No pressure then?

Another busy week for yours truly. I travelled up to London each day and brought Pat home Friday. We now have to wait until about March 11th. for the results. There was precious little time to do much else except make sure the dog had her walk and keep on top of the small jobs around the house, but I did manage to get on with my Pulp Fiction thriller. I now have a book jacket for it. I won’t say it’s brilliant, but that’s something I can deal with later if it’s really necessary. I also received a fairly comprehensive report from one of my beta readers with a beautifully laid out column of typos and an adjacent column with suggested changes. It cost me nothing! I had already done an edit myself, so I can hold my hand up and say I had already caught about 30% of the errors. I have now sorted them all out and can take the next step: publish. That will probably be some time during the week. I’ll be setting the price low and spending some money on advertising. But (there’s always a but), I have just bought David Gaughran’s book on BookBub ads, and I really need to go through it before putting any ads on BB. No doubt I’ll do that anyway and then tweak the ads later.

Regular readers of my blog will remember me talking about being selected for Mark Dawson’s Book Lab; it’s something I’m eligible for because I’m a gold Patreon member. I volunteered for selection, never for one minute expecting to be picked. I’m No.5 and will be interviewed later this month. Meanwhile, I watched the Book Lab 4 video last night on You Tube. It was an author called Niki Danforth, and the video ran for about two hours. The three professionals who looked at Niki’s latest release, using the ‘Look inside’ feature on Amazon, were Jennie Nash, Bryan Cohen and Stuart Bache. To hire these professionals would cost the earth: I think Jennie charges $3000 a month to work with an author through the writing process. Stuart Bache charges $600+ for a book jacket, and I’ve no idea what Bryan Cohen charges, but it will be up there with the rest. They have all worked with top authors like John Grisham, David Baldacci etc., so they know what they are about. Having seen Niki Danforth’s work taken apart, dissected, critiqued and other little peccadilloes thrown in, I’m now wondering what on earth they will say about mine. It’s The Boy from Berlin they’ll be looking at, and already I’m a nervous wreck. I will have to find a sanctuary just to hide my shame: a remote retreat somewhere. When Niki was interviewed, I could see her reaction was, well, controlled is the best word I can come up with. The upside to all this though, is that if I take on board the suggested changes to my book jacket, the blurb and advertising strap-lines, it should — should — give me an increase in book sales. I know I would be a mug not to take advantage of this. However, it could be different, couldn’t it? After all, they may say I’m brilliant and nothing needs changing, right? No, I didn’t think so. The results will be posted to me on March 18th (my birthday), and the video interview will be released in April. Should be fun.

My book talk at the Ladies Friendship Club is on Wednesday, which is something I’m looking forward to; nowhere near as frightening as the Book Lab. It was touch and go for a while because I wasn’t sure I could make the date with Pat being the way she is at the moment. Thankfully she’s home and will be coming to the event with me. It’s only a two minute drive up to the village hall from here. The talk is scheduled to last 45 minutes by which time I will probably have managed to cover most of what I want to say. However, I do have a habit of going on a bit, so may have to wind things in a little. Hopefully the women will all love me and will want to but my books. Wish me luck!

It's all a bit of a puzzle

I’m almost ready to publish my pulp fiction thriller which I have titled HUNTED. I changed the title several times in my mind and each time got more and more doubtful about whether I’d ever come up with something suitable. I watched an eight minute video on Reedsy about choosing a title, but I’m afraid the lady was so far removed from my type of fiction, I knew I wasn’t going to get much out of her. So back to the drawing board and up came the title. I have paid for a cheap jacket from Fiverr.com. The sample jackets from the designer called Histart looked pretty good, so I’ve gone for the cheap, £25 option. That will give me the eBook, print and 3D versions. The jacket should be available once I’ve provided a photo and a bio. Hopefully I can accept what Histart has come up with. We’ll see.

I’m not making much headway with my book sales, so I’ve tweaked my AMS ad and my BookBub ad., which is for Past Imperfect, but it doesn’t seem to be working because my sales so far are for my other titles. I’ll wait another week and if the situation doesn’t improve I’ll bin the ad and spend money on my thrillers.

I became involved in a Facebook post about subscriber engagement the other day. I said my subs seemed only to be interested in anything free, because there is no real engagement with them. I was told it was probably because I was trying to sell them something. I pointed out that I hadn’t offered them the opportunity to buy one of my books for over a year, but had been giving them an occasional freebie. It comes down to how we interpret the advice we’re given about connecting with our subscribers. Nick Stephenson believes you shouldn’t be too ‘salesy’. But should offer snippets, talk about your characters, what drives you as a writer etc. I’ve also been advised not to contact subscribers too often because they’ll get fed up. So, what to do? I have six people reading HUNTED at the moment, which was the response I had when I asked for volunteer readers. I will send an email to my 1200 subs when the book is available on Amazon, but I won’t give it away. I’ll probably offer it at £0.99 for a week before banging the price up: see what happens.

On the domestic front, I’m taking Pat to St. George’s hospital in London tomorrow where she’ll be admitted for a procedure to determine the type of cancer she has. Last Monday, we spoke to the Cardiothoracic surgeon who will be doing the op. and he said Pat defies all medical logic; meaning they should have known by now what cancer it is. We can only hope and pray that this time the biopsy will be a success. She’ll be under a general anaesthetic for the op, but should be out by Thursday, maybe Friday.

I lived a couple of miles away from that hospital down the Garratt Lane when I was a kid. I told the surgeon I was in the hospital about 72 years ago. I might take a drive down the lane when I bring Pat home. The estate where I was brought up is the same estate where the current Mayor of London lived. Naturally this was years after my domicile there, and I’ve no doubt the ethnicity now is totally different.

It’s a bit of a puzzle; writing a thriller, deciding on a title and diagnosing Pat’s cancer, but I’m sure we’ll get there in the end. Once I’ve got this week out of the way (I’ll be travelling up to Tooting each day), and have Pat back home and settled, I might be able to pick up my current WiP and make headway with that. Wish me luck!

Joining the Rat Pack

I finished my blog last week by saying I had nothing in the pipeline apart from a local book talk, but now things have changed a little. My pulp fiction thriller was turned down by Mark Dawson, which is what I expected. He said the storyline didn’t fit his character, John Milton. I knew that, so expected him to say no: now I can publish it myself, but the first thing I need to do is an edit. I did a rough one first, but now it needs a closer look. I thought it would be a good idea to get some beta readers, so I emailed my 1200 subscribers. I have received six requests so far. Not exactly a mad rush, but at least a response. I have asked them to let me have their opinions by the end of the month. I will also be toying around with Photoshop, but might use someone from Fiverr to do a jacket for me. We’ll see. If anyone reading this blog fancies reading my pulp fiction thriller as a beta reader, please get in touch through my website contact page. I will only use about ten readers though.

Now, why have I got a photo of a rat up there? That’s me as a ‘lab rat’. Yes, I’m going to explain. As you all probably know, I am a member of Mark Dawson’s group, and I am also a member of his Patreon group. As a gold member (at least $5 a month), I can throw my hat into the ring as a subject of interest in their ‘Book Lab’. Once a month they select a Patreon member and, using one of that member’s books, they do a kind of forensic analysis. Well, I got chosen (Yay!). The book going under the microscope will be The Boy from Berlin (their suggestion). The three scrutineers are all top line professionals in their game, so I expect to be told what I already know, and I’m not looking forward to it. No, that’s not true; I’ll be pleased to have my name and my book brought to the front of the class. There will be a final interview with James Blatch asking me about my reaction to the experts’ opinions. That interview is scheduled for release in April. So, I am now a quivering lab rat, hence the photo.

After sending my book to Mark Dawson, I dragged my WIP out of storage and began to do a complete rethink on the book. I began building a timeline that precedes the story, and then started going through it from page one. This was something I expected to be doing for a few weeks until I could build a plot line that could take me beyond the 60,000 word length. Currently the WIP is about 35,000 words long. I also decided to add another character to help with the plot. It’s an old mate of mine, Mick Brock. Mick used to be a policeman, but I knew him when we worked in the same food factory. I used Mick as a Detective Constable (with his permission of course) in my crime thriller, Where the Wicked Dwell. I promoted him to Detective Sergeant at the end of the book. Now I’m going to elevate him to Detective Inspector. He doesn’t know that yet, but I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.

On the domestic front, poor Pat is still waiting to hear what cancer she has. She had an MRI scan and an Ultra-sound scan last Tuesday, but the sound scan was discounted because there was nothing on the scan they could use. We’ll know more about the MRI scan next Monday or Tuesday, but it’s a cinch that Pat will need more tests. Poor girl is trying to keep her head up, but it’s difficult for her. I’m at sixes and sevens over this, but Pat wants me to stick with the writing: something to give me focus is what she says. Keep your fingers crossed and wish us both luck!