I have to start this week’s blog with a little rant against the freebie again. I mentioned two readers last week who had won a copy of my ebook, The Eagle’s Covenant. A day or so after writing that piece, one of the ebooks was downloaded from Instafreebie. Three days ago a second was downloaded. This told me that the winners had picked up their prize. I didn’t end the giveaway there and then, knowing I had only given the free link to two people. Yesterday I discovered that the book had been downloaded four times. I ended the giveaway straight away. It suggests to me that one of those winners passed on the link to others, which is against the spirit of the free book idea; the link was not theirs to give away. So be it, but I will keep a closer eye on this practice in future.

I made some small inroad into my current WIP. I said in my last post that figuring out a back story was almost like writing a novel, but I bit the bullet and persevered. I was amused by a post I read today on an author forum where a question was posed on what is making us happy today. One writer was excited because she had book 4 being published, book 5 with her content editor, book 6 with another professional and book 4 (yes) being prepped for something else. I got exhausted just reading that. Where do these people get their ideas and stamina from? Must be my age because I can never see a novel taking less than a year to write.

I was once told by my London publisher that there are only about nine stories you can write, but many, many ways of telling them. My current effort is about a girl going missing. No, it isn’t Gone Girl, but simply another slant on a missing person. She is sixteen years old and the daughter of a notorious London crime boss. Sounds exciting? No, not yet, but it’s my job to make it so. How do I do that? If there’s a recipe book out there about writing the perfect plot, let me know please. Meanwhile I’ll struggle to come up with something to stretch between the beginning and the end.

My venture into Facebook advertising doesn’t look too promising at the moment. One of my ads achieved an audience relevance of eight, which is good, and the other ad was wilting fast. I tried a tweak and immediately lost the plot. So much for carefully following the good advice I found in Michael Cooper’s book. I will persevere and make every effort not to give Facebook too much of my money.

This time next week I will have spent four hours at the Crawley Library book fest trying to persuade people to by my paperback books and maybe even venture into my electronic pile and download some ebooks. But at least I will be meeting people who are there because they are book readers, and are interested in talking to some real live authors. After that I will be meeting my son for a spot of lunch, and that’s a bonus. Hopefully I’ll be able to brag about how many books I sold. Wish me luck!