EVENTS

Last week saw my first event in Devizes, a classically English town in Wiltshire. The corn exchange, where the event was held, was a large, light and airy room and the weather had calmed down from the crazy temperatures it had reached the days before.

I’d arrived pretty early and people started coming in long before the event officially started. I ended up selling my first books ten minutes before the curtains opened. It turned out to be a good omen.

I’d broken even by the midway point of the day and it was set to be somewhere between an average to good day compared to other events. However I was fully aware I’d said that to myself before only for the footfall to vanish and not return.

The three pack of short stories were selling very well, both as upsells when people bought OPERATION DAWN WOLF, and when they weren’t intending to make a purchase. Although the sales remained steady after lunch, in the last hour the place went nuts. From nowhere there was a steady stream of people and they were buying, and not just some me. I took over half of the days credit card payments in that hour alone and I ended up with one out of my three large boxes of books empty for the short walk back to the car.

By this time I knew the event had been a success but when I totalled up the figures I realised it was my highest grossing and most profitable one day event in the few years I’ve been doing them. I ended up selling seventeen sets of short stories, with all the potential that goes with them, and OPERATION DAWN WOLF was again the star with double figure quantities sold, whilst IN THE END wasn’t far behind. I sold a scattering of other books too.

This Saturday I’m back at Hungerford, which I’ve already been to this year and is so far my poorest performance to date. I’m hoping that was a fluke and that I can at least hit somewhere close to my average otherwise I won’t be booking the location again.

Next month I get to book events for 2023 and I plan to book one out of the four most successful events each month, then add in the lesser events to give them another try. I’ll stick to two shows a month, apart from at Christmas and none for August.

WORK IN PROGRESS

Stopping Power – An Agent Carrie Harris Undead Story – I’m still sticking to my current plan of getting as many episodes ready as I can ready to send off for edit whilst I’m on holiday at the end of July. Episode two is nearly complete with a few more elements added as I drafted the later chapters. Episode three is at a good draft stage and I’ve just finished a rough draft of four. I’m now running back over four to give it a polish and then I’ll decide whether to start a revision edit on three and four, or to plough on with getting episode five out of my brain. I have around three weeks to go before I need to think about sending them off, so I have a choice which way I go with it.

I’ve drafted the cover format for the episodes, which are just a slight revision of the original cover and I’ll be keeping the same background but I’ve added an episode number and the episode title. This will keep everything simple and will show how they relate to each other.

Here’s the old and new cover format.

I’m giving away so many copies of the first episode, it won’t be long before I need to get more printed.

That’s quite enough from me this week. Next week hopefully I will have good news about my performance at Hungerford, but I’ve set a very low bar, so we’ll see. Comments and suggestions welcomed as always.