Okay, so slow blogging might be the way forward

Sorry I've been absent. (I am assuming here that I have some readers who might have noticed my absence.) Book stuff went quiet while life went wild, mainly around my birthday. But I'm back now and planning a book launch.

Yesterday I did the final checks on the manuscript of The Dog-walking Club before uploading it again to Amazon and confirming printing. It's now available to buy on Amazon as both an ebook and a paperback.

5* reviews on Amazon!

When I launched my first novel, This Time Next Year, I did a 'proper' event in the local library, the library I'd grown up with, my second home as a child. This time with improved technology I am planning an online launch partly because it's the wrong time of year to expect people to come out and attend my little event and partly because online opens it to potential readers away from Swansea and even in other countries.

So far so simple. 

Technology. I use the word with gay abandon as if I understand any of it. But I can do it, can't I?

I'm planning a practice run in the form of an advance warning notice i.e. telling people about the book launch. I've planned what to say and practised and amended it while I was walking George. That's the easy bit. 

The hard bit is 'doing it'. 

I did some investigating yesterday. First problem was that my webcam didn't work. After much fumbling under the desk trying to disentangle wires to check that it was actually plugged in - I'm old school in that I have a separate webcam that sits on top of my monitor - I gave up and fetched my tablet instead. 

My first pathetic attempt was in too dark a room and my chins were too many. Still I managed to pick up some helpful tips:
make sure the room is well lit;
film from above-ish rather than below;
get someone else to do it for me.

Now I have to publicise it. Again publicity will take a different form. No more posters on village noticeboards but thinking about it, all the people who attended my first novel launch did so because they knew me; no-one came on the basis of having seen a poster.

Times they are a'changing. 

Now would a Monday or a Thursday be better?

And, oh dear, I've just seen my Author photo on Amazon. I'd better update it.