Three years ago, a friend of mine whom I see only once a year, told me about how he promoted his self-published books, by using an on-line service. It seemed, from what he told me, to be a rather complicated process, so instead of trying to learn how it worked, I chose to spend my time writing instead. Two years ago he encouraged me again but, being in the middle of a writing project, I did nothing. Last year we sat down, and he spent almost an hour telling me about the promo services (there are several), about which one he used, and how it worked for him. When I looked him up on line, I saw that he had, indeed, sold a decent number of books. 

This year I decided, that when I took a break between finishing Turning Point and getting back to The Empty House (which I had left unfinished in 2015), I would finally do what my friend had been encouraging me to do.

It was, in fact, rather more complicated than I liked. It took me almost three weeks to figure out how to do it, and to prepare Slaves of War for a second edition (since it had far too many typos that I had somehow missed), which would be my test of the service, rather than starting with The Black Ring, as my friend had wanted me to do.

I got an email from the service when the promotion was supposed to have begun, telling me that I had failed to do something even though I remembered having done it, and that the promotion would not take place. (I suspect that I had not clicked a critical button, which has been a problem of mine in the past.) I tried again, and it seems that I have corrected the mistake. I am now waiting for a report, which should come in a few days. If it doesn’t work this time, I’ll explain what happened to my friend, and tell him that I don’t have enough spare time to try it again.

Meanwhile, I have gone back to The Empty House. It’s a long series of connected stories, which take place from 1869 through 1926. It is Lovecraftian gothic horror, not written in his sometimes rather purple prose, but more like Shirley Jackson’s very understated style (she wrote The Haunting of Hill House). It’s going to take a while.