Reviews Part Two

 

For years, my first Jenny Parker novel struggled to get reviews. There were a fair number of sales, but reviews were hard to come by. Then I wrote the blog previous to this one.

Unbeknown to me, my publishers had created a big promotion for the Jenny Parker series around the same time.

Normally, my sales are communicated to me with my royalty statement on a six monthly basis. A very good half-year might involve a thousand sales. I'd not had a good one for quite a long time. We're talking a few dozen sales.

I went to an old friend's farm to give him my rescue chickens. This isn't a digression, though it might sound like me going off at a tangent, because his partner and her friend have been keen readers of my books for years. A socially distanced chat revealed that she hadn't read the latest Jenny Parker book and she rang her friend to tell her there was another treat coming her way. I offered to send her a copy but she said she was happy to buy one.

OK, I'm getting to the point. Be patient.

If I want to see how my books are doing, I go to my Amazon author's page and look at the charts. One sale makes a big difference when you're selling very few books. You can soar from number 1,000,000 to number 50,000 in an instant before gradually decaying back down to earth.

On a promise of a sale, I checked my Amazon page. All my books were doing ridiculously well. Due Diligence was second overall in the UK and 3rd overall in the US. Obviously there was a glitch with the figures so I checked with my publishers. No glitch, more than 30,000 downloads, they said.

I was gobsmacked and happy. Then the sales persisted. Then the reviews and ratings began to accumulate. DD has well over a hundred positive reviews now.

So, I'm telling you that writers should never give up. Success can come at any time. And when it does, I have to remind myself to taste the sweetness instead of wishing for even more.

One sale is enough to make me happy. One positive review increases that happiness tenfold.

Despite the pandemic, there's a big smile on my face most of the time now.

Limited Liability

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Limited-Liability-Jenny-Parker-Book-ebook/dp/B00N3LBTNA/

Some of you have been eagerly awaiting the third Jenny Parker novel. Well, your wait is over. The ebook is available now and the paperback will follow shortly.

It's actually the sixth novel I've completed, though the first three are unlikely to see light of day. It's been about a year since I finished the first draft and entered the interesting phase of revising Limited Liability and having it edited. 

I've begun to enjoy the process, particularly being told what works and what doesn't, what needs writing and what needs leaving out. I've somehow got over the precious attitude I used to have. The one that compels me to protect every word as if it were sacrosanct and defend every paragraph as if my life depended on it.

As with Due Diligence and Proceeds of Crime  the final version of Limited Liability is very different from the first draft. It's better. It's got more punch, more immediacy, more interesting things happening. And it's much more coherent.

I love it when things go well and LL has turned out brilliantly, though I say so myself.

By the time I'd done with LL, I'd begun to think that Jenny Parker was finished with me and that came as something of a relief. I embarked on a different project, a novel called Funky Junk which I am co-writing with my friend Daragh. Now I've nearly completed this (and it's going really well, I'll tell you all about it soon) Jenny has popped up again and embarked on another series of breathtaking escapades. I don't know where she gets the energy, I'm happy to be taken along on the ride.

So, Critical Analysis is in preparation and you can expect a fourth Jenny Parker novel in about a year.

Bees

I'm on week ten of a ten week beekeeping course. After the classroom stuff, I'll be getting hands on experience in the spring. Or getting stung, as the experienced beekeepers so delicately put it.

Bees are important, they are needed to pollinate our food crops and they are massively under threat.

This lady explains it much better than I can:

http://www.ted.com/talks/marla_spivak_why_bees_are_disappearing.html

It's just one of the many things going wrong with the world, I suppose. Like I said previously, it's easy to get discouraged and give up.

There is another way, though. Pick something you can do and do it. Even if it's as simple as being more mindful about what you consume. And plant some bee-friendly flowers.

Despair and Presumption

I was brought up a Catholic, so you don't have to tell me about sin.

Most people know about the seven deadly sins, there was a film about them after all. I could name them but sloth has set in.

There are two sins much more serious than the deadly ones. How can you get more serious than deadly?Listen, this is religion. Believe me there's a lot worse things than dying when it comes to religion.

The two biggies that immediately cast you down into the fiery furnace to be tortured for infinity are despair and presumption. So watch out for them in your lives. You might not believe in all this sort of stuff but that really doesn't matter. What you believe is immaterial when you find yourself sentenced to suffer an infinite amount for ever. 'Whoops! Didn't realise. Sorry. Now can I go?' Probably not, don't you think?

So why am I harping on about some old fashioned religious belief of doubtful application to real life in the modern era? Good question, to answer that I'll have to look at the two sins, attitudes, states of mind, call them what you will.

First, despair. This is when you've abandoned all hope. When you know that whatever you might do or try to do it'll make no difference.

Next, presumption. This is when you assume that someone else is taking care of business, that you don't have to do anything yourself, that you can just carry on the way you want to and things will turn out just fine.

We're all agreed that the world's in a mess. The human race is up shit creek. We're destroying the earth with our rapacious consumption. The only option being offered to us by governments is more of the same.

So, which is it? Despair or presumption? Which one do you hang on to as justification for doing nothing, for standing by and letting the situation get worse?

It doesn't have to be like that, we can choose to adopt one of the cardinal virtues.

HOPE

This book is a good start.

Active Hope

Little things are all it takes. Don't give up. Together we can make the world better.

Next time I'll tell you what I've decided to do about all this.

An Amazing Day

After a good week, today is turning out incredibly!

First there's the movie/tv series offer for Due Diligence. I don't have all the details for you yet, but someone's imagination has been fired up and an incredible proposition is being made today. We're talking Hollywood blockbuster here, though it seems I'll have to make some tweaks to the plot, the setting and most of the characters. New York is sufficiently like Manchester for that to work, Jenny will probably do well as a man but I'm not entirely sure where I'm going to fit in a vampire and a hobbit. Their insistence on a part for Ja Ja Binks is entirely understandable under the circumstances.

Even more remarkably, my publishers, Open Circle, have been the subject of a multi-million dollar takeover bid from Amazon. As Open Circle are yet to make any money, this might seem a little surprising. I do have a theory, though. Due Diligence is currently published on KDP Select. This means that Amazon have exclusive sales for 90 days. Maybe they are worried about a huge drop in earnings when DD can be bought elsewhere?

So, a very special day. I may be able to resist the Hollywood blandishments, though. My chickens have begun to lay golden eggs.

Proceeds of Crime

It's September 2012
I started writing in July 2007, since then I've managed to finish five novels. The latest one, Proceeds of Crime, was completed today.

Five novels, five years and one month. I'm running behind my schedule of a novel a year.
That's what writers do, we always find ways to beat ourselves up for not performing.

Proceeds of Crime is pretty damn good. It's the best novel I've ever written but it won't hold a candle to the next one. I think it's a general rule, the more I write, the better I write. It's the advice I give to anyone: Write

When I finish this blog post, I'll have a sleep then start on my next project; version 2 of Technical Difficulties with fresh, improved characters and a hero that you don't want to die quickly and painfully.

The first draft is four years old now, if it were a child it would be off to school. Time then to let it grow up.

Meanwhile, I have an interesting chicken problem. One of my new ones, Sigourney, won't go in the coop at night. Instead, she goes into the bushes and hides. When I go out to close the door, I have to coax her out, pick her up, give her a cuddle and pop her to bed. She has no problem with this arrangement but I need something a little more sensible in place before I leave the boy next door in charge while I'm away at FantasyCon.

I've bought a tiny little hen house just for her, but she won't go in there either. I've tried installing a light hoping this will entice her in but to no avail.

Last night I turned the coop around so that it faces the bushes she hides in, again she insisted on me picking her up and putting her to bed. She walked right past the light to get to me.

Any ideas?

Suggestions not involving neck wringing are welcome.