 The Old Swan A first-time event here at the Old Swan, treading a little in the footsteps of Theakston’s Crime Fest, the new history festival is going very well.
Friday evening, Rose Tremain gave the first, fascinating, talk about her new book, Merival, characterisation, writing from the inside out and how much she did, or didn’t, include of herself in her work.
 Ground Floor, The Old Swan Next, the room was packed to hear about the search for Richard III. Screenwriter Philippa Langley and historian Michael Jones outlined the exciting investigation which led to the archeological find of the century (I know we’re only thirteen years in, but as finds go, this is an impressive one!). There were many questions including where Richard was to be buried – a hot topic in Yorkshire.
Saturday kicked off on the theme of ‘Wives of Tyrants’, focusing on Katharine Parr, the sixth wife of Henry VIII who was intelligent, political and a survivor (Queen’s Gambit by Elizabeth Freemantle) and Magda Goebbels, an enigmatic but dedicated Nazi but who wielded significant power as an influencer (Black Roses by Jane Thynne).
Fay Weldon amused us with stories and a little gossip, explaining how she wanted to change to a less complicated and more tranquil age with her recent ‘Love and Inheritance’ historical novels.
‘Women, Sex and Power’ had a strong feminist flavour with Kate Worsley, Imogen Robertson, Stella Duffy and Lisa Hilton. By strategy, intelligence and strength of character as much as sexual allure, we heard how women made their mark on history, sometimes assuming male dress and identity, and found power in ‘his-story’.
 The incomparable Lindsey Davis was interviewed by M C Scott. I laughed all the way through. A born wit, but self-deprecating, Ms Davis cantered through her publishing career, focusing on the Falco detective stories and her Civil War writing. I heard her lastand the HNS2012 conference in London and she was equally entertaining. A real treat and I’ve bought her latest The Ides of April.
Following that came ‘Marching with the Legions’ with authors Simon Scarrow, Ben Kane, and Anthony Riches. Helmets, mail shirt, gladius and shield, hobnail boots and some laddish but inoffensive good humour added a touch of authenticity.
 Simon Scarrow, PERFIDITAS and me! And best of all, Simon Scarrow, who endorsed PERFIDITAS, was kind enough to be photographed with me.
A terrific second day!
Read about the next part here.
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers, INCEPTIO, and PERFIDITAS. Third in series, SUCCESSIO, is out early summer 2014.
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To celebrate its publication, PERFIDITAS is off on a virtual, fairly relaxed tour…
Click here for all the tour stop details, regularly updated.
And, of course, there’ll be the UK launch at Waterstones Tunbridge Wells on 6 November – all welcome.
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Missed INCEPTIO? You can buy it here from a variety of retailers.
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The regular stuff…
Apart from the blogsite Alison Morton’s Roma Nova you can find my Facebook author page at https://www.facebook.com/AlisonMortonAuthor
PERFIDITAS page at http://www.facebook.com/Perfiditas
INCEPTIO page at http://www.facebook.com/Inceptiothriller
And I tweet as @alison_morton
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Today starts a very special month when I’m featured in the online literary magazine Women Writers, Women’s Books. And I’m very excited to be in the company of Isabel Allende, Nicola Morgan, Roz Morris, Joanne Harris, Claire King and Judith Kinghorn, to mention a few.
It started with a tweet. My critique partner, Denise Barnes, whose recent business book, Seller Beware is being grabbed by the business community, especially the female part of it, included me in a reply to something called @womenwriters. She said they should get me to write a piece for them. Ever keen to tell people about Roma Nova and my heroine’s adventures, I contacted them and my piece appeared on 5 September.
I hadn’t quite grasped the range and depth of the site and its contributions. Launched only in 2011 to be a platform for contemporary women writers around the world writing in English, it has fast gained a reputation and status as the place to be for insights, knowledge and sharp articles about women and their writing across genres, nationalities and cultures.
Women Writers say, “The only criteria [for a contributor] is that she be a woman who writes, and that her post be written for our audience specifically, that it be well-written and interesting to read.”
Their social media reach is impressive and growing; apart from a clear, user-friendly website, they have 15,800 Twitter followers at last count.
Reading their site is a pleasure and I dare you not to enjoy as well as learn some invaluable aspects about writing, writers’ lives, work and motivations.
I’m delighted to be a supporting sponsor for this month
http://booksbywomen.org/
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 Those Who Know say the best way to keep your work in front of readers is to write another book. As I’m in the middle of letting everybody know about (let’s be honest, marketing) my new book and trying to reach as many potential readers as possible, I’ve snatched a few minutes out to think about this.
At the risk of repeating many other people, you need a damn’ fine, well-formatted and produced book that has a great cover, is tightly edited and contains a story bursting with page-turning quality. If it doesn’t meet all these criteria, don’t go a step further. Get your offering into top shape first.
You cannot just publish a book and hope people will ‘discover’ it, especially if you are self or indie published, so you have to set aside marketing and PR (collectively known as ‘promo’) time from your writing time.
You need to enlist your friends and colleagues of all kinds to help spread the word – you cannot do it all alone. Additionally, you need to develop a firm online base of friends, fan and followers by talking and engaging with people, preferably about books. But what else would you talk about as a writer? 😉
The best publicity is word of mouth, third party endorsement/ an authoritative book review (several preferably!) and you won’t get these by sitting in your bat-cave all day, tapping on the keyboard, turning out your next masterwork.
 But you’re a writer. Isn’t tapping on the keyboard your job? Yes and no – see above.
So you find yourself caught in a self-perpetuating circle of writing and promo conflict. The solution? Be absolutely grim in your determination to write even a couple of pages in your current work every day, whatever the urgent needs of promo. A blogpost doesn’t count – sorry.
Look at the counter at the top left of this page.* That’s how close I am to publication of PERFIDITAS and it’s desperately difficult to resist doing a few tweets or FB posts. But my fingertip is heading for the ‘Publish’ button now, then I’m gone, writing.
* Editor’s note: Deactivated: showed 4 days to go to publication when this article was posted
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http://youtu.be/lUPhyUE0JvE
If you want a steep learning curve, try making a book trailer. If you like a story of persistence and life hours spent you can read how I did it (eventually) for INCEPTIO, the first Roma Nova thriller in February.
But as a keen movie fan and a glutton for punishment, I decided to do one for PERFIDITAS. I took a deep breath, ready to commit days to it, then plunged in.
As with INCEPTIO, I wrote a specification
How long? Max 1.20 mins.
Type? People wanted to know about the book, so again a mini-story but without giving the end away.
Tone and pace? Snappy – it’s about a thriller.
Funding? 60 pounds/dollars/euros – an increase of 10.
Resources? My time, my picture editing skills(!), well-selected still photos and the iMovie programme on my Mac.
What did I want to achieve?
Visibility for the book, anticipation and to stimulate a wish to buy PERFIDITAS to see what happened next by the viewers.
The practicalities
Although my heroine’s story is written in first person in the book, I decided to put the script into the third person to reinforce the message on the back cover of the paperback; this should set the story, outline the threat and pose the question ‘What happens next?’ all without giving the plot away, and within a minute and a half. Not that easy…
This time, for PERFIDITAS, I decided to let the backing track stir up the emotion, rather than a voice do it. Using the same music had three benefits: people would (perhaps!) associate it with the INCEPTIO trailer, I wouldn’t have the brain-ache of trawling through another 148 sound samples and I would save money!
Next, the script dictated the visuals. For this video, I was getting personal: main characters, as well as Roman scenes. The biggest danger was that I could set the characters’ appearances in the readers’ minds or distort the ones they already had, so I took ‘generic’ as my theme. Carina soldierly, then criminal, Apollodorus dark, mysterious and definitely dangerous, Conrad a good-looker, but enigmatic. Then it was scouring my own photos and trawling the free and paying photo libraries. I used iStockphoto and SXC in the end.
 The iMac working screen iMovie’s tutorials were very good; I printed out the pages I needed in the end as it was annoying to keep flicking back in and out the Help section in the middle of doing some delicate tweak.
Loading the material into a new project and creating a rough outline was definitely easier this time. Then I typed in the subtitled wording in a plain, teleprinter-like font to give a flavour of military/intelligence communications. As most scenes had a dark background, I chose a white font to give the best contrast. The biggest challenge was amending the text to fit the scenes, and vice versa. You have to keep in mind that people read at different speeds.
Tweaking the timings, transitions, Ken Burns effects (smart name for zooming in and out in a directed way) was more intuitive – I was surprised things I’d learnt in February had stayed with me. Lastly, I did a still for the end frame showing the book, publication date and buying links.
Loading on to YouTube was painless – like most people in the digiverse, I already had a Google account (Google own YouTube). The bigger decision was choosing the size and which image to use for the thumbnail. I chose 720 HD for size (as selected in the graphic above) and for thumbnail, the first image with Carina holding a great big gun; she is after all, a strong female character!
What did I learn?
- that past experience of doing the INCEPTIO trailer was a blessing; I did the PERFIDITAS one in a day.
– with a bit of thought, $85.00 (slightly over budget!) and several hours of fiddling, I could produce a reasonable trailer.
– that my respect for professional film-makers had increased further.
Plus, this time round, it was much more fun!
I don’t think it’s a deal-breaker not to have a trailer. But if you enjoy fiddling around on the computer, are prepared to make a small investment, happy to go bug-eyed researching pictures and negotiating the movie programme, then it’s another attractive and pleasing piece of the infamous marketing toolbox.
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers, INCEPTIO, and PERFIDITAS. Third in series, SUCCESSIO, is out in June 2014.
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