More than just a mixed bag

25^th. April 2020

Quite a mixed week for me one way or another. Pat had her chemo on Monday and by Wednesday she was very ill. She ended up in hospital of course, and I thank God for the way the system works in the case of cancer patients like Pat. Within an hour of calling the emergency ‘bleep’ number, Pat was in isolation, piped up to antibiotics with two nurses and a doctor in attendance. She’s home now, four days later and a whole lot better. Her chemo for next Monday has been postponed for a week. Me and the Tuppence are a lot happier now.

And talking about our dog, I had to resort to giving her a shower, blow dry and a clipping. She was due a full groom on Friday, but because of the lockdown, no grooming parlours are open. She wasn’t keen on my attempts to clip her with the electric trimmer, so I had to resort to snipping off bits of fur where I could get at it. I will try again because I can’t let the poor thing go too long without some sort of attention.

On the book front, I finally finished Scott Mariani’s book and have now downloaded Alex Shaw’s thriller, Cold East. I met Alex two years ago in Worthing at a book event. Since then we have followed each other on Facebook. Alex has just signed a two-book deal with Harper Collins. He is already with that digital outfit and very successful too. I’ll start it sometime this week and let you know what I think,

Joffe Books. Yes, I finally relented and contacted them, asking if there was any progress with Past Imperfect. Its been nine weeks since I uploaded the files they asked for. They said they still wanted to publish my book, but they had a big meeting coming up about their backlists and would be getting back to me. It sounded more like “don’t call us; we’ll call you”. I hope not because it was Joffe Books who approached me and not the other way around. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for that.

My efforts at AMS ads has been abysmal, so I decided to put The Boy from Berlin up on Facebook; see how it went. I launched a fairly straightforward campaign and have sold twelve books in six days. And I am in profit even taking into account the VAT on the ads costs. It’s a very small profit but encouraging to say the least. I need to bite the bullet with AMS and increase my daily budget if I’m to compete with FB, but that will need a lot of thought.

And during the week I got signed up as an official carer for Pat. I have had calls from the two organisations involved and received a card for my wallet in case I end up in hospital unexpectedly. This will alert the emergency services to the fact that I look after Pat. I’ll also be getting a key safe for the outside of the house. Its amazing what kind of services there are out there for people who need them. And we are also being contacted on a regular basis by our church here in Aldwick.

And while Pat was in hospital, it gave me the chance to get on with a lot of the jobs that need doing in the garden: weeding, grass cutting, planting hanging baskets and so on and so forth. I could write a book about it. Wish me luck!