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!

Roller Coaster

May 19th. 2017 Two weeks have gone by and much has been packed into it, but not one word have I written for my next novel. I’ve been cleaning up my act a bit with regard to disconnecting from other groups, and hopefully I’ll see things a little more clearly now when it comes to knowing who I’m working with and what is expected of me. I mentioned Amazon selling my romance (Past Imperfect) at a knock down price. I realised I should buy the stock (they said there were six copies) and throw them in the bin. That way I would get the full royalties on the official retail price, and the sales would go towards pushing up my rankings. Good plan? Nope! I went on-line and learned I could only order three copies. I did this, went back an hour later to order the remaining three to discover that my latest version was up for £7.50. I ordered it, but it turned out to be one of the remaining stock, published by Lightning Source, not the new version published by CreateSpace. The single copy arrived before the other three; all has been published by LS. I complained to CreateSpace and returned the book to Amazon. End of story? Nope! I edited A Dangerous Game, waited until the new version was available and ordered the new copy. The old one turned up. I checked the “Look Inside” feature to see that it was my new version there, which meant that CS and/or Amazon have messed it up. I complained to CS and returned the book to Amazon today. I suppose when you consider that CS and Amazon are handling an enormous amount of book traffic, mistakes are going to be made, but lightning shouldn’t strike twice in the same place as it has with my book orders. One small success was registered with the promotion I ran for my author friend, Helen Christmas. She sold several copies of her box set which delighted her. She said it probably wouldn’t have happened without my input. I was really pleased for her. Her latest book in the series, Retribution, is now available on Amazon. It’s £3.50 to buy (Kindle), and free if you’re a member of Kindle Unlimited. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06ZYF7TYP. My wife and I travelled up to Norfolk last week for a family ‘bash’: a joint birthday party for our great grandson, Harrison and his dad, Leon. Had a good weekend catching up. Then we travelled up to Lincoln to visit an old friend of ours whose husband is confined permanently with Alzheimer’s disease. It’s so sad watching a man who had been your friend for twenty years fading like that. At least we were able to give our friend, Pauline, a lift in her spirit while we were there. Managed a trip out to Skegness where I left a copy of my book, Hell’s Gate in a shelter on the promenade. It had a Chindi label on it asking whoever picked it up to read it and leave it somewhere else. This is something our Chindi group have been doing as a precursor to the Chichester Arts Festival and the launch of our new website, due to happen about now. www.chindi-authors.co.uk. Despite my determination not to write for a while, I found myself mulling over different ideas for plots and writing them in my head. The curse of the author: not being able to give up for a while. I’m getting used to my new hearing aids and expect to be forking out the money for them, but not for a week or so. Need to sell more books to pay for them. While I was away, my Amazon rankings rocketed a couple of times. They are back in the doldrums now, but it puts a smile on my face to see that steep incline on the graph. I just have to learn how to keep those ‘balls’ in the air. Wish me luck!

Now for Consolidation

May 6th. 2017 Most authors like to be interviewed, and I’m no different. Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to be interviewed on radio, TV, in the Press and through author websites, including YouTube. It’s difficult to quantify the effects of these interviews, and I doubt they do much for my sales figures, but at least it puts me in the public eye. My next interview will be in June on award winning author, Karen Ingalls’ website. (kareningallsbooks.com). Hopefully the interview will attract a few more fans to my books. I’ve come to the conclusion that my less than 100% commitment to promotion is one of the reasons why my rankings and sales are low, and it’s about time I consolidated the effort I’m putting into it by setting aside my writing time. No doubt some people will say that I should write more books and keep on writing because it’s the only way to increase reader awareness out there, but it’s like a chicken and egg argument to me; so unless some unshakeable idea drops into my head and won’t go away, I’m going to spend more time trying to sell my books than writing them. Trouble is, it doesn’t stop me coming up with ideas: I keep getting them buzzing around in my head. I mentioned my Romance last week: Past Imperfect. I decided to tidy it up, edit the book for some minor typos and make a small adjustment to the cover. I uploaded it to CreateSpace at the beginning of the week. Two days ago it appeared on Amazon at £2.01. I queried this to be told that this was normal practice with book-sellers, and the royalties would be paid on the full price of £8.50. I was dubious about the whole thing so I ordered a copy. It came today. It isn’t the edited version I uploaded to CreateSpace, and was printed by Lightning Source. I’ve contacted CS, but now I’ll have to remove it from LS until I’m satisfied that the old version doesn’t exist. Who’d want to be a writer anyway? Yesterday I e-mailed my subscribers with a promotion for my author friend, Helen Christmas. We are both keeping our fingers crossed that she will enjoy a bounce in her sales figures because of it. Click rates are notoriously low these days, probably because there are so many “offers” going around, and the readers are being saturated with them. But unless we keep plugging away and gently pester the lives of the reading public, we won’t get anywhere. Helen’s promotion offer is at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B017WLXY7K. Why not click and have a look? It’s a great offer. I had a hearing test last week after seeing an advert in the Daily Mail. I’ve had so many of these over the years that I could practically draw the graph they come up with after the test, and this one was no different. Hopefully the product will be a vast improvement on my current hearing aids, which I purchased a few years ago in Spain (American company). It comes with a remote control: should be fun playing around with that. At least I get a trial period before making up my mind whether I want to shell out the money or not. Next week we are off for a family bash in Norfolk, then a trip round to an old friend in Lincolnshire, so there won’t be a blog post from me. Hopefully when I post again, I will have some good news about, well, anything really. Wish me luck!