Looking back and looking ahead

May 2026

My last blog post was in February, and reading through it, I seem to be quite enthusiastic about my progress in the Indie world of books. But the reality, unfortunately, has been a little different. Although my book, Shadow Over Paris, was doing well, followed by the sequel, I started losing inspiration. And then Amazon sent me an email asking if I would like them to promote my book, free of charge, for the month of April. They’d done this for me in December, same book too, so I wondered what is was about my book that ‘clicked’ with Amazon.

I used AI to ask what Amazon’s algorithms look for when selecting a book to promote. It came back with eight different reasons, and my book ticked every one of those boxes. During the promotion, I watched the book climb to No 7 in the Historic French fiction category, it nudged itself into the top 20 Historical fiction and came a respectable 70^th or so in Historical literature. It also peaked at 4120 in Amazon’s overall list of titles. This meant I needed to find a way of keeping the balls in the air once the promotion had finished.

And there’s the rub; I was cleverly scammed last year, which left me feeling violated and, let’s be honest, quite stupid to fall for the trickster. This meant that I could no longer trust anyone who contacted me by email, promising to elevate me and my work to a higher place. The majority of them never addressed me by name, it was always ‘Hi author’, ‘Hello’, ‘I read your work (which work?)’, and so on and so forth. I decided it was down to me and running another campaign on Facebook, which was responsible for acquiring over one million page reads for the book in six months. I tried Amazon ads, but I suck at them and achieved nothing. So, where to go from there?

Quite by chance I received an email addressed to me but wanting to discuss my book and maybe doing some publicity stuff. I returned the email with the words: ‘Not my book’. But the woman wrote back, and from there we exchanged about twenty emails, and in that time I used AI to check up on the authenticity of this person because I was convinced it was a scam. I looked at other sources as well and now find myself enjoying a small uptick in my sales. She opened my eyes to the mechanics of using the correct keywords etc, changed my blurb, told me to use a recent photo, and then we dived into the dreaded world of Goodreads. Wow, that took some doing, but we finally managed it and now we will be looking at a Goodreads giveaway, followed by (maybe) a 30 minute zoom call to see where we go from there. Am I excited? No, not yet, but it’s time for me to up my game and see just how I can reach higher and enjoy some real validation in the world of Indie books.

On a sad note, I had to say goodbye to my ten year old Cockapoo, Tuppence. She developed a terminal illness which couldn’t be controlled despite the medication and change of diet. She has been my constant companion since I lost my lovely Pat over five years ago, she has been the centre of my universe, and the reason I couldn’t make any decisions without considering her welfare first. Now she’s gone, and I find myself living in an empty house. I’m going to put a little memorial to her in a pot beneath the bird feeder. That was her favourite place in the garden, and I would often see her sitting there, wagging her tail, waiting for the birds to drop something.

So, from here? I’m working on the trilogy (slowly) and planning a trip to Norfolk to see my eldest boy and his wife, then my elder brother Jim, followed by a quick trip into Lincolnshire to visit my friend, Pauline. And while I’m in Lincolnshire, I hope to catch up with my granddaughter, Sarah and her family. So, things are looking up, but I still have mountains to climb.

Wish me luck!                                                                                Michael Parker

Looking up and wondering if

The beginning of 2026 was the point where I could relax and forget about all the jottings on the calendar for December and the build-up to Christmas, but life gets in the way, and it’s kind of a situation normal again. I often tell people that if you want to put a smile on God’s face, just tell Him what your plans are.

I was looking forward to going to Atlanta again for our great-grandson, Elliott’s 2^nd birthday, and to see the new addition to his family, who is due in April. Boy or girl? We won’t know until April. But I’ve cancelled the trip because they will all be here four weeks later and, yes, they will be coming to Pagham to see me, so I decided to save myself a few thousand quid and cancelled the trip. They will be here for our Grandson, Adam’s, wedding to his fiancée, Agata, in August.

After a relatively minor op last November, I now find myself having to visit the nurse twice a week to have the dressing changed on my leg. It’s just a giant sticking plaster, but it means marking it up on the calendar. Oh, and the Gardner is here every Thursday for an hour if it isn’t raining. My church House Group started up again, which meant more additions to the calendar. There’s always a book club meeting at Littlehampton once a month. Church itself, etc. So, with God smiling, I’m busy filling up the days. Oh, and I’m planning a trip up to Norfolk in April, then round to my friend, Pauline, in Lincolnshire for a short stay. And in between all that, I’m trying to write a third book in my WW2 series.

Those of you who read my last monthly blog post will know that I decided to give up writing, having published the sequel to Shadow Over Paris. I just didn’t want to write books anymore. But after a couple of weeks sitting on my bum with nothing to do other than watch TV  (Netflix and football), I knew I had to do something. So, I picked up my virtual pen and began putting together something for a third book. — a Trilogy.

But there was another reason too. The first of the two books had done very well in the last few months of 2025, bringing in high sales and page reads. I published the sequel in November, and that started selling, slowly at first, but it was beginning to chase after its big brother. And I wasn’t even promoting them. It was obvious what I had to do, so I began a Facebook campaign in the USA and the UK this year. The pick-up was slow at first, but now they are gaining momentum and hitting figures that are putting a big smile on my face. The trick now is to keep those balls in the air and see how far I can push those numbers, although it will mean spending more money on Promotion and Advertising.

There is also another reason why I knew I needed to write the third book, and that was the unusual interest I was getting from unexpected sources. I get several emails a day promising me they can advance my book, but they are usually web crawlers and robots out for my money. The difference now is that I’ve been approached by a book club called ‘The Paris Story Book Club’, and another club called ‘The Lisbon Raft Book Club’. I was dubious about them both, but no money is involved (yet!); they simply want permission to feature Shadow Over Paris. They both have different ways of doing this, which is too involved to explain here, but it’s another outlet for me to explore and, hopefully, extend my reach into the world of books.

After writing that piece, I received an email from the Raft Book Club offering to make a video trailer for me at a cost of $100. See what I mean? It often ends in a ‘rider’ to the ‘free’ promotion they are offering.

For anyone reading this who has no idea of what kind of level I’m at in this game, I can promise you I am still what I call a ‘Bottom Feeder’. I’ve seen sales figures from other authors like me that would make the fictional Gecko of Wall Street weep with envy, and to reach those heights at my current rate of progress would take me years. But I can dream, can’t I?

It’s late evening on January 31^st as I’m writing this. I’ve just watched an episode of The Lincoln Lawyer on Netflix. I watched the series last year, all 30 episodes. When I think of the screenwriters who knock out script after script, week in, week out, I can only marvel at the way they can produce story lines that help keep Series like that at the top. I suppose it has to be said of the Soaps as well, but I do despair at the dross some TV Dramas peddle out at times. But then, I’m not a screenwriter; I would probably find it hard, particularly as it takes me a year to write a book. On the other hand, maybe…

Anyway, back to earth. I’ve just ordered a non-fiction paperback about the French Resistance during WW2, so it looks as though this could give me something gritty and near the knuckle to include in the third book — as if transporting and murdering Jews wasn’t enough! We’ll see.

Wish me luck!

Out With The Old, In With The New.

End of year blog 2025

Today is the last day of 2025; time to reflect, to look back, and to look forward. My year has been a mixture of highs and lows, although I prefer to think of the latter as ‘not so high’. There are two significant highs, one of which was my trip to Atlanta to help celebrate our 5^th Great grandson, Elliott’s first birthday. The other was a long weekend in Prague to help our Grandson, Adam, celebrate his 40^th birthday. Both events were helped by the addition of several members of the Parker family. In Atlanta, they came from Australia, Canada, and England. In Prague, the same crowd turned up plus others from Scotland and, of course, England. It isn’t necessary to name them all, but in Atlanta, there were five of us to help swell the numbers, and in Prague, there were twelve of us. Brilliant. My trip to Atlanta included a ball game — Baseball at the home of the Atlanta Braves. I thoroughly enjoyed it but didn’t have a clue what was going on; not that it mattered.

The Prague visit in December was an eye-opener. I’ve told people that the place was like a Netflix Christmas RomCom; there were Christmas decorations everywhere. I stayed in an upmarket Airbnb with my family and the baby, Elliott. I did a lot of walking, had some tram rides, and a River Cruise. And the weather was sublime. All in all, a lovely time.

The ‘not so highs’ were really all about my health. It seemed to go downhill after my Atlanta trip. It could have been my age or the fact that my lifestyle changed considerably for a couple of weeks, enough to knock me for six. But what the hell, I recovered. It took time, but I got there. Until Prague! It’s almost de rigeur these days that airline travel will come with some kind of bug, and that’s what happened to me. It took two consecutive courses of antibiotics to get rid of my chest infection. But I am back to normal now. Well, my kind of normal.

The run-up to Christmas was very busy and, I have to admit, made me a bit downbeat at times. But that’s all because of my age and lengthy recovery periods. Now that it has passed, I can look ahead to some unhurried routine stuff (after taking down the decorations and tidying up!).

In my world of books, I achieved a few high points, which put a huge smile on my face. My WW2 story, Shadow Over Paris, started taking off once I advertised it on Facebook in March. It reached the top 10 in Historical French Fiction and managed to creep high up into the top 100 of Historical Fiction. And to finish the year off, Amazon chose to promote it for the whole of December in America and Canada at no cost to me. That will finish today, as will my own promotion for the UK.

Another high in my book world was finishing the Sequel: Shadow Over Paris – Beyond Midnight. It has been out for two months now and is picking up sales and page reads, chasing its big brother up the charts.

But then comes a ‘Not so high’ — I’ve decided to give up writing. I made the decision after publishing the Sequel because I found it such hard work that I wondered if I would ever get to the end. And now I seem to have run out of steam and inclination. I realise that I will never achieve what the majority of writers aspire to, and that is best seller status. I know that if I were to achieve that, a lot of people would want a piece of me, want me to do a speaking event and book signings etc, which would mean travel. Interviews? Expectations? It isn’t difficult to imagine, but at my age (I’m 84), that isn’t what I want. I might have done twenty years ago, but not now; I just need a quiet life. (But we’ll see).

So, what’s to come for Michael Parker next year? There are two significant events: Taryn in America is expecting and due to have her baby in April. That will be our sixth great-grandchild. I’m planning to go to Atlanta in July for Elliott’s second birthday and to see the baby. I’m not concerned about how tiring it will be; I just want to be there. And the other significant event for me is our Grandson, Adam, and his fiancée, Agata’s, wedding in August. Agata has asked me to walk her down the aisle, which I will be honoured to do. I’ve got to keep fit for that — no health issues.

I will be planning some kind of advertising for my WW2 books in 2026, but I will need to keep a close eye on the cost. My campaigns this year saw me running at a small loss each week while the campaigns were running, but the aim was to push the books and my name. The result meant that once the campaigns had finished, the books, including some of my other titles, managed to garner sales and page reads, leaving me in profit for the year and putting a big smile on my face.

So, that’s my offering for what has passed and what might come. And you never know, I might even become a best-selling author. Really?. Wish me luck!

Happy New Year to all of you, even those who have given me one-star reviews (at least you bought my book!). See you in 2026.

                                                                                                                   Michael Parker