Upsides and downsides

July 23rd. 2016 The sun is shining here in Bognor and I have a lousy viral infection. Can’t write, don’t want to write, and know that as an author I should ignore the pain and get on with it. But it shouldn’t be too long before I’m back in the game once the antibiotics kick in. You get days like that, don’t you? But what has been happening on the upside is that I have passed the 1000 subscribers mark! Time for a celebration. The next target must be 2000, but that’s a long way off. It’s a bit scary, you know, having 1000 people out there. I feel that they are my responsibility, although I know they are not. But what is the point of trying to get a burgeoning list if there’s nothing there for them? I know of some writers who have thousands of subscribers, and it makes me wonder how they keep them faithful. I also wonder if the top writers have subscriber lists. I can’t imagine they do; their name is a big enough draw anyway. I said last week that I was thinking of tweaking my Facebook advert. I tried and failed miserably. No doubt I’ll have to wait until my brain is functioning properly and try again. Nest week, July 30th, six of us in our CHINDI group will be putting up a bookstall at the Rox Music Festival in Bognor. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it, having a bookstall while all that rock music is going on? But it’s all about being in the public eye and reminding people who you are and what you do. I would like to say that I expect to sell loads of books, but my experience tells me I will be lucky to sell a couple. But we try. Today, the Daily Mail published the result of its First Novel competition. A young woman won the prize with her first book. She beat the other five short list candidates. All of them were women! I started watching the American TV series, ‘Breaking Bad’ on Netflix this week. My eldest son has just finished the box set, said it was brilliant. I often find myself envying the writers of scripts like that (The Sopranos of course), and wonder what kind of thriller writers they are, if indeed they are writers. To produce something as clever as that, you need a good team around you. It puts our singular efforts into perspective, and I suppose most of us would like to see a film made of at least one of our books. I did manage to get my title, The Eagle’s Covenant into the hands of Judy Coppage some years ago. She was responsible for bringing Die Hard to the screen. She liked the book but thought the location would not be attractive to American audiences. The book is set in Germany and uses German police procedures throughout. I did live in hopes. And so we press on. Maybe one day I’ll hit the big time and see my work up there on the silver screen. Wish me luck!