When 14000 isn't such a big number

I’m making good progress with my current mss. Last week I had reached 34000 words. By the weekend I had managed to notch that up to 47000. This puts me about halfway through my planned number of words. If I can keep that kind of progress up, I can expect to complete my first draft by the end of September. However, I think my last week’s output was exceptional, and would only expect to complete about 3 to 4 thousand words a week. We’ll see.

And on the subject of big numbers, or small, depending on which way you want to look at it; I promoted HELL’S GATE on BookBlast yesterday (Sunday), and began a two week run for the title on Indie Authors 99c promotion. My Amazon sales rank for the book rocketed from 504,000 on Saturday to 14,000 today. The graph was almost vertical. I couldn’t believe it. And my overall author rank for ALL books shot up from 73,000 to just over 26,000. Naturally I don’t expect it to last, but its great breathing in some heady atmosphere. This isn’t the first time I’ve promoted this title, but the difference this time is the category into which I placed it. I’ve always referred to it as Historical, where really it should be described as African Colonial History. However, this time I put it in the Action & Adventure category, and that seems to have done the trick.

On the house selling front, we had someone look last week, but got no follow-up, and this morning we had a Dutch client look over the place. He liked it but had others to view. We actually saw him at three other properties on our urbanisation with the Estate Agent, so it’s just a case of being in the mix and keeping our fingers crossed.

Oh, another decision I’ve reached is to put HELL’S GATE on Smashwords. I will not be doing that for a while yet because it is still part of the Kindle Select programme until October 22^nd. It’s subjective for me because I can’t expect any significant improvement in sales simply by adding to the other eReader outlets. It won’t do my sales figures any harm though.

Yesterday (Sunday) was a significant day also. I was over at Pilar Christian Fellowship preaching the word. The reason I say it was significant is that I have often been asked to go over to this small fellowship to bring the word, but in October they will be employing a full-time pastor. This means that my services may not be needed again. So yesterday was a kind of farewell day for me and Pat. You can never say never though, and if the good Lord deems it necessary, I will continue in His work for as long as He wants. Maybe we’ll sell the house and I can carry on God’s work in England? Wish me luck!