It’s actually our fault but we’re going to blame you!

I didn’t blog last week for which I’m sorry, I have no excuses, it just didn’t happen. To be fair, last week was a busy and stressful one. I was supposed to be on the second week of my holiday, and I was supposed to be publishing the first three books of the Blackwood Family Sage all in one big triple hit. Mad? Possibly.

Anyway, for those of you familiar with the whole hell that is trying to upload to Amazon’s publishing house KDP, bear with me while I try to explain it to those in blissful ignorance. If an author publishes through Amazon, then it can be great and there are many benefits. It’s free, you don’t have to pay for an ISBN number, and they will help you make your cover if you need them to. But, being an indie author means you have to do everything yourself including formatting your precious book not only into a version suitable for publishing as an eBook, but even harder, you have to produce a version suitable to go into a paperback as well.

The eBook version is pretty straight forward. Don’t page number it, KDP will do that for you. Make sure your page breaks are in place otherwise your chapters will bleed into each other. Make sure your chapter headings aren’t so big they will break in odd places and add hyperlinks to your contents page so people can jump to wherever they want to in the book when they’re reading it.

The paperback is trickier. You are charging more for a physical book, so it must be perfect, well, in my humble opinion it does. The chapter endings need to be sensible – one of my pet hates is a chapter ending with just one or two lines at the top of a page then a ton of white space underneath, so I will always tweak the paragraphs to either pull them back so the chapter ends neatly at the bottom of a page, or push them out so there’s a sensible amount of text on the last page of the chapter. I also like to start all my new chapters on the right-hand side, the top side of a page, but that is a whole other OCD issue which could take up an entire blog.

The pagination must be accurate, and that can be problematic especially in a book like Erinsmore or The Forest. Those books contain section breaks and chapter title pages which you don’t want page numbers on but you do want the pagination to count them, so the numbering picks up again on page one of the next chapter. Unbelievably complicated! I have no idea why the designers of Word made it so arse-achingly hard to do. It was like there was a committee meeting and a proposal was put forward to make pagination simple and straight forward, but they all looked at it, chuckled evilly, and decided no, they’d make it so twisty, complex, and downright impossible that any author attempting it would end up clawing their own eyes out and sobbing quietly in a corner.

Anyway, after ten books I can handle pagination. It may take me a while, there may be much cursing and some tears, but I do eventually get it right. I can even insert all my own illustrations, illuminated capitals, and chapter graphics – or rather my IT department (aka Miss F) – can do it. Then my paperback draft goes off to the wonderful Becky Wright at Platform House Publishing, and she performs some kind of arcane wizard magic spell over it which ensures that all those extra twiddly bits stay exactly where they are and she then sends it back to me in a version called a PDF. This ensures that when I upload it to KDP it will be exactly as it should be and will stay that way.

Anyway, this had been done to all three of the Blackwood Family Saga books – paperbacks were perfect, the eBook versions were perfect and those had all been converted into MOBI files so they would also upload to KDP exactly as they were – all I was waiting for were the final tweaks to be made to the covers for the paperbacks and I was good to go.

I had planned for a three-day launch programme running from Wednesday to Friday. The books would all be on at special sale prices for those three days and I had a ton of promo material ready plus a video teaser for each one. I got my final paperback covers back from Platform House on Monday afternoon, so I was cutting it fine, but being a more established author and because I upload a PDF for the paperbacks and a MOBI for the eBooks, my books never take as long in the review stage as they would if I was a newbie author trying to upload a sloppily formatted Word document.

Confident this will be the work of half an hour, max, I log into KDP Monday afternoon and begin uploading my books. For some reason it seems to take a lot longer than usual, but eventually I get them up and try to check them in the preview facility. This is a way you can look at your books on the screen and check them page by page just to ensure all is well. According to KDP no such feature existed, even though it’s a feature I’ve used dozens of times before and was there on the screen. But every time I clicked on it, I received a very strange error message.

Hmm, I thought, that’s odd, so I bypassed that stage and tried to upload my book covers. Nope. KDP did not want to know. Insisting that I hadn’t uploaded a compatible file, when I knew damn well, I had. These shenanigans went on for almost two hours before I gave up and went to bed. I did send KDP an email informing them of these problems but knew it would take at least 24 hours before any answer was forthcoming.

Tuesday morning there was a message in my inbox from KDP informing me they had no glitch their end and it must be my device. Perhaps it was too old to cope with uploading such complex documents to KDP? Well, it was only three months older than the last time I published a book through them, so, hmm. Anyway, I decided to try again and despite my device being a whole thirteen hours older than the last time I had tried, all three books uploaded perfectly this time, as well as the covers.

Brilliant, I thought. There was a chance they would all still be up by Wednesday morning, but even if they weren’t, I could run the launch Thursday to Saturday instead. So, I waited. And waited. And waited! Wednesday afternoon I receive an email that the eBook versions of Lost & Found and Fixtures & Fittings are up. Good. Then that evening, Sugar & Spice eBook version is up. Thursday morning the paperback versions of Lost & Found and Sugar & Spice are up, but no sign of Fixtures & Fittings. I email KDP again asking if they have any idea where it’s gone or how long it’s going to take.

Then I notice something else, they’ve listed the eBook version of Fixtures & Fittings with the listing of a second-hand seller who is flogging old paperback copies of the book for stupid money, but it looks like it’s the official paperback, so I’m scared if I launch that people will buy it by mistake.

Thursday afternoon, the actual paperback version of Fixtures & Fittings goes up. But it still shows the old cover. I’m pretty sure if anyone orders a copy, they will get the new one. But I don’t want to take any chances so reluctantly decide I must delay launch until the following week. I email KDP again, and in the meantime order myself one copy of each of the books to see for myself what actually turns up.

Friday morning. Fixtures & Fittings is still showing the old cover, and Lost & Found – which had been perfect – is now also showing the old cover. I am now at a state of wanting to take a machete to my laptop. The frustration caused by waiting around for three days was unbearable, so Wednesday afternoon I sat down and started furiously hammering out words for my next book!

Friday lunchtime I received an email from KDP very politely informing me that they had looked into my various issues and that because I hadn’t uploaded my books until that morning, then that was why they weren’t up entirely and some of the covers hadn’t uploaded yet. Excuse you, KDP! They were all uploaded Tuesday morning and there is a timestamp on my account to prove it. I sent back a politely blistering email pointing this fact out to them. Nothing came back.

Saturday morning, way too late to even think about launching because I was back to work Monday morning, I received notification that all my books were up on KDP. I went and checked and yes, there were all three books up on all the sites with the correct covers, and the new paperback editions linked to the proper eBook versions. Thank you KDP, finally.

What got me was the customer service. If they had come back with a prompt email saying, yes, we can see there are issues. We have a glitch our end which we are working to correct, and we will keep you posted, then fine. Glitches happen. In a massive organisation like Amazon I would imagine they happen all the time. I would have accepted that. It would have been annoying but at least I would have known precisely where I stood and what was happening. But to blame me and my laptop, to blatantly lie just to avoid taking responsibility? Well, that’s not a good example of outstanding customer service, KDP.

As a footnote, Sunday morning I received yet another email from customer support gleefully informing me that they’ve resolved my issues and are delighted to inform me that my book “Liam” was now listed on Amazon. Thinking what the hell, I clicked on the link and discovered that some Italian author had successfully managed to publish his book called Liam on the European Amazon site as it’s all in Italian! Go home KDP, you’re drunk.

There were some silver linings to this cloud of frustration. Because I had three days of waiting around that had been earmarked for launching, I did actually manage to write 25,000 words of book number eleven, so there was that! And my three copies of the books turned up Tuesday – all perfect, of course – so I was able to use them in promo pictures during the launch. Pick out the positives, right?

And how did the launch proper go? Very well thank you. I think a few people took advantage of the introductory low prices to snag all three books, but sales figures are never as high as you think they’re going to be and quite a few people plainly lied about having bought the books, when the figures didn’t back these claims up. But it is what it is.

In other news, a few of you asked about my car and I’m happy to say I now have it back and its rusty bottom has been fixed. The garage pushed it to the wire though. I dropped my car off to them at 8am on the Monday of my first week off. I heard nothing all week, but didn’t expect to, and living in the centre of town with no plans to go anywhere, I didn’t need the car anyway.

The second week of my holiday rolled around, and I began to anticipate their phone call any day saying that the car was finished and please could I go and collect it. I had managed to get a click and collect slot at Tesco for 10-12 on the Thursday, but it was fine, because it was bound to be done by then, wasn’t it? After all, they knew I needed the car by the following Monday morning because I was back to work, and as they are closed at the weekends the car was bound to be finished by Thursday morning at the latest.

Wednesday morning dawned and I still hadn’t heard anything, so I called them. No, the car still wasn’t finished, and it wouldn’t be ready for Thursday morning. But it will be ready for me to collect Friday, right? As you know, I must have it for Monday morning because I’m back to work. There was a hesitation the other end, the sound of a muffled conversation, then I’m told yes, it will be ready Friday, but could I please leave it until the end of the day to collect it, say 5pm?

That left me in a bit of a pickle about collecting a month’s worth of shopping from Tesco Thursday morning with no car, but luckily Mum was able to run me round, so that was okay.

So, I trotted across to the garage Friday at 5pm, then had to sit for a good twenty minutes until the garage was almost closing before a mechanic roared up outside in my little car. Careful how you get in, he warned me, the sills are still wet. They hadn’t even done the bill for me and promised to put it in the post – which, a whole week later, I’m still waiting for – and I really got the impression that my car had been forgotten about until my phone call Wednesday morning, then mass panic ensued to get it done on time. Oh well, I have it, it’s been fixed, and I’ve been assured not only will it pass this coming MOT but the next two years as well, at least. And that was all I wanted.

I returned to work Monday to find in my two weeks absence that a lot of changes had been implicated. For a start, it’s now compulsory for all customers to now wear face coverings and even though shop assistants don’t have to, my company has decided that all of us also have to wear face coverings of some description.

I hate wearing the masks, and before those mask Nazis start jumping up and down shrieking hysterically that I have to and if I don’t then it’s akin to me going on a shooting spree and I should be charged with murder, YES, I KNOW I have to wear them and I will, all I’m saying is I hate wearing them.

They make me sweat buckets, they give me spots, they’re too big for me and end up over my eyes, they make my glasses steam up, I can’t breathe in them, and they make me cough. All things considered, I decided to try the visors we’d been issued with instead. And they have their own set of problems. They make my hair stand on end, the plastic fogs up, it’s difficult getting my glasses on underneath, and they leave me with a nasty red welt across my forehead.

It’s all very well for someone popping into a shop to do a spot of shopping having to wear them but try being in either a mask or a visor for eight solid hours. And again, before those mask Nazis start leaping again, I KNOW that nurses and surgeons and the like wear them for much longer, but I am not a nurse or a surgeon, I’m a sales assistant and I didn’t sign up for this. Also, I’m not dealing with sick people or performing surgery, I am trying to sell to people. You try selling to someone when they can’t see your smile or even your face properly, when they can’t see your mouth and read your facial expressions.

So, Monday I tried the visor and found all the drawbacks listed above. I also found out that because my company had obviously bought the cheapest ones they could, the Perspex is not great quality and is all blurry, so it’s really hard to see through them.

Tuesday, I wore a mask all day, and have never been so pleased to leave work in all my life! As soon as I got home, I ordered myself a pack of cotton masks off the internet. They feel much cooler and more comfortable and have adjustable straps. The two sorts we have at work either constantly slip down or threaten to pull my ears from my head. I will take my own mask into work today and see how I do, but I wish this were all over. I wish masks had been made compulsory from day one of lockdown because this whole making them mandatory five months into a pandemic is seriously like taking condoms to a baby shower – too little, too late.

Anyone else think the black face masks look like men’s underpants?

Anyway, we’re now into August and I am wondering what happened to July? Seriously, anyone else feel that something has been done to time because there just doesn’t seem to be as much of it as there used to be? Another busy month looms. The Blackwood books may have been launched, but now I have to concentrate on getting The Book of Eve out there. It’s been extensively edited and is now with my beta readers. It’s basically formatted, just needs all the chapter graphics and fancy fonts inserting, and Becky and I have already started brainstorming about the cover, promo images, and the video trailer for it. I can’t say too much at this stage about the cover but think Great Gatsby and you’ll be in the right area.

Really need an August launch date for this, but I know how long this final stage can take, so am prepared for it to slip into September. I’ve also got to get my backside down in my chair and write until my little fingers are reduced to bloody stubs. I want this new book to be launched around Halloween time and although that may sound like a long way off, it’s not, it’s really not. So alongside writing it and preparing Eve for publication, I will also be sourcing images and working on the cover for this one as well. And I really can’t say anything about this latest book yet, but I promise I will keep you posted.

Old cover. I didn’t choose it and it doesn’t reflect the story inside

August is also Miss F’s birthday and I’m really not sure what she will be doing to celebrate her 17^th birthday – I have a seventeen-year old daughter? How? How?! – so no doubt we will be busy doing something to mark the occasion.

She hasn’t been at college since the beginning of March and obviously now won’t be going back until at least September, and no one seems too sure what form their return will take. I really hope she can get some practical, hands on experience, because this is a crucial year for them. They are preparing for their finals and need to be applying to universities, all of which they ideally need proper, face to face, classroom time with their tutors to do.

Miss F is also still on furlough from the pub where she works part-time. They have re-opened but at a greatly reduced level and all the full-time staff were called back first, although she is still receiving furlough pay, but again no one seems to know when she’ll be returning to work. On Wednesday, I took her for an interview for a new work placement position to commence in September and replace the position she had last year at the stables and kennels in Keddington which is a good 45 minute drive away. This position is in a doggy day care centre right here in Bury and is so perfect for her that we’re both crossing everything she gets it.

She must have made a reasonably good impression because they’ve invited her back for a day’s try out next Wednesday, so please send lots of good luck wishes and I’ll keep you posted. I think one definite thing in her favour is that because we live in town there will never be any issue with her getting there. There are numerous buses that whizz around town that she can catch, if she gets either a Thursday or a Friday (which I believe are the only two days they’re offering) then they are both my days off so I don’t mind running her up there – compared to the 1.5 hours run I had to do twice a day, every Friday, all last year, a 20 minute round journey to the other side of town and back is nothing! If all else fails, she can always walk it. It’s a good 50-minute walk but it’s doable in an emergency.

So that’s you caught up with all of my news, and I apologise again for not blogging last week. To be honest I was so caught up in my new book that I couldn’t bear to tear myself away from it. I hope you all have a great week and wherever you are, stay safe, stay well, stay happy.

Regards

Julia Blake

Launch Week!

Another week has flown by in isolation. Is it just me? Or is anyone else finding that the days are flashing by and you’re beginning to wonder how you ever managed to fit in going to work, what with all the other things you have to do about the house and garden?

What have you all been up to this week? On the home front, I took my dining room apart and gave it a thorough spring clean, including shampooing the carpet and the large rug I have in there. Now, I’ve had this rug for over twenty years, and I don’t think it’s ever been properly shampooed. Needless to say, what came off it was disgusting, and I am properly ashamed of myself.

When I put the room all back together and re-laid the rug, I called Miss F in to take a look. Smugly proud of how bright and clean and sparkling everything was, I waited for the gasps and wows. They didn’t come. Instead she just looked around, grunted, and left. Bit crushed, must admit, that she couldn’t see the difference. But I can see how much better everything looks, even if she can’t, and at least I know how much cleaner it is, so I suppose that’s all that matters.

We continue to stay very close to home. My routine now is to go out just once a week on a Saturday morning, when I scuttle up town avoiding contact with anyone I see, wait to get into my local Tesco Express or Marks & Spencer – I haven’t dared go near one of the bigger stores – and then forage for whatever is available. This week Miss F requested I try and get flour so she can make some cakes. I came back empty handed though because the home baking section had been picked clean – no flour to be had for love nor money.

It makes me a big cross though, when I’m on these brief, necessary excursions, to see elderly and frail looking people tottering about the shops. I even spoke to one lady whilst waiting in the queue for Marks & Spencer – at a safe 2m distance of course – and asked her why she was out. She confirmed what I already knew that there are no delivery slots to be had. Now, I know of several perfectly able people who are still getting their food delivered when they really could go to the shop and leave their slot for someone who really needs it, but I guess their argument would be that even if they did give up their slot there’s no guarantee it would go to the needy. No, some other perfectly able person would probably grab it. It seems a shame that the supermarkets who are delivering still aren’t giving priority to the most vulnerable people, those who really should be at home, not risking their lives tottering up to the shops every day because they can’t carry very much back in one trip.

This crisis has certainly brought out the best and the worst in people.

Although I have been busy all week and have had happy and productive days, Miss F hasn’t. She’s basically completed all the college work she’d been given and is now wallowing about in her PJ’s and watching mindless videos on YouTube. All my suggestions for things she could do are met with eyerolls, so I now leave her alone to get on with it. Although, I have put my foot down and insisted she must go into the garden for at least twenty minutes a day. It’s been almost three weeks since she has set foot outside the house and she’s beginning to look like Wednesday Adams.

One other thing that happened this week was of course the re-launch of my fantasy novel Erinsmore. This happened Thursday and I was initially unsure how it would go. These are strange and difficult times and most authors I know are complaining that book sales are down, not up, which on reflection is not what you would have expected. Forced to stay home with no work or social events to go to, it would seem logical that people would be reading more, not less, yet many of my author friends are finding the opposite to be true.

Bizarrely my sales don’t seem too affected, not yet anyway, so despite being told it might not be a good idea to relaunch now, I went ahead and published the new edition of Erinsmore.

I had prepared as much as I could with some lovely promo posts and ten second teasers. I’d enlisted help from all my friends and followers on social media, and I even had a minute-long amazing video trailer that I hoped would pique people’s interest.

I’m happy to report that launch day went with a bang. I had far more support than I ever expected to get, and even people I’d never really had any interaction with before stepped up to the mark and shared my posts and even bought the book. On the flip side though, there were a few people whom I’ve been close to on social media for many years who sat back and did absolutely nothing to support me, not a like, not a share and not even so much as a congratulation. That did surprise me, but those people will be remembered when they are launching a new book and look to me for support. It may sound harsh, but I’m afraid mutual reciprocal support is really what it’s all about.

It was a long and exhausting day, monitoring posts and shares, trying to respond to each and any gesture of support. As I hopped from Facebook to Instagram and back again, I thought how impossible this would have been ten or even five years ago. I know social media has its faults, but it also has its perks, and it does make it possible for me to be a published author.

I finally stepped back from my tablet at about 6pm, drained and exhausted. Miss F had cooked dinner and I took a five-minute breather to go and sit in the garden – my eyes tend to go a bit buggy if I’ve been looking at a screen for a long time. It’s traditional to have a bottle of something sparkly to celebrate the successful launch of another book, but in the circumstances I didn’t have any, so instead I made myself a gin and tonic and put some frozen berries in it to make up for not having any fresh lemon or ice. I also didn’t have a perfect copy of Erinsmore, only the proof copy, but it didn’t matter. The book was launched and it had been an amazing day.

I’m hopeful that Erinsmore will do well. It’s a fun and engrossing fantasy read which seems to be the most popular genre in these trying times, when people want to lose themselves in a book, but don’t want to read anything too ‘real’.

Since it’s relaunch on Thursday, I’ve had a couple of followers ask me for some background on the story. Where did the idea first come from? What was the inspiration behind the characters?

Well, I guess you could say that Erinsmore has its roots way back in my childhood, when I first discovered the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis. To say I was blown away by them is an understatement. I was a lonely child. I didn’t really have any friends and wasn’t one of those children who wanted to wander around outside by myself. Books were my only refuge – don’t forget this is long before the internet was a thing and also way before all day kid’s TV – so books really were the only way to escape life in a small and confining village.

I think I must have read “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” first. I’m pretty sure it was, because I remember being so excited when I discovered that there was a book that came before it, explaining the origins of Narnia, and that there were more books that came after it. I must have read those books a dozen times each over the years of my childhood. Each time completely losing myself in the fantastical world within its pages. I dreamed of Narnia, and although I knew it would never happen, couldn’t help wishing that I could find a way to get into it.

As the years passed, I explored other children’s fantasy, especially the books of Alan Garner – “The Owl Service” and “The Weirdstone of Brislingham” – in particular, stick in my mind. I also loved the “Dark is Rising” series by Susan Cooper, and from this gained a love of old British myth and folklore which I’ve never lost and which can be seen in “Erinsmore” and more particularly in “The Forest ~ a tale of old magic ~ also available from Amazon.

In my teens I discovered sci-fi and for a while strayed away from pure fantasy, but then in my twenties I drifted back. Discovering the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit series, then later the “Shannara Chronicles” by Terry Brooks and then the superb epic fantasy series by Robin Hobb, truly the queen of high fantasy. All these books were busy laying the foundations for what was to come in later life.

In about 2007 I went up to London for the day with my favourite cousin. We both had a deep and abiding love for West End Musicals and once or twice a year would save up our money and buy tickets to travel to London with a local coach excursion company to have a meal and see a show.

This time we’d got tickets to go and see “The Lord of the Rings”. An epic blockbuster show, with a reputed huge budget, it flopped mere months after we’d been to see it, but I honestly don’t know why, we absolutely loved it and thought it was amazing. Anyway, we travelled up early in the morning very excited to be having a day away from our usual humdrum lives.

There was some kind of parade happening in London that day and the whole of the city centre was closed to traffic, so instead of dropping us off outside the theatre as was normal with these coach trips, we were dropped off on the embankment and had to walk to the West End.

It was very strange, walking down the middle of London streets with no traffic, and after getting lost a few times we finally found the theatre, orientated ourselves as to where it was and then went to have a good lunch.

Now, as I said, normally we’d be dropped off right outside the theatre and would always find a wonderful restaurant mere minutes away to have a long and wine-soaked lunch in. Knowing our seats were pre-booked and the theatre was only a couple of minutes away, we would stay in the restaurant for as long as possible, then use their facilities (queues for the ladies in West End theatres being almost as long as a performance of The Lord of the Rings) before rocking up at the theatre with just enough time to place our interval drinks order and fall into our seats.

This was what we were used to doing, but neither of us had a watch on so we hadn’t appreciated just how long we’d taken to walk to the restaurant. Seeing a wonderful three-course lunch option on the menu, we both chose that and settled back with a bottle of wine to have a lovely chat and generally relax and enjoy ourselves.

Our starters were brought to us, and, as we started to eat, I happened to notice the time on the clock on the restaurant wall. There was 25 minutes to curtain up. We had 25 minutes to eat a three-course meal, pay, use the facilities, get out of the restaurant, place our interval drinks order and find our seats.

We looked at each other. Mild hysteria ensued. We calmed down. When the waitress came to collect our starter plates, we explained our dilemma. She promised to get our mains out to us as soon as possible, along with our desserts at the same time. In the meantime, she’d bring us the bill and while my cousin sorted out paying it and leaving a tip, I slipped out of the restaurant and ran to the theatre next door.

Hurtling up the stairs, I think I barged through a few people who’d been more organised than us and allowed plenty of time to get there, I then pushed my way to the front of the queue in the bar – I’m sorry, but this was an emergency – placed our interval drinks orders and paid for them, then charged back out, making a mental note of where we had to go to reach our seats. Downstairs, third row from the stage – result!

Getting back, our mains of steak, fries and all the trimmings had just been delivered, alone with two large bowls of raspberry cheesecake. Normally, over the course of a couple of hours, this would not have been a problem. But, stuffing our faces with three courses in less than thirty minutes, well, I really don’t recommend it. We made it to our seats with seconds to spare, still taking our jackets off as the lights were dimmed and it began.

And it was wonderful. Like I said, this show was critically slated and closed after just one year, I don’t know why. Maybe we weren’t as clever as professional critics, but we loved it. It was wild and extravagant, and the orcs were truly terrifying. They wore those curved stilt things on their feet and jumped onto the arms of of seats and ran along the whole row right over the top of the mesmerised and slightly terrified, audience.

Despite having chronic indigestion caused by eating too much, too fast, we had a wonderful time, and rolled out of the theatre at the end in a blissed-out state of good food, good wine and good entertainment. Luckily by now traffic was once again allowed into the city centre and so our coach was waiting for us right outside. Falling into our seats, we exchanged greetings with the guys sitting in the seats behind us who were so cliché nerdy it was funny.

Heading home, they were chatting to each other and to us about the show, Tolkien and fantasy in general, and my cousin happened to comment what a shame it was that fantasy was so male centric. That it was always the guys who got to go on quests and fulfil prophecies and fight in epic battles, never the girls. Don’t forget, this was long before The Hunger Games, Divergent and all the other books and films with kick ass heroines saving the day.

An idea stirred. A story niggled at my mind in which it was a girl who got to do all the things that the guys usually did. No, make that two girls. A pair of sisters. Both very different, but both normal London teenagers who were completely unprepared for suddenly finding themselves in a strange, fantasy medieval type world. I started to get excited. I imagined their dismay at no indoor sanitation, no internet, no coffee! Yes! And they’d be at the heart of a prophecy and go on a quest or two, oh and there had to be dragons. By the time we got home, I’d borrowed some paper and a pen from the obliging nerds behind us and had written the prophecy, drafted up some character notes, and even thought of the name of both this fantasy world and the novel – Erinsmore.

I then spent the next three months writing it, falling in love with this fantastical world and in my head plotting out the next two books in the series. Yes, it is going to be a series when I eventually get round to it. Then I sat on it for eleven years, occasionally digging it out and reading it. It was read by a few family and friends, who all loved it. I even read it to Miss F when she was ten and she has since read it to herself several times. It’s funny though, I’d always envisaged her as Ruby the younger sister, but in Miss F’s view she was definitely Cassie – the feisty, warrior older sister.

In 2018 I finally published it as an independent author and it was very well received, but I always felt it could be so much more. Over the next two years I developed as an author. I grew and learnt and became more skilled at my craft. I found out what could be done with a book and discovered how to use illustrations and graphics to really make a novel stand out in the readers mind. Finally, I put all my ideas together and went to see one of my best friends, Becky Wright.

An author herself, she had recently started a formatting and promotional company for writers, Platform House Publishing, and I knew I would need her help to make Erinsmore the book I was sure it could be. It took many months. For good measure, I had it professionally edited and changed the book size from 5×8 to 6×9. I was planning on adding a lot of pages of illustrations and I also wanted to enlarge the font to make it more striking and reader friendly. Trying to cram all that into a 5×8 just wouldn’t work. Besides, I wanted the book to have heft. I wanted it to feel special in the readers hands. Once the font was enlarged and all the illustrations were entered, it actually came out to be the same size as “The Forest ~ a tale of old magic ~” so it sits nicely beside it on the shelf now.

Becky and her husband James worked tirelessly to make an amazing new cover for the book, a whole range of promotional pictures, three ten second video teasers and a magnificent, minute long video trailer which has stunned all who have seen it, and has been likened to Game of Thrones – but the PG version. She also took all the wonderful drawings I’d found for the book and inserted them in their correct places. I have tried to put the link to the video on YouTube below. I’m not very technically minded, so apologies if it hasn’t worked.

Like I said, a lot of hard work and expense, but it was totally worth it. The book is a thing of beauty and if fantasy is your thing, and even if it’s not, why not give it a try? Suitable for ages 12 and upwards, it is in no way a childish book and many adults have already read and loved it. I think it is what we all need right now, pure escapism. If like me you loved Narnia when you were a child, then this book will call to you in exactly the same way.

Link to book on Amazon UK (I hope)

Then link to Amazon US

And now it’s another Sunday morning and again “A Little Bit of Blake” is late coming your way. Isn’t it funny how now I have so much time in the week to get this written and saved, I’m tending to leave it later and later until it’s too late on a Saturday evening? My gran always used to say, “you fill the time you have” and I think that’s very true.

So, what’s next? Well, book wise I will start working on my romantic suspense short novel “Lost & Found” ready for its re-release. It’s currently with my editor but will be back next week so I can make all her amendments. I will also be busy with Becky Wright working on a new cover and the interior formatting. After that, I will need to do the same with the next book in the series “Fixtures & Fittings” and then the new, as yet unpublished, third book in the series will have to be prepared for publication. I’m planning a big, extravagant publication of all three titles at the same time so a lot of work to do.

Home wise, on Monday morning I’m going to tackle the lounge. It needs a thorough spring clean and the carpet shampooing, so I’m hoping the nice warm weather comes back so I can get sofa covers and curtains dry outside – I daren’t risk them in the tumble drier, I know they’d shrink! The lounge should only take a couple of days and then I’m going to start on the bathroom – and that really does need a deep clean!

As you can see, plenty to keep me occupied next week but I will try to write the blog a little earlier so you’re not waiting for it again.

Hope you have a great Sunday. If anyone is interested, I’ve put the Amazon listing links to Erinsmore below.

Stay safe.

Julia Blake

I have a very good reason why there’s no blog this week – honest!

It’s been a really busy week. As many of you may know, book nine, Chaining Daisy, is being released next Wednesday, and those of you who understand a little about the life of a writer will know that means manic and frenzied preparations are going on all around.

I did have every intention of still blogging, I even had a subject matter in mind, but as the days crept by I’ve been caught up in a tsunami of interviews, prepping promo posts, setting up the eBook for pre-order on Amazon, checking one last time that everything is perfect, arranging for reviews to be posted on launch day and generally soliciting help and support from whomever is prepared to offer it, time got away from me and suddenly it was Saturday afternoon and the blog was still unwritten. No problem, I thought, I know what I’m writing about so it’ll only take an hour or so to hammer out my words of wisdom and upload it onto the blog site.

I should have known really, shouldn’t I?

At about 2.45pm Saturday the phone rang, and a conversation ensued that went something like this:

“Hello, is that Ms Blake?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, good. Tell me, has your cat gone missing?”

I paused to think about this, because the word missing is very subjective. True, our dear little black moggy Skittles had been missing in action since the previous day, but she did sometimes do this. She’d worry us silly by not appearing at mealtimes and have us searching the street and the neighbours gardens, only to saunter in without a hair out of place and declining to answer when we asked where she’d been.

“Well, we haven’t seen her since last night. Why? Have you found her?”

“Yes, she got into the bonnet of a car and went for a little ride.”

“Oh, ok, where exactly did she go for a ride to?”

“Ely.”

Now Ely is a town about a 50 minute drive from us and Skittles had ended up a fair way from home. So, Miss F and I pulled on our shoes, got down the cat basket and went on an hour and a half round trip to collect our nomadic feline from the vets where she’d ended up.

Needless to say, Skittles was VERY pleased to see us, and the vet told us some of the tale. The rest was filled in by the delightful lady whose car it was our kitty had hitched a lift in – the vets gave me her number so I could phone and thank her. Apparently, she’d come to Bury St Edmunds on Friday to do some shopping and had parked in the car park at the top of our street.

Leaving Bury late Friday afternoon, she’d driven home to Ely, then had driven to Wisbech, then home to Ely again – a round trip of approximately 100 miles. Saturday morning, the lady noticed the bulb in one of her headlights was gone, so went to replace it and was very surprised to find a little pair of dark eyes looking back at her. Help was summoned as Skittles was well and truly wedged in and showed no signs of coming out – whether she was trapped or just so frightened she couldn’t move, I don’t know. Bits of the engine were removed and hey presto, the cat was free.

But this lovely kitty guardian angel didn’t just let her run off, she phoned her local vet who told her to bring this little black hitchhiker in to be checked for injuries and to see if she was microchipped.

Luckily, very luckily, Skittles is, so the vet then made the telephone call I recounted above.

When I think of how this tale could have ended my heart goes into my mouth. There are a lot of moving parts in an engine, so Skittles is very lucky she wasn’t ripped to shreds. Being driven at 70mph down the motorway, she is also extremely fortunate she didn’t fall out onto the road and get run over by the cars following. She’s lucky the lady who found her didn’t just release her – so far from home there’s no knowing what would have happened to her. She might have been found and taken to a vet or the local RSPCA, but then again she might not have been. Finally, she’s very lucky that we had her microchipped so the vet simply scanned her and found our contact details.

But she’s home now, and has been cuddled, fed and watered. We’re going to keep her in for a couple of days to make sure she’s not too traumatized by her experience, so I’ve had to go and buy a litter tray which she eyed with disgust, before bashing at the locked cat flap and plaintively demanding her release.

Will she learn from this? I hope so! Heaven only knows where she might end up next time.

I’m sorry this is such a short blog, but under the circumstances I think I can be forgiven. If anyone is interested, Chaining Daisy will be released as a stunning paperback, an ebook and will be on Kindle Unlimited next Wednesday.In the meantime, it is available to pre-order at a special introductory price.

The sequel to Becoming Lili, it reduced one editor, three beta readers and two arc readers to floods of tears, and even made me cry when I was writing it, so if you have read Becoming Lili and want to know how the story continues for Lili and her friends, then why not buy yourself a copy.

Chaining Daisy – Book Two of the Perennials Trilogy and
the beautiful sequel to Becoming Lili

I hope you have a great Sunday and I’ll see you as usual next week, when I promise things should be back to normal – well, normal for me!

Best Wishes

Julia Blake