Relationship Marketing, by Charlie Cochrane

As part of my non-writing life, I attended a development day, where one of the speakers discussed “Relationship Marketing” and the increasing loyalty as someone moves from being a prospective customer to a brand advocate. I’ve recently blogged about how that concept relates to writing in certain eras (it made sense to me at the time) but now I’m looking at the more obvious connection to readership.

The first rung on the ladder is the likely future purchaser. I guess authors probably regard everybody as a likely purchaser, although reality tells us that not everyone likes our genre or our style or our title. All we can do is get our works in front of as many people as possible, especially those who are more likely to give our stories a try, maybe because they’ve bought similar things or maybe they hang out at blogs/groups where such books are discussed. I have to say I don’t like being unrelentlessly treated as a potential customer. I know there’s a viewpoint that says every interaction is a possible selling interaction, but when people friend me on social media just to sell to me, or friends send me e-mails directly asking me to buy their latest, I make a conscious decision not to!

The second step is when somebody buys one of your books for the first time. When I have my reader hat on, I find it really exciting to discover a new (new to me) author whose works I can plough my way through. Recent joyous finds have included Christopher Fowler and Len Tyler. With my author hat, I have to ensure that a reader’s first encounter with my story is so good that (like me and the aforementioned boys) they keep coming back for more. I wish I could go back and rewrite some of my early stuff in the catalogue...

I’ve gone to the third step – repeat purchaser, or sometimes repeat library borrower – for plenty of authors and clearly plenty of my readers have done the same for me. It’s comfort, I guess, that lovely sense of knowing you’ll be happy with whatever the author has written. Although, as a reader, I’ve occasionally find that I love one series by an author, yet find another of his or her series just so-so. Different setting, maybe, that just doesn’t work as well? That makes it hard for authors, because we don’t want to just be typecast to a certain era or genre. We have to run the risk of spreading our wings. Which leads us to...

The fourth step, which is someone who’ll try new products. So, in this setting, they might try one of my contemporaries if they’ve read my historicals, or vice versa. They might hate it, but at least they’re willing to take a punt. All an author can do is ensure the same quality of writing across all genres, eras, and styles. If the reader finds something hard edged instead of the humour they’re expecting, then at least they find well written hard edged stuff. And, clearly, making sure the blurb and excerpts accurately reflect the story as a whole is invaluable to a reader. Am I the only one to have been taken in by a blurb that bears no resemblance to the book?

At the top of the ladder there’s the brand champion, who tells everyone to buy your books. (Rather like I’ve been championing Messrs Fowler and Tyler!) I know from experience what a great effect it can have on sales when a well respected author says, “Buy this person’s books. She’s good!” But it’s more than sales which are affected positively. It does wonders for a girl’s ego to hear those sorts of things.

Biog and links: As Charlie Cochrane couldn't be trusted to do any of her jobs of choice—like managing a rugby team—she writes. Her favourite genre is gay fiction, predominantly historical romances/mysteries.

Charlie's Cambridge Fellows Series, set in Edwardian England, was instrumental in her being named Author of the Year 2009 by the review site Speak Its Name.
She’s a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, Mystery People and International Thriller Writers Inc, with titles published by Carina, Samhain, BSB, MLR and Cheyenne.

You can reach Charlie at cochrane.charlie2@googlemail.com (maybe to sign up for her newsletter?) or catch her on Facebook, twitter, goodreads, her website or her blog.

Latest release

Awfully Glad:

http://boldstrokesbooks.mivamerchant.net/9781626391642e.html

WWI hero Sam Hines is used to wearing a face that isn’t his own. When he’s not in the trenches, he’s the most popular female impersonator on the front, but a mysterious note from an anonymous admirer leaves him worried. Everyone realizes—eventually—that Sam’s not a woman, but has somebody also worked out that he also prefers his lovers to be male?

When Sam meets—and falls for—fellow officer Johnny Browne after the war, he wonders whether he could be the man who wrote the note. If so, is he the answer to Sam’s dreams or just another predatory blackmailer, ready to profit from a love that dare not speak its name?

Authors writing themselves into their works..., by Charlie Cochrane

Authors writing themselves into their works is nothing new. Many people reading St. Mark’s gospel think the young man who slipped out of his linen clothes to elude his captors and ran away naked from the garden of Gethsemane was the Apostle Mark himself. And, in As You Like It, there’s a slightly dim-witted countryman called William who seems to have no real purpose in the play except to be a figure of fun – is this the Bard making game of himself?

I’m not necessarily talking Mary Sues here, although some self-inserted characters come perilously close. I find the wikipedia description of these women – or  their male equivalent, the Gary Stu – useful, that they’re primarily functioning as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors. Many of the ‘author appearances’ make the feet of clay all too apparent and so wouldn’t fit into this category.

Autobiographically inspired novels like ‘On the Road’ clearly portray the writer and his/her friends, foibles and all, to some extent or other. Sal Paradise is Jack Kerouac, ‘Jeannette’ in ‘Oranges are not the Only Fruit’ is Jeannette Winterson and Philip Carey in ‘Of Human Bondage’ may be Somerset Maugham, more or less. Paul Morel in ‘Sons and Lovers’ could be the young D H Lawrence and elements of Dickens’ life appear in David Copperfield.

Sometimes, though, the reader sees what he or she wants. E M Forster insisted that Maurice Hall wasn’t him, although the similarities in appearance, Cambridge background and sexual awakening by a man from the ‘lower classes’ has made fans of ‘Maurice’ wonder whether that’s true. Harriet Vane is evidently based on Dorothy L Sayers – similar educational background, similar unhappy love affair – although she possesses too many faults to be a Mary Sue. Except in one thing; Sayers was infatuated with Eric Whelpton (one of the models for Peter Wimsey), but to no avail. Could Harriet’s happy ending with Peter have been a bit of wish-fulfilment?

Certainly the wish-fulfilment element looms large in the case of some authors of fanfic. In Age of Sail stories, there’ll be a young woman who’s beautiful, talented, clever, witty; a right pain in the bum, to put it bluntly. She’s the best shot on the ship and can probably outdo the officers at swordplay. She might even be in disguise as a man, some very capable second lieutenant, and nobody’s twigged yet. I’m struggling to think of an equivalent character in a major novel written by a woman, although two male characters spring immediately to mind – James Bond and Stephen Maturin. This pair of bold adventurers needs no introduction, nor do their stories. Ian Fleming based Bond and his adventures on various people and incidents, including his own – for example some of the scenes in Casino Royale reflected his own attempt to scupper some gamblers he thought were Nazi agents.

Maturin fascinates me, as does his creator, Patrick O’Brian. It would be easy to overegg the pudding discussing similarities between the two – secrecy, dissimulation about background, a daughter with special needs – but the fact remains that Maturin at times feels like a Gary Stu, despite his faults. Brilliant shot, wonderful espionage agent, a bit of a super hero (he takes a bullet out of his own abdomen and survives torture, storms, abandonment on a scorching hot island, a night on a freezing cold mountain, etc). I can’t help wondering if O’Brian was using Maturin in part to be what he’d wished to be, (or pretended he’d been) including a spy, an Irishman and a wonderful father to his disabled child.

Self inserted characters exist today. There’s a lady in my Cambridge Fellows books who bears more than a passing resemblance to me and I know that there are others knocking around. Of course, the tendency is, when I’m reading something, to try to spot a character who might just be the author in disguise. I daren’t say anything because of the risk of a suit for libel, but might that beautiful lady in the latest book by xxxx really be her and can that ridiculously sexy man, the one all the blokes fawn over truly be yyyyy? And will you share your favourite ‘self-inserted’ characters in the comments?

 

You can reach Charlie at cochrane.charlie2@googlemail.com (maybe to sign up for her newsletter?) or catch her on Facebook, twitter, goodreads, her website or her blog.

You say jelly, we say jam, by Charlie Cochrane

You say jelly, we say jam. You call it jello, we call it jelly. You say “Hang a left at the rotary” and we say “Aaaargh”.

 

The Cochranes often holiday on the east coast of the USA. Let me state here and now we always have a fantastic time and are made to feel incredibly welcome wherever we go. (Although note to those of you across the Atlantic – the UK is a big place, full of people. If we say we’re from England, it isn’t likely that we’ll know your friend in London or Manchester or Edinburgh. Just sayin’.)

 

The fun and games start with the subtle differences in the language, which make everyday life and adventure and spice up our holidays no end – if you live in Massachusetts and ever see a family in your local supermarket, scratching their heads and wondering whether what was in the package was what they actually wanted, that could be us. You see, chips are chips, they’re not crisps. Likewise, chips are chips, they’re not fries.

 

Shall I start that again? What you call fries we call chips and what you call chips we call crisps. What you call cookies we call biscuits and what you call biscuits we call scones. Your muffins are not our muffins and your cheese is what we’d call plastic (that’s not a linguistic difference so much as one of taste).

 

Driving cars is fun. We have bonnets and boots – you have hoods and trunks. Our cars don’t run on gas (we use that for heating and cooking), they run on petrol. And we drive around roundabouts, not rotaries. As for sports, football is football and always will be. Not soccer. And hockey is played on grass, not ice. That’s ice hockey. And toilets are toilets, not restrooms. Am I sounding too grouchy? Sorry, I’ll behave myself.

 

In all seriousness, an appreciation of the finer differences in language can avoid all sorts of embarrassment, particularly if you travel east over the Atlantic and visit us. You see, if you say someone’s pissed, over here that doesn’t mean they’re angry. It means they’re drunk or might have wet themselves. And here, ‘period’ is more likely to be used as a noun for a menstrual bleed rather than a full stop. Don’t even think about the word ‘fanny’ – that’s not your backside, that’s…well just don’t use that word in polite company.

 

 

Promises Made Under Fire

by Charlie Cochrane

 

Available from Carina Press

 France, 1915

Lieutenant Tom Donald envies everything about fellow officer Frank Foden--his confidence, his easy manner with the men in the trenches, the affectionate letters from his wife. Frank shares these letters happily, drawing Tom into a vicarious friendship with a woman he's never met. Although the bonds of friendship forged under fire are strong, Tom can't be so open with Frank--he's attracted to men and could never confess that to anyone.

When Frank is killed in no-man's-land, he leaves behind a mysterious request for Tom: to deliver a sealed letter to a man named Palmer. Tom undertakes the commission while on leave--and discovers that almost everything he thought he knew about Frank is a lie...

 

Excerpt:

First light. A distant sound of something heavy being moved. A thin curtain of rain—the sort of misty, drizzly rain that soaked us through to the skin. Prospect of something for breakfast that might just pretend to be bacon and bread.

Good morning, France. An identical morning to yesterday and bound to be the same tomorrow. Tomorrow and tomorrow, world without end, amen.

I looked up and down the trench. The small world I’d become bound in was now starting to rouse, stretching and facing a grey dawn. The men were stirring, so I had to get out my best stiff upper lip. If I showed how forlorn I felt, then what chance had I of inspiring them?

“Morning, sir.” Bentham, nominally my officer’s servant but in reality a cross between a nursemaid and a housemaster, popped up, smiling. “Breakfast won’t be that long. You and Lieutenant Foden need something solid in your stomachs on a day like this.”

“Aye.” I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything else until I’d got my head on straight.

“Tea’s ready, though.” He thrust a steaming mug into my hands. Add telepathist to the list of his qualities. Maybe when I’d got some hot tea into me then the world might seem a slightly better place. “Quiet, last night.”

“It was.” I was going to have to enter into conversation whether I wanted to or not. “I don’t like it when they’re quiet. Always feel that Jerry’s plotting something.”

“He’s probably plotting even when he’s kicking up Bob’s a dying.”

“Bob’s a dying?”

“Dancing and frolicking, sir. Not that I think Jerry has much time for fun.” Bentham nodded, turned on his heels and went off, no doubt to make whatever we had in store for breakfast at least vaguely appetising. I took a swig of tea.

“Is it that bad?” Foden’s voice sounded over my shoulder.

“Do you mean the tea or the day? You’ll find out soon enough about the first and maybe sooner than we want about the second.”

“The perennial ray of sunshine.” He laughed. Only Frank Foden could find something to laugh about on mornings like these, when the damp towel of mist swaddled us.

“Try as I might, I can’t quite summon up the enthusiasm to be a music-hall turn at this unearthly hour.” I tried another mouthful of tea but even that didn’t seem to be hitting the spot.

“If you’re going to be all doom and gloom, can you hide the fact for a while? The colonel’s coming today. He’ll want to see ‘everything jolly.’” The impersonation of Colonel Johnson’s haughty, and slightly ridiculous, tones was uncanny. Trust Foden to hit the voice, spot on, even though his normal, chirpy London accent was nothing like Johnson’s cut-glass drawl.

“Oh, he’ll see it. So long as he doesn’t arrive before I’ve had breakfast.”

Foden slapped my back. “That’s the ticket. Don’t shatter the old man’s illusions.” He smiled, that smile potentially the only bright spot in a cold grey day. In a cold grey life. Frank kept me going, even on days when the casualty count or the cold or the wet made nothing seem worth living for anymore.

“How the hell can you always be so cheerful?”

“Because the alternative isn’t worth thinking about. Why make things more miserable when there’s a joke to crack?” They weren’t empty words—that was how he seemed to live, always making the best of things. He wasn’t like a lot of the other officers, plums in their mouths and no bloody use, really. The men loved him.

 

Charlie Cochrane

Facebook ~ Twitter ~ Goodreads ~ Website ~ Blog

Bats? Yes, thank you for asking.

You know how life sometimes just gets so complicated? How the easiest task seems to multiply in complexity until it resembles a scene from a screwball comedy? We’re undergoing that at the moment and it’s all due to Pipistrellus pipistrellus or possibly Rhinolophus hipposideros.  - I’m waiting for Batman and Batwoman to come and tell me whichAre you sitting comfortably? This is a long story.

It begins about six years ago when we had our boiler replaced and they had to do some pipework in our loft.

“Ere. Missus, you want to come and look at this,” said one of the gasmen (oh, don’t be smutty you lot!)

I leg it up to the loft and find a pile of droppings (oh, the glamorous life of the novelist!). My mind races – rats, mice, squirrels? – so I get on the phone to the local council who send round a nice man. He goes up to the loft and says, “You’ve got bats”.

In the greater scheme of things, this was good news. No nasty rodents, just adorable little bats, probably the same ones who flit through our garden on a summer evening. So, all I had to worry about was the shower of bat droppings which lands on your head when you open the trap to the loft, because you can’t get rid of the things. They’re, quite rightly, protected species.

Now, this is all fine and dandy, until you think you might have death watch beetle and have to get another nice man (from Rentokil) to come and give your joists the once over. He finds no death watch beetle, just common or garden wood-boring beetle (this is starting to resemble one of those David Attenborough wildlife programmes), which will need treating at some point. There’s one complication – yes, the bats. We need to have permission from English Nature to have anything done in the loft (like spray the wood-boring beetle or replace our insulation, which needs renewal).

So, weeks later (allowing time for somebody to ring me to say that somebody’s going to ring me and then them not managing to catch me) I have an appointment for two nice batpeople to come around and (I hope!) give me a certificate from their utility belts to say I can have work done. Presumably there’ll be some time restrictions, like having to have any work done when the bats are off somewhere for the winter (on a cruise to Tenerife?)

As I said, this is all becoming quite surreal; if the man and lady from English Nature resemble Adam West and Julie Newmar, I shan’t be able to control myself.

 
 

Home Fires Burning

by Charlie Cochrane

 

Available from Cheyenne Publishing

 

 

Blurb: Two stories, two couples, two eras, timeless emotions.

This Ground Which Was Secured At Great Expense:

It is 1914 and The Great War is underway. When the call to arms comes, Nicholas Southwell won’t be found hanging back. It’s a pity he can’t be so decisive when it comes to letting his estate manager Paul Haskell know what he feels before he has to leave for the front line. In the trenches Nicholas meets a fellow officer, Phillip Taylor, who takes him into the unclaimed territory of physical love. Which one will he choose, if he’s allowed the choice?

The Case of the Overprotective Ass:

Stars of the silver screen Alasdair Hamilton and Toby Bowe are wowing the post WWII audiences with their depictions of Holmes and Watson. When they are asked by a friend to investigate a mysterious disappearance, they jump at the chance — surely detection can’t be that hard? But a series of threatening letters — and an unwanted suitor — make real life very different from the movies.

Excerpt from 'This Ground Which was Secured at Great Expense', a bittersweet story set against the backdrop of WWI:

“You have to go home. You must be mad to want to stay here.” Phillip smoothed his chin, easing fingers over the parts the razor had left raw.

“There’s no one at home to go to. You know I’ve no close family.” Nicholas stared at the letter from Colonel Johnstone, the one which virtually ordered him to get home and take a rest. There was little point in staying if Phillip had gone, anyway; better to go back to Hampshire and try to keep his hands to himself when he met Paul.

Phillip had been given leave, too and he seemed alight with some private, inner glow. “How about you? What have you planned?” Nicholas asked the question for formality’s sake; the thought of Phillip enjoying a passionate reunion with some chit of a thing burned into his dreams, torturing his sleeping self.

“I’ll be seeing family, of course, and…” Phillip considered his face in the mirror once more. Nicholas suddenly realised he was playing for time, weighing up his options. He’d seen that expression before—it spoke of utter candour. “And I have someone waiting for me, someone I’m very close to.”

Nicholas had to fill the silence that clung to the coattails of that bald statement. “Not like you not to have mentioned her before.” The strain in his voice seemed amplified by the tension which had descended between them.

“I didn’t feel entirely sure I could, not up until now.” Phillip finished his toilet and rolled down his sleeves. He turned, fixing the full piercing glare of his green eyes on his fellow officer. “You’re a good man in a tight corner. Reliable. Can I rely on you now?”

“Of course.” Nicholas awaited the revelation, the great secret he was to be entrusted with. Was Phillip laying siege to some other officer’s wife, sapping her resolve and providing comfort while her man was miles away? If so, it was little wonder he wanted to get home.

“It’s not a girl, at home. It’s a man. Yes, I know I’m a bloody idiot telling you, but I trust you with my life, Nicholas. Have done every day since I got posted here. You’re not going to shop me, are you?” Phillip ran his hands through his dark hair. “Not sure it wouldn’t be worse if you told my parents than if you told the Colonel. He’d probably be more sympathetic so long as I’m not buggering Miller.”

The unaccustomed coarseness made Nicholas wince, although he was sure its origin was nothing but Phillip’s nerves masquerading as bravado. “I had no idea.” Weak words, stupid sounding once they hit the air, yet it was all he could manage. If only he’d known, he might have said something. Sooner.

“I’m hardly likely to advertise it, am I? Fergal’s a good sort—he’s an engineer, working on ships’ engines for Vospers. Wants to get to sea himself, the idiot.” The deep affection apparent in Phillip’s voice cut into Nicholas’s heart. He’d never heard him speak this way, even about his family.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Giveaway!

I’m doing weekly giveaways through November, so if you mail me at  Cochrane.charlie2@googlemail.com  with the answer to “What’s the fifth book in the Cambridge fellows series?” you’ll be entered.