A HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE!

I'm not going to post on anything humorous, or contentious. This is my last post before Christmas and I want to thank everyone who helped me during this year. Especially:-

Marit Meedith - A Norwegian lady who has helped me promote the Temporal Detective Agency books as well as helping just about everybody in her own Welsh village. She also makes the most wonderful fabric animals!

Carl Hedges - A lady who runs a wonderful blog site and invites people like me to join her in conversations on her Pink Sofa. Unlike many authors she promotes the competition!

Carol Drinkwater - Who not only acted in one of my favourite TV series some years ago, and now wited some of the most interesting posts on FB. I value her as a friend.

Caleb Mason - My publisher in America and CEO of Publerati Publishing, for believing in me and the Temporal Detective Agency.

Blimey! I suddenly realised that if I thanked everyone who deserves thanking, I'll be here until 2013. So the ladies who inspired Merlin and Tertia are thanked more than they can imagine.

A happy Christmas to everyone and  an incrdeibly prosporous New Year to everyone.
Richard

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A YEAR OF HIGHS AND LOWS!

As the end of 2012 approaches it's good to look back on the highs and lows and try to dwell on the highs. Don't forget the lows - and there have been a few - but concentrate on the high points, both personal and universal.

Universal highs -
1. The Olympics. Say no more really. Few people thought we could pull it off. Many thought Britain would fail dismally, both as an organiser and as a team, but Lord Coe and Team GB make it a Games to remember. Danny Boyle, Mr Bond and Mr Bean gave us a great opening ceremony and the entire competitor team did themselves proud.
2. The Paralympics. A phenomenal event on a par with the Olympics in every way, even though it had a much smaller budget.
3. Bradley Wiggens. The first Brit to win the Tour de France, only to follow it up with a gold at the Olympics and the Sports Personality of the Year trophy. Rumoured to be Sir Wiggo in the New Year.
4. Claire Balding. 2012 was Claire's year. She matured from being a horse race commentator, to becoming a past-master of most sports and a consumate linker.
5. The Diamond Jubliee celebrations. Only marred once when the BBC tried to dumb down the river pageant. Even the great Claire Balding dumber-down on instructions one suspects. The Queen and Philip and most of the Royal Family carried it off well.
6. Gaddafi was overthrown, though it remains to be seen what will fill the Libyan vacuum.
7. Felix Baumgartner became the highest skydiver.


Universal Lows -
1. Lonesome George, the last Pinto Island tortoise in the Galapagos Islands died, making the species extinct
2. Hurricane Sandy killed 209 people, though we only heard about the few in N.E America.
3. Greece imploded financially and the rich fat cats over there famously said that "only the little people pay tax".
4. A 20 year old in America took his mother's collection of guns, including an assault rifle and hand gun, and murdered more than 20 infants and some of their female teachers. More than 9,000 people were shot and killed in the USA in 2012. During the same period the next country had less than 100 killed. Hopefully America will learn.
5. Typhoon Bopha in the Philippines killed 1,020 people with 844 people still missing. Anyone heard of it?

I can think of a few more, but it would be interesting what other people consider univesal highs and lows.

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LOTS OF LINKS AND SELF PROMOTION!

Since Trouble With Swords was published as an eBook two weeks ago it's done very well in the Amazon rankings, though like every schoolboy's report says "it could do better!".

The book has had some great publicity (some unintentional) from friends and my thanks to those who joined on the Facebook launch party last Saturday.

So, the links:

The wonderful Carol Hedges (author and fighter of good fights against local authorities!) interviewed me for her well-known blog, the Pink Sofa. Very comfortable it was too and the sweets were lovely and chewy.
http://carolhedges.blogspot.co.uk/

Authorsden have around a million books and short stories on their very complete site, with author biogs and book write-ups. Under the heading of Young Adult they have over 1,200 books and this week Trouble With Swords has been featured along with 17 other YA titles as their main headline books.
http://www.authorsden.com/categories/cat.asp?catID=59

If you search on Google for Trouble With Swords Google tells you there are 16,500,000 results. I looked and expected my book to be around 3,000,000 or so and impossible to find. Not a bit of it. My boo was number one search result with the lin to Amazon. Top of the page! I was impressed! In fact it was also result number two with the link to the FB launch party!
https://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&tbo=d&sclient=psy-ab&q=trouble+with+swords&oq=trouble+with+swords&gs_l=hp.3...2314.7186.0.8438.19.12.0.7.7.0.172.940.10j2.12.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.40yB9dm1sPg&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.1355325884,d.d2k&fp=e6e6c8241fc0fe8&bpcl=39967673&biw=1280&bih=699

Talking of Amazon..... The most important link of all is the Amazon link so you can buy Trouble With Swords!!!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trouble-Swords-Temporal-Detective-ebook/dp/B00AFEKVE6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1355511685&sr=8-2
Or if you're outside the UK:
http://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Swords-Temporal-Detective-ebook/dp/B00AFEKVE6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1355511685&sr=8-2

Don't forget to buy and review!

Blog on, Dudes!

TROUBLE WITH SWORDS
Launch Update

I'm not one much for personal publicity (ahem!), but after the official launch yesterday at the Facebook party event I feel I need to make a few comments.

1. Without the help of some great friends I couldn't have even attempted to hold the launch party. In no particular order, not even alphabetical!
   - Marit Meredith has helped from Day 1 when I wanted to publish Leap of Faith, my first Temporal Detective Agency book. She wrote me up on her blog and has been a tower of strength in convincing me to get things finished. She's a multi-talented lady and I love having her as a friend. In the not too distant future, when the Agency series is established, she and I will be collaborating on a very special cook book. Yesterday Marit helped keep the drinks running and the foodies plates full.
   - Carol Hedges has become a good friend over the past few weeks and as well as helping me host the event yesterday, she wrote up a wonderful interview with me about my books. You can read it at http://carolhedges.blogspot.co.uk/
   - Caleb Mason is both my agent in the States and my eBook publisher. He's also the CEO of Publerati Publisher. He was in the party for 8 hours yesterday helping to meet and greet. He also asked some devilishly hard quiz questions and gave away excellent eBook prizes..... copies of Trouble With Swords!

2. Amazon's rankings are both weird and delayed. By the end of the party Trouble With Swords hadn't moved on the Amazon UK ranking and if anything has slipped. I looked this morning and it had climbed nearly 20,000 places. I just looked again tonight and it's climbed another 4,000 places!

3. The chance of being the first result presnted on a Google search when there are 16,500,00 results is... well, 16,500,000 or thereabouts. And yet if you Google Trouble With Swords it tells you there are 16,500,000 results and the very first one presented is my book showing the Amazon link. It's the most incredible thing that money couldn't buy. Well, it almost certainly could, but not the sort of money I have! The power of Google.

4. I now have a fair bit of work to do in loading Trouble With Swords onto Goodreads and Authorsden.

5. I can now carry on writing the third book in the series, loosely titled A bigger Bang Theory.

6. Did I hear someone say "Where can I get the book?". Silly me, of course you want the link. You can get it at Amazon.both in the UK and Internationally. The UK link is http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trouble-Swords-Temporal-Detective-ebook/dp/B00AFEKVE6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1355062818&sr=8-2
I'd get o copy quickly while it's still in ctock!

Thanks again to everyone who came to the party, even greater thanks to those people who bought a copy of the book and gretest thans to those who bought the book and are going to write a review. Above all, thanks to Marit, Carol and Caleb.

Blog on, Dudes!

TROUBLE WITH SWORDS
Launch

Hi everyone. I'm immensely proud to say that my second book in the Temporal Detective Agency series was published last Friday and has its official launch today with a Facebook party and many other events to celebrate.

Trouble With Swords has already sold as many copies as the first book Leap of Faith, which is also selling fast this week. Exciting times!

Please help me celebrate by visiting the Amazon site:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trouble-Swords-Temporal-Detective-ebook/dp/B00AFEKVE6/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1354958592&sr=8-5&keywords=richard+hardie
Ther book is available on both Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

You can also Google Trouble With Swords and the first item to appear will be my book and the Amazon link. Spooky, so well done Mr Google.

Thanks in advance and I hope you enjoy reading it.... waht am I saying! Of course you will!

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A BATTLE WITH BT.... THE SAGA CONTINUES!

And I thought the saga was over!

Those who have followed my battle with BT will kknow that I have two BT phone lines. One is for home use and has Sky on it, the other is a home business line and also has the famous high-speed Infity broadband facility. As the advert says... Simples!
Unfortunately, not only do I have two phone lines, but I also have two accounts with BT and therefore two bills, and that's where things got complicated.

I made a payment to one account instead of the other, with the result that the payment to the account it should have gone to was overdue. BT in its infinite wisdom chose to suspend my outgoing service to encourage payment. The whole thing was resolved in a matter of a couple of hours and normal service was resumed. Or so we thought.

I received the next bill a few days ago for both lines and even before it was due received a recorded message from BT telling me that on one of the bills I owed an amount almost twice what the bill said and had to pay it now. In  fact I'd paid slightly more than the bill's amount a couple of days earlier. I phoned BT, prepared for another hour long argument and after ten minutes had apparently got it sorted. I still owed around £20. I paid that today and thought we were now ahead of the game. I don't think we are.

The money that was originally allocated to the wrong account is still allocated to the wrong account according to the new bill, even though it was transferred some time ago. However in reality it has gone to the other account so the bill for that one is significantly overpriced. So both account are now right, but both bills are wrong.... or maybe it's the other way round. Who knows?

I'll pay and BT will keep phoning, but one thing does still amuse me. BT keep sending me letters asking me why I don't use their broadband facility as a valued BT user of many years standing. I keep telling them I have broadband on the other line and they say OH YES. Then I ask them for one account and we go round in circles.

The saga maybe over, but the Empire Is About To Strike Back!

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"A BATTLE WITH BT.....AN UPDATE!"

Yesterday, I posted on my blog the saga of my battle with BT in Manila about a sum of money I deposited in the Post Office in payment of a BT bill. Today I had a phone call (what else!) from a lady called Judith who is part of the famous "offline" BT team in the UK. She works on a Saturday and had good news!

After only 5 minutes of investigations she had isolated the missing sum of money and confirmed it was actually with BT. However I have two BT phone lines and for some reason I have two accounts and the missing sum had been allocated to the wrong account. She spotted it straight away, and yet the Manila lady took up an hour of my life without resolving anything.

The money has now been allocated to the correct account and the "offline" lady has put measures in place to ensure it doesn't happen again. In total I talked to her for 10 minutes, some of which was to chat about the view over Winchester I was enjoying at the time.

It just goes to show that UK companies like BT are so keen to put their call centers anywhere in the Asia Pacific region for reasons of low cost, and certainly not for the benefit of their customers. Whether it's language, dialect, culture, or just time zone difference, talking to call centers in India, or Manila is far from a joy and definitely not a good experience for the vast majority of people. And yet a ten minute call with a lady in the UK resolved everything and still left time for us to chat happily.

UK call centers may be a thing of the past, but if UK companies (Telcos, banks and financial services operations) don't rethink their tactic of moving overseas they're is severe danger of losing customers and money.

How nice it will be to hear a Liverpool, a Manchester, a Birmingham, or Scottish accent.
Dream on!

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