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!