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25 January 2015
...of procrastinators!
Twitter followers: 31,043
Facebook page likes: 504
Indeed if I can put something off until later then I will, like my tax return for example. In fact it's a miracle George and the Dragon ever got published at all.
Facebook page likes: 504
Indeed if I can put something off until later then I will, like my tax return for example. In fact it's a miracle George and the Dragon ever got published at all.
Take writing this blog for instance; it happens quite regularly, especially on a Monday when I'm trying to catch up with things at work after the weekend, where I'll think to myself I can write that later and then before I know it it's Wednesday and the blog still isn't written.
I basically need to be far firmer with myself and work more closely to a set of recurring logs in the weekly calendar. However, I know this, I'm 42 and I'll be 43 before I know it and I've been this way for as long as I can remember.
This year though I want things to be different. I want to release two novels, at least 1 novella and a few short stories and to do that I need to be more disciplined. This is especially true as I have two young children who often demand time of me when I'm around and they are awake.
There's other changes I need to make as well, getting to bed earlier so I'm less tired on the train for example means I get to write on my journey's to and from work.
I've not even mentioned the demands of keeping up with my social media commitments.
All in all I guess it just reminds me of the following:
17 January 2015
...only a little delayed!
Twitter followers: 29,000
Facebook page likes: 501
It's been a pretty good start to 2015 for me, plenty of book sales have come off the back of the start of my big push on twitter.
I've set myself the target of 200,000 followers by the end of 2015. I hit 25,000 just into the new year.
So the plan is to gain 175,000 or 3,365/week.
So far I've managed 4,000 in 3 weeks so I'm nowhere near that target, however, what I'm hoping is that as my following increases the number of people following me without me following them first will snowball and towards the end of the year I'll be managing to gain more than 5,000 followers per week.
On top of this regular readers of this blog may recall that I had submitted George and the Dragon for auditions for a audio version of the book. The first two auditions I had received just didn't fit what I was looking for vocally. This was months ago and I had pretty much given up on anyone else auditioning for the book.
That was until Thursday. I was discussing the fact I would never record myself for the audio book with my colleague when I noticed I'd received an email with a new audition. I had to wait until I got home to listen and was, truth be told, not expecting much.
On Friday I let 4 of my colleagues listen to the audition and we are all agreed it is fantastic.
I'm hopeful now that an audio version of George and the Dragon will go ahead and it will get released not that much before I'm ready to publish the sequel.
So as you can see a great start for 2015 and I'm hopeful that things progress in the same direction.
Phil
Twitter followers: 29,000
Facebook page likes: 501
It's been a pretty good start to 2015 for me, plenty of book sales have come off the back of the start of my big push on twitter.
I've set myself the target of 200,000 followers by the end of 2015. I hit 25,000 just into the new year.
So the plan is to gain 175,000 or 3,365/week.
So far I've managed 4,000 in 3 weeks so I'm nowhere near that target, however, what I'm hoping is that as my following increases the number of people following me without me following them first will snowball and towards the end of the year I'll be managing to gain more than 5,000 followers per week.
On top of this regular readers of this blog may recall that I had submitted George and the Dragon for auditions for a audio version of the book. The first two auditions I had received just didn't fit what I was looking for vocally. This was months ago and I had pretty much given up on anyone else auditioning for the book.
That was until Thursday. I was discussing the fact I would never record myself for the audio book with my colleague when I noticed I'd received an email with a new audition. I had to wait until I got home to listen and was, truth be told, not expecting much.
On Friday I let 4 of my colleagues listen to the audition and we are all agreed it is fantastic.
I'm hopeful now that an audio version of George and the Dragon will go ahead and it will get released not that much before I'm ready to publish the sequel.
So as you can see a great start for 2015 and I'm hopeful that things progress in the same direction.
Phil
12 January 2015
...and what people think of them.
So it's well documented that I greet new Twitter followers with a question.
The latest iteration of which reads:
"Hiya :) Tell me; if a dragon fighting for the Nazis fought against four pilots flying Spitfires during the Battle of Britain who would win?"
This generates various responses but it does highlight certain commonly held preconceptions:
1. Dragons are NEVER evil. Dragons are noble creatures who would NEVER fight for the Nazis.
Not true says I. Even though this particular dragon is being coerced to fight dragons can be good or evil in the same way humans can be good or evil. This is probably because my versions of dragons are highly anthropomorphised, they have feelings, argue, are sarcastic, funny etc. And hey lets be honest Smaug is no angle!
2. Dragons are invulnerable, except maybe for their week spot which is often their soft bellies or their hearts.
Not sure I can disagree with this. I actually don't yet know how to kill one of my dragons even if you do manage to engage them in battle in their own reality. They are long lived but not entirely immortal and can die I shall just have to decide how. Now I just have to decide which dragon to kill off first mwa ha ha.
My dragons are invulnerable because they are protected by both magic and their scales and even should this fail they are merely unsummoned back to their own realm. It is there that they can be killed but such an atrocity is rare as it would take a dragon or something akin to a dragon to kill one.
A Wyven could do it if they caught a dragon on the ground.
A Roc could do it if they kept from having their feathers torched for long enough.
An Eerie of Griffins most certain could do it but there would be many casualties among their kind.
3. Dragons have breeds. This stems from Harry Potter, How to train your dragon and, I guess, Dungeons and Dragons.
My dragons don't so much have breeds as they have a caste system. I've posted about this before but it runs:
Common -> Regal
A regal can then turn into a Harbinger dragon, if that particular dragon is wise enough, has studied for long enough and has the mental fortitude to undergo the change.
There is also the Queen, or Queens as is the case currently in the dragon realm. There should be single female regal dragon who takes to the throne when they come of age and the existing Queen abdicates and takes her last flight, Not so at the moment. There are two queens and a third female dragon who should have taken the throne!
4. Dragons don't make mistakes.
Just some thoughts about how my dragons and their mythology shape up against the average persons idea of what a dragon is.
Phil
3 January 2015
By March 2016,the Royal Air Force/Ministry of Defence are withdrawing all support from the Chapel. If no one or group takes on the responsibility of this magnificent Memorial Chapel, it will be closed without access to the public or church services.
This Chapel was built as a Memorial to Aircrew, who had their lives taken in World War ll, they fought and they died.
We, today, have the freedom to forget.
1 January 2015
....my review of 2014.
It's time for me to look back on 2014 and see just how things went. Check out the Highs and the Lows and reflect on how things have gone..
2014 as most of you reading this will know is the year I finally published my first novel; George and the Dragon.
While sales of the book continue to tick over I've generally been slightly disappointed with them and now realise my expectations were probably set a little high. While I didn't expect to set the world on fire with my sales I did think I could sell a fair number more than I have.
This will not stop me publishing more works in the future it just makes me realise how hard you have to work for each sale of your book.
But that is then and I should really go way back to the beginning of the year. Once I was sure I was going to publish the novel I started to ramp up my on-line presence in preparation for the big launch which happened on 23 April 2014, St George's Day.
I started this blog on 31 January 2014 with a post titled 'Here be dragons'.
To start with I wrote on the blog daily, however, more recently it's been harder for me to think of interesting things to write so I'm guilty of neglecting my blog. However, I'm going to change that in the new year and post 3 times a week Mondays, Fridays and on one other random day as well.
This should hopefully bring the blog back to life again. Not that the blog is really dead, since it's inception it's had over 17,000 page views that's a little over 1,500 page views a month. Last month it had 2000 page views. So it's fairly healthy I just need to keep the content coming.
On top of the blog I started a Facebook page, a Twitter Account, a Google + account, a Pinterest account and a Good Reads account. I'll write more about my experience with each of these and my plans for the future over the coming weeks.
I created www.georgeandthedragon.co.uk to start with I didn't have anything to put on the site so I created a fake Newspaper from the time with references to scenes in the book.
You can still view this news paper here: http://georgeandthedragon.co.uk/marketing/the-london-evening-mercury/
I am, to this day, still quite proud of this and have a plan to do something similar with book 2 of the Knights of the Sky series.
Alongside the website for the book I also created my own personal website: www.philiptolhurst.co.uk and used a similar template for both sites. 2015 will see many more websites being created as I produce one for the sequel, for the Knights of the Sky series and other works I have planned.
My second published work was in the charity anthology Lupus Animus.
This anthology is full of stories, poems and Haiku about wolves and all the proceeds raised go to go to Artisan Rarebreeds. Registered Charity Number: HMRC XT37297. So it's well worth a purchase.
I missed the deadline for the third project I was hoping to be a part of but I know they are planning a sequel to their anthology so I will submit my story for that when the time comes and use the time in between to hone my story and edit it close to perfection :)
NaNoWriMo was a success for me this year. I crafted a story around my take on the Elf, Dwarf, Human and Orc storyline that Tolkien wrote about in his works. The novel details the transition of the elves from beautiful cities to wood fairing folk while the humans leave the woods and start to build cities. It's the fall of one civilization to be replace by another. It features far more adult content that I would write about in the Knights of the Sky series with the first chapter featuring a scene depicting inter-racial sexual violence. Whether I ever publish it or not is a question for the future but the story is strong so it maybe worth revisiting with an editors pen in hand.
That's a brief summation of the year gone by, join me next time as I look forward to the future and detail my plans for 2015.
Have a fantastic 2015 everyone.
Phil
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