TL Bartusch Indie Author of the Roth series

Indie writers get a lot of advice about how to be noticed, how to attract readers and how to keep them. One of the most consistent pieces of advice is to write a series.Three years ago I took the leap and started my own featuring a handsome, engaging Frenchman who I named Victor Roth. By the way, Victor has a liking for hot air balloons. More about that later. Der Luftballoon, Paul Klee, 1906 A series is a way of building a following. If readers like the first story and your characters they'll want more. That's why we write series. Changes of genre or style lose the most precious thing you have, readers. When the series began in 2014, Victor was 38, single, rich and a desk-bound analyst in the Paris office of Interpol. His specialty is counterfeting and forgery. He lives in Montmartre and is single by choice. He has his suits and shoes made and wears black tie when he dines with friends. He also carries a flick knife. I love him but he may not be to everyone's tast

I thought it might be interesting to have a look at the paintings that share the Mona Lisa's gallery in the Louvre. So many images of the Salle des Etats are limited to  the Mona Lisa's glass cell on the end wall and ignore the other Renaissance paintings by Venetian artists or painters working in Venice in the 16th century that are hung in her purpose designed room. The purpose of this vast space is to shuffle about six million visitors past the Mona Lisa every year. Salle des Etats, Mona Lisa on far wall Let's look at the gallery first and get that out of the way. The plain walls and austere skylight, so different to the original domed glass is very dull indeed. Of course the Salle des Etats has a much more colourful past. It was the principal state room of Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, nephew and heir of Napoleon. Napoleon's second wife, (you remember the first was Josephine of not tonight darling & don't leave me Boney fame) Marie-Therese of Aust

When we write, we edit. Everyone does it - put it down, re-read, change it. Whether it's a text message, email, the shopping list or a novel, we (hopefully) improve what we put down by editing. I write novels, not long fantasy tomes of 175,000 words. Mine are considered novels because they exceed 60,000 words. I generally come in between 70,000 and 80,000 words, depending on how long it takes me to get the story down. Even at that modest length there's a lot of editing in one of my novels and I have been painfully aware that there are a lot of skills a trained editor has that I do not. Solution? Do an editing course. Oh woe the day in February that I signed up for a year of long-distance torture. I live out of the city you see and going to daily classes just wasn't an option. I had done my first degree by distance education and thought what the heck, I can do it again. Idiot. My course in editing and publishing is all online which I can cope with. You don't

The base image I used today to create a new cover for Hubris. Wikimedia Commons One of the hardest things I do as an Indie author is to design my own book covers. Not having been trained as a graphic designer I find the process, shall we say, challenging . During the writing of the latest book in my current series I created 71 versions over the cover. Today I created the 73rd. Overkill you say. You bet, but it's not easy to conceptualise a story in a cover design. I've used a number of images to try and give my reader the idea of what's in this book which is a mystery/thriller about the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. Of course the painting itself would be the first thing you think of and I did, I used it but I wasn't happy with the result. As the book is set in the curatorial department of the museum I also tried an image of the workshops in the Louvre. I liked that. It was primarily black and white and appealed to my sense of what the story is about.