Saturday 13 June 2020

Behind the scenes


13th. June 2020.

I watched the ITV documentary ‘Living with Dementia’ this week featuring Ross Kemp talking to two families who are living with the curse of knowing their loved ones have this disease. I was able to recognise the early signs that I see in Pat, and I’m caught up in the dilemma that is familiar to so many people who have gone through it. Pat’s cancer may take her first before her mind becomes so confused she has to go into full time care and suffer all that entails, but what do I hope for? Whatever way the coin lands, we lose. All I can do as time progresses is to make sure I look after Pat completely and totally.


Have you ever been on the cusp of something? I feel as though I’m on the cusp of some fairly good book sales, but I don’t know how to make sure the numbers grow. My Facebook campaign has resulted in nineteen sales of The Boy from Berlin so far this month, while the legacy of a cross promotion I shared at the beginning of the month for No Time to Die, has resulted in fifteen sales. Meanwhile, on D2D I have sold seven books so far. All told that’s forty-one, which is just over three a day: better than last month. I’m still not making a profit, but I’m quite close. However, it could all taper off unless I find a way of “scaling up”. There are several ways of doing this, and invariably means spending more money, buy at least it has given me something to work on and hope I can lift the graph and end up with a smile on my face.

In a couple of weeks’ time I’ll be promoting a fellow CHINDI author, Isabella Muir, who has written a crime mystery set in West Sussex. I can’t give the title of the book yet because it happens to be the same as a best-seller I downloaded at the beginning of the week and am still reading. It’s an eBook written by a retired policeman, but it isn’t a thriller; more a resumé of his career in the Met. I’m enjoying the book despite it having a lot of statistics in it about crime. One thing I can say though, as a result of reading the book, I know that the violent demonstrations that are going on in London will be policed in such a way that the public will be unaware of the enormous effort that goes on behind the scenes while the violence is perpetrated by the zealots.

And on the subject of fellow CHINDI authors, I must congratulate Angela Petch whose book sales have passed the 100,000 mark. It’s great to be in the company of some stellar writers. Hopefully some of the stardust will rub off on me.

Most of you will know that I stopped writing last year so I could spend more time with Pat. The desire to write didn’t go away, but the inclination did. I’ve become used to the idea now, but last night I found myself considering an entry into Amazon’s yearly competition for the best eBook of the year. It has to be self-published on Amazon by the end of August. I did some simple maths. One thousand words a day would get me to August 12th for a 60,000 word novel. That would leave less than three weeks for editing, cover design, etc. before submitting it to KDP on or before the last day in August. It’s possible, except that I haven’t got a clue what to write, and doubt very much if I could even challenge the entries that usually win this kind of prize. I don’t watch much TV now, so would have no excuse about lacking the time. I’m not on the go all day long and do have my quiet times (when I’m usually asleep). So maybe it would give me something to focus on alongside the need to watch over Pat. Who knows? I may even do it. At least it would mean another book to add to my growing list. Wish me luck!

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