Diane Wordsworth: freelance writer ● novelist ● editor ● ghostwriter ● book reviewer ● member of the CWA ● world-famous nutter-magnet
Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay This is a long one, so grab a coffee and make yourself comfy. Tuesday Tuesday dawned very slowly on my computer. It struggled to open everything: the internet, Word, file manager, everything. I tried restarting, but it hung, and so I turned it off and on again… and waited for almost half an hour for it to boot up and start to open things. Sometimes technology has a mind of its own. The first job I did on […]
Read more… and it’s not because of me. Once I’d done a load of household chores, I arrived at my desk at 10:05am on Friday. When I’m supposed to be there at 10am, that’s not bad going. Or not on recent standards. I had a bit of a whinge on a forum I belong to, and I completed about half a dozen feedback forms for them. Then I published Chapter 23 of Diary of a Scaredy Cat on Medium, and I scheduled […]
Read moreI’ve been sharing friend links to Facebook for the Night Crawler chapters on Medium religiously as I’ve been publishing them. But on Tuesday night, when I sent a friend link for the Little John article to the poet, it wouldn’t let him read it. He tried logging out (he created an account so that he could ‘clap’) and tried again, but it still wouldn’t let him. So then I asked him to uninstall the app from his phone and see if […]
Read moreImage by LukasBasel from Pixabay Monday evening finished on a bit of a surprise when the ghostwriting client sent an email asking two things: Could we make the new story 80,000 words instead of 60,000 words? Would I be able to write another one concurrently? The first one was a bit of a surprise because I’d already said that the outline needed a bit more substance. But if that can be remedied, then yes, I can do 80,000 words instead […]
Read moreImage by nile from Pixabay As usual I’m working against the clock to get the first instalment of the 4th ghostwriting gig submitted in time. Deadline is today, and at the start of today I still had just over 11,000 words to write. Why have I left it so long? Well, this time I can’t blame faffing or book covers or self-publishing schedules. This time I’ve had appointments here and there as well as various interruptions. I’ve also had editing […]
Read moreThis week I’ve tried to do a bit of my own work in the mornings and client work in the afternoons. I kept on being distracted by colourful sparkly things, though, and it became a bit of a chore to drag my attention away from that and back to the job in hand. Monday was mostly faffing with book covers and flyers and other PR and marketing material. I gave the blog a facelift, and I wrote a blog post […]
Read moreAfter a bit of a bumpy start, Twee Tales Twee is now finally live. Amazon accepted it late on Tuesday. You can find the ebook in multi-format here, and the Kindle book here. Twee Tales Unfortunately, it looks like Twee Tales (aka Volume 1) has disappeared from the Kindle radar at Amazon, although it’s still there on my author’s bookshelf under “all”. It’s all rather baffling, but I suppose that’s robots for you. I was going to do a 4th compilation, but […]
Read moreAs we inch ever-closer to the 1,000 followers mark, so too do we get closer to the competition to win a bumper pack of all of my published paperbacks, including the two books from Pen & Sword. Oh yes, and chocolate … This means that, alongside everything else that I do, I’ve been checking that all the paperbacks are there. And if they’re not there, I’m publishing them. I self-publish everything I produce myself on either Draft2Digital or Lulu, apart […]
Read moreToday’s faff, then, has been all about re-publishing standalone short e-stories. Once upon a time, I discovered CreateSpace, a wonderful self-publishing tool from Amazon. The best thing about it, for me, was the cover creator. Every single book I thought of writing, as it went into the ideas and drafting stages, was given a spot (and a cover) in my CreateSpace. Series all looked the same (I think they call it “branding”), and there was more than one series, each series […]
Read moreHmm. Not only is the old classic WordPress interface much easier and quicker to use, it also posts when I schedule it to. The new editor isn’t exactly on a winning streak at the moment … Yesterday was a good working day. I got up on time, was at my desk on time, and I finished all of my daily admin jobs and household chores early. If ever I don’t have any client work in, mornings are now spent doing […]
Read moreI had a busy week last week removing most of my self-published books – ebooks and paperbacks – from Amazon KDP. I’m setting up a proper publishing schedule and re-releasing them all on Draft2Digital, initially just as ebooks for now. I’ve heard so many horror stories about Amazon and how they display their authors’ books (or not) and about them removing reviews. They also want exclusivity, and I don’t like that either. If I decide to publish hardback books again, […]
Read more… and removed from Amazon KDP. Only the ebook is available at the moment – or it will be once it’s been through the process. The paperback will follow, and that, in turn, will be followed by the audio book. I’ve been meaning to transfer all of my own books from Amazon to Draft2Digital for such a long time. I finally decided to do it when I realised D2D were now printing paperbacks on demand. The first thing I had […]
Read moreOnce upon a time, a long time ago, I wrote a short story based on the great storm that lashed the British Isles in 1987. That story, The Spirit of the Wind, eventually found its way into My Weekly, and then into Twee Tales (on Kindle here, and in paperback here). A little more recently, a friend of mine nagged me for a sequel to that story. She said she’d love to know what happened to everyone. Towards the end of last year, […]
Read moreI did say I’ve been busy … I’m delighted to say that Twee Tales Too is the latest to become available on Kindle. You can buy it here for just £1.99. I’ve also republished the paperback with a new cover, and I’ve revamped the original Twee Tales with a new cover – so they both match. The Kindle stores will, however, take up to 72 hours to refresh the covers, but I think they’ll automatically refresh next time you update your Kindle, for those […]
Read moreI’m delighted to announce that not one but TWO of my re-branded, re-packaged and re-published books are now available in the Kindle store on Amazon. This is one (or two!) of the things I’ve been working on recently. NIGHT CRAWLER: A MARCIE CRAIG MYSTERY and TWEE TALES are now available, on Kindle, for £2.99 and £1.99 respectively. If you click on the covers, you’ll be taken directly to the Kindle store. But if you’re in a different country, still follow the […]
Read moreI promised I’d let you know when Twee Tales was available outside of Lulu. Amazon were once again first off the blocks within only a few days. It’s available here for £4.99 + delivery if you’re not a Prime customer or if you don’t spend £20. Or you can get it from Lulu, here, for £3.99 + p&p. If you Google your favourite book store, you may be able to see it or order it there.
Read moreI expect you’ve been wondering where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to. But I can assure you that I’ve been quite busy … and so has the poet. But here is one of the things we’ve been working on. Twee Tales by Diane Parkin has been republished and repackaged as Twee Tales by Diane Wordsworth. I’m retiring the original print copies now and the ebook should be out in about 3 months. Then I’ll retire the old ebook too. You can […]
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