Researching To Get It Right

I started writing non-fiction 20 years ago and I continue to write non-fiction magazine features to this day.  I've always strived to write features that are as accurate as possible. Even though I know (I heard it on the TV programme QI, so it must be true) that facts normally have a shelf life of five years. 

This desire to get facts correct crosses over into my picture book and short story writing. I've had many a discussion with editors on getting the 'facts' right. I understand in my picture and short story collections we're dealing with talking animals or creatures that don't exist. However, having studied environmental geography at university I prefer to try to ensure the life science elements of a story are as real as possible. 

For example in my first picture book (A Book For Bramble) Bramble the hedgehog is hibernating under an upturned wheel barrow. This is based on real life. You see in between 'life' stuff I rescue hedgehogs (Herts Hogline) and two carers I work with lost the use of their wheelbarrow to hedgehogs hibernating under them. However I did have to concede to the editors decision that Bramble slept with his family. Typically hedgehogs hibernate on their own. I say typically because we've had  autumn hoglets in our care hibernate late in the season curled up beside their siblings, even though we provided a hibunacula each.

This year I've worked on two books that feature a hedgehog as the main character. The first was a picture called 'Harveys Big Sleep' written as co-author with hypnotist Chris Caress. The second book (Hedgehog of Moon Meadow Farm) is a collection of re-told short stories obviously staring a hedgehog. It was important to me that although I was dealing with talking animals that I kept the stories as natural as possible and that the facts were correct. So in both books I have Harvey and Hedgehog eating the right food, only rambling at night and living on their own. 

I'm now working on a follow on collection of short stories (Fox of Moon Meadow Farm) that stars a Fox. As with my previous books it's important to me to keep to the facts as much as I can. So because I don't know anywhere near as much about our other wildlife (foxes, badgers, starlings etc.) I've had the pleasure in having to do some research (it's the geek in me, I love a bit of research). So I've researched a range of things including:

• What times foxes are most active
• When they have their cubs and what calls they make 
• When leatherjackets (crane fly) are in season
• How wild animals deal with parasites, mainly fleas
• What starlings eat and their natural behaviour
• When damson fruit come into season

Armed with this research I'm now working up the roughed out stories and I'm hoping by this time next month I'll have the first draft completed. As I've been writing this post I've been asking myself if I'm the only one who likes to keep to the facts or is that just 'so yesterday?' What with fake news appearing to be the thing to write at the moment.

So what do you prefer to write or read fact or fake?    

Lynne 

Now for a blatant plug:

Hedgehog of Moon Meadow Farm

UK - ebook and paperback

US - ebook and paperback

Meet the Trickers

UK - ebook and paperback

US- ebook and paperback

Brer Rabbit

UK - ebook 

US - ebook

Coyote Rales Retold

UK - ebook

US - ebook

Anansi the Trickster Spider (Volumes 1 & 2)

UK - paperback

US - paperback

Researching online

In my last post 'I used to go to the library' I shared a few online libraries that enabled me to research for my latest book ‘Hedgehog of Moon Meadow Farm’ without visiting a physical library. This time I wanted to share aa few more I've used and found really helpful.  

Encyclopedia Mythica (thank you for the suggestion Fran B) holds 7,000 plus articles. It contains a mythology sections that is divided into six geographical regions. These being Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, Middle East and Oceania. I’ve already bookmarked their folktales section. 

Scribd. has built a library of books, audiobooks, documents, magazines and sheet music. At the time of writing this they were running a read free for 30 days special. Unfortunately, I couldn’t track down how much the charge is once that 30 days expires but I understand it’s a “single small payment.”  

Academia.edu is a platform for academics to share research papers. It claims to be the easier way to share papers with millions of people across the wold for fee. To use you must caret an account but once you do you have access to over 18 million papers. 

LibriVox has the mission statement of “to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet.” This site is a non-commercial, non-profit and is run by volunteers. The volunteers record public domain books (mostly sourced from the Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive) and makes them available to download free. They are always in need of volunteers to read and record books in all languages.

Google Books is a searchable data base of books in print and in the public domain. A good starting point for any research. You can search by term, title or author. When clicking on the link for a book it will tell you if a book is available in eBook format and supply links to places you can purchase the physical format of the book.

Enjoy that research. 

  

Regards

A collection of 8 traditional stories retold

Lynne

Now for a blatant plug:

My latest collection of short stories featuring my favourite animal the hedgehog is available on Amazon in eBook format and as a paperback.

Hedgehog of Moon Meadow Farm

UK - ebook and paperback

US - ebook and paperback

I used to go to the library

I've recently been enjoying carrying out a lot of research for a non-fiction work. Now once upon a time I used to go to the library to do my research. Searching shelves for those elusive books and ordering books from other libraries. That's no longer the case. Over the last few weeks I haven't left my desk but have visited libraries all over the world and found everything I've needed. So in the spirit of sharing I've decided to share my top five online digital libraries. They are in no particular order:

Perseus Digital Library

This easy to use online library contains primary and secondary sources for the study of ancient Greece and Rome. Perseus is a non-profit located in the Department of the Classic, Tufts University - Medford, Massachusetts.

Archive

This non-profit library contains millions of free books, movies, software, music, website and more. It is easy to use and to support the great work it does just click on the present icon near the top right hand corner.

Hathi Trust Digital Library

A fantastic resource which is provided by the HathiTrust in partnership with a huge number of academic and research institutions. If you're unsure about fair use of anything on the site click here to find out how you can ensure you don't infringe copyright.

Gutenberg Project

A huge library of free ebooks containing a wealth of knowledge. It's easy to use and many of the books I found on there are now part of my Kindle library. If you'd like to support them there is an orange 'donate' button in the left hand side bar.
  

Forgotten Books

Unlike those I've previously mentioned this is not free. They're a London-based publisher who specialises in the restoration of old books. For £5.99 per month you can have full access to over 600,000 books (read online or download). If you love the book you can purchase a printed version, which I've done and been pleased with the quality.

Note:
When using such libraries be aware some of the content may not be in the public domain, so always check and if needed ensure you mention where the information was obtained from.

If you've discovered any other online libraries please share below and if enough are suggested I thank you now, as I'll use for my next blog post.  

Regards

Lynne

Now for a blatant plug:

My latest short story collection Coyote Tales Retold is available on Amazon in ebook format. Also available Meet The Tricksters a collection of 18 short stories featuring Anansi the Trickster Spider, Brer Rabbit and Coyote is available as a paper back and an ebook.    

A Few Blogging Tips

I teach a number of writing courses that encourage students to earn money from their writing. As part of their marketing campaign I always suggest that writing a blog can be a good option. The reasons I give are the very reasons I blog. They include:

• It provides you with the opportunity to exercise your writing ‘muscle’
• Blogging doesn’t cost you anything apart from time – so can be a cost effective marketing tool
• It allows you to create your USP by proving you know your subject – great if you want to impress an editor
• It enables you to reach a worldwide audience and market yourself and your work, even when you're asleep

Now when blogging there are things you should do and things you shouldn’t. What follows are a few tips that will hopefully help you create a blog people will want to visit plus a few tips on blogging etiquette.

What you should do when blogging:

One:

Don’t just use it to sell, sell, sell. Write something of interest; create a blog that is useful and provides information, just as I’m hopefully doing with these tips. However remember a blog can be used as a marketing tool and include a link here and there. Be honest you don’t get anything for nothing. As a reader I’m more than happy to gain from someone’s knowledge with the only cost to me being the odd link here and there (which I don't have to follow if I don't want to).  

Two:

Include images of anything related to the blog content, you or your work. It makes the page look more enticing and allows you to ‘hide’ a little advert - hence the picture of my latest book – see point one.

Three:

Don’t moan about your in-grown toenail, how bad your day has been or what you plan to have to lunch, people don’t care. I refer you back to point one, so write something of interest or of use. 

Four:

Ensure you proofread and edit, make the work the best you make it. This will prove you care about your work and hopefully encourage an editor to contact you and offer that book contract you’re looking for. As someone who is an Indie publisher it also proves to possible readers of my work that I can string a sentence together.   

What you shouldn't do when blogging:

One:

Use it as a tool to send spam. 

Two:

Steal someone’s copyright (words and or images). You’d be annoyed if it were to happen to you.    

Three:

Don’t be rude, cruel, incite hatred, say anything that can be considered libellous, encourage someone to break the law or say something you know is untrue. It damages your reputation, will lose you readers and may lose you work. This also goes if you're leaving comments on a blog post. What you write reflects on you and once your reputation is damaged it can take a long time (if ever) to repair that damage.      

Four:

Don’t share information that is personal to you or anyone else.

Five:

Don't claim to have done something you haven't or be something you’re not. There will be at least one person who will know you're stretching the truth and will let the world know. As with point three it will simply damage your reputation and people remember.  

Although writing a blog may not directly earn you money you may find you get commissions based upon your on-line presence. I know a couple of my writing friends have and I gained a commission from a US magazine from one of my crafting themed posts. 

I hope you’ve learned a little from this post and I’d love to know why you blog.

Lynne 

As I’ve mentioned I teach a few writing courses I thought just in case anyone was interested I'd included links to three of my courses that start on the 7^th March 2015:

How to Write a Picture Book And Get Published 

5 Picture Books in 5 Weeks (Advanced Course)

How to Write a Hobby-based How to Book 

See what I did there? 

My seven tips for marketing your ebook

In a blog post I wrote for Authors Electric last month (Retelling Tales - It's Been Done Before) I hinted at my latest book. This month I'm pleased to announce my latest ebook featuring the rogue that is Brer Rabbit is now available for download from Amazon (UK - USA). The book contains eight retold tales all based on the original tales collected and retold by Joel Chandler Harris.

You may be wondering why I'm telling you this. Well using my monthly slot on Authors Electric was one of the ideas I had to help me market my new book. I also had other ideas and wanted to share them with you (so I wasn't just marketing at you). So here they are:

One:
I've placed a blatant plug on my personal Facebook page and my author Facebook page.

Two:
I've decided to give Wattpad a go. If you've not heard of it basically it's a library you upload your work on to and people can download and read for free.  Some people choose to place entire books on there, a chapter at a time. Some like myself upload part of their work (in my case just one of my short stories) in the hopes someone enjoys their work so much that they are then willing to pay to read further work. I have no idea if it'll work but I'm happy to give it a go. In the first 24 hours my Brer Rabbit story was read by six people. I've also uploaded a story from my Anansi the Trickster Spider collection so I can see if the sales increase -  I'll let you know in a few months if Wattpad appears to pays off.

Three:
I've let the 449 people on my LinkedIn network know my book is now available to purchase. I also intend to let a few of the groups I'm a member of know about my new book. One of the groups has 3,774 members - so a quick mention can't hurt.

Four:
As you can see I've also blogged here and intend on blogging on my website and post on our company website (all my ebooks are written under the banner of Mad Moment Media).

Five:
I read somewhere that Pinterest has 70 million users, with 80% of those being women and apparently 70% of Pinterest members using the site as inspiration for their next purchase. So I'm going to create a Brer Rabbit themed board which will hopefully raise the profile of my ebook and even create a sale or two.

Six:
I've added the book to my author page on Goodreads. I'll be honest I've done very little with Goodreads, so over the next couple of months I'm going to learn as much about it as I can and try to discover if it can be used as a marketing tool. If you have a Goodreads author account and also wish to experiment then here is their official link that provides information on how you can use it to market yourself and book.

Seven:
Last but not least I'm going to create a 'proper' email signature. It's something I've never done (I've just been lazy) but I send 100s of emails per month. Apparently it shouldn't take long and I never know it may lead to a sale or two.

If you have any other ideas about marketing then I'd love to hear them, so please do share.

Regards

Lynne
P.S. If you fancy reading a Brer Rabbit story or an Anansi the Trickster Spider story then just follow the links.