Do Fictional Characters Have Ghosts?

 By Jane Davis

 St Mary’s Church in Beddington is normally bolted during the week, but on my mother-in-law’s tenth anniversary, I found the doors unlocked, and so I stepped inside and lit a candle. 

But at the same time as thinking how much Maureen would have liked the building (pointing out that the vicar would never have agreed to play ‘Fat-Bottomed Girls’ at her funeral, as hers did), I was aware of two other presences: Jim and Aimee.

Who are Jim and Aimee? They’re old friends of mine.

There’s something transportative about living in the same neighbourhood all of your life; walking around familiar geography, knee-deep in the history of the place. And superimposed over a street map carried both inside and outside your head (the housing estate that now stands on the site of your old high school), are important milestones. When you learned to ride a bike. Your first kiss. The first flat you owned. But when I started setting fiction within my personal geography, I added an additional strata.

Let me explain. In Smash all the Windows, my character Maggie takes several walks. I work in the City of London so I’m familiar with its streets, so familiar that I was afraid I might neglect the detail. As research for my novel, I walked her routes – from Tower Hill, down the Thames riverside path, over London Bridge, through Borough Market and along Bankside to Tate Modern. I made notes about all of the sights and sounds, notes that made it onto the pages of my book. But now, when I take the same walk, I think, ‘Here’s where Maggie saw the starling’, and ‘Here’s where Maggie bought her copy of the Big Issue’. Her presence is real. Particular locations are now imbued with a certain energy. And by some definitions, such a presence might be called a ghost.

In fact, ghosts are frequent visitors in my daily life. I might park in Shere at the beginning of my favourite walks in the Surrey Hills, and see Sir James Hastings crossing the square from his home, past the war memorial, to the pub he drank in, his elderly German Shepherd called Isambard in tow. (I Stopped Time). I take a short cut through Honeywood Walk in Carshalton and see the tree that caused the collapse of the wall that Judy Jones was buried under (These Fragile Things). I cross the small wooden bridge at the foot of the waterfall in Grove Park and Aimee swirls round, elbows on the rail. (A Funeral for an Owl). I come across a lone stag when out walking in Richmond Park, and somehow it is the stag that blocked Alison’s path, looking her straight in the eye (An Unchoreographed Life).

We live with our characters so long, they’re kin to us. In a way, we know them better than friends and family, because we’ve seen through their eyes and know their every thought. Every single one of these things was a memory of my own, a memory that I’ve since given to a character, and in editing my novels – that constant re-reading – I’ve made the memories more theirs than mine. You might even say that I’m the intruder. Perhaps, inadvertently, I’ve become the ghost.  

Publication Details, Smash all the Windows:
 

It has taken conviction to right the wrongs.

It will take courage to learn how to live again.

For the families of the victims of the St Botolph and Old Billingsgate disaster, the undoing of a miscarriage of justice should be a cause for rejoicing. For more than thirteen years, the search for truth has eaten up everything. Marriages, families, health, careers and finances.

Finally, the coroner has ruled that the crowd did not contribute to their own deaths. Finally, now that lies have been unravelled and hypocrisies exposed, they can all get back to their lives.

If only it were that simple.

Smash all the Windows will be released on 12 April, but you can pre-order it now for the special price of 99p/99c (Price increases to £1.99 on 12 March. Price on publication will be £3.99).

Smash all the Windows is available at all of these retailers.

 

From 13 February to 10 March, US readers can also enter a Goodreads Giveaway for a chance to win one of 100 eBooks.

About Jane Davis

Hailed by The Bookseller as ‘One to Watch’, Jane Davis is the author of eight novels.

Jane spent her twenties and the first part of her thirties chasing promotions at work, but when she achieved what she’d set out to do, she discovered that it wasn’t what she wanted after all. It was then that she turned to writing.

Her debut, Half-truths & White Lies, won the Daily Mail First Novel Award 2008. Of her subsequent three novels, Compulsion Reads wrote, ‘Davis is a phenomenal writer, whose ability to create well-rounded characters that are easy to relate to feels effortless’. Her 2015 novel, An Unknown Woman, was Writing Magazine’s Self-published Book of the Year 2016 and has been shortlisted for two further awards.

Jane lives in Carshalton, Surrey with her Formula 1 obsessed, star-gazing, beer-brewing partner, surrounded by growing piles of paperbacks, CDs and general chaos. When she isn’t writing, you may spot her disappearing up a mountain with a camera in hand. Her favourite description of fiction is ‘made-up truth’.

CONTACT DETAILS

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Press enquiries: janerossdale@btinternet.com

High resolution photos available from https://jane-davis.co.uk/media-kit/

Finding That Perfect Read

by CP Lesley

One advantage of the current publishing climate is that a reader has no shortage of books from which to choose. Free and low-cost books are everywhere, including through subscription services like Amazon.com’s Kindle Unlimited.

But finding a good book is not so easy. Reviews offer some insight, but many good books fail to attract reviews for various reasons. Book bloggers soon acquire more titles than they can ever have time to read, never mind write about.

Readers too soon become overwhelmed by demands on their time. And not all reviews are what they seem: ethical writers, including myself, refuse to pay for book reviews, but some desperate souls give way to temptation.

So what’s a reader to do?

One approach, adopted by more than a few GoodReads friends I know, is to limit oneself to commercially published books. There readers can trust that books have gone through editing, typesetting, and proofreading, received professional covers—and, yes, that any reviews they receive reflect the honest opinion of the reviewer. But trade books are expensive, at $9.99–$12.99 or more even for an e-book. For the average voracious reader, they represent at best a partial solution, although public libraries can help.

But that approach also ignores the many good books published outside the commercial houses. And commercial publishing is just that: books have to sell millions of copies in today’s market to make a trade publisher’s investment worthwhile. If your taste runs to more unconventional fare, you’re out of luck.

That’s where small presses and coop publishers (a variant on small presses) come in. A coop like Triskele Books or my own Five Directions Press exerts the quality control of a traditional publishing house but can charge less, especially for e-books, because the coop authors can break even at a much lower number of copies sold. No one guarantees that if you love one author’s gritty historical fantasy, you will love another’s sparkling contemporary romance, but you can count on each book having received extensive critique and suggestions for improvement followed by professional editing, typesetting, proofreading, e-book production, and cover design. We guarantee one another’s work.

We also cooperate to get the word out, which means that we publish quarterly newsletters featuring other authors and news about our forthcoming titles, regular lists of book recommendations—Triskele’s BookMuse,  Five Directions Press’s Books We Loved posts—and blog posts, many of which feature writers and/or their books. I host an interview channel, New Books in Historical Fiction,  where I interview other authors and read excerpts from their books. Another Five Directions Press author, Gabrielle Mathieu, does the same for fantasy and adventure novels.

So you see, there are tools out there to help you navigate the independent publishing ocean. Take a chance! You never know what magical island may be hiding right over that cloudy horizon.

C. P. Lesley is the author of seven novels, including Legends of the Five Directions (The Golden Lynx, The Winged Horse, The Swan Princess, and The Vermilion Bird), a historical fiction series set in 1530s Russia, during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible.

 

Find out more about CP Lesley on her website

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Why Read Short Stories by Vanessa Couchman

I’ve always been an avid reader of novels, but I first became aware of the short story as a different but equally inspiring form when a teacher read E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops to our class. The story is set in a far-off but credible future. People depend on the now failing Machine to survive, but they have discarded their humanity somewhere along the line.

I was hooked. I read more of Forster’s stories and then sought out other authors who had written them. The list is long and distinguished: Edgar Allen Poe, Franz Kafka, Ernest Hemingway, Katharine Mansfield, Alice Munro and Helen Dunmore, to name a few in no particular order.

What was it that captivated me? I didn’t analyse it then but, having now written short stories myself, I can offer some thoughts.

A good short story sucks you in immediately, absorbs you and engages your emotions. It presents the main character with a dilemma that must be resolved by the end and tells you something about the human condition. A story can be particularly effective if it finishes with an unexpected twist.

Okay, but a novel does that too. Isn’t a short story an easy option?

Not in the least. I find short stories more difficult to write than novels, although they don’t require as much stamina! In a short story, every single word and your overriding premise have to count; in a novel you can elaborate and introduce more characters and ideas. You can afford to have weaker bits in a novel; you can’t in a short story.

Think of a novel as a treasure chest in which some of the jewels sparkle more than others. A short story is like a single gem that is cut and polished to perfection. 

 For readers, an advantage of a short story is that you can read it, or listen to it, at one sitting. They are perfect for relieving a tedious commute, taking your mind off work during a coffee break or whiling away an hour on a rainy day.

You can also try out other genres you might not normally read. For example, I don’t generally read sci-fi, but I’ve enjoyed short stories by John Wyndham and Ray Bradbury.

So, while the teetering TBR pile on my bedside table is largely composed of novels, short stories are usually lurking in there somewhere.

Vanessa Couchman is a British novelist and short story writer who has lived in Southwest France since 1997. She has written two novels, The House at Zaronza and The Corsican Widow, and is working on a third. Her short stories have been placed in competitions and published in anthologies. French Collection, her collection of short stories set in France, was published on 9th November.
 

Selling direct? The EU VAT laws lowdown

Guest post by Julie Relf of Applause Accountancy Services

Do you sell ebooks direct to consumers or non VAT registered entities?

Are any of these consumers outside the UK but within Europe?

If you answer Yes to the above, you need to be aware of changes in EU VAT legislation coming into effect on 1 January 2015.

To help guide you through the changes we have compiled a list of commonly asked questions we have been receiving:

What is changing?

Legislation comes into force which changes the “place of supply” of these services. Currently this is listed where the selling business is situated (so if you are a business in the UK the place of supply for all your sales is the UK), however from 1 January 2015 for digital services to consumers this changes to where the consumer is based. This means that the VAT applied to these services will be determined by which country the customer is based in.

For example

A non VAT registered individual in Spain downloads an eBook from your website. From 1 January 2015 you will need to charge this customer VAT at the rate applicable in Spain, report this on a Spanish VAT return and pay the VAT across to the Spanish authorities.

What types of service are included?

A full definition of the services included can be found here

But I’m only a small business and below the UK VAT threshold, will this affect me?

Unfortunately yes it will, there is no minimum threshold for these EU VAT requirements, every sale no matter how small needs to be charged the correct amount of VAT and reported in the correct country. Your first sale to a European country after 1 January 2015 will trigger the start of your reporting requirements for EU VAT. This legislation covers the whole of Europe and some countries do not have a VAT registration threshold so limits have been set to nil to comply across the board.

What information do I need to collect?

You will need to review your system to ensure you are collecting the following information:

1. Customer location

You will need to identify the location of each customer and maintain a record of this information. To do this you need to collect two of the following (and ensure they both confirm the same location):
customer address
bank details
IP address
SIM card country code
any other appropriate information confirming address

2. EU VAT registration number

For all EU customers, you will need to identify if they are VAT registered in their country by obtaining their VAT registration number. Any EU VAT registered customers are outside the scope of these requirements and will not need EU VAT adding or reporting. UK VAT registered customers would continue to report these on their EC sales lists.

If you cannot obtain a EU VAT number then the sale will need VAT adding at the rate applicable in the customer’s country and the sale will need reporting and VAT paying to the local authorities in that country.

Do I need to supply these customers with VAT receipts and if so what information do I need to include?

Reporting requirements differ between countries but it is expected that a “simplified” VAT invoice, showing the VAT charged and your VAT registration number will be required. This is not currently confirmed.

I offer training over webinar/Skype, is this included?

No, if the service is live with a presenter it is treated as a supply of training/education and so excluded from these rules.

However if the training is recorded or automated with no live presenter then it would be classed as a digital service under these EU VAT rules.

I sell apps via an app store, will I be affected?

VAT is due by reference to who your customer is, so in this case you will need to review the terms of the contract with each platform you use to check if you are selling to the app store or the end consumer.

If it is the case that you sell your app to the app store, who in turn sells the app onto the consumer, your part of the sale would be business to business, you would need to collect their VAT registration number and the transaction would be outside of these requirements. In this situation it would be the app store who would be required to report the EU VAT on sales to consumers.

A lot of the app stores are moving along these lines, Apple trade this way and Google Play have updated their terms inline as shown here

However some platforms act as agents taking a commission from the app sales, in this situation you would need to account for the VAT to the EU customers.

I sell eBooks via Amazon will I be affected?

The present situation is that Amazon deals with the end customers and deals with the VAT reporting.
[Triskele edit: Here you can find the detail of how the changes will be implemented at Amazon, the conversion of prices from VAT-exclusive to VAT-inclusive, the effect of pricing and royalty calculations, and how to check these changes to ensure your royalty rates.]

If you use other platforms you will need to refer to your agreements and the guidance from the platform provider.

How and where do I report?

You need to account for VAT in the country the customer is located, using the VAT rates applicable to that country. A list of these rates can be found here

This can be reported in two ways:

1. Registering for VAT in each applicable country and filing VAT returns in line with their legislation;
or

2. UK VAT registered businesses have the option to file returns via HMRC using the “Mini One Stop Shop” – MOSS

The MOSS service will allow you to enter the sales per country, calculate the applicable VAT due, send the reports to the required authorities and collect the payment from you for distribution.

Agent will be able to file EU VAT returns on your behalf using the MOSS system, however the registration for MOSS needs to be done by you. You need to register separately for MOSS: it is not included in your UK VAT registration.

The return are due for the quarters ended March, June, September and December.

Returns and payments are due 20 days after the end of a quarter.

To use MOSS you need to be registered for VAT in the UK and so will need to charge VAT on all UK sales. If you are not registered at present you will need to assess whether this will be beneficial for your business, an accountant will be able to talk you through the pros and cons. Update on this! HMRC have indicated that businesses may be able to “split” their sales separating out the EU digital services for the purposes of this VAT registration. The details are still being outlined but it would mean that the registration would apply to only the EU set of sales and UK sales would be remain outside of UK VAT. This would allow small businesses to use MOSS and only require them to register the business for UK VAT when the UK VAT threshold is met. When firm guidance is available we will update this matter.
 
How long will I need to maintain all the information?

You will need to keep the records for 10 years to comply with EU regulation. This is taken as 10 years from 31 December of the year during which the transaction took place.

This all sounds very complicated and costly for the amount of EU sales I have, can I avoid it?

The only way to remove yourself from these requirements is to stop all digital service sales to EU customers. You will need to assess whether the amount of sales (or potential sales) is worth the additional reporting requirements.

How do you do this? Well I’m not a tech expert by any means but Paypal and developers for Plugins for sites such as WordPress are coming up with solutions. It may be the case that EU digital baskets can be rejected at checkouts (and potentially offered a postal service). But it is a case of keeping your eyes out for a wave of solutions on the market.

So I’m definitely going to be inside these requirements, where do I start?

To get yourself prepared for the 1 January 2015 start date you need to review your systems and make the necessary changes to ensure:

1 You are recording the location of each customer;

2. You are recording (where applicable) customers’ EU VAT numbers;

3. You have made a list of the applicable countries and their VAT rates;

4. You have either a) registered for VAT in each applicable country and made a note of the reporting deadlines or b) you have registered with HMRC for MOSS (this can be done here);

5. If you are using an agent(s) to file EU or MOSS VAT returns on your behalf you have the appropriate engagements in place in advance of filing deadlines.

Full guidance on the changes and EU requirements can be found here and results from a HMRC Q&A session can be found here

Professional bodies across the UK have been appealing for the simplification of these requirements for small businesses for some time, however it looks increasingly unlikely that this is going to happen before 1 January 2015. It adds an increasing amount of administration on small businesses, going against the tax simplification policy the UK authorities have been striving to achieve. We will of course continue to monitor the situation and if the requirements do change we will be reporting back.

If you have any questions on the above or any other areas of accounting or tax, or would like assistance in this area please contact us at hello@applauseaccountancy.co.uk

Applause Accountancy Services Limited takes every care in preparing material to ensure that the content is accurate and up to date. However, no responsibility for loss for anyone acting from or refraining from acting as a result of this information can be accepted by Applause Accountancy Services Limited. http://www.applauseaccountancy.co.uk/