Ringing in the changes. 

October was going to be the beginning of a Facebook marketing campaign for my WW2 trilogy, of which Book 3 would be published before the month was out. I’d already been in contact with Lesley Sainty, with whom I agreed to hand over the campaign. I had already provided the details she’d asked for, and we had a Zoom meeting on September 30th. The first campaign would be in the UK and run for 14 days. Then a planned Zoom call after that. I handed over the fee and ad costs and sat back with the pleasant thought that I didn’t have to worry about the campaign for now; time to relax.

I knew that an increasing awareness of my name and books on the internet could mean sales of my other titles. Not in great quantities, but enough to encourage me to start editing those titles I thought might sell. I started with The Eagle’s Covenant (TEC). This book has sold 22,000 copies in ten years. Not many by best-selling standards, but enough for me to begin a read-through and an edit. I used Gemini AI to help me with editing. I must emphasise here that I did not use AI to replace any of my text with a ‘polished version’; I only used it to correct the grammar and spelling mistakes, along with typos, etc.

While I was going through that, I had to upload suggestions to my book cover designer, Nat, at booktypesetters.com so he could come up with a suitable jacket design for Book 3 of my WW2 Trilogy, Shadow Over Paris. He struggled to find the right stock images that could solve the problem I was giving him, so I asked ChatGPT to come up with a suitable book cover. I told it exactly what I wanted, and it produced the perfect result in less than a minute. I sent the image to Nat and gave him the option to use it, which he did. I absolutely love it. I had to declare to Amazon that I had used AI for the image when uploading the cover. The eBook was released on October 11th, but the print copy won’t be available until November 1st. The eBook is already selling well.

Another event was a new website, built for me by my son, Terry. I didn’t know he was doing this, but it is now front-line, so to speak. It is still michaelparkerbooks.com. It’s very good. I know people don’t buy books because an author’s website is ‘brilliant’, but he has done a remarkable job. And on top of that, he created a separate domain for my Emma Carney Romance books. It’s emmacarneybooks.com. Both sites are connected so that you can switch from one to the other. And there is a ‘Contact’ button on both sites so people can get in touch with me.

Some of you may know that I had a Yamaha Clavinova digital piano, which I bought a few years ago. Well, I sold it because I wanted to get back to my first love, the keyboard. I advertised the Clavinova on the Facebook local marketing page, had three enquiries, and sold it to a young couple who were buying it for their ten-year-old daughter. I used the money to buy a Yamaha keyboard and am struggling to understand all the buttons! I have used it to prop up my phone while I make a TikTok video promoting my books. I open the video with a short riff across the keys and go from there. I think I average about 200 views, which I understand is the usual. I’ve had a couple of responses, but it’s unlikely I’ll keep it up.

I had to buy a new laptop. My old HP had been playing me up for some time, so I took it into the local computer shop. It was a bit like the Dead Parrot sketch from Monty Python. The guy looked at it, tried something, and said it was dead. It still responded to some finger poking, but it was beyond hope. So I bought a new laptop. It’s an MSI Notebook.

Halfway through the month, and it was time for another Zoom call with Lesley Sainty. The book sales looked promising, but we decided to switch the campaign to the USA. This will finish at the end of the month when we have another Zoom call and decide where we go from here. So far this month, it’s the 28th today; the total royalties have covered all my costs, and there are a few days left before the campaign ends.

Last day of the month today, and from tomorrow, Lesley Sainty will be running my FB campaigns in the US and the UK. Yesterday was my best day ever with total sales and page reads. Royalties were the highest ever. It’s looking promising, and I’m looking forward to November already. But I need to slow down and reflect; it could all go wrong and leave me out of pocket, although I’m sure Lesley knows what she’s doing.

So, where do I go from here? I’m not writing anything and have no real inclination to do so, but I’m a writer and still have stories buzzing around in my head. I need to step away from chasing the dream and think about more practical things like keeping body and soul together, maintaining contact with family and friends, and staying on top of my domestic duties. However, I did manage to make two trips to Brighton during the week: one to visit my granddaughter, Gemma, and the second to spend time with my eldest son, Vincent, and his wife, Jackie, who were down for a couple of days of R&R.

That’s about it. I’ll post this and then think about all sorts of things I could have told you about, but that would have run into a book-length blog, wouldn’t it? Take care then, and God bless.

 

 It’s all about books. 

When September dawned, I knew it would be a bleak month for my WW2 series, and I was right, but it was what I expected, and I was happy to see sales and page reads bump up the bottom line. I wasn’t advertising, so I could not expect anything else. Instead, I used the month to edit Books 1 and 2, in readiness for the new campaign starting at the beginning of October. I used Gemini AI on Google to check the files for any errors, and what it came up with was an eye-opener. Not only did it correct the usual errors like typos, punctuation, and hyphenated words, it also corrected the French and German spellings and pointed out historical timelines that needed addressing. Although it also offered a ‘polished version’ of the uploaded files, I didn’t use it because I felt it would create a subtle change in my ‘author voice’. I simply went through each correction by hand. It was slow work, but necessary in my view because of the need to offer readers a virtually error-free book, although I doubt whether that would be possible, and there would still be some readers who just want to find fault and give a low review. 

The reason for doing this was because I had a Zoom meeting with a book marketer, Lesley Sainty, on September 30th. I contacted Lesley through the online Company, Reedsy, which I have used before. However, the whole point of this was to hand over the marketing of my series to a professional and let me get on with what I do best, and that is to write. 

Lesley had already done a book audit before the Zoom meeting and highlighted several things I could do on my Amazon product pages and in my KDP pages. She also came up with several ad options for me. We discussed these, and after the meeting, Lesley produced the images she would be using for the ad campaign. It all kicked off on the 2nd of October, and although it’s early days, there is a slight increase in my sales and page reads. Oh, and the daily royalties so far have covered my costs. I know it could all crash and burn, but that’s the chance we take in the world of books. The campaign will end on October 14th, when Lesley and I will have another video call to discuss the next steps. Should be fun. 

I have also started reading through The Eagle’s Covenant, using Gemini to check the errors, etc. The reason I’m doing that is that I discovered, quite unexpectedly while checking my overall book sales, that in ten years I sold 22,000 copies of The Eagle's Covenant. It is my best-selling book so far. Now, I started a sequel a few years ago but gave up on the idea because I couldn’t think of a way to develop it. Once I’d seen the sales figures, I had a long think about it and decided to give it a try. But what I did, rather than trying to come up with some ideas, was to upload the entire book and the sequel I’d started (14000 words) to Gemini and ask it to give me some plot ideas. The speed of response was mind-blowing; it took about three minutes. It produced some incredible plot ideas, choosing individual characters to be placed as good guys or bad guys, and all the usual twist-and-turn stuff that makes a thriller enjoyable. I printed the result out and have six pages of ideas. But despite all that, I’m not completely convinced that I will complete the project. I have a few things going on in my life not related to books that might prevent it. Who knows? 

Added to this is, of course, the upcoming publication of Book 3 in the WW2 series. This will complete the trilogy, and if I am still spending money on Facebook campaigns, and they prove profitable, I may be asked to write another war story. You may wonder who it is that does the asking; it’s usually people who have no idea what it means to sit down and write an 80,000-word novel. But it’s also the little demon who sits on my shoulder and nags away at me to keep on writing. 

My life outside of books is uncomplicated, and much like a lot of people who are in a similar situation to me. I’m battling with my garden and losing, no matter what I do. My domestic duties are the usual round of chores that my lovely wife took care of. I spend my money unwisely, mostly on spur-of-the-moment ideas that often end up in my Room 101, and I keep telling myself that I have to play my piano more. But on the whole I have little to moan about at my age. 

Those of you who have got this far will be reading this on my new website. My son, Terry, built it for me, and also made the trailer for my Shadow Over Paris novel. He’s a clever boy, but what can you expect from someone who was a Harrier pilot in the RAF? He’s still flying, but at a more sedate pace. 

So, that’s it, my blog for September. Hopefully I will have more uplifting and inspiring news in my next blog. Wish me luck!

                                                                                                                               Michael

 Coping and Hoping July Blog 

After a reasonably successful run of sales and page reads, I find myself back down among the bottom feeders, thinking about launching another Facebook campaign, but this time in the United States. I made the mistake of reading Kristin Hannah’s book, The Nightingale. It is set in Occupied Paris, the same as my book, Shadow Over Paris. Wow, what a blisteringly good writer she is, and I’m up against that kind of talent? I did manage to get to No 7 in the top ten, Historical French Fiction category. Kristin Hannah was at No.1, so I was only six places behind her (for a while). 

I finished writing the third book in the Shadow Over Paris series, so the Trilogy is complete. The Word file is with my son, John, who will be reading it for me and checking for typos and errors. No doubt he’ll find a few. Once that’s done, I can ask my cover designer to come up with a jacket as good as all the others he’s done for me. 

Now that I’ve finished writing, I find myself with precious little to occupy my mind. It’s been two months now since I had Tuppence put down. I do miss the little sod and often feel guilty because I made the decision to have her put to sleep; something I struggle to get my head round. 

I spent a few days away; went up to Norfolk for a long weekend at my eldest son, Vincent, and his wife, Jackie’s place. After leaving them, I popped in to see my brother, Jim. While I was there, his son, Colin, brought a young Italian woman to the house. She was called Ludovici (Ludi), and Colin has known her for several years after driving a Medical Wagon around Italy.

Ludi, probably in her late twenties, wanted to know how to get a book published. She had written a Contemporary Literature novel, which she wanted traditionally published. Naturally, I was able to give her a lot of pointers and useful information. It made a pleasant hour for me because I love talking about writing. When I left my brother’s, I went up to Sleaford to spend a couple of nights with my friend, Pauline. 

During the last month I got involved with a book publicist in America who helped improve the way my work appears on search engines like Amazon and Google. It cost me money, and I can’t honestly say I got the bang for my buck I wanted, but maybe that will be a kind of underlying improvement when it comes to my campaigns on Facebook. 

I was approached by email from a woman representing Authors Manuscriptia. (No, me neither). She produced an incredibly detailed history of my career as a writer, even to the fact that I gave up writing to nurse my terminally ill wife. After an exchange of emails, I said thanks, but no thanks. I used Google’s Gemini AI to ask who these people were. They were genuine but lacked results and charged a fee for a pointless document, professionally edited, that would enhance my reputation, not just as a writer, but as a person as well. 

Looking ahead, I have two separate medical conditions that are being looked at, either of which could mean me having to make decisions I’ve no wish to. I’m due to walk my grandson, Adam’s fiancée, Agata, down the aisle on August 4^th, and after that I’ll be going up to Sleaford to bring Pauline down here for a spell — her and her little Chihuahua, Daisy. And the (almost) entire family from Australia, America, Canada and Scotland (England too!), will be here for the wedding. They say they will be popping in to see me as well, even though we’ll be together at the wedding. Should be fun. 

And my current reading? The Women by Kristin Hannah. I’m a glutton for punishment. Wish me luck!

 

 

 

 Writing can be a lonely, soul-destroying business, or it can be fun and uplifting, depending on what kind of writer you are. I know of some writers (not personally) who can knock out a prodigious number of books in a month, and I suspect they are always in a good place, overwhelmed with ideas and probably writing the next book in their heads as they write down the words of their current project. I am like the tortoise in the fable, except I always cross the finish line, but a proverbial country mile behind the hare. But that’s my lot; I am antediluvian, old school, and it usually takes me about a year to complete a book.

 

For my current project, I am over halfway down the road, about 60.000 words into the third book of the Shadow Over Paris series. There’s an old saying, Irish I think, that says “May the road rise up to meet you”. I love that, and I see it in the way I have struggled to come up with a plausible tale for the third book. I reached, not just a roadblock, but a proverbial mountain as I struggled to find a way to interlock all the pieces of the jigsaw I’d scattered along the way and wasn’t sure I would get to bring them altogether to complete the picture. Well, I think I’m on the other side of the roadblock, and I can see daylight.

 

At my current rate of progress, I expect to have the first draft complete, but unedited, by the end of this month (June). But there’s a ‘but’. Isn’t there always? I’ve had two medical appointments for two different things in the last seven days, and each of those means a referral. Just when the sun is beginning to shine, the clouds come over to darken the day. I will still be writing, but I’m not in control now; that will be in the hands of others. However, I still expect to publish the book, hopefully, in November. I’ve chosen that particular month because Shadow Over Paris and the sequel were both published in November (2024 and 2025). It does kind of round it off nicely, and perfect for the build-up to Christmas.

 

I have entered the first book into a Goodreads Giveaway. These are supposed to be an excellent way of attracting readers, and there is a prolific amount on Goodreads. The current giveaway begins today (June 1^st) and runs for 14 days. I will be giving away 20 copies. This may not seem a lot, but I am going on the advice of a professional book publicist. If the giveaway is successful, I could do another, but it costs money. Doesn’t everything? That’s the rub; there’s no such thing as a free lunch, so they say. If you want to try your luck, go on to my website, facing page, and you will see the ‘Widget’ that will take you there.

 

I’m currently running a campaign on Amazon for the book, but I’ve never had any success running campaigns on Amazon. I suck at it, to be honest, but so do a great deal of authors. We can write books, but we cannot as hell, advertise. To do that successfully, you need the help of a professional with the usual costs. But Amazon promoted my book in April (for nothing), and I enjoyed healthy sales during that month. And the upshot is, readers are beginning to buy the sequel. It has actually sold more than the first book this month, because readers want to read it (natch). That’s another good reason for me to get the third book of the trilogy out by the end of the year.

 

On the domestic front, sadly, I had to have my lovely cockapoo, Tuppence, put to sleep. She was terminally ill and had been under treatment for several weeks. It was so sad. Tuppence was the centre of my universe. Now she’s gone and my house is empty. Sometimes my soul feels like that because I no longer have the two girls of my life: my lovely Pat and my lovely Tuppence.

 

But life goes on. I’m having a stall at a car boot sale here on our site this coming Saturday. I’ll have some of my books plus a lot of stuff that I’ve had in my Room 101, wondering what I’m going to do with it all. About ten days after that, I’ll be travelling up to Norfolk for a weekend with our eldest boy, Vincent and his wife, Jackie. Our No.3 son, John, will be there for a day. Then it’s off to Lincolnshire to spend a couple of nights with my long-standing friend, Pauline. While I’m there, I plan to call on my granddaughter, Sarah and her family at RAF Cranwell. Oh, and on my way to Lincolnshire, I will be popping in to see my big brother, Jim, who, unfortunately, cannot do much, so it will be nice to have a chat with him and put the world to rights.

 

So you see, there’s life in the old dog yet, and all the time I’m healthy and fit enough, I will try to maintain that journey as the road comes up to meet me. Wish me luck!

 

                                                                                                       Michael Parker

 May 2026 blog post.

 

Looking back and looking ahead. 

My last blog post was in February, and reading through it, I seem to be quite enthusiastic about my progress in the Indie world of books. But the reality, unfortunately, has been a little different. Although my book, Shadow Over Paris, was doing well, followed by the sequel, I started losing inspiration. And then Amazon sent me an email asking if I would like them to promote my book, free of charge, for the month of April. They’d done this for me in December, same book too, so I wondered what is was about my book that ‘clicked’ with Amazon.

 I used AI to ask what Amazon’s algorithms look for when selecting a book to promote. It came back with eight different reasons, and my book ticked every one of those boxes. During the promotion, I watched the book climb to No 7 in the Historical French fiction category, it nudged itself into the top 20 Historical fiction and came a respectable 70^th or so in Historical literature. It also peaked at 4120 in Amazon’s overall list of titles. This meant I needed to find a way of keeping the balls in the air once the promotion had finished.

And there’s the rub; I was cleverly scammed last year, which left me feeling violated and, let’s be honest, quite stupid to fall for the trickster. This meant that I could no longer trust anyone who contacted me by email, promising to elevate me and my work to a higher place. The majority of them never addressed me by name, it was always ‘Hi author’, ‘Hello’, ‘I read your work (which work?)’, and so on and so forth. I decided it was down to me to run another campaign on Facebook, which was responsible for acquiring over one million page reads for the book in six months. I tried Amazon ads, but I suck at them and achieved nothing. So, where to go from here? 

Quite by chance, I received an email addressed to me but wanting to discuss my book and maybe do some publicity stuff. I returned the email with the words: ‘Not my book’. But the woman wrote back, and from there we exchanged about twenty emails, and in that time, I used AI to check up on the authenticity of this person because I was convinced it was a scam. I looked at other sources as well and now find myself enjoying a small uptick in my sales. She opened my eyes to the mechanics of using the correct keywords etc, changed my blurb, told me to use a recent photo, and then we dived into the dreaded world of Goodreads. Wow, that took some doing, but we finally managed it, and now we will be looking at a Goodreads giveaway, followed by (maybe) a 30-minute Zoom call to see where we go from there. Am I excited? No, not yet, but it’s time for me to up my game and see just how I can reach higher and enjoy some real validation in the world of Indie books.

On a sad note, I had to say goodbye to my ten-year-old Cockapoo, Tuppence. She developed a terminal illness that couldn’t be controlled despite the medication and change of diet. She has been my constant companion since I lost my lovely Pat over five years ago; she has been the centre of my universe, and the reason I couldn’t make any decisions without considering her welfare first. Now she’s gone, and I find myself living in an empty house. I’m going to put a little memorial to her in a pot beneath the bird feeder. That was her favourite place in the garden, and I would often see her sitting there, wagging her tail, waiting for the birds to drop something.

 So, from here? I’m working on the trilogy (slowly) and planning a trip to Norfolk to see my eldest boy and his wife, then my elder brother Jim, followed by a quick trip into Lincolnshire to visit my friend, Pauline. And while I’m in Lincolnshire, I hope to catch up with my granddaughter, Sarah, and her family. So, things are looking up, but I still have mountains to climb.

 Wish me luck!                                                                                Michael Parker

 

 January 2026 Blog post

 Looking up and wondering if...

The beginning of 2026 was the point where I could relax and forget about all the jottings on the calendar for December and the build-up to Christmas, but life gets in the way, and it’s kind of a situation normal again. I often tell people that if you want to put a smile on God’s face, just tell Him what your plans are.

I was looking forward to going to Atlanta again for our great-grandson, Elliott’s 2^nd birthday, and to see the new addition to his family, who is due in April. Boy or girl? We won’t know until April. But I’ve cancelled the trip because they will all be here four weeks later and, yes, they will be coming to Pagham to see me, so I decided to save myself a few thousand quid and cancelled the trip. They will be here for our Grandson, Adam’s, wedding to his fiancée, Agata, in August. 

After a relatively minor op last November, I now find myself having to visit the nurse twice a week to have the dressing changed on my leg. It’s just a giant sticking plaster, but it means marking it up on the calendar. Oh, and the Gardner is here every Thursday for an hour if it isn’t raining. My church House Group started up again, which meant more additions to the calendar. There’s always a book club meeting at Littlehampton once a month. Church itself, etc. So, with God smiling, I’m busy filling up the days. Oh, and I’m planning a trip up to Norfolk in April, then round to my friend, Pauline, in Lincolnshire for a short stay. And in between all that, I’m trying to write a third book in my WW2 series. 

Those of you who read my last monthly blog post will know that I decided to give up writing, having published the sequel to Shadow Over Paris. I just didn’t want to write books anymore. But after a couple of weeks sitting on my bum with nothing to do other than watch TV  (Netflix and football), I knew I had to do something. So, I picked up my virtual pen and began putting together something for a third book. — a Trilogy. 

But there was another reason too. The first of the two books had done very well in the last few months of 2025, bringing in high sales and page reads. I published the sequel in November, and that started selling, slowly at first, but it was beginning to chase after its big brother. And I wasn’t even promoting them. It was obvious what I had to do, so I began a Facebook campaign in the USA and the UK this year. The pick-up was slow at first, but now they are gaining momentum and hitting figures that are putting a big smile on my face. The trick now is to keep those balls in the air and see how far I can push those numbers, although it will mean spending more money on Promotion and Advertising. 

There is also another reason why I knew I needed to write the third book, and that was the unusual interest I was getting from unexpected sources. I get several emails a day promising me they can advance my book, but they are usually web crawlers and robots out for my money. The difference now is that I’ve been approached by a book club called ‘The Paris Story Book Club’, and another club called ‘The Lisbon Raft Book Club’. I was dubious about them both, but no money is involved (yet!); they simply want permission to feature Shadow Over Paris. They both have different ways of doing this, which is too involved to explain here, but it’s another outlet for me to explore and, hopefully, extend my reach into the world of books. 

After writing that piece, I received an email from the Raft Book Club offering to make a video trailer for me at a cost of $100. See what I mean? It often ends in a ‘rider’ to the ‘free’ promotion they are offering. 

For anyone reading this who has no idea of what kind of level I’m at in this game, I can promise you I am still what I call a ‘Bottom Feeder’. I’ve seen sales figures from other authors like me that would make the fictional Gecko of Wall Street weep with envy, and to reach those heights at my current rate of progress would take me years. But I can dream, can’t I? 

It’s late evening on January 31^st as I’m writing this. I’ve just watched an episode of The Lincoln Lawyer on Netflix. I watched the series last year, all 30 episodes. When I think of the screenwriters who knock out script after script, week in, week out, I can only marvel at the way they can produce story lines that help keep Series like that at the top. I suppose it has to be said of the Soaps as well, but I do despair at the dross some TV Dramas peddle out at times. But then, I’m not a screenwriter; I would probably find it hard, particularly as it takes me a year to write a book. On the other hand, maybe… 

Anyway, back to earth. I’ve just ordered a non-fiction paperback about the French Resistance during WW2, so it looks as though this could give me something gritty and near the knuckle to include in the third book — as if transporting and murdering Jews wasn’t enough! We’ll see.

 

Wish me luck!

 

 End of year blog 2025

 

Today is the last day of 2025; time to reflect, to look back, and to look forward. My year has been a mixture of highs and lows, although I prefer to think of the latter as ‘not so high’. There are two significant highs, one of which was my trip to Atlanta to help celebrate our 5^th great-grandson, Elliott’s first birthday. The other was a long weekend in Prague to help our Grandson, Adam, celebrate his 40^th birthday. Both events were helped by the addition of several members of the Parker family. In Atlanta, they came from Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In Prague, the same crowd turned up, plus others from Scotland and, of course, England. It isn’t necessary to name them all, but in Atlanta, there were five of us to help swell the numbers, and in Prague, there were an additional twelve. Brilliant. My trip to Atlanta included a ball game — Baseball at the home of the Atlanta Braves. I thoroughly enjoyed it but didn’t have a clue what was going on, not that it mattered.

 

The Prague visit in December was an eye-opener. I’ve told people that the place was like a Netflix Christmas RomCom; there were Christmas decorations everywhere. I stayed in an upmarket Airbnb with my family and the baby, Elliott. I did a lot of walking, had some tram rides, and a River Cruise. And the weather was sublime. All in all, a lovely time.

 

The ‘not so highs’ were really all about my health. It seemed to go downhill after my Atlanta trip. It could have been my age or the fact that my lifestyle changed considerably for a couple of weeks, enough to knock me for six. But what the hell, I recovered. It took time, but I got there. Until Prague! It’s almost de rigeur these days that airline travel will come with some kind of bug, and that’s what happened to me. It took two consecutive courses of antibiotics to get rid of my chest infection. But I am back to normal now. Well, my kind of normal.

 

The run-up to Christmas was very busy and, I have to admit, made me a bit downbeat at times. But that’s all down to my age and lengthy recovery periods. Now that it has passed, I can look ahead to some unhurried routine stuff (after taking down the decorations and tidying up!).

 

In my world of books, I achieved a few high points, which put a huge smile on my face. My WW2 story, Shadow Over Paris, started taking off once I advertised it on Facebook in March. It reached the top 10 in Historical French Fiction and managed to creep high up into the top 100 of Historical Fiction. And to finish the year off, Amazon chose to promote it for the whole of December in America and Canada at no cost to me. That will finish today as will my own promotion for the UK.

 

Another high in my book world was finishing the Sequel: ShadowOver Paris – Beyond Midnight. It has been out for two months now and is picking up sales and page reads, chasing its big brother up the charts.

 

But then comes a ‘Not so high’ — I’ve decided to give up writing. I made the decision after publishing the Sequel because I found it such hard work that I wondered if I would ever get to the end. And now I seem to have run out of steam and inclination. I realise that I will never achieve what the majority of writers aspire to, and that is bestseller status. I know that if I were to achieve that, a lot of people would want a piece of me, want me to do a speaking event and book signings, etc., which would mean travel. Interviews? Expectations? It isn’t difficult to imagine, but at my age (I’m 84), that isn’t what I want. I might have done twenty years ago, but not now; I just need a quiet life. (But we’ll see).

 

So, what’s to come for Michael Parker next year? There are two significant events: Taryn in America is expecting and due to have her baby in April. That will be our sixth great-grandchild. I’m planning to go to Atlanta in July for Elliott’s second birthday and to see the baby. I’m not concerned about how tiring it will be; I just want to be there. And the other significant event for me is our Grandson, Adam, and his fiancée, Agata’s wedding in August. Agata has asked me to walk her down the aisle, which I will be honoured to do. I’ve got to keep fit for that — no health issues.

 

I will be planning some kind of advertising for my WW2 books in 2026, but I will need to keep a close eye on the cost. My campaigns this year saw me running at a small loss each week while the campaigns were running, but the aim was to push the books and my name. The result meant that once the campaigns had finished, the books, including some of my other titles, managed to garner sales and page reads, leaving me in profit for the year and put a big smile on my face.

 

So, that’s my offering for what has passed and what might come. And you never know, I night even become a best-selling author. Really?. Wish me luck

 

Happy New Year to all of you, even those who have given me one-star reviews (at least you bought my book!). See you in 2026.

                                                                                                                   Michael Parker