Huddersfield Literature Festival

I'm giving a talk/workshop on the Hard Truths of Self-publishing on Friday 18th March. Please pass this information on to anyone you think might be interested. For more information follow the links below:
http://www.litfest.org.uk is the website link.
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/group.php?gid=61839645820 is the facebook link.

Long time no post

Just added some more dates to the calendar on this blog. After a quiet spell, trying to finish the novel, all of a sudden lots of speaking engagements have come my way! I'm especially delighted to be giving a talk at the Huddersfield Literature Festival in March. The poetry writing workshop should be fun at Lawrence Batley Theatres Festive Fayre event in a couple of weeks, too.

Writers' groups

Last Friday, I gave a talk at the beautiful library in Cleckheaton on setting up a writers' group. It was well attended and we finished up by launching three new groups. One will meet on Friday afternoons, one Monday evenings and one at Birstal library on Wednesdays evenings. Please contact the libraries, if you are interested. And please contact me, if you'd like me to do a talk at your local library. In this economic climate libraries, like other services are fighting for their existence. We need to use them or lose them!

Amazon.co,uk expansion

Amazon.co.uk can now post my books to the following EU countries at no extra charge!
Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Ireland, Portugal

Christian.com

Michael, from christian.com has invited me to join this social networking site. I'd love to know if any of you are new visitors here because of this link. Does social networking really work?

Smashwords

Anna-Kaisa's done a brilliant job on reformatting A Life Less Lost and it's now been launched as an ebook on Smashwords! Thirteen people have so far downloaded sample pages so let's hope a few purchases will soon follow. My next project, with David's help will be to release it as an audio-book on the Podiobook website... Any thoughts about that idea would be gratefully received.

An experiment

Six blurry weeks on and I'm looking forward to a possibly quieter August. Between reader's groups, house groups and writer's groups, visitors and social events, time has lost its elasticity. My new hobby ~ edible gardening ~ is helping me relax. The homegrown cougettes we had for tea last night were yummy.

My novel is out with readers and the feedback dribbling in is positive. Kate and Christina are meeting with me on Monday for the detail. Two new novel ideas are beginning to take shape.

I've come to the end of my speaking engagements, for the moment. The talk in Wilshaw was well received and I sold as many copies of Reflections of Holme as A Life Lest Lost. Holmfirth Parish Church are doing sterling work selling books to tourists and my future daughter-in-law is creating an e-book version, out soon hopefully.

The big experiment was to offer free 'Writing From Life' workshops at two small local bookshops. This was intended to bring people into the shops and spark interest in my book. Seven people turned up for the event in Orchard Bookshop, Denby Dale and all seemed to enjoy it. Only one came to Huddersfield Christian Bookshop, though. I'll need to do more of these in order to discover if it was not enough advertisement, the time/day or the venue. Only one book was sold because most of the people already had a copy! I'm sending out enquiries now for future events. All suggestions welcome.