Claudia goes on tour

Claudia Faraday, like her author, is a shy and reserved woman who hates to draw attention to herself.

However in the big bad world of books, of which there are far too many, a person – and an author – does from time to time have to raise her head above the parapet and say ‘Here I am!’

So it was for this purpose that Claudia and I enlisted the services of Rachel’s Random Resources, who took us on a five-day blog tour last week in search of reviews. It was the most attention either of us had received ever since Claudia appeared on the scene back in 2015 (she was revamped in 2019), which was heart-warming to say the least. Here are some of the comments from the book reviewers:

I loved reading how Claudia really opens her eyes and sees a whole new world and starts imagining things she never thought of . . . For me, it was not purely a sexual awakening for Claudia, but more on an emotional level . . . A funny read, with an important message underneath! https://tizisbookreview.music.blog/2020/09/15/the-awakening-of-claudia-faraday-written-by-patsy-trench-bookreview-patsytrench-rararesources/

Headline news?

I really enjoyed this story and I thought that the author has a superb writing style that really brought the period, the characters and what they were going through and dealing with to life . . . Very highly recommended! https://donnasbookblog.wordpress.com/2020/09/15/blogtour-bookreview-for-the-awakening-of-claudia-faraday-by-patsy-trench-rararesources/

Thank you Rachel’s Random Resources for introducing me to Claudia Faraday. We went on an interesting journey together . . . Patsy Trench’s story has an unexpected elegance . . . The chronology in the journey of sexual awareness depicted in the story is one of the beautiful elements here. https://trails-of-tales.com/book-review-the-awakening-of-claudia-faraday/

. . . an interesting feminist take on sexual diversity. https://jessicabelmont.wordpress.com/2020/09/16/blogtour-the-awakening-of-claudia-faraday-patsy-trench-patsytrench-rararesources-gilbster1000-amreading-bookblogger-bookreview/

The Awakening of Claudia Faraday is a delightful novel which consistently confounds expectations . . . Claudia is a lovely protagonist. A gentle and well intentioned woman who, in her sixth decade, is only beginning to question her wants and desires . . . It is not a difficulty to spend time in the world of these delightful characters. https://pajnewman.com/

Patsy Trench writes a fun, easy and totally relatable story that translates well to current day . . . it’s a page turner that I know every woman can identify with in their own way and will absolutely love . . . With a really great cast of characters and a brilliant plot, I honestly have to repeat myself and say “you gotta read this book.” https://www.facebook.com/readinggirlreviews/

A bit of subtle advertising in a London street

Trench combines the charm of the early 20th century with a facet of womanhood that hasn’t really changed that much at all. We put the pleasure of others before our own, because society tends to deem it be correct that way. And goodness gracious me if one does endeavour to discover and enjoy pleasure, and demand it no less – well I never, what would people say? https://mmcheryl.wordpress.com/

A coming-of-age story set in the 1920s where the protagonist, Claudia, shakes off the shackles of a prim, well-to-do lady and discovers the joy of sex . . . Offering something a little different from other books, I think this would appeal to fans of the 1920s or historical fiction . . . It’s an unusual story that provides a different perspective on what it means to be a woman. https://mrsbrownsbooks.wordpress.com/

Photos courtesy of photofunia.com.

The Awakening of Claudia Faraday is available here: https://mybook.to/ClaudiaF

Patsy Trench
September 2020

A Country To Be Reckoned With

My second book in the Pitt family history series is published on 11 August 2018.

The blurb reads:

In the 19th century Australia went from struggling penal colony to a thriving community with a glowing future.

George Matcham Pitt’s life spanned the greater part of this century. A larger than life character and a master of rhetoric, fond of quoting from classic poets, opinionated and generous to a fault, GM, as he was known, went from humble farmer to landowner, auctioneer and the founder of one of Australia’s first and best-known stock and station agents Pitt, Son & Badgery. He was also my grear great grandfather.

This is the biography of a man who helped to shape a country

And who played a small part in its transformation from what was once considered the Worst Country in the World into A Country to be Reckoned With.

For a glimpse at a sample chapter please click here.

The book was assisted by funds allocated to the Royal Australian History Society through the Heritage Branch of the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage.

Available on Amazon, Apple itunes, Kobo & Nook
Paperback available at Amazon (UK & US)  & Booktopia (AU)

Keeping a diary

If Shakespeare had kept a diary there would arguably be far fewer books written about him.

shakespeare-2

If we knew for instance

  • What he got up to during the ‘missing years’
  • How he got to leave his home in Stratford and fetch up as an actor/playwright in London
  • How much of the 37 plays he actually wrote
  • Whether Shakespeare was Shakespeare or someone else
  • Who the Dark Lady of the sonnets was
  • Whether or not he got on with his wife
  • Etc etc etc

We wouldn’t need to endlessly speculate. And it would not be half as much fun.

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What will people say about you when you’re gone? 

Diary-less ancestors tend to be remembered for what they did rather than what they might have said. Or rather for what they did that made the public records. So we are likely to know more about men than women, especially if they played a prominent part in society. We may also know more about the ones who got into trouble, and the ones with police records, especially if they ended up in Australia.

silhouette-sepia-again
Who was Mary Pitt?

As a family historian I’d have given anything for my ancestors to have kept diaries so I knew exactly why my four times great grandmother decided to emigrate to a penal colony. 

On the other hand lacking the facts gives one scope for one’s imagination; so what would have been a case of simple transcribing becomes something rather more creative. The challenge of filling in the gaps while remaining as true as possible to the character you think your four times great grandmother was, for instance, is a fascinating one. 

A certain amount of mystery is no bad thing.

If you want to read the story of my pioneering Australian ancestress please click here: The Worst Country in the World.

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 Who was Claudia Faraday?

brown-flipped-smaller
Claudia Faraday?

Claudia kept a detailed diary of a crucial period in her life when she made a discovery that altered her entire outlook on life and on the people in it. The fact that she kept this diary in her loft, to be discovered by generations to come, suggests to me she wanted them to be found, and to be published.

Nonetheless such was the intimate nature of the diary I went to great lengths to protect her reputation by not just changing her name but the names, and some details, of her daughters and her friends, and a few other bits and pieces beside.

So I defy anyone to identify her.

If you’d like to read her story click here: The Unlikely Adventures of Claudia Faraday.

Have you kept a diary?

I have, from time to time. It makes for hilarious and sometimes embarrassing reading. It is also a handy reminder of the person you once used to be, and if you think – as I often have  – you are still an eighteen-year-old wrapped up in a middle-aged woman’s body, it is good to be reminded that, actually, you aren’t.

But I wouldn’t want anyone to read them, no way. Unlike Claudia I will make a point of destroying them before I pop my clogs.

 

The Oldie workshop

To the gracious people attending The Oldie workshop on 22 October on writing Memoir and Biography here is the gist of my brief talk on self publishing, with some recommendations of people who can help you along the way.

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If you are deciding to self publish it is important to arm yourself with as much information on  the process as possible from the start. Even if you intend to hand over much of it to other people you need to know exactly what it is you are asking them to do. The better armed you are the less likely you will fall under the spell of the sharks (excuse the mixed metaphor).

shark

Suggestions and recommendations for reputable service providers are below.

The pros of self publishing:

  • You get to control everything: what kind of book you write, its length, the look of it, the cover, when you are ready to publish, how it is priced and marketed.
  • You get to keep a good percentage of the royalties yourself: with Amazon it’s 70% for ebooks, in most countries.
  • If you are not aiming at a mass market then marketing need not be too much of a headache.

The cons of self publishing:

  • You get to control everything: with no necessary prior experience of publishing you are turning yourself, an individual, into a publisher. You are taking on the work of an experienced team of professionals.
  • Marketing for self publishers is a challenge. Without a publishing house behind you you are less likely to be reviewed or interviewed in the national newspapers, or to be able to sell your book in major bookshops. (Though neither of these is impossible.)

1)         What does self publishing involve?

  • Write your book. Rewrite it. When it is as good as it could possibly be
  • Find an editor. (Suggestions below.) This is crucial for all writers, no matter how experienced or talented. Hunt around to find the right editor, who understands the genre you are writing in and respects your style without wanting to rewrite your book. This could be the biggest financial outlay in the whole process (it was for me) but it is worth it.
  • Have the book proofread. An editor is not necessarily a proofreader, so it’s important to find someone – a close-eyed friend is fine – to read your book and spot the typos. There are bound to be some no matter how many times you checked.
  • Choose a cover. Unless you are an experienced graphic designer it’s best to hand this to a professional. Print and ebooks have different requirements although both will appear on online retail sites in ‘thumbnail’ size, so make sure the wording is legible.
  • Write the blurb. Online retailers usually ask for a short description of your book (up to 400 characters) and a long one (up to 4000 characters). This is a selling tool – along with the cover it could be the difference between someone deciding to buy your book or not. Basic guidelines are:
    i)  Write in the third person present tense.
    ii)  Don’t try to tell the whole story.
    iii)  Write in the style the book is written in. (ie Comic if your book is comic, punchy if your book is likewise, etc.)
    iv)  Including extracts from reviews is fine.

As with the book cover, it’s a good idea to spend time in a bookshop looking at books and analysing why some make you want to pick them up and read them and some don’t.

  • Create your book interior (paperback): you may want to outsource this too (although it is not difficult to do yourself). It is useful to use a published book you like the look of as a template, and copy the design. You can choose your own font and font size, page (trim) size, margins and chapter layout. Alternatively you can buy ready-formatted templates from the likes of The Book Designer: http://www.bookdesigntemplates.com/
  • Convert your manuscript into ebook form: this basically involves removing hidden codes embedded in your word processor and creating internal links. Click here for details.
  • Submit your book. There are currently two main options:
  1.  AMAZON. https://kdp.amazon.com Whatever you think of their business practices they have opened up the self publishing business and made it possible and simple for independent writers to upload their books onto their site. Submission is free: they provide you with their own form of ISBN. The submission process is extremely simple, just follow their clear instructions.
    Amazon have a print ‘arm’ called CREATESPACE:www.createspace.com/ Again this is free and easy to understand.
    Amazon is for Kindle ebook only of course. For other e-devices use
    SMASHWORDS. www.smashwords.com Again the submission is simple, and free, and they will convert your Word manuscript into the correct formats for Kobo, Nook, Apple and so forth.

2) INGRAM SPARK. www.ingramspark.com/ Ingram have been around for centuries but only recently opened up to make it easy for self publishers to submit their books. The advantage over Amazon is a) they are not Amazon (bookshops don’t hate them) and b) their global distribution of print books is better. Also c) they offer more print options, such as colour, page size, hardback etc. The disadvantage is the submission process is less customer-friendly and you have to provide your own ISBN. (Of which more later.)

  • Marketing
    This is a whole different ballgame and may not be relevant if you are only planning on distributing your book to family and friends. However if you want a broader reach, first
    i) Define your target audience
    ii) Try for reviews in family history/memoir magazines, or in the local press
    iii) Approach your local independent bookshop and ask if they will stock your book, or even help you host a book launch
    iv) Social media is an important part of marketing, including author websites

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2)         How can I go about it?

There are three main options:

  • Do it yourself (apart from editing and cover design).
  • Get partial help with, for instance, cover and interior design and converting to ebook.
  • Hand the whole thing over to a service provider. There are things professionals can do that we can’t. But BE VERY CAREFUL who you deal with and make sure you know what you are paying for, and that you hang onto your rights.

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RECOMMENDATIONS

Generally tried and tested, some by me and others by ALLI (The Alliance of Independent Authors).

Cover and/or interior print design:

Editors

The following are recommended by ALLI.

Averill Buchanan: www.averillbuchanan.com/
Katherine D’Souza: www.katharinedsouza.co.uk/
Sally Vince: www.editorsal.com/
Alison Shakespeare: http://shakspeareeditorial.org/

Cornerstonses and The Literary Consultancy are manuscript assessors and they also offer some editing services.

Full help

The following two companies are consistently held to be efficient, honest and trustworthy:

You can buy in part service from them (ebook conversion only for instance) or full service.

Ebook conversion

If you do decide to do the whole thing yourself take a look at my self publishing pages. Or buy my book (available on Amazon at £1.99)!

Digital book thumbnail

Self publishing may seem daunting, and is, but the more research you do the more sense it makes. It is a fantastic resource for memoir writers.

If you are serious about it you might consider joining The Alliance of Independent Authors. If you click on the logo on the sidebar of this page it will take you directly to their site.

GOOD LUCK with your publishing enterprise. And If you have any other specific questions on things I haven’t covered please email me at

[email protected]

 Recommended books

Choosing a Self Publishing Service, published by ALLI

 

Writing about what you don’t know: The Light Bulb Moment

One of the paradoxes facing the family historian is that he or she does not get to choose who or what to write about.

If you are a regular historian or biographer you are likely to be writing about people or events or places that interest you and that you already know something about. But if your ancestor was a limner in Victorian times, or a tipstaff in the Middle Ages, or – in my case, a farmer in 18th century New South Wales – you may just have your work cut out. And if the mantra ‘write what you know’ is anything like true then you are about to stumble blind down a long and tortuous alley.

RAHS logoI have received a Heritage Grant from the Royal Australian Historical Society to write about my great grandfather’s exploits as a pioneer farmer in the Moree district in northern New South Wales. As a Londoner I know nothing about farming, not here in the UK and certainly not in 19th century Australia.

George Matcham Pitt, my great grandfather
George Matcham Pitt, my great grandfather, subject of my next book

I can see two faint glimmers of light (three including the grant): the reminder from friends that when I complain yet again that this project is ‘completely beyond me’ that is exactly what I said when I was setting out to write my previous family book The Worst Country in the World.

The second comes from reading about the ‘new chums’: early settlers, usually young men migrating from England to ‘take up’ land in the new colony and make their fortunes, cheerfully confessing to having only ‘a vague idea of cattle as heifers, cows, bulls, and oxen, and as beasts that had horns, and made a great bellowing.’[1]

Starting from a point of total ignorance need not be an obstacle. Knowing nothing means you have no preconceptions, either about your subject matter or your readers’ expectations. But if you can’t get interested in your subject then you can’t expect your readers to either.

The process of researching land regulation and droving practices in 1830s New South Wales is  like trying to get to grips with a foreign language such as Japanese: a sea of hieroglyphs on a page that mean nothing. But with a bit of luck and a lot of persistence, gradually those incomprehensible shapes start to make sense: the veil lifts, the light bulb flashes and Eureka: you’re in business.

Vectoroptics.net

So, as a way of turning ignorance to advantage I am making notes not just of what I’m learning and the sources I’m learning from, but of those light bulb moments.

My first moment came about with the help of a poem called Saltbush Bill by Australia’s unofficial poet laureate Banjo Paterson.

Now is the law of the Overland that all in the West obey —
A man must cover with travelling sheep a six-mile stage a day;
But this is the law which the drovers make, right easily understood,

They travel their stage where the grass is bad, but they camp where the grass is good,
They camp, and they ravage the squatter’s grass till never a blade remains.
Then they drift away as the white clouds drift on the edge of the saltbush plains…
                   

Saltbush Bill was a drover of remarkable talents. The poem goes on to tell how he managed to extend his stay on a squatter’s land by picking a fight with the jackeroo (who was English, and a new-chum), making it last all day and allowing the jackaroo to win in the end so he could proudly return to the homestead claiming he’d licked the interloper; meanwhile Bill’s sheep had strayed way beyond the legal limit of half a mile from the track and spent the day merrily chomping on the squatter’s lush grass, scattering so far and so wide it took a week to muster them before Bill and his now well-fed mob could be on their way again.

Saltbush Bill by Eric Jolliffe
Saltbush Bill by Eric Jolliffe

On  a more sober note, Henry Lawson’s The Drover’s Wife tells of the desolate and desperate isolation of a woman living in the sticks with her kids, her husband absent almost all the time, fighting snakes and loneliness, dressing up on Sundays to go for walks along the riverbank with her kids.

The Drover's Wife by Drysdale
The Drover’s Wife by Russell Drysdale (abc.net.au)

These wonderful pieces are an inspiration to this would-be biographer. They demonstrate how it is possible in a few short lines, or pages, to paint infinitely vivid pictures of early colonial life in outback Australia. The message this delivers to me is: when short of inspiration, look to the poets and the authors. Then once you’ve found the spark, and you can convey the excitement of it to the reader, you are well on the way.

Has anyone else out there experienced a light bulb moment?

[1] Edward Bell, quoted in Station Life in Australia by Peter Taylor