How many?

18^th. July 2020

Well, I said the pattern may not change but the intensity will, and I wasn’t far out. Pat’s demands became intense to the point of me having to change her up to ten times in a 24 hour period for about three days. The conversations I had with the medical people were mounting, and eventually a GP came to the house. Two days later once the blood test results were known, she was put into an ambulance and taken to hospital. But instead of invasive intravenous treatment, it was decided by the consultant, after talking to what he referred to as the ‘ECHO’ team, that Pat would continue with the antibiotic tablets the GP had prescribed, and she was released the next day into my hands as her carer to continue with her palliative care. There was a discussion about this of course, but the next event, which will probably be sooner rather than later, will almost certainly involve hospice care with the implication that comes with that.

So, what about my other world? I’ve been invited by Lucinda Clarke to be her nominated author of the month on her blog post. I was pleased and surprised. I’ve followed Lucinda for some time, and she produces an amazingly informative and professional looking blog post. It might happen next month, but I won’t complain if Lucinda puts it off until September.

For some reason, I am receiving a flow of emails from individuals offering to review my books. I’ve no idea why this has happened; perhaps something I triggered inadvertently. I think I know what these people are about, and it can only be a ruse to get money out of me, which I’m not about to fall for. And while I’m on the subject of reviews, I dismayed with the paucity of reviews I get from the readers who sign up to my email list in return for my freebie, The Devil’s Trinity’. I collect my subscribers almost entirely through Voracious Readers and add about three of four a week. I only pay VR pro rata, which is about £7 a month, but I’m seriously considering giving it up and falling back on the offer that is on my website for the same book.

My advertising campaigns are showing an improvement with the BookBub ads, but still nothing with Amazon. I closed the campaign for my WW2 book because that sold nothing, and then opened a new campaign for my crime/mystery thriller, No Time to Die. So far, nothing has stirred in that campaign. Meanwhile, I’m selling about one book every other day through my BB campaign, and this is reflected in my D2D sales. And yesterday I sold three copies of The Eagle’s Covenant as a result of a promotion with a site called Book Adrenaline. This group was recommended by David Gaughran in a blog post, so I was happy to give them a try.

We all like a laugh now and then, right? But a laugh at ourselves? As a result of my inability to read the Amazon product pages correctly, I managed to order two scrubbing brushes (I wanted one); three jars of Vaseline (I wanted one); four, 400g bags of ceramic bio rings for my fish tank (I wanted one bag), and twelve pink flannels (I wanted two). Mea Culpa; no-one to blame but myself. Anyone want 1.2 kg of ceramic bio-rings? Going cheap! Maybe one day I’ll look at the Amazon product pages properly and might find my books languishing at a ranking of 100 instead of the usual 100,000, and not even notice. You never know. Wish me luck!