C.P. Moore's Blog, page 3
April 23, 2012
Free weekend - the aftermath
This morning marks the end of my free promotion weekend on Amazon. For those who haven't stumbled onto my last entry, I set my novel Secret of the Nexus up for free for two days to increase the readership.
Prior to the free promo, the book was priced at £1.97 ($2.99) and had sold 16 copies so far in April (and around 30 in March). Free promo weekend saw downloads of 250 in the UK, 4 in Germany, and 550 in the US. I guess it just goes to show the price people are willing to pay to take a chance on something - zero.
I'm fine with that outcome. The idea of sacrificing some royalties for a couple of days was to draw in those people who love to read, but that are all too aware of the thousands of self-published e-books available on Amazon that are just plain terrible. The risk one runs of looking for a kindle book nowadays is that it's almost too easy for anyone to put their book out there with very little oversight. Of course that's pretty much what I've done. By choosing to attempt to self-publish due to the restrictions of submitting to an agent, I've entered that world of amateurs who might think they know what they're doing, but are instead potentially comparable to 80% of the candidates for X-Factor who auditioned because their friends and family showered them with faux-praise about their lack of talent because they love them and didn't want to shatter their dreams.
Now, I'm not saying I've deluded myself into thinking I'm not one of them, and I certainly take all comments and compliments from friends and family with a pinch of salt (although I'm told my father in law would not power through a book if he didn't like it, even if it were mine, so maybe I'm doing good there). But not only is fiction writing not the first form of publication from me since school essays, but I have submitted to several agents, and am part of several online writing communities whose purpose it is to read samples of work from other authors and tell them what you really think.
I've mentioned Authonomy before (I'm currently only 720 places from the top spot and at least a real read by Harper Collins editorial board, having moved up 4000 places in the space of three weeks), and its places like these that are crucial to separating those who are serious about putting out good work, whatever the motivation, from those who just want to say they've published or have a book and make money off an industry they foolishly believe is easy to get rich in.
So losing out on the royalties of hundreds of downloads by putting it out for free for a time might sound a little daft. But I'm not in this for the money (though I'm no fool, I would take a deal in a heartbeat if it would supplement my income), and increased readership could well lead to increased exposure, recommendations to friends from those who read it for free, and reviews appearing on Amazon. Reviews are kind of the end goal of the free promo; because when I go shopping online I punch in the keyword, then select the category, then either first narrow by price, or immediately refine the search to only those with 4 star reviews or better. And wouldn't you know it - late Saturday evening my fist review pops up! And a 4 star at that! Exactly what I was looking for. Five stars would look dodgy, or like someone I know wrote it. This is something I've actively discouraged as I've chosen not to buy numerous e-books on Amazon due to the fact that despite it obviously being self published (no publisher listed) and therefore a potential risk, but that they have around a half dozen reviews that are all 5 star glowing or praise the author specifically. No customer review of the work of an established author really praises the author themselves, bar a brief mention of their name. No, 4 stars is just fine for me thank you. Not least because at this stage, unless I'm an unknowing prodigy, I'm not up there with the likes of my favourite authors with bestsellers and actual representation behind them. To have a slew of 5 stars when Jonathan Kellerman is averaging 4 for his latest novel is just ridiculous and the reviews would have to be considered suspect.
So has the promo paid off? It's early days, but, much like me continuing to wrote this blog despite only a dozen views or so a week, exposure can only be good. And the classic "and they tell five friends" can only come about if the friend of those five friends saw this blog, read my tweets, or stumbled onto my book by filtering their search to 4 stars and above.
Prior to the free promo, the book was priced at £1.97 ($2.99) and had sold 16 copies so far in April (and around 30 in March). Free promo weekend saw downloads of 250 in the UK, 4 in Germany, and 550 in the US. I guess it just goes to show the price people are willing to pay to take a chance on something - zero.
I'm fine with that outcome. The idea of sacrificing some royalties for a couple of days was to draw in those people who love to read, but that are all too aware of the thousands of self-published e-books available on Amazon that are just plain terrible. The risk one runs of looking for a kindle book nowadays is that it's almost too easy for anyone to put their book out there with very little oversight. Of course that's pretty much what I've done. By choosing to attempt to self-publish due to the restrictions of submitting to an agent, I've entered that world of amateurs who might think they know what they're doing, but are instead potentially comparable to 80% of the candidates for X-Factor who auditioned because their friends and family showered them with faux-praise about their lack of talent because they love them and didn't want to shatter their dreams.
Now, I'm not saying I've deluded myself into thinking I'm not one of them, and I certainly take all comments and compliments from friends and family with a pinch of salt (although I'm told my father in law would not power through a book if he didn't like it, even if it were mine, so maybe I'm doing good there). But not only is fiction writing not the first form of publication from me since school essays, but I have submitted to several agents, and am part of several online writing communities whose purpose it is to read samples of work from other authors and tell them what you really think.
I've mentioned Authonomy before (I'm currently only 720 places from the top spot and at least a real read by Harper Collins editorial board, having moved up 4000 places in the space of three weeks), and its places like these that are crucial to separating those who are serious about putting out good work, whatever the motivation, from those who just want to say they've published or have a book and make money off an industry they foolishly believe is easy to get rich in.
So losing out on the royalties of hundreds of downloads by putting it out for free for a time might sound a little daft. But I'm not in this for the money (though I'm no fool, I would take a deal in a heartbeat if it would supplement my income), and increased readership could well lead to increased exposure, recommendations to friends from those who read it for free, and reviews appearing on Amazon. Reviews are kind of the end goal of the free promo; because when I go shopping online I punch in the keyword, then select the category, then either first narrow by price, or immediately refine the search to only those with 4 star reviews or better. And wouldn't you know it - late Saturday evening my fist review pops up! And a 4 star at that! Exactly what I was looking for. Five stars would look dodgy, or like someone I know wrote it. This is something I've actively discouraged as I've chosen not to buy numerous e-books on Amazon due to the fact that despite it obviously being self published (no publisher listed) and therefore a potential risk, but that they have around a half dozen reviews that are all 5 star glowing or praise the author specifically. No customer review of the work of an established author really praises the author themselves, bar a brief mention of their name. No, 4 stars is just fine for me thank you. Not least because at this stage, unless I'm an unknowing prodigy, I'm not up there with the likes of my favourite authors with bestsellers and actual representation behind them. To have a slew of 5 stars when Jonathan Kellerman is averaging 4 for his latest novel is just ridiculous and the reviews would have to be considered suspect.
So has the promo paid off? It's early days, but, much like me continuing to wrote this blog despite only a dozen views or so a week, exposure can only be good. And the classic "and they tell five friends" can only come about if the friend of those five friends saw this blog, read my tweets, or stumbled onto my book by filtering their search to 4 stars and above.
April 18, 2012
Free Nexus Weekend
Secret of the Nexus will be free to download on Amazon this Saturday and Sunday. Just click on the link or the image to be taken to a place where you can immerse yourself in the adventure faced by Greg Cross, and hopefully want to tell all your friends about it afterwards (and maybe an agent or two -- shhh...)
Secret of the Nexus Weekend
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Secret of the Nexus Weekend
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April 13, 2012
Secret of the Nexus - free sample!
Rather a simple entry this time - the first 50 pages of my novel to read and enjoy, then go to amazon and buy the rest!
PDF to follow
April 6, 2012
Story arcs
I'm on a long coach ride back from Milford Sound in the south island of New Zealand. It's dark now, so tricky reading my kindle (and I need to download another book when we get back to some free wifi anyway), and the time spent unsuccessfully trying to nap has got me thinking about what to do about my next book.
The question is: how to continue my previous one as the second part of a series without ending it too similarly in order to ensure a continuance of the overall story into a third and final book? Actually the better question is whether to start a second book at all. My first is only available on Kindle, yet to get a review to become more "findable", has only sold about 20 copies in its first month, and I'm still hoping kindle sales and the very positive feedback on Authonomy will someday lead to an agent and a print version (honestly, I didn't set out to get so absorbed in promoting my work and fighting to get it on non-digital bookshelves).
But I digress. Supposing I do start writing a second book for the same reason as I did the first - that I had an idea I wanted to give some life (and some legs) to. How far should I take it? Do I dare step further towards the realms of sci-fi by revealing more of the "magical" side to the backstory I have rolling around my imagination? Or do I keep one foot and a couple of toes firmly in the real world by hinting at the fantastical and limiting the sci-fi to our hero's emerging abilities?
There must come a point, surely, when I'm going to have to let the genie out the bottle and reveal all with where I've been going with all this. But how early do I reveal the entrance to the rabbit hole, and how far down it do I take the reader in the second of three (or indeed the third)?
I'm sure feedback on the whole novel (as material uploaded to Authonomy is free, I've only included the first 20k words or so) will help guide me, and let me know if I was on the right track with the right balance and mixture. But I guess until then, I may have to let the basic plot for the second part of my "Order of the Nexus" arc continue to bubble away, uncomitted to screen for a while.
As always, and with the hope of some back ansd forth; what say you?
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March 28, 2012
Road trip!
Very brief entry today; not least because I'm doing it on the tiny keyboard of my smartphone. But mainly because for the next 2 1/2 weeks I'm in NZ with my wife.
Anyway, plenty of time while driving around to think of ways to market my book better. Seems to be doing well on Authonomy, with plenty of sample reads and good feedback. But sales on Amazon have gone right down. Definitely need a review up there to make it more visible and generate interest.
So today's blog is more of a plea than a tale - if you're one of the people who've bought Secret of the Nexus and found me here at blogger, please review it on Amazon if you liked it, our even let me know here if you didn't, and why.
Maybe as a blog is supposed to be a log, I'll start tracking my journey around Kiwiland... Hmmm, good idea
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March 22, 2012
Navigating the authoring community
It's been about a week now since I put my book up on Amazon for Kindle. The sales have started to tail off a bit now it seems, though I'm sure its first review will make it more visible to general Amazon hunters, hopefully leading to an increase in interest. At the moment the grand total is 12 copies, though two have been in the States and one in Spain, so I at least know those weren't family or friends.
So now I've started trying to learn about some of the other methods of getting your work seen (and more importantly, given feedback). The main one of these seems to be to join one of the writing communities out there. I've found a couple of great ones so far, both of which offer a lot of advice, and stories of success and failure. These are www.Litopia.com, and www.authonomy.com. Authonomy seems to be the best so far for taking what you've worked on and getting something back from it. Litopia is definitely more of a hints and tips for the process of writing your book in the first place, as in order to be able to upload it to get other writer's opinions, you have to have posted several hundred times and risen up the ranks of membership. I get the feeling many of the members are very experienced in the traditional publishing route and indeed seem to encourage wariness towards e-publishing or self-publishing, to a degree.
Authonomy on the other hand is where you stand a chance of cutting out the middle man - the literary agent (who is incredible difficult to get in the first place) - because it's run by a major publishing house. The idea there is to submit your work (or a piece of it at least) and just leave it out there for other members to read, review, and comment. The more members "bookshelves" your work makes it to, and the better rating members give it, the better your ranking.
And here's the genius part: The top 5 in the rankings each month get sent to an actual editorial board at Harper Collins for serious consideration for approaching the author for something more! And what's great about the "sampling" method of reading the members do, is that they can leave comments on what they thought of it, hints for changes, things they liked.
However, because of course we're all there to get our stuff read, ranked, and win the grand prize, it's very much a "read my book" environment. I have no problem with this, and of course will mention my work wherever I can. But as a new member you do tend to get inundated with private messages asking you to read theirs if they read yours. This is fine, and I will indeed have a nose around and pick out some samples that intrigue me by their description and (possibly) cover. But there is an implied etiquette towards this personal introduction message, in that I feel obligated to read a work that may not actually be exactly my genre (just because my book has a sci-fi element doesn't mean I want to read about aliens, for instance). I don't want to hurt my fellow writers by not reading their work, or by not giving it a fair shake if I find the first chapter not quite my cup of tea. But likewise I fear the repercussions of not doing so may result in a less than favourable review of my own.
So how to best navigate these choppy waters of the writing community? Do you accept every friend request, and read request? Do you "up" someone's work by supporting it without fully enjoying it simply because they liked yours? Did they even like mine, or are the positive comments that are quickly followed by "and please read mine" more a means to increase rankings than actually help your fellow author? I'm all for quid pro quo, and I do want to read lots of examples of work by people out there in the same boat as me (unintentionally continuing the analogy there), but I also don't want to hurt people by not being bowled over by their work - which is daft really as although I would hate to discover my book shook no one's literary world, I also don't want to put the idea in someone's head that their work gripped me when in fact it did not.
Small successes and small failures could well be seen as the means to true improvement, without the risk of ego.
So now I've started trying to learn about some of the other methods of getting your work seen (and more importantly, given feedback). The main one of these seems to be to join one of the writing communities out there. I've found a couple of great ones so far, both of which offer a lot of advice, and stories of success and failure. These are www.Litopia.com, and www.authonomy.com. Authonomy seems to be the best so far for taking what you've worked on and getting something back from it. Litopia is definitely more of a hints and tips for the process of writing your book in the first place, as in order to be able to upload it to get other writer's opinions, you have to have posted several hundred times and risen up the ranks of membership. I get the feeling many of the members are very experienced in the traditional publishing route and indeed seem to encourage wariness towards e-publishing or self-publishing, to a degree.
Authonomy on the other hand is where you stand a chance of cutting out the middle man - the literary agent (who is incredible difficult to get in the first place) - because it's run by a major publishing house. The idea there is to submit your work (or a piece of it at least) and just leave it out there for other members to read, review, and comment. The more members "bookshelves" your work makes it to, and the better rating members give it, the better your ranking.
And here's the genius part: The top 5 in the rankings each month get sent to an actual editorial board at Harper Collins for serious consideration for approaching the author for something more! And what's great about the "sampling" method of reading the members do, is that they can leave comments on what they thought of it, hints for changes, things they liked.
However, because of course we're all there to get our stuff read, ranked, and win the grand prize, it's very much a "read my book" environment. I have no problem with this, and of course will mention my work wherever I can. But as a new member you do tend to get inundated with private messages asking you to read theirs if they read yours. This is fine, and I will indeed have a nose around and pick out some samples that intrigue me by their description and (possibly) cover. But there is an implied etiquette towards this personal introduction message, in that I feel obligated to read a work that may not actually be exactly my genre (just because my book has a sci-fi element doesn't mean I want to read about aliens, for instance). I don't want to hurt my fellow writers by not reading their work, or by not giving it a fair shake if I find the first chapter not quite my cup of tea. But likewise I fear the repercussions of not doing so may result in a less than favourable review of my own.
So how to best navigate these choppy waters of the writing community? Do you accept every friend request, and read request? Do you "up" someone's work by supporting it without fully enjoying it simply because they liked yours? Did they even like mine, or are the positive comments that are quickly followed by "and please read mine" more a means to increase rankings than actually help your fellow author? I'm all for quid pro quo, and I do want to read lots of examples of work by people out there in the same boat as me (unintentionally continuing the analogy there), but I also don't want to hurt people by not being bowled over by their work - which is daft really as although I would hate to discover my book shook no one's literary world, I also don't want to put the idea in someone's head that their work gripped me when in fact it did not.
Small successes and small failures could well be seen as the means to true improvement, without the risk of ego.
March 19, 2012
Team ups in fiction - hot or not?
I was chatting with my brother yesterday about the clichés that often come up in fiction. One of his biggest pet peeves appears to be the classic pairing of the main male and female characters in most thrillers and adventure novels. Not that he has a problem with male/female team ups. It's actually that he finds it tiresome, almost irritating, to be reading a book and get to the point of introducing the main female character (who more often than not will be partnered up with or otherwise forced into working with the main male character - or vice versa) only to find that she is, of course, attractive.
We argued the point, with me not having a problem with it based on the nature of the business female protagonists find themselves working in most action thrillers requiring a high level of fitness thereby making it perfectly plausible that they would have athletic physiques. But he pointed out that this doesn't mean they automatically have to have the face of a covergirl as well.
Personally I don't think this should hurt sales of a book, or the reader's enjoyment. But I suppose it can be a bit of a cliché, and therefore I wondered what the voices out there think? There are exceptions to the need/expectation of an attractive female partner/leader: in books that have small town medical examiners for instance, there might not be a need for her to be a smouldering 35 year old who doesn't realise she's smouldering. And even in the case of the "brilliant" linguists, criminal psychologists, and archaeologists who might not technically need to have military training or spend half their lives dodging gunfire, do we really need them to be hot as hell?
So if you've found me and want to weigh in, please: Is it a bad thing to have your primary female characters in an action adventure/thriller novel be attractive, even if there is no intention to have your primary male character end up with her? Or, despite it's clichéd status, is it something you enjoy in your escapism, and expect as much as you expect partnerships on TV to generally have to good looking people play them?
We argued the point, with me not having a problem with it based on the nature of the business female protagonists find themselves working in most action thrillers requiring a high level of fitness thereby making it perfectly plausible that they would have athletic physiques. But he pointed out that this doesn't mean they automatically have to have the face of a covergirl as well.
Personally I don't think this should hurt sales of a book, or the reader's enjoyment. But I suppose it can be a bit of a cliché, and therefore I wondered what the voices out there think? There are exceptions to the need/expectation of an attractive female partner/leader: in books that have small town medical examiners for instance, there might not be a need for her to be a smouldering 35 year old who doesn't realise she's smouldering. And even in the case of the "brilliant" linguists, criminal psychologists, and archaeologists who might not technically need to have military training or spend half their lives dodging gunfire, do we really need them to be hot as hell?
So if you've found me and want to weigh in, please: Is it a bad thing to have your primary female characters in an action adventure/thriller novel be attractive, even if there is no intention to have your primary male character end up with her? Or, despite it's clichéd status, is it something you enjoy in your escapism, and expect as much as you expect partnerships on TV to generally have to good looking people play them?
March 15, 2012
Putting it out there
Day three of having sent my new book out into the big wide (and often well hidden) world of digital publishing. So many questions about marketing and promotion: How do you make it more visible? How do you tweet effectively? Should I try physical posters locally?
I had a nice flurry of congratulations and "likes" across facebook from friends and family - but how to get it further? I'd like it if I were able to use the monster machine that is my workplace; a university should have something useful help promote don't you think? But short of sending a university-wide e-mail advertising my untested and virgin first novel, I can't think of anything that might help. Of course you also have to think about things like how often do you actually look at staff noticeboards in work? And even if you do, just how often do you rip that little tab off the advert for a cheap sofa, or note down the number of that fitness instructor promising SAS like results on your chubby midriff?
No, I'm not sure an A4 poster, no matter how lovingly and cleverly crafted it is, is going to have much of an impact. But how else do you get seen and heard amongst the (as of five minutes ago) 16,000 other kindle books beating me on Amazon?
I had a nice flurry of congratulations and "likes" across facebook from friends and family - but how to get it further? I'd like it if I were able to use the monster machine that is my workplace; a university should have something useful help promote don't you think? But short of sending a university-wide e-mail advertising my untested and virgin first novel, I can't think of anything that might help. Of course you also have to think about things like how often do you actually look at staff noticeboards in work? And even if you do, just how often do you rip that little tab off the advert for a cheap sofa, or note down the number of that fitness instructor promising SAS like results on your chubby midriff?
No, I'm not sure an A4 poster, no matter how lovingly and cleverly crafted it is, is going to have much of an impact. But how else do you get seen and heard amongst the (as of five minutes ago) 16,000 other kindle books beating me on Amazon?
March 13, 2012
Secret of the Nexus
Well, this would be my first blog, and my first book. I don't often find there's much I want to express an opinion about on the internet - with the exception of the obvious anonymous posts on boards that I'm passionate about. I post the odd review (both good and bad) about books I've read, films I've seen, and places I've been. But I've never really leapt full blown into the world of Blog following, Tweeting, or using Facebook for more than surreptitiously keeping up to date on how infrequently seen friends are getting on, and the occasional status update when the inconsequential thing I've just done just has to be blurted to the world (or at least whichever friends continue to allow my movements to appear on their newsfeed).
However, with the completion of my first novel, I find myself drawn to putting the word out there as best I can and hoping that it spreads. It started out as simply an idea I couldn't get out of my head and so started to put down on paper. But the more I put down, the more the ideas of expansion came. And the more I expanded it and let friends and family know about it, the more they encouraged me to do something with it. My wife had bits read to her every night to see what she thought, and though inevitably she would eventually fall asleep, the very next evening she would ask me to pick up where she dropped off.
So here it is: Secret of the Nexus - available on Amazon £1.95
But what if the truth were something in between?
This is the reality that master thief Greg Cross now finds himself facing. What started out as a simple job for a trusted associate has quickly spiralled into a race to uncover secrets hidden since the dawn of civilisation. A race between those who seek the truth in order to take the next step in mankind's destiny, and those who wish to claim it for their own and use it to rebuild an empire lost to them millennia ago. It is a mission that Greg cannot deny his role in; because he now possesses an ancient power that is the key to unlocking the secret of the Nexus.
Allied with those who have fought all their lives to find and protect the truth, Greg must now learn to accept what he has become if he is to master it and survive the trials to come. For although he now embodies a potential seen in man long ago, his is not the only secret of the past to have resurfaced... "
My fiction of choice for the last ten years, has been that of the archaeological adventure/thriller, and as I read more novels of this type I began to see an increasing trend in examples of work that step delicately into aspects of history and myth that could be considered fantastical, or at the least difficult to explain in conventional scientific terms.
I have always enjoyed the concept of our understanding of the basis of the universe perhaps opening the door to greater possibilities that one would ordinarily relegate to magic or myth, whether from the perspective of fiction, or interpretation in history. In that vein, I decided to attempt to marry the ideas and beliefs that civilisations of ancient and pre-history used to explain the world around them, with modern fictional applications of heroism, quests to uncover secrets of our past, struggles with one's character, and the idea that because of our over reliance on logic and strict adherence to the scientific laws we have laid down, we are reluctant to accept anything beyond what we can measure. I chose the religious beliefs of the Sumerians of Mesopotamia as the foundation of the archaeological pursuit due to their strides in written language and development of technology never before seen, and in many cases lost for centuries after. Their belief system has roots in so many of the later religions, fables and legends, that it makes the perfect starting point for asking the question of what really happened all those millennia ago that so much of it survived in so many places, when other ideas became lost to time.
The result is a story that throws the lead character, Greg Cross, into an arena of which he has no experience, and struggles to comprehend. A man of moderate scientific knowledge, he feels and expresses a fear and disbelief at that which is happening all around him, much like many of us do when watching shows that throw everyday people into fantastic situations but accept them far more readily than reality would suggest.
So click the link, try the sample, buy the rest, and pass the word around. I'm not entirely sure how to even get this blog more "out there" to give this work the best chance it can, neyond the link on my facebook page and the greatest will in the world - but if this blog should fall into your metaphorical lap, please do spread it about.
However, with the completion of my first novel, I find myself drawn to putting the word out there as best I can and hoping that it spreads. It started out as simply an idea I couldn't get out of my head and so started to put down on paper. But the more I put down, the more the ideas of expansion came. And the more I expanded it and let friends and family know about it, the more they encouraged me to do something with it. My wife had bits read to her every night to see what she thought, and though inevitably she would eventually fall asleep, the very next evening she would ask me to pick up where she dropped off.
So here it is: Secret of the Nexus - available on Amazon £1.95
"Myth tells us that the cradle of civilisation was created and nurtured by the gods. History tells us that mankind developed along its own path, and that many ancient kings believed themselves to be gods and were revered as such.
But what if the truth were something in between?
This is the reality that master thief Greg Cross now finds himself facing. What started out as a simple job for a trusted associate has quickly spiralled into a race to uncover secrets hidden since the dawn of civilisation. A race between those who seek the truth in order to take the next step in mankind's destiny, and those who wish to claim it for their own and use it to rebuild an empire lost to them millennia ago. It is a mission that Greg cannot deny his role in; because he now possesses an ancient power that is the key to unlocking the secret of the Nexus.
Allied with those who have fought all their lives to find and protect the truth, Greg must now learn to accept what he has become if he is to master it and survive the trials to come. For although he now embodies a potential seen in man long ago, his is not the only secret of the past to have resurfaced... "
My fiction of choice for the last ten years, has been that of the archaeological adventure/thriller, and as I read more novels of this type I began to see an increasing trend in examples of work that step delicately into aspects of history and myth that could be considered fantastical, or at the least difficult to explain in conventional scientific terms.
I have always enjoyed the concept of our understanding of the basis of the universe perhaps opening the door to greater possibilities that one would ordinarily relegate to magic or myth, whether from the perspective of fiction, or interpretation in history. In that vein, I decided to attempt to marry the ideas and beliefs that civilisations of ancient and pre-history used to explain the world around them, with modern fictional applications of heroism, quests to uncover secrets of our past, struggles with one's character, and the idea that because of our over reliance on logic and strict adherence to the scientific laws we have laid down, we are reluctant to accept anything beyond what we can measure. I chose the religious beliefs of the Sumerians of Mesopotamia as the foundation of the archaeological pursuit due to their strides in written language and development of technology never before seen, and in many cases lost for centuries after. Their belief system has roots in so many of the later religions, fables and legends, that it makes the perfect starting point for asking the question of what really happened all those millennia ago that so much of it survived in so many places, when other ideas became lost to time.
The result is a story that throws the lead character, Greg Cross, into an arena of which he has no experience, and struggles to comprehend. A man of moderate scientific knowledge, he feels and expresses a fear and disbelief at that which is happening all around him, much like many of us do when watching shows that throw everyday people into fantastic situations but accept them far more readily than reality would suggest.
So click the link, try the sample, buy the rest, and pass the word around. I'm not entirely sure how to even get this blog more "out there" to give this work the best chance it can, neyond the link on my facebook page and the greatest will in the world - but if this blog should fall into your metaphorical lap, please do spread it about.
