Filling my
days (April blog)
Another month passes and I, like most of us, wonder where it all went, and why so fast? I have continued to make progress with the TikTok course. I’m at 87% so far and intend to complete it before starting on my TikTok adventure. Will I make a success of it? Well, if I was a racehorse, I wouldn’t recommend putting any money on me. But I’m going to try.
Today (April 30th) I am promoting my nuclear thriller, The Devil’s Trinity, with the Kindle Book Review featured book deal. I have had a moderate success promoting this book in the past, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it will continue to sell. As far as my monthly sales go, they are next to useless at the moment (six books thus far), but that is because I have made no effort to promote anything. The reason for that is because I had planned to wait until I felt confident with TikTok. However, I received an email from David Gaughran (a genius) giving me (one of his many subscribers) a free walk through video on creating a Facebook Ad., in which he talks you through creating an Ad. on FB, and avoiding all the pitfalls. I’ve used FB several times without success, but the beauty of David’s video is that he creates the ad step by step and points out those “suggestions” that FB use to drag your money out of you and says to avoid them. So, that’s my next attempt at promotion. I’ll let you know next month how I got on.
On domestic front, I have excelled myself in making progress in the garden.It is not my favourite pastime; Pat was the gardener, I just did the heavy lifting for her. But now it’s my responsibility, I have to make sure I keep on top of it. I’ve planted a lot of Geraniums, which was Pat’s favourite flower, and have ordered a bunch of other stuff to add to them. Next thing is to reduce a border I cleared by the lawn and put a line of turf in.
I was invited by my granddaughter, Gemma, to go foraging with her and Orin (her 5 year old) in the woods near her place. The idea was to return home and cook a meal with what we foraged. Fortunately my son, Terry, came with us, which meant I could chat with him while Gemma and Orin foraged. It was a long morning and we finished with a Pesto lunch. Actually, it was quite good. I think Tuppence enjoyed the walk too.
I have also been sucked into the technological age and fitted four Smart lamps to be controlled by Alexa. Last night I was watching a YouTube video that included a short ad on Alexa, when suddenly my lights kept going off everything time the name was mentioned. Do we really need all this?
So, back to the world of books. My progress with my
latest thriller is very slow. I have reached the ‘writer’s block’ stage and
have virtually ground to a halt. I have managed 38000 words, which means I’m
not even halfway through the first draft. Last weekend I popped into the
Heygate bookshop in Bognor Regis for a chat with Jason, the owner. He likes to
support local authors and has quite a few in a special display. He’d managed to
sell two copies of my paperback, No
Time to Die, and handed me my royalties
from that. From there I went back to our local village hall and bought a book
from a local author who had an event there. I like the idea of supporting local
authors that way. Whether I’ll ever read the book remains to be seen. And
finally, I have joined the Bognor Writers Club. They had their first, face to
face meeting last Monday after spending two years meeting on Zoom because of
the pandemic. Hopefully I’ll make new friends and enjoy time in the book world.
See you next month.
Michael.
