Coping and Hoping

Coping and Hoping. My July blog post

After a reasonably successful run of sales and page reads, I find myself back down among the bottom feeders thinking about launching another Facebook campaign, but this time in the United States. I made the mistake of reading Kristin Hannah’s book, The Nightingale. It is set in Occupied Paris, same as my book, Shadow Over Paris. Wow, what a blisteringly good writer she is, and I’m up against that kind of talent? I did manage to get to No 7 in the top ten, Historical French Fiction category. Kristin Hannah was at No.1, so I was only six places behind her (for a while).

I finished writing the third book in the Shadow Over Paris series, so the Trilogy is complete. The Word file is with my son, John, who will be reading it for me and checking for typos and errors. No doubt he’ll find a few. Once that’s done, I can ask my cover designer to come up with a jacket as good as all the others he’s done for me.

Now that I’ve finished writing, I find myself with precious little to occupy my mind. It’s been two months now since I had Tuppence put down. I do miss the little sod and often feel guilty because I made the decision to have her put to sleep; something I struggle to get my head round.

I spent a few days away; went up to Norfolk for a long weekend at my eldest son, Vincent and his wife, Jackie’s place. After leaving them, I popped in to see my brother, Jim. While I was there, his son, Colin brought a young, Italian woman to the house. She was called Ludovici (Ludi), and Colin had known her for a number of years after driving a Medical Wagon around Italy.

Ludi, probably in her late twenties, wanted to know how to get a book published. She has written a Contemporary Literature novel, which she wants traditionally published. Naturally, I was able to give her a lot of pointers and useful information. It made a pleasant hour for me because I love talking about writing. When I left my brother’s, I went up to Sleaford to spend a couple of nights with my friend, Pauline.

During last month I got involved with a book publicist in America who helped improve the way my work appears on search engines like Amazon and Google. It cost me money and I can’t honestly say I got the bang for my buck I wanted, but maybe that will be a kind of underlying improvement when it comes to my campaigns on Facebook.

I was approached by email from a woman representing Authors Manuscriptia. (No, me neither). She produced an incredibly detailed history of my career as a writer, even to the fact that I gave up writing to nurse my terminally ill wife. After an exchange of emails, I said thanks, but no thanks. I used Google’s Gemini AI to ask who these people were. They were genuine but lacked results and charged a fee for a pointless document, professionally edited, that would enhance my reputation, not just as a writer, but as a person as well.

Looking ahead, I have two separate medical conditions that are being looked at, either of which could mean me having to make decisions I’ve no wish to. I’m due to walk my grandson, Adam’s fiancée, Agata, down the aisle on August 4^th, and after that I’ll be going up to Sleaford to bring Pauline and her little Chihuahua, Daisy, down here for a spell . And the (almost) entire family from Australia, America, Canada and Scotland (England too!), will be here for the wedding. They say they will be popping in to see me as well, even though we’ll be together at the wedding. Should be fun.

And my current reading? The Women by Kristin Hannah. I’m a glutton for punishment. Wish me luck!

The Long and Lonely Road

Writing can be a lonely, soul destroying business, or it can be fun and uplifting, depending on what kind of writer you are. I know of some writers (not personally) who can knock out a prodigious number of books in a month, and I suspect they are always in a good place, overwhelmed with ideas and probably writing the next book in their heads as they write down the words of their current project. I am like the tortoise in the fable, except I always cross the finish line, but a proverbial country mile behind the hare. But that’s my lot; I am antediluvian, old school, and it usually takes me about a year to complete a book.

For my current project I am over halfway down the road, about 60.000 words into the third book of the Shadow Over Paris series. There’s an old saying, Irish I think, that says “May the road rise up to meet you”. I love that, and I see it in the way I have struggled to come up with a plausible tale for the third book. I reached, not just a road block, but a proverbial mountain as I struggled to find a way to interlock all the pieces of the jigsaw I’d scattered along the way and wasn’t sure I would get to bring them altogether to complete the picture. Well, I think I’m on the other side of the road block and I can see daylight.

At my current rate of progress, I expect to have the first draft complete, but unedited, by the end of this month (June). But there’s a ‘but’. Isn’t there always? I’ve had two medical appointments for two different things in the last seven days, and each of those means a referral. Just when the sun is beginning to shine, the clouds come over to darken the day. I will still be writing, but I’m not in control now; that will be in the hands of others. However, I still expect to publish the book, hopefully, in November. I’ve chosen that particular month because Shadow Over Paris and the sequel were both published in November (2024 and 2025). It does kind of round it off nicely, and perfect for the build up to Christmas.

I have entered the first book into a Goodreads Giveaway. These are supposed to be an excellent way of attracting readers, and there is a prolific amount on Goodreads. The current giveaway begins today (June 1^st) and runs for 14 days. I will be giving away 20 copies. This may not seem a lot, but I am going on the advice of a professional book publicist. If the giveaway is successful, I could do another, but it costs money. Doesn’t everything? That’s the rub; there’s no such thing as a free lunch, so they say. If you want to try your luck, go on to my website, facing page, and you will see the ‘Widget’ that will take you to the Goodreads Giveaway.

I’m currently running a campaign on Amazon for the book, but I’ve never had any success running campaigns on Amazon. I suck at it to be honest, but so do a great deal of authors. We can write books, but we cannot as hell, advertise. To do that successfully, you need the help of a professional with the usual costs. But Amazon promoted my book in April (for nothing), and I enjoyed healthy sales during that month. And the upshot is, readers are beginning to buy the sequel. It has actually sold more than the first book this month, because readers want to read it (natch). That’s another good reason for me to get the third book of the trilogy out by the end of the year,

On the domestic front, sadly, I had to have my lovely cockapoo, Tuppence, put to sleep. She was terminally ill and had been under treatment for several weeks. It was so sad. Tuppence was the centre of my universe. Now she’s gone and my house is empty. Sometimes my soul feels like that because I no longer have the two girls of my life: my lovely Pat and my lovely Tuppence.

But life goes on. I’m having a stall at a car boot sale here on our site this coming Saturday. I’ll have some of my books plus a lot of stuff that I’ve had in my Room 101, wondering what I’m going to do with it all. About ten days after that, I’ll be travelling up to Norfolk for a weekend with our eldest boy, Vincent and his wife, Jackie. Our No.3 son, John, will be there for a day. Then it’s off to Lincolnshire to spend a couple of nights with my long-standing friend, Pauline. While I’m there, I plan to call on my granddaughter, Sarah and her family at RAF Cranwell. Oh, and on my way to Lincolnshire, I will be popping in to see my big brother, Jim who, unfortunately cannot do much, so it will be nice to have a chat with him and put the world to rights.

So you see, there’s life in the old dog yet, and all the time I’m healthy and fit enough, I will try to maintain that journey as the road rises up to meet me. Wish me luck!

                                                                                                       Michael Parker

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