Only two more chapters to write for my epic "Merlin" fan fiction book "Let the Questing Begin"! Phew, this has been such a long-term project, interrupted so often by client work, ill health etc. Never mind, I'm really pleased with the result and it was such a brilliant writing exercise. Weaving multiple strands of the plot and using multiple points of view was the name of the writing game, because I wanted to practice this for my very own version of the "Merlin and Arthur" legends. I'm planning that as a 13-part epic adventure. Yes, that's right. 13 novels. If I live that long. My arms start to ache just thinking about it...

Unfortunately, the one thing I had hoped the "Merlin" fan fiction writing would help me with, namely to decide if I should write the 13 books from a First Person's point of view or a Third Person's, hasn't really helped me. Am currently reading C. J. Sansom's "Revelation", which is written from the First Person's point of view and the immediacy and I guess intimacy this builds up between reader and writer, reader and protagonist is very tempting indeed. Should I therefore not let Merlin tell his own story rather than show his adventures from a more distant Third Person's perspective?

Well, before I plunge into that next epic Dark Age adventure, I still have to finish a few other book projects, including "The Little Book of Ghosts", which is nearing its end, and the brand new Flippety Floppet Early Reader series which I'm developing together with my brilliant illustrator friend Sarah Chipperfield. And then there are only a couple more chapters to work over for the first full-length German-language "Inspektor Beagle ermittelt" novel, for which Sarah has already created a brilliant cover. Still, looking up at this screen I see cover after cover appearing and that means slowly but surely, I'm making progress on the publishing front. Yay! (About time too, my long-suffering friends might say!)

Finally managed to release "Master of the Foxhunt" and am now waiting for it to be approved by the various online bookstores. Ended up making more changes and now it's a novella with some 55,500 words. Hopefully, since there are no pictures inside the book, there won't be the same kind of trouble I had when I uploaded one of my other book ideas.

I shan't bother sending links to any of the groups I'm a member of, since there are hardly any readers here on Bookrix anyway and the few people who do read want to consume everything for free, not even bothering to leave comments or a critique, because they're too lazy. I've come to the conclusion that this site is only useful for uploading ebooks and getting large scale distribution under way without too much hassle, but pointless with regard to gaining readership or sales.

Example: when I uploaded stories to Wattpad a couple of years ago (I'm no longer on that awful site), I had hundreds of downloads within days. When I uploaded stories to a German short-story website, I had ca. 1,000 readers within the first week alone. Here one is lucky to get 3 or 4 a week.

Looking at the Bookrix "bestseller list" confirms this assessment. There are so few downloads for the top five, how they can even be called "bestsellers" is a mystery to me.

Typical, isn't it. When you start going through the book during the editing and proofreading process, you suddenly find there are a couple of chapters which don't work quite as well as the others...and before you know it, you're up to your eyeballs in rewriting stuff. Argh! It's taken me nearly a week before I was satisfied with what I'd changed, but today, finally, I can just get on with proofreading and then release "Master of the Foxhunt" as an ebook for sale. Yay! It will now be a novella with around 54,000 words, but all the better for it. It's essentially still a ghost story but with more romantic than paranormal activity. Just in time for Valentine's Day...

Not long to go now and my latest ebook, "Master of the Foxhunt", is ready to on sale here at Bookrix. I'm just going through the 51,000 word text to check for errors...of which there are always plenty, given that I often change the name of my characters when the story starts to take shape, or alter their occupation or status in relationship to the other characters. Still, I'm gradually getting there and have already uploaded the cover and ten chapters. What's it about? It's an old-fashioned ghost story set in Victorian Britain in 1895. There's a bit of humour, a bit of romance, plenty of ghostly goings-on and naturally, foxes have the upper paw in the end.

Vengeful Sir Hubert Tulking, a life-long huntsman, gets more than he bargained for when he returns as a ghost to punish his son Allan for choosing a bride from among "commoners in America, an actress no less. She has so turned the young man's head it seems, he is no longer happy to hunt and look after his ancestral estate; he wants to become a playwright and work on Broadway! When Sir Allan organises one final hunt on his English estate, his father seizes his chance to do more than a bit of ordinary haunting!

The story was inspired by real-life foxes. Some years ago a vixen and her cubs took up residence in my garden. It was fascinating to watch what the little family got up to in my at that time rather overgrown garden. I had just bought the flat after it had been on the market for quite some time, so grass was waist-high and brambles and weeds were everywhere. Now I get to meet urban foxes every day when I take a short-cut past a park on my way to the library. Some of them seem to regard it as sport to stop and stare, then run off only to stop again and wait for me to catch up. In their eyes, they are the masters of the hunt.

I don't know if any of you Bookrixers are members of about.me(dot)com like I am, but a few days ago all of us on that site where greeted with the news that they had remodelled the site completely and we now had to all update our pages. To my utter disgust I discovered that my photograph had been deleted, only parts of my artwork showed and I can no longer show the links to all my various blog sites etc either. Instead, the site wants to force us to complete a very details "profile" that gives away our actual location, education, workplace details and so forth - This would not only enable advertisers to target us on every aspect of our lives, but also enable stalkers to find us easily and those with a criminal mind to copy our details and use for illegal purposes!

Collections of people we might want to collaborate with have seemingly been deleted or may possibly now only be available to those who pay a monthly subscription fee. Some moron at the site also thought it would be a good idea to insert "Buy My Book/Product/Services" button, as if that weren't the ultimate "No-No" in marketing and promotion. No potential reader wants to look at an author site that constantly screams buy my book at them! In short, without bothering to inform users beforehand of the huge changes the site was to undergo, they just went ahead and did it. The profiles look totally naff, the design is childlike and not what any of us signed up for. Why would we then want to upgrade to the paid version, if the free version is already utter rubbish? This is one of the worst examples of riding rough-shot over customers that I've ever come across. We had no warning, so far no apology either. The FAQ page on their site shows clearly that they want to force everybody to sign up to the paid version, but when the free version is already so unsatisfactory, what's the point?

Interestingly, today I discovered a different site that allows individuals, non-profits and small businesses to post their profile, as much or as little as anyone wants, for free. Feature Yourself may not look that sleek but has some rather interesting features that are worth checking out for aspiring authors and entrepreneurs:

https://featureyourself.com/featureyourself

Since Bookrix apparently has more authors than readers, it is an utter waste of time to promote one's books to the various groups here. Every time I open up "the little envelope" on the top of my screen, I am bombarded with "read my book" messages - even if I had the time to read all or at least a sizable percentage of all the books my Bookrix friends post here, I would no longer have the time to be an author myself. Given that the large majority of "books" people urge us to read on Bookrix are not even completed books, but merely a few short chapters, if at all, it's even more of a waste of time.

The general consensus among professional authors and marketing gurus dealing with the promotion of books these days is that authors should build up a rapport with their potential readers, not constantly cry "buy me" with the stuff they post.

I'm therefore using my profile messaging to give advice about how to market ebooks for free via other platforms, what writing contests to enter etc. or where to find illustrators for book covers or children's picture books for example. Blog posts by authors that offer genuine advice or tell a genuine story about the author's life are far more likely to result in sales than the constant shouting of "read me, buy me" that goes on here.

And if you urge others to read and review and comment on your book, then please stick to the rules of common decency and offer to do the same for theirs - and actually do what you've promised! Several times now I was asked to review, even edit, other people's books her on Bookrix in return for reviews of my own books. I completed my obligation as promised, but have yet to see the favours returned (after several months of waiting). So no, if you contact me with private messages to read your chapters, edit them or review the entire book, the answer is sorry, shan't fall for that one again, Bookrixers.

A week into my 2nd Copromote boost for my book Linus & The Leprechauns I see that an amazing 67 CoPromoters retweeted my original Tweet to 212,933 of their followers on Twitter. That's given my own message a boost of 6,700%! I've still got one more week of promotion to go, so this has really been a great success so far in getting the word out about my children's ebook.

I thank each and every Copromoter for their help...and this seems highly popular, because not only do they click the "like" button, giving me additional exposure as an author, many of them either become a follower on Twitter or on Copromote, some even on both social media sites. Great result all round for a FREE promotional resource. Why not try it for your own book?

On other matters, the lovely people at Narrative Magazine are also running a Winter Writing Contest. Here are the details for those feeling "literary" and ready to submit to Narrative's submission rules:

http://www.narrativemagazine.com/winter-2016-story-contest

Aeroprogramme Studio have just published a list of more writing opportunities for Febr and March this year. Here's the link for those who're game and want to submit their stories:

http://www.aerogrammestudio.com/2016/01/14/opportunities-for-writers-february-march-2016/

Good luck, if you're entering a writing contest this spring!

There's a lot going on with regard to copyright issues - Germany's rule changes on authors' contracts with their publishing houses is just one of many. Writing and publishing fan fiction for example can be fraught with dangers, too. Many famous authors resent seeing fan fiction that may (potentially) be better written than the original and threaten to undermine that author's place in the market. Others believe in principle that people should only write and publish original stuff and not base their efforts on writing that's already there. Whatever the reasons, several fan fiction writers have already discovered that some famous authors have no sense of "homage" or "humour" when they see their creations do and say things the authors never intended. Given how many "books" here on BX are based on games, TV series and other books, I thought I pass on a helpful resource.

Here's a very informative blog that deals with some of these copyright issues, but also with scams that target wannabe and new writers in particular:

http://accrispin.blogspot.co.uk/

Today's quick check on how the Copromote boost is going for "Linus & The Leprechauns" is more than encouraging: 37 CoPromoters retweeted my original messages to 166,728 followers on Twitter. I keep running out of credits though, since I can only ever promote about 10 Copromoters myself per day, giving me too small a "lump sum" of free credits. Since I won't know for at least another month how all this promo effort is translating into sales, I don't really want to sign up for the paid-for version of Copromote just yet. Meanwhile, I'm on chapter 24 for my Merlin fan fiction and have finished all the artwork for "The Little Book of Ghosts"...which just leaves for 3 ghost stories to be completed and some of the non-fictional text to be edited and proofread. Phew.