Getting some mileage in

My post is one day early this week because we are travelling back up to Baldock to return our friend and her little Chihuahua to her daughter tomorrow. It’s been an interesting week but with very little time to write. I’ve managed about 1000 words and a great deal of head scratching. Last Monday, my book group, Chindi (www.chindi-authors.co.uk) had an on-line meeting. We managed this through a company called Zoom. It’s strange to see your PC monitor filled with individual TV images of those who logged on. It can be a little hectic, but still possible to get a conversation going and come up with some sensible suggestions. We are already looking ahead to a November event, and hope to have something put together in time to publicise it.

I’m looking forward to the BookBub promotion of my thriller, A Dangerous Game. I dropped the price to £0.99 in readiness for the promotion. You can see the book at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AKCLP60/?tag I’ve also submitted it to ENT, but haven’t heard from them yet. If I can get some decent mileage out of this, then maybe I can keep those balls in the air and hold good rankings for some considerable time.

I also have a sponsorship with Kindle Book Review for The Eagle’s Covenant. This will be for August, but unlike other promotions, this has nothing to do with a price change or new launch, but simply having my book on the right hand side of their main web page. I won’t know how effective this is until later in the month when I can check my individual book sales. The link to their home page is https://www.thekindlebookreview.net

The newspapers over here in UK are talking about the latest development in DNA modification through genetic engineering. It’s made the TV news feeds as well. I’m pleased to say that genetic engineering was featured in my book, Where the Wicked Dwell. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06WD8988W/?tag. It doesn’t make me a clued up scientist, but at least I’m on the ball.

During the week we went to an open museum at Singleton, a few miles north from us here at Pagham. It’s known as the ‘Living Village’. The museum is dedicated to life throughout the Middle Ages and towards the 18th and 19th centuries. The houses on display have all been pulled down, removed from their locations and rebuilt on the site. It provides a fascinating look at how we used to live in those times. Good place for research too if you want to write a novel about those periods.

We also went to Queen Elizabeth Country Park up the A3 Portsmouth to London Road, The reason for that is because me and Pat are going to our No. 3 great-grandson’s naming ceremony there next week on Wednesday. Orin will be six months old. We’ve never been to anything like this before, although we’ve been to christenings. It’s a Vegan/Vegetarian affair, which leaves me wondering what we will be having on the BBQ. Flame grilled veggie burger anyone? It’s also the same day as my BookBub promotion. Wish me luck!

Looking at fact from fiction

I made another small step forward in my WIP: managed to write up a ‘mystery’ flight into the Negev desert. Now I don’t know what to do or where to go with this. It isn’t too bad a problem because although I now have to figure out how to resolve it; if I can do that, the reader will probably think I’m really clever. I know of one author, Helen Macinnes, when asked how she managed to get her characters out of the impossible situations they got themselves into, she said she put them there so had to figure a way out. She was a best-selling crime writer who died over thirty years ago.

I did some work on my website, trying to improve the way I present some of the pages. I’ve redesigned a couple that are hidden from the main menu, hopefully making it easier for those who visit my site. Although my rate of progress with this is quite slow, I do hope eventually to have something a little more professional looking.

I’ve been looking into Facebook advertising again. I have a promotion coming up during August and need to support it with other social media efforts. I will also look at EReaderNewsToday (ENT), plus others that have been recommended to defray the cost.

My book sales have just about flat-lined this month. I’m hoping it’s because readers are spending more time out of doors at BBQs, at the beach, on holiday and other such pursuits where there isn’t much time, or the desire, to be stuck in a book. I just hope August proves to be different, which means I’ll have to be a “glass half-full” optimist.

Earlier this week we went to see the film, Dunkirk. Enjoyed it immensely. Bit noisy though, and with hearing aids it practically blew my ears off. When I think of what those men and women had to put up with, it makes my problem with book sales and marketing pale into insignificance. I also watched the film, American Sniper, on Amazon last night. If you haven’t seen the film, and know nothing about the sniper Chris Kyle, I suggest you Google it first before you watch it. I thought it was fiction until I saw the caption as the credits rolled.

Yesterday we travelled up to Baldock, north of London to pick up a friend of ours. She will be staying with us for a week. The traffic was horrendous, and while I was crawling along the motorways etc., I thought about the government’s plan to ban all petrol and diesel cars from the roads by 2040. Something tells me that the government are talking themselves into an impossible position which they will have to sort out just like my fictionalised plane trip into the Negev desert. Wish them luck!

Inquest of the Vanities

A friend of mine asked me to comment on a publishing contract he had been offered with a Vanity publisher. I don’t like using the word “Vanity”, because there are a lot of wannabe writers who have no idea how to self-publish a book using Amazon, or other on-line companies such as Lulu.com, and perhaps feel compelled to go down the vanity route. I prefer to call it “Assisted” publishing. Anyway, my friend was asked to pay £2300 to get his book into print. I warned him against it, but agreed to put the question to my author groups on Facebook. I was overwhelmed with the response — well over 200 comments, all advising against the deal. There were a few cheeky comments offering their services, but I suppose that was to be expected.

When I had my first book published by Macmillan almost forty years ago, I was a complete novice and also very naïve about the book business. In fact I didn’t have a clue, and I think it was my naïveté that prevented me from making a career out of writing. I did contact a Vanity publisher a couple of years after my book had been published, and it was obvious I was going nowhere. I was asked to pay $5000 for the privilege (American company). Of course, the company offered to finance the deal for me at very generous terms. It was a non-starter anyway, but I had my curiosity satisfied and that was the end of my attempts at making it in the book world. But if I could replay that scenario over again in the present climate, I know there would be a whole host of experts out there willing to help me, at a price, to make a success of my work. It wouldn’t be too difficult to cough up £2300 and still not find success though. So I don’t blame people for seeking out vanity publishers, although, like my friend, it is sensible to seek advice first and save yourself a lot of heartache.

I pressed on with my Conor Lenihan ‘revival’ during the week. I’m still trying to come up with a plot line that will give me the impact I achieved with Conor’s first escapade in The Eagle’s Covenant. I need to achieve a dramatic arc that will lift the reader’s expectations to a high level, but it seems too distant at the moment. I often find myself looking for inspiration when reading the newspaper, or watching dramas on TV. I have to say, though, that the scripts produced in a lot of TV and Film crime dramas I’ve seen recently would never find room in one of my books because they are so thin. My wife and I have just finished watching Pride & Prejudice: the six-part BBC TV production of Jane Austen’s book. The script was written by Andrew Davies. I found myself wishing I could write as cleverly as Mr. Davies. But those kinds of productions are put together by some very clever people, and I guess I’m no match for those, so its back to the ‘smash and grab’ production line of my thriller journey.

Networking is an essential part of business, in whatever form. Mine is through connecting up with other writers and finding publicity (free) on their respective websites. The latest is on Jessie Cahalin’s website: Books in my handbag (http://jessiecahalin.com/handbag-gallery/) I put A Dangerous Game in my wife’s backpack (I don’t have a handbag!), and Jessie has included it for me. I have also agreed to take part in a box-set deal with Mike Stop. I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, and this week I received confirmation from Mike that the planned box-set deal should be available on line in October. It’s an unusual promotion in that it is for stand-alone novels only. It makes sense for me to participate because, as you all probably know, I am a stand-alone writer. In fact, in a recent survey conducted by BookBub and published earlier this week, it seems that over 70% of ebook readers go for the series books as opposed to just over 20% who go for the stand-alone books. It’s food for thought.

Our Chindi authors http://chindi-authors.co.uk are getting ready for the Arundel Festival which starts August 19th. in the historic town of Arundel in West Sussex. We will be supporting the Cancer UK charity and donating a percentage of our book sales. It was a tremendous success for us last year, not that we all sold a ton of books, but collectively we were able to give the charity a decent gift for their invaluable work.

On the domestic front, there’s a social evening tonight down at the village hall: bingo and fish & chips. I don’t like bingo but have little choice. It’s the fish & chips that sell it though. Now there’s a thought — prizes for buying my books. Can you get a fish & chip voucher for Amazon? You never know. Wish me luck!