A New Website and other News

I've got a new website! It's been a while since I had one, so I hired designer Stuart Grant to design a website for author Sean McLachlan. I think it looks pretty good. It's still being tweaked, though, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to add them in the comments section.

In other news, I'm back in Oxford for my usual summer research in the Bodleian Library. This year I'm doing research for my upcoming Weimar historical mystery series, as well as some reading on the Sudan in anticipation of a trip there in the winter. Fingers crossed on that one.

On the 16th of this month I'll be releasing the next issue of Sean's Travels and Tales, my monthly newsletter that comes out on the 16th of every month. If you sign up via my website, you also get two of my books, Radio Hope and Tangier Bank Heist, for free! Not a bad deal, eh?

A Coup Interrupted My Writing (and other news)

Well, this hasn't happened before.

I was planning a trip to research my next book, and now I can't go because there's been a coup.

I wantd Book Six in my Masked Man of Cairo series to be The Case of the Disappearing Dervish. This would have seen Moustafa returning to his village in the Sudan to solve a mystery, with Sir Augustus and Faisal coming along to help.

Sadly, last month while I was in Alexandria and planning a trip to Khartoum in December, the military in the Sudan overthrew the transitional council set up after the fall of dictator Omar al-Bashir and have arrested the civilian prime minister. Now the army is shooting peaceful protestors in the streets.

It's a horrible situation and I feel bad for the Sudanese people. When I plan to visit a new country, I often think of the people I will meet there, future friends I don't know yet. Now those friends are in serious danger and their economy is collapsing. I hope Sudan gets through this crisis and gets the democratic government it has so long deserved.

In happier news, the print edition of The Case of the Asphyxiated Alexandrian: The Masked Man of Cairo Book 5 has just been released. You can get it on Amazon, Amazon UK, and all the other Amazon outlets as well as several other online vendors.

I'm working on several projects right now, including a ghostwritten series for a client, a trio of prequel novellas for the Cairo series detailing the adventures of all three protagonists before they met, a science fiction series, and another historical mystery series.

If you want to keep up to date with my travels and writing projects, subscribe to my newsletter. An issue comes out once every other month and contains a travel article, updates on my work, and a coupon for a free or discounted ebook. Issue 17 comes out later this week!

My next newsletter comes out next week!

What's this place? If you've read The Case of the Shifting Sarcophagus you might recognize it. Read all about this little-known spot in Cairo in my next newsletter, coming out next week. Every issue contains a short story, travel article, and a coupon for a free or discounted book. And even better, I never share your information, because that would be a really lousy way to treat my readers. Click here to subscribe!

The Fifth Issue of my Newsletter is Coming Out This Week!

The fifth issue of my newsletter, Sean's Travels and Tales, will come out later this week. This issue includes an article on researching in the Bodleian Library, a short story from my Trench Raiders series, and a coupon for two discounted ebooks.

So click on this link to sign up to my newsletter. I promise not to share your email with anyone, because that's a sure way to tank my career!

My Writing in 2017 and Looking Forward to 2018

Happy New Year! Well, at least if you use the Gregorian calendar like I do. It's been a busy year and I'm looking forward to an even busier one in 2018.
At the beginning of the year I set myself the challenge of writing a million words a year. I counted words the same way I did in 2016: fiction, nonfiction, and blogging all count. I also included editing at a ratio of 10:1, so editing 10,000 words counts as writing 1,000. I rounded down to the nearest 250 words.
So how did I do? I got to 927,000 words, up from 900,750 in 2016. So I missed my goal, but still had my best writing year to date. I'll be trying for the million mark again this year. We'll see how that goes.
Despite it being my best year, I was not entirely happy with my output. Much of it was ghostwriting, and while that certainly helped my bank account, it meant that no new titles came out under my name in 2017, a first in more than a decade. I also ended up in a higher income bracket and the taxman really nailed me.
I did have some successes. My neo-pulp mystery novel, The Case of the Purloined Pyramid, won the Kindle Scout program and got a contract with Kindle Press. The ebook edition comes out January 9 and the print edition later this month. I also got more than a third of the way through the next in the series, The Case of the Shifting Sarcophagus.
This year I'm making a concerted effort to work on more of my fiction. This will mean saying no to some ghostwriting offers, but I think it's best for my long-term career. Sales of my own books fell off sharply in 2017 because I wasn't bringing out more stuff, and that needs to change. In this new publishing world, visibility is the key. So, besides a million words for this year, here are some more resolutions I'll try to stick to:
Writing 1,000 words a day of my own fiction.
Writing a short story every month (more on that later).
Pitching a nonfiction article every month.
Getting more of my back list out in print, and sprucing up things like metatags and blurbs.
It's going to be a busy year!
If you're a writer, artist, or other creative type, how did your past year go? What are you plans for this one? Tell us in the comments section!

My next newsletter coming out this week, sign up for a free ebook!

The third issue of my newsletter, Sean's Travels and Tales, will come out later this week. This issue includes an article on an odd artifact I spotted in the National Museum in Cairo, a short story from my Toxic World series, and a coupon for a free ebook.

So click on this link to sign up to my newsletter. I promise not to share your email with anyone, because that's a sure way to tank my career!

My Writing Year: A Look Back and a Look Forward

So here we are at the start of another year. Time to look back at what we've accomplished in the past 365 days and what's coming up.

All through 2016, I've been keeping a running tally of my word count, including fiction, nonfiction, and blogging. I also include editing, at a ratio of 10:1, so editing 10,000 words counts as writing 1,000. While this is the first year I've kept track of my word count, I'm sure this is my most prolific year so far. I ended up with 900,750 words, an average of 17,322 words a week. While this sounds impressive, writing is my day job. There are plenty of professional writers who blow my word count out of the water. James Reasoner has written a million words a year for the past 12 years. No wonder he has 344 novels under his belt. I'm downright lazy by comparison!

The first of my novels to come out this year is the one I'm most proud of. The Last Hotel Room was picked up by Kindle Press. It's about the Syrian refugee crisis, and as I promised during my Kindle Scout campaign I donated $500 to Doctors Without Borders for their excellent work on the ground in Syrian refugee camps. Thanks for your support! I'll be donating a portion of my royalties too once I pay though my advance.

That same month I also released Warpath into Sonora, a Western from the Apache point of view. It's my first Western unless you count my Missouri Civil War novels.

On a related note, Osprey Publishing also came out with my Apache Warrior vs US Cavalryman, part of their Combat series that takes a grunt's-eye view of conflict from both sides. This is the seventh book I've written for them. You can see all my Osprey titles here.

The bulk of my work has been ghostwriting. I've ghostwritten five novels and a short story this year, plus the bulk of a sixth novel. You can read more about this aspect of my career in a post I did for Black Gate.

So what's in store for 2017? I want to hit a million words this year! I already have two ghostwriting contracts lined up, plus a bunch of my own books. You can keep track of my progress with the word count bars on the right side of this blog.

If you're a writer, artist, or other creative type, how did your past year go? What are you plans for this one? Tell us in the comments section!

Happy 2017!

Insecure Writer's Support Group: Learning to Market

Sana Sayeeda! That's Happy New Year in Arabic. Even though the Muslim new year was a couple of months ago, I heard this said a lot in Tangier this week. We were on on our fourth annual "let's avoid Christmas" trip to Morocco. Now I'm back and ready for a new year of challenges!

My biggest challenge this year will be learning how to market my work. I've built up an inventory of 13 fiction titles so now that I have something to sell, I need to figure out how to sell it. Marketing is most definitely NOT my strong suit so any advice would be most welcome.

Right now my plans are pretty basic. I'm starting a newsletter with free fiction and travel articles, and of course info on any new releases. The first issue will be out in a couple of weeks. You can sign up here. I'll also be more active on my Twitter and Facebook accounts and of course keeping up this blog. The big project will be some promotions coming up next month, which I'll be sending out to various newsletters and websites that list ebook promos.

There will be plenty of writing this year too, because nothing promotes your work like coming out with more books! There will be new books in both the Toxic World and Trench Raiders series, as well as a couple of novellas, the Tangier novel I've been talking about, and a few more goodies.

Beyond doing those things, I'm pretty much out of marketing ideas. Anyone have any techniques that have worked?

Insecure Writers Support Group: Newsletter Nerves

Hello fellow IWSG members! This is my first post in our monthly communal ventilation of fears so I’m still a little curious what it’s all about. I’m working on a different project than usual right now—I’m starting an author’s newsletter! I’ve never done one before so I’m a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing. I’d love to get some feedback from fellow writers who do one, and fellow readers who subscribe to them.

Here’s my plan. I want the newsletter to be something more than just periodic announcements of my new releases and instead to be something people will read for the content. So what I’m going to do is include a travel article and a short story with every issue. Regular readers of this blog know how much I travel! The newsletter will, of course, mention any new releases and each issue will include a coupon for a free or discounted book. I’m figuring on having it come out monthly via Mailchimp.

So. . . what do you think? Anything I should add or take out? What has worked for you in your own newsletter? Besides adding a link from my blog and in the back matter of my books, how else can I advertise it? (And what if no one signs up?) Any suggestions for layout? I’m clueless when it comes to design so any tips will be much appreciated! Also. . .I need a name! "Sean's newsletter" sounds lame. Any suggestions?