Tag Archives: writing

Five basic steps for Blog Success!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

There are a heck of a lot of blogs about blogging. How to start blogging. What to blog about and so on. The thing is though, if you don’t know what to blog about you shouldn’t be blogging. You have to have some idea what you want to talk about, some subject or interest that’s close to your heart, otherwise, what’s the point?

quotescoverb-jpg-39My blogs are pretty diverse but generally they are funny or at least mildly humorous observations on life. They usually get serious when I talk about things like the Bobby Kennedy shooting or the JFK assassination or even when I look at my writing or film heroes like James Hilton or Woody Allen.

Blogging is something that I started just to promote my book, Floating In Space, and my blogs are mostly written in the same style as the book so they give the reader a sort of taster of what they will be in for if they decide to purchase a copy but now I’m starting to feel almost like, well a professional journalist! I have my deadlines, well my deadline, my one deadline and that is to have something written ready for Saturday when I post. Throughout the week I’ll usually jot something down then edit it into something like a readable piece of work prior to Saturday, and when I say prior to Saturday that usually means Friday night!

Recently I returned from six weeks in Lanzarote and I had planned to write so much and in fact did so little. I started work on another book and another radio script as the last one was rejected by the BBC (what do they know anyway!) I didn’t make much headway in either of those areas but what I did do is a huge amount of networking and I boosted my twitter profile and quadrupled my followers and signed up to Linked In. Actually I was already on Linked In but never used it that much but there are quite a few writers’ and bloggers’ groups worth joining. I’ve also started posting my blogs on Google+ which has substantially increased my network presence. Has it led to more buyers for my book? Well, the exposure has certainly helped with my free promotion but sales are still not quite where I’d like them to be. I’m reading lots of blogs about blogging and book promotion but I’m sorry to say that the chap who promised that he could boost my sales by 1667 % in seven days did not deliver! Well, I did follow most of his advice but stopped just prior to the bit where I should hand over a substantial amount of cash for even more help!

Anyway, after over six months as a blogger here are a few handy tips!

1. The important thing I’ve learned about writing is this: be disciplined. If you plan to write on holiday then choose a time that is good for you and try not to be distracted by e-mails or the internet. In Lanzarote I’d get up early, switch on my laptop with all the best intentions and then start checking e-mails and tweeting and so on. What I should have done is set aside a time for that later, switch off the internet, write for an hour or two hours, or whatever your allotted time is, then go to the internet later.

2. Try to have something visual in your blogs to catch the eye of a potential reader, even it’s only a graphic showing the blog title. There are plenty of places online where you can sort out a graphic, places like www.picmonkey.com, www.pinstamatic.com or www.quotescover.com. You might even want to create a video. Take a look at one of mine made on the www.animoto.com site, created from still images.

3. A good headline pulls people into a newspaper and the same is true for a blog post. Think about your title as much as you think about the content. You also need to get some vital keywords in the title too, just so google can pick up your post, so if you’re writing about motorcycles, get a snappy title in there using ‘motorcycle’! 10 things you should do before starting your motorcycle engine! Try that one and if you’re stuck for a headline title or even content, try this site at portent.com, tap in a few keywords and it’ll come up with a title for you!

4. Create a blogging schedule. There’s a reason why your favourite TV show is on every Friday at seven thirty: So you’ll know when to tune in. It’s the same with a blog. Some people write every day, some people knock out a random blog every so often. My blog comes out once every week, on a Saturday so my small band of followers know when to look for a new one!

5.One final thing you might not have heard of, it’s the ‘call to action.’ So what’s that? Well it’s the thing you want your reader to do, buy your video, buy your product, or even, buy your book, so it might go something like this . . . .

If you liked this blog, why not buy my book? Click the links at the top of the page for more information.

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Why Finding your voice as a writer is so important

Posted on by Steve Higgins

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I start Floating In Space talking about the weekend as ‘one long high energy cassette’ and looking back I wonder if today’s younger generation even know what a high energy cassette is, or even an ordinary cassette for that matter? Still, the important thing is the idea, the idea that the hero of my book, Stuart, is profoundly fed up of his nine to five life and spends a lot of his time waiting for the weekend to begin so that once again he can replay the high energy cassette and enjoy life.

Like a lot of first novels, Floating In Space is semi-autobiographical and based very loosely on some of my own experiences. Many years ago I left school and started work for an insurance company and very soon the whole nine to five existence became deadly dull and I longed to be doing something more interesting. I packed in my Insurance job and spent a few months in Spain but I quickly became bored there. I do love Saturday nights out but when every night becomes a Saturday night, the whole thing loses its attraction. Back in the UK I started work as a bus conductor just as a quick way of earning money and fully intending to get a ‘proper’ job soon but I found I enjoyed my new life working different shifts and meeting new and different people as I tripped up and down the roads of Manchester.

How did I come to write Floating In Space? Well, when I was younger I used to write a lot of things, mainly action, adventure and espionage stories. The only inspiration I had was film and television and my own imagination. Sometimes your own imagination is enough but for writing to have a real impact and depth it needs to come from within and that’s where an author finds his true voice. James Bond for instance, is a great character but he didn’t spring wholly from Ian Fleming’s imagination. Fleming, like the fictional Bond, was a Commander in Naval Intelligence during the Second World War and his knowledge of secret intelligence helped him create the world of 007. When Fleming writes about Bond’s love of food and the good things in life, he is writing about himself. It was Fleming who smoked the bespoke cigarettes which he speaks of in the Bond books. It was Fleming who ate scrambled eggs for breakfast and wore ‘Sea Island’ cotton shirts and these small things he passed onto his fictional character, James Bond.

Finding your own voice is the key to finding your way as an author and one day I sat down and decided it was time to write about the world around me rather than what I was watching on television so I wrote an essay about an evening in the Busmen’s works club. It was an essay about beer and cigarettes, about playing pool and snooker and the banter of young men across the polished bar of the club and over the worn card tables. I wrote more and more about what I saw around me and gradually realised that I could spin all this material together into a novel. I wrote the book in the first person and began to develop a colloquial talkative style which I have used ever since. I never successfully put the various parts together into a complete narrative until a few years ago on a wet rainy holiday in France when I finally wove everything into the final book that you can buy today from amazon.

Go on, give it a read!

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The Trials and Tribulations of a Coach driver

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Quite a few times travelling on the motorway I’ve seen some really nice looking futuristic coaches. Back in the early eighties I had a short spell as a coach driver working for National Travel but the coaches we drove were not quite so exotic.

picture courtesy wikipedia

picture courtesy wikipedia

Today’s coaches are limited to seventy mph but back then our coaches could do eighty or even ninety miles per hour. The job for us drivers on the Manchester to London route was all about getting down to Victoria Coach Station as quickly as possible, parking up at Battersea coach park then getting down to the pub. One of the problems of running at high speeds, especially in the summer, was that engine temperatures soared and we had to slow down. One day when, once again, I was the last to arrive in London and consequently got the worst hotel room, the one that nobody wanted, one of my fellow drivers asked me if I had used the heaters.

“The heaters? What, in this heat?”

“Yes,” said my colleague. “When your temperature goes up slap the heaters on and you’ll see that temperature dial drop right down.”

Well, anything’s worth a try I thought so the next time I was on the London route I was hurtling along, way ahead of everyone and the temperature dial rose up into the red. Instead of slowing down I popped on the heaters and like magic the temperature gauge dropped down from the red into the black.

When I finally pulled up into the coach station in London I looked up into the mirror and there were my assembled passengers looking as though they had spent the trip in a steam room.

Hey, at least I got the pick of the hotel rooms though!

My fellow drivers and I were booked in at a hotel not far from Battersea coach park and in the evening we would assemble in a pub called the Drum for drinks. Some of the guys had told me about a group of ladies there who used to favour the coach drivers. They were known as ‘the heavy gang’ and for some reason I got the impression of them as being movie starlets, or fashion models. Big mistake! When I was first introduced to one of these ladies with, I might add, the whispered comment ‘she’s a right goer’ I was, well, let’s say disappointed. The epithet ‘heavy gang’ was clearly a reference to the ladies weight rather than their passionate nature as I had mistakenly believed. The Drum was not for me and from then on I rarely frequented its portals.

On one particular London trip I fell into the age old trick of thinking I had begun to actually know London. We were diverted down a different route because of road works and just as I thought we were back on the normal road I looked about and realised to my horror that I didn’t recognise any of the roads. Just then a young girl came down to the front and told me I was going the wrong way and I would have to turn back somewhere. I turned off the main road into a housing estate and just after completing a difficult three point turn (it was a 57 seater coach after all!) the same girl came back and asked if she could get off. I said sorry, no, I could only stop at authorised stops. She looked at me and pointed to the door of a house only yards away, “but that’s where I live!” She gave me that sad imploring look she must have used on many a coach driver so I opened the doors and let her off. Perhaps she wasn’t used to kindly northern coach drivers but whatever the reason she planted a huge kiss on my astonished lips, told me I was wonderful, and nipped off the coach. As I was finishing the three point turn and straightening the coach up she went into her front door and waved back with a huge smile. The rest of the passengers, subjected to this untimely diversion were not so happy.

After meeting the ‘heavy gang’ I tended to drink in the pub next door to the Drum. They had a pool table and I used to put a marker down and have a game. On this particular night a driver called Freddie came in (not his real name!) He was a really over the top friendly guy and seemed to be very concerned that I was on my own playing pool. He brought a few of the other National Travel drivers in and we all had a chat and a nice evening. Later on he asked me if I fancied going on to a club. Great stuff I thought. Here I am, a northern lad, clubbing down in London. I even imagined mydelf bumping into the girl I had dropped off earlier!

One of the other guys said to me quietly “Are you going to this club?”

“Yes,” I replied. “You fellas up for it too?”

“Well, not really, “they said. “Do you know what sort of a club it is?”

“What sort of a club? Well, I assume it’s a nightclub.”

“Yes, it is. But it’s a gay club.”

“What?” I said.

If you don’t believe it they said, ask Freddie.

Well, I asked Freddie and it was a gay club and Freddie turned out to be the resident gay driver at National Express. He was a really nice guy but I was unable to return his affections. It’s nice to be wanted of course, especially when you are the new guy but it was hard work making Freddie understand that gay clubs weren’t my scene.

The next day when I arrived back in Manchester the Boss called me over. Apparently he had been inundated with complaints about my conduct on the trip down to London.

“What?” I asked, incredulously, “me?”

“Yes,” he said. “What’s all this about you going off route and dropping your girlfriend off at her front door in London?”

That one took some explaining!

If you liked this blog, why not try my book, Floating in Space? Click the links at the top of the page to buy for more information!

 

Floating In Space: Last day to download free on Kindle!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Yes, you can download ‘Floating In Space’ free for your Kindle until 22nd January.

It’s a novel following the adventures of a young man in Manchester in 1977. No mobile phones, no Internet and a pint of bitter cost only 25p. Here’s me talking about it in Manchester;

 

Floating In Space -two days left to download free!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Yes, you can download ‘Floating In Space’ free for your Kindle until 22nd January.

It’s a novel following the adventures of a young man in Manchester in 1977. No mobile phones, no Internet and a pint of bitter cost only 25p. Here’s me talking about it in Manchester;

http://youtu.be/A4dEXc9zXzI

 

Floating In Space -free on kindle

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Free until 22nd January!

Happiness is Blogging in Lanzarote

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I think I’ve finally sorted out my scheduling issues as my last post was published (successfully) on a Saturday in line with my new posting philosophy; a new blog every Saturday! Anyway, I arrived in Lanzarote on the third of January for a long six week break so I’ll have plenty of time to write!Photo0007

Recently I applied for a managerial promotion and even though I was unsuccessful I did get the opportunity for a temporary promotion as my own manager had been seconded elsewhere. The extra money came in very handy over Christmas but my blogs have suffered. When it’s a little quiet at work I always take the time to try and write something, not always a complete blog but at least something that I can use and work into a blog at a later date. As a manager though that whole concept went right out the window because there was always something to be done; something that needed sorting out. I did get a big bonus in my pay packet but believe me, I really did work for it. Anyway, plenty of time now to relax in the warmth of Lanzarote, contemplate where I went wrong with my manager application and to work hard at blogging and promoting my book, Floating In Space.

I do hate the cold which is one reason why I’ve flown away from the cold of the UK in January. Here in Lanzarote it’s like an English summer’s day; warm but not too warm. Dinners outside on the patio, barbecues, and a lovely warm heated pool. Getting here though wasn’t that easy. Blackpool airport closed down recently which was only ten minutes away from us so instead we had to trek to Manchester Airport, that huge bustling place a good hour’s drive away. Checking in our suitcase wasn’t so bad but the hassle of passport control and the hand luggage check; what a nightmare. We’d left a bottle of water in our bag so that came back to haunt us, my laptop and Liz’s I-pad (which have to be x-rayed separately of course) ended up in one area and our ‘suspect’ case in another surrounded by security people who then emptied my water away and squashed my sandwiches! Not happy! Al-Qaeda have a lot to answer for!

Anyway, getting back to Lanzarote, did I hear people say –six weeks in Lanzarote?

Yep. Six weeks away from the cold and hopefully at the end of those six weeks, that will be six weeks’ worth of blogging, of promoting my book, of e-commerce and networking and even  hopefully some good work gone into the follow up to Floating In Space. In my first week I’ve done a huge amount of networking and almost trebled my twitter followers. For a newcomer to self publishing it’s a pretty hard learning curve and there are plenty of blogs out there telling you how to get more followers, how to get more likes and so on. Click here to see a pretty interesting one but at the end of the day it’s you who has to do the work: You who has to make your blog successful.

I’ve noticed on twitter there are plenty of people and companies claiming they can tweet your book and get you a guaranteed thousand followers or more but it all comes at a price. Is it worth it? Well, if it brings in followers and they read your blog and buy your book or whatever product you are selling then great, but if not then that’s more money spent on a wasted avenue. Here’s an interesting post by an author who hit number one on the amazon best seller list and seemed to make his major breakthrough by showcasing two books together and alternating each book as a freebie download over a set period of time. Looks like it worked for him.

Happiness is a warm gun, or so said the Beatles on the white album but for me after a morning writing it’s a glass of red wine on a warm summer’s evening, my favourite salad (onion and tomato) and something cooking away on the barbecue (courtesy of Liz) or the prospect of a short walk down to the marina at Playa Blanca for an evening meal.

Anyway, that’s enough for now, think it’s time for a swim!

If you enjoyed this blog, why not buy my book! Click the links at the top of the page to buy or for more information

Floating In Space: Free offer!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Anyone who knows me will tell you I never give anything away free, so just to prove them wrong you can download the Kindle version of Floating In Space free from today until the 22nd January! Click the picture below to take you straight to the amazon.co.uk page!

fiskindlecover

Floating In space is a novel set in Manchester in 1977 and if you like kitchen sink dramas like ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ and ‘A Kind Of Loving’ then you’ll love this book too.

If you remember the seventies I hope you’ll perhaps enjoy a trip down memory lane, if you’re younger then you’ll be pleased to know life did exist before mobile phones and the Internet were invented and if you’re familiar with Manchester then I hope you’ll recognise some of the locations, particularly the pubs and clubs mentioned.

Here’s me talking about the book on you tube:

http://youtu.be/A4dEXc9zXzI

 

 

My 10 Best Posts of 2014

Posted on by Steve Higgins

dsc_ed20287Well, 2014. There it was -gone!

This has been my first year as a regular blogger and it’s gone reasonably well. I don’t seem to have enticed thousands of followers to my pages -yet! But I live in hope. I’ve got a good following and I really do like writing and becoming a regular writer has helped me in my craft. I’ve improved as a writer and I’m starting to think like a writer.

I started blogging so that I could plug my book, ‘Floating In Space.‘ It’s a novel set in Manchester in the late seventies, actually 1977 and it’s based on my own experiences from those days.  It’s a nostalgic novel based on memories of pubs, bars, girls and the nightlife of Manchester in the seventies. Thrown into that is a heavy dose of fiction mixed up with some serious reflections and we’re left with what I hope is a pretty entertaining story. If you were given a kindle for Christmas why not treat yourself to the kindle version!

Anyway, back to my ten favourite blogs. Here they are in order of publishing.

(10) Here’s the first one: What Do French People do?

(9) Another favourite is this one: If Only I’d Gotten in the Taxi! Yes, If only I had and maybe I could have become a Channel Four documentary director!

(8) Buses, Nicknames and the Scaremonger! Another true story and one day I must write more about Mr Nasty!

(7) Marlon Brando, Texts, and Extraordinary Behaviour!

(6) Catchphrases, pub friends, and Big Steve. Big Steve was a good friend and the last time I saw him was in the pub at Christmas. A big, strong, jovial guy, I would never have guessed that this was the last time I would ever see him.

(5) The Sound Barrier and my inflight Canine Friend! Never go flight training with a dog on board the aircraft!

(4) Childhood, Hoodies, and a Shaggy Dog Story! Makes me laugh just to think about this one!

(3) Competitions and Getting Even With Your Brother. (Well, he had it coming!)

(2) Mr Todd and the Sound of that elusive next Blog. Sometimes it’s hard to get the ideas coming. This one came to me after some hard graft at the keyboard. Should have saved it for my Christmas blog really, it brings those long ago Christmases back to life!

(1) The day the cat Wars started! You wouldn’t think feeding next door’s cat would cause so much trouble!

The funny things kids say!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I’ve not been lucky enough to have kids but many years ago I remember watching TV with my girlfriend’s daughter, Wendy. I can’t remember the film we were watching but the star was Christopher Reeve, most famous perhaps for playing the part of Superman. Wendy was wondering why he wasn’t ducking into a phone booth to change into Superman and streaking up into the air at the drop of a hat. Well, I thought, it’s time for a serious talk with Wendy about the movie world.

I explained, pretty thoughtfully I thought, about how movies were made, about cameras, shooting, screenplays and actors. Wendy seemed to take it all in but after a while she looked at me, looked back at Christopher Reeve and asked;

“Right, so he’s lost his powers then?”

Here’s another one. One day Tania, Liz’s daughter was asking for a drink of juice. She was very young at the time, just learning to talk so Liz filled her cup with juice and handed Tania the drink. She was expecting a word of thanks but when it wasn’t forthcoming Liz held onto the cup. Tania tugged harder, Liz waited for a thank you. Eventually she said; “Tania, what’s the magic word?”

Tania thought for a moment and replied “Abra cadabra!”

Kids. What funny things have your kids said?