Social Media

For the first time in history, we are able to sustain friendships, and engage in conversations with groups of people, all over the world. I have friends in countries I've never visited, on every continent. Some of them are people I met and subsequently connected with online when they moved away. Others are people I first met online, who have become good friends. All of this has become possible through the advent of social media. To begin with, these online contacts didn't seem like real people at all. The first time a Facebook friend of mine turned up at one of my book signings, it felt surreal meeting her in the physical world. Since then many of us have met in the real world, as readers often come along to my events, sometimes travelling long distances for a signed book and a chat. It's always a thrill meeting people who read my books.

The only problem with social media is that it's so addictive! I frequently pop over to Facebook to reply to comments on my latest post, or see who else has been posting. Twitter is another site I frequent, putting up a tweet or responding to other people's comments. I've connected with some interesting people there as well.

So we are living in interesting times, in terms of human relations. We have our family and friends in the real world. Next are our virtual friends, real people we connect with via the Internet. Finally, there are the fictitious characters we read and write about. Whether real, virtual or fictitious, any of them can become our friends, and any of them can confound our expectations. The characters I create often surprise me. As an author, you might think I would be able to control my characters well enough to avoid them catching me off guard. They may be unpredictable to a reader, but they should not surprise whoever created them. As other authors will confirm, this is not always the case. My characters sometimes deviate from the paths I map out for them. That can be frustrating, but it is also part of the fun of writing, making the process more organic and creative. Like real people, they can have minds of their own.

Leigh Russell is published in English, and in translation throughout Europe. Her Geraldine Steel and Ian Peterson titles have appeared on many bestseller lists, including #1 on kindle. Leigh's work has been nominated for several major awards, including the CWA New Blood Dagger and CWA Dagger in the Library, and her Geraldine Steel and Ian Peterson series are currently in development for television with Avalon Television Ltd.

Journey to Death is the first title in her Lucy Hall series published by Thomas and Mercer.

Links to all Leigh's books can be found on her website http://leighrussell.co.uk

Authors on Social Media

I just came across an article in Publishers Weekly presenting The Future of Reading: 10 Trends for 2014 and Beyond, published in 2014. Not all the predictions have come true... yet. We are not all wearing 'reading glasses', not reading glasses like those of us with what I like to call 'mature' eyes wear, but glasses that actually do the reading for us. (As with most technology, I may have totally understood that. Perhaps I really do need a device to do my reading for me... )

Among the paragraphs on 'Visual Literature' and 'Data-Driven Narrative', 'Print-on-Demand' and 'Instant Translation' was this: "In the social media era, it’s become commonplace for authors to provide free content on blogs, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and to interact with fans on public forums (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) as a way to establish their distinctive brand personas."

So authors are not only expected to appear at literary festivals for free (cf my last post for my views on this topic) we are also supposed to establish 'a distinctive brand persona', whatever that is. (I have to confess to being out of my depth with all this.) And of course we have to find time to do that other thing... what was it?... oh yes, write books. 

Some authors are better than the rest of us at exploiting the opportunities offered by social media. Many of the very successful self-published authors have a background in PR of some sort. Of course it's a given that they write books other people want to read, but well done to them for having the knowhow to help promote their books. If I had those skills, I'd use them. Who wouldn't? When  it comes to self-promotion most of us are clumsy amateurs. 

So is this 'free content' online really useful to an author? First literary festivals, now blogs and twitter and Facebook and all the other outlets, Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr... there are so many, most of which I have only vaguely heard of. Should we give up our time 'for free' to interact with fans? 

I have to admit to loving my little forays into social media. Confession time: it's fun to write a blog post where I can go crazy with hyperbole and indulge myself with ridiculously excessive punctuation!!! It's very different to writing books, where I take scrupulous care with my language. Facebook is fun too. I post photos there, something I haven't mastered on my blog. Sometimes it works. Mostly my attempts fail, or the photo is ridiculously large, or refuses to go where I want it. 

But if writers don't enjoy social media, it really doesn't matter.

I'm not suggesting that, as creatives, we need only sit in our ivory towers and write a book for great wealth to pour into our needy coffers meaning we never have to work for a living again. Isn't that how it works? We are the Cinderellas of the world, and the Prince - let's change his name from 'Charming' to 'Success' or 'Fame' - will seek us out and save us from the nightmare of obscurity, a pitiful existence where no one has heard of us. 

What I am saying is that most of us are doomed to - or possibly blessed with - obscurity. It all depends on your attitude. The fairytale teaches us that there is only one prince. There can be only one Cinderella. Losers outnumber winners in that family. The majority of us are destined to play the role of the ugly sisters, names unknown. Yet Cinderella's sisters never had to sweep the floor or do menial work around the house, and they were invited to the royal ball. When you think about it, they had a very comfortable existence. They just had a bad attitude. They thought they were entitled to marry a prince.  

So here's my advice, for what it's worth. Use social media if you want to. It can be fun. You meet all sorts of lovely and interesting people online (and, just between us, it's a great way to procrastinate!) but don't expect it to turn you into a 'distinctive brand persona'. Live in the real world, and manage your expectations accordingly. I don't expect my efforts on social media to bring me fame and fortune. I'm relying on my fairy godmother to do that. 

Hunting for Facts

Sir Tim Hunt would be a poor scientist if he did not focus on facts, and clearly he is talented in his field. He won a Nobel a Prize. In claiming that women are more likely to cry than men, he was stating a fact. Women are more likely to cry when emotional. So what? Men are more likely to resort to violence. Of the two, I know which reaction I deplore. 

Sir Tim's communication skills are perhaps not so impressive. Maybe he would not be employed as a diplomat, or a counsellor. He might struggle as a stand up comedian. Because, let's face it, his way of expressing himself can be clumsy. He's the typical unfunny after dinner speaker, a bit tipsy, a tad nervous, We've all heard them, and it can be embarrassing, painful even. At best, inexperienced after dinner speakers are dull. Thankfully Sir Tim was only invited to give a toast, not a whole speech. What could possibly go wrong? 

What went wrong, I mean seriously eminent-lifelong-career-wreckingly wrong, was that three journalists tweeted his pathetic joke out of context. A transcript of the full speech has now been leaked by an official, completely exonerating Tim Hunt of misogyny. The worst criticism that can be levelled against him is that he made an unfunny joke. His admission that he was joking was omitted from the tweets. Two of the three tweeters have now retracted, claiming they "could not recall enough" to comment further. 

Forget about the victim's eminent career. A man has been forced to quit his job, in a "resign or be sacked" ultimatum, on the basis of a twitter frenzy provoked by a misrepresentation of the facts, at best a misunderstanding of what Sir Tim said. 

I believe in democracy. But if we are to countenance mob rule by social media, let us proceed responsibly.

This kind of stupidity is counterproductive. At least one feminist sympathiser is now a feminist sceptic. Issues like fair representation, for men as well as women, and free speech, are more important than any perceived snub to feminism. I'd go so far as to say the feminist response here was emotional and irrational. It makes me want to cry that not one of these tweeters and retweeters paused to ask for the facts. 

The Death of the Novel?

First as reader, now as author, all my life I have  have been permanently engrossed in at least one book.  Like many people, fiction is, paradoxically, my 'reality'.
One of the appeals of fiction is that it offers us an escape from life where the pace of change seems to be speeding up all the time. Most events are consigned to the relative oblivion of history after a year, or a month, sometimes even less. As HW said, "a week is a long time in politics."
But sometimes it can be instructive to take a longer view, so let me take you back in time to 1666, the year of the Great Fire of London. One of the most remarkable records of that event comes from an eye witness account by Samuel Pepys, whose diary has survived. This is not a novel. Not only is Pepys telling us about real events, but he couldn't have been writing a novel in 1666 as the form did not yet exist. It would not emerge for nearly another century.
The first novel in English was published in the mid 1700s. It took the form of a series of letters, as writers had not yet envisaged the concept of the prose narrator as a character in its own right, or even as a disembodied omniscient authorial voice. The letters were a clever device, taking the reader inside the thoughts and feelings of different characters. This allowed for intimate first person narratives, from different view points. It was entirely new, or 'novel'.
Today we retain the name, but the form itself is no longer ground breaking, or even 'novel'.
There has been a lot of discussion recently, some of it on this blog, about dwindling book sales, and 'discoverability' for authors, and how they can attract more readers. But perhaps the real problem lies, not with the proliferation of authors, or the failing quality of writing, or that people are no longer reading, but with the form itself.
Has the novel had its day? And would that matter?
We can access stories from other sources - films, television, games, the media - but these are not the same as novels which go into more depth. Through the medium of stories, the best novels offer us insights into contemporary life and morals, and hence ourselves. Think of any great novel - Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, Moby Dick, Dickens, Hardy - not only were they instrumental in changing opinions at the time, but they provided a record of society and how people were thinking at the time they were written.
Which brings us back to Samuel Pepys, whose diaries tell us about his daily life in the 1600s - no different to a modern blog. Perhaps we have come full circle, and the reason new novelists are struggling to break into the market is that the novel form has outlived its popularity.

Postscript
No sooner had I finished writing this post than I came across an article about "embracing the artistic potential of social media". Really? Here it is:

"David Mitchell To Put Next Work On Twitter
"Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell is to publish his next work on Twitter. The British writer has penned a short story, titled The Right Sort, in 140-character instalments. It will be serialised in clusters of about 20 tweets at a time over the next seven days. In total there will be 280 Tweets.
But while embracing the artistic potential of social media, Mitchell himself is not a tweeter and had to open a Twitter account for the project."

The end of the novel as we know it? Sigh. Sometimes I would prefer not to be tuned into the current zeitgeist, but then that is the job of an author.
Or is it?

Levels of 'reality'

There's the real and the virtually real... and then there's the surreal. These are just three of the many levels of 'reality' that exist side by side, distorted through the prisms of dreams, imagination and other kinds of insanity. What is new is the constant and instantaneous interplay of these kinds of reality.

A lot of my time is spent living in imaginary worlds, those I invent myself and those created by other people. I try to keep the two separate. My characters are never  based on real people, and unlike many other authors, I don't find my ideas in true crimes. But other kinds of reality impinge on all our lives these days.

Last year Belvedere Books in London hosted a launch party for Cold Sacrifice, the first in my spin off series featuring Ian Peterson. It was a lovely event, not least because many of my facebook friends came from all over the country, travelling hundreds of miles to attend. Although I had never met many of them before in the 'real' world, they had become good 'friends'. We had shared each other's problems and joys online, and had seen enough photos to recognise each other as easily as if we knew each other in the physical world. It was very exiting to finally meet them; the real and the virtual worlds were interconnecting in both directions, from the real to the virtual and back again.

Last week, after months of negotiations, I signed a contract with a major television production company who were interested in purchasing the rights to both my series. It was like signing my very first publishing deal all over again. Very exciting! Of course the contract arrived just as I was about to leave for the CrimeFest convention in Bristol, so I quickly printed out two copies before rushing to catch my train. The lovely director of the CWA who was at CrimeFest kindly witnessed my signature. When I posted some photos on facebook, friends and fans from around the world - as far afield as Australia - began posting their congratulations. The real and the virtual worlds are interconnecting again.

But this time another level of reality is involved, because I can hardly believe my luck. I've signed a contract with a television company. It's not just happened in the real world, reflected in the virtual world on facebook and twitter - it's surreal!

Where am I now?

I've not been very active here on the blogosphere lately so thank you for still checking to see what's been happening here.
I have however been busy elsewhere. Several videos are already available to view on my brand new youtube author channel. You can see and hear me talk about a number of topics including How to write a book, How to get published, The importance of research, Why we love crime fiction - and other related subjects. There are also readings from Cut Short and Road Closed. A reading from Dead End is uploading onto my computer as I type this.
If (a deceptive word that looks insignificant but conveys a huge meaning)... If I can manage to upload the uploaded upload on to my author channel you'll be able to see it. (I hope you know what I'm talking about here. I find all this technology something of a challenge! Showing my age - or my limited intelligence - or both...)
Apart from filming for the author channel (which it seems everyone has to have these days) there is facebook, twitter, linkedin and I can't remember what else I try to keep abreast of.
Besides the online profile, I've been active with my research. I think I've already mentioned the maggots... enough said!... there's also a visit to a local police station, and a police HQ, in the pipeline, plus a visit to a prison...
AND OF COURSE I'm still writing! Exciting news to follow very soon... !
In the meantime, the link to my author channel is http://youtube.com/leighrussellauthor - I hope you find something there to interest you.

On writing and... writing

Oxford University professor Kathryn Sutherland has thrown doubt over Jane Austen’s authorship of her novels, her scepticism based on an analysis of Austen’s letters. The theory seems to hinge on Sutherland’s expectation that Austen’s letters should be written in the same perfectly polished style as her books. But the letters, according to Sutherland, are “littered with misspelling and grammar errors”. The books are not. Therefore, Sutherland concludes, the books could not have been written by Austen. Sutherland goes on to quote from Austen’s editor, William Gifford, who wrote of a draft of Emma: “It is very carelessly copied… there are many short omissions which must be inserted.” He offers to “readily correct the proof for you.” From which Sutherland presumes that the books were at least in part written by the editor Gifford.
Oh dear.
I hope no one scrutinises my blog posts, emails, facebook comments, and tweets and compares them to my books. My books are by and large grammatically accurate, and my other ramblings aren’t. But would anyone conclude that my books were written by someone else? We don’t expect tweets and emails to be well-written, carefully considered literature. Why should Jane Austen’s private notes and scribblings be judged by different standards to those of today? Jane Austen’s letters weren’t written for publication. They were private. Why should she have written beautifully constructed letters in perfect elegant prose? Her books of course are another matter altogether and I daresay she – and her editor – checked and corrected them carefully.
Any serious author will acknowledge the help of their editor. Why should Jane Austen be any different?

Why You Have to Love Twitter

NEWSFLASH This post is quoted in the online trade journal book2book
& is number 1 in Most Popular Stories in book2book 24th March

Many in the publishing industry fear that electronic media are threatening to replace printed books. A recent post on The Literary Project illustrates how, by working together, new media can offer valuable support to traditional books and even help promote their sales.

According to Gemma Noon of The Literary Project, 'You have to love twitter. Less than an hour after I sent out a random tweet along the lines of 'anyone know a debut crime novelist who might like to be interviewed?' than a couple of people tweet back Leigh Russell's name at me.'

You can read the interview that came about as a result of those tweets on http://theliteraryproject.blogspot.com/ on March 19th.

Check home page on Crime Time & see the tear on CUT SHORT move!
http://www.crimetime.co.uk/mag/index.php/

More exciting news - Recently helenmhunt of Bookersatz kindly sent me some interview questions and that interview can be seen on Helen's own blog Fiction is Stranger than Fact
http://fictionisstrangerthanfact.blogspot.com/

And as if that's not enough excitement for one week, here is a photo a reader sent me from Kinokuniya, a bookshop in Bangkok, where she bought a copy of CUT SHORT. I hope you enjoy reading it, JJ, and thank you for the pictures!