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This is Keith Carter’s blog, an erratic trail of posts since 2012. A more focused site for me as an author and my first novel, The Umbrella Men, is to be found by clicking here:

Trying to be Millennial (and failing)

I have built a new website, for the book – The Umbrella Men (https://theumbrellamen.com).  To achieve the connection between All Plain Sailing and The Umbrella Men, and to widen the audience further, I engaged the assistance of MailChimp, a dodgy-looking fellow who promised much. 

He would, he assured me, establish contacts of great and robust closeness with my ‘target audience’.  Driven by the venal desire to sell more books, I – not without some trepidation – allowed him access to my contacts file. 

What a disaster!  Swept along by Mr Chimp I optimistically clicked ‘send’ on a laboriously crafted email.  With the lightning speed of a nugget of AI,  Mr Chimp informed me that I should ‘reconfirm’ the recipient list. He invited me to compose another email (which seemed to me to be rather contradictory – if this new email was acceptable, why not the first?).  I did this, and – with some dread – clicked ‘send’ again. 

As I write, Mr Chimp is at work bothering everyone in my contacts file with an email looking nothing like either of the ones I wrote. Headed ‘GENERITECH’.  Now, Mr Chimp claims some expertise in this arena, whereas I (as you have doubtless concluded by now) am a blithering idiot. But even for me, if in receipt of an email headed GENERITECH, my most likely response is to delete it.

I rather hope they do. Without noticing that it was from me.