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How to edit your novel on Kindle

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It’s been two months since I typed The End on my manuscript. I thought it would feel exciting and wonderful, but actually I felt kind of flat. Because although I was pleased to get to the end of my first draft – SIX FLAMING YEARS after starting it – I also knew there was tougher work to come. I dreaded the process of picking apart my hard-woven words, taking out all those flowery bits which seemed so beautiful at the time and crunching the plot.

Yup, I was dreading the editing process.

There’s just something about scrolling through a Word document which bogs me down. I pick apart sentences and shift words around but it’s impossible to step back and look at the broader flow of the story or check the pacing. Reading on-screen or even in an A4 printout doesn’t feel the same as reading a book.

I had the chance to read my book as the average reader would

Before Christmas I sent the manuscript to a kind, generous and straight-talking author friend for feedback and she asked me to send it to her in ebook form so she could read it on her Kindle. After an initial technophobic panic, I downloaded an app called Calibre which allows you to convert Word documents to .mobi or .epub files so they can work on an e-reader. Self published authors will know this process well, but it was new to me.

It suddenly dawned on me that I had the chance to read my book as a reader would. On a Kindle while sitting on the bus, lying in bed or brushing my teeth (Just me? Probably.)

It didn’t take long to convert the latest version of my MS (instructions are below if you haven’t done it before) and I got a genuine kick out of seeing my words on the Kindle screen. It felt more like an actual book than it ever had before.

Reading in that format prevented me from stopping every few minutes to perform major (probably unnecessary) surgery on an actually-probably-OK paragraph but I could still use the highlight and note features to jot things down as I went along.

It’s been a completely refreshing, new way to look at the book and definitely worth doing if you’re in a slump. Once I’ve finished, I’m planning to keep the ebook in front of me as I make changes which makes me feel one step ahead on the brutal editing process – and one step closer to getting my book off the ground.

How to turn your MS into an e-book (for editing, not self-publishing purposes)

This might be a completely bleeding obvious process for some people, but super handy for others, like me, who are new to this malarkey.

screenshot of calibre app open on a desktop

The Calibre window open on my desktop

1: Download Calibre online. My computer runs on Linux rather than Windows, which is probably why the screen grabs look a bit weird – but Windows versions are available. I used a dummy Masterpiece for the screen grabs – that obviously isn’t the title of my book. I did this because I STILL CAN’T FLIPPING THINK OF A GOOD TITLE FOR MY WIP DAMMIT.

2: Open Calibre and go to Add Books to import your document.

click on Output Format at top left to convert to .mobi

Add a cover then click on Output Format at top left to convert to .mobi

3: Then select your book and click on Convert Books. Go to Output Format and select .mobi for a Kindle. Other readers can run .epub documents. I added a random photo of an Elvis impersonator as a cover, just to see if it worked. It showed up in the actual document but, disappointingly, not on my Kindle homepage.

4: Hook up your Kindle to your computer and drag-and-drop your mobi into the documents folder with your other ebooks. You can obviously try to email it using your Kindle email address but I’ve had patchy results with this.

If you decide to try this too – or have used it lots before – let me know how you get on!

All about being stuck in the middle of a novel with no end in sight

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Twisted fairy tales: The Hazel Wood and beyond

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If you’ve ever read real fairy tales, you’ll know the concept of a fairytale ending is far from perfect. Before Disney got his sugar-coated hands on them, they were dark, stark teaching tales – some of them with an obvious moral, others simply twisted stories that people passed around at night to scare the petticoats off each other.

page from a fairy tale book illustrating rapunzel including a picture of a witch and tangled treesBluebeard’s chamber was full of the corpses of his former wives, characters are blinded, torn apart by wild animals. It’s worse of course if you’re the stepmother. You could be tricked into eating the minced-up body of your own daughter, rolled down a hill in a barrel lined with nails or, if you were foolish enough to be cruel to Snow White, you could end up with your feet being forced into red-hot iron shoes and dancing yourself to death.

Nope, real fairy tales – not so nice.pages from a fairytale book pictures of two giants on the rampage

Over the years many authors have drawn inspiration from this fairytale darkness, but Melissa Albert takes it to a new level. Her novel, The Hazel Wood, manages to out-grim the Brothers Grimm.

Seventeen-year-old Alice spent her life on the run across America with her wonderful but erratic mother, who was always bundling her into the car and hitting the road at the first sign of trouble. It’s no wonder that she becomes obsessed with her rich, eccentric grandmother, Althea Prosperine.

The Hazel Wood manages to out-grim the Brothers Grimm

Althea’s book of fairytales became a cult hit in the postwar years, enabling her to buy a huge estate north of New York, called The Hazel Wood. She since became a recluse, and her book mysteriously vanished from shelves which only feeds Alice’s fascination.

Then Alice’s mother is kidnapped and Alice herself begins to realise that the frighteningimage of a fairytale book open at an illustration of the wild swans creatures from her grandmother’s tales might not be fictitious after all.

The Hazel Wood’s strength is that Melissa Albert has weaved a whole host of new tales rather than relying on the ones we grew up with, so they feel oddly familiar but warped and twisted. Some of the stories are woven into the book, but others are just alluded to, with horrific names such as Twice Killed Katherine.

I’d like to have read more of the actual fairytales themselves, although it could be the author decided to keep us in the dark to add to that sense of the unknown. Perhaps there’ll be a spin-off volume later, JK Rowling style.

Cover of The Hazel Wood by Melissa AlbertIt’s a hugely accomplished book for a debut author, beautifully written and atmospheric. The heroine is tough, scrappy and flawed – although her anger issues are more talked-about than experienced, it would have been fun to explore them more. I had a bit of a crush on her sidekick, Ellery Finch. I’m not at all surprised that the film rights have been sold already.

After finishing The Hazel Wood I immediately went to my fairy tale shelf (yes, I have one) and dipped into The Annotated Brothers Grimm, edited by the incredibly knowledgeable Maria Tatar. Re-reading Tatar’s matter-of-fact tone and footnotes, plus ominous titles such as The Hand With The Knife, the link with The Hazel Wood is clear to see. Pick up a copy of both and dive in… Just don’t read them to your children.

The Hazel Wood is out now

The images are from my 1970s volume of Classic Fairy Tales, which is what started this whole thing for me in the first place.

The Chalk Man: A creepy 80s thriller… a fun book launch

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Set in the 1980s and the present day, The Chalk Man is one of my top thriller picks in a pile of chalk man hardbacksmonth teeming with twisty tales. It’s a brilliantly original idea: in the 1980s a gang of kids use chalk figures to communicate with each other. It’s all innocent, although somewhat creepy-looking fun until the day the chalk figures lead them to a body hidden in the woods. Thirty years later the gang has moved on, but has to confront the past when the figures start appearing again…

It’s a killer hook and debut author CJ Tudor has woven a confident, evocative story with great characters and a Stephen King-esque feel to it. It helps if, like me, you grew up in the 80s and have fond memories of Buckaroo, The Goonies and BMX bikes but readers of any age will relate to that feeling of being a child, yearning for adventure and stressing about how much your friends really like you.

There are a few chinks in the tightly-plotted armour but it’s such an absorbing, exciting story that I was completely carried away. Definitely worth reading. I’ve also heard great things about her next novel – involving an eerie abandoned mine in the North of England.

CJ Tudor with publicists jenny platt and laura nicol

CJ Tudor with her fab publicity team

So I was thrilled to venture out of my writing and reviewing cave to attend the book launch last night. It really is great to see a debut author so blown away by the response to her book and to learn that her love of the 1980s is very passionate and real – after five minutes chatting to her I was desperate to go off and rent The Lost Boys again.

Her story is also an inspiration to aspiring novelists everywhere. Caz was running a dog-walking business when she was inspired by her daughter Betty’s chalk drawings on their driveway. As she played fetch and scooped poop, the plot refined itself in her head.

It wasn’t her first attempt at a book – she’d been writing on and off for 10 years and that practice really shows in her writing – her agent admitted she was blown away at the first reading and it went onto become the agency’s fastest-selling debut. The book has already been sold across the world in multiple languages.

So although the book has an unnerving atmosphere, the scene at the launch venue, The Driver pub in North London, was celebratory and full of hope and excitement. I’m looking forward to seeing what CJ Tudor does next.

The Chalk Man by CJ Tudor is out now

creepy image of a hangman drawn in chalk

Book Review: The November Criminals

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When it comes to life, Addison Schact thinks he has it all figured out. Well, don’t you always when you’re 18? He makes a nice living dealing pot to his classmates, enjoys a semi-detached relationship with his father and spends his spare time (of which there is a lot) hanging out with and wildly shagging his best friend-not-girlfriend, Digger.

And then one of his classmates is murdered, and he can’t stop thinking about it…

This kind of story really isn’t my thing. Arrogant, amoral male narrator racketing lazily around town between drug deals? Ugh, no. But by the time I was about 80 pages in I realised I was hooked. Because Addison does have charm and isn’t quite as blind to his own weaknesses as you’d think. What’s more he is an acute observer of the hypocrisies of the adults around him. Take his observation of the Gifted & Talented group in his High School, which he skewers instantly as a racist tactic ensuring the white kids still get the better education in a mainly-black school.

But then he takes on something you know is too big for him too handle, too dangerous and beyond the capabilities of a small time pot dealer who doesn’t even understand why fuck-buddy arrangements can get complicated. I read through swathes of the book chewing on my fingers thinking this is all going to go horribly wrong.

It’s not a spoiler to say Addison survives – the whole book is his elaborate answer to a college admissions test question: “what are your best and worst qualities?” It’s also not a spoiler to say we explore these in great detail, and it’s definitely not a spoiler to say that you learn to appreciate Addison for who he is.

it’s rare to see this level of subtlety, where the writer says one thing and the reader understands the truth underneath

In a market where unreliable narrators are rapidly becoming the norm, it’s still rare to see this level of subtlety, where the writer says one thing and the reader understands the truth underneath without there being the literary equivalent of a flashing neon sign to point it out. On any writing course they hammer that old “show don’t tell” rule into you and this is a masterclass. It’s what Addison does that reveals who he really is.

As in all coming-of-age books there’s some growing up to do. But does he come out of it a better person? You’ll have to get back to me on that after reading it. But the book really has something special and I wasn’t surprised to see it’s being released as a film early next year. I’m imagining something quite arty, in the manner of Napoleon Dynamite rather than blockbuster but if I were you I’d snap up the book first, enjoy the fabulous writing, then see if the film makes the grade.

The November Criminals by Sam Munson is out now.

I’m baaaack…

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So, it’s been a while. In the past two years I’ve had a baby, got married, picked up some fun-but-demanding commissions and generally been up to my eyeballs to the extent that tending my needy website slid further and further down the list of priorities. I have not been on the ball. In fact I’ve been about as far away from the ball as you could possibly get – a strategy which worked very well for me in PE classes in the 1980s but doesn’t really do quite so well in the cut and thrust world of modern media.

Until one afternoon I realised to my mortification that people could still see this website and that, frankly, it was embarrassing. It still is a bit embarrassing (check out my cool graphic above) but I’m working on it. And even better I’m filling it with content by doing the thing I enjoy best – writing.

The thing about working part time is that on the days when you’re not working your brain floods with ideas but you never have the time to put them into practice. Well, no more. The whole point of freelancing is that you can use your imagination, pitch any idea anywhere. So you’ll be seeing a lot more of me here from now on. Lucky lucky you…