As promised in my first post on ‘our journey so far’, here’s a bit on how the marketing/publishing process is going.

As I may have mentioned before, Mike is the talent and I’m the brains, or rather marketing brawn, behind the scenes. Which is rather odd for me as I’ve spent the last 10 years anywhere but behind the scenes as an inspirational speaker, facilitator and coach. I’ve got to say I rather like it, not least because I get to dish out the work 🙂

Mike has had his usual weekly target of 10,000 words on the current book, book two of The Unseen trilogy and at the same time embarking on the free download for the website. It started off as the beginners guide to fantasy and he’s written some great stuff. Having reviewed it together this weekend we think that what he’s done so far will end up on the blog and that he’ll be writing a novella as the download, so that will take a little longer than originally planned.

My focus has been on sorting out the first draft of the website/blog, sourcing an editor and cover designer and of course the day job of looking after Mini-Monkey Cairns.

We know how vital it is to get the brand just right and I must admit I do struggle with the frustration of having the vision of how we want it and not yet being able, due to budget and time constraints, to put it into action.

We hope what we’ve got up at the moment serves as a good first step. The image for the web banner in particular has been a challenge. Eventually we will commission an artist for an original piece but for now we’ve chosen the crows. Crows are storytellers in folklore and we think they’re rather cool.

Relationship marketing efforts are warming up nicely. Mike has well and truly ‘joined the conversation’ on twitter and I’m really proud of him, he’s gone from taking 10 minutes to craft a tweet to using instagram with ease. If you’re on twitter do drop by and say hi, you can find him @cairnswrites

The absolute highlight of this week was when Mike spotted that the amazing Terry Moore was following him! Terry is one of Mikes’ all time heroes, a comic God and the creator of the first comic I ever read. Seriously, he couldn’t stop grinning for ages, it made my heart go fuzzy.

Finally, we have settled on the strapline for Cairns Writes that we hope encapsulates our vision. It started off as the rather throw away “Writings and ramblings of contemporary fantasy author Michael Cairns” and has become “Inspiration for readers and writers”. We wanted to open up the scope of what we were able to share. As well as enabling you to get to know Mike and all the things he loves in his crazy fantasy universe, it’s also so important to us to be able to give something back. To share inspiration, support other writers, to showcase other talent, and to encourage a life long love of story and storytelling. So you’ll see a wider variety of content on the blog and we’ll be adding inspirational images and music down the line too.

Lots more in the pipeline but I’m way over my wordcount so more on another day.

My warmest

Elizabeth