Guest Blog by Katrina Mountfort

 

Hi all, today fellow author and blogger Katrina Mountfort is writing about what she has learned from running a Kindle Scout campaign for her new book ‘The Lost Corner’.

Running a Kindle Scout campaign – what I’ve learned:

At the beginning of June I decided to have a shot at getting my latest novel published via Kindle Scout. From what I’ve heard, of other people’s experience with Kindle Press, they can sell a lot more of my books than I could manage on my own. I was delighted but shocked when my application was accepted within 12 hours of submission and so, a little unprepared, I started a 30 day campaign to gain as many nominations as possible. It’s been a huge learning curve but a useful one, so I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned so far:

1. A large proportion of my votes have come from direct traffic to the Kindle Scout site. So my first piece of advice is to polish your submission as much as possible. Make your one line description catchy. Invest in a professional cover. Proofread it again and again.
2. It’s a marathon not a sprint. My biggest mistake was to use all my big guns at the start of the campaign. Several friends shared it on Facebook all at once. This helped me make a splash and find myself in the ‘hot and trending’ section, but it’s hard to keep up that momentum. If I had the chance to start again, I’d have asked my friends to spread out their shares.
3. Book bloggers are the nicest people. My work schedule doesn’t allow me to blog regularly so I asked several people whose blogs I follow if they’d feature my campaign. They all said yes and each post has given me some votes. I’ve tried to spread them out so I’m featured in one blog per week of the campaign.
4. I’ve had mixed success with social media. Facebook has been far and away the best. Twitter has only given me a few page views. Some people have found Bing Bing and Headstarter useful but I haven’t got very far with them yet.
5. Although I find it excruciating to do so, you have to contact EVERYONE you know.
6. It’s not just a popularity contest. The point of getting a lot of votes is to get the judges to consider your work at the end. They’re not going to publish a seemingly popular book that will then get a lot of bad reviews so if other books seem to be ‘hot and trending’ more than yours, don’t despair.

If you’ve found this useful I’d be grateful if you could check out my campaign:

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/2KB0W6JT2O5KA

If you like what you see, please nominate me. If it’s accepted, you’ll all get a free electronic copy.

Finally I’d like to thank Stevie for her generosity in letting me post on this blog and wish her luck in her own Kindle Scout campaign for ‘The Porn Detective’! https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/3IQ62RDNCFI3F

About me:

I am a UK-based author, living in York. My philosophy of life is that we only regret the things we don’t try.  When I hit forty, I decided it was time to fulfil my childhood dream of writing a novel. My first three novels, Future Perfect, Forbidden Alliance and Freedom’s Prisoners formed the speculative fiction Blueprint trilogy, and were published by Elsewhen Press. I love music, walking with my two Labradors, travel, wine, daffodils and Parma violets.

Find Katrina on the following web links:

Blog: https://herstoryblogspot.wordpress.com/

Website: http://www.katrinamountfort.com/

Publisher website: http://elsewhen.alnpetepress.co.uk/index.php/catalogue/author/katrina-mountfort/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KatrinaMountfortAuthor/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/curlykats

Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Katrina-Mountfort/e/B00MU1AEA8

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New Book: ‘For the Greater Good’, by Colin Guest

I am pleased to be able to feature Colin Guest’s new book ‘For the Greater Good’ on my site today.

http://bookShow.me/B071R8B81K

When Jeff, a specialist in Black Operations, learns his brother has died while in police custody in Yemen, he wants answers. While he is in Yemen he gets involved in a plot to assassinate the self proclaimed president, as it seems this will benefit both the country and world peace and be for the greater good of all concerned.  He carries this out by use of a new and deadly effective method … using his skills to adapt innocent toys.

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Colin Guest was born in England in 1940, and became an expat worker in 1993, specialising in high-class interior fit-outs. After obtaining a contract down on the Mediterranean Coast in 1988, he had a house built, and lived there until after his wife’s death in 2007. He is now married to a Turkish lady and lives in Istanbul. His first book, “An Expats Experiences of Living in Turkey,” recently re-published, covers his living in Turkey for over 25 years. His second book, “Follow in the Tigerman’s Footsteps,” is intended to help readers discover that there is more to life than a boring 9-5 job. Although a memoir, it reads more like an adventure story, covering numerous life- threatening, crazy and hilarious incidents, which occurred while he lived a life most only dream. Colin’s latest publication, “Terror Holiday,” is based on events during the recent attempted coup in Turkey in July 2016.

Apart from writing books, Colin had an article published in a UK expat magazine, and over twelve articles published in online magazines. In between writing books, Colin also writes poems, with several well placed in online contests. Due to his deep concern about nature and the environment, Colin supports several organisations including, Sea Shepherd, and Care for the Wild/Born Free, with his adopting a tiger for the past ten years. After working as a volunteer at Wildlife Rescue/Rehabilitation centers in South Africa and Thailand, he recommends this as a way of giving something back to nature.

You can check out Colin Guest’s website by clicking on the link below:

https://www.turkmed.wordpress.com

Guest Blog, 1st February: Travel Troubles (part 2) by Frank Parker

Last time we learned how Frank became lost on Paddington  Station as a 10 year old boy.  Now read how a simple mistake led to him becoming lost in a  Surrey wood on a bitterly cold January day.

You can discover Frank’s books by visiting his Amazon author page at https://www.amazon.com/Frank-Parker/e/B0076JVE5I and more about Frank by visiting his blog at https://franklparker.com/

Travel Troubles, by Frank Parker.

Travelling by coach from London along the A3 Portsmouth Road necessitated that I alight from the coach at a place called Fairmile. From there a twenty minute walk through woodland took me to the School. It must have been January 1954. I’d not returned to school on the appointed date. There were two reasons for this: I’d contracted chicken pox during the Christmas holiday and early in January there was a heavy snowfall which made travel from our cottage near the Black Mountains impossible for several days.

My return therefore took place on a bitterly cold foggy morning near the end of January. I alighted from the coach in what I believed to be the right place. After waiting for a suitable gap in the traffic I crossed the road and sought out the entrance to the path through the wood.

I was familiar enough with the route. After all, I’d taken it in reverse only a few weeks previously. And the path skirted a small lake, known to us school boys as Black Pond, which was a frequent destination for weekend walks. In weather such as I was presently experiencing such walks might include skating on the ice. Swimming there had been banned after a boy a year or two older than me had become entangled in weeds and drowned the previous summer.

There was, however, nothing familiar about the path I’d chosen. Where was Black Pond? And I certainly did not recall a ploughed field beyond a wire fence at the edge of the wood.

I decided to retrace my steps and try a different path into the woods. This one quickly turned out to be as unfamiliar as the first. By now I was shivering with the cold – or was it fear? I could not feel the fingers of the hand holding the small attaché case I carried. My nose was numb and running. I regularly suffered from chilblains in winter. This year was no different. Every step was accompanied by searing pain. My breath came in sobs.

I wished I could find somewhere warm to curl up and die. I stopped walking and looked around me at the frost fringed undergrowth. This – the situation I’d got myself into – was stupid. How could I have got things so wrong? Had I got off the coach at the wrong place? If so, where was the right place?

Once again I retraced my steps. I had definitely got off the coach at the right stop. I recognised the place I’d stood waiting for the London bound coach back in December. It was at that moment that I realised my mistake. And cursed myself for an idiot. My sobs turned to hysterical laughter as I re-crossed the road. There, immediately recognisable, was the right path. The fog began to lift and a pale sun sent splinters of light bouncing from the cobwebs festooning the briars at the path’s edge.

I look now at news footage of refugees trudging for miles in appalling weather or braving a sea crossing in overcrowded leaky boats, and realised that, however painful it may have seemed at the time, nothing I had to endure as a child could begin to compare to the suffering of such people.

 

Guest Blog 30th January: Travel Troubles, by Frank Parker

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Frank Parker

I’m pleased that Frank Parker wanted to join me on the blog-go-round.  He’s written a guest post for me that I’ve split into two, which is set in the days when children used to travel on public transport unaccompanied.  I’ll share the first part here today, and the second part on Wednesday.

You can discover Frank’s books by visiting his Amazon author page at https://www.amazon.com/Frank-Parker/e/B0076JVE5I and more about Frank by visiting his blog at https://franklparker.com/

Travel Troubles, by Frank Parker.

Monday 15^th September 1952: the day Mum waved me off from the platform at Hereford railway station bound for Paddington, the London terminal serving the West of England and Wales. Some time during the previous week we had delivered a case containing a change of clothing, toiletries and writing paper and envelopes for those all-important letters home, to the station master of the small village station on the Golden Valley branch line to be sent “Passenger Luggage in Advance” to my new school in Surrey.

There would be a half dozen identical journeys over the next 2 years so I suppose my recollection of the route is an amalgam of more than one. The station names are certainly familiar and have a nostalgic ring to them: Ashperton, Withington, Colwall, Ledbury, Malvern Link, Great Malvern, Malvern Wells, Worcester Foregate Street, Worcester Shrub Hill, Moreton-in-the Marsh and so on, through Didcot and Oxford to the metropolis. Moreton-in-the Marsh especially always reminded me of a radio show from a few years earlier called Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh.

Awaiting me at Paddington was Aunty Jessie, a former work colleague of Mum’s from her pre-war days. My memories of the journey from Paddington to Stoke Newington are vague and confused. I’m sure one or more trams were involved – or maybe the whole trip was accomplished on a bus? I recall a terraced house with a basement and meals in a small dining room at the back of the house.

The following day Aunty Jessie accompanied me to Waterloo Station where I and around 150 other boys aged between 10 and 18 were scheduled to catch the 2:15pm Southern Region train for Oxshott. Three months later she met me at Waterloo and delivered me to Paddington for the return journey in time for Christmas.

In between these two events I turned 11. I also learned that I was not so clever as my successes in a rural primary school might have suggested. I learned some modest skills on the soccer field and discovered that I did not much like being regarded as the country bumpkin.  Of the thirty or so boys in my age group, one came from Wales, one from Scotland, another from Newcastle. Most of the rest had homes in or near London. Many of them had begun their attendance at the school 2 or 3 years previously or had been together at a sister school in the London Borough of Wanstead. So only a handful of us were new boys. One thing we all shared in common was the absence from our lives of at least one parent.

Returning to school after Christmas, a journey that I knew was inevitable but the end of which I no longer faced with optimism, I descended from the train at Paddington and looked for Aunty Jessie in the crowd thronging the platform. I was gripped by panic. To add to my misery at having to return to school it now seemed that I was alone in London. I had no idea how to find my way to Aunty Jessie’s Stoke Newington home.

The train’s guard had, as on the previous occasion, been charged with ensuring that I was handed over to Mum’s friend. Now that she was nowhere to be seen he handed me over to the Station Master – or one of his staff whose role included the disposal of lost children. I was taken to a small room with a gas fire and left to sit on a hard chair.

An announcement must have been broadcast over the station tannoy and eventually a rather flustered and embarrassed Aunty Jessie came to claim her friend’s distressed son. All I can remember of the next 18 hours is that, hard as I tried, I could not stop shedding tears.

In due course I learned that Aunty Jessie had written to Mum to opt out of the responsibility. Mum then had to make an alternative arrangement. Fortunately, Jessie was not her only London contact. She had an uncle and grown up cousins living in Hammersmith. And a Green Line coach bound for Guildford stopped on Hammersmith Broadway.

The man I referred to as “Uncle Basil” – actually Mum’s cousin – was a bachelor who lived with his father, my mother’s Uncle Henry, and his brother. Their small flat did not have space for me to sleep, but there were two married sisters each of whom lived in a flat in an adjacent block within the Guinness Buildings complex. I could sleep and have my meals in the one occupied by Aunty Rose and her grown up son. Uncle Basil would meet me at Paddington and accompany me back to Hammersmith. Either he or she would see me on to the coach the following morning.

I can’t recall exactly how many times this arrangement continued. In due course I would be deemed old enough to make the whole journey on my own and a route was discovered which involved changing trains at Reading and Guildford, arriving at Oxshott on the north bound platform. Before that there was to be one more panic-inducing mishap. This time no-one else was to blame.

I HOPE THAT YOU CAN COME BACK ON WEDNESDAY TO READ THE SECOND INSTALLMENT OF FRANK PARKER’S ‘TRAVEL TROUBLES’.

Blog-go-Round

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#postaday, blogging

I cannot help but notice that one of the latest promotion strategies to win more readers to your blog site is to use your own blog as a base for other authors to write guest posts on.  There seems to be a sudden surge lately in authors inviting fellow scribblers to compose a family friendly blog for their site.  I’m sure it is the way forward to gain more readers, but I have a bit of a warped sense of humour, and my mind has gone into overdrive.  I’ve started to imagine some kind of frantic blog-go-round, where we all send posts off through the ether that we would have written on our own pages, but now they have to appear on somebody else’s blog instead.  Blogs fly in from cyberland, taking up residence where our own posts should be.

While I’m awaiting guest post invites from my cyber friends, this whole scenario has caused me to trundle through my back catalogue and check the content of the most popular blogs I have written over the past year.  I thought it would be a good idea to cut to the chase and find out which type of blog I’d like authors to blog-go-round with on my own WordPress site.

With it so far?  Ha ha!  What I’ve come up with is surprising to say the least, because I’ve found out that readers on the whole aren’t too bothered about who has got a book for sale, or even what their new book is about.  No, my dears, fasten your seat belts on the blog-go-round and have a gander below:

29th Jan 2016 – The chance to win a free critique of their work in the ‘Dear Lucky Agent Competition:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/01/29/dear-lucky-agent-contest/

16th Feb 2016 (53 views) – ‘Anodynity’ which focuses on using local slang in your novels: https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/anodynity/

9th March 2016 (89 views) – A blog regarding my then new women’s fiction book club: https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/03/09/new-womens-fiction-book-club/

23rd March 2016 (64 views) – A blog about my new book ‘Repent at Leisure’ (yes I’ve contradicted myself, but never mind – onwards and upwards): https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/03/23/cover-reveal-for-repent-at-leisure/

11th April 2016 in the Open Book Blog Hop (47 views) – Lessons we’ve learned while writing, publishing or marketing:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/open-book-blog-hop-11th-april/

4th May 2016 (51 views) – A blog about alternative medicines: https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/05/04/alternatively/

13th May 2016 (51 views) – A blog regarding ReadFree.ly’s 50 Best Indie Books of 2016 competition: https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/05/13/readfree-lys-50-best-indie-books-of-2016/

15th May 2016 (42 views) – A blog about my mother’s 92nd birthday: https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/05/15/two-years-older-than-queen-elizabeth/

17th May 2016 (64 views) – My review of ‘Vatican Intervention’ by Andrew Lee Sullivan: https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/05/17/review-of-vatican-intervention-by-andrew-lee-sullivan/

25th May 2016 (51 views) – A blog for Haddon Musings’ Senior Salon regarding role reversal:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/05/25/haddon-musings-senior-salon-role-reversal/

4th June 2016 (78 views) – Information for authors regarding the PitMad competition: https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/06/04/info-for-authors-for-june-9th-pitmad/

6th June 2016 (83 views) – I write about a good marketing strategy which I tried on Facebook,  but unfortunately it died through lack of interest:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/06/06/a-good-marketing-strategy/

29th June 2016 (62 views) – I write about my first time nerves at attending an author signing event: https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/06/29/first-time-nerves/

25th July 2016 (55 views) – I write about raising a hyperactive child:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/07/25/open-book-blog-hop-25th-july/

3rd August 2016 (47 views) – I write about learning of the past whilst speaking to an elderly resident who lived in my mother’s sheltered housing complex:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/08/03/all-change-and-yorkshire-miners/

14th August 2016 (47 views) – All about my first book signing event:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/08/14/the-manchester-author-signing-event/

21st August 2016 (47 views) – Promotions tried and tentatively tested:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/08/21/promotions-tried-and-tentatively-tested/

22nd August 2016 (42 views) – A blog about where I live ‘Seasons in Suffolk’:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/08/22/open-book-blog-hop-22nd-august/

29th August 2016 (44 views) – An excerpt from one of my short stories:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/08/29/open-book-blog-hop-29th-august/

7th Sept 2016 (61 views) – A blog about the secret of a long life:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/09/07/the-secret-of-a-long-life/

10th October 2016 (38 views) – A travel blog of places I’d like to visit:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/10/10/open-book-blog-hop-october-10th/

26th October 2016 (47 views) – A blog about downsizing:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/downsizing/

4th January 2017 (51 views) – A blog regarding the generation gap:  https://steviet3.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/the-generation-gap-is-alive-and-kicking/

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So you see that the most popular posts seem to be blogs that are about the lives of authors, not about their books.  Therefore in this 2017 blog-go-round if any authors would like to write a funny, heartwarming or poignant post about events in their lives for a guest post on my blog-go-round, then please send it to stevie@stevie-turner-author.co.uk.  Don’t forget – IT’S NOT ABOUT YOUR BOOK, IT’S ABOUT YOU (you’re allowed to add a link to your Amazon author page though)!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guest Post: Sexual Abuse, by A. T

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sexual abuse

This is a new category that I’m starting today for bloggers who would like me to feature their article.  Today’s candid post by A.T (who prefers to remain anonymous) deals with the effects of sexual abuse upon the behaviour of the abused.  I welcome this article as I was once a victim too, although on a somewhat lesser scale.  Look out for my interview with A.T next week which will be published in my ‘Life Experiences’ category.

A.T says: “Domestic violence does not need boots, fists, or weapons.  Abuse starts with the mind.” 

Sexual Abuse Damages Boundaries, by A.T.

Abuse – whether it be physical, emotional, mental, sexual or a combination of all of them – plays havoc with human boundaries and that all-important sense of self.

I have recently emerged from an abusive marriage. It has taken a huge toll, not helped by the fact that my ex-husband and I remain in the same house until frustrating delays can be overcome in the moving process.

My ex never hit me in anger, though he enjoyed pain – both receiving it and doling it out – sexually. For over three decades, I have been subjected to abuse in the bedroom, abuse which was both sexual and emotional – but, because it was enacted under the false umbrella of ‘love’, I fought battles in my own mind in order to call it healthy sex, and used every justification to excuse him.

More than this, however, I gradually erased that healthy line between what I felt safe and comfortable with – and acts which I dreaded and which were, in truth, little more than legalised rape. Trained to respond in an overtly sexual way, to be alluring and suggestive, to dress up and use props and act and be convincing, my signals were broken and my covert messages to men so messed up that I did not know what I was transmitting to male friends and colleagues half the time.

Accused of Vanilla attitudes to sex – though the actual name came much later – and persuaded that my compliance was proof of my love for this man, and terrified that he would have sex with someone else if I didn’t please him, I lived in constant fear. I could not say a convincing ‘No!’ you see – and, on the few occasions I tried, I received such manipulative behaviour in return (anger, back-turning, muted threats, loud wrenching sobs) that giving in was, ironically, less stressful than holding out.

He was, and remains, a man who would not take ‘No’ for an answer, in or out of bed. Things I felt very uneasy about were made to seem normal and necessary through his intimidation and gaslighting rhetoric. I felt as if I, as an individual, did not matter and barely existed: I was there to keep him happy, to keep his rage at bay, to satisfy his persistent fantasy in the sexual sense. I was expected to be speedily aroused, highly responsive and inventive in a demeaning way.

As a consequence of this, the natural boundaries – my sense of myself as being more than a sex object – have been badly damaged, and I still feel enormous anxiety around men and this dread feeling that I should be trying to appear seductive and willing and ready if they want me. I have no current wish for that kind of relationship – but there lurks an underlying fear that I should be available, at least in potentia, and that men (even those who are platonic friends) expect the sexual option to be clearly on the menu.

I suspect I flirt and tease without even being aware I am doing it, not because I want sex – but because something of self-esteem and self-respect and the hallowed sanctity of my own body has been ripped and torn and shredded. The boundary which allows women to feel they have the right to refuse sex, and still be loved and respected, has worn away.

It makes me feel so sad. I have a huge sense of loss and grief. There was a time, long ago, when sex was earthy and bawdy pleasure for me; when I was utterly spontaneous and adventurous and unafraid; when my boundaries were both deep and clear.

Sexual abuse makes us feel that we have to prove our love through ever-more outrageous acts; it means that our abusers are never satisfied with our performance because it is not about lust; it is about control – theirs. It is about the dark extremes of human sexuality – and is, in fact, the very opposite of true arousal. It is a cold and frightening universe full of unstated threat and despair.

For thirty years, I have been sexually abused. I will never again be the hopeful and innocent and undamaged young woman I was in my early twenties. That trust and openness and freshness and true connection with my own body has gone – and it may never return.

I mourn its loss.

Rebuilding my boundaries and healing my sexuality will take time. I know that. I could weep for the waste and pain of it all – and sometimes I do just that.

Abuse is real. It is out there. It is hidden behind closed doors. It does not inevitably involve fists and feet and weapons breaking fragile skin and bones. It is not perpetrated by obvious monsters. It can be committed under the pretence of love and after the ceremony of Holy Matrimony. It can break minds and cripple bodies.

Abuse: The Fifth Horseman – and the one too many people turn a blind eye to.

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Thank you A.T, for such a heartfelt post.

If anybody else would like to send me a guest article, I’d be very happy to receive it.  Please email stevie@stevie-turner-author.co.uk with your blog, making sure that ‘Guest Article’ is in the subject box.  I will unfortunately have to reject anything that I do not deem appropriate for my site.