We painted the kitchen and we painted the bedroom and we painted the front room. Masking tape was our savior. Edges were our foe. Great big swathes where the skirting board was the same color as the wall and all four walls were the same color were our great friend. Here is the kitchen transformation- Wallpaper stripped. I should’ve taken a picture with the stripey blue paper up, but didn’t think. It wasn’t terrible, but I’m no fan of wallpaper, and it was cracked, peeling, and pretty poorly aligned in the first place. Here it is with white primer. Lovely … Read More

More great examples of 2 steps forward one step back today, grr…  Did all shower ordering stuff (£500) plus carried 1.5 square meters of tile home, nice Weatherspoons pub lunch, then get home to start painting! I move the new modem so it won’t get painted on, and boom, goes stone cold dead. Call provider- apparently we’re not even supposed to be ‘live’ yet. Well, we were, now we’re not. Much frustration. Many venting.  I go on quest for another mobile wifi (a dongle). 5 shops and many quizzical looks later (“I don’t know what you’re talking about”, one shop … Read More

House stuff continues apace, with every day being a range of two steps forward one step back progressions. Of course the key to remember is that’s a lot of forward steps! It sucks though. Eg, THE SHOWER. For a week tried to get a good plumber to replace cracked shower tray. Got a guy out, came 2 hours late, gave a quote, 1000 pounds +. I sent him photos to email, tried to get him to come back and do the work (even at that price!), but he never came. Get another guy, lined up for that day- he doesn’t … Read More

Most of a week has gone by and while we’ve had wifi- a little mobile dongle thing with limited gigabytes (10 pounds for one gb!!)- it hasn’t allowed me to make a single wordpress post. Whaaaat? It’s true. I tried. It gazumped me. But we’ve been busy here, using our second week of holiday to try and get this house in shape. The wifi man came, the British Gas boiler man came (sludge in the system but not bad, ancient boiler with lowest energy efficiency rating, can’t get replacement parts, but working ok), and tomorrow the plumber comes and wil … Read More

Today my Dad and Ailz came over with a raft of pictures to hang on our blank walls, including a number of Ailz’ cross-stitch works and a tableau that could include both Abe Lincoln and Robert E. Lee (confederate general), bought in Kentucky.  Maybe I’ll take pictures in good light tomorrow. We showed them the house, which is starting to look pretty nice, then went out for lunch at a lovely pub called ‘The Orange Tree’.    Dad, Ailz, me, SY    Chicken soup to start.    Pork belly for main- lush.   An array of paints for dessert. But … Read More

Sales and borrows are taking a jump today, up to 8 sales and 4000 page reads and the days almost over, which is great.  Perhaps this is the impact of free really kicking in? It has been a week since the promo ended- that would be slow response- though I have heard it can take days for the post-free bounce to kick in. In other writing news, I’ve broadly plotted out zombie book 3. These things always seem more exciting to me as I dig in. It may end on a terrible cliff-hanger. I’m thinking about that… Life Last night, … Read More

I moved house!  Didn’t have internet yesterday so couldn’t update. Sales of books went down from the high of 10 to just 2 yesterday, and now 4 today. Pages read has come down from 10,000 to 4,000 to 2,000. Tralala. I did all I could do. Reviews on The Last are up to 40. That is awesome. After over a year out and some 100 emails to book bloggers, Ignifers Rise still has only 27. The Last has been out 4 months. I’m going to start editing Mr. Ruins harshly. I’m simplifying and speeding things up. It’ll be the same … Read More

Sales of all books today are down to 5, but page reads are still high at 4500. Between them that’s about $35.  6 days at that level of sales and I’ll pay off the promo cost. 9 days and it will pay for the cover too. Any further can go towards the next cover and promo!  Life New house! It bucketed down rain all day. We arrived to get the key at 3pm. Going into the house was just overwhelming. Our house! Turning off the burglar alarm was wild and frantic. Discovering that some of the electrics, one toilet and … Read More

Shifting 7000 free copies of The Last and The Lost is already having some small boost effect, with 10 sales so far today. Kindle Unlimited page reads (borrows) are up fourfold on normal- 5000 pages read. That’s probably 10 people reading a book fully through.  Things ought to pick up a little more- that is if the promo has raised my visibility on the popularity list. In the past the bump comes a few days after coming off free. I feel good. I guess a big part of that is the good reviews coming in. I’m glad people are enjoying … Read More

Its been the last day of my double promotion for The Last and The Lost, and free downloads have hit the peak of 7,000 and not moved much since. It’s less than I hoped for (5k each book), but I’m happy really. 3 5-star reviews came in for The Last over the course of the promo, taking it to 39 and an average of 4.7, very close to 4.8. Who cares about number of reviews? I think readers will. Primarily though- it’s the big promo sites. Bookbub look at number of reviews. More is no guarantee they’ll feature you, but … Read More