Michael's Blog (195)

November 12^th. 2016

Mixing with a bunch of writers always helps to raise your spirits when talking about upcoming promotions etc. Our CHINDI party (www.chindi-authors.co.uk) takes place on Friday in Chichester. Last year’s was a success, and we hope for a repeat of the same. Table top sales aren’t always going to achieve high sales, but this event will include raffle prizes — all donated by local companies —  nibbles,…

November 5th. 2016

Tonight is bonfire night! Well, in UK anyway. Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. 400 plus years later and our government is still under threat, but this time by those opposed to Brexit. There have been numerous re-writes since Guy Fawkes: different bodies of opinion trying to bring down the rulers (good or bad). It wouldn’t make a good novel though because there never seems to be an end to it all.

I reached a milestone this…

October 29^th. 2016

I have now more or less broken the back of my first draft. I still have about 10,000 words to go before reaching my initial target of 80,000. When I have finished the re-write, I expect to raise this figure by about ten percent. If I was still under contract to my last publisher, now defunct, I would have been asked to trim the word count by a considerable margin. As an Indie writer, I can do as I please, although I have to remember that more…

October 22^nd. 2016

Looking at my diary for the previous seven days, it’s blank. Anyone would think I don’t do anything. I’ve managed to add about two thousand words to my WIP, but have had to interrupt the flow because of hospital appointments, a flu jab, and a trip to Specsavers. We also made a pointless journey to a garden centre to buy something they didn’t stock. We didn’t know that until we arrived. So, stayed there, had lunch and drove home. Sometimes the…

October 15^th. 2016

Last Monday, one of our CHINDI authors spent an afternoon in Chichester doing video interviews for each of our members. These were short, five minute interviews which will go on our You tube channel, and subsequently on to our own websites and that of CHINDI. It was simply a video of us reading an extract from our latest book and a description of what the book is about. Five minutes? Gosh, we writers need a load more time than that because we…

October 8^th. 2016.

It’s our son, John’s birthday today. Takes me back to when he was born in a small, cottage hospital in Ely, Cambridgeshire. I had to look after his two brothers, both toddlers. Perhaps I should write a book about the fun we had!

A couple of months ago, a local chap contacted me through my website asking for advice about getting a book into print. We met up for a chat in the local pub where I was able to give him the advice he…

October 1^st.

Christmas is coming and will soon be dominating our thoughts about what presents to buy friends and family. You could do no worse than thinking of buying those you love, or like enough, to make an author’s day and give books as presents. When me and my two brothers were youngsters, we almost always received books in our Christmas stocking. One aunt always made sure of that, and it was because of this that I developed a liking for the children’s…

17^th September 2016

I would like to say that I put in a good shift this week and added a few more thousand words to my WIP, but that isn’t the case and I have no excuses. Well, perhaps I do, but I’m probably kidding myself. The character I mentioned in last week’s blog who insists on dragging me away in a different direction is at it again. Perhaps I should listen to her and follow, but then I would lose the main thread of the story, which would cause me problems…

10^th. Sept. 2016

Life is full of surprises, little ones I must admit, but they help to put a spring in your step and manage to counter those little disappointments that happen from time to time. I began advertising my three book trilogy on Facebook, but found the click rate quite high. I am forcing myself to wait about a week before addressing the problem, but I have managed to sell about twenty copies so far. Not ground-breaking, I know, but it’s a start. But that…

September 3^rd. 2016.

I made a start on my September advertising campaign on Facebook, and hope to see some return on my investment as we make our way through the month. I intend setting up another advert, and will switch from one to the other, just to see which one is delivering the best. I have already sold at least one of my three book box sets since the initial launch. It puts a smile on my face so long as I don’t compare myself to some of my web colleagues on…

August 27^th 2016

I had an interesting week, what with a trip to the dentist to begin with and finishing by ordering a new car. In between I was at Arundel in West Sussex doing my shift on the CHINDI book stall supporting Cancer research in the UK as part of the Arundel festival. I also managed to publish my three book box set on Amazon, but have so far failed to get it right for Draft2Digital, but more of that later. Oh, and I did manage to write a…

August 20^th. 2016

No, Tuppence didn’t win best puppy, but it didn’t appear to bother her. Why can’t people be more like dogs?

While I was struggling through my manuscript, I thought it might be a good idea to put it on hold and knock out a box set for three of my least performing novels. After all, it would only take an afternoon to set the thing up and get it on KDP, so I thought. For a box set of books, they need to be one document, each book…

August 13^th. 2016

I didn’t write last week’s blog because we had company over the weekend. Two friends of ours from Spain are on an extended holiday in UK and spent four days with us. Sometimes it’s right to stand back from your routines and see life from a different angle, and the four days with our friends was like a mini break for us. On the other hand, I didn’t get any writing done and missed writing this blog.…

July 31^st. 2016

Yesterday, five members of our CHINDI group and myself set up a bookstall at the Rox Music festival in Bognor Regis. It might sound odd, being as it was a music festival, but it worked. The six of us were there all day, and met some interesting people who stopped by the stall to chat. And we sold some books! It’s amazing what kind of questions we are asked. “Are you all authors?” was a common one. One visitor wanted to play a kind of one upmanship.…

July 23^rd. 2016

The sun is shining here in Bognor and I have a lousy viral infection. Can’t write, don’t want to write, and know that as an author I should ignore the pain and get on with it. But it shouldn’t be too long before I’m back in the game once the antibiotics kick in. You get days like that, don’t you? But what has been happening on the upside is that I have passed the 1000 subscribers mark! Time for a celebration. The next target must be 2000, but that’s…

July 16^th. 2016

It has been a quiet week for me, with nothing to show in my diary except for one event that had nothing to do with writing. On Monday, my wife received a phone call at two o’clock from the local hospital in Chichester. Would she be available for her cataract operation that afternoon? Yes, I says (demonstrative!). So we’re there at three o’clock and home by six — cataract done. No time to worry, no long wait for the op. Now she can see through that…

July 10^th. 2016.

Marketing, promoting, meeting and lecturing: something of a book week really. I didn’t do any lecturing, except to our puppy. Monday was our CHINDI meeting. There’s always a lot said and done at these meetings, but last Monday was entertaining, watching two of our group trying to “live video chat” between their laptops. It worked after a fashion, but their skills, and ours, need polishing. It’s all to do with live chats with readers on our website…

July 2nd. 2016

Halfway through the year already and I’m only a third of the way through my latest novel. I had great plans, probably like many writers, and when I see Facebook posts from other writers who are churning out three or four books a year, I wonder where they get the time or stamina from. I am just nudging 30,000 words, which makes the ending seem an awful long way off. I’ve found my story splitting into two parts, but not part one followed by part two. Both halves…

June 25^th.

It’s been a momentous week, but not from a writing point of view. This week the British voted to leave the European Union. I voted for it so am pleased with the result. A lot of people are upset and some are quite bitter. Now the mud-slinging starts and some of the losers are making spiteful utterances. They claim we have divided Britain, but as they continue their vituperative tongue slashing, they forget they are acting like a spoilt child who wants…

June 18^th. 2016

A lady came round to my house the other day and asked if she could buy a couple of my books. I was out but my wife was here, so the lady went away. I got back home about ten minutes later. It made me wonder if that was a kind of metaphor for my book writing life: not being in the right place at the right time. But she came back, so that’s alright then. She bought a couple of thrillers for her husband who needs dialysis three times a week. Makes you…