Help! Too Many Book Ideas

Call it a gift, or call it a curse, but one of the hardest parts of being a writer is deciding which book idea to pursue. Simply having too many ideas!



It's been a year since I published Gabriel's Game, Part 2: The Black Knight - marking the end of a journey to write the Sheridan and Blake books, that started in 2009.




A combination of factors has led to my books dropping off the radar and the worst sales since I published The Bronze Box in 2013.





My reasons (or excuses) for being rubbish at selling books in 2017:

• Being too busy with my business, and focusing my energy on writing the 'Write Your Way to Success' online course for business bloggers

• Procrastinating over writing 'Finding the Scream', and losing the mojo to commit it to paper, has meant I've not released anything new since the 4 booksin 1 Sheridan and Blake boxset last year

• Amazon's algorithms have changed to favour paid advertisers. Organic reach for books is more and more difficult to achieve without some serious work at it.

• Just not doing enough to market my books and maintain consistent sales 

• Psychologically, I left Sheridan and Blake behind when I finished the series, I'm mentally in other book ideas...

...And here's the rub - I've got 5 ideas now for books to spin off from the series. 



Each time I have a new idea, that one seems like the one I should pursue, then another one pops into my brain and the previous one gets side-lined.



I always say to the clients I coach, "The hardest part of writing is getting started."



If only I could learn to follow my own advice?  



I wrote on Linked In about 'Taming The Ideas Junkie' - how to organise your ideas and make decisions.



However, I can do all the filtering I like, the fact remains, that whichever book idea I pursue next, it will involve me dedicating the next few months of my life to writing a little every day.



At which point, it becomes an issue of prioritisation and time management.

Or maybe I just need a little help deciding?



So, here are my 5 book ideas, tell me which one you like:



1) Finding the Scream 



When a cache of art stolen by the Nazi’s is uncovered in an abandoned mine in Austria, Katarina Orlov is called in to investigate. She enlists the help of a former colleague from The Agency - Tom Sheridan - who is now an art dealer. Amongst the cache is a missing version of Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’. When Tom and Kat walk into an ambush, they must find the art before it's sold into the black market. But first Kat must face the demons from her past if she wants to find The Scream



I've already written portions of this, but I don't know where the story will go or how it will end. It’s proving to be a struggle.



2) The Ruining



To break a man, you must take from him that which he loves the most; to ruin a man, you must make him believe it's his fault. 

Art dealer and former spy Tom Sheridan’s wife has been kidnapped. The ransom? To step into the darkness of his past and commit a terrible crime, or his wife will die.



This idea gives me chills, and scenes from it are vivid in my mind’s eye. Any excuse to get Tom Sheridan at his flawed hero best again. All I've written so far are some notes and scraps of narrative, I don’t know what the crime is Tom is asked to commit yet, or why the kidnappers need him to do it.



3) The Professor's Legacy



His reputation on the line, his marriage on the rocks, his life's work about to be ripped from beneath him, Dr David Thornton is a desperate man. He accepts an anonymous donation, no questions asked, to fund the archaeological dig he's dedicated his career to, but there's a catch; he must retrieve an artefact from the site, a mysterious Bronze Box and deliver it to his benefactor. When his conscience gets the better of him, Professor Thornton wants to know why this box is so important. But how much will he sacrifice to find the truth?



This is a prequal to the Bronze Box. Fans of the book will know the fate of Dr David Thornton, but fans of the series will want to learn more about why. So far this is just a concept, with a few notes. It could potentially be a novella, and much of the plot is already established from the Sheridan and Blake series. I just need to pull it together and work out the connections.



The next 2 ideas are both part of the Katarina Orlov series. It doesn't matter what order I write these in, although the stories all star Katarina, each will be a stand alone book.



4) Finding the Seeker



Freelance seeker, Katarina Orlov, is sent deep into the rainforests of central America to retrieve an ancient Mayan artefact stolen from the Natural History Museum in Mexico City. She unwittingly attracts the attention of a Mexican drug cartel, who believe she is in possession of a shipment of cocaine bound for LA.  The cartel kidnap Kat’s daughter, Elly, as leverage. Katarina must find and deliver the drugs to the cartel by the deadline or Elly dies. 



Again, none of this is written yet. All I have is the concept, notes and a clear idea of the characters involved. There will be a certain noir irreverence to this story, with the Mexican drug barons being comically, yet deliciously, evil.



5) Finding Revenge



Freelance seeker, Katarina Orlov, travels to Key West on the trail of a missing artefact that went down with a ship in the 18th century - a ship taken by pirates and renamed Revenge. But to solve the 200-year-old mystery of this ship, Kat must resist her own temptation to seek revenge.



This is just concept, but I love the idea of doing some research on piracy. With Bristol as my adoptive home, I'm fascinated by the piracy trade that was the dark underbelly in the history of the city. I'm also, unashamedly, inspired to write a pirate book by 'Black Sails'. I've no idea what the 'missing artefact' is at this point, or who Kat is seeking revenge over, but it could be a great caper of a story?

What do you think?

Which of these stories would you like to get your teeth into first?

Building a Book Trailer - Part 2

Back in August, I shared my progress and ideas to create a book trailer for the Sheridan and Blake books. Read part 1 HERE.

Stage one involved regular meetings, my filmmaker familiarising herself with the books and between us building the concept and laying the foundations. I set about collecting cuttings, images, quotes, maps and articles to build the investigation web, as featured in the Bronze Box .


"On one wall were pictures and maps with pins in them, linked with string in a web of investigation that looked as if it had been consuming him." 
  
I've mocked up elements from the web, which will form the basis of the trailer concept and posted a few of them on my @AmyCFitzjohn Instagram.

 
Since then, Roslyn (my film Producer/Director) has finished reading all the books and has pulled out the quotes, scenes, and images that sum up the story well for the trailer. She has started to storyboard it all and build a plan on a spreadsheet.

At our last meeting, I had the giddy thrill of being able to 'see' what she was thinking and could feel the excitement mounting. We aim to start the filming in November and I've been location scouting this week.

For Tom's office at The Agency, I've found a great space that we could hire for the day and effectively turn it into a film studio, at Filwood Green Business Park.

 I'll keep you posted on our progress!

If you enjoy my blogs, say thank you by keeping me fuelled with coffee.

£2.50 / $3 will get me a cappuccino! Thanks :)

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What's in a Name?

There's a long tradition of author's writing under an assumed name.

We do this for many reasons, for example: to remain anonymous, to hide our gender, to distinguish between genre's... we all have our reasons.

Mathematician, Charles Dodson, wrote one of my favourite books of all time in a name for which he is better known: Lewis Caroll.

I loved 'Alice in Wonderland', at one stage as a child I learned the words to the 'Jabberwocky' by heart...

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
  The frumious Bandersnatch!"

...such a fantastical piece of writing made all the better by virtue of the fact that in true Shakespearean tradition, Carroll made up many of the words.



Another of my favourite authors, Stephen King, published four novels as Richard Bachman. He was such a prolific writer that his publishers didn't think readers would be willing to buy more than one novel a year by a single author. He was quickly outed because his distinctive voice as an author rang loud and clear through the books.

Being an author has been my dream since I was a child. I remember daydreaming of seeing my name printed on the spine of my own books.

When I wrote the Sheridan And Blake Adventure Series, there was never a question in my mind that I'd publish them in my maiden name.

In my head, as a child, 'Fitzjohn' was a very authory name! 

That little girl, with crazy dreams of being an author, still jumps for joy whenever she picks up one of those books!

But there is more to it than that...

I have childhood memories of hours spent in dusty libraries and registry offices while my dad studied microfiches, books, historic documents and parish records to trace our family tree. I'm showing my age here, but the internet didn't exist then!

I don't have any children and I'm now married. Therefore, my lineage as a Fitzjohn ended on 16th June 2004 (my wedding anniversary).

Being such an unusual name, I wanted to keep the 'Fitzjohn' name as part of that family legacy, and what better way than to do so through literature.

In the front of all my books is this dedication:

There is also a 21st century advantage to an unusual name; if you type Amy Fitzjohn into Google it's just me.

Once I'd decided I would use the Fitzjohn name, I toyed with the idea of using initials 'A C Fitzjohn' - that way my gender doesn't matter. Whether we realise it or not, we make unconscious judgements about a book when the author is female. 

In the adventure/thriller genre especially, there are very few female authors. 

At first, I thought it would put me at a disadvantage to make it obvious that I was female, however, ultimately, I decided that I didn't want to hide that I was one of very few female authors in this genre. 

I wanted to be a pioneering female in a male dominated genre, so I went with my name and middle initial instead.

So what about you?

If you published a book, would you use a 'nom de plume', and why?

If you enjoy my blogs, say thank you by keeping me fuelled with coffee.

£2.50 / $3 will get me a cappuccino! Thanks :)

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