The Puppy is Winning at the Moment.

April 23rd. 2016 It’s been a hard week. Puppies don’t realise what a strain they put on their owners. I’ve been exercising muscles that have been dormant for ages. How do you make a garden puppy proof? A lot of hard work. How can you get work done when you are keeping an eye on the little one because your wife is having a well-deserved break from it all? Me and Tuppence fell asleep while I was on duty. Fortunately she woke me up before my wife came home. But I have managed to get some writing done. As readers of my blog know, I scrapped my last WIP of 12000 words and started again. So far I have managed to pen 3000 words, and have started my novel from a completely different perspective. I have an idea which way I want to go with this, and even how I might change the style a little. I suppose it’s all part of being a stand-alone author, having an “eclectic” mix of styles. Is that possible, I wonder? Usually you can rely on a series author to write the thriller or whatever genre in which they write, to be unchanging, but in my case I believe that different characters in different time settings mean there will be subtle changes. All I can hope is that I come up with the goods. My current work in progress is a resurrection of Marcus Blake from A Covert War. I haven’t changed him; I will be using him in a slightly different way, but hopefully he will be the same man I invented and have the same fighting skills and bags of luck (editorial licence comes into play here). I will also be using Sir Giles Cavendish, but in a lesser role than the one he occupied in A Covert War. Another female character I am introducing is a single mother called Vereen. She is a widow, young and of mixed race. She is also very attractive (what else?). I have looked up some gangsta slang too. Mustn’t get carried away with that though. I had a small promotion yesterday for North Slope. The book shot up to just over 6000 in the rankings out of 3 million books on Amazon. I wish it would stay there, but can’t expect that. I sold 67 copies yesterday, which is nice. I also e-mailed my subscribers to tell them of my change of plan with regard to my latest WIP and to ask them to mention me to their friends on social media. It would be a neat way of spreading my name around the social networks. I also raised my two, low priced books back to their original price of $2.99. Tomorrow I expect to put North Slope back there too. After that I’ll keep an eye on sales and think about some promotion on either Facebook or Google. Maybe I’ll get more work done on my book. Or in the garden. Wish me luck!

Puppies and Projects

April 16th. 2016 Two things happened this weekend which will help to re-order my life. Did I say ‘help’? We picked up our eight week old puppy, Tuppence, today and we are now experiencing a minor, soon to be major, disruption. At the moment she is fast asleep in a cardboard box. No, we didn’t force her to go in the box; she chose to do this herself despite the lovely soft bed we bought, the blankets in her cage where we thought she would feel safe, and the lap my wife offered her several times. Oh, and earlier she chose to sleep wrapped around the leg of the table. I had to rearrange things so I could have my lunch. Her toys are now scattered all over the floor, and she probably has no intention of clearing up after her. What was the other thing? I decided to bin the 12000 words of my latest book and start again. Day one, page one. I’ve never done that before and believe me, it’s hard. Why chuck out all that work? In my heart I knew I was going down the wrong path, but I had to do it. I now have to look at the end of the year before I can say the book will be finished. Perhaps I should set a November target so I can have it ready for the Christmas rush. Earlier this week I completed a revision of two book jackets. One was for A Covert War, and the other for my religious book, A Word in Your Ear. I received a copy of the first book today, and am satisfied with the result. The other one should be available in a couple of days. Something else changed too. Yesterday I discovered that Amazon had altered the zero price on The Eagle’s Covenant to $0.99. No reason given except that the book isn’t free anywhere else. I contacted them but they claim to reserve the discretionary right to do this. As someone on one of my author forums said earlier this week, “$0.99 is the new zero.” I must admit, it does seem pointless offering a book for free these days. Even at the new low price, there’s very little profit to be made. My sales rankings are tumbling a lot quicker now, which I expected, so next week I’ll be raising my prices on my two lowest priced books, and dropping North Slope to $0.99 for a promotion on the 22nd. After that I’ll get back to Facebook advertising again. May even have a shot at BookBub. So what’s on the horizon for me now? A lot of ‘walkies’ I expect, and more head scratching as I work on my latest thriller. Wish me luck!

Falling averages but still selling

April 9th. 2016 As a writer, words interest me. I came across one yesterday on one of the author forums I use. The word is “Pantser”. No, me neither. Anyway, the word appeared in response to a post about the author Lee Child declaring that he doesn’t plan his books; they just happen. Whatever sentence he writes, he isn’t sure how the next line will develop, something like that. Sounds like fun, but I don’t believe it is strictly true; Lee Child has a wealth of knowledge on firearms, security services, military protocol, etc. so much so that he must have some idea of where he’s going with his story. Not that it matters, because he is a clever writer. I have followed this unwritten rule for a number of years, i.e. making it up as I go along, and that means I am a “Pantser”. It’s a made-up word alluding to the phrase ‘by the seat of your pants’. It’s often applied to flying where a pilot is flying an aeroplane for the first time and doesn’t really know what he’s doing. Sounds like a lot of writers to me. So there you have it: another word to add to my lexicon of useless words. I haven’t had a particularly fruitful week in terms of writing and increasing my word count. No excuses except to say that I have had other priorities to deal with. I do manage to get the time though to check my book sales and rankings, of course. I am currently averaging twenty sales per day, and can see it won’t be too long before I put my prices back up and think seriously about another Facebook promotion. I’ve just finished uploading my files for the paperback copy of A Covert War. Took a few attempts with Createspace, but I got there in the end. Once I have a copy in my hand I’ll be able to see if it’s OK or needs work. My next paperback will be The Boy from Berlin. Hopefully I’ll be able to come up with a stunning design for the cover. I had a lovely comment from a friend of ours: lady by the name of Pauline who we have known for several years. She told me that my book, A Dangerous Game, had to be made into a film. How I wish, eh? I get comments like that from time to time. Makes me feel good about my work. My latest WIP is currently at the 12000 word mark. I’m getting demotivated by my own sluggishness, otherwise known as procrastination. I have no-one else to blame but myself. Now the sun is beginning to show more often, it won’t be long before I’m tackling the garden. Perhaps I should write a book about gardening. Last Monday was the monthly meeting of the CHINDI group. I always enjoy these meetings, and often get to pick up some useful information. I was asked about my BookBub results and received a huge round of applause when I read out the results. One of our new members came up to me and asked if he could meet me for a drink so I could advise him about advertising. Someone had referred to me as the ‘advertising genius’. I had to disabuse him of that idea though. Anyway, we are meeting up next week for a coffee and a chat. Should be good. On the subject of helping others with their writing, I have been feeling sorry lately for a wannabe writer who asked me to look at his work (I mentioned him in my last blog). He came to me for advice after my Book Talk. I didn’t like the idea at all but agreed to have a quick look. Well, I’m afraid my response to his work could have destroyed him, because I was particularly candid (to use his word in response to my criticism). I now wonder if I should have let him down gently and pointed out his errors in a more accommodating fashion. But the truth is, there is no way of delivering a measured response if you want to hide the truth. Hopefully the man will come to understand that although the criticism was harsh, it was genuine. But I can’t help feeling sorry for him. It made up my mind that I will not agree to any requests for an opinion anymore. So, what’s next? More writing; a trip to the dentist; a run to Gatwick airport and a trip to see our puppy, Tuppence. We can’t have her for another ten days, but fortunately she’s only half an hour’s drive up the road. I must also figure out another advert for Facebook too. Wish me luck!

Not enough hours in the day.

April 4th. 2016 I’m late this week, simply because of too much to do. Went to a wedding on Saturday, which interfered with my usual Saturday treat of watching football. Sunday was a visit from our grand-daughter, Gemma (lovely), and then a trip across to see our puppy, Tuppence. Such a busy life I lead! Blogging took a back seat for a while. I have kept an eye on my book sales and rankings, and can now see the tail end of the BookBub promotion results. I’m really pleased with the way it went, and I am still managing to sell about twenty books a day. Sometime this week I need to get some advertising sorted: probably on Facebook, and hope I can keep the balls in the air that way. Earlier this week I received a request from a gentleman who had attended my Book Talk on March 19th. He asked me if I would have a look at his competition entry: a synopsis of his book and the first 5000 words. My immediate reaction was one of dismay because I don’t like getting requests of this nature. There was a deadline for the competition, so I agreed, reluctantly, to have a quick look. Unfortunately the MS fell well below the standards necessary to be considered ready for publication with the need for substantial editing. Plus there was very little knowledge in how to tell a story. Sadly I had to tell the man the truth. He thanked me for my “candid” reply, which I think was a euphemism for “brutal”, and I suspect he was really disappointed both in me and in the answer I gave. But is there a right way? Do we have to let wannabe writers down gently, or tell them the bald truth? I have experienced rejections and criticisms, and they are not nice; they are a fact of writing life. I believe it’s right to tell the truth, and if the writer can’t take it, that’s tough; it’s a tough old world out there. I did encourage him to submit his entry because none of us know what the judges are looking for. Timing is important in life, wouldn’t you agree? This morning, twenty minutes before I was due to take two people to Gatwick airport, I received a call from the local hospital asking me if I could go in today for my cataract operation. I had to say no, of course, but it could have all been over by now, had it not been for the airport run. I took umbrage last week over an article by an Amazon writer who had sold 2 million books on Amazon. She was pumped up about the fourteen hours a day she spends on promotion and marketing, slammed the traditional publishing houses and basically inferred we should all be knocking ourselves out like that if we wanted to sell books successfully. You could almost see the halo over her head on the publicity photo (head shot, smiling, slightly turned) as she beamed these little gems our way. I don’t like people coming on strong like that to wannabe writers, believing they should all follow the same path. When I wrote my first novel, North Slope, I was working in Saudi Arabia, twelve hour shifts seven days a week followed by twelve hour night shifts seven nights a week, Where’s the room for another fourteen hour shift each day in that lot? There must be tens of thousands of writers working a full day before coming home to write. Perhaps that’s where they are going wrong — working instead of writing. Tonight is the monthly meeting of the CHINDI group. I always look forward to these meetings. We all get the chance to talk about our work and have brain storming sessions about the best way to promote ourselves collectively. It’s good fun and often we learn some very useful stuff about promotion and marketing, but not about squashing it all into a fourteen hour day. Wish me luck!

Keeping up the averages and buying a puppy

March 26th. I held my Book Talk event last Saturday and enjoyed it immensely. About fifteen people turned up, which meant there was no over-crowding in the room, and I managed to sell a few books. That wasn’t the purpose of the event, but I took my books along just in case. I have seen both the one hour videos of the two hour event, and if I’ve learned anything, it is that questions from the floor cannot be heard when it’s only me who has the voice microphone. If I hold another event in future that’s being filmed, I will have to remember to repeat the questions for the benefit of the camera. Because I was talking from a personal experience of traditional and self-publishing, I managed to sound like an expert. I’ve no doubt that some people will, or could, challenge me on some of my statements about the book world, but I will stand by everything I said. I think most people there gained something from the talk, and quite a few of them have asked me to e-mail the notes I used to guide me through the afternoon. The notes were simply an aide memoire, but helpful to jog people’s memories. I have been asked when I will be doing another talk; it was from someone who couldn’t make it. I had to tell the lady that I am not planning on another, although if I was invited to do something along similar lines, I would probably consider it. Trouble is, what could I talk about other than my own experience as a writer; I would just be repeating myself? My book sales are still healthy following my BookBub promotion. It is now almost two weeks since the event, and I am selling about forty books a day. My Amazon rankings are dropping slowly, but that is to be expected. At the moment I am at 12000 plus. I can also see where my sales are distributed among my titles. Sometime later, I will be able to distil the figures and see which books are selling better than others. It might help me when working on another campaign. I did receive a questionnaire from BookBub asking me about the promotion and my results. At the end I was asked if I would be prepared to take part in another survey. I said yes because I want to keep my name in BookBub’s lexicon of so-called “Partners”. It might help if I try for another promotion. I am pushing ahead with my current WIP. I’m up to 10,000 words now and already changing my mind about which way the story will go. I did a small re-edit earlier, changing some of the ‘clues’ I usually drop in to confuse the reader. As the story goes on, the clues will be revealed and leave the reader thinking what a brilliant thriller writer I am! That’s the plan, anyway. Fortunately I haven’t got too far into the story to let the changes make much of a difference, but I will have to remember where I put them and not forget to use them. Scrivener helps with that. On the domestic front, we bought a Cockapoo puppy last week. It will be handed over to us in about three weeks’ time. We already have put photos up on Facebook, and will be going over to the breeder tomorrow to spend an hour of so with “Tuppence”. We’ll do this each week until we can bring her home. Then the fun begins. Wish me luck!

BookBub and Book Talk

March 20th 2016 This has been a good week for me both on the book and domestic fronts. The Kitchen fitter turned up as planned, my book promotion went out on BookBub, and on Friday I celebrated my 75th. birthday. The kitchen fitter completed the job in one day, and my promotion exceeded all my expectations. So now we have an upgraded kitchen, new tiles, work tops, cooker and hob etc. and I have a smile on my face because I have sold over 3000 books. And I’m still selling. That’s one of the great things about a successful promotion; there’s always a ‘tail’, and sales continue for some time. I’m currently averaging about forty books a day, which is a whole lot better than my usual average of about one or two. My Amazon rankings reached 302, which is quite a contrast to 200,000. The book I promoted was Roselli’s Gold. It only had sixteen reviews, which I thought would not make it attractive enough for BookBub, but as a consequence of the sales it reached No1 in two categories and No.2 in another. And now my other books are selling. I know this will slow down and eventually I’ll return to the low sales and rankings I’m used to, but I need to build on this and get back to more promotions. For my birthday, I took Pat out to Dell Quay, a small marina in Chichester Harbour. The pub there is very popular, and we enjoyed a meal overlooking the small boats, watched a few people cockling, and a couple of canoeists negotiating the channels. Yesterday, Saturday, I held my ‘Book Talk’ in the local Arts & Crafts Gift shop. Fifteen people turned up. I put a limit of twenty on the talk because of the room size, so fifteen was just about right; no-one was cramped and had plenty of room. I used an aide memoire that I had prepared so I didn’t wander off track. The point of the talk was to encourage those people who want to write, but haven’t yet made the step. It’s good to be able to talk from a position of experience, having been through the highs and lows of the book world. I was pleased with the response I had afterwards, and even managed to sell a few books — always a bonus. The event was recorded by an author friend of mine, Dan Jones, and will be on YouTube soon. I’ll provide the link in my next blog, and will be posting it on my website. So what’s next on the horizon for me and my expanding horizons? Well, I have started my next thriller and have written about 7000 words, so that’s something to crack on with. Next week seems fairly clear, so I may be able to get on and add a few more words. One thing that may put a temporary stop to it is a dog. Yes, Pat wants a dog. She’s been searching the adverts, hoping to spot the right dog, right price and right locality. We may end up having to drive a fair distance if she finds the one she believes is the right one. She wants a cockapoo. That will mean more “walkies” for me no doubt. Can’t be too bad; at least it will help get me fit. Wish me luck!

Busy Boy

March 6th. 2016 We’ve had a full week, one way or another. Saturday (eight days ago) we went to the funeral of a dear friend who succumbed to cancer. Monday we visited friends in Southampton for a meal. They are off to Spain today to their holiday home; back in May. Friday was a visit to my sister and then yesterday we were with number three son, John and his wife Bryony, so all in all a busy period. The kitchen work tops turned up Tuesday — couldn’t get them in the house, so had to leave them propped up against the house in the back garden. It will be up to the kitchen fitter to sort it out when he comes next week to upgrade the kitchen. But I did manage to make a start on my next thriller! Procrastination is the bane of a writer’s life, and I’m as guilty as the next one. So I took the plunge and e-mailed my subscribers to tell them I was about to make a start. This means I am committed to keeping my word and producing something by the end of the year. I had some encouraging replies, which put a smile on my face. Oh, and I have picked up some excellent reviews for A Dangerous Game: mostly five stars, so I must be doing something right. I decided to bring Marcus Blake in from the cold for my next book. He was the main man in A Covert War. I had to think seriously of a makeover for Marcus to add something visually brutal to his character, but at the same time necessary. I thought of Bruce Willis in the Die Hard films and how he comes across, but I am not planning to copy Willis’s character. Marcus began life in A Covert War with blond locks, which had to change. In the opening sequence he is taking part in an illegal cage fight. He has been battling with his demons after killing his friend, Rafiq Shah in the previous story, and finds the violence helps smother his anger over Rafiq’s death and the manner of it. And as a cage fighter, blond locks are a liability, so I’ve shaved them off. Isn’t it marvellous how writers can shape their characters? Often it’s the other way round and the characters leap out of the pages and demand to be taken in a different direction: a case of the tail wagging the dog. But the die has been cast, and now I have to press on. Do I have any idea where I’m going with this? Not really: the story will develop and arrive at a conclusion of which I have no idea. My books sales are maintaining a reasonable, if low, daily average. I like to think that readers are finding my books enjoyable and want more. I also believe my Facebook campaign helped. I had planned to run another campaign, but will wait now until after my Bookbub promotion on March 14th. The consequence of the promotion could send me off in a new direction, or not. We’ll see. Wish me luck!