The Comcast saga rumbles on

1&1 are apparently 'still working on' the Comcast problem, whatever that means. They've just e-mailed to advise us to send e-mail attachments to Comcast users by another means 'momentarily' (we presume they mean 'temporarily') - only about four days after that solution had actually occurred to us. 90% of the time they're a perfectly fine company to deal with, but when something goes wrong like this you really have to find your own solution to the problem; frankly, their technical support is neither technical nor supportive.

Statistics for August

It will probably come as no surprise to anyone who keeps track of our exploits, but our best seller for August has been Julie's BUTTERFLY HUNTER. As a result of that one highly enthusiastic review - and presumably word of mouth as well - sales have been very impressive; in fact, August 2012 has even edged out November 2011 as the most successful month since we started trading, and we've been kept very busy filling orders!

Not too busy, though, to keep track of our response times which, when crunched, averaged out at four hours and 46 minutes.

We have also learned two interesting things, which we record here for whatever value they may have:

1. Comcast seems to have our email provider, 1&1, flagged as a source of spam. We have tried repeatedly, but we can't seem to send emails with attachments to Comcast addresses - or to one particular Comcast address, anyway - although plain emails get through without difficulty. After raising support requests with our provider - and getting nowhere - we took the easy way out and got ourselves a backup account on Googlemail. Comcast, it seems, has no objection to Googlemail ...

2. A customer who had trouble making our online shop/Paypal combination work, and who had tried different browsers as we usually suggest, solved the problem by deleting her credit card from Paypal and then promptly reinstalling it - which would seem to indicate that the problem was with Paypal rather than with us. While we're sure the same thing won't necessarily work for everybody, we also thought it was a tip worth passing on. We should probably start thinking about having an FAQ/Troubleshooting page on the website, really!

New review of 'ABOVE ALL'

The first review is in on Jane Elliot's ABOVE ALL, and it's a very positive one. The reviewer at Bittersweet Reviews closes the piece with the following extremely welcome words:

I really liked the author’s style and how she managed to seamlessly blend the lighthearted moments with more darker issues. I also liked how she portrayed the unlikely romance between these two men and the lack of perfection during their most intimate moments was downright refreshing. The witty dialogue was also pure genius and a pleasure to read, so I’m definitely going to check out her other books.

Coincidence? Or is it?

We have just offered a free book to the person who placed our 500th order - who, by a bizarre coincidence, also bought the 1000th book we sold, earlier in the year. We were slightly brain-boggled by this, and then it occurred to us that when you have loyal customers this sort of thing is far more likely to happen than not, so we decided that this was probably a good moment to send another shout-out to those customers - you know who you are - who come back to us over and over again. It's always lovely to see new names on the order list, but when the same names come back time after time it makes us even more certain that we must be getting something right; therefore, we'd like to be certain that you know now - and will remember - how much we value our repeat customers and how glad we are to have you around. Whatever it is we're doing that you like, we hope to keep on doing it for the foreseeable future ... and to be marking quite a few more of these modest milestones along the way.

Thank you again, for all your loyal support; without you, this wouldn't be half as much fun as it is!

New review of 'BUTTERFLY HUNTER'

Have we mentioned lately the similarity between reviews and London buses? You wait ages and ages and there's never a glimpse of one - and then suddenly they all seem to come along at once! Guest reviewer Feliz at Jessewave seems to have enjoyed Julie's wonderful BUTTERFLY HUNTER (and, indeed, what's not to like?) and has just posted a thoroughly delightful review: This story bypassed my conscious brain and went straight to my heart, just the same way a new puppy eases into your bed despite your best intentions, and one morning you wake up to a velvety little snout nestled into the crook of your neck and you wonder how it came to be there, but at the same time you won’t even think about doing something about it because you’re much too blissfully happy to have it right there. Awwwwwww......

New review of 'BUTTERFLY HUNTER'

... aaaaand ... just when we thought our two new books were stuck in review queues, BitterSweet Reviews have delivered their verdict on Julie's BUTTERFLY HUNTER, and we have the distinct impression that they rather liked it!

Butterfly Hunter is a enchanting tale set in the Australian Outback where two lonely souls find each other and after reading it, I was left with a renewed sense of wonder at how beautiful love can be when two people destined to be together finally find each other.

We can't argue with any of that, and we wouldn't even try!

New review of 'GHOST STATION'

Intriguingly, while our new books are still languishing in various review queues, Midia at The Romance Studio has turned her attention to Adam Fitzroy's GHOST STATION. It's a short review, but it does include these words ...

What motivated me to request this book for review was the blurb. It seemed interesting and I don't read many spy thrillers so I decided to give a chance. It was the best decision I ever made.

... and what author could possibly hope for more?