Up the Amazon!

Once again I have been entirely neglectful of this page, but now the year is ending and my thoughts turn to writing again.

My only real pieces of news this year are (one) that we decided to let out our cabin on AirBnB. The plan was that we wanted to do some renovations (we have lived in the place for about eight years and it needed a spruce) so we thought we’d move out and do it up and, to earn some money to help with the work, we’d let it out on AirBnB thinking that only one or two people would come and it might be fun. And then people started to book. And then they kept booking and kept booking and booking.

Within a few weeks of listing our chalet was fully booked for the season. This was great but it meant we couldn’t do the painting and decorating we’d planned. But the whole AirBnB thing was really enjoyable and we met some lovely people (some of whom are coming back!) and we’re really thinking of making a full-time business out of it because it was such an experience.

I live here!

The second thing was because of the AirBnB thing I haven’t been able to finish a novel this year, but I do have two unpublished manuscripts (one of which was rejected, the other never presented) so I thought I’d publish them on Amazon.

I’ve never done it before but I didn’t want to wait two years for a publisher’s schedule to catch up. I just wanted to get them out there.

Unfortunately I found it really difficult, exhausting even, to get my head around the formatting for the kindle programme but, eventually, I got something reasonably acceptable.

Now, I haven’t done anything to promote the first book (and haven’t put the second up) as I thought I’d leave that for 2020 so I’m going to start whispering about it.

The main change for this book is that I’ve published it under my own name, Mark Keating, rather than Robert Lautner. Strangely enough I did this because Mark Keating is less well known and I wanted to re-establish him…me?…as a writer again. I don’t know. But if anyone can advise how to promote Amazon books that would be great.

Here’s the UK and US Amazon links for Rabbit Moon.

 

 

And I’ll publish my second book soon. It’s called Sturdy Maiden, set in Burma in 1942. An elephant story and that’s all you need to know right now, but I’ll post snippets of it when I can.

And here’s our link for my AirBnB if you want to book and visit the remotest part of the Pembrokeshire coastal path and walk down to the sea from our front door!

https://airbnb.com/h/chalet-to-the-bay

 

Us in winter!