Cruise Control

June 30^th.

It all began in Juneau; panhandle capital of Alaska. That’s where my
first novel, North Slope, opened. And
that’s one of the reasons we wanted to cruise Alaska: to see just what it was
like. Although my book was published thirty five years ago; a curiosity about
the country has always been part of mine and Pat’s life. Pat’s more so than
mine. As an author, I suppose it’s natural to forget about the places in which
the stories are set, but for Pat it meant so much more: her husband’s first
novel. So we set sail, not like the gold diggers of the nineteenth century, but
like modern day pioneers, well cossetted on our magnificent cruise ship, the
Ruby Princess and headed north to Alaska. And what an amazing place it turned
out to be. What helped me was that I started reading James Michener’s book
about Alaska; it’s history and the gratuitous violence from settlers, fortune
hunters, pirate sea captains and other so-called entrepreneurs that coloured
and stained the birth of a magnificent country. But as they say: its all
history now. We saw huge, snow-capped mountains, glaciers, floating ice: some
as big as a small lorry. We didn’t see any whales but could have done if we had
gone on a whale watching cruise as some of the passengers did. We met some
lovely people, had a lot of fun, walked our legs off and just soaked up the
history and natural glamour of the place.

One thing I didn’t do was write; it was the furthest thing from my mind
really (metaphorically speaking). I kept an eye on my book sales though until I
lost the Wi-Fi connection to my phone. After that I didn’t worry too much about
whether I’d sold a book or not. But now we are back in harness so to speak, I am
about to catch up with most aspects of my literary world, not least putting
another promotion in place. I also have to make contact with Kim’s Bookshop in
Chichester where she has on display several books from the CHINDI group: the
local writers group of which I am a member. I will be taking a couple of my
titles in with me to replenish any of mine that have been sold.

This coming weekend we are off to a wedding. We’ll be travelling up to
Norfolk on Friday, returning Sunday. Hopefully after that I will then be able
to settle in to a writing routine and make progress with my latest book. I’m
65000 words in so far, and still don’t know how it will end. That’s probably a
good way of writing a thriller. We’ll be seeing some old friends of ours who
were our neighbours in Spain for about eleven years. They moved back to UK last
year, so we’ll have a bit of catching up to do. We’ll also be seeing another of
our Spanish friends, Kath & Don, who we’ve known for about seventeen years
now.

Along the domestic front are the usual hospital appointments, dental
appointments, gardening to catch up on and a host of other things that most
people deal with during the normal, everyday lives.

On the book front; my subscription list is still growing. It is now
about 265. My free title The Eagle’s
Covenant is still downloading daily. The average has dropped to about sixty
a day, but it still manages to pick up excellent reviews. I won’t read my
reviews, of course, and I do know that not everyone will like my style of
writing, but my average rating for that book is still holding 4 stars; so I’m
happy with that.

Next thing for me to do is download the photos of our holiday from the
camera to the PC and put some of them on Facebook. Oh, I almost forgot: on the
day we boarded our cruise liner, the Ruby Princess, we wandered around the ship
to familiarise ourselves with everything. We found ourselves in the Wheelhouse
Bar; an English pub. It was empty which gave us a chance to look around the
place. On the walls were a lot of pictures in frames: all neat and tidy. But
there was one picture that stood out. It had pride of place and was larger than
the others. It was of an old ship. When I saw it, there was something about the
single, yellow funnel that stood out. I went over to it and couldn’t believe
it: the ship was the Chusan. This was the ship I had served on in 1958/59 as a
steward. I got so excited, I was like a school kid. Naturally I took several
photos of it and will be posting the best one on FB. It brought back so many
memories of my time as a merchant seaman and my travels around the world as a
young lad. Great stuff! See you all next week.

Time for a break: cruising away from choppy writing hang-ups

June 17 2015

Tomorrow we are off
to Alaska for a seven night cruise, flying from Heathrow to Seattle. Three
nights in Seattle and then board the Ruby Princess on Sunday. Am I looking
forward to it? Well, it’s a long way to go for a week’s cruising, but I’m sure
the trip will be enjoyable. Not so sure about the 13 hour flight. We’ve done
the 24 hour flight to Australia, which was a pain. Always is when you fly
economy. We did fly business class once. What a difference, eh? Can’t do that
again unless I sell more books or win the lottery. But selling books is
something of a lottery: some writers crack it, others don’t. My sales have
increased slightly to about 3 a day. The average is probably slightly below
that, but who’s going to argue? Since starting my subscriber campaign with
MailChimp on March 14^th. I have seen a steady increase in the
subscription rate and the daily sales. I now have about 216 subscribers, and
all the time that figure keeps increasing, I can expect, hopefully, an increase
in my sales. But how do I keep the faith with all of them? There is a great
deal of advice on how to sell and increase your reviews out there on the web.
The trick is to pick the right one. When we get back from our holiday (we also
have to travel up to Norfolk for a wedding) I hope to be able to knuckle down
and start promoting as well as finishing my current WIP. I have reached 63,000
words and am now at that big hurdle known as writer’s block. The problem isn’t
really finishing the story, but making it as intriguing and fast paced as you
can without just tapering off to a kind of ho-hum so what ending. I’ve managed
to put three of my characters into a situation that I never intended should
happen, and that has kind of thrown me a curved ball: where do I go from here
and what do I do to get these characters back in line? Ah, but I’m the creator
of this intriguing piece of fiction, so I should have no trouble continuing
with the story and taking any path I choose. I could even re-write the whole
thing, but would that solve my problem? Believe it or, I began this book in
2011 — four years ago. In that time I have shelved it, written a full length
novel (Past Imperfect) which was published in hardback and Kindle this year,
had cancer, gone through chemo therapy, sold our house in Spain, moved into rented
accommodation and finally arrived back in England eight months ago. And now I’m
struggling with a WIP that my common sense tells me I should have thrown in the
bin four years ago. But writers aren’t sensible people, otherwise they wouldn’t
write. So why do I do it? Because I’m a romantic; I’m a story teller. I’m still
a kid who makes up stories. And that’s the rub: I can’t stop myself. I will
carry on until I drag myself over the finishing line with a completed novel in
my hand and wonder why I ever doubted the process. Wish me luck! See you all in
about a month’s time.

Measured Progress

June 6^th.
2015

Where did
the week go? Ever felt like that and wondered where it all went? Monday began
with a hospital appointment for Pat, but that evening I went to a meeting of
the CHINDI group to talk about our writing, our promotions and the forthcoming
events that all help to get us out into the public domain. You can read about
the writers group and the work they do on their website http://www.chindi-authors.co.uk. The next, forthcoming attraction for us is the Festival of
Chichester. This is a celebration of the rich and varied talent that can be
found in this ancient city. The festival covers all aspects of the arts and
gives people like me an opportunity to showcase our talents. (I do have some, I’m
sure!)

I’ve
managed to add a few more words to my WIP, and have increased my word count to
just over 60,000. Being over half-way is something of a bonus for me because I
began to doubt whether I would ever get there. It won’t increase by much more
over the next couple of weeks, and then there will be a pause because we are
going on a two week break cruising Alaska. We fly into Seattle for a few days
and then cruise for seven nights. Back to Heathrow twelve days later. Then a
wedding, but that’s in July.

I am
managing to sell a few books. Not many, but I am averaging a little over one a
day. This is more than I managed in the early part of the year. I put all this
down to the course I’ve been doing with Nick Stephenson and having a
subscribers list courtesy of MailChimp. If I can keep it going and supplement
it all with promotion, I would hope to improve my sales figures progressively
and with a good rate of increase. We’ll see.

I keep an
eye on my sales rank on Amazon daily, and have seen it taper off slowly to well
below 400,000 over the last few weeks despite the fact that I was selling books
on KDP (Amazon). I contacted them and asked why my sales rank was falling and
ignoring the fact that I’m selling? I received a text book reply from them
which told me nothing, but when I checked my rank after that, it had rocketed
to under 60,000. And I had no sales that day! Makes you wonder just how
efficient Amazon’s algorithms are. Or perhaps someone in the office felt sorry
for me and pushed my rankings up.

I’m still
battling with self-publishing. My latest print book came from Ingram Spark and
it was a total disaster. It was uploaded during their Spring event, which meant
publication was free. I have had to upload again, but this time it will cost
me. The annoying thing is that when I looked at the files I used, they are not
the ones Ingram Spark used. Now, you might think I’ve got it wrong, but this
happened a couple of months ago with another title. When I complained they told
me they only print the files uploaded by the customer. Can’t argue with that,
of course, but there is no redress if you know that the error is theirs. One of
the joys of self-publishing, I suppose. But I’ve uploaded the “correct” files
and have had to pay $50. I probably won’t even sell that many print books to
cover the cost. Why bother? Because I’m still in the game and like what I do.
Wish me luck!