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!