Rolling On

December 16th. 2017 My little dog, Tuppence made the weigh-in satisfactorily. She needs to lose about half a kilo now, and we’ve cracked it. Now I need to work on my weight. No doubt Tuppence will win. I’m still not succeeding with my BookBub ads. I’m persevering though, and will continue to tweak them until I see a significant change in my results. I need to make up my mind whether to keep them going until well into the New Year, or move over to Facebook ads. I made some progress with my WIP, despite my admission last week that my Christmas lunches were getting in the way. I must admit that it’s taking me a lot of time just sitting staring at the screen and trying to imagine where I’m going. I can see different ways of going with it, but there’s an inevitability of drifting away from the theme if I’m not too careful. I’ve seen a number of complaints recently on one of my author forums about the lack of reviews and the quality. This isn’t something I too vexed about; I find some reviewers can be quite dismissive of an author’s work without realising why they are posting a review. It should be about enjoyment and being carried along with the depth of the story, but some reviewers must feel they are marking a student’s exam paper, and treat it as such. If they don’t like a book, find it boring or poorly written, they should say exactly that, rather than give a forensic report on it. At the same time, authors shouldn’t read their reviews if they don’t want to read harsh words. Had a real treat today: two of our sons came over with their families, and we all went out to lunch. Because of family commitments, it was easier to have our Christmas get-together this way. And as an added bonus, our No.3 great grandson Orin came too — brought his mum with him of course. He’s 9 months old. Such a joy. I entered a short story competition this week: the BBC annual event. The winners won’t be announced until October next year, so I’ll have forgotten all about it by then. I’m not a short story fan, because I look at them as a kind of extended joke: there has to be a punch line at the end. My story was something I wrote a couple of years ago for our church magazine in Spain. I cannot see it making any progress because of its Christian content. Sadly, the BBC tends not to enjoy tales of this nature. Nine days to Christmas now, and still a lot to get through. I probably will not making any progress with my WIP during that time, but I’ll try. Meanwhile I want to wish all my readers a very happy Christmas. I might post a blog next week, but it’s unlikely. Have a great time and I’ll see you all in the New Year.

Weighing up my progress

December 10th 2017 Well, still no real progress with my BookBub adverts. Using an author as the keyword, which is BB’s suggestion, doesn’t appear to open up any real, tangible results for me, and switching authors and split-testing ads hasn’t proved anything useful; except that I have a long way to go before I can say I have the hang of it. I looked up one of my titles (I won’t say which one), published on KDP about five years ago, and decided it needed a little attention. I wish I hadn’t started. But after some editing, almost all minor changes, I have managed a forensic edit and believed it would stand up to scrutiny, but after viewing it on the Kindle previewer, I see there are no indents. I haven’t changed the way in which I upload my Word docs to KDP, so it looks as though I’ll have to do some research and find out why this has happened. I’ll probably convert it to a PDF file first; see if that works. It didn’t — I discovered that copying the whole document to include a table of contents for KDP, meant that the indents disappeared. That shouldn’t happen, but it is what it is, so I’ll have to come up with plan B. I saw a post on Facebook from Mark Dawson of the Self-publishing group. I am one of his “alumni” (that’s his word), so I see everything he posts, which often includes some good advice. He put a lengthy post up about Kindle Unlimited, and is seriously thinking of moving his books there. He gives some pretty good reasons why, and it certainly makes you think of which way is best. Mind you, he is a million books best-seller, so he can afford to play around. I might put some of my books there, but only those that are not selling. That’s a project for next year though. Are you all ready for Christmas yet? Two weeks to go and we’ll be celebrating the birth of baby Jesus. Well, a lot of us will, but some of the younger generation may think it is simply about being nice to each other and exchanging presents. You can always buy one of your offspring a book; one of mine preferably! I haven’t made any progress on my WIP, but I’m blaming the time of the year for that, plus the editing I’ve been doing. We’ve had a couple of Christmas lunches with friends, so that’s an excuse not to do anything, and using that as a deplorable excuse means I probably won’t do anything now until next year. Then the New Year’s resolution takes over. So what lies ahead for this week? Our little dog is going to the vet for a weigh-in. She was a little overweight three weeks ago. I got into trouble for giving her too many treats, which I hold my hand up to. Hopefully she’ll make the required weight and I can resume (secretly) feeding her treats. Not true; I will be very careful. I have a trip to the physio this week; she is going to make me ride a bike this time. Thankfully it will be in the gym and not out on the road. I may even lose weight like my little dog. Wish me luck!

Happy Planners

December 3rd. 2017

Last night our Chindi group enjoyed a pre-Christmas get together at The Dragon restaurant in Rustington. Twenty of us made it there, although not all were writers. However, it made for a good number to crowd into a very full restaurant. The oldest of our members is in his eighties, and is reaching the fulfilment of three years’ work: he is publishing a semi-fictional account of a soldier relative who fought during the First World War. Our youngest member there was a newcomer to the group who writes children’s stories. We are a diverse bunch and cover just about all genres in fiction and some non-fiction. It was a chance, too, to be able to chat with some of the group about what problems we have encountered throughout the year, and what success we’ve had. Success in our case is largely relative, but we all have been able to blow our own trumpets from time to time. We have some good ideas to carry us forward into the New Year, and it gives us all a sense of excitement and hope. We are already discussing our summer promotions in the Chichester Arts Festival, plus we have a couple of things planned for Littlehampton, which should be around the earlier part of the year. And March is something else eight of us will be looking forward to because of the UK Southern Book Show at Worthing. I’m sure we’ll come up with other little gems too, but it does give us some impetus, knowing that we are reaching out and not waiting for things to happen. Earlier this week I cracked on with my WIP, and managed to push ahead somewhat. I still have a long way to go with this, and will probably struggle to have it ready for a summer launch at my current rate of progress. I mentioned my efforts last week about BookBub advertising and the fact that they seem to feature a lot of best-selling authors: some who aren’t even living now. I received an email from them advertising Harper Lee’s book, To Kill a Mockingbird, which kind of reinforces the complaint I saw on an author forum about BB capitalising on the top writers and leaving less room for the indie guys. So far I have received an email each day and only one has featured an indie writer, all the others have been NYT best-sellers. Make you think. Anyway, back on the advertising bit: it is a recommendation from BookBub that it helps to use their list of top authors when searching for a “keyword” writer. As I am trying to promote my book, A Dangerous Game, I searched through their list for an author similar to me. Almost without exception though, the list of thriller writers is populated with those who write series characters. This makes it hard for people like me, a cross-genre writer, to find an author to use as a “keyword” author. I’ve already tweaked my ads, and even changed them, hoping for some positive results. I can’t expect overnight miracles, but there are pointers to the way in which your ad is performing. I’m getting a few sales, thankfully, but at the moment I can expect to struggle. Hopefully things will improve in time. Wish me luck!

Nothing but a dreamer

November 26th. 2017 We’ve just returned from an overnight stay with our son, John and his wife, Bryony in Dorset. It’s good to get away for a while, spend some time with the family, couple of beers, walk the dogs. There’s no time to think about books, promotion, advertising and sales figures because those things will be there when you get home. There’s always the anticipation of what might have happened to the book sales while you’ve been away, and true to form in my case, very little has happened. I checked my BookBub advert (I have two) and find that they will need serious attention if things don’t pick up, but not today; there’s always tomorrow. The planned launch of the box-set hasn’t come off, and it looks like it’s going to fail before it gets started. The launch date and pre-launch push didn’t happen, it’s been delayed now until after Christmas, and cracks seem to be appearing in the overall commitment necessary to make it work. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but leaves me with the sense that involvement with other authors, for me anyway, is not the best way to go. So once this year is out of the way, I’ll stick to my own plans for promotion, marketing and writing. I don’t include the CHINDI group in this, because we have contact with each other by meeting up, doing book stalls and getting together from time to time. In fact, next Saturday, a lot of the group will be at a Chinese restaurant in Littlehampton for a Christmas bunfight. Should be good, and we’ll have plenty to talk about. I made a little progress on my WIP last week, and dug myself out of a hole I’d managed to get into. Making small gains in this writing business does help. One thing I do frequently is watch movies on Amazon Prime, hoping to pick up some ideas. Unfortunately I tend to watch a load of rubbish that passes for crime drama, but I did pick up a little nugget that I will be able to slip into my WIP. Some-time during the week I found myself thinking about music from my past. This was as a result of sitting in a waiting room where a couple of elderly ladies were talking about the youth of today and all that goes with it. My mind went back to when I had finished my second novel, Hell’s Gate, and imagined it on the big screen (it never happened of course). The novel is set in British East Africa in 1898, and was inspired by historical fact. One of my all-time favourite pieces of music at the time was The Dawn by Osibisa. I could see the whole thing on the big screen: my story and the compelling, African music. Ah well, what it is to be a dreamer, eh? Incidentally, you can get the book at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RW1VTGO/?tag

and

https://www.books2read.com/u/4XGd9m

. I mentioned Hell’s Gate last week and the length of time it was taking to get the paperback file uploaded to CreateSpace. I thought I’d cracked it until I received an email from CS asking me for ‘Content Validation’ for the book. I sent them a photocopy of the rights authorisation from my publisher. Good thing I still had it on file. Once they have accepted that, I can look forward to getting the copy from Amazon UK, and then I can get on to do another, hands-on edit. And as we come to the end of November and look ahead to Christmas, I can see the social diary filling up with various dates for this and that. I’ve no idea what Santa will be bringing me for Christmas, but I hope it will be a ringing endorsement of my books, coupled with a blossoming advert campaign. Wish me luck!

Keeping different balls in the air

November 19th 2017 Much has happened this week, but not all to do with writing. I’ve made a little progress with my WIP, but have been distracted by other things. I continued looking at the BookBub ads training video by Adam Croft to help understand all the information BookBub provides with regard to the ad. I had two running, but it soon became clear that I had made the wrong choice of author to follow (including me), so I created a single ad, and am now following Mark Gimenez. It’s too early to tell how successful that will be, but early signs are not too promising. However, I must be patient. Another diversion was my decision to re-edit my book, Hell’s Gate: something I thought would not take too long. Needless to say it took up an enormous amount of time. It came about because I want to advertise this particular book on BookBub as a ‘Literary’ work of fiction on African, colonial history. I’ve always used the keyword ‘Action & Adventure’ for this book, but now I see it another way. It wasn’t until I started the process that I discovered I hadn’t released the paperback on CreateSpace, so that’s where it will be heading. I have it with Ingram Spark. I haven’t changed any of the text; this was simply a tidying-up exercise. Last Monday, our book group CHINDI had an on-line meeting. Using the website, ZOOM, we get fifty minutes free where we can chat and see each other on screen. One of our writers, Christopher Joyce, gave us an update on his book launch the previous Saturday. He has published an ‘Alien Cook Book’ to complement his Children’s books. You can find Chris’s books in our shop at www.facebook.com/pg/chindiauthors/shop. There are lots of other good titles of all genres in the shop, many of them priced low for Christmas. Tomorrow, I am expecting the launch of my box set along with a bundle of other box sets in time for “Cyber Monday”. This is something the writer, Mike Continues, has put together with others. How successful this will be is anybody’s guess, but it can’t do no worse for my box set than it’s doing at present. The agreement is to run the promotion for six months. I live in hopes for that, but don’t expect much. When it kicks off, I’ll be sending out a newsletter to all my subscribers. Five weeks to go now to Christmas. We are out on Wednesday, shopping at Winchester. I doubt if we’ll get all the presents we need, but it will not be for the want of trying. No doubt we could do this on-line, which would save our feet. It’s something we could do at leisure, but there’s nothing like traipsing round the shops, armfuls of carrier bags, and getting home to realise you’ve forgotten that important present. So long as I don’t forget my wife, I’ll be OK. Wish me luck!

Forging ahead

November 11th. 2017. This is the point where I will be looking ahead with a renewed enthusiasm. I made some unexpected progress on my WIP, and I launched my first BookBub advert (two in fact). Having watched Adam Croft’s excellent video several times, I plunged in and launched two adverts. Using Adam’s advice, I advertised my thriller, The Devil’s Trinity with my name as the author to follow. The second ad., same book, was with Ty Patterson. I looked at the ‘also bought’ list on my author page to find a suitable author. The first one I chose gave me too big an audience, so I clicked through the various names until I found Ty Patterson’s name put me in the ‘Green Zone’. It means an audience reach of about 10K. This, apparently, is a sensible start. The ad. began yesterday at about 4pm. The second ad. will go today. Now comes the tricky part: I have to monitor my progress and tweak until I see an improvement. I will probably look at BookBub’s own top 100 author list to find a bunch of thriller writers who will give me a similar audience to Ty Patterson. I’ll also be going back over the videos. The unexpected progress on my WIP came by ignoring the writer’s block and jumping ahead to the latter part of the plot. I found myself writing quickly and enthusiastically, even extending the idea I had for the outcome. It means that I’ll have a beginning and an end with a word count of about 25000. Although it seems I still need to do a lot, like find another 50,000 words, it isn’t as daunting as it was a week ago. Getting back to the BookBub advert briefly, I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email from Adam Croft in response to the comments I made in my blog last week. It put a smile on my face, and it was so nice to get a comment from someone who actually reads this. I was even more surprised to think that this best-selling author (over a million sales on Amazon) actually took the trouble to write and encourage me. Good for you, Adam. Christmas isn’t far away now, and the various sales pitches are springing up everywhere, no more so than our CHINDI group. We have opened our shop for Christmas specials, so why not pop in and see what’s on offer. We have a growing membership in our group with authors who have notched up awards in their writing career. There could be something there to suit everyone’s taste. www.facebook.com/pg/chindiauthors/shop. I mentioned author cross promotions last week. Looking at my sales, I see no benefit, which means I’ll knock them on the head for a while. I am still committed to Paula Wynne’s BookHub Christmas promotion, but that is simply adding one of my books to the bundle she is giving away. http://bookhub.online/readers-news/win-a-book-bundle. So what now? With Christmas Day only six weeks away, it’s about writing out the Christmas cards, getting presents, arranging get-togethers etc. Our CHINDI group are meeting up for a Christmas meal next month. Although we meet up occasionally, and on-line daily, it’s good to get the chance to chat face to face. I’m looking forward to that. We have an on-line meeting on Monday where we’ll be able to see each other on our computer screens, but there’s nothing like the real thing. And something else I mustn’t forget: it’s Remembrance Day. There will be ceremonies all over UK and elsewhere in the world to remember those who fell during the terrible conflicts we’ve witnessed on this earth. I served in the Royal Air Force, and so did our four sons. Happily, none of us experienced the terror of real conflict. Mind you, one of our boys has a chest full of medals. He’s still serving but in the Royal Australian Air Force. He looks like a General in his best uniform. So tomorrow I’ll wear my Poppy with pride and hope the leaders of this world will see some sense. Some hope! Wish me luck!

Learning the hard way: understanding why.

4th. November 2107 When I read interviews or watch podcasts of writers who have successfully self-published, I admit to feeling a little envious of their success, and wonder if I’ll ever be able to achieve the kind of sales figures they enjoy. My wife asked me the other day if I get upset when I see what others have achieved doing what I’m doing, but I told her that it would be pointless getting upset; the fact is these people have worked hard to achieve their success, and that is the limiting factor in my case. I have watched two mega selling authors in the last week: Adam Croft and Hugh Howey. Both these writers knew how to do the hard yards and come up with a solid way to promote their work. I have watched others over the last few months, always looking to see if there was a shortcut maybe that I didn’t know about. But the truth is — its work, work, work. This brings me to a kind of late, 2017 resolution (procrastination got in the way): to try harder. I paid the royalties into my bank today — those I received as a result of the BookBub advert earlier in the year — and decided I would like to do that each month, and watch them increase; but how? Well, this week, Mark Dawson is releasing his latest advertising course for authors, which includes all the updated stuff on Facebook, Amazon Ads and BookBub. As a student of his, I get all this free, so I’m looking forward to dipping my toe in the water with BookBub advertising (not a ‘Featured Deal’). But I know that simply following what I’m told, without working at it, I’ll be wasting my time. So it’s up to me: must work harder. You will all get to know how I’m doing, but it could be a while before that happens. If I was a racehorse, you wouldn’t put your money on me, so I now have to see if I can’t make this old nag romp home first past the winning post. I made some progress with my WIP. I’m at the writer’s block stage. This is familiar territory to most writers. I’ll get through it of course, but at the moment I can’t see how. I sent a short extract of the WIP to my subscribers, wondering if I would get a reaction. I did — 21 of them unsubscribed! You’ve got to laugh, haven’t you? I scrambled through a couple of cross promotions recently and came to the conclusion I’ve been coming to for a long time: they’re not worth it. Others might disagree, but I’ve seen no increase in my daily sales figures to convince me it’s all worth the effort. Tomorrow I will be on a book stall for a couple of hours at our local British Legion. Some members of our book group (Chindi), will be there at the one day Christmas Market trying to spread some literary cheer in the area. I probably won’t sell any books, but that isn’t always the case. It could turn out entirely different. And on the subject of trying to spread literary cheer, our book group, Chindi, are running a Christmas promotion on ALL our books in the run up to Christmas. Almost all genres will be on sale through our website at reduced prices. So why not pop along to www.facebook.com/pg/chindiauthors/shop and have a look at some of our bargains? I might sell some there too. Wish me luck!

Getting over life's little problems

28th October 2017 Well. I got my PC back from the shop, but had to phone them because it still didn’t connect to the Wi-Fi. Fortunately it was cleared up by the technician over the phone after having to take it back for another session with the techie guys. I was almost back in business, but had to get on with the cross promotion I had agreed to do. Although I thought I had reduced my book for the promotion, it turns out I hadn’t; but I didn’t find out about that until the author’s promoters contacted me. Embarrassing? Yes. But all is well now and the cross promo is running. I’ve only sold one book though so far, so it can’t be making much of an impact out there, can it? For those of you who may want to see which author I am promoting, click the link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075R35B5J/ I got back to my WIP and am feeling a little more confident about where I’m going with it. Yesterday I typed about 1000 words, which is a lot for me because I often stop to research something that needs clarifying. But at least I’m making some kind of progress. Another kind of research I was engaged in was preparing my sermon for this Sunday evening at my church. Yes, we have to do research for that as well. I will put a link in my next blog should any of you out there wish to hear what I have to say. Yesterday I watched a video on Mark Dawson’s SPF group. It was a forty minute interview with Adam Croft; another student of Marks, who has sold over a million books on-line. He spoke about the poor sales of his stand-alone novels, and mentioned that the valued opinions out there believe you have to produce a ‘series’ of titles if you are to make a success of self-publishing. Well, he blew that theory out of the water by using BookBub advertising to advertise his ‘eighth’ book. As a result of that, his other books are selling: something they failed to do previously in any great number. I said last week that I would be looking at Amazon ads (AMS), but now I will give BB a go. I’m a member already, so I don’t have to apply to go on BB’s waiting list. This is not a “Featured Deal”, but is similar to FB ads and AMS. It’s worth looking into — for me anyway. Next month, our book group, Chindi, will be advertising great deals for their books coming up to Christmas. Have a look at https://www.facebook.com/chindiauthors. There are some great books there with generous discounts and genres to suit everyone in the family. Looking back over my week, health has figured largely in our lives. Fortunately for me and Pat, nothing too serious. Mind you, having injections in the eye, which my Pat is having, probably is serious. I had a couple of hospital visits: different hospitals, nothing to worry about either. And a friend of ours passed away over the weekend. Losing a loved one is sad news for anyone, but on Tuesday we held our church house group here, and the theme was: Celebrating Janet’s life. We had a lot of laughs and spent a couple of hours in tears of mirth instead of tears of sadness. Oh, and one of my fish died. That was sad. So, next week I begin with preaching at my local church, looking ahead to Christmas (shopping!), getting more pages added on to my WIP and maybe, just maybe, getting to grips with BookBub advertising. Wish me luck!

When Gremlins attack

October 21st. 2017 Just when you think things are running smoothly, a gremlin hops into your daily routine. My PC went belly-up on Tuesday: it wouldn’t boot up. Took it into the shop, got it back on Friday and now I can’t access the internet. I’ll be going back to the shop on Monday to have a “talk” with them. Obviously I’m not without a PC or the internet, but I have to use my laptop, which is not geared up like my main PC. These problems, when they come, always seem to pick the most inopportune moment. I am supposed to be preparing a Newsletter promotion for a fellow author. In return he will be posting about my book, A Dangerous Game. It means seven days of tweets, FB and social media, and now I have to come up with something satisfactory so I don’t fall short of the agreement I made. Another hurdle I have to cross is that my church has asked me to preach on Sunday week (October 29th). No big deal really, but the access I have on line to research the stuff I need is already part of my ‘Favourites’ on the main PC. So now I’ll have to go hunting via my laptop. On top of that, a very close friend of ours has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. I had to give up two mornings this week to ferry a very distraught husband in to the hospital. Plus I was asked to sit in with him when the doctor delivered the sad news. His grief, and my friend’s condition, make my problems pall into insignificance. Naturally I have made no progress with my WIP, but it has never been too far from my mind. My foray into Facebook advertising was pretty disappointing too, but I’ll survive the trauma of handing Jeff Bezos (FB founder) my money for so little in return. I will do nothing now until next month because I reached my self-imposed budget limit. I’m thinking of having a look at Amazon ads. According to Mark Dawson, a prolific user of FB and Amazon, they offer a more direct way of directing your potential readers straight on to your Amazon product page. It makes sense: an FB ad asks someone to click a link to an Amazon product, whereas with Amazon Ads, the product appears and the click takes the reader to the place where they can purchase the book. Plus the fact that the product page contains so much more information about the author, the book, the also-boughts, the reviews, and a host of other stuff, which would cost a fortune to place on an FB ad. We took our dog down to the beach for her routine walk this afternoon, but had to turn back because the beach has been battered by the strong winds brought on by “Storm Brian”. I despair of the naming culture for hurricanes and storms etc. The name ‘Brian’ suggests a gentle nature. I have a couple of friends with that name, and neither of them is violent. Why don’t they pick names with connotations of strength and danger? Attila, Ghengis Khan, Napoleon, Brian? Spare me, please. So what happens next week? I might have a serviceable PC, and I might even have got back to my WIP, but whatever happens, as always: wish me luck!

Mystery upon mystery

15th. October 2017 We all like a mystery, right? Well, I was walking along the beach with my dog, Tuppence, the tide was out and just a couple of dog walkers around. I trod on what I thought was a plastic bottle, but when I looked again, it was more like a gun than a discarded piece of plastic. I picked it up. It was quite heavy. There were a couple of dials on it, and also some switches. Plus, a port that looked the same as the one on my phone. It was definitely something electronic. I wondered if it was some kind of signalling device; you know, a short wave transmitter. Perhaps there had been some illegal activity on the beach. Smugglers? I pulled out one of Tuppence’s poo bags and put the device inside, and looked forward to discovering what this mysterious object was. When I got home, I showed it to my wife, but she couldn’t help me out there. So, using my research skills, I went on to Google and began dialling in some of the letters and numbers that were barely discernible on the side of the object. And as I got closer to the truth, I began to wonder what planet I lived on. Am I so far out of it now that I couldn’t recognise an electronic cigarette? A vapour thingy? Ah! Then I thought about how life changes, pulling the rug from under your feet. The world and his dog would have known what it was. But I likened the reality to my Granny and her hearing trumpet. What would she have made of my modern hearing aids? When I smoked years ago it was a packet of cigarettes with twenty fags inside. I’ll just have to keep taking the tablets. Oh, and the vapour thingy has gone into the bin.

Yesterday I went along to Crawley library for their ‘Book Fest’. It was a first for the library, and they made a good show of it too. It was limited to twenty authors (all pre-booked). We had our own allotted space with a small, printed poster attached to the front of the table. I only sold one book: one of my religious books. It was only £1, which is practically the same as giving them away. My son and grandson came along for an hour. They live close by, so that was a bit of a bonus. It was good to meet other writers, many of whom only had one or two books to show. I think I made a mistake by taking too many book along, but it’s all part of the learning curve. I’ll have to remember that “Less is more” in future. I left two of my hardback titles behind for the library. They accept donated books. I don’t know what Facebook are up to, but they suddenly ‘disapproved’ one of my ads for “profanity”. The ad in question was one I ran through September and had been inactive for two weeks, and contained no profanities at all. I let them know in their ‘appeal’ box that they had made a mistake. So why is it that big companies can’t apologise? They sent me a response to say that my ad had been approved and I could view it etc., etc. The ad wasn’t even running! I’m still failing miserably with this advertising game, but I will persevere. Yesterday I had an ‘uptick’ (I like that word) in my sales, so perhaps I’m doing something right. My WIP moved on a notch, and I have managed to get to the fifth character that needs introducing. It’s still early days and I’ve only written about 4000 words. Just 76000 to go and at least eight or nine months maybe. We’ll see. Wish me luck!

Disingenuous freeloaders

October 7th. 2017 I have to start this week’s blog with a little rant against the freebie again. I mentioned two readers last week who had won a copy of my ebook, The Eagle’s Covenant. A day or so after writing that piece, one of the ebooks was downloaded from Instafreebie. Three days ago a second was downloaded. This told me that the winners had picked up their prize. I didn’t end the giveaway there and then, knowing I had only given the free link to two people. Yesterday I discovered that the book had been downloaded four times. I ended the giveaway straight away. It suggests to me that one of those winners passed on the link to others, which is against the spirit of the free book idea; the link was not theirs to give away. So be it, but I will keep a closer eye on this practice in future. I made some small inroad into my current WIP. I said in my last post that figuring out a back story was almost like writing a novel, but I bit the bullet and persevered. I was amused by a post I read today on an author forum where a question was posed on what is making us happy today. One writer was excited because she had book 4 being published, book 5 with her content editor, book 6 with another professional and book 4 (yes) being prepped for something else. I got exhausted just reading that. Where do these people get their ideas and stamina from? Must be my age because I can never see a novel taking less than a year to write. I was once told by my London publisher that there are only about nine stories you can write, but many, many ways of telling them. My current effort is about a girl going missing. No, it isn’t Gone Girl, but simply another slant on a missing person. She is sixteen years old and the daughter of a notorious London crime boss. Sounds exciting? No, not yet, but it’s my job to make it so. How do I do that? If there’s a recipe book out there about writing the perfect plot, let me know please. Meanwhile I’ll struggle to come up with something to stretch between the beginning and the end. My venture into Facebook advertising doesn’t look too promising at the moment. One of my ads achieved an audience relevance of eight, which is good, and the other ad was wilting fast. I tried a tweak and immediately lost the plot. So much for carefully following the good advice I found in Michael Cooper’s book. I will persevere and make every effort not to give Facebook too much of my money. This time next week I will have spent four hours at the Crawley Library book fest trying to persuade people to by my paperback books and maybe even venture into my electronic pile and download some ebooks. But at least I will be meeting people who are there because they are book readers, and are interested in talking to some real live authors. After that I will be meeting my son for a spot of lunch, and that’s a bonus. Hopefully I’ll be able to brag about how many books I sold. Wish me luck!

Writing in a straitjacket

30th.September 2017 I finished setting up my Facebook advert using Michael Cooper’s advice. Some of you may wonder why I haven’t stuck with Mark Dawson. I wonder that myself sometimes, because so many authors on his forum seem to do so well with his course. I did double my subscribers list last year using Mark’s instructions, so, yes, it works.

However, with Michael Cooper’s approach, it opens up FB advertising in a different and unexpected way. For example, he insists you must never, never use your book jacket to advertise the book. I squirmed over this but he was insistent. And you can’t really argue with a guy who sells thousands of books a week and does this by some pretty forensic work on his adverts. To give you an idea of what I mean, you can see from the image what my ad will look like. Doesn’t make sense, right? But I have to go along with it for a while. If you can’t see the image, click this link: bit.ly/2yzwyqa. I have created two adverts: one for women over 35 in UK, and one for men. I’ll run both adverts for about three days and keep an eye on the metrics. If it fails, I’ll switch to USA, but I won’t hang on too long for results. I began work on a new, Marcus Blake thriller during the week. I spent some time fleshing out a back story which will be revealed piece by piece as the plot develops. One of the problems I found was that by sketching out a short synopsis of characters, events and reasons why, I found I was literally developing a story on its own. I did think for a moment that I ought to go down that route, but then I remembered that this is supposed to be a Marcus Blake thriller, and that’s what sells — one character in a series of books. So I’ll stick to this literary straightjacket I’m in and hope for the best. I’m still a million miles away from coming up with a plot that’s convincing and “different”. Oh, and this is supposed to be a psychological thriller: something new for me. My book sales have just about flat-lined, but once I begin the Facebook project, I’m hoping to see a definite change. I’ve hooked up with another author for a promotion, but these generally produce very little. It’s simply a case of trying and hoping. I received an e-mail from an author who ran a competition which included two ebooks from me. I was given the email addresses of the two ‘lucky’ winners, and duly sent them the link for their prize. Two days later and nothing has been downloaded from Instafreebie, and I have had no acknowledgement from them either. I’m loathe to give away books now. Over the years I have given away about 50,000 books, which may have improved my readership, but it’s something you can’t quantify. I’m fast coming to the conclusion that it’s a waste of time and leads to very little in the way of author/reader connection. So, no more freebies unless I’m persuaded that something might come of it. Am I living in hopes? Maybe, but whatever I do, wish me luck!

Three in a bed

22nd. September 2017 I should write comedy novels. All you have to do is hire a motorhome, take yourself, the wife and the dog away with you and let the research take care of itself. One thing we didn’t have in our possession was years of camping experience. Looking at the other happy campers we came across, I decided that their stoicism is what we need when it comes to defending the rights and principles of our glorious nation (Brexit!). They all smiled! I think they must have all been treated to a facelift at some time to make sure the smile remains fixed despite the weather and the conditions. And they all gave me the impression that they wouldn’t be beaten, whatever they came up against. The dog didn’t complain too much. She wasn’t too sure, and just to be on the safe side she decided our bed was much better than hers. So we ended up as three in the bed, cold, sleepless and wondering how, if ever, it could improve. We did manage though, and made the best of a “challenging” job. The end result was that we cut our holiday short by a day and got back to enjoy our comfortable bed, decent shower, cooked grub. Churchill once said, “Never give up”. I say, “Never again”. Although I wasn’t able to devote my time to writing, I did manage to read a novel by Claire Francis (Dark Devotion). She made a name for herself by sailing round the world single handed. When she wrote her first thriller (Night Sky, I think), I read it and was surprised at how good she was. If there are any budding writers out there wanting to know how to craft a novel, they could learn a great deal from a master at work by reading one of her novels. I thought about my WIP while I was away, and have reluctantly come to the conclusion that I will not finish the book. For that reason I have set it aside and will think of something else to occupy my mind on the literary front. I will continue to promote and advertise, but with a measure of control that has been a little lacking recently. I intend using Facebook again, but not until I have finished Michael Cooper’s book on the subject. I’ll probably have to read it twice, because I need to ensure I come close to the advice he is giving out. I kept my eye on my book sales too. I sold none over a period of five days, probably because the FB ads had finished. But yesterday I sold six. It’s amazing how such a small number can get you excited. I don’t expect too much now, until I start advertising again. I need to wait until next month because of my self-imposed budget limit. If I exceed that, I’ll be pouring good money down the drain. And my wife will divorce me. Probably keep the dog though. Those of you who have read my bio on my author’s page will know I published a religious book based on my conversion to Christianity. I preached at different fellowships when we lived in Spain: something I never believed I would be capable of. Once we returned to England, I assumed my preaching would come to an end. But God moves in mysterious ways (so they say), and I have been asked to join the preaching team at my local church. We’ve been attending for about two years now, so it’s probably about enough time for people to get to know us. Some people might wonder how I can justify my position as a preacher and a thriller writer at the same time, but I feel no conflict. If you’re curious about my “other side”, why not have a look at my book, A Word in Your Ear (How God changed my retirement plans). https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01EA6LWUQ. So what next? A small promotion for Hell’s Gate today — price reduction to £0.99. A cross promotion coming up during October, but before that, more reading on Facebook advertising. Let’s hope I get to grips with it. Wish me luck!

Struggling and budding writers

16th. Sept. 2017 No progress on the literary front for me this week, simply because I’m being persuaded that my current WIP is not a good idea. I have seen figures (statistics) that support the premise that ‘series’ novels outsell ‘cross-genre’ novels by something like 80% to 20%. Having now published two thrillers with Marcus Blake as the main character, it makes sense for me to go for a third book with Marcus leading the way. But this puts me into the literary straight-jacket I’ve mentioned before, knowing I have to follow that line to improve my potential readership. I need a good plot for Marcus, and at the moment I’m more likely to win the lottery than I am to find a good plot. I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that something turns up. We were at a family wedding last night. My niece, Sarah, was marrying her partner, Simon who she has lived with for about ten years. They have a daughter called Jasmine and a son, Hugh. Jasmine was very keen to meet me because she was amazed to discover some time ago that there was an author in the family. And not just that, but her Uncle Matthew had been mentioned in the credits to one of the books. She even took the book into school for a “Show and Tell”. Jasmine has already written a story: a five page story. She also played the Wedding March on the keyboard for her mum and dad as they walked up the aisle. Certainly a very talented little girl. We had to meet. Jasmine told me she would like to write another story, so I asked her to come up with a 20 page book this time, and I will see if I can get it published for her. I would use CreateSpace if it’s possible, or maybe Lulu, but I would love to able to do this for her. I’ve no idea if I can produce a book that small, or even if CS will accept my account with Jasmine as the author. Time will tell though. It was lovely talking to Jasmine: she seemed so shy, and perhaps a little intimidated by my ‘reputation’. On the subject of being the author for a title: I had to persuade CS that my re-sized paperback, Roselli’s Gold, was really my book. I sent the required proof to them and have since received the new book. Right size too. Tomorrow we are off on a five day break. I’ve hired a motor-home and we’ll drive to Dorset and Devon. It’s a ‘try-out’ for us. I’ve never driven a motor-home before, so it looks like it could be fun. We’re not hiring a Winnebago, just a 2 berth Chausson. We’re taking the dog with us. I have downloaded a book on Facebook advertising after seeking advice on one of the forums I use. In response to the question about audience relevance, I was told that anything below 9 is a waste of time. The book I downloaded is called ‘HELP, my Facebook ads suck!’ by Michael Cooper. At a cost of under £4, it isn’t money wasted. And when you consider my relevance on UK is 4, and on USA it’s 7, then I need help. The author of the book has an impressive CV, and the author who suggested the book has never dropped below a relevance of 9 since he bought the book. So here goes, maybe I’ll crack this FB advertising lark and see some improvement in my ROI. And maybe I’ll unearth a decent plot for Marcus Blake. Wish me luck.

Royalty and royalties with links to the past.

9th Sept. 2017 One event this week pricked my memory, taking me back to my early teenage years. It was the arrival of Prince George at his new school, St. Thomas’s, in Battersea. Watching the news item on TV, I noticed an arch behind Prince William (George’s father), and thought I recognised it. Then there was a shot of the school front, and I knew it had to be my old school, Sir Walter St. John’s, known as “Sinjuns”. I Googled it and, sure enough, there it was. It’s a Grade 2 listed building now. I left that school when I was fourteen, in my third year, because we moved down to Portsmouth. I took Pat up to the school once. This was before the M25, London orbital motorway was built. We always travelled through London when driving to see family or returning to base. I detoured up to Battersea High Street and stopped outside the school. The name had been changed, much to my disappointment. It was named after some councillor: almost certainly a political decision by a socialist council; after all, the founder, Sir Walter St. John, was a wealthy man. He set up the school in 1700 for the village of Battersea and the surrounding area. I’ve now joined the Sinjuns Facebook group. On the book front, I came up against a hurdle with CreateSpace I haven’t encountered before: changing one of my titles from a 9x6 size to 8x5.25. The book had to be unpublished (deleted), and the new size listed as a new book. This was explained by CS. After doing the necessary, and approving the proof, I received an email from the “Content Valuation Team” saying I had to prove I had the rights to do this. The title has been available as a Kindle and paperback for a few years now, so it seems a bit odd that I had to go through this rigmarole when it was CS who explained what I needed to do in order to change the book size. I’ve started dabbling in some research for my latest WIP. The working title is Conor Lenihan Revival because I am bringing the character back from the dead. No, it’s isn’t fantasy, but using editorial licence I have been able to start the novel with Conor almost breathing his last breath. I’m researching Cyberwarfare. It’s something of an eye-opener, being made aware of exactly what’s going on out there. I used cyber warfare in the prequel novel The Eagle’s Covenant, so it makes sense to dabble a bit more. The trouble though with research is that it tends to take you away from the reason for it all, and you end up reading stuff you can never use. It will be a while yet before I can say I’ve enough material to make the bare bones of a good thriller. My Facebook advertising campaign is dragging its heels a bit. I’m performing better with the American audience than I am with UK. The ‘relevance’ factor for USA is 7/10, while UK is a lowly 4/10. I’m spending more than I’m earning, but I’m gritting my teeth and holding on. However I will be having a look at the UK audience and seeing if I can improve the relevance somehow. Could take a while. Hopefully I’ll get there before I run out of money. Wish me luck!

Forging ahead, come rain, come shine

September 2nd. 2017

As we roll on towards autumn, I look back over last week and see the highlight was the amount of money Chindi authors raised for Cancer_UK: a magnificent £482 ($624). The Arundel Festival certainly proved a winner for us because we managed to beat last year’s target of daily sales and the money raised for the Cancer charity. A lot of credit has to go to Carol Thomas who worked jolly hard, supported by her husband, Mason, to bring this to fruition. Carol is a self-published author who writes clever stories. You can see a short trailer of one of Carol’s books, Crazy Over You here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfA-RjTDI94. A number of us took a turn on the stall, which meant we all endured the heat (and the rain), and managed to sell some books. The next big event for us, unless we squeeze one in before Christmas, will be the UK Southern Book show at Worthing on the South Coast. This will be in March, so more of that next year. I have posted two Facebook adverts for my thriller, A Dangerous Game. I put the promotion price back up to £2.99, and targeted audiences in North America for one ad, and UK for the other. I’m switching the ads off and on according to the time of day, hopefully trying to avoid nights when most of my targets will be sleeping. So far I have just managed to sell enough books each day to cover the daily cost of the campaign. I know I will have to keep an eye on the ROI, but equally important at the moment is learning how to “tweak” my adverts for maximum benefit. I have also teamed up with four other authors to promote a box set of cross-genre novels. It’s a bold attempt at drilling into the hard earth and uncovering readers who prefer to read across the different genres. It’s risky, because not everyone wants to buy a set of books that probably contain three of which they would never read. Contracts have been signed, and brain-storming has begun on the how, why and what of the campaign. Launch date is probably going to be around the end of October. Price will be at something like £0.99 for a short period, and then will go up to around £3.99. One of the things we’ve been asked to do is get ARC readers for the box set, and pick up some reviews. So if any of you who are reading this blog would like to have a stab at being one of the ARC readers, contact me at www.michaelparkerbooks.com/. I had another go at my current WIP. I keep getting pulled away, sometimes because I find other jobs to do, but more so by the absence of any real plot structure. I could fill it with a load of nonsense and call it a thriller, but I wouldn’t be true to myself if I gave in to that little demon. I was tempted to kill one of my characters off, simply because the way in which I had composed the paragraph demanded that it ended dramatically, and this person’s death was the only way. The trouble with that, and it would have been fairly dramatic, is that I need this character later in the story. Our Chindi group have an on-line meeting on Monday evening. I hope it doesn’t take too long; England are playing Slovakia, and it’s on TV. Hope I don’t miss it (the game, I mean) Wish me luck!

The Hard Yards

August 27th. 2017

The weather is warming up along with our sales on the Chindi book stall at the Arundel Festival. Each day those manning the stall manage to sell more than on the same day last year. Tomorrow, a bank holiday here in UK, is the last day, and we hope to be able to declare a real bonus for the Cancer_UK charity we are supporting with our book sales. I popped along last Thursday. Got there early and left at mid-day. Sales were so slow that we only sold one book; fortunately it was one of mine. Sales did pick up during the afternoon though. The photo on the left was taken yesterday. It shows Carol Thomas, Helen Christmas and Dan Jones, all members of Chindi, hard at work in the sunshine. You can see more of them and our work at www.chindi-authors.co.uk. I’ve also been keeping an eye on my book sales on-line, and can see the benefits of using an ongoing advertising campaign like Facebook. Although I’m not quite clearing my investment, sales have been good enough to make it worthwhile. However, I now need to reconstruct the advert and target another audience. I received an e-mail alert from Facebook during the week telling me that there had been a sudden change in the activity on my advert. Trouble was, they didn’t say if it was good or bad. I had to decipher all the metrics to make sense of it. I believe I was being told that they had more or less exhausted my chosen audience, which is why I will be changing tack. I have registered my interest (and paid) in a Literary event at Crawley Library in October. It’s about an hour away from here, but I’m quite happy to make the journey and, hopefully, find more readers. There’s also a chance I can meet my son for a late lunch if he isn’t working, but the main reason is to sell books. But it hasn’t all been about selling books. Last Friday, we went along to Petworth to meet our No.3 great grandson, Orin. He is six months old. He brought his mum, Gemma, along with him. We had a picnic in the grounds of Petworth House. It was lovely sitting under the shade of the trees and having him and Gemma to ourselves for a while. As a result of all that is going on in my busy schedule, I haven’t put pen to paper; so my latest thriller is gathering dust on the electronic bookshelf. I can’t see me making much progress in the next few weeks either, so perhaps I have resigned myself to the fact that there will not be another Michael Parker release for the foreseeable future: certainly not this year. I do run ideas over in my head, but I suspect that’s the same for all writers; how else would we fill our thinking moments? Something will turn up though, I’m sure it will. Wish me luck.

My engaging selling technique

August 19th. 2017 The good news from the previous seven days is that the follow-on effect from my BookBub promotion is still working: I have achieved 25% ROI at the moment, and I’m still selling books. Now the really difficult bit starts: how to keep the balls in the air. My Amazon ad. was a disaster, and now I’m hoping I can achieve better results with my latest Facebook advert. It’s too soon to make an appraisal, but early results show I might need to put my learning cap on and start tweaking. I’ll let the weekend through before trying anything.

Today I was at Arundel for the Festival. Our Chindi group (www.chindi-authors.co.uk) have book stall there in support of Cancer_UK. I arrived early and helped Carol Thomas and her husband, Mason, set up the table (in the road), and waited for the punters to roll up. I managed to sell five books before finishing at mid-day. Quite a result for me: it really put a smile on my face. I enjoyed talking with the people who came up to the stall, even the elderly lady who passed by pushing her walker with a few sticks of rhubarb sticking out of her shopping bag. It made for an interesting conversation on how cheap the rhubarb was just up the road. And no, she didn’t want to buy any books. I was asked what the “mark-up” is for our books. I explained to the man who asked the question that we make nothing from paperback books because we are self-published authors. We would have to set up table top sales every day of the year and hope to sell a few books every day to cover our costs. But the important point is the engagement we have with the public, getting our name into their minds and hoping — hoping — that they look us up on our respective websites and by our ebooks. I had two copies of my hard edged romance, Past Imperfect with me, and managed to sell them. My sales skills can be unbelievable at times. I just wish I knew what I said that made these lovely people buy them. We also meet other writers who tend to be very shy in admitting they are writers too. Once we’ve dragged the truth out of them they are quite happy to talk about their work. It isn’t unusual to learn that they have written one book and are quite happy with that. One lady I spoke to had written an autobiography of her short, three month spell working in a Palestinian refugee camp. The conversation looked like it might be heading towards a political narrative, so I steered away from the subject and talked about the various books we had on display. If any of you are interested, her name is Alice Merrill and her book is called Quiet Resistance. It’s available on Amazon. And almost as trustworthy as a reliable clock, the British weather let us know it was not to be laughed at. It chucked it down for about ten minutes. It cleared the streets and made us throw a protective sheet over our books. Eventually the table was pulled in off the street and into the shelter available in front of the Cancer charity shop we are supporting. Now I need to think about writing again and steering my main character, Conor Lenihan, into trouble with the Israelis and anybody else who dare steps in his way. He’s pretty tough, you know. Wish me luck!

Singing in the rain

August 12th. 2017 The week began for me really on Wednesday because of two events. Prior to that we took our friend Pauline back up to Baldock. It started raining as soon as we arrived, and eventually forced us all, including Pauline’s daughter and son-in-law, to abandon any hope of spending time chatting and we were forced to get back in the cars. We couldn’t use the restaurants because we had dogs with us. But Wednesday — our No. 3 great grandson’s naming ceremony and my BookBub promotion. We turned up at the BBQ in the park in pouring rain. Set up a Wendy house (3x3 garden gazebo) alongside our son’s, pitched them both to the large, wooden, three sided lean to, and sheltered from the rain. The BBQ was alight and smoking at 11 am when we arrived and still smoking at 3.30 when we left. It poured with rain incessantly all day. We all got wet, the dogs got filthy and everyone’s clothes needed a wash by the end of the day. But being stoical, we all refused to let it dampen our spirits, and the ceremony went ahead as planned. It was good to mingle with the family and our grand-daughter’s friends. It was a real family bash and I know we all enjoyed it. The other “emotional” event for me, the BookBub promo, was a little nerve wracking. I wasn’t convinced it would be a success, and a little concerned that I had maybe lost a lot on the deal. However, things brightened considerably overnight, and by Thursday evening I had just about broken even. Today (Saturday) I am still selling and consequently making a profit on my investment as well as adding a whole new tranche of readers. I expected sales to dwindle as the days went by, but my sales are still buoyant. I made the No. 1 spot in Canada, which included a “best seller” banner on the sales page. Can’t be bad. I decided to try out Amazon Ads to coincide with my BookBub promotion. I elected to spend $5 a day for a week, just to see how effective it could be. Today I have spent nothing, had 99 impressions and no clicks. Obviously my advertising skills are not persuading anyone to click, so that’s something I need to bear in mind when I promote through Facebook — something I’m planning to do within the next few days. Although I haven’t put pen to paper this week, my WIP hasn’t been far from my mind. I still struggle with the concept of a series character, preferring the idea of writing stand-alone books. But seeing the competition among indie writers favours the series novelists, I know I need to do something about it, although I feel as though I’m prostituting myself for the sake of sales. Goodness me, what we writers have to do to get recognition. Looking ahead, our Chindi group will be supporting Cancer_UK at Arundel in a week’s time. I’ll be there hoping it doesn’t rain, but you can never tell with dear old England. Hopefully I’ll sell some books, but truthfully, it’s more about engaging with potential readers in the hope they will check out my website and buy my books. Oh, I was more successful in North America with my BookBub deal than here in UK. Am I about to crack the American market? Wish me luck!

Getting some mileage in

4th. August 2017 My post is one day early this week because we are travelling back up to Baldock to return our friend and her little Chihuahua to her daughter tomorrow. It’s been an interesting week but with very little time to write. I’ve managed about 1000 words and a great deal of head scratching. Last Monday, my book group, Chindi (www.chindi-authors.co.uk) had an on-line meeting. We managed this through a company called Zoom. It’s strange to see your PC monitor filled with individual TV images of those who logged on. It can be a little hectic, but still possible to get a conversation going and come up with some sensible suggestions. We are already looking ahead to a November event, and hope to have something put together in time to publicise it. I’m looking forward to the BookBub promotion of my thriller, A Dangerous Game. I dropped the price to £0.99 in readiness for the promotion. You can see the book at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AKCLP60/?tag I’ve also submitted it to ENT, but haven’t heard from them yet. If I can get some decent mileage out of this, then maybe I can keep those balls in the air and hold good rankings for some considerable time. I also have a sponsorship with Kindle Book Review for The Eagle’s Covenant. This will be for August, but unlike other promotions, this has nothing to do with a price change or new launch, but simply having my book on the right hand side of their main web page. I won’t know how effective this is until later in the month when I can check my individual book sales. The link to their home page is https://www.thekindlebookreview.net The newspapers over here in UK are talking about the latest development in DNA modification through genetic engineering. It’s made the TV news feeds as well. I’m pleased to say that genetic engineering was featured in my book, Where the Wicked Dwell. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B06WD8988W/?tag. It doesn’t make me a clued up scientist, but at least I’m on the ball. During the week we went to an open museum at Singleton, a few miles north from us here at Pagham. It’s known as the ‘Living Village’. The museum is dedicated to life throughout the Middle Ages and towards the 18th and 19th centuries. The houses on display have all been pulled down, removed from their locations and rebuilt on the site. It provides a fascinating look at how we used to live in those times. Good place for research too if you want to write a novel about those periods. We also went to Queen Elizabeth Country Park up the A3 Portsmouth to London Road, The reason for that is because me and Pat are going to our No. 3 great-grandson’s naming ceremony there next week on Wednesday. Orin will be six months old. We’ve never been to anything like this before, although we’ve been to christenings. It’s a Vegan/Vegetarian affair, which leaves me wondering what we will be having on the BBQ. Flame grilled vegie burger anyone? It’s also the same day as my BookBub promotion. Wish me luck!

Looking at fact from fiction

July 30th. 2017 I made another small step forward in my WIP: managed to write up a ‘mystery’ flight into the Negev desert. Now I don’t know what to do or where to go with this. It isn’t too bad a problem because although I now have to figure out how to resolve it; if I can do that, the reader will probably think I’m really clever. I know of one author, Helen Macinnes, when asked how she managed to get her characters out of the impossible situations they got themselves into, she said she put them there so had to figure a way out. She was a best-selling crime writer who died over thirty years ago. I did some work on my website, trying to improve the way I present some of the pages. I’ve redesigned a couple that are hidden from the main menu, hopefully making it easier for those who visit my site. Although my rate of progress with this is quite slow, I do hope eventually to have something a little more professional looking. I’ve been looking into Facebook advertising again. I have a promotion coming up during August and need to support it with other social media efforts. I will also look at EReaderNewsToday (ENT), plus others that have been recommended to defray the cost. My book sales have just about flat-lined this month. I’m hoping it’s because readers are spending more time out of doors at BBQs, at the beach, on holiday and other such pursuits where there isn’t much time, or the desire, to be stuck in a book. I just hope August proves to be different, which means I’ll have to be a “glass half-full” optimist. Earlier this week we went to see the film, Dunkirk. Enjoyed it immensely. Bit noisy though, and with hearing aids it practically blew my ears off. When I think of what those men and women had to put up with, it makes my problem with book sales and marketing pale into insignificance. I also watched the film, American Sniper, on Amazon last night. If you haven’t seen the film, and know nothing about the sniper Chris Kyle, I suggest you Google it first before you watch it. I thought it was fiction until I saw the caption as the credits rolled. Yesterday we travelled up to Baldock, north of London to pick up a friend of ours. She will be staying with us for a week. The traffic was horrendous, and while I was crawling along the motorways etc., I thought about the government’s plan to ban all petrol and diesel cars from the roads by 2040. Something tells me that the government are talking themselves into an impossible position which they will have to sort out just like my fictionalised plane trip into the Negev desert. Wish them luck!

Inquest of the Vanities

July 22nd. 2017 A friend of mine asked me to comment on a publishing contract he had been offered with a Vanity publisher. I don’t like using the word “Vanity”, because there are a lot of wannabe writers who have no idea how to self-publish a book using Amazon, or other on-line companies such as Lulu.com, and perhaps feel compelled to go down the vanity route. I prefer to call it “Assisted” publishing. Anyway, my friend was asked to pay £2300 to get his book into print. I warned him against it, but agreed to put the question to my author groups on Facebook. I was overwhelmed with the response — well over 200 comments, all advising against the deal. There were a few cheeky comments offering their services, but I suppose that was to be expected. When I had my first book published by Macmillan almost forty years ago, I was a complete novice and also very naïve about the book business. In fact I didn’t have a clue, and I think it was my naïveté that prevented me from making a career out of writing. I did contact a Vanity publisher a couple of years after my book had been published, and it was obvious I was going nowhere. I was asked to pay $5000 for the privilege (American company). Of course, the company offered to finance the deal for me at very generous terms. It was a non-starter anyway, but I had my curiosity satisfied and that was the end of my attempts at making it in the book world. But if I could replay that scenario over again in the present climate, I know there would be a whole host of experts out there willing to help me, at a price, to make a success of my work. It wouldn’t be too difficult to cough up £2300 and still not find success though. So I don’t blame people for seeking out vanity publishers, although, like my friend, it is sensible to seek advice first and save yourself a lot of heartache. I pressed on with my Conor Lenihan ‘revival’ during the week. I’m still trying to come up with a plot line that will give me the impact I achieved with Conor’s first escapade in The Eagle’s Covenant. I need to achieve a dramatic arc that will lift the reader’s expectations to a high level, but it seems too distant at the moment. I often find myself looking for inspiration when reading the newspaper, or watching dramas on TV. I have to say, though, that the scripts produced in a lot of TV and Film crime dramas I’ve seen recently would never find room in one of my books because they are so thin. My wife and I have just finished watching Pride & Prejudice: the six-part BBC TV production of Jane Austen’s book. The script was written by Andrew Davies. I found myself wishing I could write as cleverly as Mr. Davies. But those kinds of productions are put together by some very clever people, and I guess I’m no match for those, so its back to the ‘smash and grab’ production line of my thriller journey. Networking is an essential part of business, in whatever form. Mine is through connecting up with other writers and finding publicity (free) on their respective websites. The latest is on Jessie Cahalin’s website: Books in my handbag (http://jessiecahalin.com/handbag-gallery/) I put A Dangerous Game in my wife’s backpack (I don’t have a handbag!), and Jessie has included it for me. I have also agreed to take part in a box-set deal with Mike Stop. I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, and this week I received confirmation from Mike that the planned box-set deal should be available on line in October. It’s an unusual promotion in that it is for stand-alone novels only. It makes sense for me to participate because, as you all probably know, I am a stand-alone writer. In fact, in a recent survey conducted by BookBub and published earlier this week, it seems that over 70% of ebook readers go for the series books as opposed to just over 20% who go for the stand-alone books. It’s food for thought. Our Chindi authors http://chindi-authors.co.uk are getting ready for the Arundel Festival which starts August 19th. in the historic town of Arundel in West Sussex. We will be supporting the Cancer UK charity and donating a percentage of our book sales. It was a tremendous success for us last year, not that we all sold a ton of books, but collectively we were able to give the charity a decent gift for their invaluable work. On the domestic front, there’s a social evening tonight down at the village hall: bingo and fish & chips. I don’t like bingo but have little choice. It’s the fish & chips that sell it though. Now there’s a thought — prizes for buying my books. Can you get a fish & chip voucher for Amazon? You never know. Wish me luck!

Dogged Tales and Doggy Tales

I’ve spent a little more time this past week thinking about writing and promotion, more of the former than the latter though. I pressed on with my Conor Lenihan revival story and reached a point where I managed to come up with three complications in Joanna’s life. I got Conor into her room once she was in bed asleep. Joanna was terrified at first but soon relaxed when she realised Conor was not going to hurt her. Having come up with these three complications, I have given myself something of a conundrum: which way do I go? Should be fun. I’ll let you know if I do go along with this. The promotion puzzle is a little different because it brings up the old nutmeg about giving books away. The early promotion this month that I mentioned in last week’s blog, resulted in 67 subscribers among 551 downloads. It makes me realise that us indie authors are just like the local libraries: we let people read our books for nothing. If I thought the people who downloaded my book were likely to buy my other titles, I would be happy; but there’s no guarantee, so I have to go along with it, which is why I have been thinking about the best way to go for promotion. I’m still waiting for a reply from BookBub, and there has been no word from Andrea Lundgren about reviewing Hell’s Gate. But I did cast some doubt on that last week. I read Joanna Penn’s excellent ebook on marketing. Naturally I have done it all, but nowhere near as successfully as Joanna. And I watched a webinar featuring Bryan Cohen talking about improving your Amazon sales page. I checked one of my sales pages: it looked fine to me, but from Mr. Cohen’s perspective, I guess he would say “it sucks!”. I’ve heard nothing from Mark Stop about the box set submission, although I guess it’s a little early for a reply because he has to read the book before he makes a decision. Oh, I am reading something: This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti. It’s about the end times based on the Book of Revelations. Scary stuff, and well written. It’s a big book — No.1 in the series, so may take me some time to wade through it. Know what it’s like to be a proud parent? Well, in this case, a proud dog owner. We took our Cockapoo, Tuppence, along to the local fund raising event for the Parish Church. They had a dog show, which they do every year. Our Tuppence came second in the adult dog category. We were as pleased as Punch. Only second though? No matter; we didn’t expect to win anything. Mind you, I don’t know what I’m going to do with the prizes we won, give them to the dog I suppose. No-one ever remembers who came second, but I would love to be second in the Amazon best sellers list. One day maybe. Wish me luck.

Unremarkably remakable

July 9th. 2017 Little change of plan last week: not unsurprising in a writer’s life I suppose. I gave up on the idea of resurrecting the old manuscript I’d written over forty years ago. It didn’t take long before the truth sunk in and I had to concede defeat. But I have revisited the Conor Lenihan revival — working title is The Prokura — and have added a few more ideas to the story. I’ve also had a slight change of tactic in that I am writing an essential episode in the story that needs to be inserted some way ahead from where I am at the moment. Once I have completed that as a single Word doc., I will probably file it with Scrivener until my story line catches up with it. One stumbling block I had to overcome was to get my main character, Conor Lenihan, into Joanna’s house without anyone knowing. Anyone who has read The Eagle’s Covenant will know that the house is well protected by security alarms and monitors: it would be impossible for Conor to gain entry unobserved. I could have fallen back on a weak practice that I find appalling when used in some thrillers I’ve read, namely making the hero so clever that locked and alarmed doors are no obstacle: “Gaining entry into the house was no problem for a man of Conor’s ability, and he was soon inside.” I came up with the answer when I was out walking the dog with Pat. I challenged her (Pat, not the dog!), to come up with a solution, but she failed miserably. And then the answer dropped into my head. No, I’m not going to say how Conor does it, but it’s legit! I have had a book promotion running all week with L.H.Thomson. So far I have given away 67 free copies of Where the Wicked Dwell. The promotion ends today, so I’ll probably move past 70 copies. If half of those who downloaded the book enjoy my work enough, I can look forward to a small bump in sales. On the subject of sales, I believe this time of the year is a period of doldrums. If no-one else is experiencing this, then I must be a lone sailor on a flat calm, windless ocean. It has probably got something to do with people spending more time out of doors on activities that do not include reading. The lighter nights may mean that people spend a little more time out socialising and the like, which leaves little time for books, particularly mine. But I’m not giving up. I’ve submitted a book to BookBub which will almost certainly be rejected; it has 5 reviews (5 stars!) which doesn’t bode well really, but this is where positive thinking comes into play: if I’m prepared to fork out a large sum on a one day advert, then perhaps the minor websites might not look so expensive. I’ve already started looking as a consequence of reading Joanna Penn’s marketing strategies. I don’t have her kind of money, nor the big staff she has working for her, but I can try. Another stab in the dark was to submit my novel Hell’s Gate to the book reviewer, Andrea Lundgren. I haven’t heard anything yet, and don’t expect to because of the number of submissions she receives. Curiously she only wanted the title of the book, its genre and my email address, so it doesn’t look as though she’ll be too serious about this. I submitted another title, North Slope to a writer named Mark Stop. This is to be included in a boxset he is compiling. The idea is to promote the set for six months and share the royalties. If it works! On the domestic front, I had the good news that my six-monthly cancer check-up has resulted in the all clear. The specialist said, after examining my bits and bobs and diagnosing the blood tests results, that he found me “unremarkable, which is a compliment”. Good news then, and hopefully I’ll be staying clear of all the gremlins, both in body and soul. Wish me luck!

Fun and Games

July 2nd. 2017 Promotions can be a pain in the ‘A’, but we have to do it. I’ve had to give a lot of thought about this subject, particularly when it comes to the amount of work involved giving away free books. There has been a discussion recently on the merits of giving away our precious books for nothing, which I have to concede is a fair comment. I hate doing it but feel there is no other way, short of expensive advertising, to get my work out there in the eye of the readers. And I’ve been doing that for about six years now. There’s no way of working out just how valuable the ‘free’ way is, but I do know that paying out good money has not always resulted in exceptional sales — BookBub notwithstanding. So I’ve started paying out again as well as going along the freebie route. Currently you can download a host of free books, including one of mine at http://deathbytyping.com/thrillers-killers-and-chillers-24-free-books-from-instafreebie/. I began knocking my ancient manuscript into shape a couple of weeks ago. It was painful reading through the novel I penned about fifty years ago and trying to bring it up to date. It was much easier when we didn’t have mobile phones, computers, Wi-Fi and a whole panoply of gizmos that the thriller writer could use to whisk the hero through one death defying encounter and another. I could always write historical novels, I suppose, but that would be a cop-out. So where am I with my book? It’s called The Perforated Edge, and will probably keep that title all the way through. I did think of Sentient, but to tell you why would be giving the game away. If I can make sensible progress, I could have it finished by the end of the year. I did think of maybe using it as a short novel, a novella, but I’ve never really been keen on them. Our Chindi group’s involvement with the Chichester Festival finished last Saturday with a wine and words quiz. I joined in, but my knowledge of wine is about a micron above zero, so I was of very little help to my team. The Shakespeare quiz revealed the fact that the Bard never really figured in my life, apart from a few beers at the Black Swan opposite the Shakespeare theatre in Stratford upon Avon. And oh what a poor showing for the ‘Authors’ quiz. But it all came good in the end; my team, three of us, came second. It was a good evening’s entertainment; we raised almost £90 for the Dyslexia in Action charity, and I managed to have one of my books picked out for a prize (any three books showing on the display stand). What lies ahead? Well. Some training with the Nick Stephenson’s videos; reading up on the secrets of marketing by Joanna Penn, and a toe in the water Facebook ad, see what I can come up with. Wish me luck!

Useful lessons

July 24th. 2017 The week began with a buzz around the Chindi group (www.chindi-authors.co.uk) because of the Chichester Arts Festival, Our first event was a ‘Crime panel seminar’ in which Christine Hammacott and Helen Christmas joined yours truly for an hour or so talking about the ins and outs of putting together a crime novel. It was a question and answer session, with invited questions from the audience. It went well and we even managed to sell a few books. The following evening, Chindi put on a ghost tour around Chichester, masterfully organised by Julia Macfarlane of the Bognor Writers Group. Julia is also one of our members. There was a lot of good feedback from that and, mercifully, the weather was warm enough to make it a pleasant evening. On Thursday we had a “Self-publishing made easy” class. Almost like an oxymoron that; self-publishing can be hard, but at least there was some excellent advice for those who turned out for the event. Today we have been holding a Creative Writing Workshop, and this evening we are rounding our week off with a quiz: a good way to round off a fairly successful week. At the beginning of the week I was featured on Karen Ingalls website as a guest blogger. You can read the article at www.kareningalls.blogspot.com. I talk about my latest book, Where the Wicked Dwell, and a little of myself. I have also been featured on Malcolm Richards’ website being asked ten questions. You can see that at https://www.malcolmrichardsauthor.com/blog/2017/6/21/ten-questions-with-michael-parker. I have also been busy redesigning a book jacket for Past Imperfect. I want to make it look more like a romance rather than a kind of dark thriller. My PhotoShop skills are limited, but I’m having great fun learning and making mistakes. I have already changed the jacket on A Covert War, once again using my PS skills. No doubt there will always be room for improvement, but I’ll still hold on to the truism that it’s the interior of the book that’s important. This week my wife and I have been taking advantage of the good weather like so many of us. Gardening has figured prominently in that as well as walking the dog along Pagham beach, but yesterday we had lunch with my wife’s brother and his wife at a pub called The Fox Goes Free. Unusual name for a pub, but the meal was good, as was the weather. It’s situated about ten miles from us in the countryside just north of Goodwood. I’m also looking ahead to some promotion. I have signed up for a one month promotion with the Kindle Book Review, and also something at the end of this month with Choosy Bookworm. A little different from BookBub I must admit, but I can’t always fork out substantial sums of money for one day promos. Time will tell whether my low-priced options are beneficial. I have noticed a lot of promotion sites are slapping big discounts on their product. It must mean that business is tough, and indie authors are getting a little sparing about where they spend their money. But I’m not concerned about other authors; it’s the readers I want to engage with. Hopefully I’ll get there in time. Wish me luck!

Virtually Public

June 19th. 2017 This week I am a guest on the Karen Ingall’s website, blogging about my latest book Where the Wicked Dwell. I will be sending a free link for the book to anyone who leaves a comment after my article. You can see it here: http://www.kareningalls.blogspot.com. It’s a big week here in Chichester as the Arts & Literary festival begins. Our writers group, Chindi, will be doing their bit, beginning with a Crime panel seminar tomorrow evening where I, along with Helen Christmas and Christine Hammacott, will be doing a talk on writing crime novels. We are all pleased for Helen because her London gangland thriller, Beginnings, has climbed into the top ten (paid) rankings on Amazon. (ASIN: B0078L8858). It’s always good to see a fellow indie author make a success of their work — makes you a little envious too, particularly when your own books are struggling. Later this week I will be guesting for Malcolm Richard on his blog, so what with virtual and actual appearances in public, I might find my book sales rising a little. I’ve been busy revising some of my book jackets. Well, having a look at them and seeing how and if I can improve them. I enjoy doing it, even though my artistic skills are not at the level of professional designers. I have looked through the Amazon best sellers for inspiration, but quite frankly, I just don’t seem to find it there. Have they all been professionally designed I wonder? I am also tackling the knotty problem of margins. There are recommendations on line, but there’s nothing like holding the book in your hand and seeing how close, or not, you are to getting it right. My plan to write a fast paced thriller by the end of this summer has been put on hold. Prevarication is the reason why: the bane of most writers I believe. I keep promising myself I will do it, but other things get in the way. I can’t blame anyone. I could try blaming the dog, or my wife. Or maybe the hot weather even? No, I thought not. I can’t let this week’s blog go by without mentioning the Tower Block fire in London. Towering Inferno is the only way to describe it. I can only imagine the horror that the victims went through before the flames engulfed them. But now we are about to be engulfed by the extreme left wing activists who are calling for “action” against the Tory government, and are planning to take to the streets. No doubt they will be smashing property, looting shops and setting places on fire without seeing the irony in their actions. At church yesterday, we prayed for the families of those who died and also prayed that those who govern us will come up with the right decisions. No doubt those activists would mock us for not taking decisive action. Sad people indeed. On a brighter note; one of my favourite sports is on TV tonight: Speedway. It’s the British Final, contested by twenty brave men (boys really) who do what a lot of us older ones would love to do, but probably never had the time not the courage to race around a small track at sixty miles an hour on bikes with no gears and no brakes. But back to the gentler art of writing. Fingers crossed I will see more book sales this week. Wish me luck!

Out and about

June 11th. 2017. We’re in a pickle now here in UK. Teresa May’s spectacular failure would make a good novel. House of Cards anyone? Can’t see it having any impact on my book sales though, no matter whether we have a left or right wing government, and whether the Brexit negotiations go well, people will still want to read (and eat!). Looking ahead to exciting times. A strange thing happened last week. I received an e-mail from a potential subscriber to say she couldn’t download the free copy of The Devil’s Trinity. It was something to do with the link I use to AMS. So I put the book free on Instafreebie and gave her the link. Within a couple of days four copies had been downloaded. I cancelled the giveaway. Bearing in mind this subscriber was the ONLY person who was given the link, I have to assume it was passed on, or Instafreebie have a leaky website. I’m still busy going through my titles and trying to rationalise it all. It’s only recently that I have come to the conclusion my paperbacks should all be the same size, so to that end I am republishing them, one at a time, at a common size. I am also just about getting the uploads right with Amazon. I have one more title on its way, but from the “Look Inside” feature, the replacement file hasn’t been used. At least I can send it back. I sent an e-mail out to my subscribers last week extolling the virtues of North Slope. I told them a little story about the good news I received from my agent all those years ago and also told them I had dropped the price to £0.99. Within a day I sold nine copies. Not many you might say, but my averages bump along the graph at about 1.5 books a day. So a jump to nine copies really put a smile on my face. I’ve finished working my way through the old manuscript my sister passed on to me. I wouldn’t publish it as it is; far too weak. But I’m thinking of re-writing it as a standard, all action thriller: a kind of novella maybe, and written in the style of an Andy MacNab book. Not that I could emulate the master of that genre, but I could give it a good try. Might sell a few if I get it right. There’s nothing on the calendar for next week, so I’ll wing it for a while and perhaps make a start on it. I have sent an email off to Harlequin Books in Canada about the two novels they published for me five years ago. The lease on them has expired, so now I need confirmation so I can publish the paperbacks for sale in North America. I still don’t have the eBook rights to one of them, which is a pity. I’m looking forward to next week when my book group, CHINDI (www.chindi-authors.co.uk) will be taking part in the Chichester Festival. My contribution will be a Crime seminar. There will be three of us (Christine Hammacot and Helen Christmas) giving the low-down on writing a crime novel. We have five events lined up for the week including a ghost tour, a quiz evening, a workshop on publishing and a talk by one of our successful writers, Jane Cable. I have a couple of promotions this week. Not the selling books type of promotion. I’ll be featured on Karen Ingall’s website (http://www.kareningallsbooks.com), and will also be the subject of an interview (June 22nd) on Malcolm Richard’s blog (http://www.malcolmrichardsauthor.com). Hope to sell more books and attract more fans. Wish me luck!

Reviewing the Situation

June 3rd. 2017 I opened up last week’s blog with a lament about the terrorist attack in Manchester. Now I find myself thinking again of another attack: this time it was in London last night. So far seven people killed. I don’t know if that includes the three terrorists who were shot by the police. Once upon a time you would be hard pressed to find an armed policeman in London, or anywhere in UK for that matter. Now you can expect a bunch of them to turn up within minutes of an alarm going off. A friend of mine believes that young people today are immune to the realities of murder and carrying weapons because of the impact that violent computer games have on them. Is that true? Who knows, but like I said last week: as a thriller writer, this is the kind of stuff that I use in my books: not necessarily killing innocent people, but certainly killing without much thought. I have been battling with CreateSpace and Amazon over the last couple of weeks about the wrong edition of my titles being published. I think I have it sorted now, thank goodness, but I still haven’t finished the complete review of my books. So far I have revised three, not including the jackets, which I may attempt later. And while I was in a brain fog miles away, I began to think of another book. It was one I wrote about fifty years ago. It never got published because it was rubbish, basically. My sister found the copy a few months ago after having a clear out at home. She typed the whole thing for me, which is why she still had it with her. I dug it out this afternoon. I may try the opening sequence out on my subscribers; see what they think. I actually feel quite energised about this. I just hope I can make something of it and come up with another thriller within the next twelve months. I’m still holding back on promotion. I can’t help but feel I need to hang on until I’m confident on doing the right thing and spending my money in the right place. This month I will be featured on Karen Ingall’s website, which I hope will bring me some sales and subscribers. I will also be interviewed on Malcolm Richard’s website blog. So a couple of promotions without having to pay out. Looking ahead, I have signed up to take part in the UK Southcoast book show at Worthing in either September or March. My author group, CHINDI, will be taking part as well, so it isn’t just a single event for me, but for our group. Because it’s a dedicated book show, I would expect the right kind of punters to turn up. Hopefully we’ll do well and attract a few more fans. The woman I mentioned last week who asked if I would review her book hasn’t got back to me yet. Perhaps I put her off. Too unkind maybe? But if I responded to all requests to review books, I wouldn’t get any work done. I didn’t refuse outright, but probably said enough to make her change her mind. I finally paid for my hearing aids; must say it a vast improvement. I even have a remote control, with them. I was playing around with it yesterday. We were at a church family weekend do. It meant a lot of singing and rousing keyboard playing: all in a hall that had been built like an echo chamber. Fortunately I was able to control the sensitivity of the hearing aids to make life a little more comfortable for myself. Now if I could only find a way to control the thought processes of book readers and get them to read my books. Wish me luck!

Losing the Plot

May 27th. 2017 At the moment I’m distilling my thoughts here, wondering what to write. This week has been traumatic for so many people because of the Manchester bombing atrocity. No-one knows, or can explain, what drives these fanatics who kill in the name of some diabolical belief. It has been going on for centuries and is unlikely ever to change. I am old enough to have survived the war in London, knew about the Korean War although as a child I didn’t understand why it was happening. The IRA campaign. Looked on from afar at the conflict in Vietnam. The Falklands War. The so-called “Arab Spring” in which the West became involved and unwittingly unleashed Islamic terror on the world. I have read and studied the Bible a few times, and can see that it all happened thousands of years ago. And so it goes on. As a writer, I can see a lot of mileage in stories that involve pain, heartache, murder, kidnap and bombings, and have used the essence of these in my books. But in those stories I had control over what happened, and could resolve it all happily. Now I find myself looking on desperately sad over what has happened and wishing there was some way I could “resolve” it so that it never happened again. But I can’t; all I can do is pray it is finished — no more, never again. During the week I had a hearing appointment for my new hearing aids, attended a church house group, went on a coach trip to Eastbourne and continued editing one of my books. So I have had an aural, spiritual, joyful and literary experience throughout the week. And I received an e-mail via my website from a new subscriber. Very nice too. Oh, and another e-mail from one of my subscribers asking if I will review her book. I don’t really have the time to wade through a novel that I wouldn’t normally pick up and read. And I did warn the writer that I don’t usually do this. I also said I was a very harsh critic (that’s why I’m editing my books again!), so not to expect a five star review. And I’m slow. So many negatives, eh? I haven’t had a reply yet. I’ll let you know what happens. I hope to start a campaign next month to sell more books. But how do I find the right source of readers to aim at? There is so much information and advice out there, that it should be easy. But of course they all claim the same thing: to get you in front of their thousands of subscribers and keep you on their twitter feed for several days. It’s a big business and makes money for those people involved; probably more than they get from writing books. Oh yes, they are usually authors themselves. There are successful ones of course: Nick Stephenson, Mark Dawson and Joanna Penn to name a few, and I know from experience that following their advice means involvement and effort, but it’s needed in spades. I’ve been changing my mind about my next book. I’ve spoken about Marcus Blake as a follow up to Where the Wicked Dwell, but now I’m thinking of continuing the return of Conor Lenihan (The Eagle’s Covenant). I have some angles popping into my head: some I like, others I don’t, but until I can get my mind focussed on which plot and with whom, I will never get down to writing my next “best-seller”. Wish me luck!