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 blue (Moonlight Bay).

One more step remains, and that is paint the floor dark blue. That is exciting.

Sales continue at around 3/day, while page reads hold steady around 6,000 (12 books a day). Reviews pop in nicely. I’ve done no writing but I shall do some planning for Zombie Ocean 3 tomorrow. It’s going to take things in a whole other direction.

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 owner said) I got it. £45! On a contract!

But when the clerk rang it up, only £10 :). Nobody knows why. 15gb for one month, and I can cancel tomorrow. 

Much painting followed, a fury of it.

When am I gonna do writing? Nobody knows. One more day of painting then back to work.

Here is a picture of Winston Churchill’s war room bunker, in Westminster, which we went to a few months ago.

I want my study to look like this- like all the writing I’m doing is essential and keeping the world safe.  Maps on the walls, Bakelite phones, and green bankers lamps. Even a black phone with a green handle.

Churchill’s bedroom was right next to this!

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 come at all.
• Get another guy, from a 100 pound an hour company, he can come tomorrow! Bu, we haven’t got the shower tray yet.
• Rush off to Wickes to get shower tray. Dither over which one one to buy. Catch taxi home as it is big and heavy.
• Guy comes, ON TIME! Can’t install it, it’s the wrong one. Pulls old shower out- half tiles come with it. Can’t re-use old shower glass walls, the frames are busted. So now we have hole where shower was, bunch of junk, and wrong heavy shower tray.
• Back to Wickes for refund.

In total, we ripped out the shower tray. That is a step forward, though it took many dance moves forward and backward to get there. BUT IT IS A STEP FORWARD DAMMIT!!! 🙂

Some other news for variety- sales stay low at 3 a day, page reads stay high at 4,000, and the artist agrees to work on new Mr. Ruins cover. My Dad says- why change the cover, I like it. Ah, sigh. I like/liked it too. But it looks kind of like a Turner painting. It looks old. It doesn’t look clean, sharp or threatening, the way a sci-fi vampire horror story should…

GOOD NEWS! 2 months back, a Chinese science fiction magazine contacted me about rights to print my story ‘Bone Diamond’. I said sure, go to it, $100. Money money, they roll with it, and a few weeks back ey presto, I’m in the magazine, in Chinese!

It’s not the cover story, but it is the second story, which is awesome. there is also art, which is awesome too. Here see:

What is the name of the magazine? Science Fiction World Magazine(China) – Translations. It’s their first collection of translations. This cover is not of my story.

Does the image on this contents page feel familiar (to those who have read Bone Diamond?)

Yes, it is an image based on the story! I love it. It shows several pivotal moments, sets the scene in Egypt, the mood, I love it.

Here it is next to the story. Even my byline has been translated into Chinese. Though..

Here’s my name in English, in my bio as my website address.

I was teaching two classes of predominantly Chinese at the time I received this copy, so of course I took it into class to show off.

“I read this magazine all through my teens,” one boy said. Yeah. I think it has a high circulation, something like 20,000… Wow. Have I got any fans in China now? Are you reading this? Ni hao! (hello in Chinese)

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 hopefully fix the cracked shower tray.

We bought a new shower tray! We bought more paint! we sampled the old paint and the new paint on the walls! We also painted (some of) the garden furniture with weather-proof black paint, stripped the kitchen of all wallpaper, bought stuff, and generally did corralling.

Here’s a few photos:

Kitchen half stripped. There is still wallpaper at left.

Spot the difference (wallpaper fully stripped back to plaster, all trash shifted around). I used our clothes steamer to soften up the wallpaper and it came off pretty easily.

Paint samples. The top right blues will be kitchen. The bottom left grey will be living room. The middle blue-green, drawing room blue, called dance hall, will be second bedroom.

Here is an experiment painting the kitchen floor tiles. We don’t like this orange, so tried painting it with wall paint (below) and floor paint (above). Weirdly the floor paint has peeled. However neither are really for tile.

So I have bought tile primer, which the floor paint should stick to. We will have a classy dark blue floor!

In writing I’ve been chipping a little away at Mr. Ruins, sprucing it up. I find errors like:

1 – Use of words nobody knows what they mean (I did it on purpose then, but now on reading back even I find it a bit annoying).

2 – Sections that develop character, either through thinking or through fun action, but which do not develop the main plot. This is a challenge for me. Recent reviews on The Last, now up to 46 reviews!, have drawn attention to some baggy, skippable bits in the middle. They were still very positive reviews in spite of that- for which I’m very happy, but yeah. Tighten it up.

I’m fixing these as I become aware of them. I may tighten The Last through the middle. I’m also talking to my artist about new covers. I loved the old ones (and the ones before them too), but I think they suffer from point 2 (above) as well. I’ll go into this more later, and my thoughts on fixing it.

In the mean time, sales are fluctuating but generally dropping, though page reads remain high, averaging 4,000 a day!

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 really, we bought these later.
    
 We talked about granny and cousins and my sister’s baby blessingway, and of course ate, then went to Homebase and pick up:

– mop, bucket, broom, paint samples, wallpaper stripper, sugar soap, gloves, masks, and loads more. 

I felt like Amo doing a supply run in Yangtze (in my zombie books), imagining myself using a mop to slosh some huge symbol into Trafalgar Square with red paint.

On a zombie note- sales and reads of both books were great yesterday, 15 sales and 6000 page reads, which is high for me. Awesome.

Also, there is a new series set in the Walking Dead universe, called Fear the Walking Dead. I need to check it out. Have you seen it? 

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, after agonizing over wardrobes for hours (so expensive!) we spent over £300 on general house goods. A house requires a lot of stuff to fill it up!

And today, we are at Harry Potter studios tour, wandering around the real sets from the movies! 

It’s great. The next step is for them to actually build, full-scale, the whole of Hogwarts. It would be enormous and deeply cool. They kind of did do it at the Wizarding World in Florida, but why not go even madder, and massiver? 

Cram it full of rides, original sets, events, movie screenings, etc.

If you build it they will come.

A selection of photos from the day:

Great hall- Wizarding staff all arrayed at the front.   

Selfie in great hall.

  Potions classroom.

  
Magic is Might. Voldemort era sculpture in the Ministry of Magic.

Platform 9 3/4

  
Butterbeer! Liquid fizzy caramel with cream on top. Yum.

 
Diagon alley.

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 story, but faster and more accessible. New covers too.

I’ll get Zombie Ocean 3 out first though.

Life

Moving house! It has been hectic, lots of choices, tradesmen getting called, setting up bills, buying furniture and endless house bits. 

It is still pretty far from sinking in that we own this place. The biggest difference so far from living in basically a single room is how much walking we do.

I have been up and down the stairs like a hundred times, picking up stuff I left by the bedside and taking it downstairs, then going again for something else, and again.

It comes from spreading out, I suppose. We’ll get used to it in no time.

Some pictures of rooms taking shape:

  
 And a selection of SY’s plates! All brought from Japan, and first time for us to see them in a tear.

Tomorrow, Harry Potter studio tour!

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 the shower are faulty was a downer.

On the upside, we have an apple tree! Didn’t even know it. Delicious crisp green apples ready to be picked.

No internet yet. Lots of tradesmen to call out. Will we get all these basics covered within £1000? I hope so. That’s a lot, but I guess not that much for some peace of mind. Things need to work right and have guarantees. 

I’ve always ‘coded’ my own blog. I don’t want to pay for that. But with a house? Copy pasting code won’t cut it, when I’ve just cracked a pipe and the floors flooding, or the house is full of gas.

Get it done right. Tomorrow we go with the moving can, and start to live there. Crazy. 

Here is a picture of the apple tree in the rain-

   
And back towards the house, SY at left-

 
And here’s our lunch, tapas at Camino in Kings Cross, en route to house. Tasty but quite salty/oily-

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 my stuff. I’ve written the best books I know how, marketed them as well as I know how, and I’m getting good feedback.

To make money on top of that is really icing on a lovely cake. Thank you to all who’ve read one of these books. It’s good.

Life

We are moving into our house in 2 days. Today was packing. We came from Tokyo a year ago with only 10 big boxes. Now we have over double that, plus a big dining table, loads of chairs, a desk, a weights bench and weights, bags of clothes, a lawnmower, a hose, and more.

I threw out lots of old photos/diaries. I edited old photo albums (ex-girlfriends, mostly) so I don’t feel weird bringing them to my new place, at the start of a new life.

Then, I made a chicken run for my mom! Here it is-

   
Last night we went out for dinner with mom and Karen at a Turkish place in Cockfosters, called Skewd. 

Here is the opening bread balloon.

  Here was my lamb shish kebab.

 
Very tasty. 

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 it must be a contributing factor. Get a feature, and you can shift 10,000 plus copies in a day.

My author rank peaked at 13,000. That’s pretty comparable to the spike I got on releasing The Lost back in May- which ended up paying for the promo and cover. Other books are selling a few. Kindle page reads are up to 4,000 a day, a 4x increase.

It’s good. I’m pleased. Will sales be good after free ends tomorrow? I hope so.

Saturday 22 Aug

We’re moving in two days- so been packing, going through old stuff, tossing some old kid stuff away.

I have 10 boxes of diaries, old records of achievement, letters, photos, lots of sentimental stuff. Today I passed some of it to my mom- the baby era stuff. Some other bits I may mine for blog post photos.

Here is the first gem, an awesome adventure map. I remember making this when I was little. The red lines are rivers of lava. Each quadrant has a monster guarding a key. Gather all the keys, and…

Well that would be telling.

  
One has the key round his neck. One has it in his neck. One is guarded by mad red Pacmen.

I have stumbled on and almost accidentally thrown away this map dozens of times. Today I almost dropped it in the bin, as it was folded up so tight.

I’m glad I didn’t. It will be the plot of my next book.

😀