Down in the dumps

Pat came home from hospital yesterday but has now declined further treatment. This means we are heading into the unknown. Whatever comes, we have to face it because, sadly, that’s life. My hope is that I can give Pat a quality of life that will sustain her for however long she has. I’m sitting beside her at the moment, writing this blog post while she is watching TV. I took her for a slow and gentle walk round the garden just now so she could see what I’d been up to while she’s been away. I’m struggling with the compulsion to finish writing a blog post each week, and to abandon all thoughts of book sales, promotions etc., but that might be counter-productive; I need to keep my spirits up somehow while making sure I don’t neglect Pat.

My book sales are steady. So far this month I have sold 45 ebooks and a couple of paperbacks. And my page reads are trickling along nicely. This is all down to my current campaign on Facebook although needless to say it is costing me money. But I’m sticking with it. The majority of the sales are for The Boy from Berlin of course, and it’s good to see some of my other titles selling as well.

I have to say I have given up with Joffe Books. There has been no word since the last email saying they still wanted to publish my book Past Imperfect, and they would let me know after their ‘big’ meeting to discuss back titles. I know it might happen, but it no longer seems important.

How are you all coping with the lockdown and everything that entails? We have a family visit this afternoon. Our No.2 son, Terry, is coming over with our grand-daughter, Gemma and our great-grandson, Orin. They will go through to the back garden and have their lunch while me and Pat chat to them from our bedroom window. It would be nice to sit out there with them and keep our social distance, but unfortunately little Orin might want to run over and give me and Pat a hug, and that is a risk we cannot afford to take, even though we are quite sure Orin doesn’t have the bug, nor do his mum and grandad. We have to stay safe. Even more so now with Pat’s condition.

I’ve stopped reading Alex Shaw’s thriller. I did try but just couldn’t stick with it. I think it’s more my problem than the quality of the book, but it is, in my opinion, formulaic writing: writing for a market. Bit like the Die Hard films really and their ilk. I watched Lethal Weapon 2 on Sky during the week. Pure, over the top entertainment: just the kind of thing you find in a lot of action books that sell well. I wasn’t tempted to watch Lethal Weapon 3 the following night though; there’s only so much dross you can take, isn’t there?

Well, that’s my lot for this week. I might write another post next week. If I had something exciting to share with you, I would. Hope you are all staying safe and in good health.

Unclogging my brain and the garden

I would like to say this has been a good week for Pat but I can’t. Since being discharged from hospital, it has been mostly downhill. We learned that as a result of her CT scan last week, her final chemo session has been cancelled (not postponed) and the PET scan due later this month is not going to happen. We have a phone consultation this coming Tuesday with the consultant when I think he will dot the eyes and cross the tees for us. We are clinging to the hope that there will be other options. I’ve already taken Pat off one of her pills because of a problem the haematologist couldn’t solve for us: something I thought I would never do, but I reckon most people who have cared long term for a family member would recognise decisions like this. So now we wait for the outcome of the phone call. Our sleep patterns are virtually non-existent now, and it usually depends on Pat where and how and for how long we sleep. I won’t leave her on her own, so when she’s awake, I’m awake.

I can say however that I gave both my girls a bath this morning. Neither of them enjoyed it. Tuppence went mad when I’d finished with the blow drier and had a crazy run round the house and the garden. I think she was drying herself off. Thank goodness Pat didn’t try something like that. I wish she could have a run round the garden though. Tomorrow I might give Tuppence a clipping.

In my book world I can see the benefit of using Facebook ads over Amazon. Since the 19th April I have sold 53 books and had 330 page reads. For me that is phenomenal. I’m still losing money on costs against revenue, but that’s something I’m prepared to do. For now anyway. I’ve also picked up five sales on D2D but that may not have anything to do with FB ads. Taking the page reads into account, the average is about three books a day. Not bad, eh?

My creative spark has disappeared: it went long ago, and now I don’t even bother with reading through the training videos on Bryan Cohen’s Amazon Ads School, nor those on the Mark Dawson SPF 101 course. These are things I may pick up again in the fullness of time; after all, I have paid for them.

My current reading, Alex Shaw’s Cold East is difficult. This has nothing to do with the current situation in the Parker household, nor what is going on in the outside world: I just don’t feel drawn to the book at all, and only manage a few pages a day. My other avenue of attraction now is the garden. I’ve done a lot of weed clearing and have planted seedlings ready to move into those spaces I have cleared. I’ve also tackled the weeds out front with my hot burner weed killer. It’s like an elongated hair dryer and burns weeds at 2000 degrees C. But I still get on my hands and knees to tackle some of the stuff.

Incidentally, I received an email from David Gaughran: someone I have been following for a few years having bought one of his self-help books. He’s well known in the book world. He loves data: uses it a lot to break down the mysteries of the indie publishing world. He uncovered a strange set of figures from Amazon’s own pages on the comparison between ‘best-sellers’, and ‘most popular’. He chose the top ten thrillers and space operas genres, and of all the permutations, only one book featured in the top ten. The top ten in both categories did not match in a straightforward, side by side comparison, nor did the publishers, and the only consistently high publishers were ‘self-published’ in Space Opera. David Gaughran wondered how Amazon could rely on their own algorithms with those kind of contradictory figures. Needless to say, none of my books were in there. One day, maybe. Wish me luck!

A bucket and spade for me

This time last week, Pat was in hospital and was discharged during the afternoon, which I thought was a bit quick. This Wednesday she was taken back into hospital because the infection was still raging through her body. Thankfully it is now under control and we are expecting her to be discharged either today or tomorrow. She had a CT scan yesterday which helped. At least her brain was clear; something I was worried about because of her stroke last year. But she’s OK now. I phone her four times a day because there are no visitors allowed and virtually nothing for her to do in her single room. I can’t wait to have her back home.

Naturally, Pat’s absence has given me plenty of time to work in the garden pulling up weeds, filling hanging baskets and mowing the lawn. Yesterday afternoon, having already done a bunch of weeding that morning, I decided to watch an SPF podcast. It was Evan Gow of Story Origin, a book promotional group of which I am a member. Naturally, I was keen to see Evan and what he had to tell us, but I fell asleep and only woke when James Blatch was winding up the podcast with Mark Dawson. I decided not to look at it again until later and forced myself to go outside and carry on with the weeding.

My latest read is Cold East by Alex Shaw. It isn’t too bad and basically does “what it says on the tin”. Shaw is a competent writer, successful too, so I can’t say he isn’t well read. But it’s a book that is written for a market. And I think that is one of my failings; I don’t write for the market. I’ve often wondered, although maybe not anymore, why my books are poor competition for other thriller writers that inhabit the genres in which I write. I have no doubts about my ability, never have, but other writers nail it consistently, while I struggle to attract a firm readership. I think the answer lies in the fact that I write by inspiration: I get an idea in my head, maybe from a news item, or perhaps some occurrence in my life that triggers a story. I then research the idea and write the story. This inevitably means I am writing for myself and not the market I’m trying to crack. Is that a lesson learned for me? Has to be, right? So what can I do about it? While I’ve been looking after Pat (eighteen months now), I have struggled to put pen to paper, and now have no inclination to write. The desire hasn’t left me, but the thought of preparing a draft copy and all the research that’s necessary, just leaves me cold. But there is also an underlying reason for that: by attempting to write to a market, I cannot get enthusiastic about a project. It’s almost as if I’m prostituting myself on the altar of market necessity, and that’s ruining whatever story I try to come up with. So well done to Alex Shaw and all his contemporaries; they’ve got it cracked.

I’ve had a little run of success with my Facebook ads programme. I managed to sell 25 books in eleven days. When you consider my average organic sales are about ten a month, that result could put me closer to sixty or seventy. Trouble is that its costing me money. My royalties are slightly lower that my ad spend. But that’s something I have to expect for a while; I simply need to learn more and not fall asleep when I’m watching a training video.

No news yet from Joffe Books. Wish me luck!