After my successful promotion with BookBub and a comparatively successful promotion with Robin Reads, my average sales have now succumbed to their pre-promotion levels. At this point I had planned to use Facebook to get the balls back up in the air, so to speak. But instead of FB, I have gone with BooksgoSocial. This is a Dublin based group who have an impressive CV, but more importantly they have more of a personal contact with their authors. Plus they offer a 60 day, money back guarantee if sales don’t pick up. I won’t try to explain the details here, but suffice it to say that I had a few helpful exchanges of e-mails with Laurence O’Bryan, the head of the group, who put me on the right track with my advert. They will keep an eye on my sales and will let me know how I’m doing. Obviously it’s in their interests to achieve some kind of success for me. It won’t be big, but hopefully it will be effective.

On the WIP, I managed to get up to 11500 words by the end of the week. I had hoped to do more, but my elder brother came for a couple of days, which meant a change of routine. It wasn’t a problem. It might have been had I been writing for a living; he probably wouldn’t have come. I’m making progress with the story, and never fail to be surprised at the number of times I see a change in the plot because of a situation into which I have written a character. Whether this makes for good, reliable plotting or not, I don’t know, but having penned ten, published novels to date, I can’t be doing too badly with that aspect of it. I see different things as I write; different situations. Then I end up in bed thinking about the way in which I can take the new development. I sometimes wake up having forgotten the new direction I thought I could go.

I am a member of a few author forums on FB, and often see moans and groans about writing, sales, reviews, Amazon, on-line stores etc., but in the main they are all understandable complaints. But a few days ago, one of the authors posted a snarling complaint against the people she had relied on to help her sales at the launch of her latest book. She had put in a massive amount or work, day and night, even to the extent of claiming her and her husband had given up quality time with the children because of it. She was due to launch three more titles in a couple of months’ time and expected the manuscripts she had with traditional publishers to find a home. I felt sorry for her because she expected everything to fall into place because of the effort she had put in. What she forgets is that no-one has a right to be successful, even if they do work hard. In the writing game, as in many walks of life, hard work doesn’t guarantee success. It reminds me of a Michael Winner quote: “Luck is when opportunity and preparation come together”. So maybe that lady will have the luck eventually because she has put the work in. I hope so for her sake (and her peace of mind!).

On the puppy front, our little girl is developing as all puppies do, and making us wonder why we wanted a dog. She’s a lovely, boisterous, amusing and annoying little girl, but we love her. Last Wednesday we took her to ‘Puppy Play’ at the vet’s which she enjoyed enormously. Same again this week. We are looking forward to the day after her second jab when we will be able to take her out for a walk. That means more exercise for me and Mrs. P. Musn’t grumble though because at my age I need all the exercise I can manage. Making gardens puppy proof isn’t the kind of exercise I like; it hurts too much. Wish me luck!