May
10th. 2020
I would like to say this has been a
good week for Pat but I can’t. Since being discharged from hospital, it has
been mostly downhill. We learned that as a result of her CT scan last week, her
final chemo session has been cancelled (not postponed) and the PET scan due
later this month is not going to happen. We have a phone consultation this
coming Tuesday with the consultant when I think he will dot the eyes and cross
the tees for us. We are clinging to the hope that there will be other options.
I’ve already taken Pat off one of her pills because of a problem the haematologist
couldn’t solve for us: something I thought I would never do, but I reckon most
people who have cared long term for a family member would recognise decisions
like this. So now we wait for the outcome of the phone call. Our sleep patterns
are virtually non-existent now, and it usually depends on Pat where and how and
for how long we sleep. I won’t leave her on her own, so when she’s awake, I’m
awake.
I
can say however that I gave both my girls a bath this morning. Neither of them
enjoyed it. Tuppence went mad when I’d finished with the blow drier and had a
crazy run round the house and the garden. I think she was drying herself off.
Thank goodness Pat didn’t try something like that. I wish she could have a run
round the garden though. Tomorrow I might give Tuppence a clipping.
In
my book world I can see the benefit of using Facebook ads over Amazon. Since
the 19th April I have sold 53 books and had 330 page reads. For me
that is phenomenal. I’m still losing money on costs against revenue, but that’s
something I’m prepared to do. For now anyway. I’ve also picked up five sales on
D2D but that may not have anything to do with FB ads. Taking the page reads
into account, the average is about three books a day. Not bad, eh?
My
creative spark has disappeared: it went long ago, and now I don’t even bother
with reading through the training videos on Bryan Cohen’s Amazon Ads School, nor
those on the Mark Dawson SPF 101 course. These are things I may pick up again
in the fullness of time; after all, I have paid for them.
My
current reading, Alex Shaw’s Cold East is difficult. This has nothing to
do with the current situation in the Parker household, nor what is going on in the
outside world: I just don’t feel drawn to the book at all, and only manage a
few pages a day. My other avenue of attraction now is the garden. I’ve done a
lot of weed clearing and have planted seedlings ready to move into those spaces
I have cleared. I’ve also tackled the weeds out front with my hot burner weed killer.
It’s like an elongated hair dryer and burns weeds at 2000 degrees C. But I
still get on my hands and knees to tackle some of the stuff.
Incidentally,
I received an email from David Gaughran: someone I have been following for a few
years having bought one of his self-help books. He’s well known in the book
world. He loves data: uses it a lot to break down the mysteries of the indie
publishing world. He uncovered a strange set of figures from Amazon’s own pages
on the comparison between ‘best-sellers’, and ‘most popular’. He chose the top
ten thrillers and space operas genres, and of all the permutations, only one
book featured in the top ten. The top ten in both categories did not match in a
straightforward, side by side comparison, nor did the publishers, and the only
consistently high publishers were ‘self-published’ in Space Opera. David
Gaughran wondered how Amazon could rely on their own algorithms with those kind
of contradictory figures. Needless to say, none of my books were in there. One
day, maybe. Wish me luck!
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