Interview with Chrystalla

I had the pleasure to interview Chrystalla Thoma, author of Rex Rising, a new young adult science fiction book. This book is on my kindle, and I can't wait to read it. It's next on my list!

Anyway, here's the interview.

Victorine: Welcome, Chrys. I’m so glad to have you on my blog today. Tell me a little bit about your book.

Chrystalla: Hi Vicki, thank you for having me here! You are the reason I discovered indie publishing and decided to publish my novel this way.

My novel, Rex Rising, is a YA science fiction adventure set in a post-apocalyptic sort of world ruled by a race of women called the Gultur. In this world, where parasites create new human races, Elei leads a peaceful life as aircar driver — until a mysterious attack on his boss sends him fleeing with a bullet in his side and the fleet at his heels. Pursued for a secret he does not possess, he has but one thought: to stay alive. Yet his pursuers aren’t inclined to sit down and talk, and that’s not the end of Elei’s troubles. The two powerful parasites inhabiting his body, at a balance until now, choose this moment to bring him down, leaving Elei with no choice but to trust in people he barely knows in a mad race against time. It won’t be long before he realizes he must find out this deadly secret — a secret that might change the fate of his world and everything he has ever known — or die trying.

Victorine: What inspired you to write this book?

Chrystalla: Several things came together to make me write Rex Rising. One of them was the idea of sensing who to trust from the people around you, an instinct we have but rarely trust. Should we trust our gut feeling or the facts as they appear? Another was my fascination with parasites, which basically started after reading a wonderful book called “Parasite Rex” by Carl Zimmer on all the crazy things parasites can do, how they can change our behavior, our abilities and our very nature. They are almost magical!

Victorine: Do you have a favorite scene in the book?

Chrystalla: I love many scenes and I don’t want to give away the plot, but there is one where I really like for the settings. The four protagonists are discussing what to do (they suspect a traitor in their midst) in the shadow of giant white mushrooms:

“The agaric stalks shed white light into the night. Elei led the others underneath the huge milky caps. Kalaes and Maera huddled at the base of a huge mushroom. Their breaths rose in clouds into the air, mingling with fireflies and scintillating flying spores.”

Victorine: Have you always wanted to be a writer?

Chrystalla: No, I was innocent and carefree until the age of nine, lol. Then I read a fantastic book, The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, and my fate was sealed. I immediately started writing fantastic stories, much to the chagrin of my parents who hoped I’d become a serious person one day. lol!

Joking aside, I really love my parents, they always encouraged me to do whatever I wanted with my life.

Victorine: Why did you decide to self-publish this book?

Chrystalla: I saw the revolution in publishing take place – mainly through you, Vicki – and I liked what I saw. Having published stories the traditional way too, I know to appreciate the degree of freedom self publishing allows the author. In particular, I was really interested in seeing what it felt like to be the one in control of the cover and general design and of the editing. I also liked the fact that I wouldn’t have to wait for at least a year to see my story out (as is the norm even with small traditional publishers) and that I could set the price, change it, re-upload new versions of the story if I found problems, and in general have all this freedom that you have when you are your own publisher in the digital era.

Victorine: How has your experience been so far?

Chrystalla: So far it has all been great. Since I did all the design and formatting myself, I did run into small problems from time to time, but I had wonderful people around me who helped me a lot. It all went amazingly well and fast, better than I expected. Since I only paid for the royalty free image I used for my cover and for the copyright, I have already practically paid off all expenses already. I am very happy.

Victorine: What has been the hardest thing about self-publishing?

Chrystalla: Deciding to do it. Weighing the pros and cons for months, asking for and receiving sound advise for either option, knowing I can do either but having to make up my mind.

Victorine: What has been the most rewarding?

Chrystalla: Seeing the book on Amazon and Smashwords the way I want it. I am quite proud of all the work I put in it, definitely more than I would have for traditional publishing. After all, I did everything – from writing to editing to designing to formatting it!

Victorine: Thank you for coming by my blog today, Chrys!

Chrystalla: Thank you again for having me here!

You can find Rex Rising at the following distributors:

Amazon US
Amazon UK
Amazon DE
Smashwords

Watch the book trailer:

Visit Chrystalla’s blog for more information on the world of Rex Rising and her other works:

http://chrystallathoma.wordpress.com

Summer Book Club - Guest Post by Mark Williams

Sugar & Spice - The Story Behind The Story

It’s just over a year now since the Saffina Desforges Partnership began. And what a year!

It’s been a roller-coaster ride so improbable that if we used it as the plot for a novel it would be rejected as unbelievable.

An unknown name (actually two writers collaborating via email from different continents, that met for only the third time just this month) with a novel some of the UK’s top agents branded as “unsellable” and “the last taboo” (not to mention, at 120,000 words, too long).

This was the summer of 2010. Of course we’d heard of Konrath and Hocking and the way things were going across the pond in the States, but in the UK the Kindle-UK site had only just been launched, and seeing as no-one actually owned a Kindle in the UK it all seemed pretty pointless.

Besides, we’d been brought up on the dogma that self-publishing was vanity publishing. So we pitched to agents and followed the rules and guidelines, jumping through ridiculous hoops just to get the opening chapters read. Then jumping through more hoops on those few occasions where we got to the next stage.

And when the rejections started coming back we faced the big question all new novelists have to confront:  How can professional agents be wrong? They’re the “experts” in this business, after all.

Sure, you can ignore the “thanks, but no thanks” slips. No writer can learn anything from a form rejection.

But if the top agents say it’s too long, it must be too long. If they there’s too many POVs, there must be too many POVs. If they say the storyline is “unsellable,” then at what stage does a writer face the truth? Maybe we are just deluded wannabes, and in reality can’t string a sentence together for toffee.

But I’d been a creative writing tutor for more years than I care to admit. I’d written for TV, radio and theater, and freelanced as a journalist and travel write. Whatever the requisite number of words is to have under your belt before you can supposedly write a good novel, I had long surpassed that number.

That said, writing a novel is a whole different ball game from writing for theater, or running off a short article about an exotic island in the sun. And I had taken what I believed were the best aspects of theater (dialogue driven) and TV (visual imagery without long descriptive prose; switching between short scenes rather than lengthy chapters; fast paced action interspersed with short breaks of relaxed writing).

On top of this we had Saffi herself, bringing to bear her own unique style. A raw, edgy writer still new enough at the game not to be over-burdened with pointless rules created by the gatekeepers.

The thing is, we knew Sugar & Spice was not the same as the other crime-thrillers out there. But as readers we wanted to read something different from the plodding police procedurals and stereotype serial killer novels that turned up time and time again in the book-stores.  So we threw away the rule book and wrote something different.

What we hadn’t realized then was that the gatekeepers don’t want different. They want safe. What could be less safe than a novel exploring the innermost workings of the pedophile mind?  It became clear the gatekeepers did not want it. And if the gatekeepers don’t want it, the readers don’t get the option. Therefore it doesn’t sell, proving the gatekeepers were right.

As 2010 drew to a close we watched, more curious than envious, as fellow Brit indie writers tested the Kindle waters. Not least Lexi Revellian, whose feel-good thriller Remix had already sold 10,000 by the time we joined the e-show. Remix was the first e-book I bought, and I was totally impressed by the professionalism that shone through. I’d been led to believe (as had we all) that e-books were just self-published rubbish (the “tsunami of crap” as Konrath so elegantly puts it), so Lexi’s book was a revelation.

Of course it was a totally different story from the dark and sinister insights into the mind of a child-killer that defines Sugar & Spice. The agents’ words about our novel being “the last taboo” and “unsellable” kept coming back to haunt us.

But in November 2010 we finally slipped in into the murky waters of the Kindle ocean, where it pretty much sank without trace. We were determined not to give it any artificial boost by getting friends and relatives to buy it and review it, so we told no-one it was there. And for three months we sold nothing apart from the two copies we bought ourselves to see how it looked.

Meanwhile Saffi and I beavered away at other scripts. But half-heartedly. Were we wasting our time? We were still querying agents while Sugar & Spice was on Kindle, but the rejections were still coming back. We had no idea what to work on next. Should we stick with crime thrillers, given Sugar & Spice was so unwanted? Was it the subject matter that was the problem? Or our writing style? Or our non-existent marketing? We had no idea.

Marketing was one option we could toy with, so we started new blogs and began some promotional efforts. Our promotion story, a fairy-tale on itself, can be found over on Kristen Lamb’s blog.

Somewhere along the line we started actually selling. Not many. Units became tens. Tens became the first hundred. Had a hundred people really bought our unsellable book? Were we about to get a hundred negative reviews saying they’d been robbed? Were the gatekeepers right?

At this same time another British agent came back positive saying they loved the sample. We sent the full script and a month later they came back saying their reader loved the full book. Would we give them exclusive consideration? We explained we had the e-book on Kindle and had actually sold a few, but they were welcome to exclusively consider the book. Why not? We were hardly expecting a big New York agent to come calling instead. We were fiction novelists, not total fantasists.

It took three months from first contact with that agent to them coming back with their decision. On reflection, despite the glowing review from their own reader, they didn’t think it was commercially viable. That's agent-talk for unsellable.

Well thanks, guys. Funny how your own reader thought otherwise. That was three months on exclusive, raising our hopes, stopping us querying other agents, wasted.

Were we disappointed? Well no, actually.

Because in the three months that agent played their agents’ games we had actually been selling. The unsellable story that had just, yet again, been rejected as commercially unviable, was now at #2 in the Kindle UK chart. The second best-selling e-book in the UK!

In the time that professional agent had our book under exclusive consideration, only to say it was unsellable, we had sold fifty thousand e-books. We hadn’t the heart to tell her.

And the next thing we knew we had one of the biggest agents in New York on the phone wanting to represent us.

Bizarrely, three months on, we still haven’t signed with that NY agent or any other. One thing we’ve learned is that there are good agents, bad agents and indifferent agents. And that the worst thing any writer could do would be to sign up with the first agency that comes along, just because they are “an agent.”

The publishing world of 2009-10 is a different planet from the publishing world of 2011, and a writer, if they still need an agent at all, needs one who is living on Planet Publishing 2011-12, not Planet Last Year.

Which brings us to where we are now.

The big “New York agent” (we can’t name names at this stage, but they are BIG!) who came knocking for Sugar & Spice bizarrely decided it was "too long", despite a then proven track record of 50,000 sales. They decided they liked our next book, then unfinished, but told us we should not e-publish. Let them have it exclusively for three months.

Yeah, right. Once bitten…

One of the true joys of being indie is sending rejection letters to agents.

That’s not to say we’re anti-agent – in fact we’re still talking to several. We’re under no illusions that a good agent, who understands the new publishing world, can help reach markets currently beyond us. But we engage with agents now on equal terms, not as starry-eyed wannabes signing on the dotted line.

Our debut novel, the unsellable story by the unknown writing duo that tackled the last taboo in crime fiction, has now sold close to 100,000 copies without an agent or publisher in sight. It’s hit #2 in the Kindle-UK chart on three separate occasions, with over 100 five-star reviews, and has just broken into the top twenty on the Waterstone’s e-chart (Waterstone’s is the UK’s equivalent of B&N).

As fiction writers we necessarily spend half our lives living in fantasy worlds. But when it comes to real life, you just couldn’t make it up.

This past week we launched the first of our new crime thriller series, Rose Red Book 1: Snow White. This time we e-publish first and go direct to the only gatekeepers that matter: our readers.

+ + + + +

Sugar & Spice is available on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk

Sugar & Spice US Edition (American English spellings. US locations. Same great story!) is available on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk

Rose Red Book 1: Snow White is available from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk

The Secret to My Success

Since my book made the New York Times best seller list, I've had a lot of people prodding me to tell them the secret. How can they have success with their own book? Which, of course, made me ponder. What is the secret? Here's what I came up with.

First of all, in order to have a best seller you have to write a best seller. Duh, you say. That's a given. But it's amazing how many people come to me and ask me for help to create the same phenomenon with their own book, when they've written one titled "The Joy of Raising Naked Mole Rats." Sure, there's probably a small market for that, but it's never going to become a best seller. (Sorry if I sound harsh.) If you've written for a niche market, that's fine, but don't feel bad when sales are slow.

If your book is not aimed at a niche market, you're already a step ahead. However, to become a best seller, your book needs to appeal to the masses. There's a reason why books that don't have a clear genre have a hard time finding an agent or publisher. That's because in order to appeal to the masses your book needs to be well defined. That's not to say that a contemporary-western-mystery-romance-fantasy can't sell. There are people out there willing to give cross genre books a chance. But it won't appeal to the masses unless it's got a clear genre.

To write a best seller you also have to craft a good story. To do this you have to get outside opinion on your work. If you've skipped this step, remedy it right away. Join a critique group. Trade chocolate for beta reading. If all you get is praise from your outside opinion givers, it's time to seek other opinions. You need some people who are going to tear your story apart and make it better. The best critics are other writers who have been down the road a few times, have had success finding an audience and who preferably write in your own genre. And don't try to edit your own book. You'll miss stuff.

The next thing on my list is having an eye catching cover. Not only eye catching, but it needs to communicate the genre at a glance. If it's a romance, don't put an apple and a pencil on the cover, even if your main character is a teacher. Now, I'm not going to tell all authors they have to hire a cover designer. Why? Because I've seen some great covers created by the authors themselves. And I'd be a hypocrite because I designed my own covers. I will stress how important it is to get outside opinion on your cover. Again, seek opinions from other authors who have been down the road a few times and have found success in your genre. (Kindleboards.com is a great place to find such people.)

If you try and can't create a good looking cover, don't settle. Pay a professional. Sure, it can be expensive. So can replacing your stove when it breaks. But who eats raw chicken each night because they can't afford a new stove? Not you I hope. You scrape together the money. Don't expect people to buy your book if the cover doesn't look professional. You're offering them raw chicken. Not a lot of people are going to bite. Scrape together the money and pay for a professional looking cover.

The last thing I think needs to be done to have a best seller is to make people aware of your book. I did giveaways, joined forums, posted on facebook, tweeted, blogged, and paid for a couple of ads. But what really helped spread the word was lowering my price to 99 cents. I had already created a buzz about my book before I lowered the price. After lowering it other people started announcing the price change. Blogs that feature low cost books announced the price change. This got me an initial flood of sales. Then Amazon's algorithms kicked in and they started marketing for me. My low price made it an impulse buy. If you don't want to price at 99 cents you can still become a best seller, you'll just need to work more on the marketing to make people aware of your book. Come up with some creative things to do.

And don't expect your book to become a best seller overnight. It takes time. Most people I know who have sold thousands of books have had a slow build. The ones that didn't had means to spread the word to a lot of people right away.

Finally I'd like to say I'm not advocating changing the way you write just to become a best seller. If you're passionate about writing contemporary-western-mystery-romance-fantasy novels, by all means keep writing them. If you write an engaging story, it will find an audience.

Vicki