Mystery upon mystery

We all like a mystery, right? Well, I was walking along the beach with my dog, Tuppence, the tide was out and just a couple of dog walkers around. I trod on what I thought was a plastic bottle, but when I looked again, it was more like a gun than a discarded piece of plastic. I picked it up. It was quite heavy. There were a couple of dials on it, and also some switches. Plus, a port that looked the same as the one on my phone. It was definitely something electronic. I wondered if it was some kind of signalling device; you know, a short wave transmitter. Perhaps there had been some illegal activity on the beach. Smugglers? I pulled out one of Tuppence’s poo bags and put the device inside, and looked forward to discovering what this mysterious object was. When I got home, I showed it to my wife, but she couldn’t help me out there. So, using my research skills, I went on to Google and began dialling in some of the letters and numbers that were barely discernible on the side of the object. And as I got closer to the truth, I began to wonder what planet I lived on. Am I so far out of it now that I couldn’t recognise an electronic cigarette? A vapour thingy? Ah! Then I thought about how life changes, pulling the rug from under your feet. The world and his dog would have known what it was. But I likened the reality to my Granny and her hearing trumpet. What would she have made of my modern hearing aids? When I smoked years ago it was a packet of cigarettes with twenty fags inside. I’ll just have to keep taking the tablets. Oh, and the vapour thingy has gone into the bin.

Yesterday I went along to Crawley library for their ‘Book Fest’. It was a first for the library, and they made a good show of it too. It was limited to twenty authors (all pre-booked). We had our own allotted space with a small, printed poster attached to the front of the table. I only sold one book: one of my religious books. It was only £1, which is practically the same as giving them away. My son and grandson came along for an hour. They live close by, so that was a bit of a bonus. It was good to meet other writers, many of whom only had one or two books to show. I think I made a mistake by taking too many book along, but it’s all part of the learning curve. I’ll have to remember that “Less is more” in future. I left two of my hardback titles behind for the library. They accept donated books.

I don’t know what Facebook are up to, but they suddenly ‘disapproved’ one of my ads for “profanity”. The ad in question was one I ran through September and had been inactive for two weeks, and contained no profanities at all. I let them know in their ‘appeal’ box that they had made a mistake. So why is it that big companies can’t apologise? They sent me a response to say that my ad had been approved and I could view it etc., etc. The ad wasn’t even running! I’m still failing miserably with this advertising game, but I will persevere. Yesterday I had an ‘uptick’ (I like that word) in my sales, so perhaps I’m doing something right.

My WIP moved on a notch, and I have managed to get to the fifth character that needs introducing. It’s still early days and I’ve only written about 4000 words. Just 76000 to go and at least eight or nine months maybe. We’ll see. Wish me luck!

Disingenuous freeloaders

I have to start this week’s blog with a little rant against the freebie again. I mentioned two readers last week who had won a copy of my ebook, The Eagle’s Covenant. A day or so after writing that piece, one of the ebooks was downloaded from Instafreebie. Three days ago a second was downloaded. This told me that the winners had picked up their prize. I didn’t end the giveaway there and then, knowing I had only given the free link to two people. Yesterday I discovered that the book had been downloaded four times. I ended the giveaway straight away. It suggests to me that one of those winners passed on the link to others, which is against the spirit of the free book idea; the link was not theirs to give away. So be it, but I will keep a closer eye on this practice in future.

I made some small inroad into my current WIP. I said in my last post that figuring out a back story was almost like writing a novel, but I bit the bullet and persevered. I was amused by a post I read today on an author forum where a question was posed on what is making us happy today. One writer was excited because she had book 4 being published, book 5 with her content editor, book 6 with another professional and book 4 (yes) being prepped for something else. I got exhausted just reading that. Where do these people get their ideas and stamina from? Must be my age because I can never see a novel taking less than a year to write.

I was once told by my London publisher that there are only about nine stories you can write, but many, many ways of telling them. My current effort is about a girl going missing. No, it isn’t Gone Girl, but simply another slant on a missing person. She is sixteen years old and the daughter of a notorious London crime boss. Sounds exciting? No, not yet, but it’s my job to make it so. How do I do that? If there’s a recipe book out there about writing the perfect plot, let me know please. Meanwhile I’ll struggle to come up with something to stretch between the beginning and the end.

My venture into Facebook advertising doesn’t look too promising at the moment. One of my ads achieved an audience relevance of eight, which is good, and the other ad was wilting fast. I tried a tweak and immediately lost the plot. So much for carefully following the good advice I found in Michael Cooper’s book. I will persevere and make every effort not to give Facebook too much of my money.

This time next week I will have spent four hours at the Crawley Library book fest trying to persuade people to by my paperback books and maybe even venture into my electronic pile and download some ebooks. But at least I will be meeting people who are there because they are book readers, and are interested in talking to some real live authors. After that I will be meeting my son for a spot of lunch, and that’s a bonus. Hopefully I’ll be able to brag about how many books I sold. Wish me luck!

Writing in a straitjacket

I finished setting up my Facebook advert using Michael Cooper’s advice. Some of you may wonder why I haven’t stuck with Mark Dawson. I wonder that myself sometimes, because so many authors on his forum seem to do so well with his course. I did double my subscribers list last year using Mark’s instructions, so, yes, it works.

However, with Michael Cooper’s approach, it opens up FB advertising in a different and unexpected way. For example, he insists you must never, never use your book jacket to advertise the book. I squirmed over this but he was insistent. And you can’t really argue with a guy who sells thousands of books a week and does this by some pretty forensic work on his adverts. To give you an idea of what I mean, you can see from the image what my ad will look like. Doesn’t make sense, right? But I have to go along with it for a while. If you can’t see the image, click this link: bit.ly/2yzwyqa. I have created two adverts: one for women over 35 in UK, and one for men. I’ll run both adverts for about three days and keep an eye on the metrics. If it fails, I’ll switch to USA, but I won’t hang on too long for results.

I began work on a new, Marcus Blake thriller during the week. I spent some time fleshing out a back story which will be revealed piece by piece as the plot develops. One of the problems I found was that by sketching out a short synopsis of characters, events and reasons why, I found I was literally developing a story on its own. I did think for a moment that I ought to go down that route, but then I remembered that this is supposed to be a Marcus Blake thriller, and that’s what sells — one character in a series of books. So I’ll stick to this literary straightjacket I’m in and hope for the best. I’m still a million miles away from coming up with a plot that’s convincing and “different”. Oh, and this is supposed to be a psychological thriller: something new for me.

My book sales have just about flat-lined, but once I begin the Facebook project, I’m hoping to see a definite change. I’ve hooked up with another author for a promotion, but these generally produce very little. It’s simply a case of trying and hoping. I received an e-mail from an author who ran a competition which included two ebooks from me. I was given the email addresses of the two ‘lucky’ winners, and duly sent them the link for their prize. Two days later and nothing has been downloaded from Instafreebie, and I have had no acknowledgement from them either.

I’m loathe to give away books now. Over the years I have given away about 50,000 books, which may have improved my readership, but it’s something you can’t quantify. I’m fast coming to the conclusion that it’s a waste of time and leads to very little in the way of author/reader connection. So, no more freebies unless I’m persuaded that something might come of it. Am I living in hopes? Maybe, but whatever I do, wish me luck!