Looking back at my last post, almost three years ago, and it isn’t at all surprising that I stopped. I was putting a lot of hours into teaching and research (which is part of the job). COVID had made recording Radio Plays much more difficult – our habit of bringing the actors together in a studio space wasn’t both impossible and, for a while, illegal. Meanwhile many of the actors and writers that I had worked with for years had left Paris. It felt like I was rebuilding from nothing and writing into an echo chamber made up of me and, well, me.
The biggest mistakes I made were a) letting the emotional weight of the post-COVID world overwhelm me and b) listening to my heart and not the numbers. When we were publishing plays each one was getting a minimum of 30,000 listens, which for a influencer (which I most certainly am not) is nothing but for a play is huge. Even now I get hundreds of visitors a day who come to the site for the vast catalogue of articles about good writing. So in all my worrying I forgot that I’d made something, something that people enjoyed, something that some people even found useful.
It will take a bit of time to get everything going again
- The site needs to be reworked, as lots of things that worked before no longer do so.
- Then I will start regular posts again. Mostly about writing.
- I need to find new writers and voice actors – if you used to be involved and would like to again then get in touch.
- We have two plays on the editing table that should come out – both of which are award winners!
- I spent most of last year doing music (there is video evidence out there on the internet) – we may stretch in that direction.
- I have a series of half written articles on sentences that (if I can find them) will get written up and posted
- Then hopefully next year we will have new plays to share.
- I have one novel in a drawer and another 3/4 written. They will become real books at some point!
Thank you everyone who kept on visiting the site and reading the articles – it has been tremendously encouraging. My next post will be sooner than 2029!
It has been a long while since I made a post. To start off with, a had long period where an error by BlueHost made my site innaccessible. After that it was difficult to pick up the habit again. Then it became self-fulfilling – the longer I went without posting, the harder it was to post (kind of like writing generally).
Meanwhile, there was no impact on my book sales whatsoever. Now, writing a blog just to sell your books may be a bad idea, But it’s not unreasonable to hope that regular blogging might make some people interested in your work (by the by, you can click on the various links on the page if you’d like to read my books. They won awards and stuff!)
I had a contracted period of work and training come up and I focussed on that. I put fiction projects to one side to focus on academia. I started teaching at Sciences Po again. I was pushing so hard on other projects that this one just fell by the wayside.
So should I pick it up again? I think if there’s one thing I’ve learned about modern publishing it is that you need to be frequently releasing new books (quality, it turns it, is probably not as important – which is a shame, but hey, readers should read whatever please them). Would the websitebe more helpful if I’d just released a new book?
I don’t have an answer. I think that you should definitely have other good reasons to blog than just trying to push sales, because if you’re more focussed on your numbers than your writing it will bleed your soul dry. People buy and read my books. I should be finishing the next two (almost there, too busy writing about regulatory theory, do I need to change my priorities?)
I might try to move to shorter, more reflective posting than the essays I’ve produced in the past. With so much on my plate at the moment, I can’t put too much time into a website that had no impact when it vanished! I’ll also be sure to tell you when there are new books. If you have any ideas why keeping this blog is a good idea, please post in the comments!
A ghost walks the halls of his old manor house, accompanied by that of the serving girl he pushed down the well. Can they move on from their past? And is there a place from the here in the present?
Jane – Stephanie Campion
Nathanial – Roger Surridge
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Amazon, Price: £7.99
Jamie is a little boy who has lost his mother and his memory, but is lucky enough to find a home in the household of David, a wealthy widower whose own wife and son died in an accident. Tillie, Jamie’s mother, has been released from prison – where she was sent for stealing bread – and is searching for her boy. Will she be able to find Jamie? And will it be better for him if she does?
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Elena Ivanovna Popova is a grieving widow – perhaps grieving a little too hard. Grigory Stepanovitch Smirnov is an army officer looking to call in a debt from her dead husband. But will this unlikely couple find more than they bargained for?
Elena Ivanovna Popova – Sonia Backers
Grigory Stepanovitch Smirnov – Nick Calderbank
Luka – Damian Corcoran
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