Our Daily Bread

This is my first collection of short stories which I've self-published as an e-book only. It's also the first time I've completed the whole design and the cover myself. I was pleased that I could do it though not sure I've made as good a job of it as our in-house designer. 

Nevertheless, I used Draft2Digital and I have to say they were very easy to use. A downside is that they take a % of all that you earn though there are no set-up costs. Also, they can publish to multiple platforms. We normally only publish on Amazon. This time I've hooked it up to everything I can. You can see this here.

At the time of writing it's still not on Amazon. On all the other platforms you can pre-release. I did that. I even edited the book again after some of my reviewers found a couple of typos and then tried to release to Amazon. It's still processing. We hit another snag at this point. I had to fill in another tax exemption form. Amazon actually already knows that I am US tax exempt. That has now all been accepted and I am registered for 0% US tax. Still we wait. Oh dear. Amazon again.  

I've divided all of my short stories up into folders – everyday, science fiction, historical, retellings of Bible and near future. This first collection is of everyday stories. Straight away I notice a snag about this method; it's going to take ages to fill some volumes. So, I think in future I'm going to go for the mix. I can always republish stories in other collections later.

I have made a decision to self-publish most of my work. This seems a little at odds with the Opportunities List    I publish. I also miss that excitement / curiosity about publishing. So I've decided to send off each story to others first. I guess the list is still there also for those people we cannot publish. 

Our Daily Bread includes stories of people striving to succeed, sometimes managing, sometimes not.  It is at the same time about daily lives and the bigger picture. There's the story of the young woman who struggles to come to terms with the death of her baby.  A music manager is near to despair but finds a way to carry on. An older citizen finds that miracles still do happen.  Even God, whoever she may be has her say and gives us an interpretation of the Lord's Prayer – hence the title.