Expecting the unexpected

Things never turn out the way we might have expected, and this week had a few of those in store for us. Pat was due at the hospital on Monday morning for a blood test followed by an appointment three hours later with the haematologist. She had a problem over the weekend which needed dealing with urgently, so we walked into the Macmillan centre after her blood test, and within ten minutes we were sitting with the haematologist who decided to bring Pat’s afternoon appointment forward. We do know that the specialists involved in Pat’s saga over the last eight months, including her current doctor, have been aware of the need to deal with Pat as urgently as they can. In this case the doctor lived up to that by dealing with her quickly and, for us, unexpectedly. Pat is now improving gradually with the help of a load more pills. She’s handling her chemo well, which is something else we didn’t expect.

The Facebook ads for my thriller, The Boy from Berlin, came to a halt five days ago. The ads ran for four weeks: four in UK and three in USA. I sold 110 copies which included a couple of paperbacks. I also sold some of my other titles, most of which happened after the Berlin thriller started selling. I didn’t expect to do that well, although for some authors that kind of return would be abysmal, but with me, I tend to take a philosophical look at the whole thing and remain thankful that, to a certain extent, the ads worked. It was unexpected and encouraging. One downside is I am now getting emails from people offering to promote the book (at a price). I am still waiting for Stuart Bache to get back to me with the redesigned jacket; something he promised for ‘later in July’. Meanwhile I am running a short ad for my African novel, Hell’s Gate. I’ve had that running for three days and have sold two copies. I’m advertising in UK, Ireland and Kenya.

I have finished the final edit for my WIP (is it ever final?) and have been toying with book jacket designs. I can’t afford to pay anyone to do this for me because I’ve set aside money for Stuart Bache’s jacket this month. I have a copy of Stuart’s book on jacket design, which is very good, and I have found some useful information about colours and typeface etc. Meanwhile, I’m happy with the book at the moment. I asked my sister-in-law, Carol, to read it for me this afternoon. I asked her simply to read it and let me know if there are any inconsistencies etc. She reads a great deal so is no stranger to my kind of fiction. I’ve called the book No Time to Die and would describe it as a crime/mystery novel. The word count is about 62,000 words: well short of my usual book length, but I’ve messed about with this one for so long, I decided it was time to finish it and get it on-line ASAP. This was a book that, a few months ago, I never expected to finish. But I have and now I can unwind a little. Might even start thinking about my next book!

Over the last few weeks, I have tended to buy little things for Pat: things she’s mentioned that she might need or want. I bought her a drink flosser; one of those spinners that you can use for frothing your coffee up. It comes in handy when I make her a milk drink. But the other day she thought she might have to use drinking straws if her chemo affected her mouth too badly, so I bought some. However, I never expected her to put them in jar. She thought they looked that pretty, they were better on display. Cheaper than flowers too! Whatever next? Wish me luck!

Comma, comma, comma, chameleon

First full week of Pat’s chemo and she’s holding up well. She has been on steroids — they finished yesterday — and now we can see a downturn. Hopefully she’ll stay strong, certainly until we see the specialist on Monday for a review. We both know what to expect as the days go by, so it’s now a case of being careful with her and making her as comfortable as we can. We went along to a wig makers in Chichester during the week. Spent half an hour or so talking about wigs. Pat will be trying some on in a couple of weeks’ time and will make a decision then. I could do with one myself, come to think of it. Well, maybe not.

I finished the edit of my WIP and I’m now working through it, making the changes I need. Trouble is, I sometimes come across a red question mark that means nothing to me, and have to spend time puzzling out what I wanted to do. It hasn’t happened that often, I’m pleased to say. So far I’m about one third of the way through the book. Once that’s done, I’ll need to put some polish on to the presentation: things like editing the header with the title, choose a chapter heading style and include a table of contents. One other element of getting it right as far as I’m concerned, is making sure the text is justified. I don’t like to see eBooks that follow a growing trend to left justify the text. I would also like to know who came up with the idea in the first place and why? I still can’t make up my mind about asking for beta readers though. I know there are probably half a dozen of my subscribers who would read the book for me, but I need the whole thing ready for publishing before the end of August. Just something else for me to think about.

My Facebook campaign is having a reasonable success thus far. This month I have shifted sixty copies of the book I’m advertising: The Boy from Berlin. I have also started selling a few on the other on-line stores like Kobo, B&N and Apple. This is through D2D. I have sold a few of my other titles as well, so I’m looking at about eighty sales by the end of July. Once the campaign is finished, I expect a trickle effect before the sales dry up. Then I may consider advertising another of my titles before going back to this one. That will not be until after Stuart Bache has redesigned the jacket. And really, I need him to do this so I can get it into Amazon eBook competition before the end of August. The cost of my campaign is higher than the return I’m getting, but I look at that as being worthwhile until I can get the hang of advertising successfully.

As a member of Mark Dawson’s SPF group, I received an email from him talking about where he came from as an Indie writer six years ago to where he is now. He asked us what lessons we’ve learned from our experience that would be of use to others starting out on their indie journey. Well, I began my indie journey probably a year before Mark, so it’s obvious he knows what he’s doing and I don’t. But the single most important lesson I learned was never to blame your editor, proof-reader, copy editor or whatever you want to call them for any mistakes in the finished book. I started my indie journey by allowing a colleague in Australia to format my book, North Slope, for Kindle. I gave away 40,000 copies in a promotion and later discovered there were no commas in the book! I had to accept the blame because, as the author, I had to be the last person to see the book before it went off to the printers. Or in that case, to Amazon KDP. Mea Culpa. Hopefully I’m well past those kind of massive errors, and my next book will be perfect. Wish me luck.

On the up!

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 19th. 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!