The Ups and Downs of My Book World

Life is full of little surprises, and none of us are immune to them. My last post included a piece about a young, lady writer I joining Acclaimed Books and hoping to publish a collection of quotes that made people happy. I had passed on a recollection of something that had made me happy and included in that was a reference to my church here in Torrevieja. I subsequently learned that any reference to God, church or religion of any sort was not welcome, and would be edited out of any quotes she received. As a result of this I withdrew my submission. The young lady is free to publish what she wants within the bounds of decency and law of course, and I now doubt if I would have recommended her to AB.c had I known earlier of her stance on a subject that is close to mine and many people’s hearts. I did say to her when she approached me about Acclaimed Books that I would be quite happy to help her if she needed it, but it would be hypocritical of me now to help her produce a book in which those beliefs I hold are rejected. So that makes my position an unhappy one. I have always been disposed to offer advice to ‘wannabe’ authors, and have had the pleasure of pointing people in the right direction many times. Now sadly I have to face the other way, and that is one of those little surprises I never expected.

My three day promotion of SHADOW OF THE WOLF finished on the 20^th. of this month, and my download results were poor although not unexpected. I ended up giving away 700 copies. Now I have to wait and see if there is a sales bump as a result of the rankings I attained during the promotion. I reached #3 in War fiction and #75 in the top 100 thrillers. The day after my promotion my rankings had plummeted to over 367,000. This doesn’t auger well for future sales, so I just have to hope that those people who downloaded my book for free will like what they read and buy some of my other titles. Lots in fact!

I am currently working on THE EAGLE’S COVENANT and have converted it to kindle format. I’m busy proof-reading it and hope to have that finished by the end of the month. The paperback version will be published in November by Harlequin Books. Hopefully by then there will be some decent reviews on Amazon for Harlequin to include in their promotion. Wish me luck!