Here I am at the edge

No more limited editions T onight, with an increasing financial strain I was forced to give up my final luxury item. Twice a month, I used to buy a limited edition book from  Black Library   www.blacklibrary.com/Home/the-carrion-throne-ltd-page.html . I can no longer afford this luxury. I knew this day wasn't far off, but it still saddens me .

Try somebody new and be thrilled On my pages   http://alsdomain.weebly.com/barnes--noble.html#.WQMr-_QrLrd  and  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B007U50BOI   you will find a variety of writing genres, not only Science Fiction .

Free I expect sometime over the weekend, I will indulge in an alcoholic beverage or three to drown my sorrows, such is the only solace this former writer can take. I won't say I am surprised at the result of my discovery, as the vast number of readers for this blog  compared to the minute sales I get, proves yet again that readers are willing to read anything for Free  but don't want to pay a writer to write. Not even when the cost os less than that of a cup of Tim Horton's coffee for weeks of work.  I checked my sales figures today to find a third of the "sales" were for e-books  that are free. Some people tell me that I can no more stop writing than I can fly to the moon, well, I have done little other than my blogs for months now.

I am not using Smashwords again I am not surprised that I didn't get paid for my ebook sales on Smashwords , I've been telling writers for years the site is "dodgy." How can a small site like Smashwords outsell the huge Amazon market place? Also, the site manager has made himself a millionare. I'll give him that it is good business sense to set up in the Far East, and Australasia, but as soon as I read he was outselling Amazon; I knew there was something wrong. I read reports going back years, that writers have not got their royalties, the owner goes as far as to say the books never sold; even when readers are asking if a sequel is planned. I put two of my stock there, to see what the site is like, and no surprises for me - the site is definitely one to avoid.

Webcam sites I can understand why people don't approve of young women on webcam sites I didn't for a long time.  In recent times, I had one of my blogs spammed by a Muslim site from Egypt . T he irony being they can't do it in public but online these men flood the internet.   Even though I don't approve of the sites, I have come to value them for my blogs , as there are times I think these are the only links I make, especially on Twitter .

I have few regrets about being a writer , only regrets on how the journey ended

Night of the Living Dead This post is not to announce a follow-up story to Zombiewatch  - I did that months ago. This post is about the deterioration of the state of my mental health , after four nights of no sleep, I feel like one of the zombies in The Walking Dead . Where I once had the fire that fuelled my writing, now there is only a cold dark void - a void that saps what energy I have left to feed an ever growing belief that I was wrong to try to become a writer.

What the buyer doesn't take into consideration I've said at each turn, that being an Indie writer I need to weigh outgoings against the possible income - that's why until last week I'd never bought a cover. My  luxury  item   I knew in my heart when I bought this cover that it would not pay for itself, but I wanted a nice cover in my stock.  You'd think with eleven sales platforms on  Draft2Digital   www.draft2digital.com/book/235628 , the various aspects of  Smashwords   www.smashwords.com/books/view/719595   and the mighty site at  Amazon   www.amazon.com/dp/B071CSVHFD   that selling a measly ten copies would be easy, but no book outside the  Forgestriker  series has sold even five copies in over a decade on Draft2Digital. Another aspect of my costs is that I sent hard copies, printed, of The Chronicles of Mark Johnson t o three sites in the USA.

Strange bedfellows. I have added my name to the list on Smashwords  https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Alan1956York . I joined many years ago this month brought my first sale. With Google doing nothing to stop people taking e-books for free, and not selling on Amazon I am pleased I joined.

One sale from being thrown out  I am going through my stock of  e-books,  any that aren't selling after more than two years will be deleted from the shelves. With that thought in mind, A Sailor's Love   www.draft2digital.com/book/34522   /  www.amazon.com/dp/B07226FRDK   would have been the book to have gone next month had it not had a sale on  Amazon .  This is only a temporary respite as one sale in three years is not good.

RAF Bruggen During my time in the  Royal Air Force , I spent two and a half years at  RAF Laarbruch  near the village of Weeze  on the Dutch border.   All through my time in the RAF, I thought either Bruggen or Wildenrath was near the East German border.  I got this impression because the images I saw were of a forested area.     In fact, both stations are near the Dutch border, not far from where I was stationed.

Andover, Hampshire My friends tell me that I am very empathetic and perhaps I should have been a minister or a care worker. I wonder if this is why I was sent to  Amport House   alsdomain.weebly.com/at-the-blogstop/amport-house  when I was in the  Royal Air Force . I thought it was because my stories had scared people who cared about my mental health . Even at the age of 18, my stories were so good they could cause people to worry about me. One such story happened during my time at RAF Cosford , it was a Sunday and having nothing to do, I decided to go to Wolverhampton for the day. Nobody in the room was awake when I got back from breakfast, so I walked to the nearest rail station as I arrived the train left, being riled I sat down and wrote a comical suicide note - not thinking anyone would read it - when I got back to the room in the evening there was a great relief as my friends hadn't seen me leave but had found the note I left; they thought I'd killed myself.

Something wicked this way comes At the beginning of the year, I had given up hope of seeing a month with ten sales in, at the time I'd dropped my expectation to any sale was a big plus. The thought that I'd see back-to-back months with ten sales was something I had put out of my thoughts as a dream from the past, but the last quarter has corrected that situation with back-to-back months with ten sales.

Draft2Digital For some time, I've known I had a number of sales in Germany , but I never realized until last week that I have a strong following in Norway , Sweden , and Denmark too

A folk tale from Bristol It is true, my readers always surprise me with what the buy - none more so than last night- when   www.draft2digital.com/book/145147   sold. This story set is set in a disused asylum and is based on a real asylum in  Bristol . The venue is still there, you can pretty it up but at the end of the day, there is only one reason you build a building on a hill out of town. The  legend  of the girl being killed in a fall from her horse has passed into the  folklore  of the city - the rest of the story - is my imagination.  As a finale, a few years ago I asked my doctor what it would take for me to be institutionalised, as I thought I was going mad and didn't want to harm the family.

Is it more blessed? Is it better to give than to receive? For years I selflessly helped others and never got a thank you in return.  Now, as a writer, I am writing stories that people read (I hope) and yet my e-book   sales keep dropping, no matter how well these  blogs  are read.

Depression I've been told by cover designers, they wish they had my talent for writing . Take it from me, it is a hard life as a writer , they earn more with a cover than I have earned in over a decade trying to sell my ebook selection    https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-lost-years/id815071447 . I've been accused of being a writer who starts a story but never finishes it. That is one way of looking at the situation, from my viewpoint it's more a case of why write if nobody is going to read the story? I often wake up with the intention of writing a story but then think why bother? Who's going to read it?

I wasn't fooled for a minute I've been around the block more times than I care to mention, so when someone offered $200 for a 2,000-word story the Red Flag went up. I wasn't wrong. Four and a half months ago, I sent a story to Bingewatchingcure . Each month this year, I sent an email to check on the progress, and got the same reply - We got more replies than we imagined, but we're close to making a decision. Today, I checked the link on my email - no surprises - it is now a dead link.

Vacation time       Over the past several years, my views on air travel have changed a lot.     When my friend Faye died, I used to look at the trails in the skies and wish I could go back to  Canada , to say a proper farewell.        Then I went through a stage of loathing the people who could afford to travel, and now I look up at the sky and the trails mean nothing to me.

On my travels In my posts, I rarely talk about myself, I choose not to labor on my health issues.  I'd instead let them be then become a moaner. At one time, posts about my health were the most popular on my blogs.  Suffice to say that if I do go out for a couple of hours, because of my disability the trip usually takes me two days to recover from, even if I only go out for an hour or two. This week has been extra painful for me, three days ago, we did some heavy lifting around the house, and in doing the work I twisted my left shoulder badly - the shoulder has a long-standing muscle tear. During the night I took an extra paracetamol tablet to ease the pain and ended up with my throat becoming so sore I had trouble breathing for days. Tonight, when I got up from watching TV, I felt a sharp pain, like a knife being driven, in my left knee.

I still struggle to believe in myself as a writer Sometimes, all a writer needs is to feel that some people care about their work.   Comments like this -  Thanks for sharing nice information . i like your post and all you share with us is up to date and quite informative, i would like to bookmark the page so i can come here again to read you, as you have done a wonderful job -  posted on my other  blog mean a lot to me

Mark Johnson's last call To some people my decision will appear rash, but not to me. This  #ebook  series started five years ago, and to date the three books have not sold half a dozen copies between them.

1990  Between the classic series  Callan , and the equally noteworthy series  The Equalizer . Edward Woodward appered in a series called 1990  about a rogue news reporter going aginst the media, not unlike today's world where the news in controlled. After all these years, I thought I'd never get a copy of the series as it was a bit of a cult at the time, not being as well known as Callan. Also at this time, he was in the original version of  The Wicker man .