On the up!

July 6^th. 2019

The week began with a trip to the Fernhurst Centre at St. Richards hospital where Pat had an hour’s consultation with the haematologist. He explained, in detail, what cancer they’d found: it was a lymphoma as they suspected, but one that is difficult to find. I can’t pronounce the name of the lymphoma, but it isn’t curable although they can treat it. This means that Pat will have this permanently but the disease will be contained with proper management. But finally we know where we’re going. Pat starts her chemo on Monday and has been on steroids all week. She’s like a different woman, full of beans, cooking, washing — just like the Pat I married. She comes off the steroids today, but has had a good week. And all this was a blessing because on Wednesday, my false hip decided to play up and left me half crippled, in a lot of pain and having to use a walking stick. The doctor has put me on codemol and I’ll be getting an X-ray later this month. This has happened before, and I know it will get back to normal, but I could have done without it.

On to brighter things now; in particular my Facebook campaign. I made a couple of tweaks to both ads (UK & USA), and have seen my sales increase. Yesterday I sold eight books. All told this month, that’s six days, I’ve sold 24 copies of The Boy from Berlin. At this rate I could hope to make most of my advertising costs back. And this is where I get nervous, believe it or not; how do I maintain this exponential growth in sales? The ads have eleven days to run, but I’ve yet to know what kind of ROI will be returned. Not that I’m concerned about that at the moment; I just want to know what it is that I’m doing right. I won’t be running the campaign once the closing date has been reached; I want to wait until Stuart Bache has come up with a new jacket for me. I was in touch with him earlier this week and he said it will be later this month before he can get started. Once that’s done, I’ll dive into another FB campaign

I am also working through my WIP, wielding the red pen. This is something Pat used to do for me, but she doesn’t feel she could do it justice, so I’m doing it myself. I think the word count will probably run out to about 62,000, which for me is quite short; I usually manage about 85,000 words. I expect (hope) to have the book ready well before the end of August when Amazon’s Kindle storyteller competition closes. It’s open to everyone of course. I don’t expect to win the competition, but I can’t see the point in not trying, particularly as I will have my unpublished book ready to go. I will probably contact a few of my subscribers and ask them to read it for me, but I need to have it ready for them, although not with a jacket; it will just be the Word file or something.

Looking ahead, I can see things will be fraught for a while because of Pat’s chemo, which will go on until the end of the year. We are both hoping she’ll be fit and well by January 19^th. when we celebrate our diamond wedding anniversary. Probably go up to London and stay in a posh hotel. Maybe I will have sold thousands of books by then and will be in a position to afford the best. Wish me luck!

It's Good News Week

June 29^th. 2019

As this week and this month comes to an end, I can say it’s finishing on good news. The hospital has finally diagnosed Pat’s cancer and we will be seeing the haematologist on Monday afternoon for the consultation and the beginning of Pat’s treatment. Yesterday when we got the news, we were both in a flood of tears, cuddling each other with big smiles on our faces. It’s ironic that when we are supposed to be in despair at the news of cancer, for us it was a massive relief to know the treatment can begin after waiting for almost eight months. It’s going to be a hard road for Pat, but with faith and prayer, and the skill of the doctors, I know Pat will come though.

As readers of my blog will know, I have been advertising my book, The Boy from Berlin on Facebook. The two ads are identical, but one has been running for two weeks in UK, the other for a week in USA. In that time I have sold 39 copies of the book on KDP, and two on D2D. This represents a terrific turn round in my monthly averages: whereas I’ve been selling about one book a week, I can hope to see that figure rise to an average of ten copies each week. Naturally I will be tweaking my ads because it’s good advice to do so. I won’t make drastic changes, but as the numbers slow down, so I’ll look to maybe change my target audience. Needs some thought though. And next month (July), Stuart Bache is contracted to design a new jacket for me. It will be interesting to see how that impacts on the sales. I had one comment posted on my FB page from someone I don’t know. He put the jacket up and said, “Brill read”. Great stuff.

The next bit of good news is that I finally managed to type “The End” on my WIP. I never thought I’d get there with all that we’ve been going through this year. It’s taken me the best part of twelve months to get this far and it’s a relief to reach the end. Naturally the book isn’t ready yet, but I will be printing it off and going through it with my red pen. Once I’m happy with that, I’ll start the process of publishing. I can’t afford to ask Stuart Bache to do the jacket, but I’ll look into finding some designer recommended by people I know.

And the other bit of good news is that photo at the start of this blog. That’s me at our local ‘Fun Day’ on the green in our residential park home estate. Last year I sold six books and was well pleased. This year I sold nineteen books! At least, I think it was nineteen. I started losing count after twelve. I was staggered. One woman bought two books and while I was signing them, she picked up another and said her son would love that book. I reached the stage where I thought I might have to nip home for more books. So, a really good day. Next on the horizon is Pat’s treatment, my editing and a look at how I can tweak my FB ads and increase my sales. Wish me luck!

Being brave, stepping out.

June 22^nd. 2019

Well, Tuppence came home and cheered Pat up enormously. Me too. She’s such a bundle of joy — Tuppence, not Pat. Needs a decent trim now though, so she’s off to the poodle parlour on Monday. It also means I have to set aside time during the day for a couple of dog walks as well as looking after Pat now. We had two medical appointments this week: just skirting round the problem really, and are now waiting for the biopsy results to come in. Hopefully that will be next week.

I finally ventured into Facebook ads this week for my book The Boy from Berlin. I used Mark Dawson’s video on setting up an ad. My audience was (is) The United Kingdom and Ireland, my featured author is David Baldacci, and my budget is £5 per day for thirty days. At the moment I am spending about £3.75 a day. But the results are very encouraging. In five days I have sold twelve copies and my current sales have reached seventeen since Monday, which includes other titles. This is after selling about one book a week before last Monday. My next step, which I’ll be doing today, is to copy the ad and target an audience in the USA. That’s the only change I’ll make and will then see how well the ad. does with an American audience. This is what’s known as ‘split testing’; something I’ve never done before because of the cost involved. But because I can monitor the spend and the effectiveness of the ads, it’s down to me how much FB takes from my wallet. I’m planning to keep this up until the end of the thirty day run, maybe tweaking here and there, but it’s the only way I can see myself gaining any traction with readers. I accept that my ROI will suck, but nothing ventured……..

I have also made some decent inroads into my WIP. I have managed to reconstruct the plot line by moving some scenes into different parts of the story, although I think it’s a bit like moving the deck chairs around on the deck of the Titanic. Maybe the story will sink because of my ill-disciplined way of writing, but hopefully not. I expect to have the MS completed by the end of this week, and then it needs to be read by a few beta readers who I will contact through my website mailbox. If they don’t pour scorn on the book, I’ll be encouraged to find a relatively inexpensive cover artist and have a jacket designed. I would like to be able to use Stuart Bache, but as I’ve already signed up with him for next month, I can’t afford for him to do two jackets. Talking of which, my FB ads for The Boy from Berlin now use the rewritten prologue and strap line blurbs from Bryan Cohen. It will be interesting to see what kind of impact a Stuart Bache cover will have on sales when I decide to advertise again.

My recent reading has been The Fear Index by Robert Harris; a massively complex and intellectual thriller that I found hard going. I probably won’t read another Harris novel for a long time. I also ventured into The Girl in the Spider’s Web by David Lagercrantz. I read the trilogy (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larrson) and have the DVD, so I thought I’d give this a try. Big mistake. Now I’m into Hush Hush by Mel Sherratt. It’s a British crime thriller and looking pretty good so far. We’ll see though.

Next Saturday, June 29^th. will be the ‘Fun Day’ here on our residential site. Last year I sold six books while sitting in a marquis enjoying the events unfolding around me and smelling the drift of barbecued meat wafting over. Lovely stuff. I’m hoping I can pinch some time off from looking after Pat and set up another table. It’s only for a couple of hours and Pat says she wouldn’t mind coming along and sitting with me. The event is only two hundred yards from our house, so I reckon Pat could make it. Should be fun. Wish us luck!

A whirligig of a week

July 15^th. 2019

The week began for me and Pat with an appointment with the London consultant who carried out Pat’s op. He has referred her to the haematologists now having seen confirmation that there is no lung cancer. We now wait for the results of the biopsy tests from the same three London hospitals that gave that confirmation as they now look for signs of T cell lymphoma. Since Monday it’s been a case of getting Pat’s sleep patterns restored and building up her energy levels and getting some weight back on. The waiting goes on however and we just have to hope and pray that the experts will determine what cancer it is so they can begin treatment.

Although I’ve had to shoulder the burden of looking after Pat and getting on with the household chores, I have managed to get some work done on my WIP. I began by reassembling the whole story-line using Scrivener, and creating another draft. I now have an almost complete plot line right down to the last gasp page. With luck I’ll see the end of this particular draft in a couple of weeks, and from there I can get an edit done and think about a suitable book jacket. I may pay for one yet, I don’t know. I’m hoping Pat will do the read through for me as she often does before I contact those subscribers of mine who read HUNTED for me earlier this year. Ironically, I was watching Mark Dawson and James Blatch chatting on their weekly SPF podcast yesterday, when Mark said he was planning to begin a novel once he’d finished his current WIP; it was about the drug business and the County Lines. No doubt he will excel at this, but I need to beat him to it because my current WIP is exactly that: a thriller about the County Lines gangs.

I have also been watching the Mark Dawson videos on FB ads again. They were updated when Mark’s SPF group launched the latest Ads for Authors course. I will dip a toe in the water this week and advertise The Boy from Berlin on FB, and will be using the blurb and ad lines provided by Bryan Cohen. FB has a reputation of sucking your wallet dry, but if I could see some positive results, I might clap my hands. Who knows?

Yesterday I took five copies of my pulp fiction thriller, HUNTED round to Dan Jones. Dan is the Chindi author who has opened a Pop-up shop in Chichester. It’s primarily to promote his own books and his wife’s creative work, but he has shown willing to add the Chindi authors’ books to a carousel. We all wish him and Abbie good luck of course, all the while hoping Dan can sell our books.

You know, when you’re struggling to sell books, you cling joyfully at the sale of one book and hope it’s the beginning of a trend. I haven’t advertised for some time and have seen my sales virtually flat-line, both on Amazon and D2D. But I was miffed when I saw D2D take one of my sales for May and add it to June. There was me thinking I’d sold ten books last month when it was suddenly reduced to nine. And it doesn’t help when I see authors complaining on FB groups about their lack of sales. One lady writer was moaning because her sales of 50 eBooks a day, no ads, first book, had suddenly crashed. She wanted to know why this was happening to her. I don’t have to say what went through my mind. I did smile though.

So, on to next week and, hopefully, some major progress with my current book, my ads campaign, the gardening, the washing, the ironing, walking the dog. Oh yes! Tuppence comes home on Monday. That will cheer Pat up enormously. What a lovely thought. Bugger the book sales. Wish me luck!

Balloons, books and pop-up shops

June 8^th. 2019

My week began with Pat coming home from hospital and me looking forward to having her with me and being able to look after her, not to mention no need for the daily journey up to London. After a traumatic weekend, I decided our little dog, Tuppence, needed to go away for a couple of weeks, so I set that up and sent her to a company called Barking Mad. We’ve used them before and have been quite happy with the way in which they operate. So, just me and Pat and some caring time.

I have also been able to get some time in with my WIP, having come to another decision to change the opening sequence. I’m taking a leaf out of one of Mark Billingham’s crime novels and beginning the story with a violent scene during which no character names are mentioned. The link, if you want to read the short prologue is at https://www.michaelparkerbooks.com/marcus-blake-prologue. Naturally it means a few more changes to the plot sequence, but that’s the life of a writer I suppose.

Another decision taken was to begin Mark Dawson’s ads for authors course again. Mark released his latest version which, as a paid up member of his SPF group, entitles me to all the updates. This means I’m getting it for free. So it’s a case of knuckling down and start again. I’m really looking ahead to July when Stuart Bache will be redesigning the book jacket for my political thriller, The Boy from Berlin. I need to have my head right for this because I have to spend money on promoting the book, and the only successful way is to use the big guns like Facebook, Amazon and BookBub. I tried a couple of small promotions last month, about $30 a shot, but achieved just one sale for the book. When I think back to the beginning of the year, I told myself that my latest book would be published by the end of March, and here I am in June still nowhere near finishing the damn thing. I know I have a reasonable excuse, but I don’t want to use Pat’s illness as an excuse. So, thinking of next month, new book jacket, new marketing campaign to follow and getting stuck into my WIP, maybe, just maybe I’ll see an upward projection in my book sales.

The photo I have inserted at the beginning of this post is an unusual ‘bouquet’ made by our grand-daughter, Gemma. She came over to see her Nan with our great-grandson Orin, yesterday. She’s a clever girl, our Gemma: has her own business too. We’re really proud of her. Perhaps I should get her to do PR for me, although I don’t think I’d sell many books by being associated with children’s entertainment, craft making and, sometimes, dressing up as a fairy.

One of our Chindi authors, Dan Jones, has come up with a brave project. He will be opening a ‘pop-up’ shop at Draper’s Yard in Chichester. It’s to sell his own books, fiction and non-fiction, and also his wife’s artwork. He has suggested us Chindians use his stall as an outlet for our books. We have been invited to put five of each title with Dan. He’ll display one at a time and top it all up as they sell. He’s going to be swamped with books from the Chindi group, but hopefully the project will not only help us but will also help Dan and his wife enormously. I might even sell some of my books. Wish me luck!

Home again.

June 1^st. 2019

I have a big smile on my face because I now have Pat home from the hospital. We won’t know the outcome of her surgery for a week or so because the results of the biopsies usually take about fourteen days to come through. Now we can begin to get her fitter and stronger. The surgeon said to me it would be better for Pat to be at home being nursed by me than having to put up with being stuck in the hospital; something I think most of us would agree with. It’s been difficult for both of us: Pat having to put up with major surgery and me having to traipse up to London every day. One of the ironies of my visits to St. George’s is that I used to live just a couple of miles away from the hospital in Earlsfield but couldn’t enjoy a leisurely trip down memory lane and thinking how it used to be in my young days. I did actually spend some time in St. George’s myself when I was about five years old. A lot different now of course.

Spending so much time in the car and sitting beside Pat’s bedside gave me a chance to catch up on some thinking and some reading (not while I was driving!). I mentioned the two books last week — well, I had to give up Alex Shaw’s book Code Black. I did try, I must admit, but in the end I found it too formulaic and more like a tourist guide around the town of Kviv in the Ukraine where Mr. Shaw lives. I didn’t give up reading though; I downloaded Her Last Breath by Charlie Gallagher. It’s a crime novel about a serial killer. Although these kind of crime thrillers can be similar, I found Gallagher’s book thoroughly enjoyable. It was well written with well-drawn characters. It kept me guessing about the who, the how and the why, and there was a neat little twist at the end to tie it all together. I’ve now started on another Robert Harris novel, The Fear Index. Should be good. I realise I won’t be able to get through my reading as quickly as I have in the last couple of weeks though.

I have also given a lot of thought to my WIP, which has been ‘Work NOT in progress’, and have started rearranging the chapter sequences in my mind and even the opening. I do wonder why I’m doing that, but I have read of some writers who rewrite their novels several times before getting it right. The problem for me is that I know if I continue down that road, I’ll never finish the damn book. I have also been dabbling — in thought, not in deed — about my proposed follow-up to Hunted, my pulp fiction thriller. I don’t know why I’m doing this; it will only end in tears.

My book sales are still flat-lining (almost). I tried one promotion of The Boy from Berlin with Fliploud which resulted in no sales, and I have just come to the end of a one week promotion, same book, with Author Shout. No sales there either. Hopefully I’ll get back on to AMS and BB ads once I’ve settled into a manageable routine with Pat. Wish me luck.

Between Books

May 26^th. 2019

It’s been quite a week for me because of having Pat in hospital. Worse for Pat because of the major op they performed on her lung. Her recovery isn’t going too well and I don’t expect her to come home until tomorrow. I haven’t touched my writing this week but have managed a fair bit of reading because of spending five hours each day sitting by Pat’s bedside. When she’s sleeping I can read. My ‘free’ time is four hours in the car going up to London and back each day, so no writing; only lots of thinking. Anyway, I finished reading one book and started another, and the contrast between the two simply highlights the gulf between gifted writers and those who are not so gifted but still sell.

The book I finished was An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris. It’s about Alfred Dreyfus who was imprisoned on Devil’s Island by the French after an illegal trial and trumped up charges. The writing is superb and so well researched it was almost exhausting just reading the credits and how many documents and accounts Harris read in order to come up with a stunning classic. Brilliant writer who leaves many of us hopefuls standing.

The next book I started is a complete contrast. It’s called Code Black by Alex Shaw. I met Alex at the UK Southern Book Show last year. He wasn’t exhibiting but was in UK (I think he was at Worthing) and we got chatting, naturally. He is under contract with Harper Collins digital publishers. Alex writes the usual all action stuff: ex SAS soldier, Russians gangs etc., etc. It’s a kind of pulp fiction fare for a train or plane journey; easily read and filled with the usual jargon you would expect from this kind of book. But Alex has a good and creditable CV, so probably has a big fan base, and you can’t knock it. He lives in the Ukraine too, where he probably picks up a lot of intel on old Soviet matters. But two completely contrasting books and authors.

Where would I put myself in this company I wonder? Well, somewhere between the middle I guess. To give you some idea, this is an extract from an email I received from an unknown source via my blog post on Blogger.

I found you through the SPF Booklab podcast and thought you were wonderfully gracious about the dissection of your prologue and blurb. I don't take criticism well and would have fallen apart. I will be reading your book The Boy from Berlin - the new prologue is fantastic and raises lots of story questions. I was sad to hear about your wife's cancer and operation - will be praying for her recovery. The worries and stresses of the world certainly keep me from writing and any other creative pursuit. I know I should trust more but I'm not perfect yet. Go easy on yourself in this difficult time. May God bless you both. You're a great writer and I'm pleased to have found you. Prayers and best wishes from Victoria in Australia. 

Naturally I want to thank the ‘Unknown’ person for that, but it came via a ‘no reply’ address. So if you’re reading this Mr. or Mrs. Unknown, thank you for your lovely words.

That’s my lot for this post. Hopefully I’ll have Pat back home tomorrow. We have an appointment with the surgeon at our local hospital in June. With luck he will have the results of the biopsies, which have gone to three London hospitals (again!) and be able to tell us what the next, positive step will be. Wish us luck!