Sample Sunday Excerpt from 'Bunny on a Bike'

Bev and Carol take a weekend away before starting work at the Playboy casino. 

    Fourteen

    The Long Mynd

We had come to the end of our training and when Dad picked me up I had the same feeling that I’d had when I had driven through the gates of Keele University for the last time, having spent three glorious years enjoying myself, discovering English Literature and listening to Molière’s plays on a long-playing record, in a small room, presided over by my somnolent French tutor. 

With my exquisitely educated brain I had two thoughts: I wish I’d done a degree in astro-physics and now the shit is really going to hit the fan!  I had delayed the inevitable moment when I would actually have to earn a living, but now the time had come when I would be put to the test.

Dad took me up to the Long Mynd for the weekend. I didn’t resist.  Carol went off to spend some time with Dave and wander round some fields talking to pigs and cows.  It would be a moment of calm, a chance to reflect and to look forward to putting what I had learned into practice. It would be a time to go for long walks and evoke fond memories of Rick and I hiding in the forest while glider pilots circled over us taking notes.  Dad didn’t want to talk much, so we listened to the Mike Sam Singers.  The least bad tune, as I remember, was ‘Trains and Boats and Planes’.  I watched my dad as he drove round the winding country roads lightly drumming the steering wheel with his fingers and smiling to himself.  He looked happy and kind of slow, as though he were contemplating something of very little importance or of great philosophical enlightenment.  Then he told me again to take care when I drove round narrow lanes that there were not walkers on a blind bend.  My father was a mystery to me all my life and now, when I say some of the same things to my own children, I wish he could hear me.

Gladys and Vera were in the kitchen, cackling away at some private joke.  They made sure I was welcome and dosed me with tea and homemade fruit cake, asking me whether I was still ‘chasing after that poor young boy’. 

‘It was nothing serious.  Just a bit of fun,’ I said.  ‘Anyway, I already have a boyfriend.’

This, apparently, was a hilarious thing to say.

Next morning the weather on the mountain was good, with a clear sky and a favourable wind direction, so that launches would be possible.  Everyone looked forward to a good day’s flying.  After lunch I went over to the airfield and Dad took me up in his two-seater.  The sound when you are inside a glider is eerie.  The wind makes a soft, whistling noise that seems to wrap around you, as though you are giving the air a shape and a voice.  I felt safe up in the sky in an aeroplane made of fibreglass, with no engine and only a few thermals to hold it up. I felt safe because I was with my dad and he was doing the thing he loved most in the world.  He told me that there had been an accident at one of the other clubs and that it had said in the newspaper that the plane had crashed and burst into flames.  Luckily I realised that this was impossible and could join in with the irony of it all. 

I liked being in the sky with my dad.  He was quiet most of the time, and when he spoke he did nothing to disturb the peace.  He taught me some of the things that I treasure most: about being consumed by an interest and, on dark nights out on the mountain, about the stars. He knew their names and showed me the constellations, just as I do now, when I can get my children to take any notice.

That night there was a phone call for me on the clubhouse payphone, which was in the draughty and very public entrance hall.  Dad said that it was Rick. He assumed, as I did, that it was Rick, and not Rick.

‘Hello,’ said a voice I didn’t recognise.

‘Hello,’ I answered.

‘It’s Rick,’ the voice continued.

And, just as I was about to say, ‘No, it’s not!’ I realised that it was in fact Rick.

‘Hello Rick.’  I had one of those moments where my brain lags slightly behind my mouth and I couldn’t think of what to say next.

‘How are you?’  he asked.  He was very young and very well educated.

‘Freezing, actually.  What are you up to?’  I was not curious, but I thought I should ask.

‘Thinking about you,’ he said.

‘How sweet,’ I replied.

I liked the boy, but there was no future in it.  Bugger and damnation I was cold.  Anyway, it turned out that Rick wanted to play something on the piano to me.  It was ‘A song for Guy’ or something like that.  Elton John, I think.  He was rather good, but the heartfelt notes resonated relentlessly and generally went on a bit.  By this time my extremities were turning blue and I was sniffing. 

‘That was lovely,’ I said.

‘Would you like me to play another?’  He offered, sweetly, obviously mistaking my snuffling for heart-broken emotion.

My mind raced. ‘I have to do some reading.’ It was a poor excuse.

‘Oh, okay.  Can I call again?’

‘Sure.  I mean, yes.’

He didn’t and I was disappointed.  Everyone likes to be adored, after all.

The rest of the weekend was pleasant, apart from when I found an enormous spider in the shower and had to listen to spider stories for the rest of the evening, sitting round the clubhouse bar.  I played billiards and lost some money to the one-armed bandit before walking out to my caravan in the dark, windswept night.  I looked up at the sky and suddenly felt that I belonged on the mountain and not behind a blackjack table on Edgware Road.  My bed was ever so slightly damp, which was normal, and I snuggled into my duvet and thought about the next day.  Carol would be there and she would have the keys to our new flat in Willesden Green.  It would be fun and, after all, it would not be forever.  As I closed my eyes and smiled to myself at the thought of the night sky above me and all around, and pictured the glowing lights of the scattered houses in the valley below, I thought of Rick playing his piano.

Playing it for me.



Find out about Bev and Carol at Playboy - click on the link above and download 'Bunny on a Bike' for a fun read.

On the beach with Bev and Carol

      (Bev and Carol are characters from my two novels: 'One Summer in France' and its sequel 'Bunny on a Bike'.)

 A French lesson

I looked about me.  It was difficult to see the world as a bright and shiny place, when Jean-Paul Sartre had wheedled his way inside my brain.  ‘Huis Clos’, on the beach.  I looked around at some of the people, trying to decide which of them I would mind being locked up with for eternity. 

‘What rubbish are you reading now?’  asked Carol, sleepily.

‘It’s a play about three people who are locked in a room together.’

‘Why?’

‘It doesn’t say.’  It was a good question.

‘Tell me what happens.’  Carol wriggled a little and readied herself for some entertainment.

‘Okay.  It’s supposed to be about hell.  The title means ‘No Exit’.  Have you heard of existentialism?’

‘Just get on with it!’

This meant she hadn’t, or like me, didn’t really get it.  ‘There are two women and one man and they hate each other.  The idea is that putting them together will create a personalised hell.’

‘Christ!  I can think of a couple of people I wouldn’t want to be locked up with!’

‘Anyway, the upshot is that we are supposed to consider the fact that we are all free and responsible for our own lives, but that we rely on other people or even a little voice inside our own head to spoil our freedom by defining us and everything we do.  Oh, and existence itself is meaningless.’

‘Is it French?’

‘Yeah!’

She nodded.  ‘Right!  So, what you’re saying is that, if I pick my nose, I only feel bad about it if someone sees me and I see that they see me?’

I thought for a moment. ‘Yeah, I think so.  Or, you could be self-conscious and see yourself.’ 

‘Sounds as though Jean-Paul had too much time on his hands,’ said Carol, having lost interest.

I re-opened my book, exercising my freedom to do as I pleased, with my friend’s comments niggling somewhere at the back of my otherwise pure and unencumbered mind.  I was soon back in hell and appalled at Estelle’s blatant sexual advances towards Garcin in front of Inez (a lesbian, and, admittedly, a bit of a tart herself).  They seemed to be making it all much worse for themselves.’

‘Come on, then.  Teach me something useful.’

Carol lay with her hands behind her head and not a stitch on.  She was irresistible. It was another late afternoon at the naturist beach we had found by accident, in a bid to outrun a hoard of Japanese tourists and, much as I enjoyed the intellectual challenge of my French literature reading list, I really hadn’t the heart to ignore her.  I decided to have some fun. 

‘Okay. Let me see.  Something useful.  Right!  Did you know that you can remove hair dye from your forehead with plain old milk?  Works like a dream.’ 

Carol didn’t speak.

‘It’s really useful, actually -’

‘Stop!  I meant, you incredible numbskull, teach me some useful phrases in French!’

‘Ha!  Got you!’

Carol sat up.  ‘What?’

‘I got you!  This time, I got you!’  I was beside my new and very childish self.

‘What are you talking about?’  she said, but I knew that she knew she had been got.  It was a rare victory.  Sweet, and to be savoured.

Carol examined the white marks under her two silver rings, not looking up.  

In an effort to remain blasé I picked up my book and pretended to read, snickering quietly.

‘Aren’t you going to teach me any French, then?  You always say I should learn some and now, when I ask, you just muck about!’

I put down my book.  ‘All right.  Let’s start with something easy...  J’ai faim.  I’m hungry.’

‘J’ai faim.’

‘J’ai soif.  I’m thirsty.’

‘J’ai soif.’

‘Good.  J’ai chaud.  I’m hot.’

‘Now you’re talking!  J’ai chaud!’  Carol licked her lips in a rather sluttish fashion, if I’m being totally honest.

‘It doesn’t mean that kind of hot!’  I laughed and then I saw Carol smiling.  It was the easy, mocking smile of revenge.

‘Got you back!’

‘I do really hate you!’ I said, categorically.

‘I know you do, you lovely tart.’

The sun was still delicious, even though it was past 9.00pm.   Time to put on some pants, go back to the campsite and cook up some soup and rice, followed by Pop Tarts.   A perfect end to another perfect day.

‘Bring Jean-Paul,’ she said.  ‘Don’t want any other poor bugger to have to read his deadly book.’

I shoved ‘Huis Clos’ in my bag for later and thanked God (now that I had thought of him) that there were people like Carol in the world.

You can download more of Bev and Carol, young and carefree in the South of France, by clicking on the direct link to ONE SUMMER IN FRANCE, at the top right of this blog.

Carol and Bev and an egg.

‘How much did you pay for this pan?’

I knew that any price I mentioned would be too much.  ‘Found it in one of the bins,’ I said in an excellent stroke of one-upmanship.

‘Choose a different bin next time!  This one’s crap.  What else was in it?’

‘What?’

‘The bin!’

‘I don’t know.  I wasn’t looking for anything else.’

‘You should have checked.  Brand names on packaging.  Stuff like that.  Tells you what kind of pan you’ll get.’

Carol tried to get the plastic spatula under the ruined egg.

‘Do you mind a broken one?’  she asked, charmingly.

The egg looked as though it had been run over.  A number of times.  Roadkill egg.  ‘That’s fine for me,’ I lied.

‘Good!’ said Carol, implying that I somehow deserved to have my breakfast spoiled.  Pan payback. 

She noticed that I’d noticed that she hadn’t used any oil.

‘Why didn’t you-‘

‘-don’t say anything!’

She finished cleaning up the burnt-on egg and poured in half the bottle of olive oil.  I said nothing.

Two minutes later, spattled yet philosophical, Carol slid the perfectly cooked egg off the now severely deformed spatula and tore off a hunk of bread. 

The other happy campers were waking up.  Some of them passed by, bleary eyed, ignoring the two blond English girls, who were generally rumoured to be either prostitutes, lesbians or home-wreckers. 

‘Bonjour!’  I said, cheerily.

Ugly looks came in many forms.

‘Why are you so miserable?’ asked Carol, as a miserable-looking woman passed by.

I did not understand her reply.  My knowledge of French was limited to words found in my Robert unabridged dictionary and various works of great literature.  I was also thwarted by her slick, venom infused pronunciation.

I smiled sweetly and Carol said, ‘Same to you with knobs on, you ugly old cow!’

I shouldn’t have laughed so loudly.  But Carol always took my breath away with her candid comments.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Not eating your egg?’

This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  Did we roar?  I should say so!

The woman looked back again, mistaken and furious.  The egg winked in the sunshine.  We sighed as our spasms subsided and dozed in the morning heat, young, unloved and lovely.

Click on a link above to download more of Carol and Bev.  'One Summer in France' and 'Bunny on a Bike'.  

STOP PRESS!  **Free download**  My metaphysical horror story 'Angels' is free from 27th to 30th June.

 

FeedARead Experience.

I love being a self-published author, despite the occasional bad press (which, let's face it, is occasionally well-founded, although that's not to say that bad or inaccurate writing is confined to self-published works!).  Ebooks are wonderful in many ways and I now use my kindle regularly to download books that are difficult to get hold of in paperback here in France.  The ebooks are cheaper too, which is a factor I cannot ignore.

So, having published four ebooks, all I really missed was the chance to have them in print and hold them in my hands.  Not to mention the fact that lots of people still prefer to buy books rather than ebooks, which meant that I was not able to reach a huge number of potential readers.

I did some research, procrastinated, did some more, and finally decided that, if everything everyone was saying about FeedARead was true, and bearing in mind that it is run by the Arts Council, then I should take a chance on it.  If it was a waste of time, then at least I had tried.

I logged on and followed the very clear instructions, uploading the front matter and book file as a pdf, using the template they provided.  I double and treble-checked the instructions and then sent it off.  The file came back for my approval and I checked the formatting carefully, making sure the chapters looked right and that the front matter was on the correct pages.  At this point I did not read it through, as I was pretty certain is was as perfect as it could be. I clicked 'approved' and was taken to the next stage, which was the uploading of the cover, spine and blurb.  Again, they provided the template and the whole process was simple.  I downloaded the image I had bought from 'Dreamtime' again, with a higher pixel density - this is important, don't skimp.  Then I agonised for ages over the blurb and the fonts, eventually deciding that I would never be more than 99.9% happy and sending the cover off for inspection.  It came back the next day for approval and I clicked 'approved' so that I could get it finished.  By this time, I was convinced that I must have made a mistake somewhere and that I would just have to start all over again when the inspection copy arrived upside-down, back-to-front and with odd pages missed out completely.

Around five days later I received an email from FeedARead which directed me to my 'Account' page where I was able to order my inspection copy at a  reduced price (just over £4, plus postage) and then had to wait almost three weeks for it to arrive.  As I live in France, I was not particularly surprised by this.  I believe that it is a lot quicker if you are resident in the UK.

I cannot over emphasise the excitement and pure joy of seeing my book in print.  The quality of the product was superb in every way and on the back cover was my very own ISBN number!

At this point, I read the book with a neurotic attention to detail that nearly drove me and everyone else mad.  I found one typo and decided that I would not risk changing it and repeating the whole process only to end up with a different and perhaps more serious mistake.  When I do re-submit, as I am sure to (incorrigible perfectionist), there will be a small charge.

This brings me to the cost of publishing with FeedARead.  I decided to pay the £88 for 'distribution'.  If you want your book to be on sale exclusively on the FeedARead site, there is no cost whatsoever.  But, if you want other distributors to advertise it for sale, you pay £88 and FeedARead puts it out into the world for you.  There is no advertising, just distribution.  It's up to you to let people know where they can buy your book.  Also worth noting is the difference in royalty payments: from FeedARead I get around £3.60 of the £7.99 cover price and from Amazon I get around £1.50.  The only drawback is that FeedARead charge the purchaser a fairy hefty delivery fee, whereas Amazon offer free delivery.  So, unless it's your favourite auntie or other doting family members, the majority of sales will be via the site that offers the best deal.  Having said that, you will probably get a lot more exposure and sales through Amazon than through FeedARead.

One disappointing aspect is that you cannot track sales, as you can with Amazon.  All sales will show up on the FeedARead site, on your 'Account' page, but this is only updated twice a year.  I have to wait until October to find out how many books I have sold!  I can of course get a rough idea by checking the 'Best Sellers' rating on sales via Amazon.

So, all I can say is that, if you want to get your book into print, there is absolutely nothing to stop you.  Of course you want it to be as perfect as you can make it so the usual advice applies - get it edited and proofread by people who are capable and meticulous.  After that, FeedARead will do the rest, providing you with excellent support and advice on their site and via email if you have particular concerns.

I am about to submit 'One Summer in France' and will follow up with 'My Grandfather's Eyes' and 'A Good Day for Jumping.

Thank you FeedARead! http://www.feedaread.com/

'Bunny on a Bike' in paperback: http://www.feedaread.com/books/Bunny-on-a-Bike-9781782994367.aspx

Carol and Bev meet Antoine and Cedric

 Bev and Carol are characters from my humorous memoir 'One Summer in France' (prequel to 'Bunny on a Bike')

‘I’m bloody starving!’ exclaimed Carol, when we eventually got back to our tent.

‘How can you be hungry?’ I slurred.

But it was true that, while I had gorged myself on chicken gizzards, followed by veal in cream sauce, followed by tinned lychees and crème anglaise, Carol had barely tasted her food.

‘I hate French food!  Why do they have to fry up the insides of things, roast baby cows and grow fruit that looks like eyeballs?’

I wanted to tell her that lychees were in fact Chinese gooseberries, but instead, I managed to trip over a guy rope and fall flat on my face, forcing Carol to step over me in order to unzip the tent and crawl inside.  She was still wearing her polka-dot pants, which I thought not particularly hygienic.

Carol woke up with white globules, slimy and sticky, on her forehead and in her hair.  I racked my brains, horrified that we may have inadvertently performed a depraved act with our new neighbours.  Luckily, the substance revealed itself to be the best part of a tin of French rice pudding in a caramel sauce.

‘You must have been very hungry!’ I laughed, dipping a finger in the remnants of the tin.  ‘Quite nice, actually.  Bit sweet, but not bad at all.’

‘Where did it come from?’ asked Carol, running a comb through her hair and making it much, much worse.

‘No idea,’ I chomped.

The mystery of the rice pudding was solved upon unzipping our tent and finding, along with the cloudless blue sky, a bag of supplies, including bread, jam, butter, milk and a second can of pudding.

We got up and, having cleaned up in the showers, went to say thank you to Antoine for not taking advantage of two innocent English girls.

‘We can take you to see the medieval castle,’ he offered. ‘And tonight we will have an Italian pizza in a restaurant I know very well.’

We didn’t see why not and so we agreed.

In the afternoon, we sunbathed and read.  I had brought along some Virginia Woolf and a copy of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.  Carol had an old copy of Cosmopolitan and a book of verse by Spike Milligan.

We congratulated ourselves on our luck, as we read, and had a certain degree of smug satisfaction at the French we were learning and the culture we were experiencing, albeit by accident.

‘Can you put some oil on my back?’ I asked Carol. ‘I like the smell of it.  Where did you get it?’

‘It’s Lipton’s sunflower cooking oil, with a dash of patchouli,’ replied Carol.

‘Perfect!’ I said, impressed with her powers of money-saving inventions.

In those days, the idea of protection hadn’t been understood.  Red, was the colour your skin went before it went brown.  Simple.  The important thing was that your skin should look shiny and smell nice.



If you'd like to read more please click on the link at the top of this page, where you can download 'One Summer in France' from Amazon.

Carol and Bev on sweets from the 80s

(Carol and Bev are characters from two books by Bev Spicer:  'One Summer in France' and 'Bunny on a Bike' both available as ebooks on Amazon and soon to be in paperback).

Carol:  Bev Spicer, polyblonde and crazy retro tart, what is our specialist subject on this fine but rather dreary Wednesday afternoon?

Bev:     Today we shall be talking about sweeties from the 80s my little Devonshire divvy.

Carol: Fart a dart!  That's not a bag of samples is it?

Bev:     Hands off!  This is realia.

Carol:  What?

Bev:     It's a teaching term, for when items can be brought into the classroom to demonstrate a point, or make a lesson more interesting, more real.

Carol:  I'd like to see you take a bag of sweeties and chocolate into any classroom these days and come out unharmed.  What've you got?

(Bev tips out the sweets onto a table.)

Carol:  No way!  Bar Six!  It still looks the same - orange paper over silver, Cadbury gold.  Let me just run my fingernail along one of its runnels...

Bev:     Couldn't stand it!  My auntie always brought it for a treat and I had to get rid of it without her noticing.  Tried to flush it down the toilet once, but Mr. Cadbury must have thought of that - bloody wafer wouldn't sink, had to fish it out again and shove it into the rubber plant.  Yuk!

Carol: Most wafer biscuits are just made of polystyrene, I reckon. So, one for me.  What else is there?

Bev:     This one was my favourite for a while.  Caramac.  I liked to press a square of it up onto the roof of my mouth and let it melt whilst pretending it wasn't there at all.  Made talking kind of interesting.  In the end, it went into a kind of fecal sludge and I pressed it through my teeth.  Drove my sister up the wall.

Carol:  Happy days!  I did the same with Dairylea - everyone did.  Remember blue smarties?

Bev:     Shame!

Carol:  Yeah. Ridiculous overreaction.  Embarrassing.  Still get them in Russia, I'm told.

Bev:     You'd think a bit of blue dye would be all right.  I mean how many would you have to eat?

Carol:  Blue gobs are a thing of the past.  Sadness and woe.

Bev:     What about these?

Carol:  Milk Tray!  My mum loved those.  Specially the coffee ones.  She used to watch that bloke dressed in a black woolly, diving off cliffs, swimming through shark infested waters to deliver them, miraculously bone dry, to some fairly old bird with a frilly-cuffed blouse.

Bev:     Did you see that the shark had no teeth?

Carol: Swiz!  Gummed to death!  That reminds me of the Flake ad.

Bev:    Which one?

Carol:  The only one! Girl in a field of sunflowers, gypsy dress, caravan.  Looks like she's giving it a bloody good blow-

Bev:     Okay!  No need to spell it out.  Anyway, there was a worse one than that later - in the bath, overflowing, naturally.  Much more indiscreet.  Rick loved it.

Carol:  Ah, but you're forgetting about the millisecond flash.  My boyfriend at the time told me about it.  Got banned pretty quickly.  Tried Googling it not long ago because I was suspicious of the way the breakfast news presenters were looking at each other.  Far too steamy.  Bound to be something fishy going on, I thought.  Anyway, I did a search and guess what?  Nothing.  Nada. Not a mention.

Bev:     Never heard of it.

Carol:  Widely used in the 80s, my lovely trollop,  lots of filthy images too quick to see, but registered by the hungry old crocodile brain and used to work the audience into a frenzy.  Christ knows how many Flakes I got through in those days!

Bev:     Enough!

Carol:  Obviously affected you badly.  Not a Flake type of girl?

Bev:     Finished?

Carol: Give me that dipped one and I'll show you how it's done.

Bev:     One end each?

Carol: You're on, you dirty bugger.  Bath?

Bev:     Rather have these?

Carol: Poppets!  Mint flavoured!  Now you're talking!

Promotion results for 'One Summer in France'.

Right!  It's time to reveal the results of my free three-day promotion of 'One Summer in France'.

Before I do, I'd just like to thank the people who tirelessly supported me and kept me going during the process.  I did make a list of all the people who put me on their blogs, websites, retweeted me, chatted to me and generally made things happen.  I am more grateful than I can say to everyone who took the time to help.  I will work to support my fellow writers and book-promoting sites as they have supported me.  Thank you.
 

The nitty-gritty.

I advertised in the usual places, according to the lists made available through the KDP site: http://theselfpublishingtoolkit.com/kdp-select-free-promo-resources/ and paid for one promotional site (£26), which I won't mention, because I don't think it made any difference.  I did submit to Boobub but they turned me down.  Don't know why, but I'm guessing that I needed more reviews.  Difficult to launch a new book when the rules require lots of reviews.  Never mind though, I might try them again with one of my other books at a reduced price. They are expensive, but seem to achieve a high number of free and paid downloads.

So, I got just under 700 free downloads, slightly more in the UK than the US and a smattering from other countries too.  I was happy with this figure.

In the week that followed the promotion I have had 40 paid downloads, mostly of 'One Summer in France' (29) but also of 'Bunny on a Bike' (10) and one of  'A Good Day for Jumping'.  I have had four new (great) reviews for my promo book so far, for which I am extra grateful.

Was it a good thing to do? 

I am certain it was.  I have a greater chance of marketing a book that has received exposure to 700 people than if I had done nothing.  I would like to have simply reduced the price, but I think a book has to be fairly well known for this to be effective.

I have only ever promoted individual books once.  I don't know what would happen if I tried it twice with the same book - it's certainly not something I would think of doing all the time.  The next free promotion I do will probably be for 'A Good Day for Jumping', which has never been promoted.  After that, I'll probably try some reduced price offers, probably with Bookbub (if they'll have me!), and with some of the more select sites that demand a minimum number of reviews. I don't know how well this will work, but have read various posts that seem encouraging.

I note the new rules for free book promotion recently brought in by Amazon and am glad that something is being done to limit the number of free books out there.  Going free is a strategy, as far as I am concerned, and not a way of life.  But then I'm just doing what I think best and am happy to learn from others along the way.  In an ideal world, where the playing field was level, there would be no free books and authors would be paid for their work by readers who would be happy to shell out a reasonable amount for a good book. 

One thing I can say now for sure is that, if you have a book with a sequel, readers will look for it and buy it if they enjoy the free download.  That has got to be a good thing, don't you think?

Once again, thanks to all who rallied to my support - couldn't have done it without you.

Bon courage!