A little story called Just.

It was just the beginning, if you follow me and have actually read something by me then you will remember this phrase, I wrote it everywhere on the social network, on the beaches, on the toilet wall it was a new beginning , a new way of life, a new start.
I have been writing poetry on and off since the earlier nineties mainly sending a poem or two to be included in various anthologies, I think I had over 80 poems included in a ten year period.

Obviously this was before the internet, before blogging or tweeting or googgling yourself or however you write it! I was told I had talent, I had art in my fingertips so I started to write more frequently setting up Facebook pages and then my blog.

I then found the world of self-publishing, every step forward was a jump in the dark, I decided to take all my poems that I had written in the last twelve months and compile them into an eBook and sell it for 1 euro a copy and obviously that was a big failure! I was already tweeting my work on twitter but my eBook did not take off. I decided to release a free eBook of poetry that became Just For Free, it was meant to be an advert for the real eBook Just the Beginning, slowly but surely the free eBook started to be downloaded while its big brother stalled.

This was summer 2014 and I was frustrated, I continued to write and I released two new eBooks Pushing My Luck and Summer and Other Horrors, both reflecting the mood I was in back in 2014, it also relates to the world events at the time and if you read these poems now it will take you back to the horror that surrounded the summer of 2014. At this moment I was finishing another eBook this time the poems were short stories but written in poetry form.

Almost autumn in 2014 and I found the Createspace page and I decided to release my new eBook with them, a real paperback book, obviously with Kindle Direct I also made the ebook available. Obviously my humour my irony and all the other spices I place into my work were overlooked and the book failed as well.

At about this time I decided to stop sales of all my eBooks except Just For Free, I decided to compile all my eBooks into one huge book of poetry, so I cancelled both Pushing My Luck and Summer and Other Horrors and a new paperback book was born. Just should have been a bestseller but it stalled as well! I decided to release another eBook that previewed all my poems from my two paperback books Nothing in this world is Free, Just Poetry.

I hope that people would read this and then rush out to buy the real deal, yes well I am still waiting, obviously I had to change tactics because my art was not getting into the world, I was sad and angry and I felt disillusioned but nobody said it was easy.

During the last months of 2014 and through the whole of 2015 I wrote and published a long line of eBooks some did well and some failed, I changed the covers to create a better image, I change the styles, the subjects and did a lot of things and experimented in a lot of ways.
Now in 2016 I look back over my work, I would love to delete every eBook I have ever written, it is all old news now, it is so yesterday!
The strange thing is this, the eBooks Just For Free and Nothing have done rather well, both have broken the 1000 barrier of downloads, they are my most successful books! Just the paperback book has sold more than Poetry Tails, but combined sales are well below 100 units, I have not received a penny of sales for these!
So if you like what you read in Just For Free, or the extracts of poems in Nothing is Free then why not download or buy my other books?

Just For Free download here!

Nothing In This World Is Free, Just Poetry! Download here!

 

Everything that I wrote in 2013 and 2014 is still relevant it might have been written whilst I was living in the shithole called Velletri , politics had different clowns but the outcome is still the same, war is still clouding the world, people are dying, people are living.
I am still a poet, a writer or an indie author just another shit stain on a well-used toilet maybe, but somewhere in this dark soul of mine I am surviving in this dog eat dog world, I don’t ask for much I would like people to tell me exactly what they think of my writings, I am working on new material but in the back of my mind I am still raw! I want my two paperbacks to sell just a little more.

Download Just! here.

Download Poetry Tails here.

So one of my goals of 2016 is to get these two books selling, I want to have 100 units of each book sold by the end of the year, as for my free poetry I expect all my titles to push through the 200 unit barrier, I think I need to work on 5 eBooks!

After this long and maybe uninteresting blog I would like to finish on a high note, I would like to thank everyone who has read one of my poems or one of my blogs, or seen a photo or an advert of mine, I would like to send a thank you to those people who have shared my work or commented, I would like to thank the people who have downloaded or bought my eBooks!
I continue to write and push my luck, but in the end, this is just the beginning!
Have a great year!

Darren