Books, blogs and marketing.

When I started my blog, the idea was to bombard you with ‘Buy my books’ messages so you all rushed out and bought them. That way I would be rich and famous and could sit around all day writing, which is what I love to do. It didn’t quite turn out that way and in …

Blogs, scams and nice people

I try to vary the content of my blog to keep it interesting, but it’s sometimes difficult to know which type of post people prefer. Should I keep it book related?Should I post more short stories? (These always seem to be popular but are very time consuming when I should be working on my next …

Friends of Friends and Facebook

This week has been so slow with connections, I wasn’t sure if it was my keyboard, mouse, laptop or just because there’s an R in the month. I received an advice in the spam email that someone in Moscow had accessed my account. I reported it, but for a moment it did make me think …

AI gone rogue. Part 2

The second part of my short story. If you haven’t seen the first part from last week you might want to read that first so it makes sense. I needed an excuse to escape from the house and get some fresh air, so decided to combine a quick trip to the supermarket with a coffee …

AI gone rogue. Part 1

If you use social media, you might have come across occasions where people have been banned for no apparent reason. This happened to a friend of mine recently, and was the inspiration for this two-part short story.  ‘You have violated our community standards and been placed under a two-week ban. During this time you will …

Communicating

The problem with being an ‘unknown’ author is that normally you don’t have a large team behind you with an enormous marketing budget. It reminded me of my previous career in banking when the dedicated small business centres were initially being set up. Head of the first and largest in the country at the time- …

Trust

Something a little different this week. Although I wasn’t brought up with technology from an early age, I have learnt the importance of being cynical online. If it smells like a fish, and swims like a fish it’s a pretty good bet it is a fish. Of course, it could be a mermaid but that’s …

Spirit of Technology background

The original idea of this page was to provide information and background relating to my published books, and there is quite an interesting story behind this one. During an amicable conversation with my first publisher, I confirmed I hadn’t received an email which she was sure her assistant had sent me, and her comment ‘It …

Author Interview

There are so many different outlets for authors to try and publicise their books, it’s difficult to decide which ones to use. Blog, web site, Facebook author page, Twitter, Amazon author page, You Tube – I have all of these but keeping them up to date can take up all the hours which should be …

World story telling Day- Blandford Festival

This weekend is World Storytelling day. To celebrate the occasion Blandford Literary festival have organised an online production on Facebook with authors providing videos of themselves reading short stories, poetry, extracts from their books and a myriad (told you I loved that word) of all things literary. Circumstances prevented me from producing my own video …