I often start with how the week began. Today I have to say the week began sadly with the news that my younger brother, Arthur, had died. It wasn’t unexpected; he had been ill for some time, but nevertheless, it was a shock. And now I have memories, not of a 75 year-old man, but me and my little brother when we were kids and the antics we got up to. I’ve known him for 75 years — longer than I’ve known my wife — and I could probably write a book about our life as young kids and how we changed when we grew up and became part of a world that was never something we thought of; too busy being children I suppose. And as a writer of action thrillers where I can dispense savage justice and kill my characters with impunity, death is simply ink on the paper. But we all know that the reality is different, and I will mourn my brother’s passing like most siblings would.

This being the week before we fly out to Australia meant there was a lot to do, eyes to dot and tees to cross, and with very little thought to writing. My WIP remains untouched, and will remain so until we get back, but I did embark on something unexpected. One of the Chindi group pointed out that there was nowhere to leave a comment on my blog page: something I’d never even thought of. So I decided I would have a go. I followed the WIX help section and managed to get a comment box at the bottom of my blog page. So far so good, but when I checked the live site, my comments box was in Spanish! It took me ages to figure out why. It turned out that I had used the Facebook comment box, and it was that which defaulted to Spanish. I checked the settings on my FB account: all were set to English, but because I opened my account when we lived in Spain, some gremlin in there decided it couldn’t relinquish a little bit of the Español.

I am still plugging away at ads with BookBub and AMS. There’s still no distinctive edge to either of them, although AMS do seem to be giving me a slightly better return than BB. My ROI is negative, and I suppose it will always be that way until I master the art of promotion. Whenever I see podcasts and read posts about the way forward, I know there is nothing new for me; I’ve been there, done that and got the Tee shirt, but never the prize of sumptuous sales figures. I still watch and read in case some little nugget is dropped that I can pick up and run with.

The Parker household is low at the moment, because the dog company Barking Mad has picked up our Tuppence. They’ve taken her away to her new home for four weeks. Now we can get on with our packing and missing her.

There probably won’t be a blog post from me while we’re away, although I might try to put some photos up on Facebook. But before I sign off, I just want to dedicate this post to my little brother, Arthur. R.I.P.