Winners and losers: the lotteries of life.

January 23^rd 2016

I finally uploaded my Facebook ad. It went live on January 19^th. Since then, 4 days ago, my subscribers’ list has grown by about twelve to fifteen a day. This is a handsome increase from my usual one a day. The ad will run until early February, or until the budget limit has been reached. Looking at the advert page I have now had 87 clicks and a reach of 2176 people. I don’t know yet how to evaluate that, but my click rate is costing me £0.22p a click. From what I understand from the instruction videos, that’s not too bad. Time will tell though, particularly when I look at my sales figures in about two months’ time.

My pre-order posts for A Dangerous Game, should have reached all my subscribers and others through my Facebook posts. I can’t measure that, but I will be able to figure it out from my KDP account shortly after the launch. I’ll send out another reminder in a few days. You can still pre-order at http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01AKCLP60

This morning I attended a CHINDI event: ‘Writers Across Sussex’ awards. This was a short story competition for all ages, broken into three groups. The event was sponsored by the Chichester Observer, and a panel of five judges, all important people in the world of publishing, judged the entries. The head of the panel was Kate Mosse, a well-known broadcaster and widely published writer. Kate founded the Orange Book awards, now known as the Bailey’s women’s prize for fiction. The prize winners can now call themselves published authors because their entries have been published together in book form. It will be available shortly on Amazon. Meanwhile, all entries can be read on the Chichester Observer on-line.

My week on the domestic front has been pretty full. Pat and I celebrated our 56^th wedding anniversary last Tuesday (19^th). We had already celebrated with a meal the previous Saturday, which I mentioned in my last blog. Wednesday we travelled to Taunton to visit a friend of ours who has terminal cancer. I know we don’t call the shots in our lives, but you can imagine my feelings when I know I am still on my cancer treatment and feeling full of the joys of life, while our friend doesn’t have that luxury. Thursday was a visit from the plumber to install a new, larger radiator in our en-suite. Madam is happy now. And of course, today was the book event at Woodies in Chichester.

I am pondering what to write for my next book. I am a million miles away from writing the first sentence, and have no idea of plot lines etc., or even a plot. But when I think of the nine books I have had published, I probably didn’t have much of a clue about them either. But I got there in the end. Wish me luck!