This week I’m #amwriting

Selling books… sort of. To date, I’ve ‘sold’ 465 copies of my free book, Ten Little Stars. I ran a promotion for the book on Kobo* (£3 for a week) at the start of March and downloads have been consistent ever since, averaging 15 a day.

So far, it has translated into one sale of one of my other books, though I can’t prove the two are related, but no sign-ups to my mailing list yet (I advertise both in the free book). I think, however, this is a long-term process so I’m not discouraged. And it is gratifying that at least someone is reading my stuff.

The fab thing about publishing a book yourself is that you do get to change it easily. Seeing as Ten Little Stars is doing so well on Kobo (#361 in fiction and literature anthologies), I added the first chapter of my about to be published rom-com, Highland Fling, to the book in the hope that I can fix it in folks’ minds. and they will rush to buy it when it comes out…

The picture at the top of this post is an extract from Ten Little Stars. I’ve been experimenting with images for Pinterest and Instagram. I’m a words woman, rather than pictures so I took an extract from the book, blew up the font size, used the snipping tool to make a file in Paint and voila – a neat little extract in a picture.

#amwriting update

Finishing off the sequel to Highland Fling. Stand-alone books don’t work as well in the indie world as a series, so I took two of the support characters from Highland Fling and gave them a story of their own. It means I get to stay in Lochalshie, the Scottish village I made up which is based on the town of Arrochar in Argyll and Bute. If Highland Fling is loosely based on Pride and Prejudice as most romance novels are, Highland Heart is more along the lines of Persuasion, thank you Jane Austen.

Celebrating my mum’s birthday. Brenda B celebrated her birthday on Friday, so we gathered together at my sister’s house for a family celebration on Saturday. My sister outdid herself with the food – pulled pork, two different types of salad, sausage rolls, sausages (get the feeling we’re pig mad in my family?!), potato salad and a birthday cake made from individual chocolate brownies.

Sleeping with your cat is good for you. Fact.

Spending quality time with the cat.

Well, why wouldn’t you? He’s a lovely bundle of furry fun.

*May the universe rain down blessings on Kobo and the excellent tastes of Canadians in general, to date the biggest proportion of the Ten Little Stars down-loaders country-wise.