Tony Walker's Blog, page 8

Amazon Ranking...

Hey, yesterday I was 16,890 in the Amazon Author Ranking. Today it is nosediving in the mid 20,000s. Yesterday I imagined myself the 16000th (I'm ignoring the 890) best selling author on Amazon. That is about twice the size of the town I live in at the moment, so it's like everyone I meet in town is a better selling author than me. And that includes the butcher and the Lollipop Lady at the school and Mad John.

Sobering.

Swapping Reviews

I've used Amazon's free book offer time with several of mine over the past couple of months. When I do that I tend to post a link to it on several of Facebook's "Free Book" groups. I think it helps. I get nice thumbs up messages from people and likes so it's good for morale if nothing else.

It also spawns offers to trade reviews. So typically I'll get a message or two from people I don't know who say that they have a free book and that they will write me a review if I will write them one. I have done this twice I think. At first I was naive, but then I began to think something fishy was going on.

These Facebook profiles usually have an attractive young woman, occasionally a man, as the avatar picture. When you click through most of them can't be viewed and have no history. This could be because of their privacy settings but I wonder whether it isn't because they are created specially for the purpose of promoting ebooks. Often the messages are written in an English that suggests that the writer isn't a native speaker or has mastered the language (no crime in that) but the books themselves are written in good English.

When you look at the books the author's name is not the name of the person on FB who has messaged you. And the books are always How To books. I've been asked to do reviews on How to Sing, How to Detox from Sugar, How to Meditate. Others have been recipe books about Paeleo diets and Smoothies.

They are rarely longer than 25 pages long and they say they normally retail for 5.99. For 24 pages? The content is usually grammatical and well written and with a broad brush approach - pretty much stuff that could be gleaned from the Internet.

When I queried one of the lovely young women who contacted me that her name wasn't the same as that on the book, she said that was understandable as she was merely a "Virtual Assistant". Does that mean she wasn't real at all?

I think that these books are of little real worth though they aren't bad as a general introduction or a basic source of recipes but I wonder whether you taint yourself with the 'infotrash' label if you exchange reviews with them.

While writing an honest review of a book can't be bad practice, I wonder what Amazon thinks about people spewing out hundreds of infotitles - recipes and how to books? Often the author claims to be a doctor or highly qualified nutritionist, but I have no way of easily checking these claims - my hunch is that they are fake authors with fake credentials ghost written by professional writers who regurgitate websites.

Zventibold!

I have just published the first installment of Zventibold! an epic fantasy comedy tragedy which I wrote way back when I was at University. I thought it was immensely funny at the time, as did my friends. (I think they really did)

I have uploaded the first 20,000 words as part of a serialisation. The rest is written but I wanted to see how Zventibold! (1) went. So far it is on free download and it isn't doing great. This is my experience with Desperate! (1) which was also humour and which also didn't work.

Funnily enough, I think Zventibold has the pzaz (sp - I know but I prefer my spelling tbh) to eventually become a cult classic. I hope to see that happen in my lifetime.

Here it is:



If you do download it, can you do me a review?
Remember this is the beginning of a cult: the cult of Zventibold!

Stories

I continue to marvel at how my story The Haunting is selling so well - 145 copies in 10 days. That's the most I've ever sold since I started this business. Some of my other little collections give three stories for the same price, but for some reason they don't sell a fraction of The Haunting. Is it the cover? Is it the description?

My fear is that I can't replicate this with another story as I don't really know why it's been so relatively successful. It can't be reviews because it doesn't have any so far.

So I wondered whether it was the fact that the title is a common one - you can't copyright a title so you can call your stories anything. I didn't do this on purpose with The Haunting, but maybe it has helped that there are loads of other stories/films etc, called The Haunting or the Haunting of...

So, I'm writing a story called The Exorcist. I want to introduce a character called Adam Meyrink who is a Chaos Magician and who is the only one who can exorcise the thing...

"Little Brother, you've been meddling with the Goetia" as Allen Bennett said to Aleister Crowley...

I'm quite enjoying writing it but as I sit here all on my own typing away in this quiet, empty house, I am getting a bit scared.

Moving House

I have moved house since the last post which explains my silence. All done now, mostly, still waiting for some mattresses to be delivered. Maybe today, maybe who knows?

Yesterday, another mattress was delivered (mattresses are big with me) and I got a text from the delivery company. I wanted to phone them to say I wasn't in but I couldn't do that. But what I could do was watch a great little  map on my phone which showed how my delivery driver Jim was edging closer and closer and all the time I'm wanting to yell "Jim! Don't waste your time - I'm not in!" But my yelling went in vain and Jim didn't know. I did send them an email which promised that it would be dealt with in three working days. That was no good for Jim.

In my youth we just used to phone people to arrange things. It was much simpler.

But anyway, by the end of February I sold 191 books.

This month so far (it's 8th March) I've sold 130 but the bulk of those - 100 to date - is



See how I did that plug? Subtle.
This is great. But I wish someone would give it a good review. It has one good review on Goodreads which again is fantastic.
I need to get back to writing now.

Pinterest

I joined Pinterest over a year ago but I never really bothered with it. I had my Tumblr account to collect my pretties which is here and I have collected very many pretties over the years, so I didn't see the need for Pinterest.

However +Angela Booth in her fantastically helpful blog here says that it is the marketing tool for indie publishers. She says that you should be marketing things with images.  She gives the example of how a writer called Vic Sandborn created a Pinterest board, or boards, that made people who were interested in the world of Jane Austen come to her, and how then this became a powerful tool for Vic to market her writing.

I can see that. I suppose it's helpful if you fix your genre or writing subject and then create your board based on that. I have tried to do this for the Moberly book I've just reissued.

Check out the board - here

But I think I have some way to go.

Here's a link to The Adventure. Currently FREE!  Get it now! But it's your choice, dude.

Here some quotes of how people felt when experiencing the...

Here some quotes of how people felt when experiencing these timeslip type occurrences
1941: South West England -"They both felt an overwhelming sense of foreboding or evil as they climbed hedge after hedge, always dropping down into ploughed fields with no gateways."Source: http://www.assap.ac.uk/newsite/articl...
1957: Kersey, Suffolk, England"the general feeling certainly was one of disbelief and unreality…We ran for a few hundred yards as if to shake off the weird feeling""I experienced an overwhelming feeling of sadness and depression in Kersey, but also a feeling of unfriendliness and unseen watchers which sent shivers up one’s back…"Source http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-three-british-boys-traveled-to-medieval-england-or-did-they-35698485/#ixzz2uL2o9SJh1979: France - "Despite the oddities, the couples enjoyed themselves"http://timeslipaccounts.blogspot.co.uk/2009_04_01_archive.html1970s, Penrith, Cumbria, England: "As Angela and her friend climbed, they chatted away, but the atmosphere grew increasingly heavy; as if there was thunder in the air…there was a very uncanny feeling about the place."
1988: Leeds, England. "it seemed very gray and eerie."http://timeslipaccounts.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/one-thing-leeds-to-another.html

But:1968: Tunbridge Wells, Kent - England"There was at the time, she thought, nothing especially odd about the scene."1935: Minster, Thanet, Kent"Remarkably, Dr Moon seems not at the time to have been either alarmed or even mildly surprised by the changed scenery, by the quite oddly dressed man approaching his or the fact that his car was missing."Source: http://web.archive.org/web/2007100705...

Timeslip Accounts

A Timeslip from Kent:
On the morning of 18th June1968, and elderly lady, Mrs Charlotte Warburton, went shopping with her husband in the town. They decided to go their separate ways for a while and to meet up later. That morning, unable for find a particular brand of coffee from her usual grocer she went into a supermarket in Calverley Road. As she entered the shop she saw a small café through an entrance in the left-hand wall. She had never before realised that there was a café there. It was rather old-fashioned with wood panelled walls. There were no windows and the room was lit by a number of electric bulbs with frosted shades
There was at the time, she thought, nothing especially odd about the scene. 'Two woman in rather long dresses were sitting at one table and about half a dozen men, all in dark lounge suits, were sitting at the other tables further back in the room,' she said. 'All the people seemed to be drinking coffee and chatting ... a normal sight for a country town at eleven o'clock in the morning.'
Mrs Warburton did not stay but she certainly did not recognise anything amiss either then or indeed for several days. Even the rather formal and slightly off-key clothing made no immediate impression on her. Nor did the fact that although the customers were talking there was no noise from them to cause her to question her senses. Nor did she notice that there was no smell of coffee.
There is clearly something strange here. Yet without questioning the circumstances in which she found herself, Mrs Warburton blithely left the café and went to meet her husband. And she did not suggest to him that the scene at the café seemed in any was odd.
When they came to Tunbridge Wells on their next shopping expedition Mrs Warburton decided to take her husband to the café. Or rather, she hoped to take his there. But, of course, they never did find the place though they searched the street up and down. No, they were told in the supermarket, there was no café there. She must be in the wrong building. It was then that they learned about the Kosmos Kinema which had stood on the site of the supermarket. They were directed to the Tunbridge Wells Constitutional Club, where the steward told them that at one time the Constitutional Club had owned the premises adjoining the Kosmos, which was now incorporated into the supermarket. The club had had an assembly room in those days and to the rear a small bar with tables for refreshments. Mrs Warburton's description tallied exactly with the club's old refreshment room.
The bar, the cinema and the assembly room had all vanished years ago, Mrs Warburton was told. Yet, on 18th June 1968, she had stepped into the past and like others involved in time-slips had accepted without question, the place in which she found herself. Retrospective clairvoyance, it is called. Whatever it is, it is mighty odd to contemplate.
Read more here: http://web.archive.org/web/20071007052922/http://www.historic-kent.co.uk/haunt13.html

And one from South West England by Terry Cox:
In August 1941 two young sisters, aged twenty and eighteen, got off a bus at St. Mary Road [pseudonym] in order to walk along the very familiar road to Upper St. Mary [pseudonym] where a dance was being held in the village.It was 6.20pm when they set off along a road which they had cycled along many times. It was a pleasant summer evening, and they were anticipating an enjoyable night out with friends. They were country girls used to walking distances even at night and kept up a brisk pace. Ahead of them lay Home Farm [pseudonym], and they could hear the barking of the rather nasty farm dogs they usually outran on their bicycles at other times. It was then they made the fateful decision that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. They would leave the road at this point, circle round the farm inside the hedge, and rejoin the road beyond the farm and the noisy, threatening dogs. They estimated the time as being about 6.40pm as they walked past a hayrick in the first grass field, entered the second, green field, and headed back to the hedge to rejoin the road. They climbed what they thought was the hedge by the road and dropped down .... into a ploughed field. It is at this point that what I like to refer to as the 'Brigadoon factor' set in. Both sisters agree that, although it was about 6.45pm on a late summer's evening, from the moment they dropped down into the ploughed field it appeared to be dark. Except that there was a very large red moon which, totally out of character for a harvest moon, both dazzled them and threw long, dark shadows from trees and hedges. They both felt an overwhelming sense of foreboding or evil as they climbed hedge after hedge, always dropping down into ploughed fields with no gateways. They were always aware of the position of the road because they could see the tall trees of Home Farm and hear the dogs still barking - also the very occasional vehicle went past (there were few privately owned vehicles in 1941). Eventually they found a gap in the hedge and found themselves on marshy ground where they could hear a stream, but could not see it for the alder trees growing along the bank. Importantly, as we shall see later, they insist they did not cross it. They headed back through the gap in the hedge and saw a previously unnoticed gate. In the hedge near the gate was a tall white pillar or stone, unusual for these parts where grey granite is the norm. Equally unusual and frightening was the loud squeaking noise that was coming from the pillar at regular short intervals. Remember, these were country girls. As they insist, they were used to animal and bird noises at night, and used to lonely country roads. In their own words,'we were not town girls lost and scared in the countryside'. Taking the plunge, they dashed past the white pillar and threw themselves over the gate into the unknown road.Read more here: http://www.assap.ac.uk/newsite/articles/Time%20slip.html

The Adventure - did 2 Englishwomen walk back into 1792?

The Adventure: check it out here
This book was originally published in 1910 and represents the accounts and research of two English women who had an experience of some kind of 'timeslip' in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles outside Paris on August 10th 1901. They apparently walked through the gardens as they were on August 10th 1792, the day the French monarchy fell during the French Revolution. They wrote a book about this called The Adventure though the incident is also known as The Ghosts of the Petit Trianon.
This account is remarkable for its detail of the accounts of the two women and the efforts they went to establish the historical evidence for their belief that they had strayed into the past. They wrote the book under pseudonyms - Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont - though their actual names were Charlotte Moberly (1846-1937) and Eleanor Jourdain (1863-1924). Moberly's father was headmaster at the prestigious Winchester School and later Bishop of Salisbury. In her account she distances herself from a belief in ghosts and the occult (an epidemic of Spiritualism was sweeping Britain and America at that time). Jourdain's father was a vicar of the Church of England. 
Moberly was principal of a hall of residence for women at Oxford University and Jourdain was to be appointed as her assistant. Jourdain at that time was working as a tutor in Paris and Moberly went to visit her there to get to know her better before she took up the job.
As their accounts show, their visit to Versailles on 10th August 1901 was one of a number of tourist trips they went on while Moberly was visiting Jourdain in Paris.
They wrote separate accounts of their visit three months later in Oxford.
Interestingly, subsequent to The Adventure, Moberly had claimed to see ghost of the Roman Emperor, Constantine in the Louvre in Paris in 1914. Jourdain later became principal of St Hugh's at Oxford and there is a report of almost delusional thought when she became convinced that a German spy was hiding in the college. Later, her management style caused mass resignations at the college and in the middle of this scandal, in 1924, she suddenly died.
In 1931, J W Dunne, the author of An Experiment With Time  wrote the introduction to a new edition of The Adventure and he said, "Hence, if Einstein is right, the contents of time are just as `real’ as the contents of space. Marie Antoinette– body and brain–is sitting in the Trianon garden now."
You will see that Moberly's theory is that somehow they were viewing the memories of Marie Antoinette from 10th August 1792, not that they had stumbled into the past. To my mind, the idea of a timeslip seems more plausible than reliving a dead person's memories. I know this is still a pretty controversial view, but I would base it on Dunne's quote above and evidence from other timeslip type experiences which I will discuss after the text of The Adventure.
However, there are problems too with the timeslip explanation.  Moberly makes much of the anniversary - that it was 10th August when they saw these visions and 10th August was the day of the downfall of French Monarchy (though Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were not executed for many months). But we see that on 10th August, 1792, the King and Marie Antoinette were at the Tuileries in central Paris when it was assailed by revolutionaries - not at Versailles. After leaving the Tuileries for their own safety, they then retreated to the National Assembly. After a deliberation the Assembly locked them in the small reporters' box called the logographe. At the end of that day Marie Antoinette was imprisoned in the Tower of the Temple.
Imbert de Saint-Amand gives a detailed account of that day in his Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty (trans. Elizabeth Gilbert Martin)

Also the Count de Vaudreuil was not present in Versailles on 10th August 1792 as he had left France in 1789 after the storming of the Bastille. I suppose this is why Moberly does not feel she walked into the past as it was on 10th August but into the memories of Marie Antoinette as she remembered Versailles from her confined prison in the logographe at the National Assembly. She discusses these points in the chapter Answers to Questions We Have Been Asked.
Get the full book here

15p?

So for each book that I sell in the US for 99 cents. Amazon withholds 30% tax, then there is a conversion to British pounds and I make 15p. It's gonna take of books to make my fortune...