Michael's Blog (195)

I’m off for a scan tomorrow, Monday. Before last week I’d never heard of a PET scan (thought I’d misheard the word), but since then I’ve seen it mentioned several times and have even spoke to people who have had one. I will get the results in two weeks’ time when I see my specialist. On the book front I’ve just had a three day promotion for ROSELLI’S GOLD. I won’t know how successful it has been, but I expect to make at least one sale out of it; maybe more. I have a promotion scheduled for a…

Well, I wandered up another cul-de-sac by attempting to use Scrivener. There’s nothing wrong with the programme, and I can see how it could be a very useful tool for many writers, but for this writer it proved to be a little too cumbersome. Trying to learn the simple use of just a couple of its features meant that I would spend more time clicking through tabs, files and links in order to get to elements of my manuscript that I would otherwise have to hand and therefore easier to access. So…

It seems to have been a week of long walks for some. Metaphorically the England football team began their long walk back home from Brazil to the UK, while me and Pat have been stretching our legs walking around Alicante and Torrevieja. The other kind of long walking I’ve been doing is with my fingers over the keyboard as I battle with a trial on Scrivener, but more about that later. Last Monday we went into Alicante and wandered around the shops. It hadn’t been part of our plan, but we went…

Most writers, I would imagine, have a set routine for their writing process. Any haphazard approach would almost certainly result in a disjointed piece of prose and cause the writer many problems during the re-write. I find myself in that position, and have done for several months now. I could blame the house move, the chemo therapy and even put it down to an enforced change of lifestyle now that we are living in rented accommodation. But that would be a hatful of lame excuses for not doing…

During the week I received the first edited draft of my latest novel from my publisher (Robert Hale Ltd.). It was a case of reading through the comments and observations and replying without actually making any changes to the draft. Two things struck me about it: spelling and PC. I have a decent vocabulary of words I can spell and have rarely struggled with that part of the English language. But I was constantly corrected for spelling words like ‘realise’ and ‘organise’ with the ‘s’…

Suddenly it’s June and we’re approaching the half-way point of 2014. I know what I’ve done with my half so far: spent most of it battling cancer and letting Pat do all the packing for our planned house move. Now we’re settled in our rented accommodation, we are itching to go back to UK permanently, but have to wait until later this year. It gives me an opportunity though to push on with my novel, the prologue of which you have all seen now. I hope I can have it finished before our move back…

We’ve just arrived back from a very enjoyable trip to UK, happy now that we have chosen an area we want to go back to when we finally return to the UK later this year. It will be Pagham: about six miles south of Chichester in West Sussex. It’s an area we are familiar with, and close to family. Not too close though. We can’t do anything until my specialist at the hospital gives me the good news about my treatment, but now at least we can talk more positively about where we’ll be living and…

We’re heading to UK on Friday, so will not be spending much time on the PC or my blog, if any. I certainly won’t be writing, and sometimes I wonder how I’ll manage to get back into it when we return. Whenever I’ve been asked advice about writing, I’ve always recalled that Churchillian statement: ’Never Give Up’. And that old, J.B.Priestley nutmeg about applying the seat of one’s pants to the seat of one’s chair. It will be time to follow my own advice. We can talk all we like about writers’…

There was joy in the Parker household last week because I have started growing eyebrows and a moustache. For new readers to my blog I must explain that this isn’t because I am searching for a new look, but because my chemo sessions finished seven weeks ago and the hair is beginning to return. It’s like the first shoots of spring. Pat is already looking at a long one she can see, but I’ve told her there will be no trimming until I decide. For the moment I’m enjoying the sight of hair and not…

It’s been a week of head scratching for me as I try to build my new website. It isn’t available to the reading public yet simply because I lack the necessary skills to update the pages with confidence. But I am making progress and owe much to my son, Terry’s ability and patience. The whole point about building a new site when I already have one is that I can’t update my site because I’m not the administrator; my son is. Consequently when I want changes, I have to ask him. We decided last…

Since my last post, almost four weeks ago, I have done very little in respect of writing, promotion & blogging etc., simply because there was so much going on in my life that I couldn’t give my full attention to what is mainly a hobby. My cancer treatment was drawing to a close but still leaving me washed out; we were getting close to the date when we handed over our house at the notary to the new owners, and we moved into our rented accommodation and picked up a second-hand car which we…

I’m now into the last phase of my chemo and looking ahead to the days when it will be just a bad memory. In two weeks’ time my specialist will let me know what progress has been made. Progress in many things is often difficult to find, and none more so than persuading book readers to buy my books. I am currently promoting ROSELLI’S GOLD with Kindle Direct Publishing, and have noticed a marginal increase in the daily sales. Curiously though, the sales of NORTH SLOPE and SHADOW OF THE WOLF…

Those of you who read my blog entries regularly might wonder why it’s almost a couple of weeks since my last entry. Just looking at the last couple of sentences of my last entry, I wasn’t aware then of what was about to happen, but my immune system collapsed and my temperature went sky high. Consequently I was hospitalised for six days during which time they pumped all sorts of stuff into me to get me back to something like full fitness. I came home two days ago and now I feel fine. While I…

I missed last week for some reason. Maybe it was because I was due my chemo and had other things on my mind. I have made progress on the book front, and now have a paperback copy of my non-fiction title, A WORD IN YOUR EAR, in my hand. My son brought it over from UK. I have also ordered a copy from Amazon.com simply because I was intrigued by the fact that postage from USA is cheaper than from UK to Spain. How do they work that out? I will be ordering several copies to give away, but will…

So, what’s been happening during the last week for me? Low book sales; struggle with Amazon; dash to see the specialist and grappling with my current novel. I believe there is a traditional slump in on-line book sales after the Christmas period because so many people have received iPads, Kindles etc. from their loved ones, and have downloaded more than their average weekly dose of books. Some, perhaps the majority would have gone for best-sellers, while others may have taken advantage of the…

My latest website is almost complete. My son took it upon himself to get me out of a jam and has built a new site for me. It isn’t finished yet; still a ‘work in progress’. Thankfully he will be over here in Spain in a few weeks, so we can do some work on it together. What I really mean is that he will show me what to do. I’ve been on the site and thought how good it looks. If I do manage to get to grips with it; I should be able to change it as I go along, developing my creative skills as a…

It has been quite a week one way or another. I successfully uploaded a non-fiction book to Amazon Kindle (more later), secured a property to rent for our forthcoming “homeless” period in Spain and endured another chemo session. Oh, and failed spectacularly to upload a decent cover of my non-fiction work to CreateSpace. The process of uploading a word document to Amazon is fairly straightforward using their free guide. The conversion was effortless, and apart from a glitch in the final…

The week has flown by as usual and no progress on my planned novel for this year, but only because of the project I have been working on lately. I thought I might launch a new website to coincide with this and was intrigued by the Wix.com adverts on national TV. I shouldn’t have bothered because it never works out the way you think. The website domain name would have included my user name which Wix decided would be mpmick0, goodness knows why. This preceded Wix.com, and my name was attached…

Apart from a promotion on Jill Edmonson’s website for THE DEVIL’S TRINITY, I have done very little towards my next novel, although I have pushed on with another project which I will finish first. I keep an eye on my book sales through NovelRank and hope to see some improvement in that title’s results. I must say though, that Jill Edmonson is pretty good when it comes to doing what she says by tweeting often about promotions submitted by authors. It costs nothing. I always retweet whenever I…

It has been something of a technical challenge for me this past few days, because modern technology strides ever further away from my aging abilities. I was reading a blog about improving your connection to the wider audience as a writer, and one of the suggestions was that I should have an e-mail subscriber list. Having just been asked by a contact on LinkedIn if I had such a list, I thought it would be a good idea to start one. Mail Chimp seemed to be the best one for me, so I joined the…