Great Expectations

We are now at the end of what Pat and I refer to as the “middle week” of the chemotherapy. This is the low and risky point where the immune system is at its weakest. Sure enough, Pat’s blood pressure started going down and her temperature went up to over 38 C. I had no option but to phone the emergency number we’d been given. I was told to take her in, and now she’s in hospital for six days while they treat her for the infection. She’s in a sterile room under ‘protective isolation’. A similar thing happened to me when I was having chemo: three times during those middle weeks. On the last one I was put in hospital for six days; three in isolation. Pat’s in good spirits though but wants to come home — natch!

I’m now looking forward to publishing my latest Marcus Blake thriller, No Time to Die. The jacket is ready and I’m doing a final read through before putting it up on Amazon as part of their competition. It would be nice to win, but it’s unlikely. Amazon will give the winner £20,000 and a lot of promotion. That would be nice. I also paid Stuart Bache a kings’ ransom for the new jacket for my book, The Boy from Berlin. This provoked a discussion with some of the Chindi authors in our private FB group. This year I have spent just under £1000 for four jacket designs. Two were with professional designers, one was with a writer who offered to design a jacket at a low price, and the cheapest, £50, was with Fiverr.com; it was for my pulp fiction thriller, Hunted. Setting promotion attempts aside, Hunted sells regularly, not much I have to say, but it sells. The first professionally designed jacket has sold three copies this year with some promotion. In June/July I promoted The Boy from Berlin with the author designed jacket, new blurb, rewritten prologue, and sold 100 copies. Facebook relieved me of about £275 for the promotion. It will be interesting to see what kind of difference the next campaign I run with Stuart Bache’s new jacket will achieve. When it comes to ROI, I’m losing out big time. But — there’s always a ‘but’ — without advertising, not many people will know about me and my books. It’s a Catch 22 situation, but that’s life for most indie authors.

Talking about my new jacket; I put it up on KDP and, sure enough, it appeared on the Amazon eBook product page, but not the paperback page. This has happened to me before, and when I’ve queried it with the great Zon, I am usually told it will be OK when a copy is ordered. They do change it though. I can’t order a paperback until I know the jacket has been changed. It’s annoying, but I do want to think about another promotion. Just got to save some money!

Now that I can look ahead to a period without writing, I can catch up with the jobs that get neglected because I’m looking after Pat. And what with hospital visits there’s little I can plan. I can think a lot, but it isn’t getting words on paper. Thinking about Hunted, I can see that the way to go has to be pulp fiction. I have a sequel in my head, but not too much detail. It will need research, but for me, the whole point of writing pulp fiction is to knock something out in a couple of months, bugger the research and just get some excitement between the pages; this is what the reader of these kind of thrillers want. And they sell. But do I really want to go down that route? It usually takes me about a year to write a novel. My latest took eighteen months, but there were good reasons for the unusual length of time. To turn out pulp fiction stuff means one every three months or so, and I’m not really that kind of writer. But hey, what the heck? I’m not getting any younger, so I might just knuckle down and turn out a pulsating, pulp fiction thriller. Wish me luck.

Staying the course

The week got off to a good start with Pat’s second chemo session and no real dramas. We are both surprised and happy with the way she is coping, and this week Pat seems to have got stronger. She made a decision about her hair, and asked me to cut it off before it all fell out. We were due to go to the wig shop anyway, but didn’t cut her hair until after Pat had chosen her wig. I can’t get used to seeing her with a full head of hair, but now I also have to get used to seeing her with no hair! I felt awful taking the clippers to her head: like Sweeney Todd, the demon barber. But it’s another hurdle crossed and that’s a plus point.

On the book front, I have now received the final jacket for my book, The Boy from Berlin. I’m well pleased with it. Haven’t had the bill yet but it will hurt. For some reason, maybe because of my age, I can’t understand why a lot of indie authors spend hundreds of dollars on their books without knowing what kind of success they are likely to have. I’ve spent money on three jackets this year (four when I get Stuart’s bill), and I’m well out of pocket. So, what’s the answer? Spend money on advertising of course, but even then that’s no guarantee. When Jennie Nash critiqued the prologue of my political thriller, she mentioned the fact that I only had 23 reviews; it meant I had no traction. Since spending the best part of £300 (damn VAT) on Facebook, I’ve sold 100 copies of The Boy from Berlin, and still only have 23 reviews. As the Americans would say: “Go figure”. A couple of weeks ago I asked my sister-in-law if she would read the draft copy of my latest, yet to be published, crime novel, No Time to Die. She reads all the time, particularly when she’s travelling up to London as part of her work with IBM. She said some lovely things about the story and promised me it wasn’t because she was related; but she did wonder why writers with my ability (her words) didn’t get the wide readership their books deserved. I had to tell her that many indie authors will spend up to $100 a day on advertising; it’s the only way, so that kind of explains why my work disappears into the literary wilderness. I plan to set up another campaign on Facebook once I have the new jacket, but I will marshal this one very carefully.

I mentioned last week about the reaction to the book jacket I designed for my latest WIP and the reaction from the SPF group, but one response was from a USA Today best selling author, Ditter Kellen, who offered to design a jacket for nothing. Looking on Ditter’s website, I could see she was a prolific writer and had a great deal of success, but nowhere did it say she was a designer. Anyway, she offered to do a freebie so I agreed. She knocked out a very good jacket which demonstrated her skill, but it was a world away from how I visualised mine. I thanked her and said I couldn’t use it. I have also had some advice from members of the CHINDI group, all helpful of course, but in the end I will be biting the bullet and completing the design myself. The book will be available on-line before the end of the month, but I’m not sure yet how I’ll promote it. I have 1400 ‘contacts’ (MailChimp’s new euphemism for subscribers and unsubs), so I’ll let them know it’s coming and will probably start the ball rolling with a price of £0.99.

Next on the agenda is to catch up with work around the garden and in the house during the summer and try — TRY — not to think about my next book, but I do have to figure out how to get Martin Quil into Russia and out again……. Ho hum. Wish me luck!

Schisms and criticisms

Well, the week got off to a good start; we made it to church, which meant Pat was feeling strong enough to get out and mix with friends. We couldn’t hang around too long at the end of the service but it was good to be there. We both gain a lot from the Praise and worship, and the general feelgood factor of just being among fellow believers, and that helps Pat enormously. On the flip side, Pat’s weaning dose of steroids finally came to an end, and I could see the resultant effect of that. We ended up in A&E yesterday because of problem Pat had that couldn’t be sorted by a visit to the GP. We were there for about four hours and after the usual tests, Pat was given a medication which helped. We’ll be seeing the haematologist on Monday because Pat will have her second dose of chemo that day. No doubt we’ll discuss the visit to A&E.

On the book front, I’m working with Stuart Bache on my book jacket. I’ve been reading his self-help book on jacket design and have also watched one of his instructional videos. Although I will be paying Stuart for The Boy from Berlin jacket, my latest book will have one of my own creation. And thereby hangs a tale (or a dilemma). I put my design up for my WIP title No Time to Die on the Chindi FB page and also the SPF FB page (Mark Dawson’s group). My, my, what a contrast! I received some very encouraging comments from the Chindi authors, but the complete opposite from the SPF group. I had about 40 responses from them, and only about four were complimentary; the rest were a mixture of…. Well, I don’t know how to phrase it. I did get the feeling that there was a kind of snobbishness in their collective responses. It was as though they were saying ‘oh, you can’t possibly do that; get a proper designer!’ Photoshop? Really? You can tell you don’t know how to use it. At least beg, borrow or steal the money for a decent jacket. Wrong fonts, wrong colours. I could go on. I did say, at the beginning of my post that I was working with Stuart Bache on a jacket, but couldn’t afford to pay for two professionally designed jackets. Two people offered to do the jacket for me: one very cheap ($175), one for free. So, a big lesson learned there. I will be working on my own jacket until I’m happy with it, but I’ll sneak it out under their noses. Have a look, see what you think, but I will be working on it, rest assured.

A curious email popped into my inbox; it came by way of the contact page on my website. It was from a video company called wiki.ezvid. The email was from Caroline Eliasson, to tell me that my thriller, Roselli’s Gold, had made it on to their Wiki list of grown up action thrillers. No money was asked for and the book is there, right enough. The link they provided was this: https://wiki.ezvid.com/m/11-grown-up-thrillers-full-of-action-and-adventure-gUpRMIJjb5ZXt Why not check it out. There’s quite a lot to see there, plus details of the company and staff. Incidentally, when you click the video, you’ll see my book being trailered in video. Great stuff! They offer to make videos of your product of course, and that is what the business is all about.

My book sales are flat-lining again. The promotion for The Boy from Berlin, run over five weeks, resulted in a sale of 110 ebooks, plus about 20 of my other titles, which was good for me. I decided to try a short FB campaign for my African adventure, Hell’s Gate. So far I’ve sold one copy. The odd thing here is that I’ve had 30 people ‘like’ the link for the advert, so why haven’t they bought it? Unless Amazon has a fault in it’s system. I’d like to think so, but it’s unlikely. The campaign will finish in a few days, so I’ll let it run. The next one will be for The Boy from Berlin, once Stuart Bache has completed the artwork.

Next thing for me and Pat is her chemo session on Monday. All we can hope is that the treatment works and it won’t be long before we can see some positive improvement. Oh, and we’re off to the wig shop on Thursday. I think I could do with one. Wish us luck!