Hi,

Firstly, my laptop failed. It's amazing how I absolutely and totally floundered without it. It's not as if I'm short of things to do, but whatever I did, the lack of my laptop was glued firmly to the front of my mind. It was a huge relief to finally get it back complete with all my data, but I am now having to rush to catch up. I do back-ups, but not often enough, and it's times like this that I wonder just how much data (or word count in my novels) might actually have been lost had the computer shop not been able to recover it. When a similar thing happened a few years back, I lost a whole chapter from Night Shadows. I wrote the whole chapter again, which was an interesting exercise, and I've often wondered just how different the two versions would be, but, of course, never got to find out. Jilly Cooper lost a whole book, back in the days when one wrote by typewriter. She was on the bus, taking it to a publisher or agent, and got off the bus without it. It never turned up, and she had to write the whole novel from scratch. It cannot have been recognised as a future bonk buster by whoever binned it. That's the trouble with an unpublished manuscript - never mind the quality, success simply depends on who reads it.

Secondly, with the first wave of Covid on the downturn, we are finally able to plan a visit to our families in the UK. This involves driving up to Rosslare, near Wexford, and going on the ferry rather than our more usual flights from Cork to Bristol/London. So, at short notice, we will be off in two days. Without further ado:

1 BOOK COVER FONTS

Self-publishing is a continual education, and having watched a series of videos on cover creation, I revamped all my books. A 'professional' said to me a couple of days back, the images are fine, but the fonts are, ah, eurgh... And I spent such a lot of time choosing them, too! Anyway, he kindly sent me a mock-up of a concept, which I worked on. If anyone would like to comment, make suggestions, or even just offer an opinion on which ones might prompt the reader to look further, feedback would be most welcome. Click the above title, to see the images.

2 STORYBOARD - COB WALLS

My home-front story is about building with cob. For those of you who haven't come across the term, cob can be any kind of mixture of mud, stones, and plant matter which is dried to make bricks or structures. I understand it can be made with manure, and I did wonder if that was where the phrase sh*t sticks comes from. But the cob I am talking about is, in fact based on clay. Click the title above to see the quirky new house in Cork built in this traditional way.

3 FREE BOOKS

I am involved in two promotions running through July. As always, I cannot vouch for quality (except for my own books!), only quantity, as I have not read most of them. I do try to read a couple of books each week, as part of the whole Indie process, but the at the time of sending, the books on offer are rarely ones I have reviewed. Click on either image to access the books. You can often find these books on Amazon or other sales outlets if you want to see the comments made by others rather than just rely on what the authors themselves have written about their work. We are usually slightly biased!

If you wish to unsubscribe, click the link at the foot of this email. But I hope you'll stay with me, read my fiction and review it, or simply enjoy my storyboards.

All the best

Chris Lewando