It's Sunday morning

The coffee is good and it's sunny outside. It's Sunday morning and even my dog is still asleep so I am looking through the sales figures and reviews on Amazon. This is how I get to hear the voice of my readers, so I read every review. Quite a few people have reviewed every book I have written, so I recognize them when their names come up.

Amazon is pretty cool about making this possible for authors, you don't have to hunt around for your reviews, they are all collected into one page for you. Getting a positive review is a real bost and getting a critical one is good too, so long as there is a learning point from it.

One reviewer, AnnieO thinks that Peter Sparke is so totally hopeless with women that she cannot understand how he ever came to be married then divorced - great point and one I will address in the next Sparke book. This is more or less already plotted out and has the working title, "The Templar Scroll".That should be ready late summer with luck.

Right now my focus is on the first book in a new series I planning based around Scotland in the 1770's. This one is based around the Scottish legend of Sawney Bean. If you have never heard of Bean and his family of cannibals it is worth checking out the story http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawney_Bean
Wikipedia is always a good place to start. I have moved the period into the 18th century as it was a more vibrant period (The Enlightenment).

Is the world ready for a book about an eighteenth century cannibal family?

The waiting part

Once a book goes live on Amazon you have to deal with the waiting part; the time between the moment when hundreds of people buy the book and some of them post reviews.

So far my mother and my father-in-law both gave The Templar Tower good reviews, but they're family.

My next Peter Sparke book is already plotted - I use a spreadsheet to map each chapter and  it is, more or less, planned. I can't wait to start it as it is based around the last stand of the Templars in the city of Acre, their massive seaport fortress and one of the major cities in the Holy Land.

But, right now, all I want to do is to see how you, the reader, liked my last one.

All feedback is warmly welcomed.

Thanks

Scott

Teaser

Waiting for the launch of a new book is like watching a fuse burn. The Templar Tower is released at the end of the week and pre-orders are well over 200% of the last book. This is a great thing, but also pretty nerve-racking as hundreds of people have already committed to buying the book based on their experiences of the first four.

Just a little bit scary.

For those of you who have bought it, or who might, here is a little teaser

• Peter Sparke and Tilly continue to work together on the subject that keeps Sparke motivated. What happened during the last days of the Templar Order and what were their plans to survive?
• The knight we met in the Templar Thief, Salvatore is back and we find a lot more about his troubled past.
• One of the greatest enemies of the Order, Father Massimo is back and ever more determined to enforce the obedience and control that he feels is required over the Templars
• Of course, the Templar strategy is being managed by The Mason

I really hope you enjoy it and I will be watching the Amazon portal for reviews. So far, my earleir books have been very well received and my main aim in writing is to keep the readers happy!

Scott

Put to bed

Eventually, you have to stop working on a book and "put it to bed" and today around lunchtime I wrapped up the final draft of The Templar Tower. Now it's out of my hands and will be in the hands of readers at launch day which is April 4.
So far it is selling at three times the rate of the my last book on pre-order. That is a lot of trust to get from readers so I need to have it well reviewed to make sure it is up to scratch. To do this, I work with a fearsome editor called Joe. Joe and I are from the same home town, although he now lives in Spain and I live here in Switzerland. Having the same background means that Joe does not mess around when it comes to feedback which is excellent. He reviews all my stuff and gives me comments like, "stop using lazy cliches," or "try not to over-write so much," or "you use the word 'really' 163 times in this book, most of which are of no value."
He also gets into the structure and convinced me to chop a whole character - he was right and I was wrong,so out he went.  Like I say, great feedback.
This is of great value to a writer as you spend your time either staring into space or gazing at a screen; the first read by an experienced editor is like standing on a stage with the spotlight on you.
If Joe likes it and I like it, then I have a book fit to publish.
That is Book Five of the Peter Sparke books on the launch-pad. Book Six is in early outline form and Book Seven is almost completely strucutred (this is a Christmas ghost story and the whole thing fell into place during one long walk with my dog last month).
Sparke and Tilly have a long way to go together, certainly more than twelve books in total, probably more. Hope you stick around.
By the way, the ending of the Sparke plot-line has been the most requested event since I started writing, hope you like it.

You, the reader

Writing started for me about 18 months ago as a hobby, but has now grown into a major part of my life. Some people have mailed me here, or through Goodreads asking for writing advice, so here are a few things that I have learned:

• to write, you have to write. Writing groups may be something you have tried, but all the people who get books out there focus on finishing a manuscript rather than perfecting their style, so if you want to write, crack on.
• read the writers who inspire you. For me I keep reading Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson, also Raymond Chandler.
• learn the "three act structure". All stories need a beginning, and middle and an end. Wikipedia gives a great overview fo how to do this.
• write the stuff you want to read. I want to write books that you read on the train, in a plane, in Starbucks, so I keep chapters short. Writing is a competitive activity; there is always something out there to drag the reader's attention away.

This blog has now had views from nations as far apart as Poland, Ukraine, South Africa, Australia (very high number from Oz) USA, Iraq, Switzerland and even the UK.
Amazon reports sales in the various countries, so I see that there are Scott Chapman readers in India, Pakistan, Japan and Mexico.
Thanks for logging in and I hope you find a bit of value here. Next book is selling at twice the rate of the last one in terms of pre-orders, thanks partly to the excellent promotional support of Amazon.
If you ever leave a review on Amazon, be aware that I read and value every one- My current favourite was by a lady from the USA who says that she "has a massive crush on Peter Sparke." The nicest thing anyone has ever said about my stuff.

Latest Sparke book.

One of the sad things about being an Amazon author is that we get hooked on watching sales figures. Tragic, I know. The pre-order sales for Templar Tower are way ahead of the figures for the last book and being a geeky spreadsheet bore, I have this graph that I set up to watch the numbers.
Getting a pre-order is a great feeling; it's a little bit like receiving a vote of confidence from the people who read my books. If I could, I would thanks every reader individually, but writing is a pretty one-way business, and anyway after a few thousand "thank you" conversations, the thrill would probably fade.
I have the next two Sparke books plotted out pretty well already and I am well into the start of my new series "The Reekie Chronicles" - I did a thousand words in Starbucks this morning waiting for the snow to stop. I wonder how many books are written in Starbucks around the world?
For me, I would say that planes, trains and Starbucks make up more than half my writing time.Long walks with my dog make up 90% of my planning time.
OK, back to work.

Scott

New book

It's a strange feeling when you finish a book. I wrote, "The End" to the fifth Peter Sparke book on the train home from Zurich last night (I love writing on trains).
Now starts the reviewing and editiing before I send it off to my editor, a fearsome bloke called Joe Donachie who has high standards and gives outstanding feedback. Once Joe is finished with it, I will go through his critique and probably accept ever bit of feedback he gives, then it will be good to go.
The cover is done and already up on Amazon and the launch will be in May.
For those of you who are kind enough to leave reviews on Amazon, I hope you find the next one up to standard. The relationship between Sparke and the amazing Tilly moves more into the spotlight, but Sparke's relationship with crisis management is never far from the plot.
My Templar hero, Salvatore gets some back-story and his role in the Order means that he faces a new challenge.
Hope you enjoy it and thanks to those of you who get in touch. Nothing a writer loves more than hearing from readers. Special hello to a reader in Vancouver WA; your comments on Amazon were so  good that I read them out in the office.

Cheers