April showers bring forth May flowers... and maybe an award-winning book or two? by Katherine Roberts
'No Mow May' is a campaign started by the charity Plantlife in an effort to save our pollinators such as butterflies and bees, without which we as a human race would eventually starve. The UK has lost 97% of wildflower meadows since the 1930s and there are various large-scale projects to restore some of these, but even if you only have a tiny patch of lawn you can help by not mowing until the wild flowers have had a chance to set seed... usually around the end of May, although could be earlier in some parts of the country especially with climate change.
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| wild corner: fern, forget-me-not, primrose, herb robert |
I have been leaving a tiny corner of my small back lawn to do its own thing for several years now and have seen a definite increase in the number of wild flowers growing - not only in the little corner I leave wild, but also in the rest of the lawn. This year, violets have made an appearance in the shorter grass, and I've seen my first ever goldfinch feeding on dandelion seed heads. I've also witnessed a fat hedgehog visiting the wilder patch at night to feed, and as a bonus she eats our resident slugs and snails so that more tender plants can flourish in the garden, too. The neighbours might also thank you, if only because their May evenings in the garden are not interrupted by the noise of someone else's lawn mower!
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| violet |
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| periwinkle |
I know what you're going to say... too late, already mowed! But No Mow May is a win-win situation for plants, pollinators, the planet and its people, so there's always next year. Maybe.
Meanwhile, back in the author's virtual garden, here is a glimpse of my equally modest April KDP sales, which possibly benefited from last month's promotional 'shower' for Spell Spring. The 'flowers' in my author's garden are the resulting sales. Don't laugh. These are backlist books long since fallen off their original publishers' radar, and I don't have a publicity machine to rival that of HarperCollins et al. My efforts to keep my books alive are on the same scale as a tiny wildflower meadow in the corner of a small urban garden compared to a major rewilding project... i.e. not many people know about it, and so far only one goldfinch, a handful of butterflies and a pregnant hedgehog have noticed my efforts :-)
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| April bestsellers |
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| April sales - all books |
If you are tempted by such indie projects, you are definitely NOT too late to enter the 2024 UK Kindle Storyteller contest. So get that unpublished novel out of the cloud, and start sowing your own wild word meadow... you never know what might grow!
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Katherine Roberts writes fantasy and historical fiction based on legends for young readers.
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| Song Quest |
Her first novel Song Quest won the inaugural Branford Boase Award in 2000. She has since worked with various publishers on 16 more books that have all now gone out of print in their original editions and been reissued on the KDP. Katherine has also independently published two further novels and three collections of short stories. Her ambition is to work with another lovely publisher on a new project before she becomes extinct.
Comments
And your booksales - very respectable, I'd say!