After the initial flush of Book Lab 5, I’m back to normal. Had a couple of comments from members of the SPF Facebook group saying how they enjoyed the video. One guy said I had balls of steel to go through the process, which I can assure you is not true, but it does make you feel rather exposed. I’ve rewritten the prologue and uploaded the new file and blurb. It remains to be seen if that will have any effect. I have two BB ads running with two different authors as targets — Robert Harris and Jeffery Archer. Needless to say there are no results. Tomorrow I will change those two; see what happens. I also started a short campaign on AMS but, surprise, surprise, the campaign doesn’t appear on my AMS account dashboard even though I had an acknowledgement from Amazon confirming the ad. I contacted them and was told to sign out of my account and sign in again, then my ad would be seen. But that didn’t work so it’s back to Amazon. I wouldn’t mind if this was my first attempt, but I’ve been using AMS ads for some time.

I got stuck into my WIP this week and made reasonable progress. Trouble is, I keep coming up with small changes that mean I have to go back in the story and drop something in. It’s fine doing that so long as you remember to reveal all this at the end. I got interrupted at one stage, and when I got back to the computer, I had the beginning of a paragraph in front of me and couldn’t remember what I was about to write.

Some of you who read my blog will know that I published a romance, Past Imperfect. I haven’t sold any but it’s not for the want of trying. I decided to ask the question on Facebook about selling a romance as a thriller writer. I got the usual advice; all of which I’d tried, so in the end I contacted some book reviewers who blog regularly. I sent off five emails and received two replies. One said she had something like 900 books on her BTR list (!!), so couldn’t accept mine. Another blogger had a very definite review policy for which I didn’t qualify. She sent a very nice email suggesting I send the book though (no ebooks) and she would try to fit me in. Hopefully she’ll open the book when it arrives, just as a quick check, and won’t be able to put it down. That would be good, eh? I’ve got about another 25 bloggers to contact, which I’ll do as and when.

My week has also revolved around appointments for me and my two girls: Pat and Tuppence. The dog needed an annual check on Monday; I needed a hearing check on Thursday and Pat had to see the doc on Friday. The major event though was a call from the specialist at the hospital to say Pat’s PET scan showed little had changed since the last one except that her tumour had grown. It seems now that the next step is to have the thing removed. They still don’t know what cancer she has and believe this might help. It looks like another trip to St. Georges in London. Pat’s very unhappy about that, but it’s something we have to deal with. We should know when by Monday or Tuesday.

I have to admit that as I struggle to come to terms with Pat’s condition and trying to find the time to write (I’m basically Pat’s carer), and also seeing the feeble results in my book world, I think of giving it up (my writing). No doubt people will say I have to keep going, but alongside Pat’s struggle, I can see less and less value in it; the determination is difficult to find. Hopefully we’ll turn the corner. Wish me luck!