Author Archives: theadventuresofthereluctantretiree

This morning The Mini Dictator asked, “So, Grandad, are you an author now, instead of a head teacher?” We were getting ready to visit Bear Bookshop, because it is one of her favourite places and she has been saving up her pennies and thought she might buy herself a book out of her very ownContinue reading “Bucket List Hugely Ticked ✅”

The WSG Delivery Tours have been majorly disrupted by tumbles down canal embankments, collisions with canal bridges and the need to self-isolate, but we’re back on the road! Taking copies of WSG to friends, who we haven’t seen for far too long, and those who have been long lost (35 years), and to people we’veContinue reading “The Joy Of Connection”

This week I had the most lovely surprise pop up in my email inbox! I can not speak for other authors (yes I just used the A word about myself – only as part of a group, though!), but, for me, sharing Who Stole Grandma? with others has been an abundant joy. I read theContinue reading “Two Precious Messages”

I still hesitate to use the word ‘author’ in a sentence about me, but I imagine that I am like almost every person who publishes a book in that I dreamt of seeing a proper, turny-page copy of Who Stole Grandma? on display in an actual bookshop. So it it was with some trepidation thatContinue reading “A Book Celebration Night”

The exhaustion and excitement of your eyes popping open and your brain lighting up at Stupid O’clock (5.14am!) to the certain knowledge that today is the day that your book is released on Kindle! To be a million percent honest, my long-term dream was to have Who Stole Grandma? on a bookshelf in a bookshopContinue reading “It’s Kindle Day!”

I will be using the promotion of ‘Who Stole Grandma?’ to raise funds for Parkinson’s UK. WSG is the story of mine and Mom’s time together after we learned that she had Parkinson’s Diseases. Although the book is not about Parkinson’s, the time that we shared, and all the fun we fitted in between theContinue reading “‘Who Stole Grandma?’ Is Raising Funds For Parkinson’s UK”

Oh the joy! Hearing the letter box rattle, knowing that I was expecting it to . . . Then hearing a hefty thud and internally yelping, “Don’t drop my book!” I hadn’t let on that the Amazon tracker had informed me that the very first printed copy of WSG was arriving two days early. HerContinue reading “Indescribable Happiness”

On Sunday, there was the excitement of opening a WhatsApp message from your booksmith guru to find your finalised book cover. I’d sent a collection of review comments from when I’d shared WSG last year and the designer had selected a few to be included beneath the blurb. I’m blaming those for the resultant rushContinue reading “Birthing A Book”

It turns out that one of the joys of trying to self publish a book is all the other stuff! What page colour will you be using? How many ISBN numbers do you require? Do you have a website? What is your publisher name? Thankfully, I have been guided to the answers to #1 &Continue reading “Introducing Hathi House”

A friend described the difficulty (if not impossibility) of spotting your own written errors as ‘snow blindness’, which perfectly described my discomfited, disorientation in the last month of trying to iron out the last wrinkles in Who Stole Grandma? Their efforts to rescue me from that blindness, by identifying the many traps that I hadContinue reading “Saved From Snow Blindness”