Jamie and the Tree Troll
a new legend of the South Downs in Sussex
 by
East Chiltington author -
Zsolt Kerekes
Gather round lovers of English folklore and hearken to the lost tale of
the brave young Saxon Aelred Sharpspear and his battle with the Vikings on
Brighton Beach (which wasn't called Brighton in those days) as collected by our
young vegetarian hero Jamie who learned it from another (like he) who lives in
the ancient woods in Clayton, near Ditchling on the South Downs - as written
and preserved in the recently come to light book - Jamie and the Tree Troll - a
new legend of the South Downs in Sussex. (It is meet too for those who warm to
tales of tree trolls, dragons and the correct feeding of log burners.)
"What an imaginative story - to the point it almost seems
a retelling of a true story- or is it? Excellent - thoroughly recommended!"
-
review
(September 2024)
My book - Jamie and the Tree Troll is available in the
following formats.
- public libraries (request digital copies):-
hoopla,
Libby
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Met a reader of my book
the week before Christmas 2024.
"How much of it is true?" -
she asked.
"All of it," - I said.
"Including the tree troll?"
I thought back to 20+
years before when I had been a frequent visitor to my family's house in the
woods on the South Downs.
"Yes," - I replied.
and this is the path which led
Jamie there
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January
28, 2025
Folklore, memoir, mythology or kidlit? Although I wrote it
intending it to be a kids story the feedback I've had regarding my book (Jamie
and the Tree Troll) since publishing it as a proper book (in the summer of 2023)
suggests it crosses genre boundaries, age boundaries too.
How best to
describe it and position it is therefore becoming a fascinating little
challenge.
The logical thing to do is change its listing. So a few
weeks ago I went back to the Amazon web site and tried to change my books'
metatags. Got an error message saying that the same book can't be listed as both
childrensbooks/folklore and adultsbooks/folklore. I had to choose one or the
other.
That left me stumped for a few weeks. Then I tried another
tactic. Will that make my book any the more visible to those who might enjoy
reading it? It's too early to say. But whatever I learn from these experiments
will stand me in good stead when I publish my next novel (the 300 pager) in
2025.
Anyway as you're here already. I hope you'll be brave enough to
try a sample (links are at the top) and decide for yourself.
PS -
another marketing game that indie authors love to dabble with (instead of
writing the new book) is trying to describe their books in a short span of
words. The success of such self promotion efforts, by those who have just
completed an opus of 100 to 300 pages and think that's the right length for it,
is often dismal.
Timing too comes into it. I published my Tree Troll
book at the height of summer with a description which approximates to this...
Jamie
lives in a freezing cold house, surrounded by ancient woods, on the South Downs
overlooking Hassocks and Ditchling. Why are there never enough logs to keep it
warm? ...read
a free sample | |
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how does an independent
author describe their book in a short blurb in a way which gets potential book
buyers interested but doesn't give away key surprise elements?
in my
case - badly... |
It was 2025 - I had
written many short descriptions of my story - Jamie and the Tree Troll - but
wasn't satisfied with any of them for the purpose of promoting my book. Well -
it was more complicated than that... When I had assembled the revised story
for publication in book form in the summer of 2023 I incorporated the best of
these prospective blurb texts into a new prologue in the book itself.
That
left me with a space on the back of the paperback - which I populated with the
2nd best blurb I had written at the time for the ebook (which I published a few
weeks before). But I still needed some blurb to go on websites like Amazon. I
came up with something which was vaguely suitable and I fiddled with these
paragraphs for about 18 months after publication adding a sentence here,
changing a few words there. But whilst all these were readable copy, somehow
they had lost contact with their original purpose:- which was to sell the book.
There
are people who do that kind of thing for a living. It was ironic that I had
been an expert at selling computer technology in words for 30 years as the
editor of several computer tech market guides - but lacked the essential genre
specific awareness to sell my own story. I've written about what may have
contributed to that problem in the blog box above. I had been focused on one
genre - kids books - whereas the reality was my story crossed several book
genre boundaries. So - was I going to pay someone to write a description of my
story? No. I continued my experiment to write different versions of it myself.
Like
most indie authors in the current kindle era I immerse myself in the woes and
joys of self publishing as exemplified the blogs, social media posts and
podcasts of others in the same state - in the hope that I can save time and
learn from lessons and warnings shared by others who have trod the many
diverting paths in this "industry" before.
You may rightly
be thinking at this point - that the idea of "saving time" by
deliberately choosing to spend more time caught up in the ephemeral fascination
of social media - is by definition an aspiration which is delusional.
OK
- I agree. In the SM and podcasty honeypot we're watching all those swirling
colored balls whirl around the same way a baby watches those toys you can place
above their crib. And after a while we forget that we, unlike the baby, have
muscles which should enable us to climb out from under that rotating cot mobile
and get back into doing something more creative in the real world. But sometimes
a bauble which spins out of that morass is just the jack in the box incentive
we need.
I heard various writer podcasts wax lyrically about the
experience of using AI to write book blurbs. The first few times - I thought -
that may be OK for you - if you're happy to let AI into your writing and
editing or (with some tools) if you let the AI swallow your whole book - (which
some can do to spit out the blurb at the end) but I don't have AI in my editor
and I work hard to defend my books' contents from ingestion by AIs.
Then
it occurred to me - what if I just use a web browser interface to an AI and ask
it to mash up a blurb from all the blurbs which I've written and put out on
the web in various websites? Can an AI blend together all the best bits of my
blurbs without having to allow it anywhere near the work itself? What have I
got to lose? On February 3, 2025. I went to perplexity ai - and asked it to
mash up a blurb based on publicly viewable web pages on which I had scattered
various versions of my past blurbs. And this (below) is a rewritten version of
what it came up with. |
Jamie and the
Tree Troll - a new book blurb distilled by Perplexity AI from various blurbs
on the web previously written by the author, and finally tweaked with his
edits
Jamie lives in a freezing cold house nestled in the ancient
woods of the South Downs, surrounded by mystery and magic. When strange things
start happening during family picnics - food mysteriously vanishing from
backpacks - he dismisses his uncle's jocular comment that maybe it's tree
trolls. But something magical does indeed lurk beneath the hill in Underhill
Lane, waiting to be discovered.
This enchanting tale weaves together
local Sussex folklore, Saxon history, and childhood adventure, blurring the
lines between reality and imagination. Explore a world where hidden legends come
to life, and the boundary between myth and truth becomes delightfully uncertain.
Perfect
for readers who love stories that blend everyday life with magical encounters, "Jamie
and the Tree Troll - a new legend of the South Downs in Sussex" offers a
whimsical journey into the mysterious landscape of the South Downs, promising
adventure, history, and a touch of real magic too. |
So the question for me is - do
I use this or not? And if I do use it - then what's the best way?
My
initial thought is - this blurb does indeed read like a blurb - but there is so
much more I could say.
I sigh and remind myself - I should be writing
that new novel rather than wondering how to get readers to read this old story
of mine.
No matter how clever the ad or the blurb...
I said
all those things best in the book. | | |
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December 11, 2024
 I
really didn't expect this. Out of the 4 books I published last year - the one
which has outsold all the others in 2024 has been
Jamie and
the Tree Troll a new legend of the South Downs in Sussex.
I'm
beginning to realise that it has an appeal to adults too. Readers apparently
enjoy its depictions of everyday modern life rubbing frictionlessly alongside
rural folklore and it satisfies a yearning for discovering a lost local
mythology.
My little book won't change your life. But its stories
inside the story may add to the rich store of associations with certain nearby
places in Sussex (in the Hassocks / Ditchling / Clayton / Brighton parts of the
South Downs).
PS - And if you live nearby the
paperback at £4.50
might make a nice warming present for someone at Christmas. (Log fires and the
difficulties of ever getting warm in an old cold house being a significant theme
in the story.)
Zsolt
Kerekes, East Chiltington | |
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I'm more cautious about
swearing in my written work than in conversation because I don't know who's
reading or why.
Came a decisive point in my childrens book - Jamie and the Tree Troll
- when I had to invent a context aware expletive.
"Sizzling
sauropods"
google it and see | |
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Jamie and the Tree Troll - audiobook now available
