Update From LMP's Autumn Retreat

Added on 14 October 2010

Two days left of the school term, before the next two-week holiday lump. My target for the term had been to get the Barney series up and running on Kindle, a target I might just about be able to make. Naturally, I will then be in a position to award myself a bonus of something in the region of £3.5million. Following best practice from the banking world, the bonus is not linked to performance and sales figures, just to whether or not I met the target of getting some work done.

Elvis Shackleton, Long Midnight Publishing's Financial Director, reports that sales on Kindle are starting to pick up. 'We're on target to be the UK's highest grossing publisher by year end 2012,' he said at this morning's board meeting, here at LMP's autumn retreat in Bandar Seri Begawan. Nevertheless, he was unable to produce the empirical evidence to back up the claims, and understandably the markets remain sceptical. It has also been noted that sales in October to readers' friends' friends' friends' friends' friends' friends, are down on September, in a direct month-on-month comparison. Reports indicate that this is as a result of lack of direct targeting to this large customer focus group.

Attempts to pitch the series to major publishers in the US, as the dramatic tale of a misunderstood barbershop legend, trapped underground for twelve years, struggling to get to the surface, have so far proved ineffective.

On to the Final Cut, the book that promises to be Barney Thomson's final cut. This was originally written for German translation as Book 5 in the series, had the English title Limited Edition, and was published in Germany as Der Herr Der Klinge. The fact that it didn't appear as Book 5 when the series was published in the UK, was generally down to me not liking it very much. Which continued into it not being Book 6. When it finally appeared, it had changed quite a lot from the original and is in much better shape. Reading through it now, I don't feel as good about it as I did about Books 4, 5 and 6, but it has plenty of moments and it's set in a world that none of the other books inhabit. And it does feature the return of DCI Frank Frankenstein, who was great fun to write.

DCI Frankenstein, is pretty much the same detective as DCI Solomon from Book 4, and when it comes to writing a new crime series - and more and more it looks like things are heading that way - it is liable to feature a Frankenstein/Solomon type character on a more regular basis.

Better get on. Targets to meet...