Mysterious Purchaser, Somewhere In The UK...

I wasn't going to put up a blog this week - pressure of work and all that. I'm trying to prepare a series of workshops I have to give in schools at the end of February and beginning of March.

And then, there's no pubowrimo to report on this week - partly because of the workshops, but also because, living on top of the steepest hills for miles around, we were snowed in. A more courageous driver could have made it out to a decent, writer-tolerant pub - but after pirouetting my car like an ice-dancer on our steep hills a few times in recent years, I decided to pass.

I changed my mind about blogging when I logged on to CreateSpace, Amazon's Print-On-Demand Paperback site. I was intending to upload the 'interior' of 'Overheard In A Graveyard', one of my ghost story collections. But before I could do anything useful like that I was transfixed by the fact that this month's sales of my book The Wolf's Footprint, had jumped up from 5 to 23 since the last time I worked on the site, a couple

Nightcomers - already a paperback

of days ago.

The reason I put 'The Wolf's Footprint' out, first as an ebook, and then as a paperback, was because so many teachers emailed me, asking where they could find copies of the book. One teacher asked if I could supply 16 copies. I couldn't - I never owned 16 copies at one time myself.

So I can only imagine that the reason for this sudden, even if modest, spike in sales is that, somewhere in the UK, a teacher, or a school, has lashed out and bought 18 copies of the book at one go.

Mysterious bulk purchaser, whoever, wherever you are, thank you very much! Please accept a writer's gratitude. I hope the book

serves your purpose, and the story and illustrations are enjoyed.

Mysterious Purchaser, you've made my weekend.

The paperback edition of The Wolf's Footprint can be found here, with greyscale illustrations..

A paperback edition with COLOUR illustrations can be found here.

And the ebook edition can be found here.



And I can't resist saying, have a look at this - http://thezazzledimp.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/copywriters.html 

You can put words in famous writers' mouths. I love Lovecraft saying, 'Boo!'

A Scattering of Authors

          I haven't posted a blog for a couple of weeks.

          Blame the summer.
          You have to rush out and soak up the sun when you can in Britain, so for part of that two weeks, I was away in Devon.
          Last week, I was in Oxfordshire for the 2013 Scattered Authors Society Conference.
          This has been held annually for over ten years now, in a beautiful medieval manor house, in a small English village.
   Scattered Authors from all over Britain gather there, from Monday to Thursday.

          It's a gab-fest, a chance to catch up with friends, an opportunity to learn new workshop techniques to take into school sessions, to pick the brains of other authors about editors and publishers, to drink Pimms in a sunny garden while swallows and swifts dive and soar - and, above all, to talk about writing with other people who really understand what you're talking about and why you love it.

               The gathered authors - nearly thirty of them - ate in the stone-floored undercroft. The food is excellent; the talk almost non-stop.

We met mostly in the lovely solar, with its great chimney-breast, its wooden beams and stone-framed windows. A small private chapel opens off it. Every session begins with a five minute read, where one of the writers reads aloud, usually from a book they're writing. Celia Rees says that every book she's read from at Charney has won a contract!
          Celia, Mary Hoffman and Penny Dolan combined their experience of travelling abroad as writers to give us some tips. Anticipate disaster! - that's their advice. And if it's for work, claim expenses against tax. The discussion afterwards brought up more experiences, and advice.

          Jenny Alexander gave us a wonderful workshop session, using the greater arcana from the tarot cards. She pointed out that these intriguing distillations of dream images can be used for meditation and to inspire stories and poems. Jenny is always inspirational.
          Katherine Roberts led a session bringing us up to date on e-publishing and her adventures in it. I chipped in where I could, with my own experience. Kath provided lots of advice, and emailed us all a list of the sites she'd mentioned, with links.
          Dianne Hofmeyr led a very enjoyable drawing workshop - but Di's triumph was the performance she gave of her book, The Bojabi Tree. She sang, she danced, she acted, and it was a joy - though Julia Jarman almost stole the show with an impromptu and funny impersonation of a tortoise.
          But, as ever, the most vital thing about the Scattered Authors Conference was being there, talking and laughing - there is always almost non-stop laughter at Charney.
          Here's one last toast to all the Scattered Authors - success!