I am feeling very idle.
Indeed, I have had a day of advanced idleness.
Mark went out with the dogs this morning so I did not even need to go over the fells. Nobody was here to be fed, and I had tidied everything up yesterday, as perhaps you might recall.
I had the entire day to myself.
I had planned to dig the garden. I have got ten bags of horse manure, excitingly awaiting my attention. They are going to be a warm top-dressing for my plants for the winter.
It was raining so hard that I did not bother. I am going to save that small pleasure for another day.
Instead, I went upstairs and faffed about with my stories.
I have edited and edited and edited them until I think they are more or less readable. I have been doing this in spare minutes for the last couple of months, and today I think I have finally finished.
Patient, not to mention long-term readers might remember that I had every intention of not upsetting myself with agent rejections for my most recent outpouring. My university tutor said that it was splendid, but that I needed to make it shorter, because publishers would not longer accept submissions from new authors which were longer than about eighty thousand words. The reason for this is the extortionate cost of paper and ink.
Having recently been obliged to refuel my printer I am inclined to feel sympathetic about this.
All the same, my story is considerably longer than that, and in any case, when I am purchasing books I prefer to get my money’s worth. I do not see why I should fork out £10.99 for something that any sensible person can see is only half a book. I do not like my books to come in much shorter than The Lord of the Rings.
Hence I had decided that I would spare myself a good deal of trouble and simply chuck it on Amazon myself.
Actually this did, in the event, turn out to be a good deal of trouble. There were a lot of American tax forms to be filled in, presumably in case any Americans ever buy a copy, which I think is fairly unlikely, I would be surprised if anybody at all purchases a copy, given the hundreds of thousands of books currently out on Amazon.
It would be like trying to find a dead ant in a tin of tea leaves.
My marketing strategy is quite simple. I have written two stories, one of which, at a pinch, could be described as fan-fiction, which I have strategically placed on a FanFiction website. The idea is that people read it for nothing, and then discover at the end that there is a link to the other, which is on Kindle for £2.50, or on Amazon for £9.99. If they thought the first one was any good then they jolly well ought to purchase the next, or at least put it on their Christmas list.
I would do that. I am easily persuaded.
I pondered very hard about what I would call myself. The idea of publishing any kind of book under my own name filled me with a sort of squeamish horror that made it definitely a non-starter. I could not exactly explain why I feel like this, but I do. My name is far too private a thing to be bandied around amongst strangers. Nobody knows it except all of you and me.
I do not even tell taxi customers my name, although plenty of them ask. I just tell them that I am called Taxi Driver.
Obviously I could not write Taxi Driver on the cover of a book, even if it is on Kindle, and so I was obliged to think of something creative.
In the end, after much consideration and crossing-out, I have resolved upon Casey-Lee Shaw, which is easy to spell, could refer either to a lady or a gentleman, and makes me sound as though I might be either an old-fashioned American or a very modern English person.
After that there was the picture for the front cover. I put some of Mark’s pictures of scenery on the front, and a picture of Roger Poopy on the back where the author picture is supposed to be.
I will not mind if he becomes famous.
I have not quite finished the whole process yet, but an hour or two tomorrow morning should see it done.
I think I should be excited, but I am not. I am simply relieved. Once I have done it then I can stop feeling the vague sense of unresolved guilt that I have whenever I think about writing stories.
I can write another one with a clear conscience.
