Tom – Page 141

It took eleven months, four drafts and a little help, but it’s out there.

‘Ten Days’, my romantic thriller is published on Smashwords. According to all I’ve heard, the hard work starts now – the marketing. Well, I’ve been in retail for 20 years so I must have learned something about marketing.

I published this morning and since then I’ve networked with several folk on Facebook and sent out a message on Twitter, which will be amended and retweeted over the next week or two, just in case it is missed by anyone. I’ve sent out links for the 20% sample to a few people and I have a few more to add to that list.

Perhaps a little unique, but I’ve also written a poem with a flavour of the main characters. I’ll post that on The Starlite Cafe site when I’ve tidied up the lines a little more. For now I’ll have my front cover on here and this brief post. Now I’ll have to get back to my big push.

What’s next? Tomorrow I’ll be formatting the manuscript for publication on Amazon/Kindle.

A link? Of course: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/257906

Please check it out, or better still, buy it! As Arnie said, ‘I’ll be back!’

No, it’s not a title, it’s a fact. I’m 60 today and though I don’t feel old, I do feel kind of strange …. What’s the loose connection between me and Edinburgh Castle? Well, we’re both Scottish and we’ve both been around a while.

Edinburgh Castle - 3 — Edinburgh Castle – it’s been around a while

Apart from that I’ve just come back from a visit to Edinburgh with my wife. We had two pleasant days up there and most of the second day was spent at the castle. We both felt like a short break and enjoyed two days of good weather too – as seen by the photograph.

I’m back now and working hard on my novel once again. Outside agencies have dealt with the cover design and the critique and editing of the first five chapters – and I have just about completed what will be the fourth draft. Only days away from publication now and it’s all getting very exciting.

I’ve prepared a marketing strategy, which includes the sending out of my recently designed business card and I’m now going to concentrate my efforts on getting my hard work out there and read by as many people as possible. A lot of folk are of the opinion that getting as far as the e-publishing is easy and that the hardest part is getting it noticed, so I’ll shortly be able to test that theory.

For now, I think it’s time I left this birthday memo and got on with my job – of finishing off my final edit.