Living in the world of make believe

July 2nd. 2016 Halfway through the year already and I’m only a third of the way through my latest novel. I had great plans, probably like many writers, and when I see Facebook posts from other writers who are churning out three or four books a year, I wonder where they get the time or stamina from. I am just nudging 30,000 words, which makes the ending seem an awful long way off. I’ve found my story splitting into two parts, but not part one followed by part two. Both halves could warrant a novel on their own, but I feel I would lose something of my uniqueness if I allowed that to happen. Am I unique? We all are one way or another. As a standalone writer, I believe I bring something to my readers that support my belief — an eclectic mix of genre, time, place and readability. I’ve just got to figure out how to sell them this idea of mine. My sales are still buoyant, but slipping away. I expect to be launching a Facebook ad later this month to boost my numbers. I can’t make up my mind whether to promote a box set, which seems to be all the rage at the moment, or continue advertising my website and the free book offer. At the moment I don’t know how to make a box set, but it won’t take long to find out. I expect I’ll be using Photoshop to do that. If I do go for the box set, I can still promote the fact that there is a free book available on the site. I did make a small change to my website yesterday. It was an update of the image I have there of my hardback books. I had to do that because the first image was of a pile of books, all mine, but two or more the same. Now they are a pile of nine different titles. Oh, and a mug with pens sticking out: gives it a kind of cheeky charm. This coming week I will be at our monthly, Chindi meeting. There’s always a lot to talk about. I could be asked about an item that appeared in the local magazine, Sussex Views. It was a promotional bit about me and the CHINDI group. I was trying to encourage wannabe writers to come out of their shell and join a local group; get their books published. On Thursday I’ll be at Chichester Library with the group where four of our writers will be giving a talk about writing and publishing. I’m not taking part in the lecture, but as a member of the group I can offer my books for sale at the end. And looking ahead to the end of July, I have just paid for a stall at the Rox Music Festival in Bognor. Six of us will be selling our books on that day. Should be fun. Hopefully we’ll sell a ton of books. On the domestic front, our grand-daughter has announced she is expecting. That will make three great grandchildren for us if she is only having one. Our puppy has finished the six week basic training at puppy school, although no-one has told her she was awarded a certificate; she’s still naughty. And I’m slowly getting on top of my gardening chores. By winter it should all be done. Wish me luck!

Vote, write, change.

June 25th. It’s been a momentous week, but not from a writing point of view. This week the British voted to leave the European Union. I voted for it so am pleased with the result. A lot of people are upset and some are quite bitter. Now the mud-slinging starts and some of the losers are making spiteful utterances. They claim we have divided Britain, but as they continue their vituperative tongue slashing, they forget they are acting like a spoilt child who wants the game played a different way; otherwise he/she will take their ball home. We certainly have a bumpy ride ahead. I’m often asked where I get the ideas for my stories. I say I get them from real life. The stories are all around, like fruit waiting to plucked from the trees. The actions of some of our senior politicians, and their sycophants are worth delving into, particularly if you are a political writer. Out will come the knives, political parties will break apart and new parties formed. So there’s a ton of stuff if you have a devious, political writing gift. It’s like the House of Cards all over again. Looking at my sales this week, I can see they are settling around five a day. This could be a good base from which to continue building, but it won’t happen on its own; I have to do something. I am working my way through the Mark Dawson Facebook course. It’s packed with information and advice. There is so much there that I need to go through it twice before I start advertising. If I get it right, and there’s no reason why I can’t, I should be able to build my subscribers list and consequently my average sales. Or I could sit and dream! Working on my latest book is giving me self-inflicted problems; I keep changing direction. Not too wildly, but enough to make me see where the story could improve if I am brave enough to go with my instincts. For example: one of my characters has been killed off already, although she figured prominently in the early part of the book. And I have weakened the character of another by making her a drug addict, although addict would be too strong a word because I need her to survive in a dramatic way, and not from going cold turkey. I have also been doing some research and found myself reading scientific papers that are written in a language that is quite alien to me. It’s all English by the way, but you know what these scientific types are like. One of the problems with this kind of research is that it’s necessary to wade through a lot of material in the hope you can unearth a little gem that can be used as the raison d’etre in the story. I’m nearly there. Perhaps I’ll award myself an honorary degree in science ‘stickability’. But whatever happens, wish me, and the British public, a lot of luck!

Great Expectations

June 18th. 2016 A lady came round to my house the other day and asked if she could buy a couple of my books. I was out but my wife was here, so the lady went away. I got back home about ten minutes later. It made me wonder if that was a kind of metaphor for my book writing life: not being in the right place at the right time. But she came back, so that’s alright then. She bought a couple of thrillers for her husband who needs dialysis three times a week. Makes you realise what side your bread is buttered. He has to be up at 5.30 on his dialysis days to be taken to the hospital. I know some writers get up at that time, but I certainly don’t. It’s nice to be reasonably fit and well compared to some people, so my writing and my books have to be seen as not that important. They are to me, but not in the context of the reality of life and our expectations. Talking of expectations; it’s something I am filled with now because of small results from my Facebook campaign and another idea I came up with during the week. The FB campaign has increased my visibility, although I had to make some changes to improve the cost effectiveness of my advert. It’s just about finished now, but I have seen some positive results. The other idea I came up with was to drop the price of my two, lowest selling books and let my subscribers know. The idea was to get a response and lift my sales of course. It worked and I sold 32 books the day following my e-mail. My Amazon rankings shot up too, which is always nice. Everything has calmed down now, but I am beginning to pull in more ‘likes’ for my Facebook author page. As I work my way through Mark Dawson’s course I want to rush ahead and get it finished so I can get cracking, but I know I have to be patient and make sure I know what I’m doing. I also have to make sure I don’t waste my money, which is quite easy with promotions. I will be preparing another ‘campaign’ next week and hope to see some improvement in my subscriber list. There’s an irony there, too: each time I contact my list, which is not very often, people unsubscribe. I think it’s a common enough thing. I know I do this to some of the companies and websites who send me e-mails regularly. In time I realise that I never respond so I unsubscribe. I guess the e-mails to my subscribers act in the same way, and trigger the negative response. Thankfully my list is still growing. I have made little progress with my latest book. It’s getting more and more difficult to fit the time in because of other distractions. The UEFA cup isn’t helping either. I have to ignore some football matches, which is unfortunate, but we suffer for our art, don’t we? Next week our CHINDI author group are launching our “Summer Reads” week. It will run from the 21st – 27th June. We will be discounting the print books in our on-line bookshop and running a writing competition as well as a Facebook chat with four authors. The discounted books will only be for UK only because of postage. The book I have offered has been reduced by a third as an example. The website for CHINDI is www.chindi-authors.co.uk if you want to pop in and have a look. We are keeping our fingers crossed for the success of this event, and hope we may be able to hold something like this each year. Naturally I hope readers will look in and choose several books, mine included! Wish me luck.

Ups and Downs

June 11th. 2016 Interesting week for a couple of reasons: progress with my WIP and our puppy. I have re-worked my novel, and am slowly putting together something that should make a reasonable mystery/thriller. There is still a long way to go of course, but the end of the year is my target. The Skype interview I mentioned in last week’s blog did take place, but not on the day we planned. The Canadian writer, Alexandra Amor (alexandraAmor.com), contacted me on the appointed day, but the transmission link was so poor, we had to abort the interview. However, Alexandra contacted me the following day and it was totally different: good reception and a twenty minute, uninterrupted interview. It will be released on YouTube and Alexandra’s website. I’ll be putting it up once I receive a copy. Although I am very pleased to be interviewed, it’s always too short. I can understand the need for brevity, but when I get the chance to talk about myself and my writing, I could gabble away for hours. Probably bore the pants of a lot of people. After the article about my latest book, A Dangerous Game, appeared in the local Press, I was contacted by a chap living locally. Like me he was ex RAF and had written a book. We met yesterday in the local pub for an hour and talked about our RAF careers, our civilian jobs and, of course, writing. He hasn’t published his book because he has no idea what to do. I was able to give him plenty of advice on that score. Hopefully, what he is armed with now will help him find a publisher or publish the book himself. I expect to be chatting with him again sometime. He’s about my age, so we have a good many years of life’s experience to fall back on. I am now a student of Mark Dawson’s Facebook advertising course, and hope to achieve much more than I could possibly achieve on my own. I did create a FB campaign last week before starting Mark’s course, but have since stopped it. It made sense to wait until I had learned more about the intricacies of the advertising game. One promotion I signed up for which isn’t bringing me any real sales, is a year’s link to BookGoSocial. There is a money back guarantee, which I will probably have to invoke, providing the BGS idea of success is not lower than mine. But in the three weeks of daily tweets (eleven or twelve a day), all retweeted, I sold fourteen copies of the promoted book. At the same time I sold eighty six copies of one of my titles over the same period with no promotion at all. So, it isn’t rocket science: the promotion isn’t working. My book will still be shown on their website somewhere, but I can’t see that making much difference. One surprise I had was the increase in my Facebook connections. The ‘insights’ into my Michael Parker page on FB showed an increase in reach figures of 21,127%. Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? My post engagement went up by 100% too. This was because of my dalliance with FB advertising. But imagine how much better I could do with Mark Dawson’s advice. Hope it works. Wish me luck!

One eyed optimist

June 5th. 2016 Today I’m sitting in front on my computer just four hours after a cataract operation. My glasses are on crooked because of a patch over my ‘new’ eye, which makes reading and typing rather awkward, but I soldier on, ever the eternal optimist. By all accounts my eye should be back to normal very soon. Then I’ll have the other eye done to balance both eyes. What it will do for my writing is a different matter, apart from the physical aspect of focussing in on the PC screen and the keyboard. This past week has seen two events on my calendar. My author group, CHINDI, was part of the Worthing libraries “World of Words” literary festival, and on Tuesday we held a seminar at Worthing library about the steps involved in getting a book published. It was well received by those who turned up — about fifty people — and the feedback we received was encouraging. The following day was a book launch by Jim Morley, also of the group, for his latest novel, A Summer of Law and Love. I also had a piece about me published in the Chichester Observer. It was about my latest book, A Dangerous Game. I was surprised at the amount of column inches used for the article, and also a nice, big photo of me in my ‘killer’ pose as a thriller writer. Lovely stuff. I’m in the throes of considering a Facebook campaign, and thought I would target readers who enjoy standalone novels. I Googled ‘standalone’ writers, but was disappointed with the results. When I checked them out on Amazon, there was nothing that inspired me. If I want to aim for a high reader market, I need those who like my kind of books. I could stick to the best-selling thriller writers like Lee Child or David Baldacci, but find myself doubting the wisdom in doing that. More to the point though, is what kind of advertising campaign am I going to run, how much will I spend and for how long? At least with FB you can control the amount being spent, and also manipulate the advert if you think it might improve the click through rate. I have also been re-writing my current novel. I looked back through the 18000 words or so that I had written, and could see plenty of areas that needed improvement. It wasn’t too much of a problem, but now I can push on from there and drill down into my creative senses for a cracking read. I wish it was that easy. I’m looking forward to Wednesday, when I’ll be the subject of an interview on Skype. The interviewer will be Canadian author Alexandra Amor. It will be published on YouTube, and as a podcast. Naturally I will be putting it on my FB page and my website. Hopefully it will get a lot of people reading and watching. Might do me some good. Wish me luck!

Points of View

May 28th. 2016 Progress on my current novel is slow at the moment, giving me all sorts of problems, but at least they are self-inflicted. I’m in a kind of quandary about the way in which to develop the story. When I look at my other books, I see action and adventure, thrills and spills and one romance. Now I seem to have drifted into a kind of Dick Francis state of mind, and I’ve no wish to emulate that man — not that I could. I do remember during one interview I did some years ago that I said a writer should be able to write on any subject. Whether it would be any good or not is open to question, but the task should not be beyond a good author. So here I am being hoist with my own petard and struggling to write a convincing mystery. My promotion for The Devil’s Trinity has not achieved any significant sales in the last three weeks of the Twitter campaign. Compared to Roselli’s Gold, it hasn’t performed at all. It will still be listed on the promoter’s website until the end of the contracted period, but I doubt if it will have any impact now; the Twitter campaign is finished. Next month I’ll probably look at other ways of spending my money on advertising: it’s just a question of hitting the right one. I had a submission rejected by BookBub, but have put The Eagle’s Covenant up, see what happens. It’s unlikely to be accepted because the story takes place in Germany, which is not of much interest to the American market. My local book group, CHINDI, are preparing a “Summer Reads” promotion. This will be a week of tweets, FB posts, e-mails and just about anything we can do to make ourselves heard. The idea is to sell our printed books from our bookshop at a discounted price including P&P. The books will be signed and posted by each author. The week for the promotion is June 21st – June 26th. The campaign for this begins next week, and it’s up to us to push it as hard as we can. The irony is though that if we are too successful, each author will be saddled with the prospect of sending a mountain of books out. It would mean a few trips to the local post office. It will be on our website soon. http://www.chindi-authors.co.uk I did something earlier this week that I rarely do and that was to read a couple of one star reviews I received for one of my titles in Canada. I actually smiled while I was reading the criticism. I get the impression that some reviewers set out to be critical, nasty and dedicated to the role of putting writers in their places. At the end of these two reviews I expected to see marks out of ten, just like a poor exam paper. But never mind; I’ve had a host of terrific reviews for the same title. On the domestic front we have made some advances with the puppy. She’s getting cleaner and developing a bit of a character. She has been out to get used to people and traffic noises, and some more, wide open spaces. Still boisterous though, but a good girl. Last night we went to see the musical Hairspray. Pat enjoyed it, but I’m afraid my hearing doesn’t lend itself to the kind of production we watched. It was at our local theatre, which was packed. The cast worked hard, gave an honest performance. But I sat there for a while almost like one of those measly book reviewers I mentioned earlier. Then I snapped out of it; the musical was presented with all that was available, and there were far more people enjoying it than me. Mustn’t grumble. Now it’s back to work for another masterpiece. Wish me luck!

Big Oak Trees From Little Acorns Grow

May 21st. 2016 A mixed but busy week for me; I’m still writing and have reached about 18000 words. I keep getting writer’s block though which doesn’t help. I search around in my head for situations that leave a question mark over the end of a chapter or scene, and then find myself writing in my head and forgetting where I was going with the story. I have a character who is pushing for a bigger part. Sounds daft? Ask most writers if their characters do this for them, and I’m sure they’ll agree. This guy is called Blazer. He’s black, tall, good looking and likes to use ethnic slang when he’s talking to Vereen, the female ‘lead’. She’s black too. But I’ve got to keep Blazer in the background. I can’t say why because it would be a spoiler, but he will come good in the end. Meanwhile I have my other main man, Marcus, up to his neck in bodies and police and needs to find a way out. Unfortunately his other lady friend, Bunty (Vereen is his secretary), has muddied the water by involving someone who is distinctly unfriendly. The other creep in this story is Toby Abelard, a Haitian nightclub owner. Needless to say, he will figure big in the outcome, but I’m still light years away from filling in all the gaps. My book sales have steadied, and my rankings are not plummeting. They are going down, but I get small lifts in the graph. And I was pleasantly surprised to see half a dozen sales with CreateSpace, which means readers are buying my paperbacks. Not many, but it’s a start. I also had a tiny credit from Ingram Spark. And this month my Amazon royalties are coming from six different countries. Meanwhile my book, The Devil’s Trinity, is being heavily promoted by BooksGoSocial. The url they are tweeting (smarturl.it/tdet ) puts the inquiry straight to the Amazon page of that country. It’s a neat idea: saves a lot of clicking. I also had a small promotion yesterday with them for A Dangerous Game. I have no idea yet how effective that was, but no doubt the next day or so will tell me. On the home front it has been more about the puppy. She had her 2nd. Jab on Monday. On Wednesday we took her to puppy training (more for the owners than the dogs), and today she went out for her first walk. Not far, though — across to the shop. But for a little dog, the traffic and the people was all a bit confusing. We had to pick her up for a while. Naturally she’ll get used to all that and it won’t be long before she’s demanding to be taken out. Today is our sister-in-law, Carole’s 60th. birthday bash at a gastro pub. She’s paying! And today I had a pre-assessment at the eye hospital for an op. in two weeks’ time. So all in all, a lot done and more to look forward to. Wish me luck!