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!