Winning the Battle

I’m making progress this week with Photoshop. I am gradually figuring
out which tool does what and the importance of working with layer masks. One of
the downsides to watching help videos on You tube is that you often see a
screen, or an action that you can’t replicate. I watched as one photograph was
merged into another with a very simple, sliding action. I tried it and failed.
I watched that section of the video repeatedly, but it didn’t happen for me.
Oh, I have the latest version of Photoshop by the way. In another the guy
pulled down a window to disable an application, then reinstated it. I pulled
down the same window but the application wasn’t there. It’s frustrating, and
forces you to try things that aren’t part of the plan. But eventually, some
things begin to make sense and I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. I
currently have the makings of a book jacket, and hopefully I will have the
finished article by the end of the coming week. Once I’m happy with it, I’ll
set about publishing Past Imperfect.

Yesterday my radio interview on Angel Radio Havant (101.fm) was aired.
Me and my wife sat listening to it recalling things from our past as I went
through the years and selected songs that meant something to me. At the end of
the show I left a hardback copy of my latest novel so that the radio station
could offer it as a prize. I would like to think the show will bring some
reaction from listeners wanting to know more about me and my books, but I will
have to wait and see.

This morning (Saturday) we went across to a local town called Barnham.
It was to visit Pixie Flowers http://www.pixieflowers.com/ where the
owner, Pam was opening her shop for the first time. She is developing an arts
and craft side to the flower business, and that included books from my writing group,
CHINDI. I went across to offer some support and also to buy a bunch of flowers
for Pat. We spent an hour wandering around Windmill Village, where the shop is
based. It was a pleasant day: sun was shining. Lovely.

Those of you reading this blog who are writers too, will understand
what writer’s block is like. This is something I’ve been suffering from for a
few weeks now on which way to take my latest thriller. Well, last week, during
the night, I lay awake for a while thinking about the story and bang – the ending
came to me. Now, when I have finished the Photoshop project, I can get on with
my WIP. Looking ahead at my schedule for the month, I believe I can see a
reasonable period of relative calm, which means I could finish two projects: my
latest, self-published paperback, and my current WIP. Wish me luck!

Building blocks

July 25^th.

The interview on Angel radio went well. I don’t know when it will be
live on air, but it will be shared around on my blog and other social media.
Monday evening was a photo shoot with the CHINDI group. It was quite an event
in a way. The shoot was supposed to be organised in such a way that we all knew
when we were due to have our pictures taken. In the end it was a glorious kind
of melee where we all had individual shots, then a cluster of group shots. The
event lasted about an hour or so and, had we not all been responsible adults,
it could have turned out to be quite an evening considering we were in a pub. I
told the photographer that my facial shots often show up my dodgy, front tooth
(it’s getting old!). He told me not to worry; he would sort that with Photoshop.
By the way: have you noticed how ‘Photoshop’ is now a verb? I’m practising my
skills with it, but more later.

The only medical appointments me and Pat had this week were at the
dentist, so a little more free time than usual. I managed to get my lawn cut in
between the rainy spells, and Pat found more stuff to plant in the garden. We
paid my younger brother a visit. He is virtually housebound, so it helps to pop
over there for a chat. His wife is always pleased to see us.

Another visit, but this time two of our friends, Ray and Lynn, from
Spain. They came over on the ferry, landing at Portsmouth late evening. We gave
them a bed for the night so they could continue their journey to Manchester the
following day. It was nice to see them and it gave me an opportunity to chat
about my books. Not too much though; just enough.

But visits and seminars wasn’t the only thing that took up my time;
battling with Photoshop consumed a large part of it. Having completed the edit
on my book, Past Imperfect, the next
task was to create a jacket. To say I’ve been tearing my hair out would be an
understatement: but it is such a complicated piece of software, it is very
difficult to understand everything it can do and how to do it. I have used
several, You Tube videos to learn about working with layers etc., but the
biggest problem is the actual design. Not being terribly artistic in that
department, I am dipping my toe in the water and hoping for the best. I could
employ a professional, but I have another seven jackets waiting in the wings,
so the overall expense could be quite prohibitive. The reason for this, by the
way, is because I am re-publishing my back-lists, using my name as publisher. I
have completed two so far (didn’t need PS for those), and have the rest to do. And
because I have just received the UK paperback rights to my last two books from
my publisher, it has added to my workload. I’m not complaining though: at least
I have plenty to keep me out of mischief.

My Mail Chimp subscription list grows daily, which is a positive. I
haven’t reached enormous numbers but have gone past the 300 mark. Next month I
will have to send them all something. I don’t know what yet, but I do want to
keep them onside. If any of you reading this want to add your name to my list,
please click the link: http://eepurl.com/bgYKMj And sometime this year I might even get
back to working on my latest novel. Wish me luck!

Stepping Stones

July 19^th.

 

Good week last week: I’m actually making progress! Received
confirmation from my publisher that I now have the UK paperback rights to my
last two novels, Past Imperfect and The Boy from Berlin. I have completed
the edit on the first of these, and now have to embark on the daunting task of
creating a presentable book jacket. The promotion I ran for A Covert War yielded reasonable results.
I managed to sell 42 books last week, which is a huge increase for me.  Naturally it’s all about getting my name out
into the market place at the moment; not just selling books.

Our week began with a trip to Bath in Somerset to meet up
with our grandson, Sam, who is over from America on an internship for six
weeks. It was great to spend time with him, take him out to lunch and just be
in his company. We haven’t seen him for about six years. Monday was taken up
with a hospital appointment for me. Tuesday was the promotion day. Thursday was
different: I went along to a drop-in centre called CancerWise. This wasn’t
because of my on-going treatment, but because it was suggested to our writer
group, CHINDI, that we might be able to do something for the charity. I spoke
to the manageress and explained that essentially, we want to sell books, and it
would be a bit churlish of me to pretend that we could offer them something
when the truth is that there is an ulterior motive. So I offered to come along
to the group on my own and give a talk on the writing process, the value of
spending time doing this, using it as a therapy and anything else that might
crop up during the talk. And I would come as a writer, not as a snake oil
salesman trying to flog the CHINDI group to them. Naturally I would be happy to
do more than one chat, but then it might be reasonable of me to hope they will
buy my books.

For the last four weeks, the CHINDI group have been
supported by Kim’s Bookshop in Chichester by displaying several of our books in
support of the Chichester Arts Festival. It was another way of getting our name
out to the wider public. I picked up the books and was pleased to find out that
we had sold more than half of those displayed. Maybe next year, if we do the
same again, we’ll sell all the books.

Tomorrow I’m off the Angel Radio in Havant  (101.1 FM) for an interview. Being a local
lad, there should be something of interest in my life to prick somebody’s ears.
Naturally I’ll plug my books and the CHINDI group if I get the chance, and I
will also be leaving a copy of Past
Imperfect for them to give away as a gift. They will also be playing a selection
of music I’ve chosen from the 1950s. Should be fun. I don’t know if the
interview will be live, or recorded, but if I get a CD from them, I’ll post it
on my website. Wish me luck!

Meeting People

July 11^th.

It looks like I missed a week, but lots have occurred which kind of
diverted me. Hospital appointments get in the way. So essential of course, but
they do take up a lot of time. Last Monday I went into Chichester and
introduced myself to the Waterstones manager. He was very pleasant and didn’t
throw me out of the shop. I was able to talk about CHINDI, the writers group I
often mention now. He said he wouldn’t be averse to doing a book launch, but
would have to vet the book beforehand. I thought this was reasonable because I
doubt if he has any say in the matter if it’s a top-line writer with a book
launch. It’s a step forward for us, and a connection: so important too.

I also ventured into East Wittering along the coast from where we live,
and spoke to Lindsay, the owner of Kings Bookshop there. She was happy to talk
about our books and book promotions; so another contact has been made which
should help to spread the word about our writing group. I know it’s always the
aim of a writer to sell books (usually), but for the moment it’s all about
building relationships with people in the book world.

I took the plunge and asked my publisher if she could give me the
paperback rights to the last two novels she published for me: The Boy from Berlin and Past Imperfect. She has agreed to give
me the UK rights, which I am really pleased about. It means now that I can
publish those two books without having to worry about editing and
proof-reading. Well, not quite. At the moment I am going through the edited
manuscript of Past Imperfect and editing my Word doc. So I suppose it is a form
of editing. However, the book jacket will be different. I can’t use Photoshop
properly, but I have watched a training video on using Microsoft Word, and I
think I might just be able to cope. Time will tell though. With luck I can have
the book ready by the end of August and follow that up in September with The
Boy from Berlin. I’m quite excited about this development because our CHINDI
group are holding a big launch day in September, and hopefully I’ll have at
least one, new title to offer.

On the writing front; I have reached 68,000 words and changed the plot
line of my WIP. It was the only way I could see myself making progress. I still
have a mini mountain to climb, but hopefully I will get there in the end. At
the moment I am planning to offer it to my publisher. If she turns it down then
I will publish it myself. But that will incur costs: about £1000 if I’m brave
enough. Might have to give that some thought though.

I received an e-mail today from a young woman Pat and I met while we
were on our Alaskan cruise. Her name is Julia, and she was with her friend,
Mary Beth. They sat at our table and we talked for about an hour and a half.
Pat and I were really pleased to get Julia’s e-mail. Naturally we will stay in
contact through Facebook and perhaps the occasional e-mail.

I had a bit of a lift this morning with my KDP sales report. I usually
average about one sale a day, but because I e-mailed my subscribers and told
them of a forthcoming promotion for A
Covert War ($0.99), I sold nine books yesterday. Small numbers indeed
compared to a lot of Amazon authors, but it brought a big smile to my face.

Tomorrow, Sunday, we are off to Bath to see our grandson, Sam. He is in
UK on a short internship from his university in America. He lives in Australia,
and we haven’t seen him for about six years, so this is a great opportunity to
catch up with him, take him out to lunch and learn more about his hopes, his plans
and his ambitions. We are really looking forward to that. Should be fun. See
you next week.

Cruise Control

June 30^th.

It all began in Juneau; panhandle capital of Alaska. That’s where my
first novel, North Slope, opened. And
that’s one of the reasons we wanted to cruise Alaska: to see just what it was
like. Although my book was published thirty five years ago; a curiosity about
the country has always been part of mine and Pat’s life. Pat’s more so than
mine. As an author, I suppose it’s natural to forget about the places in which
the stories are set, but for Pat it meant so much more: her husband’s first
novel. So we set sail, not like the gold diggers of the nineteenth century, but
like modern day pioneers, well cossetted on our magnificent cruise ship, the
Ruby Princess and headed north to Alaska. And what an amazing place it turned
out to be. What helped me was that I started reading James Michener’s book
about Alaska; it’s history and the gratuitous violence from settlers, fortune
hunters, pirate sea captains and other so-called entrepreneurs that coloured
and stained the birth of a magnificent country. But as they say: its all
history now. We saw huge, snow-capped mountains, glaciers, floating ice: some
as big as a small lorry. We didn’t see any whales but could have done if we had
gone on a whale watching cruise as some of the passengers did. We met some
lovely people, had a lot of fun, walked our legs off and just soaked up the
history and natural glamour of the place.

One thing I didn’t do was write; it was the furthest thing from my mind
really (metaphorically speaking). I kept an eye on my book sales though until I
lost the Wi-Fi connection to my phone. After that I didn’t worry too much about
whether I’d sold a book or not. But now we are back in harness so to speak, I am
about to catch up with most aspects of my literary world, not least putting
another promotion in place. I also have to make contact with Kim’s Bookshop in
Chichester where she has on display several books from the CHINDI group: the
local writers group of which I am a member. I will be taking a couple of my
titles in with me to replenish any of mine that have been sold.

This coming weekend we are off to a wedding. We’ll be travelling up to
Norfolk on Friday, returning Sunday. Hopefully after that I will then be able
to settle in to a writing routine and make progress with my latest book. I’m
65000 words in so far, and still don’t know how it will end. That’s probably a
good way of writing a thriller. We’ll be seeing some old friends of ours who
were our neighbours in Spain for about eleven years. They moved back to UK last
year, so we’ll have a bit of catching up to do. We’ll also be seeing another of
our Spanish friends, Kath & Don, who we’ve known for about seventeen years
now.

Along the domestic front are the usual hospital appointments, dental
appointments, gardening to catch up on and a host of other things that most
people deal with during the normal, everyday lives.

On the book front; my subscription list is still growing. It is now
about 265. My free title The Eagle’s
Covenant is still downloading daily. The average has dropped to about sixty
a day, but it still manages to pick up excellent reviews. I won’t read my
reviews, of course, and I do know that not everyone will like my style of
writing, but my average rating for that book is still holding 4 stars; so I’m
happy with that.

Next thing for me to do is download the photos of our holiday from the
camera to the PC and put some of them on Facebook. Oh, I almost forgot: on the
day we boarded our cruise liner, the Ruby Princess, we wandered around the ship
to familiarise ourselves with everything. We found ourselves in the Wheelhouse
Bar; an English pub. It was empty which gave us a chance to look around the
place. On the walls were a lot of pictures in frames: all neat and tidy. But
there was one picture that stood out. It had pride of place and was larger than
the others. It was of an old ship. When I saw it, there was something about the
single, yellow funnel that stood out. I went over to it and couldn’t believe
it: the ship was the Chusan. This was the ship I had served on in 1958/59 as a
steward. I got so excited, I was like a school kid. Naturally I took several
photos of it and will be posting the best one on FB. It brought back so many
memories of my time as a merchant seaman and my travels around the world as a
young lad. Great stuff! See you all next week.

Time for a break: cruising away from choppy writing hang-ups

June 17 2015

Tomorrow we are off
to Alaska for a seven night cruise, flying from Heathrow to Seattle. Three
nights in Seattle and then board the Ruby Princess on Sunday. Am I looking
forward to it? Well, it’s a long way to go for a week’s cruising, but I’m sure
the trip will be enjoyable. Not so sure about the 13 hour flight. We’ve done
the 24 hour flight to Australia, which was a pain. Always is when you fly
economy. We did fly business class once. What a difference, eh? Can’t do that
again unless I sell more books or win the lottery. But selling books is
something of a lottery: some writers crack it, others don’t. My sales have
increased slightly to about 3 a day. The average is probably slightly below
that, but who’s going to argue? Since starting my subscriber campaign with
MailChimp on March 14^th. I have seen a steady increase in the
subscription rate and the daily sales. I now have about 216 subscribers, and
all the time that figure keeps increasing, I can expect, hopefully, an increase
in my sales. But how do I keep the faith with all of them? There is a great
deal of advice on how to sell and increase your reviews out there on the web.
The trick is to pick the right one. When we get back from our holiday (we also
have to travel up to Norfolk for a wedding) I hope to be able to knuckle down
and start promoting as well as finishing my current WIP. I have reached 63,000
words and am now at that big hurdle known as writer’s block. The problem isn’t
really finishing the story, but making it as intriguing and fast paced as you
can without just tapering off to a kind of ho-hum so what ending. I’ve managed
to put three of my characters into a situation that I never intended should
happen, and that has kind of thrown me a curved ball: where do I go from here
and what do I do to get these characters back in line? Ah, but I’m the creator
of this intriguing piece of fiction, so I should have no trouble continuing
with the story and taking any path I choose. I could even re-write the whole
thing, but would that solve my problem? Believe it or, I began this book in
2011 — four years ago. In that time I have shelved it, written a full length
novel (Past Imperfect) which was published in hardback and Kindle this year,
had cancer, gone through chemo therapy, sold our house in Spain, moved into rented
accommodation and finally arrived back in England eight months ago. And now I’m
struggling with a WIP that my common sense tells me I should have thrown in the
bin four years ago. But writers aren’t sensible people, otherwise they wouldn’t
write. So why do I do it? Because I’m a romantic; I’m a story teller. I’m still
a kid who makes up stories. And that’s the rub: I can’t stop myself. I will
carry on until I drag myself over the finishing line with a completed novel in
my hand and wonder why I ever doubted the process. Wish me luck! See you all in
about a month’s time.

Measured Progress

June 6^th.
2015

Where did
the week go? Ever felt like that and wondered where it all went? Monday began
with a hospital appointment for Pat, but that evening I went to a meeting of
the CHINDI group to talk about our writing, our promotions and the forthcoming
events that all help to get us out into the public domain. You can read about
the writers group and the work they do on their website http://www.chindi-authors.co.uk. The next, forthcoming attraction for us is the Festival of
Chichester. This is a celebration of the rich and varied talent that can be
found in this ancient city. The festival covers all aspects of the arts and
gives people like me an opportunity to showcase our talents. (I do have some, I’m
sure!)

I’ve
managed to add a few more words to my WIP, and have increased my word count to
just over 60,000. Being over half-way is something of a bonus for me because I
began to doubt whether I would ever get there. It won’t increase by much more
over the next couple of weeks, and then there will be a pause because we are
going on a two week break cruising Alaska. We fly into Seattle for a few days
and then cruise for seven nights. Back to Heathrow twelve days later. Then a
wedding, but that’s in July.

I am
managing to sell a few books. Not many, but I am averaging a little over one a
day. This is more than I managed in the early part of the year. I put all this
down to the course I’ve been doing with Nick Stephenson and having a
subscribers list courtesy of MailChimp. If I can keep it going and supplement
it all with promotion, I would hope to improve my sales figures progressively
and with a good rate of increase. We’ll see.

I keep an
eye on my sales rank on Amazon daily, and have seen it taper off slowly to well
below 400,000 over the last few weeks despite the fact that I was selling books
on KDP (Amazon). I contacted them and asked why my sales rank was falling and
ignoring the fact that I’m selling? I received a text book reply from them
which told me nothing, but when I checked my rank after that, it had rocketed
to under 60,000. And I had no sales that day! Makes you wonder just how
efficient Amazon’s algorithms are. Or perhaps someone in the office felt sorry
for me and pushed my rankings up.

I’m still
battling with self-publishing. My latest print book came from Ingram Spark and
it was a total disaster. It was uploaded during their Spring event, which meant
publication was free. I have had to upload again, but this time it will cost
me. The annoying thing is that when I looked at the files I used, they are not
the ones Ingram Spark used. Now, you might think I’ve got it wrong, but this
happened a couple of months ago with another title. When I complained they told
me they only print the files uploaded by the customer. Can’t argue with that,
of course, but there is no redress if you know that the error is theirs. One of
the joys of self-publishing, I suppose. But I’ve uploaded the “correct” files
and have had to pay $50. I probably won’t even sell that many print books to
cover the cost. Why bother? Because I’m still in the game and like what I do.
Wish me luck!