Some other sucker bought it

Way back when writing was a release valve rather than a job, I posted sporadic updates about my actual life instead of banging on about the state of the world and the publishing industry. I lived in Amsterdam then and believed I had no big problems to speak of. I’d just launched my first book and watched it shift over 5,000 copies on a marketing budget of next to nothing. This was when Kindle was new and self-published books were almost all absolute shite. Mine contained full sentences, which made me a market leader.

So all I really had to contend with was an over-dependence on drink and weekend recreational drug binges. I was mid-30s, and believed a daily diet of 40 Camel Medium, a box of takeaway ramen and three ‘happy hours’ spread across four Amsterdam gay bars was somehow sustainable.

This time out, I was going to write about how publishing seems to have absolutely no problem with straight women writing explicit gay romance, then decided... so what? If two hockey players knobbing in the changing rooms gets people reading, good. Better they do that than set fire to trees in my local park.

Instead, I’m going back to my slice of life roots.

It’s been hot, right? The sort of hot where I spend fruitless hours scanning online stores for portable air-con units - an object I once mocked and swore I’d never buy. We get two weeks of sunshine in this part of the world and everything goes to shite. Hosepipe bans, power cuts, wildfires, people dying of heatstroke. This year feels a lot like two years ago and (if I’m honest) like this is how it’s going to be now my generation has pootled through life setting the planet on fire.

Last night I spent over an hour adding and removing an eBay air-con unit from my basket. The sort of thing that should cost £300 in the real world, on sale for four times that. In the end I handed my phone to my husband and told him to refuse any and all attempts to get it back.

(I checked this morning. Some other sucker bought it.)

On the writing front, the ‘shaggy dog story’ project moves along. I need to fix up another coaching session with the wonderful Kate Davies, as I suspect I’ve written my main character into a dark side street, cowering while the plot parties past without her. Then it goes back to an editor who makes Mussolini seem lenient, and whose input I value more than anyone or anything in the world. Husband and dog excepted.

Lisa Doyle has had a lovely little run, way outselling my modest expectations and making a brief appearance in the top 2,000 paperbacks sold in the US, for reasons nobody can explain. Here at home, she’s ticking along, and I’ve broken even after one month rather than the usual twelve at a pinch. If you’ve bought, read, borrowed or advance reviewed a copy, thank you. And if you haven’t yet posted a review on Amazon, PLEASE can I beg a few seconds of your time to do that? If you’ve never published a book, you can’t begin to understand how much power that place holds over our careers, even those of us who wish it didn’t exist. Amazon review counts matter more to the industry than actual sales. Which is quite wrong, isn’t it?

Here’s a handy link to do just that

I’ll keep posting my bizarre back catalogue of PR shots overlaid with captions on Instagram, because it keeps me busy. Share and like. It makes my day.

Otherwise, it’s back to the air-con hunt.

How are you keeping cool on these awful hot nights?