Once again the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It's been a month since I blogged! Tut! There are always good excuses.

I tell my writing students that when they haven't written. I have a sneaking suspicion that those would-be writers who don't write won't ever write seriously. They don't care enough to write. That's me and blogging. I'd rather write a story or add another chapter to the novel than blog when any writing time is so precious.

The court case brought by the police against my bad neighbour is this week and I'm nervous and not very happy about it. It's going to be a case of his word against mine and he has paid expensively for a young and cocky solicitor who has the reputation of winning his cases by fair means or foul. The police prosecutor says it will be a matter of who the judge chooses to believe. This being all men versus me I am not hopeful of any sympathy from the judge. I can 'see' the defence doing his best to portray me as a neurotic old lady and his bloke as a bit of a character. We shall see.

The WWOOFers keep writing for a week's work and stay. They all want to come at the same time. March is fully booked. I will have a full house almost every day. My friends from Australia came and went too quickly. It is always fun having Julie and Michael visit. Now my house is full of Father Paul and his writer friend. Then it will be French and German WWOOFers until April. At least I will get the driveway trees trimmed back. They had formed a perfect tunnel. Also I hope all the hazels weeded and mulched.

'Jacob's Ladder' is, at last, being set for POD printing and should be printing off 12 copies for the Goodreads giveaway and 10 copies to come to me in New Zealand for the launch in our local library. There's a lovely group of Kiwi readers at Goodreads who do read our books. My books are on their list to read. I am so pleased to have the novels out to readers and the encouragement from my Writer's Choice colleagues keeps me going through the PR hoops. I've now published my favourite and prize winning stories, my prize winning novel and the next novel,'Aunt Tizzie's Jubilee' is being edited to go. 'Tizzie' was too cross genre for the trad publishers. After all that time wasted with agents and publishers it feels good to get them out to be read. Once that's done, by June 1st I think, and I think I'm running to schedule, I can concentrate on the next novel and some more short stories. And more PR! I do find it hard to brag and skite about myself and my writing but it must be done.

I am learning at last. I can link my blog to another. I think! I wish my IT expert son-in-law lived nearby. Why all this bother about tech skills? Well I've done it. I've finally stopped dithering and blethering and have struck out as an independent novelist publisher.

Oh, not on my own. Nor did I succumb to the wiles of a scam publisher. No Publish America stuff for me. No, I've found a few writer colleagues who feel like I do about the whole Traditional Publishing scene and are prepared to work with me as a cooperative group who will publish together under our group name.

It's a hard way to go. Attitudes are set. The Historical Writers Association will not allow me to join if I go this way and don't wait the 19 years is it Ms Morgan keeps quoting. In New Zealand I will be called a vanity publisher and my credit as a tutor of writers will fall! Some of my trad published writer friends will sneer. Others will cheer as they struggle with editors who ask for radical cuts or additions to make their novels 'easier to understand' or 'more marketable,'

But I am convinced that the almighty power of Trad publishing, with its pernickety editors and despotic agents, is broken. Indeed unless they adapt and change a lot more swiftly than they are doing, then they will fade away, moving sideways into conglomerate units producing mass information and nothing else.

I don't know how our group will manage all the details yet but we advance one step at a time, cheering each other on and regarding this as an experiment. It's an adventure but one we control. It's rather nice to have some say in cover design and pricing. And good to know that our novels go out to be read as we intended them to be.

Why?

Why is it that publishers are really pushing marketing novels by slotting them in to boxes?
I am tired of finding a novel which looks right, the blurb reads enticingly well, but when I read it I find it's not at all what the marketing promises.

I've thrown several novels back at the librarian with a snarl recently, because they promised to be historical novels, but turned out to be Romances. No, I don't mean a novel with a romantic relationship as a subplot. I mean the darned thing was a full blown Romance with a pretty historical setting. Yet it was marketed as a serious historical novel.

There's a trend to market literary historical novels as if they were genre romps. I'd have missed several excellent novels if I had studied the blurb and not listened to my friends.

Why do publishers think we all want candy floss reading? Why do they market well written, challenging novels as if they were easy reads? It puts readers off.