Catching Lightning in a Bottle

The month of November has been a fairly positive month for me, both domestically and in the book world. At the start of the month, I was able to look forward to a coach trip to Weymouth with a group from the small estate where I live. I also made inroads into my novel to be set in Paris in 1940, and I embarked on a course to get me back into the world of books as an established writer.

The holiday over five days meant I would be with a lot of people I knew by sight, one or two who I knew, and several who eventually became friends of mine. At least; I would like to think so. I was a little ambivalent about the holiday at first, and it was difficult not having my lovely Pat with me, but I realised that this was probably the right kind of holiday for me given my circumstances. So much so that I tried to book up for next year’s summer holiday, but unfortunately all the single rooms have gone, which means I’ll have to go on the waiting list.

I managed a trip to Brighton to see my Granddaughter, Gemma, who is heavily pregnant, and her little boy, Orin, who is six and wears his mother out. I enjoyed my time with them and even managed to get a ‘Full English’ breakfast at a dog-friendly café, while Gemma was able to have her choice of Vegan food.

I had a major problem with the Landline emergency call button that I wear on my wrist. The alarm went off early morning meaning my neighbour, who was in Brighton, got a phone call from the Lifeline people asking if I was alright. I happened to be fast asleep in bed at the time. Then the alarm went off again while I was having my breakfast. The upshot of this was that my ‘Bat button’ was faulty. A lady from Lifeline turned up and gave me a new button. Peace reigns!

And now to the book world. I said I was making inroads into my book about Paris in 1940, which is true, but I have since put it on hold because of a project I started with Mark Dawson’s SPF Launchpad. I’ve been a paid-up member of Mark’s group for about five years, and have completed a few of the courses, although never successfully. And that is simply down to me, not the quality of the courses. However, when Mark relaunched his 101 course as the new, revamped Launchpad, I decided to knuckle down and put the effort in, because I wasn’t selling any books; I was going nowhere fast.

As a result of ‘knuckling down’, I have enjoyed some progress. One of the suggested ways to go was what Mark calls his 365-day plan. That’s right: 365 days to work on getting you where you want to be in the book market. I had to begin by dropping one of my books to 0.99 cents and advertising it for at least one month before moving on to Step 2. I started on November 16th and have since shifted 50 books. Considering I hadn’t sold anything on Amazon for several months, apart from the odd book, that is a significant achievement. Mark says we have to be patient and not expect to catch lightning in a bottle, however much we are tempted. So, I’ll stick with the promotion until the New Year, and then look at Step 2. It may not be lightning in a bottle, but hey; it’s a significant spark.

Because my promotion and marketing skill sucks, I have also started Mark’s Amazon Ads course. I did this course a few years ago too, and failed miserably, but now I’m back on board with Janet Margo who worked in Amazon’s advertising department and now runs Marks Amazon Ads course. Once again I’ll need to be dedicated and ignore the fact that I can’t expect to hit the big numbers straight away. But if I get it right, and am prepared to spend some money, it shouldn’t be too long before my spark becomes a significant light in the darkness.

I’m reluctant to figure out how much money I’ve spent or am likely to spend, but it could be a hefty chunk. If it pays off, I won’t regret it. I’ve told my boy, John, who sells T-shirts online, that if I make a million sales, I’ll buy one thousand of his T-shirts. I think he’s sold about five in the last twelve months — a bit like me with my book sales before this month.

And as I push on with my learning curve and go to bed with a smile on my face, I know there will be bumps in the road and I must not let them get me down. Christmas is coming and I know there will be a lot of diversions down which I’ll be sidetracked, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, which means I have to accept the normal, Christmassy side of things, and find some time into that learning curve when I can. And if any of you see my promotion for A Covert War (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00V73HFO8) on Facebook or elsewhere, please share it (or buy it!); that would be a big help.

See you next month. Wish me luck!

Into the Lion's Den

As readers of my monthly blog will know, I started writing and researching a book about Occupied Paris in 1940. I am currently 15000 words into the story and still not sure about where I am going with it. I thought it might be a good idea, seeing as I have shelved my Emma Carney pen name for now, to consider an editor to make sure I produce a finely tuned novel. For that reason, I consulted with Reedsy.com: a well-known and respected professional organisation in the self-publishing world. They gave me a huge list of editor options, which I was able to narrow down to those most relevant to my book. As a result, I nominated five editors, supplied them with the first chapter (2500 words), and waited for the quotes to roll in. But I had to ask myself: what was I really expecting? That’s when reality bites.

I received quotes ranging from 2000 – 9000 Euros. That knocked me back, I can tell you. I felt as though I’d wandered close to a group of hungry lions. Wow! It just shows how much, or how little I know about the real world of self-publishing. There are a lot of people out there (good luck to them) making a lot of money helping wannabes like me onto the first rung of the ladder. No, I know I’m not a wanna-be, but after reading one editor’s description of my sample chapter, I felt violated. I know I am not a bad writer, but I must be on a different planet.

Let me put that in perspective for you. I had a chap working on my house, a guy I know and have socialised with. I went out front to do some work in the garden and my friend stopped me and told me he was reading my book The Boy From Berlin. He said even though he knew I was a writer; he didn’t realise what kind of writer I was but he couldn’t put my book down. He said it was brilliant and thoroughly enjoyed it. Now, this is a working-class bloke who hasn’t been to university except living in the university of life, but he enjoyed my book. He probably didn’t know (or care) that I might have put a comma in where it should have been a semi-colon. He wouldn’t have been aware of the finer details that editors expose. No, he was a reader who simply enjoyed reading my book. And this is why I get the feeling that editors will never see your book as a means of entertainment for Joe Public, but an exercise in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and phrasing and probably have difficulty in not adding the dreaded “see me” in red ink at the end of the session.

My daughter-in-law, Jackie, gave me the latest Robert Galbraith book (J.K. Rowling), The Running Grave. It’s about 800 pages long. Jackie said it was brilliant. I started reading it and really struggled. In the end, I had to give up. I probably got through seven chapters. I thought it was tedious, stuffed with all kinds of unnecessary detail and descriptions, and too many names to remember as well — most of which I’ve always been advised to moderate and/or avoid. So there you go, two different opinions. How the editors coped with the editing process I’ve no idea. However, I do accept that J.K. Rowling is an extremely talented and gifted writer and probably has a brain she should donate to science when her days are over.

One thing I’ve learned this year, and something I’ve known forever, it seems, is that I lose a lot of money on my books for one reason or another. I make more money per annum from my Premium Bonds than I do from writing. But when I sell a book, my smile gets wider each time. One of my thrillers, The Devil’s Trinity (which I have mentioned before in my blog) is still selling on Kobo through Draft2Digital. This month I have sold five, which is about par for the course and has been for well over a year now, but it always puts a smile on my face.

So where do I go from here? I’ve opened a free account with Mailerlite to see if I can rebuild a subscriber list. I used to have 1500, but they all disappeared when I picked up my digital pen three years after I lost my lovely Pat. I actually cancelled my account with Mailchimp because I couldn’t see the point in paying for something that wasn’t working. I will have to offer a book in exchange for someone to subscribe, but I expect that anyway.

On the domestic front, like most of us, my work in the garden has been seriously reduced because of the weather. I travelled up to Norfolk to see my elder brother, Jim. Had my eyes examined (should have been my head!) and my eye drops changed. Now my nose runs all the time, my eyes keep watering and I have to stay with these drops until I see the specialist in December. I have put a blue screen filter on my laptop now, which actually helps.

And another string to my bow? I had to attend a Speed Awareness Course this month. I’d been caught doing 35 mph in a 30 mph limit up in Lincolnshire. So now I am known to the Lincolnshire Constabulary. The course was good, very informative, and, in a sense, successful because I will always have it in the back of my mind whenever I’m driving through a country village after using a high-speed, empty country road.

I’ve just looked out of the window and it’s raining again. Reminds me of the song by Super Tramp. I bought a couple of their albums in the Seventies. Loved them: terrific group. Now it’s time for church and then back to the slower pace of writing.

But before I go, I need to mention my other project, which is to start collecting email addresses to add to my brand-new subscribers list. To attract them I will be giving away a copy of my Marcus Blake thriller, Where the Wicked Dwell in exchange for their email addresses. So if you want to add your name, let me know at info@michaelparkerbooks.com. Let’s see how many I can collect before Christmas. Wish me luck!

Going down Rabbit holes.

Blog post for September 2023

Once again I look back through my diary entries for September and see my daily entries are all very similar. The main difference is the amount of research I’m doing for a planned novel (maybe a series) about Occupied Paris in 1940. The books I’ve bought for my research cover the years 1940-1944, so the early stages of my research means I will only use about a third of the material, maybe less, for now. But before I talk about that, a little about what I did during September.

I took Tuppence to the vet to have her teeth cleaned. I’ve been advised on how I should clean her teeth. Trouble is — Tuppence won’t let me, simple as that. I give her a carrot or a small chew to help with the process anyway.

I took my sister-in-law, Sandy, out to lunch. Sandy was married to my younger brother, Arthur, who died shortly before my lovely Pat. Most times we talk about what we’ve been up to but invariably end up talking about our loss. We went to a dog friendly pub, which meant I could take Tuppence.

I also took Tuppence with me when I visited my granddaughter, Gemma and her family in Brighton. I took them (Great grandson, Orin, and Gemma’s partner, Max) out to lunch at the Laughing Dog Café in the marina. Lovely afternoon with them.

I decided to grow tomatoes this year. I ended up with that many I had to make soup. Not a good idea. The only thing it taught me, besides proving that I’m a lousy cook, is not to grow tomatoes again.

Another pleasing event was lunch with our No. 2 son, Terry, at Goodwood Aerodrome. We sat in the sunshine at the café beside the airfield watching the flying, eating chips and just having a thoroughly nice time. Tuppence was with us as well (natch).

But back to my world of books. I was working on a fourth Emma Carney Romance and had reached about 12000 words when I knew I was going nowhere with it; all I was doing was adding a series of events that were taking me down rabbit holes; certainly not a fitting way to find a reasonable end to a plausible story. I soldiered on for a while until I had my thoughts triggered by a film that had nothing to do with the war but referenced a fictional series about the war in Paris. This set me on the kind of research I used to do years ago before Social Media was invented. I went to the local library and ordered a book about Occupied Paris. I also searched online for more material and ended up buying four books: SOE ‘F’ Section heroines, (written by Sqdn. Leader Beryl E. Escott); When Paris Went Dark (Ronald Rosbottom); Paris in the Third Reich (David Pryce-Jones) and Americans in Paris 1940-1944 (Charles Glass). Three of the books were used, but I bought the paperback of the Library book because I knew I might have to make notations in it.

Looking through all that material might seem daunting, but much of it is repeated in all the books, and for my story, I only want to write about the early period leading up to June 1940 when German troops marched into the open, undefended city of Paris. I expect to spend a lot of time researching before I can put together a plan of how and where I want to start, and where I’ll finish. If I think I have made a success of this, I would be prepared to write a series (if I live long enough!). But the material is there along with fascinating characters and dramatic events. I have already written the opening chapter (twice), but even now I’m wondering if I should wait until I have everything written down that I need before plotting a story.

So looking ahead, my weeks will be filled with domestic chores, walking Tuppence, going to church, falling asleep in the chair, watching TV, playing my piano and missing my lovely Pat. Between all this, I hope to be writing my next full length novel.

Wish me luck!