Happy New Year everyone.
Well, as always, that wasn’t nearly as bad as I feared. Christmas at Mum’s was a quiet but cheerful affair and New Year at the in laws’ was also quiet but also cheerful. McMum in-law wasn’t well and I was worried she wouldn’t want us up there. My parents tended to prefer a distraction, when ill, but McOther’s lot are like cats; they seem to prefer to withdraw. They don’t want us to see them below par. However, this time, despite clearly still feeling a little piano, McOther’s mum was in good spirits and they did and let us look after them and cook the meals. Hopefully we gave them a bit of a break and there’s nothing like a dose of McMini to lift the spirits.
And here we are … back to um … stuff.
Needless to say, on the way to McParents I received a crie de coeur from Mum’s care team. A letter had arrived, registered post, from the people who made her washing machine, along with an invoice from September 2018. The letter was dated 28th December and threatened my mother with legal action if she didn’t pay a £78.00 bill within seven days. This seemed particularly shit since, not only was the bill was from sixteen months previously but they’d only invoiced once at a point when we were instructed that any invoice would just be the system doing its thing before they could stop it and we shouldn’t pay. It was basically a case of Teflon desks at the insurer and the company they’d used to supply the machine. I hope I sorted it out but if the … you may receive another communication but that’ll just be because it’s gone through the system and can’t be stopped … line holds a well this time as it did sixteen months ago I will expect my mother to receive a court summons shortly.
Naturally since I was half way up the A1 on the way to Scotland, and all the paperwork was either in Sussex or in my desk in Bury, there was absolutely bugger all I could do until after New Year. I rang Miele – the swines issuing the threats – and told them this. I do wonder who thought it was OK to bill an octogenarian woman with dementia once, wait sixteen months and then send a letter demanding payment in seven days on 28th December and expect to get it – Christmas post, bank holidays and all, even if she paid up since it would be a cheque. I did ring and ask them if it was a mistake and the woman I spoke to, though very polite, reacted as if she couldn’t understand what on earth I thought was wrong with that kind of behaviour.
I asked McOther if this was normal. Only for American lawyers apparently as McOther put it, ‘the rest of us are more civilised.’
Back in Bury, I was able to sort it out. After, I hope, keeping Mum out of the small claims court, I went shopping and met with a couple of surreal experiences. While paying at the self service bit of Marks and Sparks, I noticed a munching noise next to me. It came from a little old dear who’d just loaded up her sholley at the check out, said goodbye to the cashier and was hoovering up a red pepper like a woman who hadn’t eaten for days. She noticed me looking so I gave her a smile, which she returned, shyly, before going on her way. What amazed me was that no-one else noticed. I’m not sure if strange things like this only happen around me, or if it’s just that the writer in me notices this stuff. Or, perhaps it was the day for eccentrics yesterday. On my way home from Marks, I noticed one of my favourite shops had an outlet sale and popped in. A woman there was singing along to the canned music at the top of her lungs. Pretty impressive as it was all that dance trance kind of stuff where the synths do all the melody and the singer just sings one or two notes, you know, like plain chant – only with a busier background and in a major key.
After stocking up with shopping, I did the first eyebombs of 2020 – start as you mean to go on – and returned home. I wrote some stuff and then it occurred to me that I should probably and work out some sort of plan for 2020.
MTM’s 2020 plan …
Yeh. Normally, my New Year’s Resolution is not to have one.
This year, though, I feel I ought to lay some vague plan. I am aware that since my full time job is looking after McMini (McOther when he’ll let me) and Mum my ‘career’ such as it is, will always be a side hustle. But I can’t help thinking that the equivalent of, at least, pointing to something on the horizon and saying, ‘let’s go that way!’ Might be helpful at this point. Especially as I have Gareth to think about now. Holy shit I still can’t believe that’s happening! And since he’s taking the time and effort to make the K’Barthan Series as audio books, the least I can do is try and earn us some money from them. The question, as ever, is how.
Looking back is often good, in that sometimes, when your forward momentum is about the same speed as continental drift, it is a real fillip to, kind of, speed up the camera and see how far you’ve come. Last year, after many false starts (thanks, benighted car) the following fabulous things happened:
- I finally published a book, exactly four years to the day after the previous one. I’d no idea the time had gone so fast. Gulp.
- The whole audiobooks thing, which feels as if I’ve jumped timelines and am living the life of a different far more successful MTM.
- Met a bunch of local authors here in Bury which is brilliant. Cluster marketing, support from like minded souls, and all that fabulous malarkey. Looking forward to doing stuff with them in 2020.
- I wrote some more stuff, although I haven’t counted the words.
Then there’s the longer game. During the four years between Escape From B-Movie Hell and Small Beginnings, I learned some great ways to keep writing when it feels as if you lack the emotional slack to do so. Last year, we walked the final stages of Dad’s dementia journey with him and while it was really hard, I am at peace with what we did. There’s nothing that I would change. I’m sure we did the best thing by him and while it hurts, it also feels right, possibly even righteous. The writing stalled, but only for three months, and at the moment it seems to be up and running again. I have reverted to my 10 minutes a day rule, there is lots to write and from the point of view of organising and publishing more books, lots to do.
Back to the book launch for a moment. Am I happy with the way the book launch went? Yes and no. Small Beginnings launched mid November with a very small plop, rather than a splash. It’s only a novella, I’m a very small and weedy member of the writing community, who is, basically, starting again from scratch so that probably isn’t bad. It helped that Barry J Hutchison lent me his fans. Thanks Barry for letting me post on your facebook group. If you are wondering who Barry is – check his books out here. They’re a bit like mine only better and more plentiful! Plus he kept going when he had a far, far shittier year than me. Without Barry’s fans, the release of Small Beginnings would have been considerably down on Escape From B-Movie Hell in 2015.
This might be because Amazon is now pay-to-play and I can’t afford to, it might be because my mainstay group on Goodreads has become very quiet and I doubt the sales boost from there was anything close to 2015. So what can I fix that won’t take time I lack, or cash? I’m thinking, there are six things I could try, in no particular order.
- Writing more books, even if it means making them shorter and less complicated as well as long and epic. Increasing the back catalogue is paramount at this point.
- Increasing the variety of the back catalogue. Yes, I need to get my arse in gear and publish Space Dustmen.
- A blog tour might work, but it will be a time suck so I’ll have to see how well I do at writing the posts, in advance.
- I could set up some ads on Facebook, and if I can make them funny enough, might be able to blag some shares off my Facebook friends – especially for the audiobooks launch.
- I need to sort out my mailing list engagement, which is, frankly, risible. Back in the day, about 50% of folks I sent emails to would open. These days I’m lucky if it’s 20%.
- I am wondering about dipping a cautious toe in the world of podcasts or video blogs. These will not be particularly professional, mainly because I live on a main road which the emergency services use, doing full blues and twos, approximately every five minutes. And I have an extremely talkative cat who follows me everywhere.
The obvious ones to concentrate on are, one, two and five. After all making more product and building on the most straightforward and direct method contact with any enthusiastic buyers have to be the central effort.
There we are, that’s about it. Nothing to See Here will be released on 8th February, or there abouts. If you want to know when it’s available for pre-order, click here or click on the picture. I think I may have mentioned that before! Mwahahahrgh.
