Tag Archives: book marketing

15 Jul 2023 · 12:23 pm

Modern life is rubbish!

This is a blog post I wrote a couple of days ago. I’ve wrestled with my conscience as to whether I should actually post it. Mainly because it’s only going to worry people. I promise we’re all OK, but I do need to vent sometimes. This, being my blog, seems as good a place as any to do that. So it comes with a <rant mode> warning. Naturally, it’s written with a mental voice I use specifically for ranting which sounds like John Cleese doing Basil Fawlty going off on one. If any of it makes you laugh, that is the correct reaction. It is meant, foremost to amuse, but also to inform a bit in that it does genuinely feel like that sometimes.

Since the entire tirade genuinely reflects the way I felt at the time I wrote it, I think that, in the interests of full transparency, I should publish it. And also because I haven’t written anything else, so here it is.

[Rant mode] Modern life is rubbish!

A famous Blur album from the 1990s but also, sadly, very true for me. Or perhaps if I’m honest I should say, I am rubbish at modern life.

Aroogah! Aroogah! Whinge warning!

OK so I’m going to go on a teeny bit of a rant here, because in many respects, I’ve had a pretty rough time of it lately, and since this is my blog, I can sodding well do what I like. But I have a burning question right now and it’s this.

Why am I so unsuited to modern life? Because despite having been invited to sit the mensa test, it counts for zilch since I’m as thick as pigshit when it comes to certain, more mathematical strains of logic. I write numbers back to front and upside down (and add them up that way too) I often mange to look up completely the wrong hymn in church—because I read the number back to front—and my organisational skills are negligible. I couldn’t organise a fart in bed but the most galling thing is that despite knowing this, I still haven’t hit on a way to learn how to be organised. It just … doesn’t.

Then there’s the Mum stuff. The perfect storm of every single thing at which I am shit. I have skills. Are they any use to me for this? Of course they’re fucking not, I need the jot tittle and iota of formfilling and box ticking down pat and frankly, I suspect I’ve more chance of getting to the moon by putting car springs on my feet and trying to jump than I do of bossing that sort of stuff.

Mum’s mortgage money is dwindling astonishingly fast so I am trying to get some help from the NHS with her care costs. Yes, I know, I’m in the UK and the NHS is supposed to provide healthcare free to all at the point of need and yes, it does … except that some aspects of healthcare are more free than others. When you have dementia, it’s classed as a ‘social’ illness and dealt with by social services and presumably mental health services. It is a mental illness but at the same time, it isn’t because the causes of dementia are physical; strokes, bleeds to the brain, or neural diseases like Alzheimer’s, Lewy bodies, Motor Neurone etc which are all caused by physical factors, even if medical science doesn’t always understand why they happen, it’s a physical factor, not a mental one, which causes these outcomes.

Unfortunately, the NHS changed its classification of dementia back in the late 90s and for a whole swathe of people it was too late to plan for any healthcare costs, they just had to hope they wouldn’t need them. Worse, if those people did try to offload some cash after diagnosis, they stood the chance of being had up for avoiding care fees which is called deprivation of assets and is considered to be a criminal offence.

Some folks were lucky and they didn’t get dementia or they died fairly soon into the journey. My parents weren’t. One of the diffiiculties is that, for example, Mum has a house and the logical thing to do, from the point of view of death duties, would be for her to make over the house to us but continue to live there but even if she does this in a way that is compliant with UK tax law, then, since her dementia diagnosis, it would be a criminal offence because that would be trying to leave something to her children rather than spend the last of her and Dad’s assets on the healthcare she was promised for free until it was too late for her to do anything about it. Oh, and because the fact she and Dad have spent around £900k on care fees, to date—that’s right, close to ONE MILLION QUID—one million quid I didn’t even know they had, it still isn’t enough because the bastards want to make sure they strip those assets thoroughly, family antiques, pictures, the house, it’s all got to be sold to pay for care costs, or you have to make over the house to the authorities if they are going to pay (there may or may not be a cap on how much they can take for this. I think it depends where you are).

Yep, if you want to be tax efficient with your will, or try to avoid paying every last penny you have in care costs and give something to your kids … well … if you’re dying of cancer that’s OK. If you have a benign front temporal lobe brain tumour that presents very similar symptoms to the ones Dad endured, that’s OK, but if your affliction is associated with dementia then no. I’m sorry. If you try to do it, then, it’s a crime. Remember people, the D in dementia stands for destitute, and as far as the state is concerned, if you’re not destitute by the end of it, they’ve done something wrong. You’re supposed to surrender everything to pay for your care fees, suddenly, it becomes an actual crime to leave anything for your children or grandchildren.

Because we’re lovely compassionate people here in the UK and when our government screws over our citizens it likes to do it properly. Dementia isn’t a long grinding and hard enough road on its own, oh no, the government and the NHS like to ensure they make it as shitty for everyone concerned as possible. Why help one dementia patient when with a few deft tweaks to the care system, you can ensure there are more and double the assets you strip from the afflicted. Twice the money. Chancellor rubs hands together. Excellent.

As you can see, I’m not bitter or angry about this. Not at all.

Seriously, though. I genuinely don’t give a shit about my inheritance, that’s gone, although I do care about my brother’s half and that he gets nothing as well. What does make me angry is that it’s cost me pretty much everything; the never ending, grinding awfulness of it all has sapped me of any meaningful ability to write books and with that my purpose. It’s cost me being a decent mother, it’s cost me being an attentive wife, it’s cost me keeping in touch with my friends and wider family because it’s such a massive drag on my mental energy that I can only just keep in touch with a few folks. I guess we could just stop with, it’s cost me my happiness in many respects, or perhaps my contentment because in terms of stress, time, sadness, love, pain and god knows what else, it’s blown away any semblance of concentration and mental capacity I had (yes! Stress gives you brain fog, who’d have thunk it). It’s cost my husband and son because they feel it too, and they’ve seen me cry, many times and in my son’s case, at far too young an age. It’s cost my brother and his wife and my nephews and niece just as much.

I fucking resent the price we, and thousands like us, have paid because the illness our parents have endured has the wrong name. It does, indeed boil my piss. Mwahahahargh! I try not to think about it too much.

And fair due, when I say they take ‘every last penny’ they do generously leave you the last 23k. Except they don’t—and it’s not—because there’s a sliding scale of help beyond that and the full package doesn’t kick in until you are at £14k … which, to put this in perspective, is about 9 weeks of care fees.

Anyway, the amount of form filling! As you know, I am always a tower of strength when it comes to form filling, says she, with deep sarcasm. Did I mention that looking after Mum’s finances, healthcare and general wellbeing is a perfect storm of every single thing at which I am shit? And so was Dad’s. And it’s been going on for years and years, and years. And I am so, so fucking tired of my entire life being about trying to boss an enormous collection of all the things I am emotionally, physically and mentally least equipped to do. And Oh Lordy I took McMini to a consultation with a counsellor today and we fleetingly touched on the whole dementia dementor that is sucking away my life and I actually nearly wept. It caught me completely broadside because I thought I was through all that.

Not quite. Clearly.

The other day, I was listening to a programme on BBC sounds about dementia and they were so fucking upbeat.

‘Do you know carers everywhere save the government over £11bn a year?’ they said (or something along those lines). ‘Aren’t you all marvellous?’

Yeh the same way clapping people is so much better than giving them a pay rise and we don’t save them the money, they take it from us.

And I was sat there in the car, bundling along the M25 (it was flowing well that day) shouting,

‘No! We’re not fucking marvellous you absolute pus wangle! We’re fucking desperate, and lost and we have NOTHING left to give and NOTHING left to fight with! And no-one fucking gives a shit! And while I’m shouting at the windscreen like this, worrying the person in the car next to me,’ MTM turns, gives the nervous looking woman in the nissan micra a thumbs up and waves. ‘Can I just mention what it costs US? Everything. Fucking everything. Let me repeat that! It costs us every. fucking. thing. Our social lives, our hobbies, our capacity for coherent thought, our health and in some cases our sanity or our actual fucking lives.’

OK so I appreciate that sounds melodramatic but sadly, it’s true. One demented relative, and you are surrendering to years of sleepless nights and brain fog. Think new baby for years, and years, and YEARS until the lack of sleep kills you.

In a horrible irony, do you know what the result of that level of stress, for 15 years, was for Mum? That’s right. Dementia for her too. What a kindly joy! Thanks God you absolute get. The woman who said, ‘I don’t really care what happens to me when I get old, so long as I don’t lose my marbles.’ is losing her marbles.

Thank you, you to whichever clusterfuck of cucking funts made that decision back in the 1990s because thanks to your intervention she has, indeed, lost her fucking marbles.

Bastards.

Yes! I’m sure I’m entitled to all sorts of benefits and help and Mum gets it, what there is, but I’m too exhausted to look into it. And when I do, it’s for people spending 36 hours a week on care. If you have a part-time job that you can no longer do because of the strain of looking after your demented relative, that means you’re not eligible. If you worked during the school day, you’re not eligible because that’s not 36 hours. It’s a fucking shower! And I’m just running a house, a care team and a life from afar. I’m not even one of the poor bastards at home doing it 24/7 with no let up, no relief and no fucking hope. Waking up every hour all through the night and trying to persuade their demented relative to sleep because they are so … fucking … tired. People with dementia can live a full and happy life but it costs their loved ones everything. And nobody gives a fucking toss.

Then there’s … ugh … other stuff. Other stuff is a bit patchy to be honest. Everyone has a Draco Malfoy (look it up if you don’t know) and McMini is no exception. There’s a kid picking on him at school and for a while a lad who was a friend at one point was joining in, which made it extra specially hurtful. The ex friend has stopped now, thank goodness, but the other lad has continued. Luckily McMini, who was bullet proof on that score, and then very suddenly, not bullet proof, seems to have rediscovered his armour and ceased to care about the Draco Malloy in his life. Long may that continue.

Though the school is being brilliant it’s been tough for him. Hence the counsellor (psychotherapist who does counselling) and I arranged for us to meet to see if a few sessions would help. Things are a great deal better but I still want rule in or our whether or not Mc(not so)Mini might need a few handy coping strategies. Mainly because I doubt I’d be here now, in quite the same form, had I not had a lot of CBT at the beginning of this fucking dementia nightmare. And while he’s coping fine now, the kid who picks on him is still picking on him. So I set up an initial session to meet and see if the counsellor could help.

The first session was on Tuesday.

I forgot.

Jesus, Mary, Joseph and their fluffy donkey. Fuck me but I’m a fucking dickwad.

You know what. A few years ago I did an intelligence test, the result was a bit like a spider with 8 zones of intelligence and scores for each. Basically, I scored a solid top 80%-90% in seven of the eight areas. However, in one area—numeracy and certain mathematical logic—I scored below 20%. In an IQ test I scored one point off genius level (on paper, I’m well thick on screen) yet for everything that matters in wrangling my and my mother’s day-to-day existence my fucking enormous teflon-head brain is of absolutely fuck all use. The only thing my intelligence achieves is a keen awareness of how lacking I am in the one single form of fucking intellect I actually need. There are people out there with such severe cognitive disabilities that they are unable to live independently who are smarter than I am in the only area that anyone counts.

All my life I’ve railed against the stupid fucking bigots who say that the only intelligence that counts is mathematical intelligence and discount everyone else whose abilities aren’t a carbon copy of their own as ‘stupid’ because they’re too unimaginative to see the worth in any other kind of intelligence. I heartily loathe those people who aver that only one kind of intelligence is the arbiter of all intelligence and that without it you are thick, much as I heartily loathe the way the morning people have managed to fit the entire world to the way they function and have convinced us all that being a night owl (a logical evolutionary step to ensure some of the tribe was always awake to keep watch) makes you some kind of morally bankrupt deviant.

Sadly, modern life and educational standards are set up for mathematical logic, and nothing else, and it’s amazing the number of people who, when I suggest that it’s possible to be intelligent without being mathematically intelligent, will agree but then basically say, no. Engineering and construction and most stuff runs on maths or is designed using maths they argue. Therefore our world is built on maths and it is the apogee of all intelligence. I completely get that. I get that it’s important.

But we don’t all need ALL the maths to just … you know … live.  I mean, for starters, if everyone in the village has one kind of intelligence and is brilliant at building the bridges, who’s going to do the fucking cooking? Rishi’s barking plan about maths until people are 18 … well … it depends what they teach. But trying to get people like me to understand advanced trigonometry isn’t going to happen, no matter how many times you try and drum it into me. It’s just a waste of everyone’s time.

Nobody insists we all play an instrument to grade 8 level and shames anyone who can’t as an inferior or a second grade person. Some people aren’t musical. Nobody gives them any grief. Some people aren’t mathematical. Newsflash. That isn’t a fucking crime. Why this ridiculous insistence that mathematical intelligence is the only thing that matters? It’s bullshit! Surely, unless they want to be a theoretical physicist then, so long as a person can manage their finances, or parse a spreadsheet/find an expert they trust to do it for them that’s all they need.

Yes, we need to understand certain mathematical basics to get by but the way they go on. It’s like saying that only one colour matters or that only one musical note is important. And what will making people who are useless at something keep trying—and failing at it—do for their confidence.

‘You have so much to give, and so much talent but that counts as nothing because this one tiny facet of intelligence (that you’re shit at) is the only thing that matters.’

Is that a healthy message to send to our kids? From one who received it loud and clear at school throughout their entire fucking childhood let me assure you that it’s very much not.

The other day, when I forgot that session with the counsellor for McMini, I hated myself: truly fucking hated myself in a way I’ve managed to avoid since the CBT I did to deal with just this kind of negativity when I was first trying to look after my parents and navigate the absolute craptonne of admin they seemed to generate. Fact is though, I’m just a massive fucking white elephant. I know I am. Normally, I can look away and carry on living the lie that there is some actual fucking point to my existence but yesterday. No.

It’s so hard to be bright, really bright, in a whole arena of disciplines which, while perfectly valid, are discounted by modern culture as worthless, it’s even more frustrating to be smart, but, at the same time utterly, crushingly, mind-numbingly thick at the only subject by which the world gauges intellectual worth … and filling in forms … and admin. Oh I know it’s a them problem (and the fact that I care is a me problem) but it’s fucking galling. It’s not that maths isn’t important, it’s that not everyone is going to use it to an advanced level, not everyone will need to and more to the point, not everyone can. Making them try for years is just going to make them feel shit about themselves and as we all know, miserable people beget misery.

Actually if you want to appreciate what trying to force people to study something beyond their ceiling does just read this. Read this to see just how shaming people who are bad at maths makes them feel. Read this to see how giving people the impression they are stupid or somehow morally lacking, because they are less able at something you can do easily makes people feel.

It’s this idea that because some people are engineers or scientists and are using maths to define space and time, or build bridges, we should all be doing it. It’s like saying that every single person in existence should be made to write a book. It’s like saying, ‘oh we’re having a bit of trouble with the new covid vaccine, MTM why don’t you have a go?’ and being surprised and upset when I can’t crack it. It’s saying that we should all be carbon-copy geniuses (geniai?).  It is, quite frankly, a bit fucking mental.

Most of us need to do a tax return, manage a budget and possibly manage a business. Yes, it’s important to know that. We all need to. But just as important is showing people who are less gifted at maths useful stuff like the kind of logic required to parse a spreadsheet that’ll do that maths for them.

It seems a trifle unfair that the zone of intelligence, out of those eight, around which my entire chuffing life revolves is the one in which I sit in the bottom 20% of the population; remembering things, administrating financial matters, filling in government forms correctly, dotting every I and crossing every T as stipulated, and in a timely manner, not being able to see how my situation fits a standard box, sitting waiting on hold because I’m over thinking it.

On top of that, my startling lack of smarts—in the one area which dominates my existence—makes life such an uphill struggle that I have nothing left for anything else after I’ve finished with it all. That’s really where this whole sticking eyes on things cropped up. Because I wanted to write. NEEDED to write, but after dealing with all the shite, getting it wrong, doing it again, missing bits off and cocking it up, all while watching my father and then my mother slowly disappearing in front of my eyes; all while taking their hands and walking beside them as we made our way together into the dark … after that I had nothing left in the tank. But an eyebomb takes a few minutes, little or no energy. I still get to be creative and it cheers me up.

Hence the marked absence of any new writing so far this year. Or last year to be honest. Of course, that’s also the reason I’ve been concentrating on the eyebombing book. Because it’s a different kind of creativity and an easy win … except I did an event on Saturday and there was very little interest in it live … so to speak which was rather worrying after it looking like people were interested online.

This is the first book I’ve talked about on social media where people have demonstrably shown an interest but … The price was definitely too high. Nobody was countenancing paying £18 for the hardback and £10 was clearly too steep for the paperback too. I might try a smaller size and see if I can produce it more cheaply and charge £7 for the paperback and £10 for the hardback. I guess the trouble is that it’s still too expensive to produce a colour photobook for a price that anyone’ll pay. It may be that I need to aim it at a more deluxe audience … gulp … but then the photos should probably have been better. Yeek!

Bummer. It looks like I might have produced yet another turkey.

Never mind. I guess you can’t win ’em all… or any of them, it seems. I should give up already, but that would be easy, and I NEED to create things … and I’m pig-headed. Onwards and upwards.

[/rant mode]

Here’s something a little lighter …

Something for that person who has everything: Eyebomb, Therefore I Am

Picture of books about eyebombing displayed artfully

Step into a realm where inanimate objects come to life and a simple pair of googly eyes holds the power to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. This book invites you to immerse yourself in the whimsical and hilarious world of eyebombing; that art of sticking googly eyes on unsuspecting inanimate objects to unleash the joy within.

As you turn each page, you’ll find yourself smiling at the quirky personalities that emerge from everyday objects ranging from lampposts and traffic signs to automatic hand dryers and even dinner. The juxtaposition of the ordinary and the unusual challenges societal norms, reminding us to embrace new or different things, and look for humour in the unlikeliest of places.

Whether you’re a fan of street art, a lover of comedy, or simply seeking a joyous escape from the mundane, this photo book is sure to leave you grinning from ear to ear. You might even end up stashing a pack of googly eyes in our own pockets and having a go at eyebombing yourself.

To find out more and be informed when it goes on sale, join my eyebombing mailing list by clicking on this link:

https://www.hamgee.co.uk/ebl

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4 Feb 2023 · 5:09 pm

2022 in Focus, career version

picture of a factory with sunlight shining on it

The Bury Beet Factory in sunset hue … Less Silver Spoon and more Golden Spoon in this one …

This blog post is written over a couple of weeks but I’ve not harmonised the timeline. Instead I’ve left it in as-I-wrote it mode because it seems to read better like that …

This week I have suddenly developed sciatica, or at least a trapped nerve but same end result. It just gradually appeared over the course of Wednesday evening as McMini and I watched TV. Yesterday it wasn’t great but I exercised a lot to try and keep it all moving. This was the right thing to do on paper, but unfortunately, I woke up this morning with the most evil pain in my lower back. It got better as the day wore on with a heat pad pressed against it pretty much all the time, and concentrated itself in and just above my left bottom cheek. Lovely. Lowlights of the week, trying to get dressed yesterday, today and the day before. Friday, especially, my socks were causing too much friction for me to be able to get them into my trousers without extremem pain. When  you are standing on one leg shouting, ‘fuck off you fucking bastard trousers!’ at the top of your voice to an inaminate item of clothing you know you are in trouble but when it acctually makes you feel better, rather than an idiot, you know it might be piss-poor day, painwise. Still the only way is up. Except it wasn’t. Although let’s face it, things may improve from here. A friend came round to lunch on Friday which was lovely though, and it did take my mind off the pain.

Having googled myself extensively, if you see what I mean, I’m pretty sure I have what I had last time which is a tight piriformis muscle but I may have a disc pressing on the nerve too somewhere, too. The piriformis is a pathetic little muscle in your arse which, if it gets tight, traps the sciatic nerve, which hurts, which makes your arse clench, which makes it tighter, which hurts more … you get the picture. When I do a specific stretch aimed at helping this it … well … you know … helps. However, when I do stretches to releive a blurpy disk pressing on the nerve that helps too. Knowing my luck I’ve scored a full house. So now I just have to keep doing the stretch and moving around regularly, even if that does involve walking like Clive Dunn. No sitting at my computer for more than ten minutes. Productivity levels may vary. I have some absolute horse pills that they gave me last time which do seem to help but it means no alcohol if I take more than one a day. I did virtual church this morning, which was nice, except they had a collection of some of my absolutely favourite hymns … on the other hand, communion just happened to arrive at the same time of breakfast so I communicated with a glass of water and a slice of Lorne sausage. Probably quite unholy in the grand scheme of things but it helped …

Interestingly, I have been a bit more productive like this. Sitting on the sofa in my office with the omnipresent heat pad and getting up for a little walk round for ten minutes on the hour I seeem to be getting more done. So far I’ve read quite a lot of a book on antique bottles and have been able to look up some of the ones I have and come up with an approximate date. I’ve also written the thank you/Christmas letters I do to keep elderly friends of my parents and relatives to keep them in touch with what’s happening to Mum. Once the first is done, obviously, it’s easier to do the others because I’ve already written a lot of what I want to say and kind of … you know … got it down pat.

Never mind, onwards and upwards. I was going to talk about the year in book sales, although looking at the volume of sales, I am sorely tempted to say, ‘let’s not!’ On we go then …

MTM’s Year out of in Focus 2022

Aims

Ooo! Get me, all organised with my headings and subheadings but yes, despite my efforts, and my business looking like a completely random and chaotic shit-show from the outside (and the inside if I’m honest) I did start off with some actual aims last year. Rather loose ones, to be honest, and I probably hadn’t given enough thought as to how I would achieve them but they were:

  1. Write and publish another book … er hem. Yes. Oops.
  2. Increase my audio sales and see if I could get some sales of soemthing other than my two first in series
  3. See if I could do some face-to-face events and sell  more paperbacks.
  4. Attempt to grow sales at outlets other than Amazon and Audible.
  5. Try something new in marketing, possibly a kickstarter, and be more organised with other marketing efforts (social, mailings and ads).

Let’s have a look and see how I did then shall we?

1. Publish a book

Yes, that one fell victim to pressures at home but I’m hoping I might finish one in 2023. I won’t be able to publish it because if I do finish, that’ll happen in April after which I probably won’t have time to do much else but if I fail to finish I’ll throw caution to the wind and write another novella in the interim, or extend The Last Word or … I dunno. Something.

To be honest, if I want to get anywhere I have to write some straight medieval fantasy and something about a dorky american bloke in space. I haven’t done anything straight medievel fanatasy wise but I do have a dork in space (not american because america doesn’t exist in that version of reality but a guy who lost one leg just below the knee in an accident). In the meantime, I just have to go with what’s flowing, sigh, which is more K’Barthan shizz. Oh dear.

2. Audio sales

My figures for audio are not as complete as sometimes, mainly because I haven’t got round to finishing the spreadsheet where I log them all. However, this one actually went better than I thought it was going to at the start of 22. Gareth and I share a steady £60 or so from Audible each month but obviously, I wanted to grow my sales on other retailers. I did several promos on Kobo and tied in Apple and Chirp, adding Barnes & Noble as Findaway added those retailers to the promotions section. For future promos I can now add Spotify as well. On the whole, each sale was around two weeks  long.

On average, my effots (bookbub ads and the odd post on social media) garnered between 30 and 40 sales of the first book in the K’Barthan Series at 99c during each promo. These were mostly on Chirp but occasionally on my site or on Kobo too. In the first instance, there was little or no readthrough but when I ran the second sale, I noticed there were some downloads of the second K’Barthan book or the box set, although these were mainly from Libraries. Third sale, more read through and even some purchases of later books so things are looking up there. In 2020 I earned about 2/3 audible and 1/3 Findaway.

Overall, audiobook sales are climbing and to my joy the non Audible portion is growing. It is rather wearing to read my royalty statements from Audible and see sums like $395 earned with $90 going to Gareth and I to share 50:50. Worse, ACX are now reducing the prices of books so we sell more. Great on paper, I mean Audible’s book prices are fictional anyway, they are twice as much as everywhere else to make the price of a credit look good but at the same time, the books they are selling a la carte on Audible for £24.99 are piped through to Apple at £10.00 so they know how much audiobooks actually cost. However, they say that the publisher compensation is governed by the published price so if they reduce my books by 20% then presmumably my royalty goes down by 20% too. Other authors whose books have already been reduced have seen this borne out on their statements. I have had the odd very low payment but I haven’t managed to track down if it was a sale or an offer or what … So far on Audible UK they haven’t reduced my books. I am unable to see prices on any of the other audible sites, or, indeed look at them … even in ‘private’ browsing it funnels me back to the UK store. So yes, the Gorilla is still providing 2/3 of the income but only from one book and I am beginning to think seriously about pulling all the others. I just see no point exposing myself to anymore of Audible’s shit than is absolutely necessary. I’d keep one book on there and keep my account so I can claim any new books as I publish to stop other people putting them on Audible. Otherwise, I’m close to just telling them to do one with their contract that reads like an unenforcable software contract and their punishment royalty rates for putting my books in libraries.

On the upside, although the Findaway portion dropped dramatically in 2021 this last year it appears to have gone up again. It’s still only 1/3 which is annoying but at the same time, if I’m earning 1/3 of my income from 10% or less of the readers it goes to show a) how shit Audible’s royalties are and b) that I should keep promoting my wide audio. Oh and I forgot to add sales of my own books which are tiny but were definitely a thing last year (along with Kobo) both of which had very little action the year before … zero on Kobo and a few quid on my store in 21 but some earnings in 22. Gareth and my earnings in 2022 are up by about 20% overall on the year before and that’s with December’s figures missing.

Conclusion: I might be doing the right thing for audio so I’ll carry on and hope it keeps improving and that the wide/my store share keeps growing.

3. Face to face events

This one was a bit of a mixed bag. I didn’t do as well as I have at previous events before lockdown. However, at the same time, I was able to attend a lot of events in a group that wouldn’t have been commercially viable for one person alone. And I earned £349 quid that I wouldn’t have earned otherwise and yes,  the others earned way more than that, indeed one earned that figure in one appearance, alone, at the Christmas Fair during which I earned £35 but I’m still pleased with the overall figure. There’s an enormous £8.00 from Ingram Spark, the people who distribute my paperbacks online, on top. I think when I add Bookvault, who are similar to Ingram but much cheaper, I may well find things easier.

Will I do more face to face stuff? Yes because it was fun. However, I may try to be a bit more smart about which events I attend. For example, Ely Cathedral Christmas Market is one I should look at and I will definitely try Bury Cathedral if they do an event for Bury’s ‘Not’ the Christmas Market next year. I must also approach some schools offering to do a library talk, although I have to find out if I need CRB checked first. That’s expensive but might still be worth doing. Overall the most important thing was that barring one bit of one event, where I was a little bit embarrassed, I had fun and that is the main point, after all.

4. Grow sales on sites that are not Amazon

I can only really go on a hunch with this but as far as I can see, the non-Amazon portion of my earnings is growing. Now, admittedly, this could be because Amazon is pay-to-play and runs the most bizarre, opaque and arcane advertising platform so my choice is to get to grips with that one thing, or do everything else. I’ve chosen everything else. I’ve been doing the standard operating procedure with the others, I have a first in series in a free box set, I have a short and a novella permanently free and I have an exclusive story that people get for signing up to my mailing list. It’s OK but not hugely successful. Having looked at other people’s success I have decided to try running a kickstarter. After Brandon Sanderson ran the highest grossing kickstarter of all time, there are a fair few fantasy and sci fi fans on there and as yet it hasn’t been swamped by romance like everywhere else. Doubtless that will come but I need to try and sort one of those out before the Romance authors pile in and fantasy becomes a sub genre of romance on there like it is on all the other sites.

Unfortunately the only thing standing in my way is that I haven’t finished a book. I need the finished article ready to go and then I use it as a pre-order system essentially.

Looking year on year, at the nice easy fix that is Scribecount sales tracking, things appear to be going in the right direction.

  • In 2019 28% of my sales were off Amazon.
  • In 2020 it was 25% and I earned three times as much. I also had orders for books from non Amazon outlets where there had been no traction beforehand. I think a lot of that was the Pandemic but also that Amazon seemed to relax some of it’s algorithmic twiddling so people could find stuff they wanted rather than the nearest fit to what they wanted from the stuff in KU or that was advertised. This has since been tightened up again as far as I can tell and my Amazon earnings have dropped accordingly.
  • In 2021 the percentage of non Amazon sales was up to 33.3% (woot) including 6% from my own store but that may have been skewed by the launch of Too Good To Be True which a lot of lovely people bought from my store rather than any of the retailers. If that was you, thank you another 20% of those royalties went to me instead of ‘The Man’.
  • In 2022 39.5% of my income was from elsewhere than Amazon. (So close to 40%!) Kobo and Google Play were 12% a pop and my own store was 4.4% although I suspect that was mostly audiobooks (I can’t separate them out at the moment).
Pie chart of sales showing where they happened for 2022

2022

Pie chart showing where sales were made

2021

Sales pie chart showing vendor share

2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hadn’t really looked at the figures until now but that’s heartening because it is going in the right direction; the non Amazon share is definitely going up. Or to put it another way, the share I rely on from the most morally shonky, high maintenance of the stores is going down. I’m not sure what’s happened to my print sales though, I used to do about £40 a year from Ingram and this year it’s £7. I’m guessing this is Amazon no longer ordering my books in batches of six, which it then bins off for less than it costs me to buy them from Ingram at cost so I always purchase those and put them into stock! Mwahahargh, not that I’m devious or anything.

On the whole that’s a pleasing result though. I’ll keep doing what I do with that one then and hope that I can keep my dependence on Amazon and Audible dropping throughout 2023 and my earnings from other less abusive stores and/or sources of income rising. Also I haven’t posted my print sales on here because I can’t add sum up to the spread sheet as yet.

5. Try something new …

I didn’t do too well on this front. I guess I could call the in person appearances as trying something new because I hadn’t attempted that sort of thing regularly. They netted me the same as I’d usually have earned from my previous single appearence at the Christmas Fair but I do think it’s worth doing more. I bought a stand-up course to help me think about how I would talk to readers in public. I also bought an epic Kickstarter course and have so far got to about step two, but I’m slowly working my way through it with a view to reaching more readers of fantasy and sci fi books. With that in mind this year, I’m definitely hoping to ditch preorders and start using Kickstarter to get sales in advance. The upside of that being that I can give people more than just the book for buying in advance in a way that I can’t with the stores.

Other stuff to try. I’d like to expand my efforts on live appearences with two biggies:

  1. Ely Cathedral Christmas Fair
  2. School visits – time to contact local schools and offer a library talk
  3. Move from pre-orders to doing a kickstarter for my next book, and possibly starting with Googly Joy or Eyebomb: therefore I am, depending on what I decide to call it.
  4. I should sign up as a speaker to the Women’s Institute. I’m not sure how many sales I’d get but I should imagine it would be similar to the library talk I did at my local library, which was great fun.

Conclusions …?

Not many really. I think I’m doing the right thing. I think it’s been good to get out more among the people so to speak. Apparently, as authors get more successful, the profitability of in person appearances drops but at the moment compared to the vaguaries of internet marketing, personal appearances are like shooting fish in a barrel. They are not easy and on a couple of occasions I have been roundly humiliated. However, they are still an absolute piece of cake compared to trying to get some jaded online reader with ten million books they will never look at already parked on their e-reader to open mine and start reading. I won’t do the routine with about the wi-fi free island, the telephone directory and the lavatory because I suspect you’ll remember that but you get where I’m going …

Plans for 2023?

Yeh, there are some …

Last year I definitely made a little bit of progress so, at the risk of sounding as if I’m repeating myself, this year’s aims are pretty much the same:

  1. Write and publish another book.
  2. Continue to increase my audio sales, especially away from Amazon/Audible and try to build on my print sales too.
  3. Pick the right events to sell more paperbacks face to face.
  4. Attempt to grow wide sales (i.e. at outlets other than Amazon and Audible).
  5. Try something new in marketing, possibly a kickstarter, and be more organised with other marketing efforts (social, mailings and ads).
  6. Try to visualise how I could do these things and break down what I need to do to actually get them done.

Any progress so far?

Yes. I’ve started as I mean to go on. Work out what I want and then break down what I need to do to get there so I have small, easily implemented steps to take listed out and can consult the list and just do them on brain fog days. For something big like a kickstarter this is going to be especially important. I’m listing the stuff I’ve set in motion here so I have a reference document that I can return to, in order to keep myself accountable. Whether it’ll work I don’t know but I can try right?

1. Writing another book

This is where the Eyebomb: Therefore I am, easy win comes in. There will be another book this year and it’ll be that one. Another easy win is a short book; in this case, I’m doing a talk in December about coming to terms with failure. Achieving less by doing more is what it’s called but being a failure is what it’s actually about. Being a failure and being totally OK with that. The talk is schedulued for December 2023 and will run for 30 – 40 minutes online with powerpoint slides. Clearly, by the time I’ve written that, I’ll have pretty much written the entire book anyway, so it’s a case of setting out my thoughts and doing the slides early enough for there to be time to make it into a book. I think I’m going to call it, ‘I fucked this up so you don’t have to’. No obviously not fucked, the Americans will go mad. I’l

2. Increase Audio and Print Sales

The eyebombing book would be a great fit for Christmas markets if I can do it at a stocking filler price, I’m thinking 10″x 10″ hardback for £9.99 but I can take that down to 7″x7″ if that means I can make it longer for that price. I have found a cheaper printer and set up an account with them. Their books are good and so I reckon I’m going to try printing it through them. They also distribute across the UK and in The Great British Bookshop. So I’ll be using them for UK distribution and possibly for drop shipping if I do a kickstarter, in conjunction with drop shipping from Ingram Spark for the Americas, Africa, the Far East and Oceana. Ingram are between £1 and £2 more expenisve per book, wholesale and make me add a 50% margin to distribute whereas I can do 35% with the other bunch so I will definitely be using BookVault where I can.

Another important thing to do is to link my payhip shop to bookvault. I hope to move to an integrated woocommerce store on my website eventually but until I can fix that up, it’s possible to use Payhip and connect it to bookvault for direct sales via something called Zapier, which, I think is free until I make 100 transfers a month.

Likewise, if I can finish the next misfit book I will. I think it’s possible that I could but it will be important to keep up all the other stuff alongside so I won’t feel the pressure as keenly. Yes, in a strange twist of reverse phychology, doing other stuff that brings results at the same time may take the pressure off and help me finish this one. I need to do the carer’s memoir, too, as that’s very now and again, there’s a lot of stuff on my blog and in other places that I’ve already written and can use for that. However, that particular book is probably something I should attempt through trad. Hybrid is the way to go really as a trad deal shows the bigots you are good enough to get a deal and opens doors that will be closed to me forever otherwise.

3. Pick the right events to sell more paperbacks face-to-face.

picture of two people smiling in front of a table at a sci fi convention

Yes, I’m going to flex this photograph on you  yet again.

I’ve already sent in my application for the Ely Cathedral Christmas Fair. Ooo get me! Will I get in? Who knows. They wanted a web address and my HUP website had just gone down so it’s actually quite likely I will fail this year. It’s also a bit of a conundrum trying to add product photos to a pitch, when a lot of the products haven’t been made yet. However, if I get a spot I will start printing up cards and merch over the course of the year; a few things each month to defray the cost pre Christmas. If I don’t get in, I’ll probably still do that ahead of any other Christmas Markets I might do, I just won’t print as many. I’m not going to inherit any money. It’s going to go on care so I need to earn some capital of my own, fast.

4. Attempt to grow wide sales (i.e. at outlets other than Amazon and Audible)

Here’s hoping I can keep the momentum going and hit 40% of my sales being from non Bezos companies. To that end, all I can do is keep trying to find readers on other platforms and continue to advertise to them.

Other stuff, finish uploading all my books to Barnes & Noble direct. I have seven on there and five to do. Then I need to sort all the Barnes & Noble links on my site so they go to the books I’ve uploaded direct. Then I need to contact Barnes & Noble and ask them to move any reviews on other versions to the ones I’ve uploaded and then I need to cancel distribution where I’ve used an aggregator. I also need to sort out the rest of my links pages at Books2Read.com this is a brilliant thing that lets you add all the links to a book for audio, paperback and ebook format. The only trouble is, it’s immensely buggy so you can only do about two at a time, then  you have to clear the cache turn the computer off and on again and do another two and so on. So I tend to do a couple here and there when I remember because otherwise it’s so frustrating that I may be forced to smash my laptop to pieces. That would be bad. But really, I have to bite the bullet and do it.

5. Try something new in marketing

Gulp. This year, I may see if I can resurrect my Facebook ads again, perhaps doing one or two aimed at readers on Apple, where I get crickets, or Kobo, which is rather good. Ideally, I’d get them going to my own store and buying stuff there. This is another thing I could use Zapier for, I think … as I can also have books for sale on my Facebook page. Nobody buys them and the store is hard to set up and edit but I’m a great believer in having things available in as many places as I can. Then … I’m going to try a kickstarter. I’m going to do it for the eyebombing book, to start with, because it’s easy to explain what it is and there’s no mashing of genres involved, it’s a humorous non fiction art book. I’ll design it and build it first, then, when it’s proofed and finished and ready to go I’ll do a kickstarter campaign to try and recoup as much of the money as possible. If that works, I’ll try a kickstarter for the next Misfit book again, waiting until all three versions are ready to go before I start … and possibly adding an under-the-table hardback.

6. Try to visualise how I’ll do this and plan it in bite sized pieces so I am able to.

That’s kind of what this post is for … The minute I start writing or explaining it I come up with a very straight forward list of stuff I need to do. But when I sit looking a blank screen or sheet of paper trying to type, or write, it up I find myself completely unable to think. Doubtless something terrible will go wrong because it usually does. Not least, if I get into the Ely Cathedral Christmas Fair you can guarantee something will happen to Mum about ten minutes into it and I’ll have to do a mercy dash to Sussex and chalk £275 for the stall (and probably a life time ban from exhibiting ever again) up to experience. If that’s the case, I’ll just have to pack up and leave the stall because I have no back up. Here’s hoping …

In theory I could update myself, and you, on where things have got to over the course of the year but you may well lose the will to live and people will be leaving in droves! So. Instead, why not lose yourself in a book?

Astonishingly cheap ebook and audiobook alert …

Yes. Spoil yourself with your good taste (Ambassador) and a wonderful free book. Mmm hmm. If you are looking for a fun novella–to relieve the considerable tedium you may be experiencing after reading this blog post, for example … or if you’d like to listen to an audio book in the car, or at work or on the commute and you are just fresh out of ideas  for fabulous newness … well, you can fix all those things by grabbing a free book.

This book.

Small Beginnings, K’Barthan Extras, Hamgeean Misfit: No 1.

It’s free to download in ebook format from most of the major retailers (except when Amazon is dicking with me) while two and a half hours of glorious K’Barthan audiobook deliciousness is a mere 99p or c from Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Spotify, Apple and Chirp (if you’re in the States). It’s also free to download from my web store.

If you think that sounds interesting and would like to take a look, just go here.

Oh and PS … my back has recovered and my knee is getting there. Onwards and upwards eh? A bientot!

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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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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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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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5 Sep 2020 · 3:10 pm

Well … that was weird …

Lancing Beach. Just to throw you when I’m talking about Suffolk beaches later. Some guy found a gold coin here.

A strange week all round. I was going to share some of the questions and answers I’ve been doing with Gareth, because they are hilarious but a couple of bits happened that I thought I’d share instead.

First up Mum. As you know, Mum has dementia. She passed the NHS memory test with flying colours but then, everyone does. My Dad did, even after his diagnosis with Alzheimer’s in 2012 As far as I know, they were still giving him this stupid memory test until 2017 – because nobody told us or the Doctor about his diagnosis until then so we still didn’t know what he had – and he was still passing the bloody thing with flying colours. It’s not just the patient who is in denial for ages when dementia rears its head, it seems. The NHS also.

As well as dementia Mum has arthritic knees. A while back, in 2015, she had them looked at. The surgeon thought a new knee would be too complicated and that the requirements of the recovery process too taxing but they did give her a new hip, which she also needed. To be honest, I think the knee was more the problem but half was better than none and it did remove a fair chunk of pain so that was good.

Off I go wandering from the topic again … back to the point … the result of not having had her knee done is that Mum has one particularly dodgy knee which tends to give way on her. The other day it did and she ended up on the floor and hit her head – I blogged all about it here. Quick recap: because she’s on blood thinners, she had to go to hospital and have a brain scan. She had to go in alone because … Covid … which for someone with dementia who has banged their head, is not ideal. They were great with her, though, and she did well too. They took her in at three pm and was ready for collection by six. But she explained that her knee had given way and she’d grabbed the nearest thing for support which was, unfortunately, a door handle, so the door opened and she slid gently to the floor where she ended up wedged in a small space and so she couldn’t get up.

Having had this mishap, I thought that maybe it was time to get her something a bit more stable than a walking stick to use in the house. A Zimmer frame wasn’t much good as she’s quite frail and couldn’t lift it. She uses a fold up thing with wheels and a seat when she is outside which, I believe, rejoices in the name of a ‘rollator’. These are great because the wheels make them easy to push, the seat provides welcome respite from standing too long and they have breaks to help you control them. This one is ideal for outside but she needs one that’s smaller for use in the house. I had a look … God bless the internet … and found some that I thought might do.

Three Wednesdays ago, I sat down with Mum and the Carer and we looked at three wheeled light weight rollators. There wasn’t one with a seat, well there was but it was about £200 but I found one with a bag that she could use to get from one part of the house to the other. She can still put the secateurs in it lay flowers across the top of the bag etc. Having found it, I showed it to her and we had a chat and she decided it might be a good thing to have so I ordered it, there and then.

A week later and one of Mum’s carers found one that another lady wasn’t using. It wasn’t light weight but she thought it might be useful. I agreed it might be and suggested she bring it round and I’d cancel the other, except of course that the other then proceeded to arrive. Usually when you buy these things you get an email saying it’s been despatched. In this case, we didn’t. So it turned up without warning.

The Carer looking after Mum that day opened it, set it up and Mum … went into orbit.

I kid you not. She rang me, incandescent with rage, asking what the blazes I thought I was doing buying stuff without even consulting her. It was rubbish anyway, she fumed, because it doesn’t have a seat. How could she sit and talk to her friends if it didn’t have a seat?

I tried to explain that it was to use in the house, to replace her stick because it was more stable but a bit more compact than the one with a seat which she uses outside. There was no point in having it then she needed to do various things with it and without a seat she couldn’t.

‘But your stick doesn’t have a seat …’ I said.

‘No and so I can only sit in the kitchen or the drawing room because I can’t get in and out of the chairs anywhere else.’

Fair point but she doesn’t go anywhere else and she uses a shower stool I bought her (God bless you second hand shops in Galashiels). Sometimes though, Mum’s now is not the same as ours. I think she was at some point where she needed a walking aid but was still quite spry and doing stuff about the house. Things like cooking, and sending and replying to emails on her computer. She hasn’t done any of that for ages. I hadn’t properly clocked that her perception of when she is is changing, or how extensive her dementia is because she’s still so normal to talk to … usually.

I asked her if it might not come in handy?

Anyway, She told me in no uncertain terms that it bloody well wouldn’t, that it must be packed up forthwith and sent back.

After gently explaining to Mum that we had ordered it together and that she’d had a very hectic week and must have forgotten, she finally simmered down but wasn’t keeping it, oh no,  she wanted it sent back and replaced with the version that had a seat. Now.

This is where I cocked up. The way you do this with a demented person is not to set them right on the facts, you just say, ‘oh dear, they’ve sent me the wrong one,’ or ‘oh dear, how did I manage to order the wrong one,’ and leave it at that. It would have saved a lot of angst filled explaining.

Never mind, let’s get on with it shall we. I’d bought the thing online with her debit card, because I have power of attorney, except the bank don’t know that or they won’t give us a card so I did it pretending to be her. Easy then, I’d ring them up and sort it out but … they were not answering the phone unless it’s really urgent because … covid. Ugh. So I emailed them. Yes they would take it back. No they would not be able to replace it with another one with a seat, have me pay the difference and swap one for another. Oh and the cost of return would be £16.

Sixteen quid! The fucking thing only cost £48.

Bollocks.

The Carer who’d found a similar one hadn’t brought it round yet and seeing the chat about this on the … well … chat, she asked if she should.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but hide it, she may come round to using it. We’ll have to see.’

In the meantime, since the company that had sold me the new one didn’t have the one with the seat in stock I just thought it best to hang fire for a bit. The carer packed the new walker away and hid the box away where Mum wouldn’t see it.

Two weeks on, and during this week’s visit, the Carer told me that she’d managed to get Mum to use the second hand one for a bit on Monday but she’d suddenly refused on Tuesday. I thought I may as well give it a go, so I wheeled it in to the drawing room and asked her if she’d like to try it. She quite liked it but wasn’t sure because … well because she uses her stick to pull things closer, pick things up, press buttons and light switches she can’t reach, point at stuff etc. That said, after a short test run during which she really quite liked it, I left her with it by her chair.

Thursday morning and she told the Carer how wonderful it was and that maybe we should get it cleaned up.

‘We could but d’you know Mary ordered you a new one, I think it arrived the other day.’

‘Did it?’ Mum asked.

The Carer said that yes, it had and asked if Mum wanted it set up for her.

‘Oh yes please.’

Apparently it is now a hit. So much of a hit that, nine days on from ringing me in a fit of something approaching rage at its arrival, she rang me to say thank you and tell me how wonderful it was.

That, people, is dementia. Light and shade, rain and sun, on and off: random.

The obligatory seal pup picture taken on the beach I was actually at this weekend. 🙂

On a personal note, remember I did an entire day’s metal detecting without sitting down for lunch the other day? Yeh. Well that was a bad idea, I did my back in. It recovered after two days so, happy that all was well again I did more metal detecting on the beach (only for an hour and a half) went for a walk etc. We saw a seal pup and I took the obligatory Norfolk (well … Suffolk) coast seal cub picture. Awww or what. Then we went and had supper at friends. At which point, back fully recovered, I was able to remove the pain relief pad while I was there and felt oh so much better. What a relief.

Or not.

The next day, the back pain was back a little and starting to get a bit worse, but nothing major. Thursday morning. Arnold’s dingleberries! It was hideous! Friday; also hideous, and even today it is still evil. Needless to say the first day anyone who might be able to fix it can see me is Wednesday next week. Of course. And needless to say the first day I can see anyone is Friday. It could be worse … I had a club dig scheduled for tomorrow, which I don’t think I’d have been able to go to, and now I have a week to get better, or at least, well enough to do an afternoon of metal detecting without three days of scream ab-dabs afterwards.

The pain levels have been pretty grim. Up there with breaking my collar bone in the constant nature of the pain and, when it has subsided a little, the ease with which the slightest of movements will set it off. Also, at the risk of being a bit personal here … weeing. Or more to the point wiping. Fucking hell that hurts. How, in the name of the almighty do women with chronic back pain wipe their arses every day? Is there a lot of screaming? Is there a … surgical device? Jeepers. It’s alright for you blokes, all you have to do is wave it about a bit and shove it back in your trousers. We ladies have to get our hand a great deal further round and fuck me that smarts. I never thought I’d envy the ancient Romans their communal loos with the sponge on a chuffing stick, but frankly, even the prospect of wiping my personal bits with device of dubious provenance that had been used by multiple others – and probably not washed particularly well – would be preferable to the pain of doing it my bastard self. I have, at least, reached the point where I don’t dread going to the loo but it’s still about as much fun as sticking cocktail sticks into my own eyeballs and possibly slightly more painful.

Yeh so … maybe little bit too much information there. Yeh. On that note … I’ll leave you. Don’t have nightmares kids.

____________________________________

If you need to take your mind off that last paragraph …

You could always pop over to Kobo or WH Smith and download my latest audiobook from the Kobo Sale. It starts officially on 9th September but it has been reduced from £5.99/$6.99 to £2.99 and $3.99 the kobo link, among others, is on this page … here.

Small Beginnings is not quite out at all retailers but getting there … slowly. More on that story … here.

Read by Gareth (The Voice of K’Barth) Davies to the usual extremely high standards. If you want to see what it sounds like, you can catch a listen to Chapter 1 from my soundcloud page here. Or click on the picture.

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29 Aug 2020 · 6:16 pm

Treasure

Yeh, I know it’s about five hours after the usual time but things got out of hand.

Two different types of treasure this week. First the lovely one that is McOther. Ah bless him. This week he was sixty, a thing that I find almost incomprehensible. He looks about 45 if that. Anyway, in order to mark the occasion I decided I needed to do something. After a bit of discussion with a friend, and McMini, I hit on a series of days out at air museums. I’ve offered him four and he can pick one although there are a couple that I might buy for all three of us at Christmas so long as enough people (or anyone) buys some of my books.

Meanwhile our ‘bubble’ decided we would meet and sort out a birthday evening along the themes of Not France. But clearly the ‘not’ was the same as the ‘nothing’ in Nothing To See Here. We had tarte flambé and wine, obviously. Quite a lot of wine. And then we had Scottish salmon, as a nod to his country of origin. Then to acknowledge where he grew up, we did a Canadian delicacy. Tortine which was, basically, meat pies. I got the recipe from my Canadian sis in law.

As you can imagine, not much of the organising here was done by me. It was very much a group effort because my inability to arrange … well … anything much is known and understood by all our friends. However, I was tasked with the pies and some salmon bites for the champagne. In order to ensure I got this right, I bought everything I needed at the market on Saturday, and from M&S on Sunday. The salmon things were easy to assemble, the pies looked like they were going to take a bit more cooking. For starters the ingredients was all in cups. That’s fine because I have purchased some cups or at least, North American cups because I believe Australian cups are different and New Zealand cups different again.

As a metric raised child with imperial parents I can do lbs and ozs and I can do kg and grammes. Cups are weird but so long as they stick to cups and teaspoons and don’t start suddenly throwing in 200 grammes of something I’m usually OK.

The recipe called for shortening, which I have never heard of until recently, but now I know this one! It’s lard. So I went up to town and M&S had something called baking block, which looked more like margarine when I got it home and, more worryingly, seemed to comprise mostly palm oil. Fucking Nora, I’m killing the planet. Never mind. Press on.

Casting an extremely blind eye to the rain forest murdering ‘lardgerine’ I was using I consulted the recipe and hit a snag. It comprised two cups of flour and one cup of shortening. I looked at the green plastic scoop and at the thing that was not butter but looked like a pat of butter on the counter. A thing that was, undoubtedly, very solid. How did I cupify that? Did I just squelch it into the plastic measure or what? Maybe I was supposed to melt it. Except that I didn’t really know what I was making, but the recipe was echoing somewhere in the dark recesses of my brain. Yeh. If this turned out to be bog standard pastry I was making here, melting it would be a bad idea.

In the end I decided that if it was two cups flour and one cup shortening it must be, basically, two to one. So I tipped the flour into the scales, worked out there was roughly 8oz and so I put 4oz of shortening in. Though I say it myself, the result was a reasonably decent bash at what did, indeed, transpire to be shortcrust pastry. It may be that if I’d found some actual lard it would have been proper meat pie pastry, you know, pork pie style. Not sure. It was alright though. Sure, I could have got some JusRoll but sometimes it’s nice to make this stuff and have it without all the extra additives and shit.

The mince bit of the recipe was much easier; mostly in lbs and ozs and standard tablespoons etc with the odd ‘cup’ of chopped onion or whatever thrown in. Having successfully combined the ingredients for the pie stuffing and made what I have to confess was a really quite decent filling, I got to the bit where it said I should put two tablespoons of corn flour.

We had cornflour. I knew we did. McOther had bought it to thicken something or other a few weeks previously but he’d also tidied the larder so I couldn’t find it. There was none. Now, I only have a certain number of ‘spoons’ on the energy front and it’s not many. I’d used most of my energy quotient for that day going up to town to get the ingredients. Any left I was using for cooking. Furthermore, I was at a point in that cooking when I couldn’t easily leave it. I was going to have to improvise. OK so we didn’t have cornflour but we did have custard powder. If you look on the side of a tin of custard powder, the ‘ingredients’ are corn flour, salt and yellow dye. So I put two tablespoons of custard powder into the pie mix. That was great, except I’d already salted it so now it was way too salty.

Oops.

Only one thing for it then, more water and wine in the mix. Luckily it didn’t do it any harm and – bonus – meant I didn’t have to produce the traditional gravy to go with!

The pies came out looking a lot tidier than the kitchen.

Eventually I managed to bake a couple of experimental pies and hit on which dishes I’d use. All my round biscuit cutters, the ones I was going to use for the pie crusts, they’d moved to somewhere else during the great larder tidy and of course, when pressed, McOther had long since forgotten where. Luckily we had one of those rings they press your veg into when you go to a posh restaurant and have potatoes dauphinois or something in a perfect circle. So I used that for the lids. For the Scottish pie style hole in the middle, I found a thing to put in the top of olive oil bottles which had a little plastic stopper that went on top. The stopper was the perfect size for cutting a small hole in the middle.

Eight decent pies and a dodgy experimental one at the front.

Come Wednesday morning, when the chips were down, I managed to produce some reasonably decent looking pies to heat up that evening. I glazed them with an egg and ate the rest of it, scrambled, for lunch afterwards. I’d already tasted one of the experimental pies and enjoyed it but that doesn’t always mean much when serving them up to Michelin star husband and friends. When I cooked them that night, because they were a bit of an unknown quantity and we’d already eaten a lot of other stuff, I cooked four between the six adults. They made me go and cook two more. So all in all, I think they were a success. So much of a success that I might even cook them again.

Next lot of treasure … some stuff I found. I have upgraded my metal detector. Or at least I have a new one on sort of HP from a friend. It’s like my old one only lighter and even easier to understand.

Yesterday I went metal detecting. I learned many things, principally that my new rain mac is not waterproof, that my waterproof trousers are also no longer waterproof and that detecting all day is probably too many spoons. But after searching some areas where the farmer wanted us to search for lumps of iron, during which I also happened upon a rather lovely watch winder, we went and had a quick hour and a half looking on a field where there was less iron to remove and some other, rather more interesting non-ferrous items as well.

Here’s a picture of the watch winder, which looked rather straightforward but turned out to be rather pretty when I cleaned it up.

For the non initiated, iron usually equals junk. Not always, but a lot of the time. To my delight, the new detector gave me a very accurate picture of what was what. I also found the fifth best find of all time for me, a silver thimble from the 1650s. We’d just been discussing our favourite eras as we walked to the field and I’d said I thought it was the 1600s for me because it was such a turbulent century.

Because the thimble is over 30o years old and more than 10% precious metal it’s actually classed as ‘treasure’ officially.

That means I have to hand it in to the representative from the portable antiquities scheme. I may get it back or it may be purchased by a museum for about £10 because it’s worth seven tenths of bugger all. But it’s interesting because it’s rare. Many of these were handed to the commonwealth and melted down to make money so there aren’t so many left. It’s an interesting thing. I was chuffed because I worked the date out from the type of writing and the fact it reads, ‘Fere God Truly’ which, I felt, pointed to turbulent times. I also found a James 1 penny, too, which was interesting.

This is my second find that is officially ‘treasure’ the other was a bit of a silver Saxon strap end. I think it takes two to three years for the process to go through.

Well … it is the civil service and government after all. The little thing next to it is a James 1 penny. It’s a pity a bit’s broken off because the detail is lovely.

The new detector is called an ORX and bears more than a passing resemblance to the SSS Enterprise, which amuses me. ORX is usually pronounced as the letters in turn, an O-R-X but actually, if you say them, as if they’re a word, you get orcs.

The orcs found me treasure. Bless ’em. That’s a first for us all. Even so.

Woot.

I have done very little new writing this week but I am editing Too Good To Be True like a demon. I am struggling with a canal boat chase though. Canal boats and barges here in Britain have a top speed of about 4 knots. A knot is about 1.2 something miles per hour.

As you can imagine, I loved the idea of making K’Barthan barges and canal boats the same, and then having two parties in boats that go at walking pace in a grim-faced, slow-motion chase to the death. I want people to run along the tow path throwing bottle bombs and our hero to smack them back with an oar, I also think he should probably give them a tow with his snurd, except I don’t think I can quite jemmy those bits in. I have to have the folks on the barge handing him something, in full view of the pursuing hoards. Naturally, that’s thing the ones chasing are after, so our hero can then fly away to draw off any airborne pursuit. Which he does. And they then disappear into the … fog … night … trees … tunnel? Sheesh. I dunno.

The folks in the boat live on it. It’s their home so they can’t give it up. However, they can give it a make over so it looks completely different in about thirty minutes. They can’t get caught at that point because I’ve written a show down that I really like – mainly because it involves Big Merv. I really like the whole book. No-one else will, but I do. Which makes it tricky.

Also, the canal boat chase is something I have to write straight, because otherwise it won’t come out funny. And I love the idea that some people will see it in their heads, see the incongruity of it and laugh their heads off while others will completely miss that. But if it still works it won’t matter and either path will be fine.

It’s tricky though. I might have to rest it again for another couple of months.

__________________________

If you’re impatient for the next book in the Hamgeean Misfit Series why not try listening to some of my books on audio.

Read by the distinguished and extremely talented Mr Gareth Davies, who has turned the K’Barthan series into a bit of a gem. You can find out more about them here: https://www.hamgee.co.uk/audio.html

Also, Small Beginnings is on its way to market in audio format. Once again, read by Gareth who is a bit of a dab hand at comedy. It’s available on Kobo already and should land at the other retailers soon.

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22 Aug 2020 · 11:49 am

Arnold’s pants!

Blimey but it’s windy here. Must be all the fruit I’m eating. Oh ho ho. The weather is pretty blowy too. Storm Ellen, I thought we’d had Ellen after Dennis but thinking about it I think that was some Spanish one with an exotic name from far further down the alphabet that muscled in.

This week I’m feeling a bit bleargh. I dunno why really because, as things go, I’ve actually achieved a bit of a score.

McOther is 60 next week and I wanted to do something to mark the occasion. Except with covid that’s hard and also McOther, himself, while he likes to be made a fuss of, also, does not like to be made a fuss of. So if you’re going to plan some jolly birthday japes for him you do rather have to go about it the right way. This involves tact, intelligence and subtlety so as you can imagine, I’m pretty much bollocksed from the get-go on that one. I toyed with the idea of buying him a trip in a Spitfire. They do those just down the road at Duxford. Trouble is, while I could, just, run to it, it would wipe out my entire savings … and I have another £1,500 headlight pending for next month. Thinking further, I hummed and haaad about casting the net wider. I reckoned that a fair few friends and colleagues would have chipped in five or ten quid reducing it to a more manageable dent.

However, I am piss poor at fundraising so I’d have probably raised about thirty quid and McOther would have been unimpressed if I’d blown my savings. While I’m scratching my head over this conundrum. Up pops a friend who knows someone who works at Duxford and she suggested some other tours and experiences which this lady is involved in. After a bit of a search, Bob’s your uncle! I think I have found several things I can offer him which he would love. Two or three options at Duxford, one at Biggin Hill, all look completely brilliant.

Next, with a short list, came the oh-Lordy-which-one moment. I’ve narrowed it down to three … possibly four … although unfortunately under 15s aren’t allowed on one, and with the covid malarkey, Duxford aren’t answering their phone so I couldn’t ring and ask them for details (ie does it apply to all their tours or just that one and is it an insurance exclusion, or is there scope for accommodating an extremely sensible twelve year old). I will offer him all three, some as a family day out and some as just him and he can pick the one he wants. And there we are. Some things he might like! Woot.

Then there is the party. Boozy Wine dinner and staying over at some friends who we ‘bubble’ with. Yes I have to cook some things I have never cooked and they will probably taste like shit but luckily someone else is making the cake and I’m not doing all the food. Much of it will be produced by People Who Can Cook! Phew! So Real Life wise … mood nervous but at the same time, cautiously optimistic.

Oh no …

On the books front. Things are a bit crap to be honest. Nothing is selling very well at the moment and I’m trying to organise a free first in series box set for comedic science fiction fantasy. I am extremely nervous. I’m shit at placing stuff like this in the marketplace because I suck royally at keywords. Also, I need to get some covers done and I can’t really afford to ask my usual lovely people to do that so it’s going to be downloaded Creative Commons NASA images with big hand drawn letters … and a unicorn in a space helmet, or possibly Pegasus sans space helmet saying ‘Yes! I achieved escape velocity. That’s magic.’ Or ‘I bet you’re wondering how I can breathe up here, right kids?’ With an astronaut in a space suit going, ‘that’s magic.’ Or hopefully something else that’s actually funny. Anyway, it looks as if there are six of us … hopefully … unless one pulls out. I might do one more appeal for entrants! Ideally we need to be seven or eight, I think.

Writing isn’t going very well either. I haven’t. Not for ages, because Real Life. The only time I’ve had to write this week is now and instead I have to do this. And it’s not going well anyway. The K’Barthan short that’s turned into a novel is a bit of a nightmare and I shouldn’t have called them shorts because if they were called ‘K’Barthan Extras’ I could have put in for a bookbub on them but because they’re ‘shorts’ I can’t. Arnold’s pants! Head desk. I am a total moron. But I’ve reached that point in the process when you are doing the first edit and you look at it and think, crikey this is awful. But of course when you’re mid edit that’s usually because it is. I have a canal boat chase. I so want to keep it in because frankly, few things seem funnier to me than the idea of two vehicles, each with a top speed of 4mph, locked in a grim pursuit to the death. It’s just that … how do I get rid of the people running along the towpath and won’t the bad guys have airborne snurds and just … yeh, heavy on the suspension of disbelief unless I can think of a bloody good reason for it to be just the boats … you get the picture.

Also I’ve been redoing some of my auto responders. The audio ones. So they are now in alignment with the ebook ones in that they start with the mailing list exclusive free book, Night Swimming and then give people Unlucky Dip and then go on with various other bits and bobs.

Revamping these involved looking at my ebook auto responder set up because that seems to engage people quite well. At the end of it, quietly gaining entrants, I have a survey. The idea is that I can find out what readers love and … you know … give it to them. One of the questions asked is how many of my books they’ve read. The people who answer this thing have all been on my mailing list at least a year so by the time they are invited to fill it in so, in theory, they should have read some of my books, right? I mean, otherwise, what the fuck are they doing there? When I examined the answer to that question it turns out the bulk of them have read one or two books – ie the two free short stories I’ve given them – and most of the rest haven’t read anything. Weirdly, I have people on my mailing list who send me chatty, supportive emails who have never read one of my books. I just … dunno what to do.

Worse, one total bastard has joined my list, downloaded the mailing list exclusive and posted it for sale on a pirate site, which is a bit of a shitter, especially as I can’t even sling the fucker off because I don’t know who it was.

Conclusion, over half of the people on my mailing list are other authors who have joined to see what I do. Solution, shut the fuck up about your mailing list on author marketing chat groups. Send them more excerpts and deleted scenes and keep pointing the people who pathologically refuse to pay for a book to their local library or local library’s ebook app.

I can’t do excerpts with the audio, sadly, although I can do interviews with Gareth. But I can with the ebook people. And I have the perfect book to experiment with because it achieves precisely zero sales and it was doing quite well before, when there were three excerpts from it on my auto responder. Then I can look at the survey in a year’s time and see if the number of people actually reading any of my books has risen.

Oh look. I’ve just solved my own problem. That’s jolly spiffing.

Onwards and upwards. I think the pressing thing, now is to write more books. And not books about bloody K’Barth because I need a break and if I want one of those I need to write something the normals will read. K’Barth is too complicated, too rich, too much effort for most readers, I think. It has to be simple, straightforward funny-in-space. Or something. But I have to find a way to write something that people will pick up and read, you know, on a whim rather than because it’s the last thing on their kindle and they are desperate, or being forced at gunpoint.

______________________

Well there we are. If you are bored and at a loose end you could always try reading one of my books. They are a bit weird but I promise they are more interesting than reading a telephone directory … just.

Or alternatively, there’s this lovely box set of first in series which includes Few Are Chosen and a lot of very much better, more interesting books by other people. The stealth approach has worked really well for me. People have read and enjoyed my book from this. In fact most of the people who go on to read my other books do so because they’ve read the first in series that I included in this one.

You can find that here: https://www.hamgee.co.uk/infofa.html

That’s all for this week. Next week will be hectic and I will be on the road so there may not be a post. Just giving you the heads up! Until then, hope you have a relaxing week.

 

 

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4 Jul 2020 · 12:40 pm

Dementia too, because obviously dementia once wasn’t shit enough

Yeh, I selected that heading from Whiny Titles R-Us but it does sum up the way I felt at the start of this week and the feeling I’m trying to describe.

The slough of despond; rain and yellow lines …

Bits of this week have been tough. I’ve had a couple of down days, mainly because I suspect I have had a mild UTI but also it’s the time of the month when I can’t remember my own name without cue cards. Worse, I’d forgotten to put the morning HRT gel on for two days running and that does make a difference. The traffic is back to normal so there has been the usual 40 minute delay along the bottom of the M25 on the way to Mum’s. This last two weeks, the journey time is back to three hours down and two and a half back, so long as I am on the road at half two sharp.

Worse, I’ve been finding it really hard engage with Real Life. To care about the little things that other people need me to care about. Silly stuff. McMini’s bedroom curtains need hemming but it’s difficult to do that while he’s in there with them attending his virtual lessons. It’s the last day today, so that’s fine, I can do it tomorrow, but it’s been a long time and both he and McOther have been eyeing them impatiently. Meanwhile, McOther has a favourite beanbag. The material is completely rotten and sewing it up is a thankless task that I have to repeat every three weeks or so, unless he does it. It’s bust again and so the choice of thankless tasks was twofold: try to get him to understand that the material is rotten, which, itself is a hiding to nothing. Or I fix it again when I know it will break in a few weeks. But fixing it is a duty of love, so perhaps it’s a bit less pointless than it seems. Quietly, without saying so, I know McOther feels unloved if I say I’ll fix it and then take ages to deliver. It’s not good to feel so meh I can’t do anything. More on that story later.

This Wednesday, then, I was not in the right place to drive 288 miles, not even in a Lotus. I felt unbelievably meh. I was teary about the state of Mum, teary about the state of myself and feeling miserable. Then the radio proceeded to play some of my favourite songs. Things which are in my record collection but which I haven’t heard for ages because most of my music equipment assumes that anything I’ve ripped from my own CDs or vinyl is a pirate copy and refuses to play it.

Hearing all these songs again, it seemed that something out there in the ether was trying to tell me to cheer up. Finally one of my very favourite songs as a teenager; Big In Japan, by Alphaville came on. Despite being in very slow moving traffic jam, the gauntlet was thrown down. I was going to sing. I rolled up the windows so, in theory, nobody would hear me, jacked up the volume and joined in. This involved full on pop star style gurning and a selection of ridiculous hand actions, I kept going, even when everything started moving. There’s nothing like giving zero fucks to cheer yourself up, and it did, at least for long enough to realise what was wrong.

You see, lockdown was quite easy, it was like a little six week holiday from the administriviative  shit. I worried about Mum but I rang her every day and I didn’t have to go anywhere or organise anything except my books! I just hung out with the McOthers and sat around in the sun writing. Woot.

Pseudo lockdown is insanely difficult. All the admin has returned with a vengeance, except because of Covid19 it’s about six times harder to do all the things you should be able to do by making a phone call. It’s the hard bits out of Real Life plus extra duties of lockdown, like the calls. All the hassle but none of the convenience. I did manage to get the scan I was due at the hospital but now I need to try and get the cat some shots. As usual, every piece of admin which should involve nothing more than a phone call involves several, and a protracted, drawn out effort, posting things, sending things. Case in point, I’ve just stuffed up my chances of opening a Barnes and Noble vendor account by transposing two numbers in my bank account number. It’s gone into ‘pending’. Probably forever. I can’t change it and I know their help desk is offline until after covid. I think they’re the only site where I have to have a W8EN still too. Everyone else you can just add your tax number and it works. I don’t know much about it but I suspect I have to get another W8EN as mine’s probably expired. Sadly, I do know that this is a great deal more complicated than it was because Americans don’t really understand what a sole trader is.

Meanwhile Mum is still shielding so she can have a few people round but not everyone. The lady who cuts her toenails has started coming again. Yes, when you’re old and arthritic you can’t do that anymore and you have to have someone come and do it for you. The lovely lady who cuts her hair came and gave her an appropriately socially distanced ‘do’ this Wednesday as well.

However, a lot of her friends are shielding, too, or can’t come to see her because she is, so she’s still bored stupid. Hopefully, as the small things that structure her life return, like the hairdresser visiting and the foot lady, she’ll gradually be more grounded again. Just as Dad did, she thrives on social interaction. My fingers and toes are, therefore, crossed. Although I have to accept that there is no guarantee of this. Because I think the main source of my malaise this week was realising that Mum is going to take the same path as Dad. Her own version, but the same horrific journey into oblivion. And I’m going to have to walk beside her; because I love her, and because, if I want to be a decent human being, that’s what I must do.

Please do not feed the animals

As we take these first steps, I guess what struck me down, temporarily, was the renewal of that familiar pain. It still hurts. Even though I’ve done it before and I am aware of the cost. I should know by now. I should be strong. But I’m not. I really wonder if I have the courage to do this a second time. I don’t want her to die, I don’t want to lose her but I pray that she will enjoy a kindly easy passing before it gets too bad. Yet, at the same time, I know she won’t because that might actually be kind to all of us and God forbid that my family should be shown a scrap of mercy over this. Instead, it seems life brings whatever will cause the maximum amount of misery and pain to all of us. Sorry Mum.

I have wondered about consulting my doctor and seeing if some medication might be in order. The trouble is, I’m pretty certain that any kind of medication for depression will merely make me even more forgetful than I already am. And since three quarters of my insane frustration is with my inability to remember a single fucking thing for more than about two and a half seconds, I suspect it would be a bad idea. And anyway. I’m not depressed. I’m sad. There’s a huge difference. When Dad died, there was grief but the sadness went away. It was a liberation.

Now that Mum is showing more acute signs of dementia, it’s back. If you wanted to present me with the perfect storm of things I am shit at dealing with, there are parts of my life over the last eight years that would be an excellent fit. I can do level-headed, clear thought in a crisis. Yeh, I can do that. But long, slow, sustained suffering. No. Not very good at it to be honest.

As I sat there, singing in the car, I realised that I’d started to withdraw completely into inner space. I lost myself in K’Barth, where my characters were suffering but where, I knew, eventually, they would be OK. I made them suffer in the faint hope their pain would somehow alleviate my own. I gave them a happy ever after in the hope that maybe if I did that, I could have one. This is an approach which works really well for me, but, unfortunately, not for those around me. That was another cause of the misery, the misery I was inflicting on my very much loved McOthers. Withdrawing helps me but it hurts everyone else. Small doses then.

As I drove, something happened. I don’t know how, but something in me fixed it. The blinkers came up again and I saw what I needed to see. I saw what was there in Mum rather than what wasn’t there. I stopped seeing drudgery and saw small acts of love. And I remembered that I have done this before. And suddenly, I slipped into the coping strategy. Short bursts of activity. An hour at the computer and then half an hour doing something else around the house. Tiny steps. 10 minutes a day. Pigeon steps, inching forward one tiny step at a time. Lists. Lots of lists. Each project broken down into manageable tiny items which are ticked off as they are done.

Don’t be a … or maybe do be one … or work smarter not harder … or something.

Lockdown was a luxury. Lockdown afforded me big chunks of time in which to write. My work came on in leaps and bounds. But lockdown is over. I need to see the me time as brief moments of something else among the admin. I need to see life as peppered with acts of love, which is what the housework side of stuff really is. Except it’s a horrible phrase … very ‘putting out love and keeping it there’ but until I can think of something better it’ll have to do. And anyway, because it sounds like fake Oprah, it’s sort of funny and that helps. As for the worry about Mum and the trying to sort things out for her. I need to call all that something different too. Same thing? Ah why not?

Duty is a crushing, heavy suffocating word, calling it an act of love makes it feel a lot lighter.

It’s amazing how, always, always, always, holding onto your sanity is about how you look at what’s happening, how you frame it to yourself. That simple switch and I’m cheerful again, and reasonably happy. I feel the weight, for sure, but it’s lessened. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, is a chuffing marvel. If you are struggling with anything heavy and millstone-like in your life, I urge you to look it up. I never cease to be amazed how I can actually do a PR/Propaganda job on myself. I know what I’m doing, I know I’m just putting a different slant on it, yet it works.

You may consign the coping strategies to the past when you don’t need them, but it’s slightly miraculous how quickly they came back when you do. I feel better, a lot better. To be honest, I still don’t really don’t know if I can do this a second time. But there’s no point in wondering. I swam through the dark waters with Dad and came out the other side. I’ll just have to take each stage as it comes, strike out into the void and give it my best shot.

_______________________

If you are feeling a bit meh, yourself, you could always pick up a good book! Indeed, if you’re feeling really lazy you don’t even have to read it. Choose one of the audiobooks and Gareth will do that for you. Indeed anyone who signs up for my audio mailing list gets two books free; Unlucky Dip and Night Swimming. That’s two hours of glorious K’Barthan lunacy for zero pence. Yep! Night Swimming comes later on, although I may switch it so it’s the story people get first. It’s just that suddenly I have very little time so for now it’s Unlucky Dip first, then a week or two and Night Swimming.

Anyway, Gareth played a blinder on both but the really lovely thing about it is that Unlucky was the first one he did and Night Swimming is his most recent. You get to see what he’s learned in the interim. So there you are, if do want a listen, just go here, sign up and they should both arrive in your inbox over the course of about three weeks: https://www.hamgee.co.uk/audio1fb.html

Unlucky Dip Audio Book


If you do join in, and it’s not obligatory or anything, but if you do, or if you have and there’s any stuff you want me to ask Gareth about how he did the recordings, let me know and I’ll ask him.

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23 May 2020 · 11:58 am

Today, a bunny thing happened …

This week, I had intended to write a deep and poignant post about stages along the dementia path. But then stuff happened. So, instead I’m going to share another slice of my completely bat shit crazy life. Something connected with my oh-ho-ho so clever pun in the title there (phnark).

First up, I invented a joke. Who do mice worship? Cheesus. This is, possibly, the only funny joke I’ve ever thought of, and probably ever will so enjoy it while you can.

Next, ACX, which publishes audiobooks on Audible. Jeez but seriously? What a chuffing shower. Talk about arse doesn’t know what the elbow’s doing. Seriously, total, epic big-company style fuckwittery. They used to approve audiobooks by listening to them, which is commendable, but takes ages. I think they still do but they have an autovetter as well, now, that saves them a lot of time. There was a big surge in audio submissions at the end of last year apparently, and basically, they were swamped.

Friends submitting books early December were only having them put on sale in late February/early March. One of the biggest reasons I published non-exclusively with them is because I looked at them and I just thought … do I really want to rely on these insane nutters for all my audiobook income? And the immediate answer was no. Lucky because they removed the key benefit of going all-in just after I uploaded my first book with them – on a non-exclusive deal. Phew.

Anyway, the issue is that I submitted four audiobooks which are in a series. The audiobooks were submitted in order one, two, three, four in the hope that they would appear on the market in that same order. Did they? Of course not. Book two appeared first and then, worse, some poor bugger bought one – they’re going to be well confused, unless it’s Gareth’s mum (my mum wouldn’t be up to that kind of thing) but Gareth doesn’t think so.

Anyway, I wrote to ACX help, you can’t reach that from the UK by the way, the help links just pipe you through to sign up to audible, but some friends in the US and Australia shared the web address. I wrote and explained that the books need to be read in order and asked if there was any chance they could hurry up book one. I received a boilerplate reply saying that they’d look into it but that book one would probably go live before they came back with an answer. The best way of saying ‘we’ll investigate this when hell freezes over’ I’ve come across.

Well done ACX! Mwahahahargh!

OK so maybe I’m being harsh, the (possibly) person or (probably) bot replying might have made some sort of effort. Who knows, but the result of my enquiry after the status of book one was the rapid release of book four. Mwahahahahrgh!

What cockwomblery is this? I thought, but give them some time. Maybe the first book will appear next.

Sure enough ACX did put another of the books on sale that very same day, can you guess which one? Yes! That’s right. Book three! Mwahahahahrgh! Book one, which was submitted before all of them, remains stolidly ‘in review’ at the moment. Gareth’s reaction, ‘that is mad in so many ways’ pretty much sums it up.

Writing has been a bit on the back burner this week, although I have written about 6,000 words because I know exactly what’s happening so I can dash off a thousand in a few ten minute stints here and there. Also did the first Sussex trip for nine weeks, which was lovely in most ways and a little difficult in others. I will be taking McMini next week, which we are all looking forward to. McMini lost a bit of focus on his school work recently. Got a sucked into his gaming. The school raised concerns so we’ve been liaising with them since. He’s been really good about catching up. It’s half term this week and I think he has a couple of assignments left to do but otherwise, he’s nearly back on track, which is brilliant. But it does mean we’ve been spending a lot more time checking his work over with him and ensuring it’s all done. He responds much better to hearing and seeing someone explain a concept rather than reading it … like me bless him. We’ve also been distracting him from his screen so it’s been good to spend more time with him.

On Thursday, after he’d finished his lessons, he came through to the kitchen and after a bit of chatting we decided we’d go for a walk. Off we went and half way round our usual circuit McMini asked if we could take a different path and explore, so we did, ending up on a really lovely cycle/foot path through the countryside – even if it was a bit close to the A14. It came out on a road I know well and I worked out we could do a loop back home. Having decided to do this we set off, onwards, when I noticed a black rabbit calmly munching grass in broad daylight on the verge.

‘Uh-oh, looks like someone’s rabbit has got out,’ I said, making to walk on.

‘Mum! We can’t leave it. Remember when we lost our cat, remember how horrible it was, there will be people looking for him.’

‘Well … we can’t catch him,’ I said, dubiously. ‘Tell you what then, let’s ring the vet.’

Our vet was on another call and anyway, I knew they were only taking emergency calls and that they were well busy – we’d walked past the surgery and seen that the car park was hooching with folks and pets, all emergencies, waiting to be seen. So I rang another vet. They said to ring the RSPCA. I found a local rep but the number went to voicemail so I rang the hotline.

‘Your call will be answered in … thirty … minutes,’ said the electronic voice. I relayed this, pretty horrific news to McMini.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ I asked McMini.

‘Yes Mum.’

‘Right oh then.’

Bunny!

So we held … for forty minutes. During which time we stayed with the rabbit so we didn’t lose it. It was very friendly, sniffling at my feet and sniffing my fingers. Definitely tame but a bit shy as well and seemingly very short sighted. At one point it was attacked by another wild rabbit. Did you know that when one rabbit jumps another rabbit from behind, the surprised one can jump at least four feet high? No, neither did I but it did. It was chased around until it ran back to us and the wild rabbit stopped. There was stare down for a moment or two and then I clicked my fingers at the wild rabbit and it scarpered whereas our chap, being tame, was not alarmed.

Finally, the RSPCA answered and told us – you guessed it – to call the vet. They gave us the number of our own vet, the one which was engaged in the first instance and extremely busy. I rang them and told them that I hoped to be bringing in a rabbit. However, while waiting, I had texted the RSPCA local rep to explain what was happening. I texted McOther as well. He came to collect us with the car, some carrots and lettuce, and a cat box. There was a lay by just near us so he parked there. By six fifteen, we reckoned we weren’t going to get the rabbit, it came close, a couple of times but we decided we’d have to leave it and we came home. Rabbits do get out and usually, they do go home on their own.

More bunny!

Later, while exchanging messages with Gareth about the curious antics of ACX I mentioned the rabbit. He said he’d owned two pairs of rabbits and that yes, he did indeed pull them … well … not out of a hat but out of a house apparently. Mwahahaargh. He gave them to his nephew and nice when he quit being a children’s entertainer and got a job with a touring theatre company. He had two pairs and told me his would get out frequently, to the point where he stopped trying to catch them because it was a pain in the arse and pointless, anyway, when they’d always come home.

This was reassuring but our bunny seemed to have very poor vision, and while he probably wanted to go home, I wondered if he’d be able to find his way. More to the point, surely he’d have left the area when the other rabbit attacked him if he knew how to get home. Worse, there was the possibility that he might have been abandoned, in a moment of desperation, by skint, locked-down, parents who’d told the kids he ran away. Maybe that was why he was staying where he was, because that was where he had been let out of someone’s car. Or maybe he was just lost. Perhaps the increased traffic on the A14 was drowning out the noises he would have used to navigate his way home. Or, he may simply have stayed in that spot because, as a tame, domesticated bunny, albeit a lost one, he liked human company. Maybe munching pine cones and relaxing on the grass near a busy footpath was as close to human interaction as he dared get. I thought way too much about this, as you can see, but I decided that in order to come out of this liking myself, I’d have to go back and have one last go at catching him the next day.

Action bunny!

During our NHS clapping session, the local RSPCA lady who I’d texted got back to me. She’d called a local vet, would I mind if the vet called me? I said not at all and sure enough within a couple of minutes a lovely lady from a completely different vet’s practice called me. Yep, there is a third practice in Bury of which I knew nothing and this lady was from there. She went and found the bunny, but she couldn’t catch him either. I said I’d try again the following day and she told me to pop by and she’d give me some food and a box. That morning, McOther had planned to go to a supermarket near the spot where we’d seen the rabbit. He said he’d go check and see if it was still there. However, when he reached the spot, the lay-by had eight or nine cars in it and there were loads of blokes in yellow tabards wielding noisy gardening machinery. No sign of the rabbit. Unsurprisingly. Maybe it had moved on. If it hadn’t, it would now.

Later, at about two fifteen, I reckoned the council gardeners would probably have gone and wondered, that being likely, whether I should go and have one last go at finding the rabbit anyway. It had probably run away to somewhere else, but it was more than just a lost bunny. It was someone’s loved pet. And it was so very clearly a particularly docile, kindly and sweet natured one. The more nights it was out, the higher the chances it’d be eaten by a fox. I dashed off a thousand words of the W.I.P. but by about quarter to three, I knew I would feel terrible leaving the poor little chap out there for another night without trying to catch him first. Cursing my soft centre, because I had other things to do, off I went.

I packed two bowls and a bottle of water into a rucksack and stopped at the vet’s surgery, which was on the way, where they donated a box and some rabbit pellets to help me catch him. The rabbit took about ten minutes to find and was roughly where McMini, McOther and I had given up on it the previous day. It hopped into a patch of grass so I sat down with it, put some rabbit mix in one bowl and some water in the other, opened the box and waited. I noticed there were several big balls of fluff about which had clearly come off something during a fight, one was damp with dew so might have been there a day or two, the other was much fresher. I hoped they weren’t off the rabbit I was trying to catch.

Gradually, as I sat still, reading, my rabbit-shaped friend came nearer, probably more by happenstance than design. I rattled the bowl of grass pellets and almost got it to follow them into the box. Almost but not quite.

For a few minutes I let it get on with eating grass and just sat there with it. It sniffled my feet again at one point and then wandered off to wherever its nose for tasty forget-me-nots led next. It looked like I wasn’t going to tempt it into the box this time. I’d report back to the vet and try again tomorrow. I was a bit worried it might be thirsty, so I thought that before I left I should, at least, try to get it to drink some water. I flipped my finger in the bowl to make … what the hell do you call them … watery noises and it perked up and listened. More splishing and … yes, it was definitely interested. I leaned down and put the bowl right in front of its face. It sniffled it a bit and then had a long drink. Excellent.

After that I put the food bowl down and it nibbled a few grass pellets, I tried stroking it, and it moved on a foot or two. Gently, followed and tried again, stroking its head. I could almost hear it go, ‘Aaaaaaaa.’ It was clear it loved this, had missed it and was craving affection. So I kept stroking it and talking gently to it and then I put my hands round it to pick it up. It still didn’t tense or get scared, not until the point where I lifted it into the air. I didn’t dare support it’s back legs in case it sprang out of my grasp so I did get a couple of scratches from it’s paddling back feet but managed to put it into the box and close the door.

In the process of kicking, one flailing leg caught its own fur and ripped a lump off its tum. It was the same as the lumps of fur strewn around on the grass. The poor little thing had clearly had a horrid night, presumably being attacked by the other rabbit.

On the way back to the vet surgery the box nearly came open. Luckily someone stopped me to ask what I was carrying, noticed and told me. When I told her the box contained a rabbit she melted a bit – clearly a rabbit fan – and asked if she could say hello. I told her of course and as she put her finger through the grill and stroked its head I explained where I’d found it. She’d seen it too, it transpired. I said I thought it might be a bit blind and that, when I’d told a vet this, she had said rabbits get glaucoma. Yes, the lady said, they do, it’s quite common. She told me she still had a hutch and that she’d kept rabbits but didn’t have any right now. She had been with friends when she’d seen this bunny the previous day and intended to see if it was still there. She, too, was wondering whether she should try to catch him. Why wasn’t I just taking him home and keeping him, she asked. I said that he was so trusting and loving that I thought he must belong to someone who’d be sorely missing him. I told her where I was taking him and that if the owners didn’t come forward they’d have to re-home him, encouraging her to ring and say she was interested if she thought she’d like to keep him. She said she’d pop in and ask.

Second owner lined up then … although I am very, very tempted. McOther says that he already has three dumb animals to look after though (McMini, McCat and myself) and felt a fourth might tip him over into insanity. Mwahahaargh. Still …

As I walked on, I felt the rabbit shift and relax and all the weight in the box moved to one corner. Tufts of black fur stuck out of the air holes where he was reclining against the side. A good sign, I thought. Clearly a relaxed bunny. So there we are. The rabbit is safe, with kindly humans who will treat him well and look after him. He’ll spend a week at the vet – which is a legal requirement – during which they’ll try and trace his owner. Then, if they can’t find the family who lost him, he will be re-homed. Who knows, perhaps, with the lovely lady I met on the footpath.

Mood this week. Smug.

_____________________

If, like our friendly bunny, you wish to escape for a while, why not get yourself lost in a good book? And if you can’t find one of those, there’s always one of mine. Close Enough, K’Barthan Shorts, Hamgeean Misfit No 3 will be available from many public libraries (check your app or contact your librarian) and is available for preorder from most of the major retailers, as well as from me. For more information click here:

Close Enough … available 18th June 2020

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