It’s a glib cliché, but it’s also a truism. And it makes sense. If you have an idea and a shot at making it work, why not give it the best chance of success? especially if the idea is something that you’ve been building up to for a couple of years and poured just about all of your creative juices (yuk! Do they smell?), not to mention a good deal of sweat, tears (yes really) and time into. Just re-read that – perhaps I should be writing cheesy motivational speeches for people who have become emotionally involved (unstable/deluded) with their dreams of being an overnight online publishing sensation. Hang on that’s me! OK, I’m paying attention. Go on.

So, the plan is as follows.

1. Write three books in a series. Check.
2. Buy my own name domain name for my author website. Check.
3. Start a blog in the hope of being able to ‘network’ and generate some interest in what I’m doing. Check.
4. Set up a website that will link readers to more information about the series and what’s out next and when.
5. Design and create my e-dust-jackets for the books.
6. Investigate the ins and outs of the Kindle author options.
7. Format first book ready for Kindle.
8. Upload first book to Kindle by Christmas (just in time for the Christmas rush of lucky people who were gifted a Kindle for Christmas and are looking for some free books to download). Yes free. I’m going to give the first one away. Imagine how truly devastated I’ll be if no-one wants to read me for nothing. (Stop thinking negatively. Sorry. It’s just counter-productive and unnecessary. I said sorry. Can we leave it?)
9. Format second book and download to Kindle for a small fee (about a £1) to see if, out of the tens of thousands of people who were happy to read me for nothing maybe some of them will be (a) hooked into following the characters in another tale of policing the South-East of England and (b) don’t mind paying a ridiculously nominal fee for the (pleasure? You’re doing it again. What? Being unattractively self-deprecating. Sorry.)
10. Format third book and download to Kindle to satisfy the nationwide – make that the English language speaking world’s – thirst/hunger/pathological demand for more of the same. These enthusiasts will not mind paying the paltry sum of £2.99 for this book. (Three good reads for under £4!
11. All the time I’m interacting with my legion of fans through my website and blog.
12. Repeat process of formatting and downloading to Kindle the second series of books. By the time the first two have been received to huge critical and reader acclaim I will have finished the third and formatted and downloaded that.
13. Be fought over by agents and publishers (maybe someone could die in the crush? Preferably one of those who rejected me) for my signature pledging the world rights (cinematic and written) to my back catalogue.
14. Accept seven figure non-refundable sum in a five book deal.
15. Be clinically diagnosed with writer’s block.
16. Retire to villa in Bodrum to wake late, swim in the Aegean, breakfast on the balcony and read in the afternoons. Evenings will be taken up socialising, eating and drinking too much and playing the guitar and my own songs in a bar that I bought into because I ran out of things to do with my new found wealth.
17. Die happy.

I didn’t realise that I’d been thinking about it quite so much. Still plenty to do, but five minutes surfing the www for Bodrum villas won’t hurt. After all, fail to prepare…..