Ranting &; Writing

Has anyone noticed how nasty the world is these days? It’s so depressing reading the banner headlines of the newspapers, and seeing TV reports of corruption, riots, suicide bombings. Football in UK is disgracing itself with racist chanting and thuggery on the terraces. Chelsea football club accuse a referee of being a racist, with absolutely no proof whatsoever, and then refuse to apologise when the accusations are thrown out by the police and football’s governing body, the FA. In Italy the so-called Ultras attack a group of British fans with iron bars and knives for no reason other than they were Tottenham supporters. The Egyptian president is claiming more draconian powers for himself, Europe is crumbling and America approaches a fiscal cliff that can only be stopped by the two opposing parties agreeing in Congress, but they won’t come together for political reasons. Poor old Joe Public, what’s he going to do? What can any of us do? Nothing really, other than hope and pray that God will raise up true statesmen who will knock heads together and bring some calm and peace to this world.

So, after that little rant, what next for Michael Parker’s literary progress? Not a lot at the moment. I am working on my 1984 hardback, THE SHADOW OF THE WOLF, which I hope to have ready for Amazon in the New Year. I did hope to have it finished by Christmas, but looking at my ‘social’ calendar, it seems unlikely. I will be doing some promoting over the next few weeks because I am planning to put my titles on Amazon Select for the Christmas period. Hopefully this will give my rankings a lift as we go into 2013. My books are currently abseiling down the rankings cliff with little sign of recovery, and unless I pull the proverbial finger out, the slide will continue.

I know it’s natural for writers to believe in their own work, and I’m no different. I genuinely believe that I am a good wordsmith, a good story teller, and believe my books should reach a wider audience. Unfortunately for me, and hundreds like me, I am caught in what has been loosely called the ‘literary slush pile’. And one of the several problems we have to contend with is reviews. Not so much the lack of them but the way in which they are engineered in order to persuade the unsuspecting reader that a particular book is worth reading. I downloaded a Kindle book last week because the author offered it on Twitter and Goodreads. The ‘reviews’ were good and made the book look promising. It was a first novel too. I decided to buy it because it was a first timer, remembering how I was when I had my first book published. I struggled with the book, which was supposed to be a thriller. It was formulaic, the punctuation was appalling and it was like a clone of fast acting, best-selling thrillers. I gave up halfway through. And this is the trouble: my kindle books will probably be ignored by a lot of readers because of the number of times they have fallen for the ‘review’ and the spiel that has been printed alongside the glossy jacket. I can only rely on word of mouth and keep plugging away in the hope that my name and my titles will se the light of day. Wish me luck!

Promotion and Recession

In the never ending quest for success, recognition, popularity and sales, the author group I belong to, Acclaimed Books Ltd., is still searching for the Holy Grail. We’ve tried a number of things, none of which have really helped to push the boat out, but we have been trying. And you can only fail if you don’t try. So we are exploring new avenues, one of which is a kind of e-zine; a magazine on line. We still struggle independently of course; all trying to attract readers to our titles, but our collective conscience is beating steadily alongside those independent promotions. With luck we will have come up with that one idea that lifts us up closer to the top of the pyramid.

I will be promoting five of my six titles around Christmas on Kindle Select. Why only five? Because No.6, THE BOY FROM BERLIN, is still under contract to my publisher, Robert Hale. They have released it as an e-book, so my promotion for that is simply a side-show to whatever promotion my publisher comes up with. For the other five though, I may try a blitz approach at Christmas and put them all on a freebie on Amazon’s Select programme.

 I haven’t got any further forward with my podcast recording of HELL’S GATE, but that isn’t an immediate problem. When our administrator at AB.c, Peter Lihou comes up with a test version of the e-zine, I expect we’ll all pile in and get our recorded word on-line. I’m looking forward to it. This is one of the plus parts of being an indie writer; trying different ways of promoting, which means a ‘hands on’ involvement. And the results could be attributable to the amount of effort I put into it.

I expect to be getting on with preparing SHADOW OF THE WOLF for Amazon. It means copying the book using a scanner, and then tidying it up and saving it as a Word document before converting it to Kindle. It could be a long process, but as it’s a relatively short book, about 190 pages, it’s up to me. I am thinking of increasing the word count as I go through the book, simply to give my readers a bit more for their money. Not too much though; I might spoil the flow.

I won’t get a great deal done tomorrow because of some work I have to do at our church (technical stuff), and I’ve no idea how long I’ll be there. Tomorrow morning we are visiting a sick friend, which will take up most of the morning. Oh, and because the chemists are on strike here in the Alicante region of Spain, I will be queuing up at our local chemist who is due to open for one day tomorrow. This is what recession does to countries. Here in Alicante, the chemists haven’t been paid for the medicines they stock since April 15^th. It’s a scandal. And I have to say that there’s no doubt that the political leaders who are responsible for this have been paid their salaries. See you next week!

Another String to My Bow

There are days when you get so busy you forget to do the things that could be important. And writing a weekly blog is important because there is always the chance that you might strike a chord with someone, which could lead to an improvement in your name as a writer and consequently your sales. I’ve been learning to record myself reading a section from HELL’S GATE today. This is because of a plan we have at Acclaimed Books to launch a magazine next year. This will be for a trial of three months, and hopefully we will be able to serialise our books during that time. The plan is to podcast a chapter each week. In my case I will be reading from HELL’S GATE. The trouble is; I don’t like the sound of my own voice, and I don’t think I want to go through the expense of paying a ‘professional’ to do it for me. But anyway, it will be a bit of fun and I will be learning another technique and adding another string to my bow.

Last week I was pleased to see THE DEVIL’S TRINITY on Kindle, which gave me six titles on Amazon. This title though will be available on other on-line outlets. I am particularly pleased with the book jacket, which my son Terry designed for me. There is something about a design that immediately catches the eye and draws a potential reader to the book. I believe my son has a creative skill and I’ve always been well pleased with the designs he has come up with for my books, and I think this one really is the business.

I met up with Nik Morton today. Nik is a prolific author and editor. We usually meet up for a coffee about once every three months. Nik writes Western novels mainly, but also pens thrillers. All his Western titles have been published by Robert Hale of London under the name of Ross Morton. For those of you who like this genre, why not give Nik a look? You can Google him. Or catch him at www.freewebs.com/nikmorton

One thing all of us indie authors hope for of course is good sales figures. I check my rankings each day on Author Central and get a lift when I see my rankings rocket upwards. It is usually the sale of only one book that achieves this, but it always puts a smile on my face. At least my rankings aren’t in a continuous, downward spiral. I’m hoping that with six titles on Amazon now, I will be picking up more readers. And today I laid the first stone for my next title (already in hardback), SHADOW OF THE WOLF. Might have that ready by Christmas, but probably will see it out in the New Year.

And one other, small project I’m on is preparing a sermon for a small church up the coast from here at Pilar de la Horadada. I’ve preached there several times before, and I’m looking forward to November 25^th. when I’ll be there again. Wish me luck!

Begin again

Bonfire night in UK. I can remember as a young boy in London making a ‘guy’ and taking it out into the streets with my brothers and friends asking passers-by for a “penny for the guy”. What money we collected would be spent on fireworks. All that effort eventually going up in smoke. I can’t imagine allowing all the energy I expend in my writing to go up in smoke, although I sometimes wonder what makes a writer do the metaphorical equivalent. When I see my efforts disappearing without trace, I tend to be a little philosophical about it and accept that it is part of a writer’s lot: not always getting the success he or she hoped for or expected. When I had my first novel published in 1980 by Macmillan of London (one of the big, publishing houses), I thought I had made it: I was going to be a full time, best-selling author. Now, many years later I find myself still spending a great deal of time as a writer, but still not hitting the heights that I once dreamed of. But I’m not disheartened, and in fact I believe that there is more to come for me, providing I can establish a readership among the on-line readers who search the categories for their kind of novel.

I am currently reading a 50 page booklet (PDF) about selling eBooks. It’s about marketing and promotion, and what you need to do in order to avoid the many traps that inexperience brings. And I don’t mean inexperience in writing, but in marketing and promotion. A year ago I embarked on a campaign, if that’s the right word of blogging and social networking. I read all the right articles and a couple of advice books, but realized after several months that I was pouring my energies into a big, black hole. Now it looks as though I am about to renew my efforts as I bring my latest offering, THE DEVIL’S TRINITY to Amazon and other, on-line outlets. And coupled with the launch of THE BOY FROM BERLIN this month as an e-book by my publisher, it will mean I will have six titles of mine available. I still have two titles to go, so maybe that readership I long for will now start growing. Wish me luck!