The Eagle has landed

October 20^th. 2018

Safely back home after a five week sojourn in Australia, the Middle East and Singapore. Like my writing; this was a marathon, not a sprint. As much as me and Pat enjoyed our time, we are glad to be back home. But now the work begins: bills to be paid, business to catch up with and a time to contemplate the promises I made to myself with respect to my writing and adding more effort to my application. No more procrastination I hear you say? Hopefully not. The photo (for those who can see it) sums up the plight of many writers: unknown, constantly writing in hope, and papering the walls with rejection slips. We came across this in Chinatown, Singapore. I admit I had some moments of inspiration and began writing an addition to my current WiP. I’ve introduced a character who was never meant to be part of my story, but the change has given me inspiration and the hope that I can now move forward and get to the end of my own particular marathon.

Another small progress I‘ve made is to finally get the eBook rights from my publisher for my novel, Past Imperfect. Because this book, which is available in paperback, can only be classed as a Romance, I need to consider a different approach to promoting it. It’s quite a departure from my usual bag of mixed genres, that I can only see a new readership being interested. But how do I get to them? And although the eBook has been available for a few years, my publisher has achieved virtually no sales with it. That means I can look at it as a new book. If I can make real progress with my WiP, it could mean two books launched within a couple of months of each other.

I see there have been a lot of complaints made against Amazon for the apparent lack of sales over the last month or two. I’ve seen this on the SPF Facebook group mainly (Mark Dawson’s crowd). People are suggesting that Amazon (and in some respects, Facebook) are not reporting the figures correctly or are unable to. But I smile when I hear complaints that sales have dropped from a thousand a month to about five hundred. Or even $1000 down to $500. Those smaller figures are almost stratospheric to me. I’m lucky to be selling one book a day, even when I doing well. So that’s why there’s a smile on my face. And yes, my sales this month have been abysmal, but I put that down to me being away on holiday for five weeks and not tweaking my ads on AMS and BookBub. However, I can’t help but think that Amazon has a tiger by the tail and it’s difficult to control.

One joy of returning home after five weeks away was to see our little Cockapoo, Tuppence, come hurtling through the gate when she was brought home by the dog-sitting company. She was yelping, twirling and doing all kinds of somersaults. It was so good to see her. It’s funny how you can get emotional about a furry little animal, but they steal your heart, don’t they? Next on the agenda is to settle down, get practical and get on with the routines, the writing and all that comes with it. Wish me luck!