The reviews are in!

Okay, so I've opened with a lie. It's a review, singular. But it's a really good review. It's for my new book Ballroom, Bars and Seawater Baths and, as ever, I've pasted it in below to save you the effort of going to find it. Needless to say, it was accompanied by 5 stars on Amazon.

"This book is the sequel to The 24 Hour Jazz Café and again features Mitch and Rupert, the two childhood friends who now own the café. Mitch has some psychic abilities and is called in to help the local police, specifically Jane Harper, in her search for the murderer of a local man. Mitch, however, is out of contact. Even his best friends Rupert can't get in touch.

This story weaves gang rivalries and family feuds into a gripping plot. The main characters become real; Mitch the larger than life and slightly off-the-wall man affected by his childhood and his unusual abilities and Rupert, the man still grieving eighteen months after the death of his beloved Emily, the woman they both loved. A great sequel!"

So, bottom line, if you're reading this blog but haven't bought my book, what on earth is it that's stopping you parting with your cash? It's keenly priced, good review, ace title, tidy cover, tight plot. Go on, be brave, read my book. Be part of the gang.

SEO. Using Keywords to get seen.

Afternoon folks,

Morecambe. Crime thriller. Romantic saga.

You might have noticed, if you're a regular reader, that the name of the blog has changed. And the description too. Why?

Well, as part of my ongoing efforts to drive traffic to this blog and, ultimately, to drive sales of my books, I am trying to embrace the idea of Search Engine Optimisation. Like most folk, I'm aware it exists but I don't have a great understanding of it. But I've been doing some reading and have decided to give it a go.

The idea seems to be to mention certain keywords regularly throughout blog posts which are then picked up by search engines. These need to be words that are likely to be searched for so there's no point picking something random like Handbag Clasp. So, for this post I'm trying Morecambe because it's where two of my books are set and Crime Thriller, because it's the biggest selling genre of fiction.

Apparently the trick is also to reference old blog posts too, with a view that you drive traffic to yourself. I haven't grasped that yet but I'll persevere. The plan is to keep an eye on my traffic stats for a month and see if there's been an impact and review after that.

So, to recap. My book The 24 Hour Jazz Cafe is a CRIME THRILLER set in MORECAMBE and has received fantastic reviews. My book All the fun of the Fair is a ROMANTIC SAGA and is also set in MORECAMBE. Too subtle? We shall see.

Jazz Cafe proof has arrived

Morning gang,

As the title suggests the proof copy of my latest book The 24 Hour Jazz Cafe arrived this week. I know I'm biased but I think it looks superb. It's 480 pages long too which is hefty. Admittedly I could shave plenty off by reducing the line spacing a bit but I like how it looks.

As soon as I've checked it for errors I'll be approving it for sale worldwide via Amazon. Until then it is available on Kindle. Here's a photo of the proof. For £7.50 you could have that on your shelf.

Book Sales, Self Promotion and a Netbook

Morning dear reader,

This is the latest/earliest I've written anything on here and there are two reasons for this. The first is that it's Christmas so I'm off work and therefore up late making merry. The second is that I've bought myself a new netbook in the Christmas Sales. My laptop was four years old and struggling and, as my wonderful wife will tell you, I am not blessed with patience. As such, the laptop was beaten to death so I am now blogging on the new machine and very pleasing it is.

Anyway, first things first. A belated Merry Christmas and a pre-emptive Happy New Year to you all. Huge thanks to those who have bought my book, all thirty of you. I know this is not a vast amount, but my promo has been limited to posts on Amazon - lately via my phone - and it's only been available for a month. The fact that I'm averaging a copy a day thrills me as I think that with dedicated promotion and increased availability, my sales can only increase.

Which brings me to self-promotion. Amazon seem to have a real bee in their multi-billion dollar bonnet about 'indie' authors touting their wares. I would have thought that more promotion was a good thing as it benefits everyone. That said, Amazon are doing us all a favour by allowing us to sell in the first place so I'm not complaining. My plan is to make more effort via other means such as press releases and Facebook.

Finally, editing on my latest novel The 24 Hours Jazz Cafe is progressing with a view that an exract will appear on this blog soon before I send stuff to agents and then, depending on the results, publish as an e-book.

Stick with me, we're going places. Thank as ever for taking the time to read this.

Ten years in the making

First of all, welcome along dear reader, it's very good of you to make the effort. I don't say this lightly. As an aspiring writer (or rather a writer who aspires to be read) I appreciate anybody reading anything I've written.

This all began, officially at least, ten years ago when the good folks at Manchester Metropolitan University offered me a place on their Creative Writing MA. Obviously I'd decided before this moment that I wanted to be a writer, but the MA was the first time I'd taken steps to do anything about making that happen.

It very nearly did happen too. My first full length manuscript went down a storm with my tutors, the MA was mine, I gained an agent at the first attempt who thought the book a triumph and so I assumed that it really was that easy. Clearly I was a genius and my debut novel would be on the shelves in time for Christmas. Ah, the arrogance of youth.

That novel was titled Playground Cool. It remains unpublished and now, ten years on and several novels later, I remain as determined as ever to have my work read. Over the coming weeks, months etc I will be adding extracts of my work along with more background on just why that first novel didn't make it to the shops and what I have done in the intervening years.

I will also keep anyone who is interested up to speed on my latest effort - The 24 Hour Jazz Cafe. I'm editing the first draft at the moment and will then begin the now familiar process of sending out letters and extracts to publishers. Depending on how that goes I might even include a couple of rejection lettters and if - here's hoping - something comes of it, I'll post the acceptance letter too.

But for the first time I'm planning to self-publish electronically via Kindle. As and when this process starts I'll post updates on that too.

So, if you fancy it, there's plenty going on, certainly plenty to read, some of it good, some of it probably not so good and I'll appreciate the company.