Reaching Out

April 30^th.

Where have the days gone? It seems like Christmas was only five minutes ago. I’ve had enough time since then to be halfway through my next novel, but so far I’ve done precious little. I’m feeling fairly calm about that, and expect to explode into life later this year.

Now things are returning to normal after our fairly busy schedule, I can hopefully think about the promotions I’m involved in this month and keep my fingers crossed for some light at the end of the tunnel. One author I will be promoting is a member of our Chindi group (www.chindi-authors.co.uk), Helen Christmas. Readers of crime thrillers from authors like Martina Cole and Lynda la Plante, would probably enjoy Helen’s thrillers set in London. Her three novels have attracted excellent reviews, averaging just below five stars on Amazon. She has a fourth in the series coming out and will be doing a promotion on that in May. Check out Helen’s Facebook page here:www.facebook.com/author.helenchristmas. I will be sending details of Helen’s new promotion to my subscribers in early May.

I managed to crack the Co-op bank and finally become a fully-fledged member as a director of the Chindi group. I also managed to get the £65 back from Gatwick Parking that I paid to get through the barrier. They apologised, said it was down to an error on their website.

I filled out my tax return last week. Unfortunately I don’t earn enough from my book sales to employ an accountant, but at least I can say I am earning something. Compared to last year, I didn’t do so well, but that was because of a terrific result with a BookBub ad. This year my ad failed to cover the cost, although I did manage to sell about 2000 books.

I have been giving some serious thought to giving away free books. I touched on that last week, but I am still wondering why I pay £16 a month to Instafreebie so that one of my books can be given away through their website. Once I’ve got through the May promotions, I’ll probably close my account with them, unless someone can come up with a cast iron argument why it’s good to be with Instafreebie, or other sites like them.

I’ve been reading one of my books, Past Imperfect. I took a copy along to the hospital to leave it there as part of our Chindi giveaway promotion, and started reading it while I was waiting to see the nurse. I enjoyed it that much I decided to read through to the end. Unfortunately I don’t have the ebook rights to the book, which is annoying. I’ve got to wait another eighteen months before I can get them, otherwise I would be promoting it now. It’s a Romance with hard edged back story: a touch of family saga and prison life; murder; betrayal and some real tear-jerking moments as love wins through. You can find the ebook on Amazon, reasonably priced too. The ASIN is B00TDTOY3I. Why not have a look? There are no reviews either, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it’s brilliant!

I’m looking forward to the weeks ahead with Chindi. We have our new website launch to look forward to with the £300 of books to give away. We are heavily involved in the Chichester Arts Festival, and will be too with the Arundel summer festival. We have author friends of the Bognor Writers and Arun Scribes getting involved as well. Our numbers are growing and I believe this can only help us to improve our overall outreach to the area and beyond.

Now, if only I could find the inspiration to write! Wish me luck.