Quietus is Pubished!

This month saw the release of my first full-length novel Quietus in both digital (via Kindle) format and as a traditional paperback.

After several contract offers with 'so called' Vanity Presses promising me full marketing and production of my novel in approximately 280 working days and with only a downpayment of £2,500 minimum, I decided to go it alone. Several presses are yet to get back to me, such is the laborious process of submitting in this day and age (and the amount of 'new writers' out there), but this meant I could have my book available on Kindle in a matter of hours and in print within days. Pretty amazing considering the book took about 3-4 years to write!

So after playing around with the cover design which would involve a photo a specifically took for this purpose, I then got on with the formatting and was ready to go:

To date I've sold just over 50 copies and each sale brings a smile to my face.

I can access sales figures instantly via createspace (for the paperback version) and Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) for the digital version - the geek in me has always liked statistics and reports!! I've also received five reviews so far on Amazon, all of which have been extremely positive.

If you have read Quietus and are reading this, please leave a review, it would be very much appreciated as the more the book is reviewed, the more substance it has.

I was also interviewed for the Jersey Evening Post, our local newspaper, which has a daily readership of over 52,000:

Again, this interview and review was very positive and contributed to a small spike in sales and visits to my website: www.davidsellars.com.

So what's next? Well I've been busy over the last couple of months doing some courses which I won't bore you with, but the next novel, The Crosses (working title) has been heavily brainstormed and the first tentative words have found their way to the page.

Quietus was a real learning experience and I now know where I wasted a lot of my time in writing it. I was very much someone who had to edit as I went along, for which now I realise was a completely pointless exercise and probably added a year to the whole process (yes really!!).

For The Crosses, I will write without reservation and see how the first draft comes out - I know the story is likely to chop and change when being written, but if you want a quick idea about the theme, well let's just say it centres around a small island in the English Channel...facing a very different kind of armageddon.

Oh and the likelihood is that it will be a trilogy of sorts, but with each book a standalone read. Let's see what the central characters Sam, Devon and Jenny decide...

As Stephen King would say: "Thank you, constant reader."

The Silence is coming ... as Quietus is submitted to publishers

Lots going on this month so I will be as brief as possible!

My first full length novel which was originally called The Silence has been renamed Quietus. This is partially due to marketing issues surrounding the amount of books etc out there with the word 'Silence' within the title and many people, as soon as I said it's called The Silence, would then add, "of the Lambs" hmmm. The Silence was always the working title and one I was quite keen on but Quietus reflects how the novel has evolved and is a much more apt title - I can give no more away.

The book has now been submitted to publishers and alongside a couple of rejections there has also been a request for more chapters and the novel in full. My main concern however is to what exact category it fits into. Originally back in its infancy it was always intended as Adult Fiction but changed to Young Adult fiction as that was where the market was buoyant. However, as the language and scenes are completely unrestrained (encouraged from my MA tutor), the relatively recent genre of New Adult possibly applies. Call it Young Adult / Crossover / New Adult / Street Lit fiction and I guess it just about covers it. This would though initially appear to be a big problem with publishers - which brings me to question: am I writing the book to be commercial or am I writing the book to produce the exact story I wish to portray. With that in mind and under the realisation that the odds of getting traditionally published are between 500-1 and 2000-1, I have also been researching self publishing via CreateSpace and their print on demand services and via Kindle. I've been working on the cover for this and attach some of the photos I took last week to give you a bit of an idea of what to expect ... and an insight into one of the book's locations.

One thing that hasn't changed is that the theme is still Dark Romance and I am going to write the screenplay for it. My first screenplay to follow my first full length book. Nothing like making life hard for yourself!

Further to this, I've also signed up for a few other courses which I will reveal as and when I actually start on those. There are a few other things pencilled in: another short story/play (I haven't decided yet but I have an idea which came about through a rather troubling dream) and a trilogy. The latter of which will definitely be commercial fiction and has evolved from several ideas I've had previously, which when looking at together, blend into one rather nicely, with subplots based around an overriding theme.

More news to come in a month or so as other developments start to take place.

Exciting times ahead!

www.davidsellars.com
www.quietus.co.uk
www.thesilenceiscoming.com

© David Sellars and David Sellars' Blog, 2015. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material, including photographs, without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to David Sellars and David Sellars' Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.