Mixing it with books and people

October 25^th. 2015

An end to an eventful week in which I made some progress
with Ingram Spark, my current ‘work in progress’ (WIP) and more or less being
forced to buy a few copies of my latest paperback as a ‘fall back’ position.
I’m trying to achieve a successful upload for my paperback with Ingram Spark,
and I’m hoping I can use their print copies for my book launch in November.
Without going into details, I have had technical problems, which took a long
time to sort out, but now I am waiting for them to let me have a look at a
digital proof copy. If it looks OK, I can order one and, fingers crossed, get
more sent before November 13^th. If it looks unlikely, I’ll order a
quantity from CreateSpace in UK.

I have ordered postcards from Vista Print. These are the front and back
of my book. I’ll put these around the room when we have our book launch on the
13^th. Should be here this week. Tomorrow evening we have a rehearsal
for the book launch at Woodies in Chichester. That will be fun, but absolutely
necessary to make sure we get things right on the night. After last weekend
when we had the W4W event, I have more confidence in CHINDI’s efforts to
promote our books.

As for the WIP, I have edited about 2/3 of the MS. According to my
software programme, I have analysed 1.4 million words, although I have only
edited 62000 in reality. It feels like it sometimes, but with luck I will have
completed the edit by the end of this month, then I’ll print it out for Pat to
read through. I have also come up with an idea for a book jacket. Once I’ve
finished the WIP, I can begin on that. If I can crack all the minor problems, I
expect to be close to a book launch in January. By then I’m hoping to have
mastered advertising on Facebook, and will spend something on that. If I get it
right, it should give my sales a real boost.

Last Thursday I gave a book talk at our local, cancer drop-in centre at
Tavern House in Chichester. I sat with about six people and talked about books,
how to publish them and the problems that can be encountered as well as the
ease with which we can all become published writers these days. I like to think
I encouraged them. I know they were there because they wanted to listen to a
chat on writing. Three of them had actually put pen to paper but had never
believed they could get anything published, or that it was worth even trying. I
changed their minds on that score. I won’t be back at the centre for at least
eight or nine months, if I’m invited of course, so I’ll never hear how much I
influenced them. I did tell them about our OBL on the 13^th. A couple
of them seemed interested.

Tonight (and again next week), there will be a webinar with Mark Dawson
and Joanna Penn on Facebook advertising. If you can believe everything you hear
about FB advertising, then this time next year I’ll be a millionaire. Wish me
luck!

Happy Times

October 19^th. 2015

Three weeks now since I wrote my last blog entry and a lot of water has
passed under the bridge since then. Two weeks of those three we spent in Spain,
visiting our old haunts and seeing a lot of our old friends. The majority of
those were at Torrevieja Christian Fellowship (TCF), while others were close
friends of ours outside the church. It was great to see everybody and an
absolute joy to share our time with them all. I picked up a chest infection
while we were there, and am now on anti-biotics. Hopefully it will soon be
gone. When we got back it meant a lot of catching up to do on-line and dealing
with stuff that couldn’t be sorted in Spain. But a big event we had to look
forward to was a weekend raising money for the charity Words for the Wounded.

Words for the Wounded was founded about four years ago by the
best-selling author, Margaret Graham. Patrons of the charity include Julian
Fellowes (Downton Abbey) and Paddy Ashdown (former Liberal Democrat MP) The
idea behind it was to help authors publicise their work while raising money for
the wounded servicemen. The charity is fairly well established now, and almost
all the money raised goes to the servicemen.

The event kicked off at Woodies restaurant in Chichester where a lunch
was held together with the opportunity to buy books published by the Chichester
Independent Writers (CHINDI). All the authors donated a large percentage of
their sales to the charity. Margaret opened the meeting with a brief summary of
how she founded the W4W and also something about herself. There were about
fifty people there. After lunch the main speaker was introduced. This was
Elizabeth Buchan, a Sunday Times best-selling writer and a member of the Costa
Book Awards judging panel. Her talk was funny, entertaining and packed with one-
liners that resonated with all of us.

In the evening we had a party at a local pub in Chichester where more
money was raised with donated prizes being raffled. This was well attended. And
the following morning, Sunday, we had a ‘Book Swap’ breakfast at Carluccio’s in
Chichester. This went down really well and many of us managed to sell some
books, (me included!) The whole event raised £903 for the W4W charity: a
magnificent achievement and a feather in the cap of two of our CHINDI writers,
Jane and Chris for organising and managing the event.

Having almost reached the end of the year, CHINDI still has one more to
go: the One Big Launch (OBL). This will be another fun evening of entertainment
and books. Nine of us are launching our latest paperbacks. Should be fun. It
has been a massive learning curve for me and other members of the group. No
doubt we will have learned a great deal which should stand us in good stead for
next year. Meanwhile it’s back to reality and more writing. Wish me luck!