Is there a link between my Olympic photos and book sales?

Evening gang,

Is it just me or did today feel like the first day back at work after a holiday? It's like everyone woke up and realised they had a life outside of the magic world of the olympics.

It was interesting to witness the cynicism return to Twitter. We've had two weeks of really positive trends, huge support for Danny Boyle, Team GB and the individual athletes and then last night it began with a systematic dismantling of the closing ceremony online. Pity, I for one was hoping to stay Olympic for as long as possible. Thankfully the worldwide reception seems to have been positive and not everyone seems keen to return to their usual bitterness quite yet. Long may it continue.

In that spirit I've decided to add a couple of photographs a family member took inside the stadium on the night Usain Bolt won the 200m. Apparently words are not sufficient to describe how impressive an event it was. The first just highlights where they were sitting and how big it was, the second is the man himself.



In case you were wondering the answer to the title question is no, there isn't a link between these photos and book sales, unless reading this post leads you to buying a copy. But since I've cleverly managed to get onto the topic of books I received a nice comment on Facebook today.

A chap was looking for pictures of Art Deco buildings on the internet. His son, I think, sent him a picture of the Midland Hotel in Morecambe. He liked it and looked for more, stumbling across what he described as a spooky looking picture of the hotel which was, it turned out, the cover of my book The 24 Hour Jazz Cafe. This led him to this very blog and from there to my Facebook promo page. After that, he downloaded a copy of the book. Now that is the best example I've ever had of all my marketing, promo and links coming together and I was delighted.

Anyway, the second book in the series is progressing. It's about 45000 words in so far. Next week is going to be a review week which will hopefully lead into the final push to the end. It's going to be tight to get it done and published by the end of the year but it's good to have a goal.

Right, that's all for now. To recap. Olympics awesome. I hope we can all retain the spirit as long as possible. Keep buying my books, it makes me feel warm and safe.

London 2012 and pink grapefruit

Afternoon everyone,

So then, how good was the opening ceremony then? Apparently 26.5 million folk stayed up to watch here in the UK. The wife and I sat pretty much mesmerised by the whole thing. I can only imagine Danny Boyle and his team will receive some sort of mention in the Queen's next honours list.

It seems that our American chums struggled to see the opening of the largest sporting event on the planet owing to NBC not showing it live. I don't know details only what I've seen on Twitter etc, but a lot of people seemed pretty unhappy that it wasnt being shown live. If it wasn't, it begs the question, what's more important than showing the opening ceremony of the Olympics?

I'm established on the couch today for a full day of olympic viewing - I am going out tonight though. Outdoor showing of Woman in Black in a local park. Hope it stays dry.

The BBC have pulled out all the stops with the coverage. They've got a fancy menu TV guide thingy where you can just click on the sport you want to watch and away you go. Epic.

The other bonus was that I discovered a tin of grapefruit in the cupboard so that became a late breakfast.

Since this is a writing blog I'd best mention the books. I've written 30,500 words of the new book so I'm still on course to have it published this year along with another from the back catalogue. My existing books are also still available on Kindle, Createspace, Smashwords, Kobo, Apple Ibook, Sony Ereader, Bibliocracy and doubtless a few more. They're all priced to sell too, except the paperbacks which are vastly over priced but look superb on a shelf.

Oh, one last thing. An associate of mine went to the local library yesterday and asked if they could order in a copy of one of my books. He was, I believe, armed with the necessary ISBN info. From what I can gather they seemed to suspect that he was, in fact, me trying to abuse the library and use them as some sort of self-promotion tool. I have to admit to being a bit miffed. After all, I thought libraries would order in pretty much any book if a customer asked for it. Add to that the fact that I'm local and it's win win all round. If I end up selling millions all of a sudden they'd have "local author" posters all over the bloody place to drag people in. Poor form!!

Now stop reading this and watch some Olympics!