Out and about

June 11th. 2017. We’re in a pickle now here in UK. Teresa May’s spectacular failure would make a good novel. House of Cards anyone? Can’t see it having any impact on my book sales though, no matter whether we have a left or right wing government, and whether the Brexit negotiations go well, people will still want to read (and eat!). Looking ahead to exciting times. A strange thing happened last week. I received an e-mail from a potential subscriber to say she couldn’t download the free copy of The Devil’s Trinity. It was something to do with the link I use to AMS. So I put the book free on Instafreebie and gave her the link. Within a couple of days four copies had been downloaded. I cancelled the giveaway. Bearing in mind this subscriber was the ONLY person who was given the link, I have to assume it was passed on, or Instafreebie have a leaky website. I’m still busy going through my titles and trying to rationalise it all. It’s only recently that I have come to the conclusion my paperbacks should all be the same size, so to that end I am republishing them, one at a time, at a common size. I am also just about getting the uploads right with Amazon. I have one more title on its way, but from the “Look Inside” feature, the replacement file hasn’t been used. At least I can send it back. I sent an e-mail out to my subscribers last week extolling the virtues of North Slope. I told them a little story about the good news I received from my agent all those years ago and also told them I had dropped the price to £0.99. Within a day I sold nine copies. Not many you might say, but my averages bump along the graph at about 1.5 books a day. So a jump to nine copies really put a smile on my face. I’ve finished working my way through the old manuscript my sister passed on to me. I wouldn’t publish it as it is; far too weak. But I’m thinking of re-writing it as a standard, all action thriller: a kind of novella maybe, and written in the style of an Andy MacNab book. Not that I could emulate the master of that genre, but I could give it a good try. Might sell a few if I get it right. There’s nothing on the calendar for next week, so I’ll wing it for a while and perhaps make a start on it. I have sent an email off to Harlequin Books in Canada about the two novels they published for me five years ago. The lease on them has expired, so now I need confirmation so I can publish the paperbacks for sale in North America. I still don’t have the eBook rights to one of them, which is a pity. I’m looking forward to next week when my book group, CHINDI (www.chindi-authors.co.uk) will be taking part in the Chichester Festival. My contribution will be a Crime seminar. There will be three of us (Christine Hammacot and Helen Christmas) giving the low-down on writing a crime novel. We have five events lined up for the week including a ghost tour, a quiz evening, a workshop on publishing and a talk by one of our successful writers, Jane Cable. I have a couple of promotions this week. Not the selling books type of promotion. I’ll be featured on Karen Ingall’s website (http://www.kareningallsbooks.com), and will also be the subject of an interview (June 22nd) on Malcolm Richard’s blog (http://www.malcolmrichardsauthor.com). Hope to sell more books and attract more fans. Wish me luck!