Farewell Trip - cover and publication date

Exciting times. The book has a release date - 12th December - just in time for Christmas. And a rather natty cover, as you can see.

The cover has been interesting. When we were considering self-publishing I asked my niece, who is studying art for A Level, to have a go at designing one. From our suggestions, she came up with a rather nice picture of a woman reading a letter with Paris as a backdrop.

Later on someone sent us a "secret photo" of what was supposedly our cover, a shadowy picture of an outline of a woman silhouetted against an autumnal tree. We were pretty pleased with that to be honest.

But we're mighty chuffed with this final one, which goes well beyond the obvious. Just a shame we won't be able to hold it in our hands.

Getting close...

Advice for the young at heart

I'm a rubbish blogger. I do very much like the idea of expounding to all and sundry about my inner musings and like even better the idea that someone might find it moderately entertaining.  However, inner musings don't much occur, other than those crucial ones about which type of tea to make (builder's, redbush... Ummmm, builder's, redbush) or whether it's cold enough to justify turning the heating on.

You may be interested to know Mr W's questions to be answered before so doing are 1) how many jumpers do you have on? 2) how many pairs of socks are you wearing? 3) hat? (Not as Scroogey as it sounds, remember I am bald as the proverbial) 4) jumping jacks?  If the answers do not match or exceed 2, 2, yes and 20, the heating stays firmly off. Or not.

However, I digress (if you only knew the joy it gives me to actually write that sentence. No idea why, but it fills me with delight), as I said, I'm a crap blogger.  What's worse is that it means Gary is left with the miserable task of finding something to write upon.

Luckily, as you can see, his mind has plenty of inner musings and they're interesting ones too.  Anyway, my inner musings only conspicuous by their absence, I offer to you a choice morsel from Gary's delicious poetry volume, Silly Verse for Grown Ups.  It's advice he has passed on to loinfruit #1 and #2 much in the manner of a god-dad. Which they don't have but if they did, it would be him.


In The Name Of Love

Isobel, over the centuries not much has changed;
The most important thing about a man remains his name.

Take, for example, a man named Ralph.
Don't date him if he rhymes with Alph.
But if he tells you he's called Rafe,
Fellate him first then make him wait.

Want to meet someone who's as sound as pounds,
Head for a bar in the best part of town;
Shout out Torquil and when someone turns round,
Go and say Oh, there you are. It's your round...

Forget all that nonsense about love, what a bore;
It's a myth put around to keep poor people poor.
And whatever you do, please don't marry
A loser with a name like Stephen or Gary.

Farewell Trip - an update

We've gone quiet of late, stuck as we are between contract and publication. And stuck as Karin is in hospital. So here's an update.

Things are moving behind the scenes. We have completed a structural edit based on feedback from our Carina editors. Their feedback was brilliant - both encouraging and constructive. We've come to realise that the book takes a while to ignite. Until Paris, in fact, the fourth chapter, some 50 pages in. We've tried to fix this as best we can.

I was reading that Amazon/Kindle already has the capability to tell authors at what points readers stop reading their book. That's a mixture of fascinating and terrifying I'd have thought. Future authors will be treated differently. Early drafts will be subject to Kindle focus groups. The readership of the first week's sales will be scrutinised, not by number, not by 5 star reviews,  but by page clicks. "27% of readers are giving up on chapter 3, 18% skipping chapter 4 entirely, and only 2% reading in one sitting. On the plus side, the sex scene in chapter 14 is getting plenty of re-reads."


Anyway, ahead of such a brave new world, we've sent in our dedications, biographies and photos. Next step - some poor soul is to do a copy-edit. We've thrown it back and forth between the two of us so many times it's a hell of a mess. That's our excuse anyway. We wish them luck.