Just Books

Lucy Andrews

Lucy Andrews

Hello, could you begin by telling us your name, how we can reach you and where you come from, please?

Name : Lucy Andrews

Social Media : https://www.facebook.com/LucyAndrewsAuthor

https://twitter.com/LAndrewsWrites

Country: England

Do you prefer to read a particular genre? :

Yes, I usually read either historical or science fiction novels. When I read a book, I want to be transported out of normal daily life to places I’ve never been to.

Do you write in the same genre? :

My first novel is science fiction. I decided to write the sort of book that I would want to read. I realised that if I set my novel in the future, there would be no constraint on the sort of society I could put my characters in. I could create a whole world and a different way of living unlike contemporary society and take my characters to unusual places and situations. I wanted to create a world that would stretch the imagination and pose questions about the way people live, the things they do and why. Science fiction enables the author more freedom to do this than setting a book in the past or present.

Have you always written and what got you started professionally? :

I’ve always wanted to write a novel but never had the time until recently. I’ve had a busy career and first tried my hand at writing short stories for women’s magazines several years ago. I wasn’t very successful, primarily because women’s fiction isn’t a genre I particularly enjoy. I eventually woke up to the fact that what I really wanted to write was science fiction which I hadn’t tried before. As I was still working it took me some time to write my first novel and it is only within the last year that I’ve been able to give up the “day job” to focus on writing.

How many books have you published? :

Crater’s Edge is my first novel.

Why did you write Crater’s Edge and what is it about? :

I wanted to write an exciting adventure story that readers would enjoy on one level, but at the same time the book explores serious issues on a deeper level. The story is set in 2235 on a planet that is being colonised. As there is restricted space, the characters live in two different time zones. My main characters are an engineer, Kalen and a geologist, Sera. Kalen’s job is to trouble-shoot mining problems, but when he is sent to the new construction site at Three-Craters, things begin to unravel. All is not as it seems. Kalen’s search for the truth about the problems on the site, end up taking him on a dangerous journey. The book explores love, betrayal and treason. Kalen has a hard time! By the end of the book, everything is revealed, but I’ve tried to keep the reader guessing.

Crater’s Edge by Lucy Andrews

ISBN – 10 162526674X (UK); ISBN – 13 978-1625266743 (US); ASIN - B07771GBBN

What would you like your next book to be on? :

I’m writing a sequel to Crater’s Edge. Although Crater’s Edge is complete in itself, I thought it would be fun to take the story to the next level. Things are going to get pretty nasty for my characters. I’ve got a great storyline and I’ve dreamt up some very frightening challenges for them.

Owen Jones

How Merchants Can Use PLR

I suppose that it seems quite normal to think that PLR (articles that can be rebranded as one's own) are only suitable for on line use, because that is where they are used most often, but if you think about the amount of writing a business person does every month, merchants can use PLR  to help there too.

If you have the right PLR, that is, because one of the biggest benefits of PLR is that it reduces the amount of research that the end-writer has to do. Therefore, you have to be able to trust the original writer of the PLR to have done the research for you.

Subsequently rewriting the PLR and making it your own is very easy, when you have an article to adapt in front of you. This is a very handy approach if English is not your first language and you want your writing to sound fluid and natural.

So, let's say that you have a shop in the high street selling, er, gardening implements, for example. Wouldn't your shop stand out from the crowd if you could hand out free leaflets on things related to gardening?

How to build a garden fish pond; how to care for Koi carp; how to deter mosquitoes from your patio; et cetera, et cetera? However, just because you sell garden implements, it doesn't necessarily mean you know about the topics I just mentioned, does it?

What could you do? Hire someone to write the articles for you? Go and learn about fish ponds? Or buy good PLR on fish ponds, reprint it and job done? Good PLR does not have to be expensive: you can get an ebook of 15 500-word  niche articles for less than $10.

At the rate of one a week, that is nearly three months promotional material for about 65 cents a week! And you would be the only one for miles or more who was bothering to do it.

Would that not give you an edge over your competitors?

Are here any other ways merchants can use PLR?

Let's say that you wanted to start selling your stuff on Amazon or eBay? You have 15 ready-made articles that you can make your own with a little re-writing and you can post them around the Internet with links back to your Amazon or eBay account in the 'author's bio' or by-line at the bottom of the article.

Any other ways merchants can use PLR?

What if you wanted a blog, web site or / and newsletter? No problem at all! It's the same tactic, you can slightly rewrite your PLR and use them for the basic pages of your site and send the others out to article directories for back links or / and add them to your auto-responder to send to your list since the readership will not be the same.

There are many ways merchants can use PLR, good PLR, in the on and off line world, but it helps if you remember a few points:

*] PLR's main purpose is to save the rewriter time (researching or / and learning English grammar)

*] You must buy good PLR from a reputable source

*] No matter how good the PLR is, you must read it through and at least change any expressions that you would not use or do not like - in other words - make it sound like you could have written it.

For 125+ niche PLR ebooks, go to our favourite PLR site

Podcast: Merchants Can Use PLR

Megan's Free Audiobook Club

Have you caught the recent bug for audiobooks? Or is it audio books? The trend is so new that the jury is still out on the nomenclature, but I am going to use 'audiobooks' until it becomes ridiculous to continue to do so. Enter Megan's Free Audiobook Club!

Anyway, I didn't even realise that there was a fad for audiobooks until the beginning of 2018, when an article caught my eye and I followed the thread for an hour or so.

Now, I have four audiobooks of my own work and eleven more in production, and I have established a club where other enthusiasts can meet up. Well, more than that actually as I plan to hand out free copies of my audiobooks to members, and perhaps I will obtain audiobooks from other author friends to give away too.

The group is free to join, is called 'Megan's Free Audiobook Club' and is hosted on Facebook here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/megansfreeaudiobooks/

The details are explained on the group's page, but basically, I will publish a list of the books I have to hand out with a reference back to a fuller description on this website. Then if you want a copy, just ask for one and you will receive a code to download a free copy.

Audiobooks often cost upwards of $20, so that is a pretty hefty saving. The only thing that I will ask of you in return is a short, honest review and that it be completed within a month.

NB: I am not even asking for a favourable review - just an honest one!

If you have never written a review before, don't worry about it! I am not expecting a Sunday Times quality :-) Just in your own words...

In fact, I will put up a short template that you can follow to write your review to get novices started. Here is the link to that:

http://meganthemisconception.com/writing/how-to-write-a-book-review/

Please pop over to Megan's Free Audiobook Club now and join up... I would love to meet you.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Megan's Free Audiobook Club

Twitter's Three-day Rule

Do you use social media much? Whether you do or don't, you might still be unaware of Twitter's three-day rule. Twitter has always professed to be anti-spam, but most users find their idea of security a sick joke, because it is automated and their stupid bots trap the innocent and the guilty alike.

For example, I can honegets blocked by stly say that I try hard not to spam or break their rules. However, Twitter's spam bots blocks me, or one of my accounts, at least six times a year. Blocking like this means that you have to appeal. This can be a lengthy process, which is one of the reasons why I have more than one account. You can speed the process up if you give Twitter your phone number. However, I don't have one, and I refuse to buy a phone just to satisfy them.

Anyway, in answer to accusations that Twitter has been used to influence recent elections, Twitter has come up with the three-day rule.

Twitter's Three-day Rule Sentence

Basically, Twitter's Three-day Rule states that one may not post the same Tweet more than once in three days no matter how many accounts one has.

I think I may have broken this rule last week, although I didn't know about it then, and so one of my accounts is in Twitter jail.

There is no appeal. Their literature states that the jail term is indeterminate, but one supposes commensurate with the crime. However, they will not discuss individual cases, and say that they cannot reverse their spam bots' decisions...

Nobody warned me about Twitter's Three-day Rule, or maybe they did but it didn't pass my spam filter - who knows? However, it seems like using a sledgehammer to frack a nut, especially since it is impossible to reach everyone in an account by Tweeting once every three days.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Twitter's Three-day Rule

Penpals - Do You Remember Them?

When I was a boy, and that was quite a while ago, writing letters, telephoning or sending a telegramme were just about the only means of communication over long distances.

Middle-class children were encouraged to write letters, not that I was from that social group, and one of the ways of promoting literacy and an interest outside one's area and family was to write to other schoolchildren. I was never encouraged to write to other children in English, but every now and again, my foreign language teachers would come up with a foreign penpal scheme. I had various French and German penpals when I was a teenager. In my case, none of them lasted long, but there have been tens of thousands of instances of penpals writing for decades and never meeting face to face.

Obviously, the Internet and smartphones changed all that - and for the better, in several ways, but it was also another nail in the coffin of handwriting, which is a shame in my opinion.

Nowadays, people share photos of their food with friends and family all across the world in seconds, but there was something to be said for waiting for a letter from a penpal too - strange as that may seem to people who never had penpals.

My reason for writing this article was that I was talking to a young woman who had no idea of the concept of penpals, although she undoubtedly has thousands of followers on social media.

I do miss writing letters by hand with a fountain pen and having to wait weeks for a reply, but I also enjoy the immediacy of the Internet.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Penpals - Do You Remember?

A Lonely Night in Fuengirola

I wasn't happy that night - an argument with the wife, or possibly a misunderstanding... she is Thai, I am Welsh and I know for certain that we still don't fully understand one another, even after fifteen years.

So, I went for a walk around the town where I live, Fuengirola.

My first encounter was with a young man and his female companion blocking the pavement. They were asking an Indian shopkeeper directions and he was struggling to explain in English.

"Can I help?" I offered.

"No, fuck off! We don't need any help", came the reply in a broad Irish accent proving that he was a liar as well as rude and ignorant. The woman looked at me apologetically, and I walked on by.

Musing on that experience, I called into Geordie's new bar (he is a friend I have mentioned before - Coast to Coast) under Las Rampas. As I sat there, I watched people playing pool.

And this is amazing to me... a man broke and went in off. His opponent pointed at the black and proceded to put his seven balls and the black down ON A FULL TABLE in two or three minutes.

I was astounded! It was the best pool-playing I had ever seen in my forty-five years of hanging around bars.

Anyway, a younger man challenged him after about ten minutes, and, God's honest truth, made him look like a novice! He had five balls left on the table at the end of the game!

A little while later, I got talking to a bloke, and he said that a lot of the Spanish international pool team meet there to practice...

So, if you like pool, call into Geordie's and maybe you too will be lucky enough to see something like I did.

I watched every game untill kick-out, and then started walking home. It was around midnight.

The walk home was not uneventful, it is nice to be offered the company of pretty, young ladies, although I declined, and arrived home in a far better disposition than I had left.

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and list of audiobooks

All the best,

Owen

Podcast: A Lonely Night In Fuengirola

Non-English Books For My Blog

I run this blog as an author who writes and sells books, but I have never written or tried to sell any non-English books. How would I go about it? Not the writing, I have learned seven languages to a high standard, although I am now rusty. However, I wouldn't have a clue about selling them even if I did.

However, surely, foreign authors try to sell their books in much the same way as I do? By which I mean through the use of Social Media, blogs, websites and the like. However, my network of promo sites works exclusively in English.

Are there parallel networks of non-English books where they sell their foreign-language books in a like manner? I suppose there have to be, but how would I access them?

Networks for Non-English Books

The reason for my interest is that several of my books are now being translated into other languages, some of which I used to/still speak and others which I have never learned.

However, I am now going to have to address the problem of how to sell non-English books, and to be honest with you, I am looking forward to it! I am even hoping that promoting my translated books in French, German and Dutch will re-awaken my ability to converse in those languages...

My style is forty years out of date, but I can learn... I hope :-) Posting on blogs in those languages will be... unusual, at least to begin with... However, I have no idea yet how I am going to deal with promoting my non-English books in the Scandinavian languages, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi and Japanese!

One step at a time, eh?

And to think... when I finished my first book six years ago, I thought that that was the end of the line!

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our list of audiobooks,

and our current list of foreign translations

All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Non-English Books

Our Tenth Wedding Anniversary

Yesterday, March 30th. was our tenth wedding anniversary. Well, one of them, anyway, since most foreigners who marry Thais get married twice and not necessarily on the same day. However, despite the two chances, neither of us would have remembered the occasion, if it hadn't been for Facebook's built-in calendar reminder.

And this isn't the first time we have both forgotten - I can't remember a time that we have remembered!

However, this is not to say that we don't care. As soon as I showed my wife Facebook's reminder, she threw her arms around me and we cuddled for ten minutes. It was lovely...

It s just that neither of us are the kind of person to whom these sorts of things matter much.

It has gotten us into trouble too - several times - and I am quite sure that it will again.

Everyone is aware of Asian peoples' obsession with taking photographs, well, several times that we went for my visa extension in Thailand, we were asked to provide photographic evidence that we had in fact been together during the period between the visas, but we could not, because we don't take photos of ourselves.

I know for a fact that my wife only has one photo from her past - of herself as a baby - and I don't have any from my past at all.

This is not normal, I know - and what are the chances of two people who feel like that meeting each other?

God knows, but slim, I should imagine.

Anyway, the next hurdle will be when we are asked to produce evidence of a 'long and sustainable relationship' when we apply for my wife's residency permit for the U.K..

That will be a laugh!

However, for those of you still wondering... we celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary by spending time with friends in our local, and then going for a meal, at which two of our Thai friends joined us.

It was lovely, but if you want to see a photo, I will have to get one from one of them...

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and list of audiobooks

All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Our Tenth Wedding Anniversary

Moving To The UK

I am from Wales, the UK, and my wife is Thai. Those of you who read this blog will already know this, and we have to get back to the UK under European law, before Brexit pulls up the drawbridge in March 2019, because of my wife's nationality, as those dear readers will also know.

Anyway, this article represents the next stage in the now five-year struggle to get my wife of ten years the right to live with me in Britain. She has a five-year residency card for Spain and so has the right to live and work here just as any other European citizen, including Spaniards... and that is how it should be.

I am European, and as such I have the right to bring my wife with me, even if the authorities want to know the ins and outs... We understand that, and we have complied and they have given her residency, taking a huge amount of stress off off our shoulders.

We have completed Phase Three in the scheme of things, and it took five years.

However, now we face the Fourth Phase, entry into the UK an the strength of her Spanish residency card alone. This should give her the right to ninety days in the UK, during which she nay apply for residency as my wife.

That is Phase Five.

If it fails, we will be in deep doo-dah, because under British law, my wife - the wife of British citizen of untold generations, can only have a foreign wife, if he is rich or has a good job.

At the age of sixty-three neither of those options are available to me.

We can only hope that Karma is on our side...

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and list of audiobooks

All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Moving To The UK

Piracy and Google

If you make anything that becomes successful, you can expect it to be copied sooner or later. In the case of physical goods, it can take a while to set up the plant and machinery to produce those copies and the contacts to sell them through. However, there is also the theft of intellectual copyright, which is a lot easier to organise, and I am suggesting that piracy and Google often work hand-in-glove.

How easy is it to buy a CD, copy it and put it on Google?

A child could do it in a day!

Google's official line is that it detests piracy and plagiarism, and to 'prove' it, they allow intellectual copyright holders to report infringements through their system of DMCA's, which gets the offending site selling your stuff delisted from its search engine - the biggest on the planet, handling eighty percent of searches.

However, many if not most of those companies just change something about their name and start up again the next day, often using Google's own Blogspot as a platform to sell from and Amazon's S3 'warehouse' facility to keep the book or music master files on, which is quite ironic when you come to think of it, because it, Amazon, loses by piracy too, although I suppose they retrieve something from the storage. So, the only one who completely loses out is the author and copyright-holder.

These two giants are prepared to help stitch up the small man so as not to totally lose out on the piracy that they know would be very difficult to wipe out all together.

Yet all the while, they preach against piracy - the hypocrites!

I use Blasty to help keep the number of pirates selling my books down. However, Blasty and Google have combined to make life difficult for 6,500+ sites pirating my books, and yet every week there are hundreds more, and most of them using Google and Amazon's facilities.

What can you do?

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and list of audiobooks

All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Piracy and Google