Continuing the short story from last week. I hope you're enjoying it. It took nearly a year for the cracks to begin to show. At first Pam had taken to locking the door to the office where she kept all her private papers, but as time went on she realised it was rather rude and …
Tag: books
Locking Up Part 1
With Halloween fast approaching I’m working on a new book of short stories appropriate for the season. Whether I’ll meet the deadline or not remains to be seen, but it was great fun looking through my half-finished collection, and discovering other stories I can use for my blog. This was one of the more recent …
Turn the Tables – Steph Warren
Book bloggers are invaluable to authors and help to get our books known, make recommendations for future reading and are generally supportive without any compensation except our heartfelt thanks. They often feature authors on their blogs and it suddenly occurred to me, it might be nice to 'turn the tables' and actually feature book bloggers …
Book Fair – finale
What have Eurovision, a psychiatrist, children’s story time, an ancient house, losing your job, stables, a pub that wasn’t a pub, a ceremonial chain and a hairdresser’s in Penge got in common? The answer is the book event I organised at the end of August, which was a great success. The weather stayed dry and …
Alderslay birthday and Beckenham Book Fair
Facebook has just reminded me my last book ‘Alderslay’ has a first birthday due. Where does the time go? Actually it’s older than that as I wrote the original draft some five years ago. At that time it was under a different name, but once it had been edited, I made some amendments and then …
Water company saga
It’s been a bit crazy with laptop and connection problems, not to mention the unusual weather, but I hope you’ve been enjoying the short stories and feel encouraged to check out my various books on Amazonhttps://author.to/ValPortelli Something totally different for this week, which involves a few moans and digs at customer service but is actually …
Pantsers, Psyche and garden paths.
I believe I started this blog in February around 6 years ago because ‘that’s what authors did.’ The intention was it would be a showcase for my books as they were published, and everyone would immediately rush out and buy them. It would make me rich and famous, and I could spend my life writing …
Marketing and ABC Destiny
First of all, thank you to everyone who responded to my questions last week, including the members of the Facebook online writing group during the blog posting day. You’ve probably heard me say it before but I love writing and hate marketing. I know all the theory and how things should be done, and that …
Author anniversary and Amazon Categories
When my first book was released, I assumed authors wrote a book then sat back while royalties flooded in from everyone who had bought it, and the publishers did everything else. Expecting to sell millions of copies under my pen name (because all proper authors use a pen name, don’t they?) it was quite an …
Workmen and book reviews.
A fellow author on Facebook posted a snippet of conversation between two ladies which angered her, but I found rather sad. The gist of it was they would not read any book which had less than 1,000 reviews. It was also a dig at Indie or self-published authors and the smaller publishers. The lady who …
Voinks 