My book is a bestseller!

Evening gang,

So, two posts in as many nights. And there you all were thinking I wasn't bothered.

Big news. Turns out I've sold a few books today. Enough to sneak into the top 100 crime books on Amazon. I was at number 92 at lunch. Fell to 96 my teatime, now I'm at number 86 and well pleased with that as an end to the day. Here's a handy screenshot.

So, spread the word. I'd like to make this last as long as possible before I fall back into the herd. Thanks to all those who have purchased a copy today and over the weekend, I do appreciate it. Needless to say I'm all set for the odd harsh review. But all my blog posts, Goodreads posts, Facebook posts and so on, make it very clear what the book is about. So if you don't want to read about women being attacked and murdered in a garage then buy another book. But that's one plot thread. And it's a true thread, as I've said many times. Besides, worse things happen every day on the news, sadly.

Anyway, if you've paid for a copy, I hope you like it. If not, shame, try one of my other books, there's something for everyone.

Right, I'd best get my head down. Busy day spending the tax payers money tomorrow.

LIke a scene from a Scorcese movie

Afternoon gang,

So today began in perfect fashion. Stayed in bed until mid morning, full English breakfast, wife made fish pie for tea. All good.

Sales still superb for The Trust, royalties on way too and it's a decent sum too, for the first time ever.

The sun is shining so we took the dog to an off the lead walking area in nearby Heysham to let him run round. He was having a great time, playing with a few other dogs, all good. Then we got to a pond where a chap was with his dog. He warned us all that his dog wasn't friendly so I and the other dog owners started trying to get hold of our dogs. At that point I heard our dog yelp and run off. Long story short we ended up at the vets with the wife in tears. I think the photos sum it up.

Anyway, Ralph is totally fine. He wanted to keep playing with his other dog chums but as you can see there was a lot of blood. The vet has just rung to say he's come round from the operation. They've trimmed and stitched his ear and we can pick him up tomorrow. Given that it's Sunday, operation and overnight, this is going to cost a fortune. But could be worse.

Luckily this week's royalty will take a chunk out of the bill so extra thanks to everyone who has bought a copy, good timing!! Sadly I'd just got a quote for new Mercedes so I think that might have to wait until next month unless the book sales really take off.

Either way, it's been an eventful day. People do tend to steer clear of you when you're walking down the street with a dog covered in blood while you are also covered in blood.

What's the secret to successful book sales?

Morning gang,

The sun is shining here at HB Towers and the view across the bay is a reminder of why the houses here are so damned expensive. Today's' plan, after the Full English breakfast which the wife is preparing as I type this, is to take the dog for a tour of a doggy day care facility nearby. If he like it, we'll be leaving him there for a couple of days next week. If he hates, we might take him anyway.

After that, depending on the mood, we are going to test drive a couple of cars with a view to getting two new ones. We're just pondering the adult sensible option of getting two average, but well though of Fords, or chucking logic out of the window and me buying a Mercedes or an audi. The wife is being very patient as she knows I am essentially still a child and don't really understand that we might need the money for other things later on.

I want to be home by tea time because Federer is playing tennis today and you know how I like to watch Roger.

Quick blog update. As of today this blog has received 11786 views which is nice. It's only got about 33 subscribers though so there's work to be done.

As part of a project to relaunch all my paperbacks - I want them all to look the same i.e. be recognisable as my books - I have reformatted The Trust and decided to ponder a new cover, which is below. Do we like? The wife prefers the existing cover.

 Speaking of The Trust, it continues to amaze me. I woke up this morning to find it had climbed to number 14 in the crime thriller best seller chart on Amazon. If you follow me on FB and Twitter you'll be sick of the continuous and very excited posts about chart positions, accompanied by screenshots. But as I've said before, I've never sold this many copies of one book in such a short time so it's huge for me.

I've had a few days to reflect on this and decided there is no formula to it. The Trust has been available since Feb 2013. It generally sells a few copies each month as do all my books. I've done free promos before, you get a few hundred downloads, a small sales spike afterwards and then back to normal. So when I decided to do a promo for The Trust last week that's all I was expecting. But then it was downloaded over 4000 times in two days and went to number one in three countries. That was different.

Then the sales spike. Nothing in America. That's a bit different because I'd expect to see a few sales. But in the UK I did shift a few which was normal. Then a few more, and now, almost a week on the spike continues. That's not normal. I think a lot of it is down to visibility, though I'm guessing as I don't buy digital books. Since the book managed to get into the top 20 it has become more visible. Amazon display their best seller lists 20 per page. Most folk don't look beyond page 1. The people buying The Trust don't know me, and they only have the front cover and the blurb to go off before buying. But it's on the first page so that immediately tells a reader that plenty of other folk much be buying that book so it must be good, right?

I don't know. As I say this is new territory and I know enough writers to know that if we could figure out the formula for success we wouldn't all have day jobs.

As a test of this latest formula, when sales have levelled off a bit, and they will, I'm going to do a free promo for my new book Ballroom, Bars and Seawater Baths. It'll either take off or it won't.

Right, best crack on, breakfast is ready, the wife is also making a fish pie for tea!!!

Doubting my plot...

Hi everyone, How’s things?

Everything’s awesome at my end aside from the continued uncertainty over my job. It’s tedious now to be honest. I have a job waiting for me that I don’t really want but it requires no effort and, although the money is crap, it’s enough. However, because I’m apparently handy to have around the senior bods are trying to slot me in somewhere. The problem being there’s a lack of gaps and time is running out. From my point of view I don’t much care either way but not knowing is making it very hard to plan anything beyond the end of the year.

Finally signed the contract for my house investment. That’s taken forever but it’ll be worth it long term. We’re aiming to buy the next house around Easter next year but that depends on my income – see above about planning.

Regular readers will have noticed that my new book is still not out. I’m out of excuses to be honest. Bottom line is I’m not 100% convinced by it. It’s been a hard one to write, my first sequel and it’s been a busy year. New job for me and the wife, we bought the dog. All this has combined to leave me with a book that is finished but I have doubts about it. As such, I keep procrastinating. The plan, starting tonight, is to read it as a book on the wife’s tablet and see how it holds up plot wise. Then go from there. The cover is pretty much done so as soon as I’m happy with it it’ll be out. But not before. I might even not release it. Who knows?

But I am itching to start writing my next book, plenty of plot ideas and locations so fingers crossed. I suspect once my job future is resolved everything will start to flow again.

Now, other news. Sales are pretty good again. Indeed I’ve sold more in the US that the UK so far this month. Hurrah. I’m also considering approaching Independent publishers about my work. It’ something I’ve pondered for a while. I’m still not 100% what the benefit will be and I’m not mad keen on signing away my rights but we shall see.

Finally, for those that are interested Liverpool are still top of the table in the football which is amazing, and unexpected. But the real news is that the mighty Roger Federer is playing this week in Shanghai. I admit he’s past his best now, age is a real swine in sport, but on his day he’s still worth the price of a ticket. Be nice to see the old sod win something this year.

Right, to finish I’m going to paste in a couple of comments I received about The Trust over the weekend. The first was texted to my wife from a member of her staff: “…really enjoyed it. Sequel please – really want to know what happened to the euthanasia gang” And a tweet from up and coming fantasy author Frion Farrell who has just finished the Trust “Just had the pleasure of finishing Jamie Sinclair’s The Trust. Superior crime writing Jamie – am big fan."

The benefits of positive thinking

Morning Gang, If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you'll know in recent days - indeed most of last week - I've been moaning about slow sales this month while not actually doing anything about it. Typical me. But there's good news. Overnight I've shifted quite a few copies of my awesome fact based crime thriller The Trust. So much so that as of this morning I'm hovering on the edges of the top 10,000 on the Amazon ficton charts. While this doesn't make me the next Stephen King, it does mean that there are nearly a million people selling less than me who would gladly change places. All positive. I've also had nearly 9000 views of this blog. It's pretty impressive given that I started it nearly 2 years ago as an experiment. I still enjoy writing on it, folk clearly keep checking back to see what rubbish I'm saying, so long may it continue. I've also picked up pace with the editing again and will hopefully have a draft by the weekend. I know, I know, I've said this many times this year. But eventually it will be true. Promise. In other news, my house investment sideline is progressing well and the house should be mine in the next week of so. I've also lined up an interested tenant so there's no downside at all. Now if I could just find myself a permanent job...

What inspired The Trust?

Evening gang,

Really quick one tonight because there's Champions League on right now and The Brits on the other channel.

A few folk have speculated as to the inspiration behind some scenes in my new book, and also the inspiration for some of the characters. As I've said before, The Trust is based on real events and real people so here's some info.

First of all the places. Moorcastle asylum in the book is actually the Moor Hospital in Lancaster. If you Google it there's lot's of info but here's a link to get you going.

http://www.azubi.co.uk/Moor/Hospital.html

Whittingham Hospital also plays a part, more for it's background than a specific role in the plot. Here's more links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whittingham_Hospital

This link covers more of the alleged abuse: http://www.whittinghamhospital.co.uk/The_Inquiry.html

And some more info: http://www.jarrelook.co.uk/Urbex/Whittingham%20Asylum/Whittingham.htm

Finally here's some stuff about our serial killer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Brudos

http://murderpedia.org/male.B/b/brudos-jerome.htm

http://crime.about.com/od/serial/a/jerry_brudos.htm

There's lots, lots more about all of this on the internet if you look for it. But having just had another look at the Jerry Brudos info I'm not sure my book is gruesome enough. Dark times.

Anyway, that's all for now. Have a look at the info, then read the book, it'll give you more perspective on the plot.

Night...

Press Release and Blog Update

Afternoon folks,

Just a quick one today because the sun is shining so we're going out for a walk on the beach shortly.

If you look at the top of the page you'll see other pages offering info about me along with pages about some of my books. Are you looking? Excellent. I've just added a new one called The Trust. What's in there then? I'm glad you ask. It's a free extract of my new book the sole purpose of which is to tempt you into buying a copy. Go and have a look, it's free!

If you're still reading it means you've no interest in the free extract in which case I might as well mention the nifty press release I've done for the new book as well. That too only has one purpose. Not grapsed what that is? Well then there's no hope for you. Either way, here's another link for those that missed the first one at the start of the paragraph.

Time and effort allowing I'm going to add extracts of the rest of my books to this blog later on today but regular readers will know I'm full of big talk which so often has no substance. Such is life.

Right, that's it for now. Livepool vs Swansea at 3PM for those that enjoy comedy.

The Troggs and horse meat

Evening everyone,

Another week's flown by. I had the chance to spend some time with a couple of the chaps from my old job last week which was nice. As ever the task at hand degenerated into the three of us pretty much talking crap, drinking coffee and not doing much work. Which probably explains why we were still there at quarter part six in the evening.

In other news Reg Presley, writer of Wild Thing for those who can't place the name, died this week aged 71. I can't imagine anyone not liking that song, though he doubtless made lots more cash from the success of Love is All Around. The internet is littered with tributes but I like this link the best. It's Reg and the other Troggs arguing, with much swearing, about a song in the studio. Parts of it are hilarious.

Sadly his passing has been shunted from the news by continued scandal about us all eating horse meat without realising it. Grim stuff and I suspect someone is going face hefty fines. The wife has taken great delight in reminding that my guilty pleasure freezer food - Findus Cripsy Pancakes - are no doubt made with 100% prime pony. I care not. They taste nice and I only eat them when she's out. Plus I can run for miles and love jumping over fences.

Sales have been good this week, the new book The Trust, is selling well and the paperback is due out by the middle of next week. A proof is on its way to my house as I type this. I was out for lunch with my new colleagues this week and one of them mentioned she'd bought a copy. My heart nearly stopped and it was all I could do to keep chewing my beer battered haddock. As regular readers will know the content of the new book is a bit close to the bone, depending on where you work and your thoughts on euthanasia. Hopefully I won't upset anyone but I do feel compelled to keep stressing it's a work of fiction.

Anyway, that's it for now. Time for a few ales and a pizza I think. Carry on.

Cover of new book!

Evening folks,

The wife is currently ploughing through the draft version of my new book. Early reports are favourable!

I've spent some time on cover designs which will be used for both the paperback and ebook versions. Below is the first showing of the new cover. It will likely get tweaked as I get closer to publication, I'm still pondering the title!

Anyway, comments welcomed as long as they're constructive in some way. If I want someone to say they don't like it or say something daft I'll ring my mum!