{"id":1137,"date":"2017-01-01T09:00:47","date_gmt":"2017-01-01T09:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/?p=1137"},"modified":"2016-12-31T22:13:33","modified_gmt":"2016-12-31T22:13:33","slug":"new-year-status-report-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/?p=1137","title":{"rendered":"New Year status report 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is my fourth year of writing up the status of my books – see 2014<\/a>, 2015<\/a>, and 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So what’s been happening this year? Let’s take a look.<\/p>\n

The Beast on the Broch<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In January I submitted sample chapters\u00a0of what was then called\u00a0The Dragon on the Tower<\/em> to new independent Scottish publisher Cranachan. A few days later they requested the full manuscript; in February they contacted me to suggest a phone call to discuss some editorial changes; and in March I signed a contract to publish the renamed\u00a0The Beast on the Broch<\/em>, with publication scheduled for September.<\/p>\n

It was all a bit of a whirl!<\/p>\n

Over the summer we went through the edits and proofs, Dawn Treacher’s amazing cover, and the arrangements for the launch. We had two launches<\/a>, in fact, one at a school in Govan, and the second in the Byres Road Waterstone’s in Glasgow.<\/p>\n

Since then, Cranachan have been working had to get the book into bookshops. Waterstone’s in Scotland took about half a dozen copies (which is more than they took for The Wreck of the Argyll<\/em>!)\u00a0and it was great to see the brilliant independent Bookworm at Selkirk take\u00a0a couple of copies.<\/p>\n

The problem is, with a book like this, the best way to promote it and generate sales is for the author to do lots and lots of school visits, which, for a variety of reasons (location, full-time employment, temperament), just isn’t possible for me. I’m doing my best on social media to promote my book, though, with limited success.<\/p>\n

So the best hope for\u00a0The Beast on the Broch<\/em>\u00a0is Cranachan’s plan to produce study materials with which to target the schools market. These are coming in 2017.<\/p>\n

The Wreck of the Argyll<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I started to write about the travails of this, my first published novel, but when the rant reached\u00a0700 words\u00a0I scrapped it. To summarise, though: after less than a year and very low sales,\u00a0The Wreck of the Argyll<\/em>\u00a0is out of print, the rights have reverted to me, and its unpublished sequel,\u00a0Murder at Eaglecrest<\/em>, is\u00a0dead and buried. Pretty much a disaster all-round, and not the experience I wanted for my first published novel.<\/p>\n

My Dragon Has No Nose<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Written for the Kelpies Prize, got nowhere, not very good. I wrote a book about a music hall comedian that doesn’t contain any jokes<\/em>.\u00a0Let us never talk of it again.<\/p>\n

Far Galactic North<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

My middle-grade sci-fi adventure. Literary agent Ben Illis, during a one-to-one at the Wolves and Apples course in Leicester, said the writing was “accomplished” but he “didn’t love it”. As a trial I submitted the first two chapters to the Bath Children’s Novel competition, but it didn’t make it onto the longlist of 26, so I think the “didn’t love it” sentiment looks prevalent on this one. If it can’t get into the top 5% of a competition’s entries, it’s unlikely\u00a0to make its way into the 0.1% of submissions that might get representation from an agent.<\/p>\n

Pax Caledonia<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Work-in-progress middle-grade Roman adventure. It’s been a very stop-start project, this one, and I’m not sure how it’s going to shake out. I wanted to get the first (very rough) draft complete before the end of 2016, and managed it – with eight hours to spare.<\/p>\n

Older books<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The three rabbit books, The Chimney Rabbit<\/em>, The Chimney Rabbit and the Underground Mice<\/em>, and\u00a0Tales of the Ancient Rabbits<\/em>\/The Panopticon Papers<\/em> (one book, two variants with different titles), are all stuffed in a drawer marked “do not open”.<\/p>\n

Short stories<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

On the back of getting\u00a0Time for Tea<\/em> published in Shoreline of Infinity, I wrote a lot more sci-fi short stories this year, none of which I’ve managed to find homes for.<\/p>\n

I’ve got a long-term plan to put out a self-published collection of these stories in collaboration with an artist friend Anh Diep; no timescale on that one.<\/p>\n

Summary<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Some good (another book published!) some bad (Argyll<\/em> disaster) some frustrating (trying to promote my books with little success) some exhausting (carrying on writing on top of a full-time job). Definitely a mixed year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is my fourth year of writing up the status of my books – see 2014, 2015, and 2016. So what’s been happening this year? Let’s take a look. The Beast on the Broch In January I submitted sample chapters\u00a0of what was then called\u00a0The Dragon on the Tower to new independent Scottish publisher Cranachan. A… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":878,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New Year status report 2017","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/tbotb-thumb.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p37h7H-il","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1137"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1182,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137\/revisions\/1182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}