Why Blog?

A Blog is a Vital Extension to your Business Card

This weekend the Leicester Writes - Festival of New Writing is taking place. Most of the talks are at the Phoenix Arts Centre with some at the LCB Depot. I will be on a panel tomorrow afternoon talking about the use of social media. It is at the LCB Depot if you're thinking of coming along. In case you can't get there, the following is some of what I will be talking about:

I first began blogging in November 2009. I had attended a session at the Leicester Adult Education College and the advice was that every new writer should start a blog and get a Twitter account. The blog must be kept up to date with regular posts that are lively and interesting and you should tweet with other like-minded people promoting your blog posts as you go. So that is what I did.

When you first start blogging it's hard to know what to write and what style to adopt. (These days I never have to think. I just write!) The month after I set up my blog I saw an online challenge. It offered to advertise my site in return for me blogging about a local independent bookshop. I took up the challenge. I blogged about The Reading Shop, our very own independent children's bookshop in Oadby, and that's how I first got talking with the owner and now also my publisher, Lynn Moore. You can read that blog post here.

Not long after this, Lynn was approached by a publisher asking if she knew any local writers who could write history for children. Thanks to the blog post that I'd written and the discussion that we had, she knew that this was the job for me and put my name forward. I received the commission to write The Children's History of Leicester.

By this time I had built up a group of online friends who visit my blog regularly and I also had quite a following on Twitter. I blogged about the book. I tweeted about the book and they retweeted.

My friendship with Lynn developed and when Richard III's body was discovered under the car park in Leicester she asked me if I would be writing about it. I said I would but when my publisher said they couldn't commit to such a book Lynn stepped in with the awesome line, "If they won't pay to get it published, then I will!" And she did.

Part of Alice Povey's illustration of the Battle of Bosworth

This was new territory for both of us but I didn't have to worry because there's every kind of advice any writer can ever ask for in the blogging world. Bloggers are amazingly generous, supportive and knowledgeable.

We needed an illustrator and, if it had not been for Twitter, I would never have heard about Alice Povey. Alice's mother tweets under the name @Richard1483. She is even more obsessed with Richard III than I am and that was how we got to follow each other on Twitter. I admired the art work on her blog and she told me about her daughter, Alice, who went on to illustrate my Children's Book of Richard III.

None of this would have happened without my blog and Twitter. I am now researching for my Children's Book of the Crystal Palace and, although the contact was made when I was doing a book signing and wasn't directly due to my Internet presence, people from the Friends of the Crystal Palace were able to check me out and look at my work by visiting my blog. This is why my blog has become a vital extension to my business card.

Do share your story in the comments below if your blog or Twitter account has directly created a publishing opportunity for you.

Introducing Alice Povey

This week I am about to embark on an exciting new venture. I’m going to be working with a very talented illustrator to turn my text about Richard III into a highly illustrated children’s book. Firstly I’d like to introduce you to the illustrator. Her name is Alice Povey and you can see examples of her work on her website at Alice Povey's Portfolio. 

Good, isn't she!

Secondly I'd like to explain how we met. To all those people who still think that Twitter is a waste of time, I got to know about Alice through my Twitter discussions with her mother @Richard1483. As you can guess from her Twitter name, she's even more enthusiastic about 'everything Richard III' than I am. That was how we got talking. She mentioned her daughter. I looked at Alice's website and we were 'in business'. Don't you just love Twitter!

Back to Alice and the book, we're about to have our first meeting to discuss the project. I've never before had the opportunity to work so closely with an illustrator and I'm really looking forward to viewing my work through an artist's eyes. The text follows Richard's life, from when he was a young boy, through the confusions of the Wars of the Roses, to his rule as Richard III, his death at the Battle of Bosworth and his subsequent rediscovery under the tarmac of a Leicester City Council car park, including a bit about the science that was used to properly identify his remains.

The proposed publication date for the book is Summer 2014 which brings me to the only negative point in this blog post, the disagreement about where Richard's final resting place should be. The case was taken to the High Court in London last November but was adjourned because there were issues to be resolved. The next hearing will not be until 13th March 2014. I won't go into all the politics about where he should be buried. I'll just say that I hope they rule in favour of keeping him here in Leicester. It would mean a lot to us Leicester folk and I must admit that I have already written the final page of the book. I do hope I don't have to rewrite it!

A Different Kind of Day

I knew as soon as I got up this morning that I wouldn’t be going to the shops.

And there seemed to be little point in finishing off my current picture book manuscript. Editors are too busy with holiday matters right now and anyway the post boxes are full to overflowing. So I decided to do something scarily different. I decided to bake some cakes.

For me cake baking is close to magic. If I don’t wave my wand... sorry, wooden spoon in quite the right way, it’ll be a disaster. So I spent some time consulting the book of spells... I mean, cookbook [lent to me by a very good friend] and I set to work measuring, mixing...

...baking and *abracadabra*...

I’ve only gone and magicked up a lemon drizzle cake! (It’s quite easy this baking business.)

Encouraged by my success I try a second cake. It’s a tad more complicated and so Mr A is called in to help with the decorative bits.

This goes into the oven and *izzy wizzy*...

...we have a Danish Apple Cake. There's only one thing left to do. As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Delicious!

Talking of yummy food, I’d like to send a great big THANK YOU to one of my Twitter friends, Keris Stainton, for the lovely box of chocolates which is in the post to me as I type. I won her recent blog competition and the prize was a box of Hotel Chocolates from the Chocolate Tasting Club. I can recommend a visit to her blog post of a hilarious Strictly Come Dancing extract. [And yes, I'm still missing Strictly.]

  

Blog or newspaper article... What’s the difference?

The Leicester Mercury is one of the largest local newspapers in the UK with an estimated daily readership of almost 200,000. It features a mix of local and national news plus items of local interest which, last Friday, included an article by me. It was my blog posting called Strictly Limited Experience but seeing it published on the pages of the Leicester Mercury made me feel uncomfortable and I’m not sure why. It’s not as if this was my first published article. That happened way back in the 1990s when The Lady published an article about my involvement in a local bird count. I admit I was ecstatic at the time but I’ve had many articles published since then so why did this feel different?

It could be because the piece was never intended to be a newspaper article. I know that this blog can be read by anyone in the word but it’s my blog and I can choose to talk about whatever I wish. When I received a copy of the paper I scrutinised the article for any social gaffe or misdemeanour that I may have committed. I’ve yet to find out if the mother of the boy who wanted to see a close up of the goal during his first trip to live football has recognised herself. It may be that she doesn’t mind being written about. Mum expressed surprise at being discussed in her local paper even though she had no objections to being mentioned in my blog. Maybe we’ve lulled ourselves into a false sense of security. I mean, I’m only talking to myself here and you lot don’t really exist... do you?

Hang on! You must exist because I can hear you all asking, ‘If it was never intended to be a newspaper article how come it was in last Friday’s edition?’ Good question and the answer is Twitter. I was tweeting away late Sunday night with several of my local Twittermates. They were agreeing with me about the issues of accessibility at that particular venue when the editor of the Leicester Mercury tweeted me an offer to publish it as a First Person article. Of course, I agreed but this was gone 11 pm and it was all rather surreal. I felt more reassured when he emailed me during working hours to confirm but, and here’s a note to all those friends who think I waste my time on Twitter, I certainly have Twitter to thank for it being published.

So, has the article reached a wider audience? The Editor promised that it would and I’m not disputing it but I have no proof. The good thing about a blog is that people who read and appreciate my words will spend a few moments adding a comment at the bottom. Non-bloggers can’t ever understand how much that means to a blogger. I wondered if the article would increase my local blog following but so far it hasn’t. Mind you, at Mum’s day centre a well-thumbed copy was being passed from table to table and it was suggested that, as it really did read quite well, I might think of becoming a writer. I smiled politely. They probably think that all writers walk around with a quill in their hand and a whimsical look in their eye... but that’s another blog story.