When it comes to my writing, book sales, and clicks for each book from which countries, maybe I’m a bit over the top, but I am retired and, grandchildren taxi driver apart, do have time on my hands. I use Bitly to shorten my website links and anyone who follows me on Twitter, Bluesky, or Facebook will know that I use a separate link for each country for each book, to make it easier for readers from abroad to go to their own particular Amazon site. One of the incredible uses of Bitly is that it gives you statistics for each link and because I have time, I log these at the end of each month. I also get statistics regarding clicks to those links and also the links to my website at www.StephensonHolt.com and where those links have come from. (Google, X, Bluesky, Amazon etc.) Is this interesting, or overkill? Here are two things that my statistics have thrown up recently that I have found interesting. Canada. I was selling books in Canada, links were being said to be from Canada, mainly thr

We had a forced break from coarse fishing to include a week’s holiday in St. Ives, Cornwall, England. With a promise of Wil and I not fishing every day, to make it into a true family holiday Wil and I decided that a mackerel fishing trip would be enough and it would also keep his sister and grandmother happy. We booked, paid, and turned up the next day to what looked like a fairly calm sea where we boarded Yellow Fin, which surprisingly maybe is a blue boat. With plenty of room and what looked like fairly new gear of boat rods, multiplier reels, a hefty lead weight, and feathers we set off around the point to what, in the family, we call stormy beach, where we were told we would then drift back in the direction of the harbour and would make a number of drifts. With the engine cut and rods lowered, a number of things became apparent. One, we were told that rather than jigging, we should raise the rod and wind in as it descended, much like playing a large fish, and that way we would find

I hate my name. Makes me sound like a fish. Sand under my feet, nice and flat, allows a quick splurge of preening oil excreted from the back of my neck to cover my wings. We're off. Don't know why. Like a flock but we don't flock. Ah. I can see now that I'm up here, a dog running towards our drinking area. Humans have befriended and then trained dogs to chase us, they are not allowed on the beach in the summer, but the humans ignore this and laugh at the sport. Gliding now, on a thermal, looking for food with no effort involved. A few scouts have returned to our patch and I intend to join them for a drink. Drinking water comes down into our harbour and mingles between seaweed covered rocks. Not as much water this year but enough for us. Lower beak into the water to fill it and, hup, I throw my head back to let the water go down my throat. Good to have a drink before the tide is fully in, and the drinking water disappears. A hundred eggs ago, this harbour had boats that caught herring i

When I got to the end of "There Must Be Daffodils" with the obligatory happy ending, the epilogue from some years later explained that most of the girls were by then married, except for Ashley's bestie, Camlyn. That was not done intentionally, and wasn't meant to set up a follow-on novel for Cam which fifty percent now exists, with a working title of "Tulips Die Out Of Water." Time has moved on again, the girls still meet up each Friday, but they have moved from their thirties to their forties, and Cam hates her life and her job. The opening paragraph sets the scene, please let me know what you think of it as an opener. "Left behind, still on the shelf, passed my sell-by date, this bloody steam-iron is far too heavy for my skinny arms, and the steam in my face makes me feel even sweatier than the pigging office did today. At least the steam is good for my skin and about the nearest I’ll get to affording a sauna or a spa day. Windows are steaming up though. Excuse the mess. I’d say it’s

8th July. We decided that the next pond we should visit and do a video on would be Jim’s Pond at Hazel Court, where it all started on August twentieth, last year. Back then, it was two chairs, two rods, waggler floats and a tub of maggots, and if anyone is thinking about starting up fishing or introducing youngsters, this, Jim’s pond, is an ideal place to start. The only problem that we had was that our four rods were not made up with floats and maggots in mind, and we had prepared for method feeders and dry PVA bags. The decision was made to not change the rods after a discussion with Debbie, the fishery owner, who told us that the carp went up to ten pound in this pond. I'd tied so many PVA bags in case we did an overnighter, that the tub of feed had gone low. I topped it up with 600g of brown groundbait and the rest of the bloodworm, about a kilo. We (Wil) decided on one day only rather than the overnighter and we pulled up at Hazel Court at ten thirty in the morning. Walking down

I have just discovered iMovie which has been sat on my Mcbook since day one. I import all the books of a series into a file along with the pic of all the books together. Then comes the opening of a new project and entering all photos. As each is put on a time line they occupy ten seconds each. I add a place holder at the front and rear to explain that the books are all on Kindle Unlimited and on Audible, then add a piece of meaningless music from the iMovie files. Each video is going onto X, Bluesky and Facebook and I'm having fun with it all. All of these videos can be seen on my home page under the individual books.