Welcome to the first of my now monthly blog posts, where hopefully I’ll have much more to share than when I was coming to you every week. Since the last post my girls have gone off to uni (at opposite directions in the country, of course) and I’ve climbed a mountain, albeit a small one.

In my writing life the second in the sci-fi series is coming along nicely. Each part of the manuscript is now at different stages as after getting half way through an editing pass I decided to add a new attribute to a character, so rather than carrying on I started again from the beginning with the revision. I seem to remember this happened with LATS, and that turned out alright. The word count is edging towards 71,000 so it’s getting a bit heavy, which I need to keep an eye on.

The first book, LOST AMONGST THE STARS, is now available on audio. It took around ten days to go through quality control with Audible, which is pretty quick. Since then I’ve been giving away free copies in exchange for reviews and have three already. I’ve given away over ten copies and am looking to give more too. In my newsletter to my mailing list subscribers I’m giving a general shout out for anyone who wants to review it for free.

Reviews for the written version of the book have stagnated, despite giving away so many copies! It’s frustrating but hopefully people we get around to reading at some point. This week I decided the time was right to run some promotions on the book and I’ve signed up for one of the more expensive third party mailing lists in hope I can garner some more reviews and ratings. I’ll also do the rounds with the free sites to see what I can get from them.

In more audiobook news, I’ve commissioned Samual James, the LATS narrator, for the entire FATE’S AMBITION series using royalty share plus and production is due to start in January!

EVENTS

It looks like next year I’m going to be at the South of England County Show! I can’t secure my spot until January but it’s a three day event that runs for eight hours and the footfall is very good. I need to sell around 150 books to make it worth my while, so it’s a bit of a gamble. Not only does it mean a large outlay on the table cost (£370) I will also need to take at least £2k-£3k worth of stock with me. At least with the stock it doesn’t have a shelf life, the only risks are on the table cost, and of course my back shifting all that!

I’ve had two great events (Marlborough and Abingdon) since my last post, both achieving over my normal average. This wasn’t a shock for Abingdon, but was for Marlborough, and it made the massive hill at the end of the day worth it.

MARKETING AND PROMOTION

Facebook ads are still doing okay for me, but just okay. Once I have a few more reviews for the audiobook I think I will try advertising LOST AMONGST THE STARS again on Facebook.

FUTURE PROJECTS

My next project is going to be a couple of short stories, one in the world of James Fisher and the other for my sci-fi series. I will then release these, along with all my other short fiction, two novellas and the Carrie Harris shorts, as a taster collection paperback. The focus on this will be to keep it as low cost but profitable as possible. I will look at mass production, as opposed to Amazon print on demand, but it does pose the question, what do I do with the boxes of Carrie Harris short stories I have at home! Perhaps I will give one away free with every purchase at my events.

That’s about it for this month and by the time I blog again we’ll be in November and peak season for events!