Never meet your heroes – that’s what they say, isn’t it? I’m even not entirely sure who they are so screw what they say. I don’t actually have any heroes, but if I was forced to select one, it would be Joe Abercrombie. Yuck! I’m cringing even writing that. I don’t do hero worship, I hate the idea of genuflecting to anyone remotely famous or prestigious. So why bring up this nonsense at all? Well, it’s because yesterday I met Joe Abercrombie; best selling author of The First Law trilogy. I’d like to say I met him down the pub, and we had a pint together and talked shit about writing and growing up in Lancashire, but unfortunately, that nice little fantasy didn’t quite happen. Instead, I saw him at a little conference thing called Gollanczfest – he was a speaker there then did a book sighing after. I got a book signed and I told him how The First Law influenced my own books. He scribbled something in my paperback copy of The Blade Itself and off I went. That was that. I’m not in any way disappointed in my brief encounter. I like how he came across at the event and he seemed nice enough when we briefly met. Maybe it takes at least a pint in a pub somewhere to become disillusioned by your heroes, maybe one day I’ll get the chance – but not today.
So why am I waffling about Joe? What made me want to write a blog post about yesterday’s brief encounter? Well, I suppose it’s because I want to explain why I think he’s so influential to my own work. My story begins back in October 2021. I was on holiday, I had a week by the pool and my love of reading was re-kindled. I didn’t read any of Joe’s stuff on that particular holiday, I can’t actually recall what I read, but that’s not the point. The point is that the re-emergence of my love of reading that I discovered on this holiday brought something else to the fore too, my love of making stuff up. In October 2021, I was in a job where I was bored. I worked from home and had to be at my computer all day in case anyone wanted to get in touch. But I didn’t have enough work to fill my day. While I was on holiday, I had an epiphany; I realised I could use my time stuck at a computer to write stuff. So when I came home I started writing the story that had rattled around my head for years and had survived two previous attempts to get it down on paper. By Christmas, 2021, the first draft of The Queen of Vorn was complete. So what has this got to do with Joe? Soon after I started writing, I realised I needed to read more. I searched for new stuff to try, and I came across Joe Abercrombie’s books. I wanted to find a fantasy trilogy that I thought I’d enjoy and The First Law trilogy seemed to fit the bill. I read this trilogy over the next year, at the same time I wrote my own trilogy. After I finished The Queen of Vorn, I cracked straight on with its sequels. So The First Law trilogy was with me the whole time I was writing The Homecoming Trilogy. So what? I loved Joe’s fresh take on the fantasy genre. Sure, there were lots of familiar tropes, there were familiar settings and some of the characters were even quite familiar, but most weren’t. Most had dark sides, complex sides and interesting back stories. They were multi-layered and very distinctive from each other. They all came with their own threads and intermingled with other characters in a satisfying manner as the trilogy progressed. I wanted to get this stuff in my stories. I wanted deep, dark, interesting characters… (Note: If you have read neither my stories nor The First Law trilogy, you may wish to skip to the final paragraph, as the following may go over your head) First, I want to talk about Queen Lila. She’s the antagonist in my first novel, The Queen of Vorn, book 1 in The Homecoming Trilogy. She has a long back story that featured in my first draft but got axed when I re-wrote The Queen of Vorn last summer. I aim to make that backstory into a prequel one day – but anyway… Let’s make her long story short (as we’ll be here far longer than I imagine your attention span will stretch to): Queen Lila starts off as a sweet, innocent young woman, then has a really nasty time of things and turns evil. A little like how Glokta from The First Law got tortured and became a torturer. She has some nice Glokta-style practical nastiness traits about her, but she maybe isn’t as multi layered as I’d like. Looking back, she was the first character I created in The Homecoming Trilogy and so probably wasn’t as influenced by Joe as some of my others. Let’s consider another of my characters: Mark. Mark’s one of my favourite characters. He appears in the second book in The Homecoming Trilogy. He’s not particularly dark, but I think he has quite a few nuanced characteristics. He’s had a difficult start to life, which contrasts against the cushy upbringing and less complex personality of another character, Tom, quite nicely. Thinking about it, he has a lot of parallels with Joe’s Collem West. They are both officers in the military and had unconventional starts in life and carry insecurities about that through their careers. I’m rattling the rest of my characters through my head as I write this, and on reflection, I, think my more complex characters appear in The Offspring Trilogy, this is the sequel trilogy to The Homecoming Trilogy. As the name suggests, it focusses on the offspring of the characters from the first three books. There’s Garrad – the title character in The General’s Son. He’s a bit like Joe’s Ardee West meets Jezal dan Luthar: he’s not comfortable in his skin, has a bit of a booze problem, he's great with a sword and arrogant at times. There’s Sarah, she’s a bit like a non-crippled evil version of Glokta. She’s not crippled physically, but she’s a bit screwed up mentally from childhood trauma. She’s also very practical, she's a survivor, and necessarily brutal. And there’s Mikey, he’s the title character in the third book in The Offspring Trilogy, The Prince’s Nephew. I think he’s my favourite character of any I’ve created. I can’t actually think of any direct parallels to Joe’s characters because I think he takes bits of them all. He starts a bit like Logen Ninefingers in some ways - a bit of a thinking man’s barbarian, but from a modern era, but then transforms into something a bit like Ferro, a bit tapped in the head and extremely ruthless, but finally, I think he merges into something akin to Logen meets Collem. I’d always known Joe Abercrombie’s books had influenced my own work, but until I really started to think about it, I don’t think I’d realised how much. My stories are very different, but my characters? They were the thing I liked the most from Joe’s books, so I suppose it really isn’t a surprise there’s parallels…thanks for the inspiration, Joe!
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I’m gonna do it – I’m gonna self-publish! Didn’t you already do that? Um, yes, I did. But if you read my last blog post, you will know I also recently un-published the three books I published. Right…so you’re just sticking the books you unpublished back online? No! I’m doing something else, let me explain: I’ve written six books in the Gallantrian Legacy series. They all have pretty covers, as shown above (pretty covers that need work – but I’ll come to that, later). The six books have been written in two trilogies with a twenty-year time gap in-between. I deliberately wrote the second trilogy so it could sit as a stand-alone, as well as a sequel trilogy. Think Star Wars episodes 4 – 6. After I’d written all six books, I proceeded to self-publish my second trilogy first. Why would you do this? Just because it worked for George Lucas… Let me finish! I did it this way primarily because I knew books 1 – 3 (especially book 1) needed a lot of work, and I wasn’t really in the head space to go back to my first trilogy and swing the axe. That’s the real reason – although I often cite others, such as these: - It gave me the opportunity to have a second launch, I could start again with book one and run through to book six. - It allowed me to try to seek the traditional publishing route for book 1 (if you’re not aware, traditional publishers don’t normally touch books that have been previously self-published). - Books 4 – 6 needed less work, so I could get them to market quicker. Mmm, I’m not sure the primary reason I cite is the best of my reasons, but you know what? Looking back I’m certainly glad I did things this way. Why? Well, pull up a chair… In January last year, I found myself newly unemployed and eager to get my books to market. I was desperate to make a success of being an author, I ignored everything I read about author success rarely coming quickly, I thought I could buck the trend. So off I went, I threw money at editors and cover designers and did loads of random self-promo stuff online. I published all three books of my second trilogy on Amazon, six weeks apart. In the early days, things were looking good. I managed to flog quite a few books and earned over £100 in each of the first two months. But things went downhill from there, see below (I’ve no idea what the September blip is about, by the way). £534 might look like a respectable figure for a self-published author, but when you consider what I spend on ads and ad agencies, I’m running at a significant loss. I’ve not added up everything I’ve spent, as I know it would depress me. But I know for sure its way above £534. So, come January this year, I decided it was time to re-evaluate things (see my last post). In summary, I realised my read-through wasn’t as good as it could be, and I concluded The General’s Son needs work – which is now underway. This is all backstory, of course, I know I’ve not answered my own question about why I’m glad I did things this way. Well, basically, its because I’ve just learned so much! I’ve learned what is worth spending time and money on, and what isn’t. I’ve learned the importance of patience, of proper preparation for launch, of building an author platform, of making sure I have a good author presence on Amazon, Goodreads and my own website. I’m no expert by a long stretch, but I think I’m far better placed to launch a book now than I was this time last year. Which brings me to my current plan. I’m going to re-launch, but I’m going to start with book 1. Last summer, I re-wrote The Queen of Vorn. I queried it for a time; I’ve now given up. Why? Because I’m not convinced it’s the right book to attract an agent or publisher. They’re after certain things, I’m not sure my book ticks the right boxes. So I’m going to self-publish it instead. But first, I’m going to do work on my covers. I’m going to prepare a marketing plan in advance. I’m going to make sure the book is as good as it can be before I release it into the world. I’m going to do everything I can to set myself up for success. Then I’m going to hope for the best. Wish me luck! For the latest news, free stories and more, be sure to sign up for the author's newsletter:
12/1/2024 2 Comments It's time for a Condor moment...The world of Charlotte Goodwin… it’s a crazy old place. It often moves at a million miles an hour. Blink, and there’s a good chance you’ll miss her making some crazy, rash, life changing decision. I make no secret of the fact that I’m impatient, impulsive and prone to turning my life upside-down on a hairpin. Sorry to disappoint, but on this occasion there is no life-changing decision afoot, but I have made quite a monumental step in respect of my journey to trying to become a successful author. I’ve taken all my books offline. Yep, my three published novels are no longer available to buy on Amazon or read with Kindle Unlimited. I’ve also taken my short stories offline, too. I had four of them on Booksie and Wattpad. Not anymore. Just one remains, it’s a bit of fan-fic I wrote which I’m keeping live on Substack. Why? I’m not certain, it just seemed the right thing to do. What are you doing, you crazy woman? I do talk to myself a lot – mostly in my head. It helps me maintain a veneer of sanity to the outside world. To answer my own question, I’m embarking on a reset. Late in 2022, I decided to quit my job at Amazon and try to make it as a writer. I blogged about it. Feel free to read my post, here. In January 2023, I jumped on a writing roller coaster. I really was convinced I could sell books. I didn’t think I was about to sell thousands of course, but I did think maybe I could shift a few hundred, maybe I could begin to build some momentum and then I’d see my sales go up as I grew my profile and got more reviews. I didn’t. Here’s why – I rushed things. I took a sub-par product to market. There are some logical reasons why I did this; they’re logical, but not necessarily sensible. Anyway. Life goes on. I spent 2023 learning stuff. A lot of stuff. Here are the highlights: - No one becomes a writing success overnight (except a tiny, tiny minority of very lucky people). - Your first novel will suck. Your second one probably will, too. You won’t realise this until you’ve written at least three of the things. - Throwing money at your books won’t make them good – you can pay for great editors and great cover designers, but they will only ever work to your brief. Books become great thanks to the work you put in. - Don’t rush your books to market. It can be tempting in the world of self-publishing, but it rarely pays off in the long run. Take time to build your author platform and make sure you book really is as good as it can be first. - Listen to Baz Luhmann – he wrote a song called Everybody’s Free. It has some great lyrics. Here’s some highlights. "The race is long and in the end, it's only with yourself." "Be careful whose advice you buy but be patient with those who supply it." There’s loads more wisdom in that song besides, if you’ve never heard it, you really should look it up. - And of course, BE PATIENT! Now What?Now I’ve decided to start again with all those lessons in my head. I’ll do some work on The General’s Son. I’ll do some work on the covers of all my books and on my on-line presence. I’ll build my newsletter subscriber list. I won’t publish writing that is bad – including short stories. I’ll keep writing. I’ll keep learning. And maybe one day, if I learn enough, and put what I've learnt into practice, I’ll achieve the success I hope for.
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AuthorCharlotte Goodwin is the author of the Gallantrian Legacy series. A set of six books (and counting) set in a universe where magic is real, there's just not much of it on Earth. Archives
March 2024
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