It’s windy over here

Jen’s home. Phew. She came back from the QEH with a hole in her stomach, a drain and a bag to collect the stuff that’s still seeping from her pancreas – of which she now only owns 70%. And no spleen. Other than two years of penicillin and other yearly jabs, the outcome should be a Jen without a dangerous cyst. And, hope beyond hope, its removal might see some progress with the issues of chronic fatigue and mental health. We’ll see. Anyhow, she’s at home and C will pop up most days until she’s completely recovered. We are all off to Birmingham on Thursday to, hopefully, have the drain tugged out. I’m loving that bit of the M5.

Whilst that storm passes and Ciara currently rattles our windows, things are still moving on with our world. Doris passed her MoT with flying colours on Friday. Sampson

the fabulous Sampson Commercials

Commercials in Avonmouth were just fab. Whilst the yard looked like it was a back-of-beyond garage, there were more staff than vehicles, everyone was super polite and I have the confidence to take her back to them if and when issues arrive. And, at £45 for an MoT, it’s cheaper than the council place for an oversized vehicle.

I’m heads down on the first major edit of book 6. Currently a quarter of the way through, it’s taking longer than usual mostly because I’m taking longer than usual, So far, though, so good. I am not going to use my ‘friendly’ beta readers this time … that’s not because they weren’t great (and one or two of them will be reading this for the first time; I hope they understand), but I do want to try my hand at beta readers from afar. For those of you who don’t know how this works, they act like surrogate editors – but they do not proofread. That’s the final job which comes before the final edit. I’ve started to engage with potential readers via Twitter … so far, no response. But I don’t think I’ve been asking the right question. I’m confident I’ll get a few.

editing – any position will do …

In that vein, books sales have picked up. I put our over 300 free copies of Unsuspecting Hero last weekend – without marketing, and the follow-on from that is currently positive. My (current) ambition is to use the free book vehicle as my only marketing approach, but beef it up via some decent websites. My plan is to ‘go free’ for five days at the beginning of every month with a single title. I can’t do that with Fuelling the Fire as I don’t own the e-rites, but I can with the other four. We’ll see how it goes.

In the meantime Sorrel (narrator) has set up our recording booth in her house (although it is missing a bit, which we’re waiting for from the company). The aim is still to have an Audible book out there by the end of March … which I think, now, is a tall order. But we’ll give it a go. And, concurrently, I’ll press on with book 6.

It’s not all been book related. I spent a day with the MoD on Thursday and I’m back again on Wednesday. I have a full week and a half at a school at the beginning of March. And then we should be in a position to think about heading off to Spain for a bit. Finger’s crossed.

And … and … I found 15 seconds on my run! Now at 19.55 – on Friday. And I felt good all the way round. Having said that I went out today along with Storm Ciara and I might as well have been running on the spot. But, the 20 minute barrier has been rebroken. Thank goodness for that.

That’s it from me. Hope you are all surviving the storm!

Des

I just popped into Doris to check on something and got that wonderful feeling of ‘awayness’. We are following various pairs of people who are off in their vans/caravans at the mo … and I do envy them. Mrs Sun has been with us, though, even if the wind doth blow cold. Apparently it’s going to rain for ten days from tomorrow, so the respite has been short lived. Ho hum. I haven’t checked today, but I bet it’s warm in southern Spain.

Bristol was looking fab

It’s been an adminy couple of days. We popped out to Cribbs on Monday and yesterday we both took the Focus in for an MoT … and then walked into the city. Which was lovely. Our plan for the car is, as you’ve heard, get her through to the end of next year and then think about buying an equivalent, possibly a five-year-old Astra (which sell at about 15% cheaper than the equivalent Focus. Don’t know why.). Deep down C wants something more classy, but we both know that within a month one of us with scratch it … we are both half decent-drivers, but it always happens.  We’ve had smart cars in the past, but I can’t get my head round spending more than we need. Our Focus cost us £2,200 almost five years ago. And she has not let us down … yesterday’s MoT and oil and filter service was less than £200.

I think I told you our neighbour has a Tesla 3. It is beautiful and does 130 mpg. But it costs him £399 a month for two years, plus an initial deposit. Our budget will be £5k … the amount of money it will cost him to rent the Tesla for just a year. Ours should last five. Don’t misunderstand me. I love cars and, as I’ve said, we’ve had our fair share of beauties. And I applaud anyone who goes out of their way to love them as well. But our Focus is comfortable, reliable and parkable. The Astra will be similar.

Today I took the bike down town and found ‘Des’. He’s an ex-Royal Anglian soldier living on the streets. Our school friend, Elizabeth, who tours the homeless weekly with the church, had told me about him. I have tried three times to find him, and today we managed it.

It’s an interesting story. He’s a couple of years older than me and spent the early part of his life in the Army. Subsequent jobs, a failed marriage and drugs put him on the streets of Bristol. He told me he is now clean, and that seemed to be the case. He was sleeping in the outside lobby of the Hippodrome, with his dog, diesel – a sort of black cockapoo. I bought him a cuppa and we chatted for half an hour. He seemed fit, on the face of it. But, on interrogation, he’s had multiple bouts of chest infections, two heart attacks and a bad back. Surprisingly, therefore, he was charming and good company. I’ve emailed the Regiment and will keep an eye on him. He did say that he didn’t need anything, and Elizabeth – much more an expert than me – told me that was often the case. We’ll see.

And the book? This session has looked like this: 5,000 words on Monday; 1,500 yesterday

still typing away …

and 1,500 today. I am motoring. I will not be able to write tomorrow (a full day at the school in Farnham), Saturday (a full day at a school in Salisbury) and possibly Monday (travelling to Mum’s overnight). But, at 81,000 words I am well ahead of the game.

What is fascinating is that, because I am not ‘on it’ all the time, I have no real sense if it is any good. So today, as I was writing a ‘bring you all back up to speed’ scene, I thought it best … without any plan of doing so … of crying havoc and letting slip the dogs of war. Just to spice thing up a bit.

Why not?

All I have to do now is work out how that fits in with anything …

Let there be light

You’ll be delighted to know that today I’m not going to go on and on about politics. Not that there are many of you left reading this for me to apologise to. Certainly any Brexiteers have long gone … and, indeed, any Trumpsters have left with them. Sorry about that. But, hey, you can’t win them all.

The ‘just as bad news’ is that today I’m going to be a bit techy. Doris-style techy, if you like. So, if that doesn’t interest you then the three of you should look at the photographs and come back on Sunday.

We’re off to Scotland next week for four weeks (hurrah!). And whilst Doris has had all her filters and oil changed, we have a problem with her rear lights. They’re intermittent, with, every so often, the indicators flashing unnecessarily quickly and the rear right light not working at all. For those of you with some experience of cars, you’ll be thinking that there might be an earthing problem … with a wiring loom about the size of a tennis court.

Anyhow, I dismantled the rear light clusters, cleaned the points and replaced the rear light bulb, which didn’t look like it was broken. Ehh … nothing. So I looked for obvious earthing points, and those I did find looked absolutely fine.

Ahh, what about the tow bar which was so expertly fitted by #LNBTowbars a couple of months ago? That seems likely. So I phone them up (they’re just across the road in Aztec West) and they tell me to bring her round. Which I do. They unplug the electrics – which is a much more complicated system than just splicing the towbar onto the rear light cluster as they used to in the old days – but still no joy. Oh well.

Now, you know what the next move is? Take it to either Hymer and/or Fiat and spend a mortgage’s worth of cash on getting them to find a needle in a haystack … because that’s what intermittent electrical problems are. They flummox everyone, even garages with machines that go ping.

But first. Let me check on the internet. Surely someone has had the same problem. Well, of course, they have in a similar way. And, wait, hang on. Why is the front side light not working now? Oh, bother. Maybe the front right light is blown and that’s affecting the rear?

Can I get the front right out? Nope. These sharp-fronted Hymers with tight engine bays. I could reach the bulb’s casing, but, for the life of me, I couldn’t get traction. Bother (or similar) again. Ahh, but maybe there’s a fuse for just the right hand set of side lights, and it’s blown? (Unlikely I know, but I’m clutching at any straws I can get my hands on.)

Where is the fuse for the side lights? According to the Fiat owners book, there’s meant to be a third, ‘special box’ in a Fiat Ducato … but it doesn’t exist in a Hymer. Double-bother. More internet research. I find the other two, but not the third.

And then. Hey presto. A motorhome thread somewhere deep in the ether.

There is no fuse (and no fuse box) for the side lights. The Ducato’s side lights run on a CANBUS and the ECU controls them – which might not be good news, if the ECU is broken it’s a big bill. And, importantly, the CANBUS is very sensitive and if you put a non-standard bulb in the system, it throws a track and won’t work (interestingly the rear light was flashing briefly, before it goes out). So, I take out the Halfords rubbish bulb, replace it with the old – but seemingly unbroken – bulb and, tee-dah, we have lights. I clean up (again) all the lights, put it back together and we have a full suite. Phew.

I’m wondering if any garage would have had the patience to sort this out before they phoned up Fiat and ordered an ECU? We’ll never know.

Now you’re bored witless, just an update on what else we’ve been doing. Well, nothing much really. We popped up and saw Jen. And today, in the rain, I started working on rewriting Unsuspecting Hero and preparing a short management course for a school in Farnham.

and so it begins

And … as a couple who don’t work, or who work when we want to, can we pass on our sympathies to anyone who chose this week as one of their summer holiday weeks to go and head off somewhere in the UK. After some lovely weather, it’s rubbish now. So, sorry.

I might have changed my mind …

We had supper with our pals Peter and Karen on Friday night (thank you!). Inevitably we got round to politics and I made the bold declaration that popularism was a flash in the pan and would soon be dead. How’s that, Roland?

Other than humiliate the US as the former world’s policeman and liberal lead, His Orangeness has actually achieved very little. You might argue that the US’s economy is doing well under his watch, but I’ve read that (and see graphs that show that) this is a bounce that was started by Obama as the global economy picked up pace after the 2008 crash. But, for sake of fairness, let’s give him that; the US economy is doing OK.

Except … unless I only read anti-Trump articles (which is possible), the view is that his tariff war with almost anyone and everyone is now beginning to hack away at the US economy. And with no trade deal in sight with China, soon any good news will turn bad.

Ok, so maybe, maybe not the economy.

Korea? Are you kidding me? Another ‘nice’ letter received from Kim Jong-un yesterday … just as the murderous dictator launched more short-range missiles into the sea. Answering a reporter, Trump pulled down joint South Korean/US exercises, siding with a dictator against his own military. I don’t see this going anywhere – at best. At worse His Twitterness is being played. Really well.

Iran? Climate change? Syria – where, apparently, IS has started to re-emerge? Far right-supremacy? Abortion? Gun control?

Please. Name one major policy, domestic or overseas, where the current US administration has actually taken the world forward a step. Just one. Come on. Help me out.

He has so polarised the US that any future elections will be completely based on ideology rather than policy. It’s fair to say that his base will always support him … as Trump said, ‘I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters’. How true, especially now, almost three years into his tenure.

some flowers to cheer you up …

And, to the same extent, ideology is now very much driving Brexit. It doesn’t matter that the economy is heading for recession. That the benefits of Brexit have turned from sunlit uplands to dystopian wastelands. That people have and will lose jobs. Medicines will run out and people are very likely to die. Businesses have and will close. Our future prosperity is in danger at a time when we were emerging as one of the strongest economies in the world. That we have fallen so far since the opening ceremony of the Olympics in 2012 – from a joyous, inclusive and state-of-the-art country to one of xenophobia, anger and a little bit of fear. None of that matters, because there are a group of people who see this as a battle of wills. It’s no longer about benefits and disbenefits; there are no arguments to win. It’s about entrenched my side and your side. It’s about ideology. And, unless there’s a huge shock, ideological people rarely change their spots.

But … my reading is that suburban US, particularly after the last round of mass-shootings, is beginning to get tired of it all. Tired of the hateful rhetoric. Tired of the misdirected and misplaced tweets. Tired of the lies. Wary of where this leaves the US in the eyes of the world. And with the economy faltering …

… and, over here, I read of so many more people changing from ‘leave’ to ‘remain’. Indeed, other than an exasperated ‘for goodness sake get on with it’, I have yet to see a single commentary where remainers have switched sides to leave, now seeing Brexit as a good thing. Have you?

So, my ‘bold declaration’ at supper the other night was that the tide was turning. Boris Johnson has had no honeymoon period. He’s lost a by-election, the economy has dipped and there have been no huge crowds welcoming him as he toured the country last week. Indeed, has anyone actually seen him recently? Has he made a TV appearance, other than the odd Facebook ad? Not sure.

And doesn’t he look unwell? He’s a man who, by his own admission, likes to be liked. He’s the 4th Form joker … getting by by making people laugh, whilst not necessarily encouraging their respect. Without a group of onlookers I reckon he’s finding it tough. And, I say again, he looks blotchy and pallid. Maybe he always looked like that? Dunno.

His Tweetiness is not well, for sure. He clearly has a long list of ‘isms’ that have made him the man he is, but his forgetfulness, his impetuousness and his temper would make me worry about his health in someone his age.

So … on the face of it popularism seemed like a good idea. Draining the swamp, losing the quangos and lobbyists and all that. But knowing that a week is a long time in politics, these coming months are going to show the middle ground that it’s better to vote in reasonably ordinary people than place your future in the hands of (mostly) men who crave attention and can hold a crowd. I reckon. The tide is turning.

That was my line on Friday night.

But.

(Takes a deep breath.)

Conspiracy of conspiracies, Epstein is dead. Whilst in the securest of secure detention facilities in the US.

Over here, it’s been reported that Dominic Cummings’s (the unelected Brexit enforcer) farm has received £235,000 of EU subsidies – it’s actually Euros, but I couldn’t find the Euro key on my keypad, but as Sterling is now on parity with the Euro it makes no difference.

Facebook ads. Data hacking. Self interest.

Wheels within wheels. Money and power. Greed and disregard for the outcome. A man dead in the cells of the highest security prison.  I couldn’t write it.

So, all of a sudden I’m not so sure. Maybe we can’t put this right? Maybe it’s bigger than all of us in the middle ground? I know it’s an Orwellian statement, but surely it’s difficult to make a stand when the world is being run by a bunch of gangsters.

Let’s hope I’m wrong. We’ll see.

Plans afoot

I so want to write about politics. About how it’s driving me just a little bit demented. How Brexit has gone from ‘sunlit uplands’ to, ‘don’t worry we’re not going to starve’. And I could write a couple of pages on His Orangeness’s visit to El Paso yesterday. You may not have seen the clip (it’s on Twitter), but his team have made a campaign video about him walking around the hospital where they are holding those injured in one of the gun attacks. And there are selfies with hospital staff and one, with some poor injured girl. It’s horrible.

This is where we are. Oh well.

we popped along to Gloucester to see Jen and James

Instead I’m going to pitch my own plan: I am going to become a successful writer. That is, and for those of you who have followed me through thick and thin you’ll be familiar, for me that means consistently selling 10 books a day. And I am going to do that by this time next year. Promise.

How?

Good question. First let’s start with what we have. I have a proper series – five books. We have a beginning and, whilst I’ve no intention of making it so, an end (don’t worry, it’s more of a pause … Sam is alive, although …). The reviews are very encouraging and often eloquently so. I know I do get a good number from friends and family, and they will always over-egg their enthusiasm, but I also have over 100 reviews from the US from people I could never have met. And they are consistently above 4.0 stars and, whilst there are a small number who could leave the series alone, many are v positive about those they read. 

And, do you know what? I like them. Really like them. I enjoy rereading them and I do think the writing gets better each time.

But, I am in no doubt that Unsuspecting Hero is a slightly naive book, written in a bit of a rush and not in my true voice. There are a number of reasons for that which I haven’t got the energy to go into, but it is so. Importantly, as the first book in the series, it really needs to be a springboard – a hook – to capture the reader and propel them into my fantasy world. I’m not completely convinced that that is the case.

And I think I have some stats to show that – now that I’ve paid attention to them. I get an hourly update on books sold, via the internet … including which country. Last month I had a 1 to 3 success rate between Unsuspecting Hero and the second in the series, Fuelling the Fire. I don’t think that’s bad, but it needs to be better. I need to up that to at least 1 to 2, if not better. To make that happen I have to rewrite UH and republish it. That is Job Two. Timeline: by Christmas …

… Job One is to reread Fuelling the Fire so that I don’t base Sam and her pals’ characters on where I finished in book 5 which is fresh in my mind. Instead I rewrite her based on where she sets off at the start of book 2. Characters grow over a series, and I have to get that transition just so.

Then it’s marketing time (Job 3). And I have no idea what that means. It will certainly include some Amazon/Facebook ads, and there are plenty of on-line tutorials on how to get those right. It could well mean approaching an independent book store(s) in Bristol and seeing if they could take the series. That would likely mean I would need to print some of my own copies, which I could do cheaply (certainly for less than £5 a copy … currently Amazon charge over £10 for a print on demand copy). I fancy a trip to a bookfair with my own stand? And there’s our local library and book clubs. And, and …

The ambition is 300 books a month from September 2020, onward. And, key, I must not be spending (on marketing) more than I am earning. 

This means continuing to grow my on-line presence. Currently I am just shy of 500 followers on Instagram. I get between 100-150 discrete hits on this blog every week. And my Twitter following is 370. None of those are big numbers, and they do need to increase. Of course the way to get the numbers bigger is to write and post decent stuff. ‘Well, do that!’, I hear you shout. Ok, then.

Finally, on the marketing vein linked to book sales, I have made some progress. And that’s on Twitter. Sales of the original four books have stagnated at about 20 a month over the past year. However, I have seen a small upturn in the past 6 weeks and it’s been with Unsuspecting Hero. Normally I sell 5/7 copies a month of UH. Since I have become more active on Twitter that increased to 16 copies last month – outselling the other books 3-fold. This month, unsurprisingly, I have sold a splurge of On The Back Foot To Hell to my ‘known’ readers, but that will (and should) calm down. However … and this is key … in the first 7 days of this month I have sold 7 copies of Unsuspecting Hero. And the only thing I have done differently is to be active on Twitter. I am sure there is a correlation.

Anyhow … that’s where we are. And where I’m going.

For the record, Bex came down to stay – it was so lovely to have her with us – and we took her to the airport yesterday where she met up with Steven (who’d been saying cheerio to his family). We are unlikely to see her again before Easter next year, which is sad, but they have a fab life and we wouldn’t want to put a brake on that in any way. 

And Doris has just had her oil changed, which means in the last two months I’ve changed her oil, her fuel filter, her brake discs and her air filter. Fab. Next stop (with her), Scotland for four weeks in a couple of weeks time. Hurrah!

my first review for On The Back Foot To Hell – someone in the US, I know not whom

Must go. I have a plan to get on with. 

A perfect respite

I think we needed that. What a wonderful couple of days. Thanks to Kenn, Steven and Hilary and Annie and Alasdair.

There’s been a theme.

Kenn, an old Army pal of mine, is finishing his time with the services and setting up a consultancy firm. He has done really well, joining the British army from Australia and then making his way from private soldier/trooper to Lieutenant Colonel. No small feat. Now that he’s finishing he’s decided that, other than the fact that he has to make some money, his main focus is going to be on travel … no, getting the most out of life. He plans to set himself up in a two-up, two-down house: big enough to hold his stuff, provide him with lodgings and an office. It will be a ‘lock-up-and-leave’, and he tells me he will do a lot of that. For example this week he’s taking his bike to Baku … and back. Well done him. Once I have the Twitter account of his trip I’ll share it with you.

 

Then a day and night with H&S on their beautiful narrowboat. They live on it full time, but also own a cottage in Hampshire where they let a room, provide outbuildings that allow their quite brilliant sculptor daughter to produce the most amazing horses and deer and dogs (here: Holly Hickmore), and give them a place to come back to as and when. They’ve just spent 3 months ‘work-away‘ in New Zealand and are looking to take their car and caravan down to Spain after Christmas – and then come back to do some house sitting before getting back on the boat.

We had a lovely day on the boat. And when we moored up for the night C and I ran back to the car, drove back up to meet them and had supper with the sounds of ducks, ducking around just off the starboard bow. It was great to reaffirm what we knew: life is about experience, not things. Yes, we’re lucky enough to be able to afford what we do, but we go out of our way not to spend money on ‘things’ – and this really does help. We slept v peacefully before we headed off to see out v old pals, Alasdair and Annie, for lunch.

Al is working in Saudi and doing v well indeed, but even he’s thinking about the meaning of it all … and maybe heading home. They have a great life but, and he sometimes reads this (and I said it to him today), I’d love him to be back in the UK where we could see more of him … and that we would know he would be taking things slightly easier. We’ll see. Thanks for lunch!

BTW we went to Frome Farmer’s market, which they hold on the first Sunday of every month. Frome is/was an old market town that has always lived under the shadow of the more riotously attractive towns like Bath and Bradford-on-Avon. Well, let me tell you. on the first Sunday of every month (April to October) it transforms itself into the most upmarket town in the northern hemisphere. The stands are posh and plentiful; the clientele, v hip. And it was packed, like I’ve never seen. You couldn’t move for floral dresses, chinos and weak chins. Brilliant!

And so this week? Rebecca arrives tomorrow as part of a last hurrah before she and Steven head back to Korea. We’ve got some admin to do and I have to continue to mildly market my book(s). It’s interesting (and good news) but I’m selling more of Unsuspecting Hero, the first of the Sam Green books, than I am selling anything else. Which means, almost organically, I am reaching new readers. And this means only one thing: I must rewrite Unsuspecting Hero so that it is the perfect read from which readers will want to launch into the series,

That’s about to start soon.

 

Red letter day

 

This is a book about greed. And fear. It’s a book about tenacity. And mental health. In the end it’s a book that sees Sam Green, the unwitting star of four previous encounters with global antagonists, taken to the point from where she might never recover. It is more than a spy-thriller. It’s a story of PTSD. Of OCD and autism. It’s the story of a woman who has nothing left to live for, who finds herself where even that is taken from  her.

As promised On The Back Foot To Hell is published today. You can buy your copies here: ebook copy: £3.49 and paperback copy: £11.99. Please note that I do not make any money on the paperbacks – the cost is in the ‘print to order’ and delivery from Poland. In the next couple of days Amazon will bring the two formats together. In the meantime there are two different addresses.

Phew. It’s not been without effort and I didn’t finish my last edit/proof until yesterday, but I made my target publication date. Hopefully, for those of you who follow the series, you’ll have something to get your teeth into on the beach. I really hope you enjoy it … and please, please pen a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads if you get the chance. It makes such a difference.

I’m spent with words … I hope you understand. For the record we have been pottering around the house. Jen and James came for supper last night and today, by way of a day off, I met up with an old army pal (on my bike) and we had a lovely day pottering around the Cotswolds.

More detail on Sunday. Enjoy Sam Green!