Progress with Tales and Tails

May 14^th. 2016

I’m still managing to keep my head above water in the book sales stakes, but only just. My averages fell away sharply over the latter part of April, but have picked up now, although my Amazon ranking is dropping slowly. I signed up for a promotion with BooksGoSocial (mentioned last week), and so far they are tweeting every day to eight different places. Part of the contract, I know, and it is something I would expect. The owner of BGS, Laurence O’Bryan, gets involved personally and put a video on the BGS Facebook page for members. I’ll have a better idea of my sales figures by the end of the month. So far I’m reasonably happy with the way things are going.

My WIP has increased and I have now penned about 14,000 plus words. I keep changing the storyline in my head, but once I put the change down on paper, I see another way of moving the story forward. I know where I want to go, but my characters keep changing the plot, damn them. Good fun and in some ways, quite exciting. Hopefully this will affect the readers by some kind of literary osmosis. That means they won’t have a clue where I’m going with the story but are quite happy to hang on for the ride. That’s what I’m doing at the moment.

Had a good meeting last week with the CHINDI group (www.chindi-authors.co.uk). There are a few events on the horizon to look forward to, which hopefully will lead to more public awareness of the group and the writers individually. I am still waiting for some publicity with the local, Chichester Observer about the book I released in January this year — A Dangerous Game. My contact journalist there has assured me that I will make it into the paper; it’s simply a case of when, not if.

I have been approached by Alexandra Amor, a writer in Vancouver to take part in a live interview, on Skype, for a podcast. Naturally I have agreed. It’s now a case of arranging a time and date. Provisionally the interview will be early June. It should go live on her blog shortly after that. What pleases me about this kind of contact, which came through my website, is that someone on the other side of the world is interested enough in me and my writing to want to do this.

On the domestic front, we are enjoying our puppy, Tuppence. Took her to a “Puppy Party” last Wednesday. She was a bit boisterous for the two, small Jack Russells in the group, so was put in with the big boys. Unfortunately the two Labrador puppies were too much for her, so she had to go back in with the small dogs again. I thought the vet might have thrown her out! Oh the shame. Next week she has her last jab, then another evening at the party. After that, well, walkies and an introduction to the grown up world. Wish me luck!