How it's going...
An update on my annual mid-year crisis.
We’re in England for a few weeks to see friends and family, and also to put together and finally post out the influencer boxes I’ve been working on for what seems like forever. We’ve been here a week and a bit now, having packed our lives into the van and driven onto the ferry in a rather exciting storm. And everything has gone by in a bit of blur ever since. But I’ll do my best to remember the interesting bits.
Jono, Japan, Just in time…
My brother Jono has spent the last year and a bit sailing solo around Japan by windsurf board. I haven’t spoken too much about it on this blog, and I began to realise this as he closed, rather excitingly, on the finish line – pursued by his visa deadline and (in my mind at least) a comedy group of Japanese immigration officers keen to kick him out the country. On the way he’s picked up a fairly serious girlfriend, whom he met in a laundrette a few months into the journey. He’s also encountered bears, hammerhead sharks, hundred-mile long fishing nets and just generally had an amazing adventure that I can’t really comprehend. It could and probably should have been something to live vicariously via this blog.
But now that he has finished I think I understand better why I’ve not talked about it – or even thought about it too much. Whether it really is or really isn’t, it just feels bloody dangerous to me, and my way of dealing with it has been to not to think too much about him alone on the ocean every day, or sleeping rough under his sail, or getting around a treacherous headland as the light fades and the fog closes in, or wondering if bear-spray really does work, especially when the instructions are written in Japanese.
This doesn’t make me feel particularly courageous, but maybe when I woke up the other day to the news of a huge earthquake and expectations of a massive tsunami to hit Japan’s pacific coast, at least my understanding of it fell a bit more into place. It came two days after he reached the finish line so he wasn’t on the water, and I’m not even sure if the tsunami really hit with any force. But a slight rearrangement of the forces of time and nature and the outcome would have been very different. As it is each day for all of us.
Anyway, you haven’t been able to follow it much here, but I’m sure there’ll be a book, so you’ll just have buy that. And in the meantime (if you haven’t read them) there’s links below to his two previous books, about his two previous epic windsurfing journeys: around the UK in 2016, and following the coastline of Europe from 2017-2019. We don’t count the paddling round Ireland on a rubber duck.
Long Standing Ambition: https://readerlinks.com/l/1090206
In the Balance: https://readerlinks.com/l/3206003
Our own movements have been a little bit tamer. I did mention a storm on the crossing from Spain to the UK, but now it feels a bit pathetic to go on about it. Still it was quite exciting to be on a ship battering through the swells in the Bay of Biscay, though I don’t think the dog liked it much. It’s a while since I’ve been in England in the summer, and it is undeniably lovely. We spent a while in Bournemouth, where we used to live, and spent a night camping near Kimmeridge in the beautiful Isle of Purbeck. This is where I set my Erica Sands series of books, because it’s just about my favourite place in the whole world. I’d worried that it might have changed, got too busy, but it seemed just the same as ever. And then of course we all got colds, and spent a few days sneezing in the faces of dear friends we haven’t seen for a while.
Speaking of Erica Sands, something rather strange has happened with that series. In the English market the books (The Cove, The Trap, The Hunt) haven’t done terribly well. But Maria translated them into Spanish anyway, and launched them on the Spanish market. And a couple of months ago the first in the series – La Cala – actually hit the number one spot in the Spanish Amazon kindle store. This is obviously good, but I have had it happen before. But what came next is new, for us at least. The day after La Cala hit number one it slipped to number two, and we assumed it would continue to slide back down to where my books usually reside, just below the Spanish edition of A Good Scout’s Guide To Woggle Maintenance. But it didn’t. A few days later it was still in the top five, and then it climbed back up again, kicking Freida McFadden out the way to reclaim the top spot. We honestly thought it was a mistake, and Amazon would soon fix it, but a week after that it was still there, and another week after that, and another week after that. It is finally slipping a bit now, but as I write this, all three of the books are in the top 100 in Amazon.es which is completely amazing. As a result we’re probably going to be able to get a deal to put the books in bookshops too.
All of which is to say that, due to their somewhat tepid performance in English, I’ve never really liked these books. But now that they’re doing so well in Spanish I’ve completely changed my opinion and think they’re absolutely brilliant. If you’ve not read them in English, you should definitely do so, because all these discerning Spanish people can’t be wrong. By coincidence we’ve been looking at putting new covers on the English versions too, so stay tuned for that. And I am halfway through writing book 4, which I’ll get back to in September.
Deep Blue Lies
Finally we have been putting the boxes together for the launch campaign for Deep Blue Lies. This was an idea that grew and grew, and it’s finally coming together. We now have everything that’s going in the boxes, and it’s just a case a packing it all up, making it look pretty, and working out where and when to send them. It’s also clear just how far we’ve overshot the line of what would be a sensible level of effort to put into the project. I think it’s very unlikely to work, in the sense that the exposure we get is unlikely to exceed the effort we’ve put in. But it’s been surprisingly fun and you never know, all it takes is one post to go truly viral and it could make the difference and launch Deep Blue Lies up to levels I’ve not seen before.
Speaking of never quite knowing. In my last post I promised that one person who shared about the book on facebook would win their own box, and the same for someone who shared it on Instagram. And I can now reveal the winners! Congratulations to Katie Greenop, picked at random on Instagram, and Deborah Bray-Haddock on Facebook, picked because she had a picture of Paddington Bear on her facebook that I rather liked. If you could send me an address to post to I’ll make sure a box wings its way to each of you, and if you don’t I’ll do my best to track you down.
And stay tuned, I’m sure another opportunity to win a box will appear at some point. Especially to those who are following me on fb and Instagram.
Quick update on deals for this month:
The Lake House Children – Kindle Daily Deal US and Canada – 9th August
Little Ghosts – Kindle Monthly Deal, US and Canada – August 01 -31
That’s all from me. Enjoy the lovely summery weather! (Please note, if you don’t have summery weather, consider this sarcasm, if you do have it, don’t.)
Gregg
I love all your books. I still think Little Ghosts is my favourite of yours and one of my favourites by any author ever!!!
Have an amazing time here, you just missed the heatwave!
I loved the Erica Sands books, always a good day when you drop a new book! And your brother is a legend!