This week my guest is Sara-Jayne Townsend, who’s been published by Lyrical Press. Her novel, Suffer the Children, is set in my home county of Surrey!

Fear has a face…

Orphaned at eighteen, Leanne’s life is adrift in a sea of grief and drug use. She washes up on the shore of estranged relatives, the Carver family, struggling with loss of their own. The transition from her South London council estate to her new home in the Surrey middle-class suburbs is difficult for Leanne.

But beneath the respectable veneer of the quiet neighborhood, something terrifying lurks. Displaced and troubled teenagers are disappearing. Leanne recruits her cousin Simon and his girlfriend Carrie to help get to the bottom of the sinister mystery. Can the three of them stop a creature of unimaginable evil before Leanne becomes a target?

To start, can you tell me a bit about your novel?

It’s called SUFFER THE CHILDREN. It’s a horror novel about a supernatural entity preying on young people in a respectable suburb of Surrey, UK. The three protagonists (an 18-year-old girl and her 20-year-old cousin and his girlfriend) investigate the disappearances and uncover an ancient evil.

It was inspired by am empty, creepy-looking house I used to pass on my way to work years ago, when I began thinking about what creepy things might go on there and my imagination ran away with me. Stephen King was a big influence on me in my teens and early 20s, and my novel was sort of inspired by his books.

Why did you go with an epublisher for Suffer the Children? And why specifically Lyrical Press?

As for why I picked LPI, well to be honest the book had been doing the rounds and racking up rejections for a while. I was having trouble finding publishers that dealt with horror, as for a while I kept being told that horror was dead – at least in the UK. So I was sending it to anyone who said they took horror.

When I heard about Lyrical, I did think about it for a while before submitting to them. I’d never really considered e-publishers before, but I thought I was limiting my chances of being published if I didn’t look at that route. I liked the fact that LPI had a range of genres on their list, and I liked the fact that they were a relatively new publisher (they have just celebrated their second anniversary). I felt a new publisher might have more space on their list for new writers than more established publishers.

And there are advantages to e-publishing. The submission and editing process is entirely electronic, so you don’t have to mess about with hard copy and queuing up in the post office for your SAE and stamps – everything is done by email. And e-publishing is on the brink of becoming a major phenomenon. Those of us who are there at the beginning will probably be proud of the fact in the years to come.

I have just bought myself an e-reader, and I now understand the appeal. I took it on holiday with me. Instead of having to weigh down my luggage with half a dozen books, I could just take my tiny e-reader, and it has 33 books on it so far (and the capacity for hundreds more – I’ve not had it long so haven’t put many books on it yet). I will always have something to read. Most older books that are out of copyright are available for free download, so all those unwieldy classics that you never got around to reading are freely available for your e-reader. I also like the fact that when I read on my lunch break at work, I can just put the e-reader on the table while I eat my lunch, instead of having to eat one-handed while I prop the book open with the other hand (and get smudges all over the pages). So I think we’re going to see e-books take off in a big way over the next few years, as more and more people get turned on to e-readers.There are disadvantages to e-publishing. There are no signing sessions, and my writing fantasies always involved signing sessions.

Sales are not nearly as good for e-books as they are for print books, as my very modest royalty statements keep reminding me. Marketing is more problematic. You can’t go to a bookshop and start selling signed copies. You are really relying on spreading the word over the internet to get your name out there, which is precisely why I’m interested in doing this interview.

However, my experiences with Lyrical have been very positive, and I would recommend them to anyone else considering the e-publishing route.

You’ve beaten me to the next question, which was pros and cons. Instead, how long did the process take from submission to publication, and what were the major milestones for you?

The contract came in August 2009, and the e-book was published in April 2010, so about eight months, which is less time than I was expecting.

I learned a great deal from the editing process. Lyrical sent me a list of ‘check points’ for the pre-edit – things I had to tidy up before the editor was to start work on it. It included things like getting rid of excessive dialogue tags and adverbs, avoiding passive writing, ‘head-hopping’. All fairly straightforward things, and certainly things I was aware of, but I was surprised at how many of these cardinal sins I was unwittingly guilty of. I found I was too fond of writing in the passive voice, and overuse of certain words – something I only noticed when it was pointed out to me. I also found a couple of examples of ‘head-hopping’ – when the viewpoint character changes in the middle of a scene. This is something I hate in other people’s writing, so I was rather mortified to discover it in my own book.

I also had to become a lot more disciplined in writing. Because I have a day job, and other things I try to fit in my life as well as my writing, I am guilty of rather neglecting the writing when it’s not going well, and finding ways to avoid it. Before I got the contract, nobody really cared what I was writing, or how long I was taking over it. Once I had an editor, who was expecting me to turn around the revisions in a timely manner, I had to ensure I made time to write. As I find that when I get home from work I am often too tired to concentrate on writing, I made a point of getting up an hour earlier a couple of times a week to get an earlier train in to work, so I could sit in Starbucks and write before starting work in the morning. I also set aside Sundays at home for writing days. Having a contract made me think of myself as a ‘proper’ writer, something I’d never really done before, and I had to instil in myself the discipline and professionalism that warranted.

Who would you recommend epublishing to? Who would you suggest seek other publishing methods?

Anyone who writes short novels or novellas would do better seeking an e-publisher, as they are much more willing to publish shorter works than a traditional print publisher.

But I do think whether you go for a print publisher or an e-book publisher is down to preference. The rise in popularity in e-books is not going to mean death to print books. The future of the publishing world will accommodate both e-books and print books; both formats serve separate purposes. Hence, whether authors seek a print publisher or an e-publisher – or both – will probably come down to a personal decision.

What kind of post-publication support have you received so far?

I have developed a good relationship with my editor, and she’s been amazingly supportive. One of the good things about having an editor is that in future I can send submissions directly to her, instead of to the publisher.

With regard to other post-publication support, it seems that publicity is rather more difficult for e-books than with print books. The publisher have sent the book to various online review sites, and the reviews I have received so far have been good. But unlike a print book, where you can turn up at a bricks-and-mortar building and sign copies of your book to sell to people, all you can really do with an e-book is get it mentioned on as many websites as possible, and hope that people are interested enough to go to the publisher’s site to buy and download it.

The publisher’s email groups are quite useful sources of information, as people will post details of publicity opportunities they have come across. I  am presently trying to take up as many of these opportunities as possible.

I take it you’re planning to stick with Lyrical for now. Overall, do you think you’ll continue writing for the ebook market, or would you be tempted to try for print?

I would like a print book – of course I would. The dream of publication has been fulfilled, but the dream of signing sessions still has not been.

Lyrical do publish some print books, so there is is a chance they will publish print versions, but I am taking it as it comes for the time being. The most important thing with regard to sales seems to be establishing yourself as a writer – and that takes a while. For now I am happy to stick with Lyrical and e-books, but hopefully there will eventually be print books in some form or other in my future.

I think that’s everything I wanted to ask. Is there anything else you wanted to add?

I think you’ve covered everything!

Suffer the Children is available to purchase from Lyrical Press now! You can also visit Sara-Jayne’s website here for information and updates on future works.