Active again.

I decided to write my blog a little earlier today
because I find myself making excuses for not getting the entry out on a Monday.
Last week has seen more activity in the promotion and marketing effort I’m
putting to my books. One major achievement for me was the production of one
thousand bookmarkers. I designed them myself, although I listened to
constructive criticism from family and friends, and had them printed at a small
printers in Bognor. I picked them up last night and am delighted with the
result. Why a thousand? I want to distribute them in places where people will
pick them up and maybe look at my website, find out who I am and perhaps buy a
book. I plan to use my family in this (they already know), and expect the
distribution to cover about six areas in UK, couple of places in Sydney and
one, at least in America. This isn’t about distributing leaflets and flyers,
and sticking them under car windscreen wipers: it’s more of a kind of
subliminal advertising. It isn’t something that has been suggested to me; quite
the opposite: I dreamed this one up on my own. Bookmarker advertising isn’t
new, I know, but with luck I can get a kind of placement advertising simply because
my bookmarkers will be found in unexpected places. I hope so, anyway.

I have also cranked up my promotion for The Eagle’s
Covenant. I have had four, five star reviews posted on Amazon, but there has
been no quantifiable result in the numbers I’ve sold, so just how effective
those reviews will be I’ve no idea, but I’ve decided to concentrate on pushing
the title until well into the New Year.

Another step in getting myself known among the community
is to go to a meeting of the Chindi Authors Group. This is a group of Chichester
Indie authors who meet once a month in Chichester. Their aim is to help each
other with promotion and to generally encourage each other. I will be there on
Monday evening and I hope I can learn something from them and perhaps help
anyone there to learn from my experience as a long time writer. I’ve looked at
their website and seen the good reviews their books have attracted on Amazon.
Earlier this month they had a seminar in the Chichester library where about
seven of the group were doing a Q & A session. There were quite a few
people there in the audience. It’s this kind of event that can only help
writers like myself to become established in the local, book loving community,
and I hope we can all profit from this.

I began tentative steps with my dusty, old manuscript
yesterday. Having now purchased the Scrivener programme, I began using it
yesterday. I will be compiling my research material into separate sections
first. Then I will begin reading through my manuscript to bring my mind back to
the place I need to be with regard to the story line and character profiles. I
expect to be entrenched again by January and push on from there: hopefully
completing the novel by the summer. Wish me luck!

Slowing down towards the end of 2014

Once again another gap between blogs. No excuse, but
then I don’t have a great deal to say at the moment. I have been brushing up on
my Scrivener project. This is a writer’s work tool to help in the building of a
manuscript. It’s extremely useful and popular with a lot of writers. I’ve just
about worked my way through the course, but have promised myself to go through
it again. It’s not a long course, and the project is loaned on trial for thirty
days. That’s thirty days that are not necessarily consecutive. Theoretically
you could download one page a year for thirty years; not that it would be much
help. I will purchase it once I have grasped its finer detail and got used to
the way it which it functions. It isn’t expensive either. I plan to read
through my manuscript from the beginning and use that to get my thought process
back on track with the story line, and to build it with Scrivener. I can see
Christmas interfering with my plan, but I do intend to try.

Next week, December 1^st. I plan to visit the
Chindi writers group. This is a group of local authors who meet in Chichester
once a month. Their aim is to help fellow writers in the group in any way they
can with promotion and marketing ideas, and generally to encourage each other
in their work. I’ve looked at the group’s writers on the web links and can see
that they are all similar to me in that they are ‘indie’ authors and all have respectable
reviews. I’m looking forward to it

I have received a couple of five star reviews for The
Eagle’s Covenant, which
I hope will give it a kick start. When I removed it from Acclaimed Books and
published it myself on Amazon, I lost all the reviews. It has been a pain
trying to build it up again, so hopefully the five star reviews will be a great
help.

Coming towards the end of 2014 will see me (and Pat) regarding
the year as one of the most traumatic in our lives. I battled chemotherapy and
the subsequent problems associated with that. We sold our house and moved into
rented accommodation in Spain, and then moved to England where we are happily
settling into life here and enjoying every minute of it. I will be having my
next session of treatment, my first in UK, at the local hospital in Chichester
tomorrow, and this will continue for another eighteen months. I’m looking
forward to 2015 and the hope that my progress, both in my health and my writing
will be upward, fruitful and positive. I have a marketing idea for my books which
I hope to have ready before Christmas, and will explain more once I have it up
and running.  I have my December 8^th
promotion coming up and the hope that this will boost my rankings. Let’s hope
so. Wish me luck!

As You Were: back to basics.

So where was I? I missed
last week’s blog post, but have no real excuse. Maybe it’s just a case of
getting back into the swing of things. I’m slowly getting my writer’s head
back, and have started promoting again. Over the last month or so, my rankings
on Amazon have dropped away steadily, and I can only put that down to the fact
that I have been pretty lax in that department. Mind you, my rankings picked up
a couple of days ago. I think that was because a small promotion I had planned
kicked in on November 1^st. I’ve submitted another for December 8^th.
with BookSends. I’m also in the process of working on a project that might help
to increase my sales, but more about that in future blogs.

Because we have moved
into a new address, there has been a lot to do, not the least getting the spare
room ready for me to use as a study. Last week I bought a work desk at IKEA,
the flat pack people. It meant redesigning the spare room, but now I have my
desk (work station) set up and I can knuckle down to some serious writing (if
time allows!). Although I haven’t been putting pen to paper for quite a while,
my manuscript has never been far from my thoughts, and I keep making changes:
none of which have been written down. I sometimes see things on TV, or in the
paper and think of how I could use the idea in my story. Then I bin that because
it would detract from the way in which I write and create my characters. I keep
promising myself that I will rationalise that way in which I work, and try to
set goals throughout the week, but one of the penalties of writing for a hobby
and trying to live a normal life, is that no two days are the same. Plus there
are demands made on me that have to be attended to. So that’s my excuse.

It’s getting close to
Christmas which means a lot to most of us. It means we’ll get busier because of
the way in which we view the festive season. But one thing on the horizon for
me is that my next book, Past Imperfect,
should be on its way to me from my publisher. Publishing date is January, and I
usually receive my advance copies ahead of the date. Although I read the book
last month (the galley proofs), I will read the hardback with a great deal of
enthusiasm and sheer joy, like a kid with a new toy, because that’s how I am
with my books. I think is must mean I still have a measure of disbelief that I
actually made it as a published writer — a traditionally published writer at
that — and to hold the finished article in my hands fills me with a sense of
achievement.

However, after all that,
I think I have made a decision (my wife says not) to finish writing and
concentrate of promotion and marketing the seven titles I have on Amazon. I
will have two others of course: The Boy from
Berlin, and Past Imperfect, but
the rights of those two belong to my publisher. If I complete my current work,
I will offer it to my publisher. If she turns it down I will publish it myself.
This would mean I would have ten titles in print. Not bad for a boy who never
knew he would one day become a fully-fledged author. Wish me luck!

A&E and brain dead decisions

Bit of an eye-opener today at St. Richards Hospital in
Chichester. I had to pop in to A & E in the hope that they could ‘flush’
the catheter in my chest, which has to be cleaned out every four weeks. I was
also waiting to hear from my doctor about an appointment with the hematologist
to continue with my cancer medication (not chemo). Within five minutes of
walking into A & E I was being seen by a nurse. She contacted the cancer
ward and I was passed on to a hematology specialist nurse. Lots of questions of
course, but amazingly she told me her department had just received my documents
(I had passed them on to my doctor about a week ago), and her boss had asked to
see if she could locate this ‘Michael Parker’ who needed attention for the
catheter and further medication. And there I was walking into A & E. I was
examined by a doctor, weighed, blood pressure taken and had my catheter flushed
out. Oh, and they gave me a cup of tea (and Pat). Within two hours of walking
into the hospital we were walking out again. Job done. One hour after arriving
home I received a phone call with my appointment for my next medication in
November. I couldn't fault the treatment, response and professionalism of the
nursing staff, and the cleanliness of the clinic where I was treated. But here’s
the rub: the politicians; the men in suits who know what’s best for us, want to
close the unit to save money. The nearest unit then is about twenty miles away.
In the other direction it’s the same. So there would be a forty mile separation
between units. And all this on a major trunk road that is choc-a-bloc with
traffic during rush hour and holidays.

Changing the subject, I’m still a long way from
knuckling down with my writing. There’s no real excuse, but moving house and
settling in, redecorating, furnishing, sorting out all the minor details etc.,
does cut into the free time. And when I do find myself sitting in the chair
watching TV, it’s too late to think about creativity. Maybe next week, I keep
telling myself. Maybe. I must do better. Wish me luck!

Almost back in business

Its three weeks now since I wrote my last blog entry and
a great deal has happened in that time. Most of it, probably all of it, has
been to do with re-inserting ourselves back in the British way of life, and
what a pleasure it has been. This doesn’t mean that our previous Spanish way of
life was inferior to what we are discovering over here in England, but it’s all
so ‘user friendly’, if that’s the right way to put it. No doubt a major element
of that is the language and how natural it all seems to us. There’s no need to
continually translate as we go along, and dealing with officialdom and
bureaucracy has not been the drama we thought it might be. We’ve completed the
major purchases that were necessary: park home, car, TV and TV license, suite
of furniture and assorted bits and bobs, and have dealt with learning our way
around Bognor and the local area. We’ve been to two churches but will continue
looking until we find one in which we feel “right”. We attended one this
morning and was amazed when they announced a coffee break twenty minutes after
the service started.

So what’s the plan now? For me it’s all about getting
back into the swing of writing while getting on with the jobs that need doing
around the home. Two days after arriving here, the proofs of my next novel
turned up. I was expecting them, but because there had been a delay in
receiving them (my decision), I had to crack on and read them through. They are
now back with my publisher. The book is due out in January, and the e-book will
be released in February. Something to look forward to.

I also need to get back to my marketing and promotion
work. It’s amazing how disconnected I feel simply by not being involved in
pushing my current Amazon titles. My sales have dropped considerably while I’ve
been ‘off the air’ for three weeks, and I really need to get back into that
area as soon as I can. I have one or two marketing ideas up my sleeve, but not
being an expert in that field, I will have to rely on my very subjective way of
promoting myself. Wish me luck!

Back to the future. Where do we go from here?

This could be my last
blog entry for a while. This time next week we will be travelling up to Bilbao
to catch the boat back to England. Technically we’ll be homeless until we have
handed over the money for our Park Home at Pagham (West Sussex). It means no
Wi-Fi for a while, but like a lot of people of our age (me and Pat), we have
travelled thousands of miles over the years without Wi-Fi, mobile phones,
tablets, laptops and all that modern paraphernalia. We will still have our mobile
phones with us of course, so we won’t be completely isolated. Something we
noticed when we travelled to Australia a couple of years ago was the fast
disappearance of public call boxes. No doubt they will become a thing of the
past. As technology moves forward and leaves the past behind, a lot of us mourn
the passing of the old days but would probably not welcome them back. I would
not like to go back to writing novels on a typewriter, even with a correction
ribbon in place. And as for carbons: God forbid! But thinking back to the
tapping rhythm of the typewriter keys and the zip of the carriage return, I
harbour a kind of masochistic desire for those days. I think it’s because it
made the acceptance of a novel by the publisher a rewarding triumph after the
drudge of bashing away in a lonely corner somewhere. Modern indie writers
cannot possibly know that feeling: they can never live the sheer joy of
receiving the acceptance letter from the publisher. Publishing a novel now is a
fact of life that turns us all into writers. Anybody can pen a story, good or
bad, and publish it in Amazon. They become instant writers. Just add water and
stir. There’s a kind of metronomic output with some of the writers I’ve come
across on various forums. They promote their next series of first time novels
that they have yet to complete and invite readers to log on to their blog and
sign up for the newsletter, behaving like established writers. And it’s all
down to modern technology. So what’s the next step? Who knows? But the fun, the
joy and, (dare I say it?) the creativity needed to produce quality will be
missing, and this can only be to the detriment of the published word. One day
youngsters will seek instant gratification through apps on their mobiles and
tablets, apps that will be produced by wizard technology that probably doesn’t
exist yet, and books will confined to the dusty shelves of old houses and
bookshops. So when me and Pat are finally settled in our new home at Pagham, I
will get on with writing and publishing on Amazon because that’s the only way
to go for so many writers today. Unless I manage to get my novel finished and
accepted by my publisher! Wish me luck.

Amazon or traditional: which way?

Two weeks today and we’re off to UK. After all the
moving around over the years this will be our last move. (I won’t include the
ultimate one that we all have to go through). We will be settled in Pagham and
looking at a change in our lifestyle after seventeen years in Spain. Apart from
the small sacrifices that are necessary when moving house, one part of my
routine that is on hold at the moment is my writing. Although I still have
times during the day when I could sit down and write, I find my creative flow
is impeded because of other things on my mind. Some writers might say that this
is a poor excuse. If I was writing for a living I would agree, but I’m not;
it’s only a hobby. So the tools are put away and the ideas will continue to
germinate in my mind until they can take shape and form once I am back into a
routine.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to the prospect
of my next book — the one I am supposed to be writing — and whether I should
offer it to my publisher of go straight to Amazon. The reason I am in a bit of
a quandary over this is because my next book, Past Imperfect, is due out in
January in hardback, and I am looking forward to holding it in my hand and
giving myself a gratuitous pat on the back. Having your work published by a
traditional publisher is still no mean feat these days, and it is still nice to
think of myself as being traditionally published.

But there’s another reason (maybe a ton of them) why I
am considering this. Because I am from the old school of writers who have gone
through the mill of finding a publisher or an agent — rare as hen’s teeth for
many wannabe writers — I have a soft spot for the old way. But as pleased as I
am for what I have on Amazon (eight titles), and have sold reasonably well, I
now feel that Amazon are moving the goalposts and making it more difficult for
writers like myself who do not have a series of books to offer in box form.
They have also introduced KDP Prime service for authors whereby they can have
up to ten books available at once on a loan basis. This shift in the way they
encourage readers means it offers quantity at a low price. I could say quantity
against quality, but that has to be the opinion of the people who buy books.

I have had some fun with my books on Amazon and enjoyed
good results from time to time, but my rankings almost always sink back to the
200,000 mark after a promotion. When I see my rankings shoot up, it brings a
huge smile to my face, but I know it’s only a sale of maybe one or two books.
If I have the quality that readers want, then my rankings would be a lot
higher, and in a more permanent position. The only way to do that is to build a
readership, which is an antediluvian concept from the time before Amazon and
the closure of many public libraries. I am failing to do that and wonder why I should
add another title to my list on Amazon. Would it make a heap of difference to
my position there? Probably not. So for that reason I think I would prefer to
see another hardback of mine sitting on the bookshelf next to my other nine
titles. My immediate problem of course is to finish the book and offer it to my
publisher. She may not like it, which means I will have to resort to self-publishing.
I will continue to battle against the odds of course. I will carry on promoting
and marketing my books and looking for ways to open the flood gates, but at the
moment I am swamped, like thousands of us, by the other indie writers all
competing for the same bit of space. Wish me luck!