Reviewing the Situation

I opened up last week’s blog with a lament about the terrorist attack in Manchester. Now I find myself thinking again of another attack: this time it was in London last night. So far seven people killed. I don’t know if that includes the three terrorists who were shot by the police. Once upon a time you would be hard pressed to find an armed policeman in London, or anywhere in UK for that matter. Now you can expect a bunch of them to turn up within minutes of an alarm going off. A friend of mine believes that young people today are immune to the realities of murder and carrying weapons because of the impact that violent computer games have on them. Is that true? Who knows, but like I said last week: as a thriller writer, this is the kind of stuff that I use in my books: not necessarily killing innocent people, but certainly killing without much thought.

I have been battling with CreateSpace and Amazon over the last couple of weeks about the wrong edition of my titles being published. I think I have it sorted now, thank goodness, but I still haven’t finished the complete review of my books. So far I have revised three, not including the jackets, which I may attempt later. And while I was in a brain fog miles away, I began to think of another book. It was one I wrote about fifty years ago. It never got published because it was rubbish, basically. My sister found the copy a few months ago after having a clear out at home. She typed the whole thing for me, which is why she still had it with her. I dug it out this afternoon. I may try the opening sequence out on my subscribers; see what they think. I actually feel quite energised about this. I just hope I can make something of it and come up with another thriller within the next twelve months.

I’m still holding back on promotion. I can’t help but feel I need to hang on until I’m confident on doing the right thing and spending my money in the right place. This month I will be featured on Karen Ingall’s website, which I hope will bring me some sales and subscribers. I will also be interviewed on Malcolm Richard’s website blog. So a couple of promotions without having to pay out.

Looking ahead, I have signed up to take part in the UK Southcoast book show at Worthing in either September or March. My author group, CHINDI, will be taking part as well, so it isn’t just a single event for me, but for our group. Because it’s a dedicated book show, I would expect the right kind of punters to turn up. Hopefully we’ll do well and attract a few more fans.

The woman I mentioned last week who asked if I would review her book hasn’t got back to me yet. Perhaps I put her off. Too unkind maybe? But if I responded to all requests to review books, I wouldn’t get any work done. I didn’t refuse outright, but probably said enough to make her change her mind.

I finally paid for my hearing aids; must say it a vast improvement. I even have a remote control, with them. I was playing around with it yesterday. We were at a church family weekend do. It meant a lot of singing and rousing keyboard playing: all in a hall that had been built like an echo chamber. Fortunately I was able to control the sensitivity of the hearing aids to make life a little more comfortable for myself. Now if I could only find a way to control the thought processes of book readers and get them to read my books. Wish me luck!

Losing the plot

At the moment I’m distilling my thoughts here, wondering what to write. This week has been traumatic for so many people because of the Manchester bombing atrocity. No-one knows, or can explain, what drives these fanatics who kill in the name of some diabolical belief. It has been going on for centuries and is unlikely ever to change. I am old enough to have survived the war in London, knew about the Korean War although as a child I didn’t understand why it was happening. The IRA campaign. Looked on from afar at the conflict in Vietnam. The Falklands War. The so-called “Arab Spring” in which the West became involved and unwittingly unleashed Islamic terror on the world. I have read and studied the Bible a few times, and can see that it all happened thousands of years ago. And so it goes on. As a writer, I can see a lot of mileage in stories that involve pain, heartache, murder, kidnap and bombings, and have used the essence of these in my books. But in those stories I had control over what happened, and could resolve it all happily. Now I find myself looking on desperately sad over what has happened and wishing there was some way I could “resolve” it so that it never happened again. But I can’t; all I can do is pray it is finished — no more, never again.

During the week I had a hearing appointment for my new hearing aids, attended a church house group, went on a coach trip to Eastbourne and continued editing one of my books. So I have had an aural, spiritual, joyful and literary experience throughout the week. And I received an e-mail via my website from a new subscriber. Very nice too. Oh, and another e-mail from one of my subscribers asking if I will review her book. I don’t really have the time to wade through a novel that I wouldn’t normally pick up and read. And I did warn the writer that I don’t usually do this. I also said I was a very harsh critic (that’s why I’m editing my books again!), so not to expect a five star review. And I’m slow. So many negatives, eh? I haven’t had a reply yet. I’ll let you know what happens.

I hope to start a campaign next month to sell more books. But how do I find the right source of readers to aim at? There is so much information and advice out there, that it should be easy. But of course they all claim the same thing: to get you in front of their thousands of subscribers and keep you on their twitter feed for several days. It’s a big business and makes money for those people involved; probably more than they get from writing books. Oh yes, they are usually authors themselves. There are successful ones of course: Nick Stephenson, Mark Dawson and Joanna Penn to name a few, and I know from experience that following their advice means involvement and effort, but it’s needed in spades.

I’ve been changing my mind about my next book. I’ve spoken about Marcus Blake as a follow up to Where the Wicked Dwell, but now I’m thinking of continuing the return of Conor Lenihan (The Eagle’s Covenant). I have some angles popping into my head: some I like, others I don’t, but until I can get my mind focussed on which plot and with whom, I will never get down to writing my next “best-seller”. Wish me luck!

Roller Coaster

May 19th. 2017

Two weeks have gone by and much has been packed into it, but not one word have I written for my next novel. I’ve been cleaning up my act a bit with regard to disconnecting from other groups, and hopefully I’ll see things a little more clearly now when it comes to knowing who I’m working with and what is expected of me.

I mentioned Amazon selling my romance (Past Imperfect) at a knock down price. I realised I should buy the stock (they said there were six copies) and throw them in the bin. That way I would get the full royalties on the official retail price, and the sales would go towards pushing up my rankings. Good plan? Nope! I went on-line and learned I could only order three copies. I did this, went back an hour later to order the remaining three to discover that my latest version was up for £7.50. I ordered it, but it turned out to be one of the remaining stock, published by Lightning Source, not the new version published by CreateSpace. The single copy arrived before the other three; all of them had been published by LS. I complained to CreateSpace and returned the book to Amazon.

End of story? Nope! I edited A Dangerous Game, waited until the new version was available and ordered the new copy. The old one turned up. I checked the “Look Inside” feature to see that it was my new version there, which meant that CS and/or Amazon have messed it up. I complained to CS and returned the book to Amazon today. I suppose when you consider that CS and Amazon are handling an enormous amount of book traffic, mistakes are going to be made, but lightning shouldn’t strike twice in the same place as it has with my book orders.

One small success was registered with the promotion I ran for my author friend, Helen Christmas. She sold several copies of her box set which delighted her. She said it probably wouldn’t have happened without my input. I was really pleased for her. Her latest book in the series, Retribution, is now available on Amazon. It’s £3.50 to buy (Kindle), and free if you’re a member of Kindle Unlimited. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06ZYF7TYP.

My wife and I travelled up to Norfolk last week for a family ‘bash’: a joint birthday party for our great grandson, Harrison and his dad, Leon. Had a good weekend catching up. Then we travelled up to Lincoln to visit an old friend of ours whose husband is confined permanently with Alzheimer’s disease. It’s so sad watching a man who has been your friend for twenty years fading like that. At least we were able to give our friend, Pauline, a lift in her spirit while we were there. Managed a trip out to Skegness where I left a copy of my book, Hell’s Gate in a shelter on the promenade. It had a Chindi label on it asking whoever picked it up to read it and leave it somewhere else. This is something our Chindi group have been doing as a precursor to the Chichester Arts Festival and the launch of our new website, due to happen about now. www.chindi-authors.co.uk.

Despite my determination not to write for a while, I found myself mulling over different ideas for plots and writing them in my head. The curse of the author: not being able to give up for a while.

I’m getting used to my new hearing aids and expect to be forking out the money for them, but not for a week or so. Need to sell more books to pay for them. While I was away, my Amazon rankings rocketed a couple of times. They are back in the doldrums now, but it puts a smile on my face to see that steep incline on the graph. I just have to learn how to keep those ‘balls’ in the air. Wish me luck!