shelf, and while I have some that have been waiting that long I'm kind of lazy about editing so I haven't got around to it yet!

One thing I did edit was my short story Clones, and it was really f**king good.  I didn't remember it being that good when I wrote it, but I read it four times back to back just for pleasure, and I never do that.  Best thing I've written in years, so I gave it a brush up and sent it off to a literary magazine because it would be a waste to just self publish it and have it sit on Amazon being ignored.  Plus, it's really short, and regardless of how good it is people would moan about the price.  Still, I'm really proud to have it in the can, and hopefully I'll find somewhere to flog it and get myself a useful little payday.

Anyway, enough talking about the craft, back to it.  While I'm happy to have hit 60k in a month, the best thing is I really don't think I'm currently pushing myself all that much.  That's only on an average of 1 - 2 hours a day (perhaps a couple more on a weekend) and is only 2k a day.  I did a couple of big 5k days and as always happens I had a lull afterwards each time, but I think 3 - 4k a day is fairly reasonable, which would work out at a novel per month(!).  I just wish I didn't have to work the regular work so much, but if Tube Riders takes off (it's selling steadily since the promo ended) the first thing I'll do is can the evil kid classes and get my evenings back.

Right, I did say I was finishing ....

CW
22nd Oct 2012

52 Short Stories in a Year Challenge - Month Two Update

Two months since I started the challenge of writing 52 short stories in a year, and here's my current progress -

Writing since June 21, including 52 short stories challenge

	Writing since June 21, including 52 short stories challenge
	Name	Type	Word Count	Status	52 Short Stories Tally
1	The Ship	Short Story	3793	Finished - to edit	1
2	Take me Back with You	Short Story	2528	WIP
3	Take me Back with You	Novelisation	14553	WIP
4	The Lost Train	Short Story	4032	WIP
5	The Other Set of Feet	Short Story	3749	Finished - to edit	2
6	The Hunter	Novella	10248	WIP
7	Once We Were Children	Short Story	2513	Finished - to edit	3
8	The Assignment	Short Story	8802	Finished - to edit	5
9	Never Give Up	Short Story	5111	Finished - to edit	6
10	Clones	Short Story	1323	Finished - to edit	4
11	Beat Down 1 - Clones	Serial Novella	5082	WIP
12	Sunfall	Short Story	483	WIP
	Started June 21st	Word Count	62217
	Target for Aug 20th	Pages (300w/pg)	207
	61 days	Target	61000
		Ahead	1217

As you can see, I have six completed short stories, although none have been edited.  I'm looking to sit on everything at least three months.  Being overeager to edit and publish/submit tends to result in stories that either have all the good stuff cut out or are riddled with errors.  It's always been my experience that editing is far easier once you have left your writing so long it looks like it was written by someone else.

I actually wrote less than last month, but then I did spend five days in Korea, and in this summer heat ... well.  My big production months have always been October through January, so I'll be looking for some serious bumps there.  Still, more than 60k or 200 pages in two months is a solid effort.

Now, in true garrulous writer style, I'll say a couple of things about the work I've started/finished since last time.

Take Me Back With You is turning into contemporary romance novel.  I think.  I'm not sure because I don't read them and I've never written one before.  There are no cyborgs or UFOs though.  Romance seems to sell well though so if I can maintain my interest long enough to get it up to a book of about 60k, I'll put it out under some cheesy pen name like Christina W. Ard.  Something like that ...!

Got a few more words done on The Lost Train, but its a bit stalled.  Should be able to finish it.  The good thing about having a spreadsheet is that I haven't forgotten its there yet.

The Hunter is starting to think its a novel.  It's set in the world of the Tube Riders, after the Tube Riders have fled London.  It's dark.  The characters are interesting.  Not sure what to do with it.  It's certainly not a sequel but its running parallel at the moment.

The Assignment is finished, and ran way over my 7k target.  It's probably the best of the lot so far, but its a bit long-winded.  Will have to chop it down.

Never Give Up is a story about cricket.  I like cricket, and I reckon I write cricket action sequences well.  My second pro published story was a story about a cricket match featuring a cyborg as a stand in player.  I'm thinking to write a bunch of short stories about cricket in the hope that Amazon gets popular in India.

Clones was something I whipped out in an evening in an attempt to mimic the sparse style of Ray Bradbury's The Lake.  It is a short literary piece about childhood loss and personality changes, hence the "clones" of the title.  Not sure if its any good or not.  Haven't looked at it since I wrote it.

Beat Down 1 - Clones has nothing to do with the story Clones above.  This my attempt to crack into the serial market.  This is a manga-style, dumb entertainment thing.  Its central character is a borderline immortal pro wrestler called Russell who has to save the world for various reasons in a silly comic way.   Yesterday I introduced a new character, Cap'n Nerv, who is half pirate, half chav.  Should be interesting.  I've already planned out perhaps six "episodes" of about 15-20k each.  I've already decided on a pen name but its a secret.

Sunfall is a story about a man called Richard who wakes up to hear that the sun has died and that the earth has three days before it becomes too cold for humans to survive.  He needs to find his girlfriend and tell her something important.  I don't know what yet because I only started it yesterday while I was waiting for some files to transfer from one USB to another before I could open up one of the other documents.

Anyway, enough talking, time for some action.

CW

52 Short Stories in a Year - 1 month update

After deciding to take up the challenge of writing 52 short stories in a year, here is my update after finishing the first month on 21st July.

Name	Type	Word Count	Status
The Ship	Short Story	3793	Finished - to edit
Take me Back with You	Short Story	2528	WIP
Take me Back with You	Novelisation	9373	WIP
The Lost Train	Short Story	3362	WIP
The Other Set of Feet	Short Story	3749	Finished - to edit
The Hunter	Novella	5543	WIP
Once We Were Children	Short Story	2513	Finished - to edit
The Assignment	Short Story	2737	WIP
		33598

I'm actually one story behind on getting one per week, but I've averaging out at a little over 1000 words a day, and considering I'm also fitting editing a novel into the tiny window of free time I have each day I'm pretty happy with my progress.

The Ship is a short story about a boy obsessed with supertankers who falls foul of a school bully.  I did a ton of research on supertankers and stuff and then ended up cutting most of it out as my attempt at writing literary fiction ended up more action-based.

Take me Back with You is a kind of romance, which is a little strange because I've never written anything like that before.  The short story is pretty much a summary of the story which I decided to make into a novel of perhaps 60k or so, and now the main plot line is mapped out in my head I probably won't bother finishing it as a short story.

The Lost Train is about a pair of kids who find a train sticking out of the ground and discover it is one that went missing thirty years before.  I wanted to write a story about the now closed North Cornwall Railway, and this is it.  I'm a little stalled on the plot at the moment but I'll get to it eventually.

The Other set of Feet is a weird little story about a man trapped in his bedroom by a supposed murderer hiding under his bedsheets.  It's kind of comical, kind of just plain weird.

The Hunter (provisional title) is a novella set in the world of my novel, The Tube Riders, and introduces a few characters who may or may not make it into the second part of the story.  Still thinking about it.

Once we were Children is an attempt at writing a nostalgic story about an old man thinking back on good family times as he faces his death.  I tried to write in the style of a movie me and the wife watched recently about a man who went off on a last journey with his dog after his family fell apart and they ended up dying together.  My story is nowhere near as good, though.

The Assignment is what I think is the ace in the pack, a short story about a young man working for a travel guidebook who is sent to an island never before visited by people in order to write a tourist guide.  There he will discover all sorts of strange things.  I got the initial idea from a dream I had of a giant aquamarine blue factory sitting on a an island beside a massive towering cliff.  It's going to have strange beings, action and crazy discoveries about the human race before its done, and the only one of the lot so far that I'll probably bother subbing to pro magazines.


Overall, I'm pretty happy with my progress.  It might not be the 10k a day that some stay-at-home-type writers churn out, but its actually more by word count than I've written in the last 18 months combined, and I feel connected with my words in a way I haven't in a long time.  The old turns of phrase are starting to come back and the plots are getting more and more intricate with each new idea.  To say I had been stagnating is an understatement, but in the wake of failing to get an agent for Tube Riders back in 2010 my writing basically fell of a cliff.

I'm still struggling to find more than an hour a day to write which is a worry, but that's life.  I'm not in a financial position to quit any of the work I do and I'm not about to give up my other hobbies.  Variety is the spice of life and all that, I just wish it was easier to stay awake from 10pm to midnight after working a fourteen hour day.

Still, progress is progress.  If only a few more people would buy my book then things would be great.

CW.

Castles Made of Sand & The Tree

I wanted to write a little bit about the two most recent stories I'm publishing on Amazon, Castles Made of Sand, and The Tree.  Both contain a moral message of sorts.

The first of these, Castles Made of Sand, is a space exploration story set on an alien world.  Two explorers, Randall and Boyd, come across a number of giant sandcastles on a beach and set about trying to find out who made them and why.  The message in this story is very much about the care humans must take when they interact with other living beings, be them animals or perhaps one day creatures from another world.

This story is especially important to me because it kick started my writing career back in 2006, and was the first significant story I had written in four years.  2002/3 was a golden period for me, and some of my best stories, including Joyriders, The Ageless, Benny’s Harem and the original short story from which my novel Tube Riders came, were written around that time.  However, I failed to sell anything, got disillusioned and gave up for a while.  Then, in 2006, I wrote Castles Made of Sand, discovered the ease of submitting via the internet, and it quickly became my first paid sale, after a couple of earlier ones had fallen through in the way that they so often do in the small press.  It has since been sold as a reprint to the magazine Aoife’s Kiss, and was published in 2009.  Now the rights are mine again, it’s taking its turn on Amazon.

The Tree is a dystopian story set in the future.  It was a bit of an experiment, written as it is in the form of a diary by a girl called Cybil, whose father works somewhere off-world, and one day returns home bringing with him a gift that Cybil and her brothers and sisters have never seen before – a little oak tree in a pot.  The story focuses on the reaction of the children and the fate of the little tree.

In school I remember reading what I thought was a short story but on investigating (thanks, Google) it seems to have been a poem, called We are Going to See the Rabbit, by an English poet called Alan Brownjohn.  The Tree is heavily influenced by this poem.  I found the poem on the net here, but have pasted it below for your interest (no copyright infringement intended).

we are going to see the rabbit

We are going to see the rabbit,
We are going to see the rabbit,
Which rabbit, people say?
Which rabbit, ask the children?
Which rabbit?
The only rabbit,
The only rabbit in England,
Sitting behind a barbed wire fence
Under the floodlights, neon lights,
Sodium lights,
Nibbling grass
On the only patch of grass
In England, in England
(Except the grass by the hoardings
Which doesn’t count.)
We are going to see the rabbit,
And we must be there on time.

First we shall go by escalator,
Then we shall go by underground,
And then we shall go by motorway
And then by helicopterway,
And the last ten yards we shall have to go
On foot.

And now we are going
All the way to see the rabbit.
We are nearly there,
We are longing to see it,
And so is the crowd
Which is here in thousands
With mounted policemen
And big loudspeakers
And bands and banners,
And everyone has come a long way.
But soon we shall see it
Sitting and nibbling
The blades of grass
On the only patch of grass
In- but something has gone wrong!
Why is everyone so angry,
Why is everyone jostling
and slanging and complaining?

The rabbit has gone,
Yes, the rabbit has gone.
He has actually burrowed down into the earth
And made himself a warren, under the earth.
Despite all these people,
And what shall we do?
What can we do?

It is all a pity, you must be disappointed.
Go home and do something else for today,
Go home again, go home for today.
For you cannot hear the rabbit, under the earth,
Remarking rather sadly to himself, by himself,
As he rests in his warren, under the earth:
“It won’t be long, they are bound to come,
They are bound to come and find me, even here.”

ALAN BROWNJOHN

It's a pretty interesting thought to have no grass, rabbits or trees left, and while we might look around us now and think that such a situation might never happen, it's important for all of us to make an effort to look after the world we live in just to ensure that a world like that in the poem above or in The Tree never happens.

CW

How Much is a Short Story Worth?

How much is a short story worth?

I recently ran a free promotion for my short story, The Cold Pools, giving away 2041 copies in three days after it was picked up by the popular free ebook website Ereader News Today.

A couple of days later I received this comment as part of a generally positive 4-star review:

“This little story is very good and certainly worth borrowing, but not I think given its brevity, paying 99 cents for...”

Don't get me wrong, I was happy to receive the review and pleased that the reader took the time to write it, but it got me thinking.  So, this reviewer doesn’t think my story is worth 99 cents.  In that case, what is it worth? And what is 99 cents worth?

There seems to be a growing attitude that just because something is digital and can't be held in your hand then it has no value.  Hence the proliferation of music/movie/ebook piracy, which is effectively theft from the comfort of one's own home.  I have no problem at all with listening or watching something on Youtube, which I consider to be a form of borrowing, but downloading pirated music or movies is stealing, so I don't do it.  I don't care what other people do, but I know I'd be mighty pissed off if there were 30,000 copies of my writing being passed around without my authorization.


Anyway, back to the main thread, the value of a short story.

At the time of writing, The Cold Pools has sold 8 copies, for each of which I made 35 cents. In addition to this it was originally published in 2009 in an online magazine which paid me $15. I paid $3 for the cover image for the ebook, so currently it breaks down like this –

Paid sales + $15

Amazon sales 8 at 35c = + $2.80

Cover art - $3

Equals $14.80 total profit.

So, not counting the ezine sale, I’m currently making a loss on Cold Pools.

However. 

The reviewer’s concern was that the story wasn’t worth paying 99 cents for. Cold Pools is 3500 words long, which is admittedly short for an ebook, although it was packaged with the first chapter of a novel as a bonus (and not a shameless form of self-promotion, honest ... ;-) ). I write at roughly 1000 words an hour, plus these things always take a couple of hours to edit and format. Even saying it took me six total hours to write Cold Pools (which is probably pretty conservative, it’s likely double that at least) it still works out at a pretty measly hourly wage.

Currently, assuming it took just six hours, I’ve made $2.46 per hour from Cold Pools. I’ve sold 8 copies in three months. Let’s say I sell 1000, which at this stage looks pretty unlikely to happen within twenty years. That would be $350, or $58/hour. Much better, although considering I can easily earn $50/hour teaching English it really isn’t that much.

Moving on, I’d like to consider just what 99 cents is worth. I live in Japan, so I’ve done a conversion in order to investigate. 99 cents is 78 yen, which, frankly, is hardly anything.  We have 100 yen shops for a reason, and that is because very little is valued at less.  With this knowledge in hand, I decided to visit my local 7Eleven to see just what was worth less than my story, and what was worth more.

Here it is, the winner.  My story is worth exactly the same amount as this boiled egg, which comes in a kind of soy sauce and is designed to be put into a bowl of ramen noodles.  Now, I know you get a physical product, whereas my story is just a bunch of words on a screen, but its not like the egg and the packaging it comes in is designed fresh each time - it is just replicated on the production line, just like my story.  You see what I'm getting at?  78 yen is probably worth it for the hours it took someone to design that product, even if the number of potential sales is as many as there are chickens.

This packet of sliced, processed ham is worth slightly less, at 75yen.  It was one of only perhaps four items that actually cost less than my story.  Among the others were a cheap single meal tub of catfood and a single disposable razor.  There wasn't a single chocolate bar that was cheaper than my story.  Believe me, 99 cents is not a lot.

And this bottle of Pom orange juice, at 157yen, is worth almost exactly twice as much as my short story.

Interesting.

I guess it all comes down to how you perceive value.  I welcome all reviews on my work and if people think my writing sucks, then so be it.  It's all up to you.  What does concern me is that a lot of readers don't consider our work to have any value at all.  Do plumbers put in pipes for free?  Do bank managers hand out free mortgages?  Do teachers give free lessons?  Only if they're idiots.

Of course services are products aren't free.  Generally, when something is free it falls into two categories - charity or promotional.  It is the second that directly effects me so I'll focus on that.  Incidentally, on my visit to the 7Eleven I was given this bottle for Lemon Volvic as a service, because I'm pretty much in there every day spending money.

It was a nice gesture, and it was appreciated.  But does it mean that I now expect to get all my bottles of water free every time I go into 7Eleven?  Of course not.  The only point of giving me a free bottle of water was to encourage me to go back and shop there again.  Which of course I will, not just because it is the closest shop to my house but because the staff are nice to me and they stock stuff that I want.  It's no different to when I give my short stories away on Amazon, it's not out of the kindness of my heart, it is with the hope that readers will enjoy them and want to visit my "shop" again.

There are many, many writers out there who are nowhere near as good as me who are making far more money, and there are many far better making even less.  A lot of it comes down to marketing and how good you are at it.  I suck at marketing.  I'm not good at networking.  I'm not particularly prolific at making friends, let alone charismatic enough to make people I meet buy stuff I have written.  I have one novel out at the moment, The Tube Riders.  Everyone who has read it and reviewed it has said it's exciting, original, a great read.  These are not people I have paid or people I know, these are complete strangers.  It's got to the semi-final shortlist of a minor award, and I'm pretty confident it'll make the final five.  It took me three months just to write the first draft, and its currently priced at $2.99, which is less than a 500ml can of beer in my local 7Eleven (beer is pricey in Japan...!).  It's the cost of three boiled eggs, and about half the price of a Starbucks Coffee.  I've sold about 20 copies.  Is it worth this price?  Personally I think it's worth a lot more, but potential customers don't seem to agree.

It is a dangerous world we live in where creative media is considered of less and less value.  Art enriches life, especially good art, and while Amazon in particular is clogged with junk passing itself off as literature, there is still a lot of great writing to be found.  The famous indie writer Joe Konrath talks about a future where the only revenue from ebooks comes from internal advertising, but this is something that fills me with dread.  How far will we go to devalue something that so many people consider an enriching experience?  Something that entertains you or makes you think should have a value, be it music, art, film, literature.  People should be happy to pay for an experience that makes them happy, the same way that they'd pay to go on a rollercoaster or take a parachute jump.

So criticise all you like, but never say my work or the work of all the thousands of other writers, artists, film-makers, musicians and other creative types has no value, because you're wrong, it does.

CW