Saturday 25 March 2017

Could this be summer?

A glorious day - 21 degrees in  the garden, which faces full south. Tim and I have been out for a lovely walk on the north side of the river up the hill behind Ovingham. It is uphill, but steady and follows the edges of the fields which this season are sprouting sprouts (I *think* they will be sprouts.) It is in full sun, too and it is fairly dry except for the odd muddy patch where water drains off the fields. Birds are singing, the trees are showing a hint of green and we had it all to ourselves. Passed one couple walking their two dogs on the way back down to the field gate and no one else in sight. Unless people have a dog, they don't seem to venture out much these days. 

It was like this yesterday, too. Long may it continue, but I expect it won't, and if it did we'd be in drought condition by July. Nothing is perfect and we are lucky to live in this temperate climate where we don't live in fear of bush fires, dust bowls, avalanches, floods and tsunamies, not to mention volcanic eruptions and days and days of snow blizzards. We get changeable weather, sure, but it is (usually) incovenient rather than deadly.

Now, back to editing. Didn't do any at all yesterday, and feel guilty. 


Thursday 23 March 2017

Grey days

This perfectly illustrates the weather today. After heavy rain all evening - and all night, for all I know - I did not take Tim for his walk on the fields this morning. They were back to a muddy quagmire yesterday, and today I'd be likely to land on my backside in six inches of mud and water. We made do with a walk on pavements, which is good for wearing down his claws. He enjoys the doggy smells  on every fence post, tree, etc.

The trees are starting to flush with all the shades of green and brown that indicate new leaf growth, and down in the valley by the river hawthorn blossom looms out of the gloom like a white ghost. Birds are chasing each other round the garden but I don't think we have any frogspawn yet. All we want is some decent weather.

Editing is continuing. As yet I don't have an idea for a new Affair title, but one will come if I let it percolate around while I'm editing. Not certain I will  bother doing a paperback version. Sales are low, presumably because of the high price (plus postage) on Createspace copies. Lovely as it is to hold one's book in one's hands, I think I'll stick to Kindle versions.






Wednesday 15 March 2017

Fresh air and editing

Editing, I am tired of thee! 
I like it in small doses, but when I opened Banners of Alba I saw with horror that it was 147,000 words in total. (Remember I wrote this about 15 years ago and published it 10 years ago.) I'm a third of the way through and down to 144,000, but as fast as I take some out, I add some in. Let's hope I can cut more from the next  chunks. I've done two good stints today and now deserve the glass of white wine that is waiting for me downstairs. I like to break the sessions up because my editing eyes fails if I do too long in one go. I end up reading instead of editing.

Spring is hovering around with daffodils in flower and catkins dancing on the wind. The frogs are back in the pond, all four of them this time and Tim is fascinated. I don't know if he's seen them yet, but he hears them and the splash as they disappear from his view. Today neighbours have been cutting their lawns, and the fields are greening up nicely. Now if only the 45 mph winds would die down, we could have a lovely time out in the fresh air.


Wednesday 8 March 2017

Lowering book prices

My experiment with lowering prices of my self-published books was interesting and in general, successful. There was an instant response and while I cannot claim to be racing up the sales charts, my figures have gone up quite nicely. Lowering the price has also had an effect on KENP pages for all of my titles.

On the other hand, I did not simply change the prices and sit back to observe what happened; I did a few tweets announcing the lower prices, and made a determined effort to tweet one or the other of my titles two or three times a day. But that’s hardly what might be called high profile marketing or promotion.

It was around this time that I stopped sending out full cover pics, but made some small banners that sit comfortably on Twitter and Facebook without hogging the whole screen. I like making them, and like how they look on screen.

I suppose it was lucky that around this time I brought out a new book, The Matfen Affair and probably that spurred some interest.


I researched some tweet hashtags to widen my promotion activity, and checked my blog pages and Amazon Author Central to keep my titles and biography up to date. Now I need to check and see if yahoo groups are still working as they used to. My impression is that they are not, but I’m wondering what has taken over instead of them? Maybe it is time I was on Instagram, but would I have time for writing?

Wednesday 1 March 2017

Banners and book promo

My watch tells me it is 29th February, but I know it is the 1st March. I shall struggle for ages to alter my watch. It is one of the things I happily hand over to dh, who manages it with no trouble whatsoever, but for me, it is like those child-proof pill bottles and  every other kitchen and bathroom appliance that employs such caps and tops. No child is going to get into them, and neither are many women and men who don't have the requisite finger strength. Old people don't have a hope. Do the manufacturers and designers ever think of this?

It is a bright frosty morning outside, with a sunshine and a blue sky, so the moment my post-shower hair is dry enough, I shall head for the great outdoors. Then I shall be concentrating on editing Banners of Alba when I return. I was surprised to see it was published ten years ago at 147,000 words, so now I'm aiming to bring it down by forty or fifty thousand. Quite a task, and much editing as I go. Reassuring in a way, in that I can so quickly see where I need to make alterations, which  proves I must have learned something in the last decade.

I'm finding it good fun to make up these little banners to use in promo on Twitter and Facebook.
I'm sure people get bored with seeing the same cover photos at full size which are pushed out everyday - and yes, that's what I used to do - but now I find these little chaps and chappesses much more user friendly.

But first of all I need to try and make some alteration to my Microsoft Outlook account in order to stop it periodically deleting all my e-mails.

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