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!