Tag Archives: cheap quality books

21 Sep 2024 · 9:04 pm

Hello again, hello …

Crikey but it’s been a long time hasn’t it? I am well aware that this is not good for my readership and that most of you are long gone. However, life has been very busy. I suppose everyone gets back from holiday in September and has to catch up on the month and also do All The Things that those of them with kids were putting off over the summer. I confess to being no different, although, today I have a cold so I have decided that running around like a blue arsed fly will not be my lot and I am going to spend it sitting down doing things I enjoy. Ergo …

Chaos fairies have been in abundance this week, when are they not? Although I have managed to remember my own name, and even some other people’s. I have kept my eye on the ball enough to get my lad to and from school at the right times, with the right kit washed and ready for a whole week while McOther went to Arnhem on a history walking tour. This process confirmed to me, very strongly, that I am not a morning person. But we managed it anyway. Woot.

Picture of a hollyhock flower with a bee inside it collecting pollen.

At one point I had a hilarious meeting with the school bursar who was so stereotypical that it was like interacting with a character from a comedy comic strip.

The speed limit on Mc(not so) mini’s school site has recently dropped from 15 to 10mph. After 7 years of 15 I do tend to do that speed on autopilot now so I have had to be very mindful that it’s dropped. Basically, if the car is bunny hopping along in second gear, I know I’m doing the right speed. If it’s running smoothly, and I’ve forgotten to stop and put it into first, I’m going 15mph.

So there I was, having just turned onto the site, about 100 yards in, drifting along on auto pilot. It was 5.00pm and I noticed there were lots of cars still parked at the pre-prep and was wondering whether it was late pick up, or a parents’ evening or similar.

As I lurched over another bump and gave it a bit of a squirt to stop it bunny hopping, I was brought back to earth, as the revs dropped again, by a movement at the side of the drive. A tall man in the kind of tweed suit you’d expect to see on Colonel Blimp was striding along with his arm out at about 45 degrees from his side waving it round in a circle.

Is he looking at me? I wondered.

Yes, I decided he probably was. The gesture was not one I’ve seen but I assumed he meant slow down. I eased right off the pedal and checked my speed, which by the time my very dodgy vision was able to present my brain with an image of the speedo that was in focus enough to read it (more on that story, later) was definitely bouncing about a bit at the 10mph mark.

OK not speeding now then, probably was before. Never mind, all’s well now. Phew. Job done. Smile and creep on past. But no, he continued to wave at me. What did he want? I checked the speedo and the errant eyes worked better this time. Yes, it was just below ten.

I’m going about 7mph now mate, I was thinking. I can’t slow down any more, so I stuck with 7mph and continued on by. It wasn’t like he had a speed gun, so it wasn’t his fault if he didn’t know I was going under 10 miles an hour, I decided as I approached the next speed hump. He was still waving his hand, presumably because he wanted me to go slower, no stop yet though.

There is normally one of those things that tells you your speed at the bump there, which I’ve slightly come to rely on to check I’m complying with regulations, that would have helped both of us know my speed for certain and has the added benefit that I can see it, but I was disappointed to note it wasn’t there.

I slowed even more for the speed hump. That was the point at which point he ran over and banged on the window.

Well that was a turn up. I stopped, and wound it down. Somewhat flabberghasted but also wondering why, if he wanted me to stop, he didn’t just … you know … put his hand up, palm towards me, in the universally acknowledged signal for stop. He appeared to be absolutely incandescent. And before I could even take a breath to say,

‘Hello there, can I help you with something?’ he started in.

Here we go. I thought. People do that same slow down gesture as I motor carefully through villages at 30 because they are certain that a car like mine will be speeding, so I was already harbouring misgivings that he was one of those. As such, it was probably best to just keep schtumm and see what he wanted. It depended how reasonable he was and what he had to say I guess. But since he was some random male I had no clue what he was about, but I could always burn away if he tried to open the door.

‘I am Arnold Rimmer*, the bursar of this school and when I signal for you to stop I expect you to do so please.’

*Not his real name, obvs.

Well, it would probably have been a good idea to actually signal that he wanted me to stop then. Never mind. I looked up at him in silence, the only thought in my head apart from, doesn’t he know how to signal stop? was, hmm, somebody’s done assertiveness training.

That, and a certain amount of surprise, of course, because I don’t think anyone’s talked quite as comprehensively down to me as that since I left preschool, and I had to hand it to him, the way he tacked that ‘please’ on the end took the sentence to a new level of rudeness and, yes, aggression, whether he meant it to or not.

Well. On the upside, it was nice to know he was the bursar and not some weird fucking rando, on the downside, it was very clear that he was about to go into orbit. Previous experience of this kind of situation has shown me that it’s best not saying anything to these people. You just nod politely until they’ve finished and then carry on with your day.

Even though it was extremely tempting to suggest, politely, that actually signalling ‘stop’ might have been more effective than just waving his arm about in some vague and random gesture, I reflected that it was unwise, and more pertinently, pointless. He had already decided who and what I was and no evidence or polite suggestion to the contrary was going to change his view, that much was clear … he had me pegged as evil. Forever. Not that he gave me time to so much as breathe before continuing.

‘How fast were you going?’ he demanded as I took a breath in to ask if I could help him.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But I really don’t think it was much more than about twelve.’

‘It looked much faster than that to me,’ he said.

I didn’t reply. I think he said some other stuff but I’ve blanked it out. When he was done I drove off. At 10 mph. Except I started off in the wrong gear so my car was having none of it so embarrassingly, it bunny hopped the entire way up the drive. Now he’s going to think I’m speeding at any point when he sees the car driving smoothly.

Fucking weird though. Really, fucking weird.

That story there was going to be more of later …

Other things I have been mostly doing this week? Buying eye-wateringly expensive spectacles. My son and I needed eye tests. I have noticed, for some while, that I can’t always see things close up … or far away to be honest, but then I discovered that there were days when the instruments in the car … well I can see them, I just can’t always read them straight away. And that’s very bad so I booked an eye test immediately.

McMini’s eyes needed adjustment and he chose new frames, the most expensive frames in the shop which are made in Japan using the same technique that is used to make samurai swords or something ridiculous. For the love of the almighty. Raises eyes to heaven. They do suit him though.

Not the glasses in question…

Meanwhile I discovered that I now have astigmatism in my right eye as well as my left. I had no idea that could happen. I thought you were born with it but no, it grows. So there’s a new fact I’ve learned this week. Here’s another one. Varifocal lenses are extremely expensive. I’m going to try contacts as they do lenses that act in a similar way but I’ll still need specs whatever. I’ll have to test the lenses out as apparently some folks find they just make everything feel blurry. We shall see. I have chosen new glasses (the cheapest frames in the shop) although they were the ones that best suited me as well so … swings and roundabouts.

Writing news.

The writing has been coming along. I’ve been managing to do a little bit each day, which has been grand. It’s mostly editing so far, and shuffling scenes around so they fit, although I have a cold at the moment, just for a change, so I probably won’t be able to do much until that’s gone.

Bastard Chaos Fairies

Yep. The little bastards are back. This time it’s my fitbit they’ve got into. Yesterday it suddenly went yellow. I plugged it into its charger and rebooted it which seemed to fix it for a few minutes, then it went yellow again and completely died. I’ve no idea what’s up there but it’s not even a year old. Return it and get a new one I hear you say. Well yes, I could do that, I thought if I could find the chuffing receipt. I know I bought it in October but that’s all, which was kind of annoying.

Worse, I know I threw the box away recently, as in put-in-the-recycling-they-collected-two-days-ago recently. So that’s also sodding annoying. I have no receipt, no delivery note … nothing. That’ll teach me to tidy up.

I did everything I could think of and then clicked the help thing and got a call back. Turned out I had, indeed bought it from Fitbit, and while I couldn’t see it on my dashboard after Fitbit became Google, they could. So I have a shipping label and it will be off to Holland by DHL on Monday to be fixed, or at least switched. It’ll take ten days, and it’ll be a bust one that’s been fixed, but I’m really chuffed not to have to stump up for a new one.

Here’s another thing you never knew.

On the usual Saturday morning trip to the market today, there was sad news from the egg sellers. Apparently one of the major re-homing shelters for urban foxes from London is near them and many are released into their woods. This is usually fine, but occasionally, once a year or so, a fox gets into their hen coops and kills everything. Last night a fox got into their bantam coop and killed all 12 of them.

Interestingly, the girl also told me that the reason foxes kill everything is because they will take the bodies away and bury them to eat for later meals. So it’s not bloodlust after all. Nope. It turns out your basic fox is just a panic buyer.

Onwards and upwards.

Afore ye go …

There’s a fabulous free book giveaway on today so if you want to snaffle a copy of Few Are Chosen, now’s your chance.  There are a stack of books in the promo, you can find them all here:

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1 Oct 2022 · 12:01 pm

Enjoy yourself …

It sounded as if the Dalek operator inside was laughing as I did this.

OK, it’s a bit of a long one this week because woah! Norcon! What a gas! And I want to give you the low down. Yes, you will remember—if you wade through my outpourings regularly—that last week, through the wonders of modern technology, I was talking to you, in my absence, from Norcon where I was flogging books. Now I’m going to tell you all about it. Oh yes I am.

Why? Because it was brilliant! That’s why, one week on, I still haven’t quite returned to earth.

During the summer, I did St Albans Comicon with some author friends and we had great fun even though it was hot enough to cook meringues by just leaving them outside, and even hotter inside.

This time it was not hot, or at least not inside. I dunno about outside because I didn’t go out there during the day. Hang on, I’ve gone off on a tangent there. Right, yes, back on track now, the same three of us were sharing two tables, plus another lovely East Anglian author who we met at St Albans Comicon: Mark (Book of Souls Saga) Ashby. So half a table each, which worked out just peachy. A few feet round the corner was A E Warren (Tomorrow’s Ancestors Series) another East Anglian author who is a member of the author zoom group of which we are all part.

Norcon bills itself as the most friendly convention and it certainly lived up to its name. The atmosphere was very relaxed which was lucky because we had to get up at insane o’clock in the morning to get there and I am not at my best before seven a.m. Not even after coffee. Julia Blake (Erinsmore, The Forest, Black Ice and many more) and I were sharing a car; her car on day one, my car—which had arrived back from lengthy and convoluted (not to mention expensive) repairs the Friday before—on day two. Because the loading doors closed at 8.30 and we weren’t sure where we were going we decided to leave at six a.m.

As you know people, I have a light dash of IBS. What this means it that certain THINGS have to happen before I leave the house. Thank the heavens above, my body was in a cooperative mood that morning and I was ready for pick up at six. But to achieve that, I still had to be up by FIVE am. Gads! We decided that we would do cosplay too so we were all going to be dressed to match the characters or genre of our books.

Having scratched my head about the number of books I should bring, I decided in the end that I should assume I’d sell double what I sold in one day at St Albans over the two days … but then I got cold feet and in an act of hopeless optimism, I packed all the books into two huge boxes.

‘Blimey! How many books have you brought with you?’ Julia asked me as I heaved them all into her car.

‘Yes!’ I replied.

Us and our stalls

There was a small hiccup was that a large part of the A11 is down to one lane and Google chose to direct us the quickest way which involved Julia navigating her brand new car down single track roads. But something else happened to Google, or maybe I touched the screen of my phone with an unwitting fingertip, but it took us to someone’s house on Church Street, in a small village about ten miles short of our expected destination; the Norfolk Showground.

Oookaaaay …

Luckily, we got there unscathed, although I felt horrendously guilty for putting my friend through the crap in her BRAND NEW CAR (yeek!) or at least, for letting my phone do it.

Paul McGahn, Nigel Planer and Chris Barrie sitting at sci fi convention signing tables

Paul McGann, Nigel Planer and Chris Barrie with members of Norcon Crew

We set out our stalls and I discovered that we were opposite the signing tables — I hadn’t realised this but the others had cunningly planned it because that way we might have a captive audience of people queuing for signings to pitch our books to. The three opposite us were Paul McGann, who was the radio and film Dr Who, Nigel Planer who is the voice of the first 24 (I think it’s 24) Terry Pratchett audiobooks but, more importantly, was Neil in a comedy show called The Young Ones which my friend Kirsty and I watched pretty much on loop as teenagers. Then there was Chris Barrie, who is Rimmer in Red Dwarf. Julian Glover was down at the end somewhere and there were two more folks, stars from StarTrek the New Generation and another from StarWars, I think, in between, but the three opposite us were the ones I genuinely admire; being, as I am, a monster fan of Dr Who, Red Dwarf and The Young Ones.

Chris Barrie sitting at a table

Chris (Arnold Rimmer) Barrie

The stars were sitting with a Norcon team member each and in most cases they were chatting away and it all seemed very relaxed. Meanwhile we were doing the same thing our side.

As I was banging on about something in the voice of Dr Evil to my neighbouring author—Rachel Churcher (Battleground Series)—and primping and reprimping the books on my stall, I was aware of someone tall in a dark jacket reading the blurbs I’d pinned to the front of the table cloth and taking a picture of me. I looked up and the only person in a dark jacket in our neck of the woods was Nigel Planer, who was wandering back to his table.

‘Did he just …?’ I asked Rachel.

‘Take a photo of you? Yes,’ she replied.

‘Woah. That’s cool.’

So we had a quick squee moment and told the others and then got on with selling our books, photographing each other looking excited and holding books or arsing about, flaunting our costumes—or in my case, trying to prove my books were amusing by Being Funny at people—and generally Being Authors … er hem … probably.

During the gaps in traffic we looked at people’s costumes and took photos which the organised ones shared to instagram and Facebook but I just whatsapped them to the McOthers at home, or we watched the martial arts bunch behind us doing light sabre training with legions of pint-sized Jedi and Sith or photographed passing Daleks, because who’s going to pass up an opportunity to do that?

Meanwhile the signing tables were busy but in the gaps, Mr Planer appeared to be doing exactly the same thing as we were (sensible chap) wandering about with his phone taking pictures and clearly living his best life and enjoying at all. He kept stopping to look at my stall, and me, presumably trying to work out who on God’s green earth I was supposed to be. He was wearing an affable smile or an expression of intelligent enquiry (or both) for most of the time, but above all when he wandered past us, he appeared to be genuinely intrigued by the books I was selling. Which was a bit of a thing. And which threw me completely.

As the day wore on, all the others noticed and they kept teasing me that if Nigel Planer was looking at my stuff, I should go over and sell a book to him. I was just wondering if I could swing that and deciding that no, I very much could not, when I looked up and there he was, standing in front of the stall, like an actual … um … customer.

Shit.

‘Hello,’ I said, although, to be honest, it might have come out as a bit of a squeak.

I think he asked if my books were humorous sci fi to which I said yes and then, before I could stop myself, I sort of blew it. My brain went into overdrive.

You can’t sell him a book! Some of it told me. You have to give him the book.

I know but what if he insists on paying? The rest of me asked it. I can’t take his money. It’s really bad form.

Use a short. Then he’ll only have to pay £3 if he insists and you can accept his money without looking like a charlatan taking advantage.

And so it was that before I could stop myself, while the larger part of my brain was still attempting to compute, I grabbed the nearest short, Close Enough and I blurted.

‘Can I give you a book? Seriously, I would be honoured to, if you wanted one.’

Noooo! What was I doing? Where was the calm sensible, let’s chat about the books, let’s allow the customer to ask me the questions and choose the one they want selling policy that I try, and fail, to pursue with everyone who approaches my stall? Nowhere, that’s where. There’d been some kind of brain coup and sensible, mature Mary was now gagged and tied up in the corner. Gibbering fan girl was firmly at the wheel.

Worse, that was the wrong book! I’d picked a short, which he would be least likely to enjoy, because it would drop him in the middle of everything with minimal world building. But it would have to be a short because they were the cheapest. Except that if it does have to be a short Nothing To See Here is the one to throw them in with. And I didn’t even fucking ask him which one he wanted, poor sod! And if I was going to do that why, in heaven, didn’t I just sell him Escape From B-Movie Hell at cost, since that’s the one which eases the uninitiated into my style gently and I could have charged him a fiver for that without looking like I was grovelling but it would still not be rudely expensive.

Head desk.

On the other hand, he’d seen and heard me selling books all day so he probably had some idea what he was in for. And I didn’t dribble or start quoting vast tracts of The Young Ones at him and my Traffic Warden Clemency Begging Gland didn’t pump two gallons of spit into his face while I was talking to him either, so that was a bonus. Also, it wasn’t nearly as embarrassing as the time I met Dudley Moore (I die a little inside every time I remember that) which, I suppose, was a small win. I guess I was just a bit … starstruck though.

Rolls eyes.

Encore de head desk.

And the others chimed in and I think Julia gave him a book because … share the love!

He did insist on paying and I took his three quid. I also devalued his copy by signing it for him.

Nigel, thank you for being Neil (and Nigel) all the best … I wrote, drew him a picture of a snurd and signed it. In sharpie. God in heaven.

Then he told us he’d written a book which he’s crowd funded on Unbound and that it’s humorous sci fi, a time travel story. So we chatted about that and he had a flyer so I asked if I could keep it and Rachel (Battleground Series) asked for one, too, and he went back and got one for her, as well. Then, clutching mine and Julia(Black Ice, Erinsmore, The Forest and many more …)’s books, our hapless victim returned to his station. He left us bobbing up and down like overexcited pontipines.

Hmm, maybe not so hapless, then, since I’ve bought his book; the deluxe hardback version, signed by the author with my name printed in the back so I think he might have had the last laugh. Then again, he was so friendly and generally affable that how could I not? And it’s comedic sci fi and this is me so that I’ll buy the book is pretty much a given really.

I also apologised to him for being a bit starstruck on twitter and sent him a picture of Extra Special Deadpool man (I’ll come to that) and told him I’d bought the book. He dutifully liked the picture said he hoped I enjoy it.

Back to Norcon.

A bit later on, I was suffering with raging guilt over 1, taking money off actual Nigel Planer for my crappy book and, 2, giving him a book he’d probably loathe so I thought I’d better go and buy a photo. Then Amy (AE Warren; Tomorrow’s Ancestors Series) said I should try and get a selfie except there was a sign over each person saying what they’d do and how much for and Mr P’s said no selfies. Amy reckoned he was quite louche about that though and assured me that she’d seen him doing selfies with other people.

So I took my courage in both hands, waited for a quiet moment and went over to him.

‘Since you’ve been kind enough to buy my book, the least I should do is return the compliment. How much would you charge me for a selfie?’ I asked him, pretending that I was either terribly myopic or too stupid to have read the sign. Well, I wear spectacles and he’d already spoken to my by this time so I reckoned I could swing it.

‘I’m not really supposed to do them but I doubt anyone will find out if we go over there,’ he said cheerfully, waving his hand in the general direction of my book stall opposite.

‘Oh! Thank you, very much,’ I said.

He wandered over and positioned himself in front of the banner but also a bit to the side, you know, so people looking at the photo could read it. I trotted over in his wake.

‘There we are!’ he said as I stood beside him. ‘You can just pretend you are taking a photograph of something over there,’ he told me, pointing in the general direction of Chris Barrie. There was definitely a slightly gleeful vibe coming from him at this point, as if he was feeling the joy of doing some small piece of rebellion that’s Naughty and that he Wasn’t Meant To. That, of course, is something I can always get on board with. I was just about to start a light hearted sort of, ‘Oh look at that over there!’ in a suitably wooden comedy voice and hold up my phone when, bless her, up popped Rachel.

‘Shall I take the photo?’ she asked.

Brilliant. So I handed her the phone and he put his arm round me and we grinned at the camera. Rachel wisely took two photos, both of which are fabulous; like, really decent shots both of him and me, which might be natural for him but trust me, for me, it’s something approaching a miracle.

Woah.

What was lovely was that it came over as totally genuine interest in another professional, which from one so stratospherically elevated from us made all four of us feel good. Mwahahahargh! I guess that’s the power of fame but it’s amazing how such a simple kindness from someone who has that power can make another person’s day. If I ever make it off the bottom, I hope that I, too, will show the same generosity of spirit and encouragement to the people coming up behind me.

Where could I go from there? Well, on the Sunday, things did feel a bit flat at first but then I looked at the costumes and on the up side, I did get a belly laugh out of Chris Barrie by asking him, in the voice of the Toaster from Red Dwarf whether he wanted some toast. And obviously, I went and shook hands with Paul McGann as well because … you know. He’s The Doctor. And Terry Malloy, who played Davros quite a lot in Dr Who (one of my favourite villains) at a time when I avidly watched the programme every Saturday night.

Another delight was watching the Dalek operators. There was an impressive selection of Daleks; from the 1960s and 70s ones I remembered as a kid, to the copper-coloured David Tennant era ones. They were fenced off in an area close to us. The fellow in charge had brought his parents, who were in their 80s and absolutely sweet and would sit in deck chairs each day happily watching the action, or wander the hall, hand-in-hand, looking at all the other exhibits.

And then we heard the martial arts folks giggling and saying that ‘he’ was here so we asked them who ‘he’ was and they said,

‘Oh you’ll know.’

Sure enough, when this gentleman turned up I suspect we did. Yes. Dead pool. With a euphonium. Mwahahahargh!

Awesome.

He followed the people in particularly excellent costumes about playing their themes or the theme from their film. I asked him if his instrument was heavy and he told me that yes, it’s hard on the core strength. Apparently he has to wear a back brace to help with that.

I particularly like the way he’s wearing the trumpet like a side arm. I didn’t see him play it but I should imagine it would be too difficult to get to when the euphonium is in position and you’d need some extra arms to hold the euphonium while you used your main set of arms to play the trumpet.

On a final note, it was one of the safest spaces I’ve seen for a while. There’s a whole other level to cosplay. Nobody cares if you’re 20 stones and want to dress as Wonder Woman, nobody cares if you’re a he, a she, a they or a ze. Nobody cares if you’re a biological bloke but you feel more comfortable, and more yourself, in a dress. I should imagine there are a lot of folks who might be on the end of some serious prejudice in Real Life, who can come to a con and be who they really are. Not only be who they are but be applauded for it. I’d imagine that’s pretty freeing. I loved how open and accepting it was.

Yeh.

It was golden. All of it.

How many books did I sell?

Hardly any. In fact, sales were pretty dismal. I sold exactly half the number of books I sold at St Albans in one day, over two days at Norcon.

But fuck me! I sold one of them to Nigel Planer! Mwahahahrgh!

Will he read it? Who knows, but that’s not the point. He bought one. And I hope I haven’t got him into trouble posting the selfie. Sorry, Nigel, if I have and you’re reading this*.

* Well, you never know right?

And I managed to get a guffaw out of Chris Barrie. In fact lots of people actually laughed at my crap jokes, which made my day. Both days; because the principal aim when I do these things is to meet people, be funny at them so they think my books must be funny too and buy one, oh and have a gas, because then the books sell themselves. And anyway, without laughter what do you have? Well … no fun, that’s for certain.

I came home feeling the same way I used to after a really good gig in my very, very brief flirtation with stand-up. To be honest, I was so high I still haven’t quite come down.

Not a commercial success then, but will I go back next year? You bet your arse I will.

And finally … last chance to grab 12 hours of audiophonic joy for 99p (or 99c)

Yes. If you like cheap audio books, Few Are Chosen is on sale until Monday. After that the price goes up again.

As always, I’m cutting my own throat here.

It’s 99c on Apple, Kobo and my own website. For anyone in the States, it’s also 99c on Barnes & Noble and Chirp (which is USA and Canada).

If you want to grab it while it’s mega cheap you can find store links and a bit more info here

Oh and one more thing …

Here’s a little bit of Nigel Planer in action as Neil …

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18 Sep 2022 · 5:32 pm

Stuff happened … I even remembered some

Quite a lot to catch up on after the gap last week. Sorry about that, I was out digging, this time near Haverhill. Once again, it was a weekend event with two days’ on the fields.

However, on this one the fields had been ‘fertilised’ with something called ‘green waste’. Green waste is low grade industrial waste so it contains hundreds of tiny pieces of metal. Therefore, if you’re detecting on it, you will have to dig about 20 pieces of scrap; bits of circuit board, wire and—a favourite—the metal bottom bits of car light bulbs. The first day, I found a button, what I think was a Roman tile, a Roman floor tile and an amphora handle. Did I find anything metal among the pieces of twenty first century shite? Did I bollocks. The ground was heavy clay and wet so I had mud boats the size of snow shoes stuck to my boots and I might have been better with a cheese wire than a spade.

The fields were all on the same huge farm, so despite the fact they were releasing some new land to detect on the Sunday, I bugged out and went to a dig that a member of my club was having on his permission. It was the best decision ever, light sandy Norfolk soil and land that I knew. I found two long cross pennies, although one is almost blank, a Tudor button and a gorgeous cloth or bag seal … probably a cloth seal to be honest. I’d cautiously put that as Tudor, too, or possibly 17th century. I’ve had the little o-ring off the back and I’ve found the fronts of these seals but this is the first one I’ve found that was complete.

Interestingly, one of the other club members there had also bugged out of the big rally and both of us went home with interesting stuff, feeling fully vindicated in our respective decisions.

Maybe big rallies are not for me. You need to be fast because no matter how much research you do, you don’t know the land and it’s only by digging regularly somewhere that you begin to learn where the finds come up. That means the folks who are strong and fit enough to dig the highest number of targets in the shortest time are going to get the prize. On the up side, by the end of the first day, or the second day, you’ll probably have started to learn where the good stuff is coming up so you can go to those areas, on the down side, depending on how many people there are per square metre of land to detect, it may be that anything that’s at a depth a detector can reach will be gone when you get there or you find there is only stuff which is very deep and takes longer to dig meaning fewer items recovered and less chance of one of them being interesting. It is what it is but as someone with a dodgy knee who can’t always do a whole day, it’s only sensible to be a bit selective.

On the Mum front, things are looking up substantially. The Good news is that they released her from hospital a week after she was admitted, the bad is that we had to wait for the kit she needed to arrive at home. This being a broken ankle, she gets the stuff on the NHS who are kindly providing her with a hoist and a hospital bed. The bed was due to arrive on Wednesday but was the wrong type so had to be sent back. We were given a revised slot for Thursday; between 12.00 midday and 20.00 (eight pm). If if arrived in time, I had to ring the ward to let them know, which I did.

The following day, the Friday, Mum was put on the transport. It arrived home and the drivers, seeing that Mum’s drive was long, decided to leave the vehicle parked while one of them popped up to the house to see if they could turn round. The carers, waiting in the drawing room, saw her and rushed out. She explained what she was doing and said that yes, she could turn round so she’d go and get the vehicle. Naturally, having actually met the driver, the carers were expecting the vehicle to appear any minute.

It didn’t.

Not wanting to crowd the drivers, and thinking that they might have been going to go drop someone else off nearby first they gave it ten minutes and then walked down the drive. No sign of any ambulance anywhere. Next thing, 40 minutes later, Mum is wheeled back into the ward.

At this point the ward clerk is well annoyed but the transport is contracted out so she can’t find out much about what went on. The reason given for taking Mum back was that they couldn’t get the vehicle into the turning and since she is non-weight bearing, they needed a piece of equipment called a carry chair to get her to the house, which they didn’t have.

However, Mum has a wheelchair so, had they popped back to explain, both Mum’s carers were confident that the four of them could have easily got her into her wheelchair and off the transport, at which point they could have wheeled her up the drive, into the house and then, using the hoist, they could have got her into bed.

But no.

The transport staff didn’t bother to come and explain the situation to the carers. They just buggered off back to Worthing with Mum on board. And THIS, my friends, is why the NHS is running on a shoe string on the one hand, while it gaily spunks what little money it has up the wall on the other; because someone couldn’t be arsed to walk 100 yards up a drive and give an explanation that would have saved deploying another vehicle and two more staff to do the same journey. The Ward Clark told me this has been happening a lot recently. Urgh.

It’s also another way people with dementia are treated as things. My mother is not a flat pack wardrobe for fuck’s sake. It’s not sodding My Hermes dropping a card in. ‘I’m sorry your package could not be delivered, we will try again tomorrow.’ The carers who the driver had met and spoken to were effing there, waiting for the stupid bastard vehicle … or an explanation.

So we had another go and Mum finally reached her house, for the second time, at 5.30 but she was actually unloaded this time. Unsurprisingly she was knackered. Urgh. Head. Desk.

This last Wednesday, when she had arrived home she was on reasonable form but a bit distant. She just looked in pain and unwell bless her and seemed to be very muddled. Turns out she has a morphine patch though, so she might just have been tripping gently. When I spoke to her on Friday she was actually quite switched on. The words she uses don’t always make sense but I think that might be word finding difficulties making the confusion sound worse.

As you can imagine, I’ve done fuck all this past couple of weeks. Its’ been one of those ones when the small stuff mushrooms into a giant wobbly shite ball, like that canned foam stuff you spray into cracks in walls that balloons into enormous yellow bobbles that look almost edible (honeycomb anyone?).

On the up side, my Bruv had drawn my attention to a bin in the hospital which was labelled ‘offensive waste’. Obviously, we found this hilarious because we are both incredibly mature. I even took a vid so I can over-dub the bin saying something suitably offensive when I open it.

On the books front. No. Strangely there has been absolutely zero writing at all. On the other hand, I have boxed up one of each of my books with a covering letter ready to send to Suffolk libraries. Suffolk is in the Public Lending Right this year, which means that I will receive a royalty payment for any books people borrow. Since sending them, I have learned that they are now on their way to Bury St Edmunds Library so people can borrow them. I have used the online system to reserve a book from each of the authors I know and have also reserved one of my own, because I’m sad like that.

Also on the books front, the cosplay costume is done, I think. CF picture of incredibly sarcastic looking author in very messy bedroom. You might be wondering about the goggles. Yeh. Well the thing is, they just seem to raise the level of the costume from alright to Quite Good. So I’ll just have to write them into the next book, OK?

If you think it looks striking, have a squiffy at some of the photos of the event on Google and I think you’ll agree that it’s actually quite understated compared to most people’s and yet odd enough to fit right in. Or to put it another way, eccentric but not to the point where I’ll get mugged on the train … probably.

Norcon, as it’s called is running over the 24th and 25th September at the Norfolk Showground which is on the outskirts of the city of Norwich, Norfolk, UK. I will be there, flogging my books to the unsuspecting public and devaluing them by signing them.

If you want to know more or would like to come along, you can find more information here: https://www.nor-con.co.uk/

Most of the clothes featured there are things I couldn’t get into a couple of months ago so I’m quite pleased. The weight loss does seem to have started up again, at least some of it’s moved this week which is grand. I’m now wondering if the final target item of clothing—a pair of shorts—will fit by the time I go on holiday in three weeks. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility but I’m not going to sweat it if I fail to achieve that one. Even so we are entering the realms of being able to wear stuff that hasn’t fitted since just after McMini was born so it’s quite a thing.

The zip’s broken on the dark blue trousers but it’s a long shirt so I should be alright with some safety pins I think.

Briefly, I have to mention The Queen because she was ace. Both her and her father were reluctant monarchs. Maybe that’s why they were so good. But so far, Charles III is showing every sign of being a similarly excellent King. If I can get my shit together, I’ll do a longer post on this at some point. In the meantime, The Queen is Dead, Long live the King.

I’ve also been following events since her death including the lying in state. It’s been interesting, especially because of the amount of arcane ritual and tradition surrounding the accession of a new monarch and the death of the old one. It’s been an eye opener and I’m particularly peeved that I wasn’t switched on enough to saunter down to the bottom of my street and watch the king’s accession being announced by the Lord Lieutenant of Suffolk from the balcony of the Atheneum. Definitely missed a trick there, not to mentionan opportunity to take part in actual history. Then again, it’s been a bit like that this week, I forgot to go to a PCC meeting on Wednesday and I forgot to take my son to Boys Brigade on Friday then again, he forgot too.

Another member of the PCC also forgot or at least, he got the date wrong and turned up the following day. As he’s a world expert in his field, I felt a bit better about being a dunderhead because I can convince myself that intelligent people do stupid things so I’m not a thickie after all. Mwahahahrgh. As we agreed, it’s hard work being a pillock! We have standards to keep to. Definitely attained on my part this week though!

But, returning to the topic in hand, as you know, I like a bit of arcane ritual (rights of Twonkot anyone?) so I’m thoroughly intrigued and taking notes …

On a completely different note …

Here’s some good news if you like cheap audio books!

Once again, I’m cutting my own throat and having a sale. Kobo is doing a buy more save more deal on audiobooks this September and the K’Barthan Series, as well as Too Good To Be True, are in it. As a result, to make it more exciting, I’ve reduced the first book in the series to 99c on Apple, Kobo (of course) and my own website. For anyone in the States, it’s also 99c on Barnes & Noble and Chirp (which is USA and Canada). So if you want to grab it while it’s mega cheap there are store links and a bit more info here

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19 Jun 2022 · 6:46 pm

Spigotry …

Yes, I am still alive, although you could be forgiven for wondering if I’ve quietly shuffled off this mortal coil the amount of time it’s been since I wrote a blog post. I suppose the main reason for this is that the mood to waffle about my life tends to hit at the weekends, therefore, if I happen to be Doing Stuff several weekends in a row, the blog grinds to a halt. Case in point, when I came to write this post I found two others that I’d already begun before going out. On the upside, all this Doing Things does come under the heading of Putting Stuff In which is probably what other people call ‘refilling the well’.

So what’s been happening. Well, Mum stuff although less of it, Mc(Not So)Mini stuff and too much stuff of my own. I suppose you could say I’ve over-peopled but it isn’t really the social that’s hampering my efforts to achieve anything. I just keep on having to do things because I make trouble for myself. Yes, the reason for my absence is that I have been, mostly, trying to put out the fires I’ve inadvertently started in the dry grass of life. Or trying to unfuckup the fuckups, of which there are legion.

This week I went to see my writer friends where I used to live. For years they’ve been coming to me but now that I don’t have to collect McMini from school until 5 on the day we meet – or because, a lot of the time McOther picks him up – we have started going to the house of our eldest member and having lunch in the village pub. On the way I pick up the other lady in our group. She has a great deal of difficulty getting in and out of my car and this week, I discovered that taking the roof off merely made it worse. It was hot and I was wearing my prescription shades so while I was getting ready I took my actual spectacles out of my pocket and put them, in the little bag in which they come, on the back of the car because I didn’t want to bend them. The last thing I remember thinking is, ‘I must remember to put those back in the care before I drive off.’

Can you guess what happened next?

Of course you can! Yes. That’s right, I drove off with the glasses on the back of the car. Obviously, the fates didn’t do anything kind to me, like arrange for them to slide off on the side roads leading from the estate on which my friend lives. Oh no. They fell off as I turned onto the main road. When I reached my destination and went into the house I found I no longer had my specs. It being a social event and there being a table booked for lunch, I couldn’t just say, ‘Guys, I have to nip back and check.’ It would have been rude. The lady I had just picked up rang her husband and he went and looked but found nothing.

Resigned to their fate – I didn’t hold out much hope for my glasses surviving, unsquashed, until I dropped her back – we read each other our work, had lunched and talked writing things. When I dropped the lady back, it turned out her husband had popped out for a bike ride and found the glasses on the main road. They had sustained a small amount of damage, as you can see from this picture.

picture of smashed spectacles

When I break something, I like to do it properly.

Strangely, I had to visit the optician the next day to pick up some contact lenses for a friend’s daughter who’s a border at McMini’s school so I took my glasses with me along with another pair of frames that I’d picked up for a song at TK Maxx about twenty years previously (when I’d bought the smashed pair). I asked if they could fix my specs.

Yes well … at least I gave them all a good laugh.

Naturally, it turned out that they’d have to send the new frames I had away because it involved drilling the actual lense. In addition, it turned out that I was due for an eye test so they recommended I do that first, in case my prescription has changed. On the up side, they did have a slot sooner rather than later, on the downside, ‘sooner’ was next Friday. I found a similar pair on ebay for £24 and sent off for them so I do have those, although when I put them on they exaggerate the fact that I have asymmetrical ears and one is a lot higher than the other. On the up side, they don’t involve drilling the lenses so I can get them sooner and, if I have to go varifocal, maybe I can get the send always done as varifocals and the other as bog-standard prescription.

So now I’m wearing my sunglasses most of the time, Roy Orbison style, although he went on tour and left his prescription specs at home whereas I … yeh. If I ever can find another set of the others I’ll buy them and replace my old ones as they suited me better than any specs I’ve ever had before. In the meantime, I’m wearing a pair from 2008 which are more-or-less OK, although slightly weaker than the originals.

Add taking the cat to the vet, me to the gym and all sorts of other stuff and somehow, I achieve very little. That said the writing is still going. I’ve been going through Misfit 5 editing it and picking out where I’ve added tracers for plot development. I usually know where it’s going at the time and I put the tracers in but if I’m not writing for a long time, I then forget what they are and end up writing off in the wrong direction. This is a Bad Thing.

Other news, McOther has been a bit busy at work recently and McMini has had a gig with his band again. Their singer left, which looked as if it was going to be a bit of a disaster, but they’ve found a new one who is less experienced but I think could be very good so that’s a win.

Picture of a hitler european tour t-shirt

Height of bad punk taste.

We went to a re-enacters’ event today which was excellent and McMini spotted a Hitler European Tour T-shirt to wear on stage (it’s a punk band, after all). I bought it for him.

Lord but this is not Setting A Good Example, but since I had one when I was about his age, I’d be a special kind of hypocrite to point that out. Also it’s actually slightly less offensive than the T-shirt McMini was wearing, which advertises a band called Deicide.

On the up side, it’s black and white, and a lot more understated than the enormous red and black, front and back printed white one I had when I was the same age which also featured a huge swastika.

It’s also a bit easier to wear these days, I think. There were many instances when I simply couldn’t wear mine because it might be taken the wrong way. McMini’s is a great deal more understated than mine was, which is no bad thing, even though, as a whole, it’s still a bad thing and I am still a Bad Person for caving in.

It is difficult with gallows humour. I strongly believe that actually jokes do occasionally need to be offensive. I also believe that comedy is often far harder-hitting than the heaviest of moral-lesson type stories. I also think that one of the reasons Britain is such a horrible place right now is because we have lost our ability to laugh at ourselves in ways that are a bit sick, and we’ve lost the ability to trivialise the things that scare us to a manageable level by making jokes about it. Nonetheless, McMini has promised me this one is on stage only.

On a different note

My audiobooks are on sale again, so you can grab Few Are Chosen for 99c and Small Beginnings for 99c or free.

I’ve also reduced the other books in the K’Barthan series though some stores (a.k.a. where I can). Help yourself while you they’re cheap. They’re on sale until the end of June.

If you’re interested and would like more information about that, just click here.

AAAAAAND! There’s more!

The Last Word, available in Audio.

If you enjoyed the short story, The Last Word, the audio of that is also available, to find that, go here.

 

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31 Dec 2021 · 1:07 pm

Happy New Year … briefly.

Happy New Year …

This is just a quick one to wish you Happy New Year.

I can’t say much this week. Christmas II is about to start, in Scotland, so I will be heading up there tomorrow and I’m busy packing and sorting stuff out before we go. There is an absolute craptonne I want to talk about regarding Christmas I at Mum’s. How it went (well, I think) and about being a carer; the sense of responsibility, the good bits, the bad bits and why God seems to think it’s his moral duty to ensure that I have to wipe somebody somewhere’s arse at regular intervals from now until I die. More on that story … next week.

In the meantime, one of those terribly strange conundrums has cropped up. Suddenly, yesterday, 439 people in the USA and 1 Canadian downloaded Small Beginnings, for free off Amazon, along with another 127 so far, today – I can’t tell where they’re from yet but I’m guessing USA again.

That’s pretty impressive. I doubt I’d get much more interest in the States than that if I’d scored the mother of all promotions that is a bookbub. It really is like the American bit of a Book Bub Featured Deal without the other countries on top. It’s bizarre. But also good. OK so the USA is the country with the lowest read through rate, but I’m still delighted. After all, I should be good for 10 sales on the next book if I get the usual 2% read through rate, only a fraction of those folks will read the book, you see. I’m guessing they were all the USA as well, possibly with another Canadian in there.

Also, so far, the Christmas Easter Egg (Nog) – The Last Word, has received 253 downloads so I’m pleased about that, too. It was only 8% of the mailing list people so I’ve resent it to them for next week with a ‘just in case you forgot this’ kind of message because it’s a busy time and some of them may have done.

While I was doing that, it crossed my mind that I haven’t checked my mailing list for non-openers recently. Having done so I discover there are over 800 and I have not checked or sent a do-you-want-to-stay email for over a year. Oops. So I’ve sent the, ‘Wanna unsubscribe?’ email letting them know I’m going to delete them and giving them a button to click if they want to stay.

The joy of that technique is that the people on that list are gathered with an equation that, essentially, says, ‘show me everyone who hasn’t opened or clicked an email in the last year, who isn’t on x, y or z list’. Then of course, anyone who clicks will automatically disappear because they’ll have opened something in the last six months. Mwahahahrgh! Cunning eh?

Right, it’s late now and I have to go to bed but before I do, I may as well remind you about the K’Barthan Not Christmas story as well. Yes, The Last Word is still available to read. AND I’ve corrected the bits where I pasted the same paragraph in twice – a chunk at the beginning and a paragraph near the end. 🙂

Here’s a bit more information:

The Last Word, A Christmas K’Barthan Extra

Shows the cover of The Last Word

The Last Word

Yes! It’s dark, it’s mid winter and in K’Barth that means only one thing. It’s Arnold The Prophet’s Birthday! The biggest holiday in the Nimmist year. As usual, the Grongles have banned any celebrations and worse, this year, to add insult to injury, they’re going to have a book burning on the Sacred Day but that’s not going to stop Gladys and Ada. Oh no. Here’s the blurb:

When Mrs Ormaloo brings the terrible news to the Turnadot Street Businesswomen’s Association that the Grongles are going to burn some more banned books on the night of Arnold, The Prophet’s Birthday Gladys and Ada decide to take steps. They even enrol some of the punters from their pub to help out.

The books are in a warehouse being kept under guard. Gladys, Ada, Their Trev and the rest of the group embark on a plan of devilish cunning to rescue as many banned books from the flames as they can.

Corporal Crundy is determined not to mess up his first assignment since his promotion. It should be easy. All he has to do is guard some books. Yeh. It should be a piece of cake but somehow that’s not the way it turns out.

Just to recap, this story is about the same length as Night Swimming and available in PDF, Mobi and Epub from Bookfunnel. Later I will add a second half to it and release it as a short story with a proper cover and t’ing rather than this slightly dodgy one what I done! Phnark.

To download your copy, click here

All that remains is to wish you and yours a fabulous New Year. I’m not going to say anything like, ‘Hey 2022 can’t get any worse can it?’ because in my view, that’s just tempting bloody fate. Instead, I’ll just say, here’s hoping we’ve bottomed out and things begin to look up.

 

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25 Dec 2021 · 12:34 pm

Here’s a Christmas Easter Egg …

Happy Arnold, The Prophet’s Birthday (may his blessings be upon you).*

Yes this year, I’ve got my arse in gear and I have managed to produce a free Christmassy story for your delectation. Except, of course, it being K’Barthan it’s not a Christmas story per se but is about their equivalent, Arnold, The Prophet’s Birthday. And also, if I’m brutally honest, it’s only here because I wrote it last year f0r an anthology which never went ahead and then I never got round to writing the second half this year.

Never mind, last year’s happenstance and MTM cock ups amount to this year’s Christmas Easter Egg for you … or Christmas Easter Egg Nog, if you’re American, although I don’t know what Egg Nog actually is because I’m British. From what I understand, it’s a ye olde American tradition of drinking custard on Christmas morning. I used to drink custard instead of coffee in sixth form at school so it sounds good to me if a little … you know … odd.

Anyway onwards and upwards. Here it is, anyway. Feel free to download it of you want to. Is there an audio version yet? Oh no there isn’t BUT oh yes there is will be in the New Year, when Gareth has finished being the baddie in a panto. **

Here’s a bit more information:

The Last Word, A Christmas K’Barthan Extra

Shows the cover of The Last Word

The Last Word

Yes! It’s dark, it’s mid winter and in K’Barth that means only one thing. It’s Arnold The Prophet’s Birthday! The biggest holiday in the Nimmist year. As usual, the Grongles have banned any celebrations and worse, this year, to add insult to injury, they’re going to have a book burning on the Sacred Day but that’s not going to stop Gladys and Ada. Oh no. Here’s the blurb:

When Mrs Ormaloo brings the terrible news to the Turnadot Street Businesswomen’s Association that the Grongles are going to burn some more banned books on the night of Arnold, The Prophet’s Birthday Gladys and Ada decide to take steps. They even enrol some of the punters from their pub to help out.

The books are in a warehouse being kept under guard. Gladys, Ada, Their Trev and the rest of the group embark on a plan of devilish cunning to rescue as many banned books from the flames as they can.

Corporal Crundy is determined not to mess up his first assignment since his promotion. It should be easy. All he has to do is guard some books. Yeh. It should be a piece of cake but somehow that’s not the way it turns out.

This story is about the same length as Night Swimming and available in PDF, Mobi and Epub from Bookfunnel. Later I will add a second half to it and release it as a short story with a proper cover and t’ing rather than this slightly dodgy one what I done! Phnark.

To download your copy, click here

All that remains is to wish you and yours a wonderful Christmas – or whatever you do instead – and a fabulous New Year.

*I am probably going directly to hell for that joke.
** S’cuse the badly executed oh no it isn’t! Oh yes it is panto joke there. I couldn’t help myself.

 

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7 Aug 2021 · 5:38 pm

Urgh! Just kill me now …

This week I have been making a very credible attempt to disappear up my own bum. Jeepers, if this is what it takes to visit another country I am never ever smecking going abroad again. And I’m not even the poor bastard trying to organise it. That’s McOther.

Suffice it to say that we had been looking at the prospect of escaping to France at some point, but I suspect the gargantuan mound of admin we have to attend to, were we to do so, would compare unfavourably with the amount of forward planning Scot did for that fatal trip to the Antarctic.

Other news this week, my website – not this blog but the actual http://www.hamgee.co.uk one – fell over. OK it didn’t really fall over exactly, I pushed it … a little bit. But NOT on purpose.

For some time now my web interface over there has been pestering me to upgrade  to WordPress 5.8. However every time I do I get a server error. This was something which had always happened at first release but there was usually the option to upgrade to the US version. I’d do that and then the GB version would work fine. This time there was no US version.

This was not a good idea.

Looking up on t’interweb, I discovered that it might be down to lack of server space, possibly, or I might need to do a manual install. I deleted a lot of posts from my blog, except for the two years when it was there rather than here. Then I attempted the manual install. I followed the instructions carefully and … when I loaded the site, I got a little message telling me something was missing. And a white screen. But nothing more.

Shit.

I backed up the copy I had on my own computer and then cracked open the original copy I’d downloaded in 2014. Then I wiped everything on the server and uploaded that. Maybe that would work?

Nope.

Maybe if I uploaded the backed up recent version on my computer then?

Nope.

Shit.

The galling thing was that this was obviously a really simple fix, I was just having trouble understanding what things it was telling me it needed.

Long and the short of it was I contacted the fellow who designed the site and does my web hosting. After a fraught 24 hours waiting for him to come back to me. He was away bless him, he reassured me that there was a back up on the server and reinstalled one from Friday. It’s still a bit borked so he’s going to have a look at it and see if he can straighten things out. Fingers crossed.

Other news this week, I suddenly got two promo slots for Hello Books, which is rather good and as a result I added a couple of other promo sites and yesterday Escape From B-Movie Hell received a massive 40 downloads. I am very chuffed about this as they came from other sites as well as Amazon, including Barnes & Noble and Kobo. Woot. Happy with that then. Yes it cost more than I’m going to earn but at the moment it’s a case of collecting new readers any way I can and hoping that as they join in with the whole K’Barthan Jolly Japes community, they will stick around and read my other stuff too.

Yesterday, I managed to step on a dead chick which I think may be the most revolting thing I’ve ever done. It was very windy here and I think it must have blown out of a tree or been dropped by one of the squirrels/magpies. It still had a yellow egg sack and it was primrose yellow and fluffy and definitely hadn’t been caught by the cat as there were no bite/puncture marks. Ugh. Just thinking about it gives me the boake.

Over the next four weeks I have many, many things to do. Just the thought of it is giving me hives, also characteristically, many things I wanted to do are, of course, happening at the same time, or when I’m not around; church friend’s funeral, the first metal detecting rally I’ve had access to in two years … all fall on days I can’t get to them. I guess that’s the same old same old.

During the next month, I suspect there will be no blog posts because there will not be time. I’m really sorry about that. There is so much admin that it’s all I’ll have time to do. If you feel denuded of all things K’Barthan, and are on Facebook, do feel free to hop over there and join the K’Barthan Jolly Japery Group. It’s a scream and I should be able to check in there a couple of times a day.

Right then. That’s it, I think. A bientot! Waves.

In the meantime, if you are hankering after some K’Barthan nuttery …

You can get some of my books reduced at the moment. Woot.

There may be a security error on some of these links but last Friday, I installed something that fixed that, but clearly after the time the site was backed up to. I have just installed it again. Oh yes I have. Hopefully it will work and nothing will break.

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26 Jun 2021 · 11:41 am

In brief …

Life is feeling a bit like this at the moment …

Just briefly, some writing news this week. It’s the end of term there’s loads of stuff on at the school, sports day, for example, but because of Covid it’s been split over two days, an afternoon and a morning. I also appear to be completely and utterly knackered in that I have slept through my alarm for two days running. Ugh.

I have also got a bit down with the marketing. Slowly but surely, I am cobbling together a box set of funny books from seven authors. However, I am making very slow progress and at some stage I have to bite the bullet and appreciate that I am going to have to stump up ready money for a cover. This is why I haven’t done one before, of course. The cover. Because if we’re clubbing together to make a free book, I don’t want to charge anyone anything. But the folks I know who have done this are able to design proper, professional standard covers as well.

There’s also a conundrum with the name. I have what I thought was a great name but one of the authors dislikes it intensely and it would be useful if I could come up with something we all agree on. It’s funny fantasy and sci-fi first in series books. Originally I thought of calling it The Light Fluffstastic, in a play on 1990s comedy shows, Terry Pratchett and the fact they are comedy stories. One of the bigger names hates that so I’m trying to think of something else, but of course, I can’t get the light flufftastic out of my head now.

All the other marketing is going rather badly. I’ve tried having a book on 99c special this month, and as it’s Pride month Escape From B-Movie Hell, with it’s gay heroine, seemed like a good one. I’ve sold 10 copies so far, although it has been mentioned in the Ebookaroo newsletter today fingers and toes crossed there may be a handful more. Other authors, most of the ones I hang out with, run sales and give aways at the stores to gain visibility. That is not an avenue of expansion that is open to me because those 10 copies are actually a fantastic result.

How to get my books in front of the people who’d like them then. Hmm. Therein lies the million dollar question.

If only it was this neat in my head …

Advertising is very expensive at the moment. Unless I spend $5 or more a day, my Facebook ads never seem to get out of the learning stage and worse, the ones that had have gone back in! Yeek! This is to advertise books that make me $200 a month maximum. And of course it’s 3 months until I get any of the money from sales via retailers. Bookbub ads … ugh. I spent ages doing one yesterday, only to discover the ruddy thing had signed me out at some point in the process so when I clicked save, it all disappeared. Can I remember what it said? Can I buffalo? But even when I manage one, I can’t get the things to deliver. I’m begging them to spend my money but nothing’s happening. I guess I need to spend $5 a day plus there, too. Then there’s the fact I have more readers on Amazon than anywhere else but that isn’t where I want them. Amazon is volatile and hissy with its suppliers. I don’t want 80% of my income coming from the least reliable of all my outlets. I need to expand my readership to the other platforms but … ugh. Again. How?

Making a book free isn’t working – not enough downloads so it remains invisible, and even where it isn’t there is zero read through, which is a bit of a bummer. Google play, I get stacks of downloads for my free shorts in places like India and the Phillipines. I have reduced my prices in those countries accordingly (I am making 6p on each sale) but there is still no read through. Bit pants really. I suppose that’s why my marketing efforts tend to be quite basic. I get discouraged. And of course, there’s no time to have it running on more than tick over.

Since my marketing efforts at the moment are having such piss poor results, I’ve decided to concentrate on getting the box set finished and writing.

At the moment it’s all a bit like this.

As a result I wrote just under 1.5k yesterday. Was dead cuffed with that. This is a new series and I intend to have written three or four books before I bother publishing the first one. The world is still building itself right now so it’s taking a while but it’s only by beginning to write more of it that I can solve these conundrums … you know … does the station run on fuel cells that synthesise power from wee (actual existing thing) or is it the ship that runs on wee? Stuff like that.

It’s all a bit amorphous still but there’s definitely enough going on to start writing, and my curiosity is aroused enough to work on it regularly, which helps. I began it before and got 40k in but it was more of a sweeping epic, the baddie was bad, the stakes were high and there was a definite arc across the series that lasted about four books.

Right now I need to do things I can write in shorter instalments so while the sweeping epic was happening, it wasn’t happening very fast. Also, I know they don’t sell, or at least, not mine. Reading comedy books from people who do manage to sell them, it seems that they are a) a lot more slapstick and less sophisticated, b) the plots are simpler. I can’t really do slapstick and less sophisticated because I can only do it the way I do. I have no idea if it’s funny or not when I write things, the comedy part has always been more about making it look deliberate.

However, I can simplify the plots a bit, drop the multiple character POVs and make each book more like an instalment in a situation comedy. Or to put it another way, make it less of a Lord of the Rings style epic with added jokes and more like Porridge in Space.

The advantages of doing it like that are that I can probably include more world building as it goes on and the humour will be in the side characters, the surroundings, and our hero’s continued battle to get one over on a Mr Machay type of overseer who has taken against him. I dunno how many I can do, which is why I’m not going to publish the first one until I’ve written several but I can set it up so we don’t necessarily need an end, or at least, not until I decide to write one. The disadvantages to this are that I am very unsure as to whether I can think of that many adventures for them to have. Also, I do love the idea of a sweeping epic battle between good and evil. Although I’m doing another K’Barthan book like that, so I should try to be content with one, I think. In a nutshell, I guess I think that a kind of Porridge in Space might sell better than anything else I’ve done, but have grave doubts as to whether my comedic talent is up to it.

But I’m aiming for something a bit smoother like this.

Only one way to find out. Have a go. So that’s what I’m doing. The first one is provisionally entitled ‘Dignity Pants’. I’m enjoying myself, even if it ends up being crap. Right now, it’s so amorphous that I can’t tell. Then I’ll sell it as a straight sci fi space opera, which will be way, way easier than trying to sell humorous sci fi, which is officially a hot niche – woot – but only because it’s becoming a sub genre of romance, therefore burying my and any other books that actually are comedic sci-fi under a deluge of nekked manchest, rom-coms-in-space. Same thing happened to Fantasy.

Alongside this stuff, I also need to write some more Hamgeean Misfit stories. I’ve made a start on book five but my heart isn’t really in it, except it sort of is so I think this one probably begins in the wrong place. There is something creeping out of the woodwork there so I’ll let it ferment for a day or two and then have another go. I also need to finish the expanded version of the Christmas story I’m doing which features Gladys Ada, Their Trev and, of course, Humbert. That one has reached it’s first end point the mission is accomplished … sort of … but now they have to get home. I decided that they were going to run into some difficulties on that score but I haven’t started writing that bit so I’m not sure how many difficulties there will be or what, exactly will happen. I think that one’s about 12k at the moment so I suspect it will probably hit about 20k or thereabouts by the time I’m finished.

I guess the biggest problem is that I just take too bloody long to write this shit. It’s so annoying. But it is what it is.

Onwards and upwards. I’ll see how it goes.

On another note …

Yep, once again, I’m cutting my own throat here, but if you want to pick up an award-winning comedy sci fi novel for a song, now’s your chance.  Escape From B-Movie Hell is down to 99c/99p for the month of June. If you’ve already picked it up, do feel free to share the news with anyone you think might like it. Here’s the blurb.

Escape From B-Movie Hell, 99c for pride month.

Escape From B-Movie Hell, 99c until July 2021

If you asked Andi Turbot whether she had anything in common with Flash Gordon she’d say no, emphatically. Saving the world is for dynamic, go-ahead, leaders of men and while it would be nice to see a woman getting involved for a change, she believes she could be the least well equipped being in her galaxy for the job.

Then her best friend, Eric, reveals that he is an extraterrestrial. He’s not just any ET either. He’s Gamalian: seven-foot, lobster-shaped and covered in Marmite-scented goo. Just when Andi’s getting used to that he tells her about the Apocalypse and really ruins her day.

The human race will perish unless Eric’s Gamalian superiors step in. Abducted and trapped on an alien ship, Andi must convince the Gamalians her world is worth saving. Or escape from their clutches and save it herself.

If you’ve read the book and enjoyed it, feel free to share the ‘good’ news with anyone else who you think might. If you haven’t read it, and think you’d like to give it a go now it’s so cheap, then for links to buy – either from me or your favourite store – click here.

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6 Jun 2021 · 5:03 pm

Floating aimlessly

Yeh. Welcome to my world, the world of what might be the most unproductive human being on earth.

Shit! A squirrel has just run under my chair. Sorry where was I? Apart from outside, I mean. No squirrels indoors at this point, I’m glad to say. Ah yeh. Being the world’s most unproductive human. Not true. I do understand that. It just feels like it sometimes. I need to relax and take a chill pill.

Well, I sort of have. It’s half term this week so I have put writing aside and instead have been Humaning. I enjoy Humaning from time to time, especially when I seem to be particularly devoid of any creative inspiration, as I am this week. By doing nothing on my writing stuff, it’s not as if I’m doing any damage. I did get my ten minutes of writing in on Saturday, Sunday and Monday last week, though. Woot.

As I type this I am sitting outside. Yeh we did that didn’t we? Anyway, it’s cloudy but warm so I am stolidly refusing to acknowledge that it is, actually, beginning to rain. Hopefully it’s just going to be a bit of gentle spattering that passes harmlessly by rather than a full-on, race-for-the-door, deluge. Maybe that’s where the squirrel was going then. Somewhere dry. Hmm.

It being half term for us this week, we went to see the in-laws after nearly a year and a half of their being ill, us being ill, COVID19 or Nicola not letting us in because we have English Covid Cooties. It was wonderful to see them again and check that they are OK. They have a fair bit to contend with but seem to be doing alright, which was a relief. And I think their finally being able to see McOther and McMini after so long must have perked them up a bit.

It was a short trip because we didn’t want to knacker them out. The weather was kind to us and we went to Kelso, where there is a gorgeous house that used to belong to the family that started Pringle. We went for a walk round the lake while McMum and McDad sat and relaxed on a bench. The McOther and I went back a second time because I’d left my glasses there – I’d put them in my glasses case and put on my prescription sunglasses. Then the box had fallen out of my jacket pocket. On the upside, though we did get home to discover I had not brought my specs with me, no water closets were involved. I did find them straight away upon my return too. Someone had left the case in a little hole in the seat, end up, so that it was really obvious and easy to find. Bless ’em.

Impending week of oops-I’ve-lost-my-glasses-and-I-only-have-these-prescription-sunglasses Roy Orbison-ness avoided? Check.

It was a gorgeous house. Big, but not massive. I could imagine that if you were as rich as Croesus you could run a really happy team of staff there. It was a lovely spot, with a very pleasant and peaceful feel to it, which was unexpected. The volunteers gradually doing it up maintain the grounds and there were beds of flowers, not corporate planting but sympathetic stuff that went with it all so well. Cracking job all round. There was a lake too … cf pics I took, shown below.

  • The house, itself, which had a lovely feel to it
  • An arty shot. Where does the tree end and the lake begin?
  • Gorgeous bluebells and erm … yellow things.
  • The house from the other end of the lake
Lovely Kelso House – currently being restored by volunteers, and a couple of views of the lake.

When we got back, after a very rainy Friday, we spent Saturday with some friends in a cottage they’d hired Burnham Market. We passed a beautiful field of blue flax on the way, which I failed spectacularly to photograph. I also failed to capture a record of the sign to a place called Pudding Norton.

When I was a kid we used to holiday there and the ridiculous place names used to make us laugh. Before he came back to Sussex and met Mum, Dad taught at a school in Holt. North Norfolk was a popular holiday destination, not just because of the scenery but because Dad and Mum could visit all his old friends. Usually it was a bit like an episode of The Road Trip, in that Dad was funny, and a great mimic, and Mum was just plain funny. The friends; likewise. The conversation was always absolutely bats and normally involved Dad or one of his mates doing impressions, be-it Dad’s famous impression of a teacher from his school days at Lancing, who had a wooden leg, dropping dead in assembly one morning, or um … other stuff. All were very wicked and probably quite un-PC except they were always delivered with such obvious fondness for the unfortunate victim. Thinking about it, looking at the way they took the piss out of one another, I doubt the objects of their ribaldry would have batted an eyelid if they’d been around to see it. They were probably similar.

Wells next the sea at high tide.

At some point we usually went to Stiffkey salt marsh for the day – at low tide – and walked four half an hour or so to find the sea. There’d be indentations in the sand full of seawater that had been warmed to bath water levels by the sun, there would usually be a seal pup or two and sometime fossils. Finally, after walking for half an hour or so, we’d find the sea and skinny dip in the ice cold water, an event which usually involved a lot of screaming.

This Saturday, visiting our friends, we went past Holkolm Hall, a place of many happy memories, and then all of us went crabbing at Wells Next The Sea. Well, the kids crabbed, we walked along the prom and back. It made me smile to remember the happy times I’d spent up that way as a kid. But it was also lovely to think that I was walking somewhere where my father had undoubtedly walked before he’d ever fallen in love with my mother, in a part of the country where he had been very happy as a young man … until someone broke his heart. That’s why he came back to Sussex; new job, new start.

The architecture and stuff up there is so different that it really is like visiting another country, you know, northern France or something. It reminded me of Valerie Sur Somme, right down to a similar little train! So that was a bit of a gas.

It was gloriously sunny, but with a cool breeze off the sea that took it from a bit much in the heat department, to just right.

Now it’s back to Real Life.

Sea rowers at Wells Next The Sea.

Since Lock Down is ending … supposedly … it seems there’s so much to do. I sat down in a free moment to write this yesterday but realised that I needed to sort out a method of giving away Unlucky Dip in Audio because I can’t set the price to free at all the retailers, although I can set it for 99c so I’ve done that. Then this morning, I realised that I’d forgotten to publicise the fact that my standalone ebook, Escape From B-Movie Hell, is at the promotional price of 99c or pence or whatever, this month. Tomorrow I also have a newsletter to write which will take forever because everything uses blocks and the blocks interface takes about forty seconds to a minute to load.

Fine, roll your eyes and tell me I should learn some patience. But actually that’s a massive time suck. Added to that, doing stupid blocks on here, as I am now, when our internet connection drops, which it does, frequently, it’s likely I will lose it all. Sure I do save from time to time but originally, when the internet dropped and the annoying stupid little circle thing started going round and round on the screen, I could just do select all and copy everything I had written. That way, if I had lost it, I could just cut and paste it all back in and save it when the internet resurrected itself. Can I do that now? Can I bollocks? Stupid knobbing blocks are set up so the CtrlA – or CommandA on an I thing – only saves one paragraph; the one I’m actually editing. How is that in any way helpful?

Creative mojo, a fickle and fleeting thing.

Worse, if you look underneath at the code, it’s exactly the same as the stuff I used to get when I typed it into an editor. Seriously there’s no reason for this blocks shit other than to make it really and I mean REALLY hard for people. Likewise, Mailerlite … I moved to them from Mail Chimp and it was like a breath of fresh air. I clicked to edit an email and up it popped. It was blocks but it was fast. No waiting ages for it to crank up before you could edit. Then you just dropped your block onto the page and wrote in it.

Now? Nah. You have a preview pane and you have to do a paragraph at a time in the side bar.

Just in case that’s not irritating enough there are several parts to the side bar for each block template and there used to be a scroll bar so you could move up and down. That’s now gone. So you get the thing where you’re editing a paragraph and the bit that lets you do bold or alter the justification isn’t in frame. So you have to click on the edge and use the arrow keys on your keyboard to make it move. But they don’t always work because if you click into a box by mistake it just thinks you’re editing that and doesn’t budge. What was wrong with the bloody scroll bar ffs? It didn’t take up any space but it meant I could do those edits way faster. Is this finger trouble? Am I such a moronic twat that I’ve somehow removed the scroll bar from my option and if so why the fuck is there no easy and obvious way to put it back?

At least with windows when I do that thing on the keyboard and the box suddenly appears saying, ‘do you want to turn on sticky keys?’ I can shout, ‘No! No! I fucking don’t!’ and click on cancel. Clearly I’ve borked something the same way but there was no, ‘Are you sure you want to remove this really useful scroll bar that you actually rely on rather heavily?’ box. It just disappeared! Poof! Gone.

Bastards!

Then there’s the fact that fucking Linked In randomly disconnects itself so when I come to publish it tells me I have to go refresh my connection to Linked In. Every. Fucking. Time. Why, Linked in, you total and utter cockwomble! Why? This is total bollocks and phaff that I do not need in my life. I’ve connected you to my blog because I want the two of you to be fucking connected. Randomly disconnecting yourself is not looking after my security. It is bing a fucking pain in the arse. If I wanted to disconnect you from my blog, I would disconnect you from my blog. I haven’t ergo I do not chuffing want to. How hard is that to understand, you absolute fucking muppet?

Yeh, I can imagine what anyone normal and sensible reading this is saying now. This stuff is chicken shit and doesn’t make any difference. Except trust me, it does.

Don’t believe me?

OK, here are some Real Life examples. When I drive to Mum’s on a Wednesday, it takes around two and a quarter to two and a half hours. In lock down, it took two hours. There was no difference in speed. I drive at 3,000 revs which is usually around 70mph give or take a bit – it varies a little with the weather, the gear I’m in and the speed limit, clearly. The reduced journey time was simply caused by the fact that I wasn’t dropping down to 57 as a lorry pulled into my path, or proceeding through the only two miles on the M11 where lorries aren’t allowed to overtake at 57mph, because some absolute bell end in one lorry was overtaking another gargantuan twatwank in another one, and neither of them was giving way to the other. Or, it could be that I wasn’t following a wide load down the double track bit of the M11 with a weaving escort vehicle that wouldn’t let anyone pass for health and safety reasons – even though there was room to put a couple of bloody buses past it side by side without causing the buses or the load any problems. Let alone my stupidly tiny, tiny car.

Likewise, many years ago, I used to commute to Birmingham from Ely. It used to take about two hours or thereabouts going at 70mph most of the way. Limited to 60mph, running-in my brand new Lotus, it took me about twenty five minutes less. Yes even running in at 60mph all the way, it was quicker in a Lotus than in a Triumph Spitfire going 70mph. Why? because those people who sit in the fast lane drifting along for miles and miles saw me coming and actually got out of the chuffing way. It’s the acceleration and deceleration time that drives the journey time up, so the smoother your journey the quicker.

This is not new. There’s a whole fitness and training strategy based on the little things, I believe. I think it was the Team GB cycling trainer who worked out that small things added up. An uncomfortable night with less sleep might make an athlete tired and not quite at their best, it might only make a couple of hundredths of a second to their time but in the velodrome, that might be the difference between winning or losing. So he hit on the idea that if he made sure that all these, seemingly irrelevant, pernickety things were right, the effect on overall performance might be quite substantial. Needless to say, it was. Suddenly Team GB were winning medals.

It’s a genius idea and over the course of my years doing motorway journeys I’ve begun to think that there is definitely something in it. It’s not about whether you blat along in the fast lane at 90mph, it’s about whether other motorists think you will and get out of your way so you can do a solid 3,000 revs all the time. That makes a huge difference to petrol consumption as well. It’s also whether there are a small enough number of other motorists for you to be able to drive smoothly at that speed. And of course, constantly standing on the anchors because a lorry has pulled out in front of you makes for inefficient acceleration and deceleration time. I suppose it’s only natural, there are many proponents of the ten minutes a day fitness regime. I did try doing a 6 minute, high intensity interval thing once a day for a couple of weeks and there was a noticeable drop in my resting pulse so I think there’s definitely something in that approach.

Similarly the ten minutes a day approach to writing, in the last year that I was able to keep it up consistently, 2019, it netted me a stupid amount of words at a point when they weren’t really coming that easily. OK, so, in 2020 it was different. I managed 55k in a couple of months as I changed my 30k short into Too Good To Be True. But that was because there was zero stress on the horizon. Right now I’m back to stressy hormonal can’t think straight so the ten minutes a day is a good discipline to resurrect.

So where am I going with this? Well, two ways, I guess. First I’m saying that the old adage that you should break a huge job into tiny pieces and deal with each of those pieces one at a time is great advice. But conversely it means that each of these tiny, pissy things that are sent to try us also add up; to something big and, in my case, cataclysmic. In lock down, all the pissy administrative shit went away. I couldn’t have a smear test, eye test, dental check or boob x-ray so I didn’t have to remember to book them, note the correct time/date and get to them. We weren’t going away so I didn’t have to remember to book the cat into kennels. I didn’t have to do social things which involved me remembering to shave my legs or find something that made me look slightly less like a parked zeppelin draped in camouflage material than usual. OK so I still had to make sure I did the wages and fix whatever the latest thing was that had broken at Mum’s house, from a distance, but that’s alright because there was only the one life I had to sort out: hers. Mine was on hold, as were McOther’s and McMini’s so no organising McMini’s bloody PE kit either.

The second point I wanted to make was that sometimes, you just have to let it all go. There is shit I have to do right now. And I have McMini’s birthday coming up which will involve doing stuff like making a cake. And I have some more boring pissy administria to do so I decided that I’d take two weeks out, one before and one after half term, to do it. It’s not going badly. I’ve signed up for too many promos so it will take me all day to sort out the mailing tomorrow. But I have planned time for it. After that there will be more humaning, which will be fun, and a bit more admin, which won’t. But if I can crack through it diligently enough then the week afterwards, with any luck, I may be able to do a bit of writing. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go talk to McOther about booking the cat into kennels … while I remember.

Award-winning fiction for a snip!

Escape From B-Movie Hell is down to 99c or p or whatever it is you do instead of cents or pence. In case you have forgotten, or for those of you who don’t know about it, here’s the blurb:

Escape From B-Movie Hell

Escape From B’Movie Hell

First contact, in films, was never like this …

If you asked Andi Turbot whether she had anything in common with Flash Gordon she’d say no, emphatically. Saving the world is for dynamic, go-ahead, leaders of men and while it would be nice to see a woman getting involved for a change, she believes she could be the least well equipped being in her Galaxy for the job.

Then her best friend, Eric, reveals that he is an extra terrestrial. He’s not just any ET either. He’s Gamalian: seven-foot, lobster-shaped and covered in marmite-scented goo. Just when Andi’s getting used to that he tells her about the Apocalypse and really ruins her day.

The human race will perish unless Eric’s Gamalian superiors step in. Abducted and trapped on an alien ship, Andi must convince the Gamalians her world is worth saving. Or escape from their clutches and save it herself.

If you’re interested you can find a page of links to the main retail sites here.

If you are not interested, do feel free to share it with your friends, family, the postman, the bloke who sometimes collects the empty cups at your local coffee shop and anyone else you can think of to spam, because it isn’t spam from you because it’s not your book.

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1 May 2021 · 5:23 pm

Unicorn farts and other sundry ephemora

This is going to be a short one because it’s twenty past five, which means I have approximately forty minutes to write my usual fifteen hundred word blog post. Hmm. Isn’t going to happen.

Looking at my notes to write about this week they read as follows:

  • Auto correct and bloody Duke
  • Metal detecting and throwing a six

That is all. Okay… off we go then.

Metal Detecting and throwing a six

Saxon ... thing.
A Saxon … thing.

Quite pertinent as I write this, that one. Yesterday, to my absolute delight, I was invited along to a friend’s permission to do some detecting. It was an old club permission so I’ve been going there for a while. The land owner is thoroughly good egg and it’s a lovely spot.

The last time I was there I found a crushed silver thimble from the 1600s I think, and a hammered coin. I love finding stuff from that era because it was such a stormy time in our past. Anything less civil than our Civil War is hard to imagine. You know I’m fairly obsessed because I’ve told you the story about a house called Woodbines which my family lived in, in Kingston, although I’m not sure it’s on this blog. You can read it on the blog on my official author’s site, which I no longer post to, down the end of this link here. Excuse the lack of pictures. I believe that if you’re using a picture to illustrate something under discussion, on a personal blog, it’s supposed to be fair use. However, I still got hit by copyright trolls. I don’t want to risk a huge bill, but also I don’t want to inadvertently pirate photos. I thought it was clear cut but it seems not. Hence, I’ve removed the three pictures I, personally, haven’t taken from all my blogs and two of them were on that post.

Where was I? Oh yeh, so I love Civil War era artefacts mainly because that era was so uncivil and it makes me feel close to a very turbulent part of our history.

The thimble wasn’t my first bit of treasure, there was a bit of Anglo Saxon strap end previously to that from another permission. Both were interesting and have to go through the process by din’t of being silver, rather than particularly brilliant in any respect. That said, a museum somewhere might want the thimble because it’s a bit rarer, coming as it does from an era in history when they were being melted down to make coins to fund the war effort. The modern day ‘evangelists’ yelling ‘Jesus needs your money’ on telly are clearly nothing new since the Puritans really believed they were doing God’s work. Humourless and uptight, they were eventually kicked out of the UK and a lot of them became the founding fathers of America. I’m wandering off on one though.

So we started detecting. The setting is one of the many studs in this neck of the woods and our main purpose is to get any big or spiky bits of iron out of the ground after a piece injured one of the horses a few years ago. This week there was a gorgeous little foal who was too shy to be photographed. I nearly managed it though. After a while I felt I should try and actually find some iron, it wasn’t going very well, I was digging what I thought were big crap signals and discovering, after digging a very deep hole, that the thing that had caused the bing was not iron. Eventually, I got what, in theory, should be a decent bing and sure enough, down in the hole, I found a random silver bit of something. I checked the hole but a bit was all there was. I thought it was either arts and crafts or Saxon. To be honest there wasn’t going to be any middle ground.

Now, having consulted smarter people I am pretty sure it’s Saxon, so that’ll be off to the treasure process then. On the up side, it’s so good it’s likely to come from a grave so there may be more of it. Even better, we should be back on the site this week so I will be able to have a look. But the thing I find most amazing is that when I pulled it out of the ground, mine were the first hands to touch it since someone living six to eight hundred years after the death of Christ pinned it, grieving, to the tunic of a recently dead loved one.

Where is the throwing a six bit to this? Well, I have this theory. I’ve never found gold or anything like that with my detector and I’ve always assumed that my main problem there is the walking over it bit. Because I think, to walk over something really valuable like a hoard or a piece of valuable gold, you have have a certain kind of luck. I remember as a kid playing Ludo with my family. You had to throw a six to start and then you threw the dice to go round the board and back into your ‘home’. The person who got all four of their counters home first was the winner. I remember sitting there, round after round, trying to throw a six to get out and failing dismally. Often I’d not succeed to get anyone out onto the board until my brother’s first counter was already ‘home’. Then Mum, who had similar dice throwing skills, and I would make our way round the board throwing a one each time.

I was always last.

The luck that follows me is not the kind of luck that wins me many premium bonds … or board games. When the Unicorn farts, I am usually up-wind or indoors or … I dunno … facing the wrong way. Except for people; there’s the McOthers, many of my friends and a lot of the colleagues I’ve stumbled upon through my working and writing life. Work stuff would clearly be things like Gareth popping up and wanting to narrate my books … well it could only have been a cloud of sparkly unicorn gas that wafted that piece of good fortune my way! Bloody hell! And nothing gives a person a bigger lift than when someone with a generous dollop of talent in their own field seems to think your stuff is good, I mean he is an actor but I think that’s genuine! Mwahahargh. Also Katherine Jackson, who taught me so much about editing, while editing my books and really had no business dying like that. I still miss her. Then there’s the lovely folks who do my covers, who I blundered upon because they were the people my employers used. And the lovely folks I’ve met and become cyber buddies with in my authoring efforts. But that’s not the luck I’m talking about. The luck I mean is the throwing a six and winning at board games kind of luck.

Am I content with that? Well yes, I think for the most part I am. If I can only choose one, I’ll take the one I have. But reverting to the silver thing – actually I’m pretty sure it’s a silver gilt thing – it’s clearly a tiny fragment of something special. What, exactly, I do not know but, as I mentioned before, most likely it’s grave goods. A brooch pinned to the clothes of a very loved, cherished and high-status dead person before burial so they would be looking at their best in the next life. The rest of it is probably still there somewhere … if I can find it.

If …

Part of me thinks – possibly a little churlishly – that were I the kind of person who could throw a six on a regular basis, I’d have found the whole thing. Another part of me realises that even this tiny fragment is like throwing a double five, a whole one would be the find of a life-time. It’s not that they’re rare, although they are, I believe, but one that good, whole, would be a hen’s teeth job. On the other hand, it definitely ties in with my ability to find interesting things. The ideal, of course, being something interesting enough to be fabulous (to me) but not so interesting it’s worth stacks and I have to sell it! And then another part of me is thinking that I’ll be back there next Thursday. I was chatting to the ex finds liaison officer for this area on line. He told me that in his time, someone had found a fragments of a similar things, returned to the site and found more … Mmm. I’ll keep you posted.

Autocorrect and bloody Duke

A brief one here. Anyone who knows me, personally, will know that when it comes to communication, using my phone, if I’m not speaking, is the bane of my life as it is one long battle with auto correct/auto complete. Auto whatever it is is like wearing a gag, although if I turn auto correct off it seems to be even worse. Part of the problem is that I use the swift keyboard – the Google one.

What is wrong with that thing? It seems to be possessed by some dyslexic demon with an exotic name fetish. Case in point, here in the UK, on the whole, Duke is a surname, a title or something you call your dog. I do not know anyone called Duke as a first name and I think, in the entire two years, so far, that I’ve owned this phone that I’ve typed the word ‘Duke’ on purpose, twice. Yet, whenever I type the word ‘done’ Duke is what it gives me. Not only does it give me Duke but if I change it to done and continue I will find, when I hit send, that it’s quietly changed ‘done’ back to Duke again. Every. single. fucking. time.

Someone or sometime. Bog-standard words. Often used you’d have thought. Summertime. Not so common. Uh-uh-uh, says Auto correct. Every time I type either of those words it defaults to summertime. This is with actual real auto correct switched off. This is just the stupid slidey keyboard getting it wrong. Then there’s or. What is so fucking difficult about understanding it when my finger is sliding from the o to the r key? I’ve no clue but what I get for ‘or’ is out or put. And once again that’s every. fucking. time.

I read somewhere that these things work by looking at what the normals type, averaging it out and offering suggestions. Lord above I haven’t a fucking hope then have I? I mean, look at the words I use. OK so it’s learned the word, K’Barthan. That said it seems to unlearn it and have to be taught afresh from time to time. I’ve no idea why that is. But if it can learn that when I type in K’ I’m going to be saying K’Barthan because that’s what I type every time I write K’ then why the fuck can’t it learn, by the same logic, that every time I type in Mc I’m going to type McGuire? Why is it able to understand that I spell ‘realise’ without an ess rather than a zed but at the same time, be pathologically unable to grasp that if, every time I type done and it offers me Duke I cancel it and type done again until it accepts it, I must actually mean done. Why, when I type in the letters d-o-n-e and not Duke, does it default to Duke, a word I never type, comprising completely different fucking letters?

Also, new factor here. Random capitalisation. If I am in the middle of a sentence, or sometimes in the middle of a word it will suddenly give me a capital letter so I get stuff like,

Hello, how are You doiNg today?

Mental. It’s not as if I’m typing the name of some obscure chemical that is only written by out in full every six million years. These are bog-standard words that everyone uses. Seriously though, who, in God’s name, are the people it’s taking averages from to work out how english … well … you know … works? What in the name of holy fuck are they saying to produce the shit-show that is my phone’s text suggestions? I can only assume it’s mostly folks in Asia where English is used a lot but isn’t anyone’s first language, or that my vocabulary is simply too wide for the parameters of the algorithm to operate. (Really, though? Sounds doubtful.)

At a complete loss, I tried speaking to it. But it can’t understand my fucking accent! My fucking ENGLISH accent for fuck’s sake! The other day I was speaking a sentence which involved the phrase, ‘power of attorney’. My phone decided I’d said, ‘parrot Ernie.’ Give me fucking strength!

As a result, I find myself typing each word tiny letter by tiny letter and the phone, which should be something I can use to quickly reply to stuff, turns into a time sink.

Bah! Swift key? There’s a fucking oxymoron if ever I heard it.

Bookish things …

Yeh, those. So, this month, was officially the worst in about three years for sales.

Last April, I made £408.74 in book sales. This April, I made, er hem, about £65 if I count the sale on my website. Then again it’s up on April 2019 when I made £56.68. Mmm.

Something appears to have happened to Amazon, maybe it’s because I dicked with my series pages – as in changed the name from ‘K’Barthan Trilogy Series’ to K’Barthan Series. Actually no, thinking about that it wasn’t this month. But needless to say, the K’Barthan Trilogy, while disappearing completely from my dashboard, is still alive and well on Amazon. I now have a two book series called the K’Barthan Trilogy (it contains books three and four) which appears nowhere on my dashboard and is therefore undeletable, but alas, all over Amazon. I will sort it out but at the moment I just don’t have the strength of will to deal with emailing KDP customer service repeatedly until they stop giving me boiler plate answers to some other vaguely related question, finally read my actual query and give me a bastard answer.

On the up side, I discovered something weird about myself. Because I’ve made about forty quid on Amazon this month, instead of a hundred and fifty, my wide sales are a much bigger percentage. For the first time they are over a third; 34%. For some bizarre reason, this makes me feel fantastic. Audiobooks, I still appear to be unable to give the bloody things away off Amazon/Audible – except for the odd library purchase or sale on Google Play. Ebooks though, there’s a weeny hint of movement from non-Amazon vendors. This may be because I’ve been actively advertising to people in countries where Amazon companies are not the number one supplier.

It’s not that I don’t like Amazon as a customer, it’s alright, except it’s getting harder and harder to find out how to pay for anything I buy without joining Prime – talk about black pathways. But while I don’t want to penalise Amazon users, I have no wish to be beholden for my income to a company with such rancid corporate ethics, so ideally, I’d like to see a lot of my income derived elsewhere.

Sales last month with unfeasibly high percentage wide because Amazon was low. This month because there’s only been one day, and Amazon sales continue to flatline, I’ve sold a book on Kobo and am 100% wide for a while! Yay!

Yes, here I am a hundred dollars plus down on my monthly earnings and I’m not nearly as pissed off as I should be – and year-on-year looking at 2018 and 2019 they were about the same – but the distribution of sales over the different platforms is making me happier than money? Well yes. But also it’s because the action on other platforms seems to be increasing a teeny bit. Even better, as my Amazon sales continue to flatline, I have sold my first book of the month, on the first day, from Kobo. Yes, for a while I have a 100% wide sales chart. This also makes me unaccountably happy. There is zero logic in this. I am doing badly and I should be worried but strangely I care more about increasing my sales elsewhere (which is really hard) than on Amazon. I appreciate it sounds a bit touched in the head. But Amazon is difficult to deal with and has the corporate ethics of a morally louche confidence trickster. All its rules are enforced by AI but it’s the cheapest crappest AI possible – NOT like the algorithm at all – which means they are totally inconsistent and their measures ridiculously draconian, often with no appeal or recourse.

Amazon’s customers love the experience but they mostly do prime. The books I’m interested in are usually like my own, outside Kindle Select so I know I wouldn’t maximise the benefits of Prime. Also I don’t understand people who pay £7 a month for netflix, £7 a month for prime, £7 a month for Spotify and so on ad infinitum. All those invisible direct debits chipping away at my income … the thought gives me hives. I need to know the cash is going out. Then again, I am eclectic and have a wide range of interests. Therefore, just as auto correct throws up its hands and has a melt down trying to predict what I will say, so a subscription algorithm probably isn’t going to deliver me with what I require once it is tweaked for commercial gain. Since Amazon’s algorithms are now driven by advertising payments rather than entirely by the desires of the customer, it’s unlikely I’d find what I wanted there. And since Spotify has announced that it, too, will be shifting to that model, I’d suspect theirs will become the same.

I appreciate that the Normals like Prime and Amazon’s customer service is excellent for those who fit their ideal customer criteria (I don’t). But to deal with as a distributor, Amazon is extremely high maintenance. Clearly, they are important and I will always have my books there, but ideally, I want the lion’s share of my income and interaction to be with entities where things are smoother, pleasanter and better run. And where my royalties will not inexplicably go tumbling from over £300 a month to £40. Not to mention that the other sites, and my own, all pay me higher royalties than Amazon for book sales. That’s just business logic innit?

And now, some free stuff and a lot of Things On The End …

Small Beginnings …

Small Beginnings: Ebook version

This month, I have mostly been doing some marketing. I have two things that might be useful. First, Small Beginnings is now free pretty much everywhere except Amazon. I’m hoping it will go free at Amazon eventually.

Normally if I reduce books in price to zero pence elsewhere Amazon makes it free on their own but they don’t seem to have noticed this time. Anyway, if you’d like to bag yourself a free copy of Small Beginnings, or you know someone who might, you can find a page with links to download it. NB, in this particular case, avoid my online shop as I haven’t sorted out a discount code yet and Amazon, because … ditto. Yeh, still steeling myself to contact KDP help (shudders) with the web address of my book on every single Amazon site, followed by the web address of it shown as free on every single country Amazon serves on Kobo, Google Play and iBooks.

Kobo are featuring it in their free section this week, too. For that information link click here.

Unlucky Dip: Audiobook version

OK so you do actually get this as part of my mailing list sign up protocol but if you aren’t, and you have a boring half hour job to do and would like something to listen to to lighten your spirits while you do it, you can’t really go wrong with this. It’s all that is joyous and wonderful about Gareth doing his thing – albeit on a bit of writing that is, if I’m honest, not my best work. Never mind. That is free in two places this month, from iBooks and from Kobo. For links to that, click here.

Merchandise …

Finally, do you remember that K’Barthan merchandise I was talking about? Two developments on that one.

Thing one … If you would like to vote and haven’t yet, the quiz is still open for you to choose your favourite K’Barthan invective. because I have to send it to my mailing list in two week’s time as well! You can still vote for your favourite invective here.

Well I finally have a sort of shop, although it’s Zazzle so no-one will be able to afford anything – I’m working on other suppliers who are less expansive (and pay more royalties) – and also I haven’t finished adding products. But if you’re interested to see how it’s going and you want a gander, you can see that here.

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