Out with the Old

My old photo slides are now in the wastepaper bin. They've been waiting in the attic for a good many years.

Now they have been digitally copied, run through Photoshop and the pictures are now safely on my computer. If anyone wants the now redundant film scanner, do let me know. It has now done its job for me. 

The clarity of the digital pic is not as good as the original but since there is no way I will ever get all the old gear from the attic and set up a projector and screen in the living room, this is as good as it gets. 

I have also been busy on another new cover. Taking to heart the advice offered by Bryan Cohen's webcasts, I "saw" that some of my covers were not "genre relevant". So I am on a mission to rectify that. 

He means that a romance ought to be recognised as a romance within the first seconds of seeing the cover. That's genre recognition in action. Subconsciously we recognise a thriller from the cover style, and some  - like the Jack Reacher covers - have become almost a brand. Another thing I learned from Cathy Helms and Tamian Wood is that choice (and use) of font is as important as the picture. And finally ~ I managed to use a layer mask successfully! 

Tiny, tiny instructions

 Will be playing with my new software for a day or two until I get the hang of it. 

Like all "gadgets" from China (or Taiwan or anywhere in the Far East,) the technical aspect is good but the instructions that come with it are the opposite.

I struggled with the the tiny, tiny print and the film scanner yesterday but could only get a negative image on the scanner rather than the computer which kind of defeated the object of the exercise. 

Applied to dh, who has no fear of  attacking things intuitively, (and has better vision than me!) whereas I hesitate in case I do more damage than good. Evidently I had managed to screw up the menu, but he soon had it sorted again. So today I am all set to go, except that I have an appointment with the dentist at 9.45.

On the right is the final attempt at a cover for my latest story set in 1911. I took the advice from Cathy and Tamian and finally got all the bits as they were intended to be. I definitely need more practice with layer masks!

Uncertainties

Finally, revision of the Matho trilogy is complete.

I sent it off for re-publishing this morning, and can 

now relax and enjoy the garden, the sunshine and dog walks!

Currently uncertain as to beginning any new writing project. It takes so long to complete, and though there are lots of ideas spinning around in the subconscious nothing  is solidifying into an idea that I am prepared to spend a whole heap of time on. Perhaps I just need a rest, time off to relax. I can always concentrate on marketing and improving covers. 

Recently I put my cover for Silver Season up to Discovering Diamonds Cover critique duo (Cathy Helms and Tamian Wood) and received some really useful comments that have spurred me on to  do something about it. For the moment I'm so relieved at having got the revision off to Kindle that I'm going to relax and enjoy an ice-cream in the sunshine - oh, and watch Rafa go for his 14th Roland Garros championship.

Ad results

 All my ad campaigns on Amazon were scheduled to end  on the last day May 2021.

All 34 of them! What has my dabbling achieved? 

I have spent less than £25 and earned roughly double that. No vast fortune, I agree, but then I didn't throw myself into it with gay abandon and create 200 plus ads as some do. But it was enough to make me want to do the stats, and confirm that though there were no sales in the US the whole exercise gained me more dollars from Amazon than I have in a while using other methods. 

I haven't spent a huge amount of time on it, either.  And a big plus is that I have not been dodging about on Facebook and Twitter with book ads, which does take up a lot of time. I used that time profitably, too.

So I shall take a little break, see if I can spruce up my Hooks, and start again. Meanwhile, there are book descriptions to check, blurbs to polish and keywords to collect. At least I now have all my book prices in line over the last month!