August Newsletter
Hello there!
It’s been a very busy month since I last emailed! School’s out, but that doesn’t mean a break as the kids need CONSTANT entertainment and so it’s been a juggle, but there’s some exciting things happening, and lots of opportunities for you to support me, and me to support you (that’s how this thing works, right? No takers-only please!).
I got the most adorable set of letters (21 in total) from a lovely year 5 class who read Ghosts of Mars during the summer term. I’ll pop a couple below as they’re too lovely not to share, but here I am sending them a wee message from a galaxy far, far away.
Adorable, right? One of my top author highlights so far!
In other news, I have my first YA book coming out very soon, and a number of other things on the go:
You can sign up to get an ARC of THE NAMELESS here. Should sending those out mid-August, a couple of weeks before release.
I’m also delighted to say I’ll be headlining Book Jive Live on Friday 29th September. Full details are here.
And I’m offering mentoring to an individual or two (3 max!) to help them self-publish their middle-grade or young adult novel. Full details here and how to apply.
Anyway, have a lovely month ahead everyone, and I hope you enjoy the newsletter this month - as always, reply, tell me what you think, get in touch about anything!
Reviews
If you’ve read Ghosts of Mars, I would really, REALLY appreciate a review for the book, even if it’s not a great one! Ratings are also gratefully received.
I am still someway short of my goal of 100 this year, and I’m woefully short on GoodReads for example - here are the links to my pages where you can leave a rating, even if you don’t have time for a review.
On a similar note, if you want to read The Nameless, you can add it to your Goodreads shelf here. If you’ve beta read, you can also review/rate now (I think!).
Shout out to new subscribers!
Thanks for following this month and welcome to the rebel alliance:
Vikki, Amy, CT and AP!
I’d love to share my writing journey and tips/experiences with more authors, so please do share this newsletter with your writing/reading friends!
Earn benefits. When more friends use your referral link to subscribe, you’ll receive special benefits.
Get Ghosts of Mars E-book for 5 referrals
Get The Nameless E-book for 10 referrals
Get 30 minute Zoom with Stuart for 25 referrals
Also on a related note, I’d love for you tell me you’d like to see more/less of in this newsletter - I’ll pop a poll down below, but you can also email if you have a longer suggestion.
Diary of a Self-Published Author
There are now 10 episodes up for this podcast - you can see then via my YouTube channel, or any good podcast provider!
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If you want to be part of small Facebook group for this podcast, which will be a supportive place for self-published (or SP-curious) authors, then you can join here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2185895738466818
For the Space Nerds
Chandrayaan-3
India has launched its third Moon mission, aiming to be the first to land near its little-explored south pole.
The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft with an orbiter, lander and a rover, is due to land on the moon around the 23-24 August.
There are so many mission objectives but I’m excited about the possibilities extended by the rover aspect - in the previous mission the land and rover crashed - but it’s also tricky as they have to land them at precisely the right time to ensure enough sunlight to charge their solar panels.
I loved this quote from Mylswamy Annadurai, project director of Chandrayaan-1.
"So the ultimate goal for India's probes is that one day when the Moon - separated by 360,000km of space - will become an extended continent of Earth, we will not be a passive spectator, but have an active, protected life in that continent and we need to continue to work towards that."
More info on the mission can be found here.
Writing News
Ghosts of Mars made the semi-finals of the BBNYA award. 🎉 Fingers crossed for the next round! I shall update you.
I attended the NYA LitFest in Preston the other weekend - it was a great day of panels, and catching up with writing friends from the north. Well worth it, if you’re around Preston (or can travel) next year!
I also got lots of writing done in my mini-PremierInn writing retreat either side of the lit fest! (Yes, I’m showing you my meals!)
I am currently just putting together the finishing touches on The Nameless, for the August release, and I’m getting started on the final edits for my next MG book, Astra FireStar and the Ripples of Time, which will be out this winter.
And for those of you wondering about Ghosts of Mars 2…well, I’ve plotted out, and written a few pages of Craters of Ceres: An Eva Knight Adventure, which will be book 2 of that series - which I’ve planned up to book 3 now but hopefully won’t stop there, so you can follow your favourite Type 1 Diabetic Martian Astronaut, and her sarcastic AI, Thunderchild, across the universe!
Speaking of Thunderchild, I’ve almost finished their origin story spin-off novella, which I’ll be giving to all newsletter subscribers for FREE (digitally ofc) when it’s ready. I love this story, and I know many of you love T, so I hope it will go down well.
Anyway, that’s enough to be getting on with, right?
The Final, Final Word
The tide will turn, my friends
How often, in the moments where we’re at our lowest, on the cusp of giving up, do we get unexpected good news?
Something that flips your world view from misery to ecstasy, that inverts the whole paradigm of your writing mindset.
It takes you from ZERO TO HERO!
It can, of course, go the other way, and often the swing is nowhere near as drastic. If we existed on a spectrum, it would be more like a few notches either way.
There’s a saying - Great news often comes when we least expect it - and it’s an interesting one because yes, it does, but it rarely exists in a vacuum, or comes completely out of the blue.
More often than not it comes as a result, albeit maybe a surprise, from accumulation of small, but consistent efforts in your past.
Current you has them to thank for submitting that piece of work, or finishing that damn book, or for spending all those hours posting content, to little or no reward in the short-term.
There’s a concept that I’m trying to embrace at the moment:
DELAYED GRATIFICATION
In a world where so much comes to us so quickly and so easily - within our own homes, nay within our own hands, that device we hold can do pretty much anything now - there’s a huge increase in people becoming instant gratification junkies.
I do it every single day - wait for that notification on social media, announcing that I’ve written 500 words on the WM Hub and waiting for the emojis, or when making simple choices about diet or lifestyle, I almost always go with the one that brings the INSTANT gratification.
Delayed gratification is the discipline (and I choose that word deliberately) of doing things every day that you know will NOT pay-off that day, or even in the near future.
It’s what we do, in writing our novels, for example, all the time.
But it can be tough, especially with a few hundred rejections to support the belief, that there will be NO PAY-OFF, and so the concept of delayed gratification is a myth for you.
I’ve certainly felt that way many times before. And it takes a lot to overcome it.
So I’ve been experimenting with a mixture of instant and delayed gratification each day. Do 3 tasks that will give no result today. Do 3 tasks that will.
I’ve worked out that this is helping me quite a lot - although I still have bad days where I do nothing that’s delayed gratification.
The point I’m trying to make is this: as writers, we are essentially digging in the dark, trying to find a pot of gold, with no light and a blunt shovel most days, and we can look at it two ways:
we hate the digging, we look at it as a chore, and we take no reward each day - this will bring nothing but misery
we chose to forget about the end objective and focus only on the 30 seconds ahead of us. we focus on the feel of the shovel in our hands, the dampness and aroma of the dirt we dig. we enjoy the contraction of our muscles as we dig, knowing we’re lucky to be able to work hard. and we take joy in the process, knowing that repeating that small process, day in, and day out, that the outcomes will take care of themselves.
One day, all that work will pay off.
The tide will turn, my friends, for all of you. Keep digging.
If you want to talk about my newsletter and encourage others to sign up, I will always be grateful to you for that. And if you have a newsletter and I don’t follow you, I’d love to, so just reply with the link and I’d be happy to hear from you!
Have a lovely month,
May the Force be with you,
Stuart