David Brian's Blog, page 5

Let's all meet Behind The Bus Stop!

Apologies for posting this so late in the run-up; but they say Late is Better Than Never!

Behind The Bus Stop, which is a wine bar on the Wellingborough Road, in Northampton, will be a busy place tonight (28th January) as it is hosting a fundraising evening for Michael White.

https://en-gb.facebook.com/BehindTheB...

Michael is a 40 year old Northampton man with a fantastic cheery disposition, and an unfortunate medical history.

http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/new...

having originally suffered renal failure when he was just eleven years of age, Michael has now received three kidney transplants.
Then, eight years ago he developed Multiple Sclerosis. And yet, even with this further knock-back, his high spirits and tenacity still drove him on to lead a full and busy life, and to continue his career as a software developer; a job which involves a thirty mile round trip each day. Well done Michael!

Over the last few years Michael's mobility problems have increased greatly. It has now reached the stage where walking is becoming a major issue. But there is a potential solution to hand.

Medical professionals have developed an ankle-cuff which stimulates the nerves of the leg with electronic pulses. Michael has undergone trials, and the cuff has proven most effective. Wearing one of these cuffs on his weakest leg allows him to walk unaided, except for his walking sticks.

If Michael resided in a different Health Care catchment area, then he could well have received this device through the N.H.S.
Unfortunately, as a resident of Northampton he doesn't qualify to receive the cuff. And therefore, with the help of friends he has taken the decision to launch a fund, aimed at raising the £5000 pounds he needs.

Tonight sees the first of his fundraising events; a charity meal, raffle, auction, and live music at Behind The Bus Stop.

Among the prizes are meals in top restaurants, Signed football shirts and footballs, and of course some signed books.

I have already had a chat with Michael, and have taken the decision to donate January's royalties, from kindle and paper sales of Carmilla: The Wolves of Styria, towards his fund.

Here's hoping tonight is the beginning of a successful venture: A good cause aimed at helping a good man!

So, if anyone is in the vicinity, come along and say hello. It's going to be a fun night!

The Proofing Dilemma.

Charles O'Donnell, author of The Girlfriend Experience, shares his views on the burden of proofing a book. It is a subject which I, along with most other indie authors, can sympathize with. Numerous re-reads and edits, followed by further proofing, and then proofing some more, is probably the most arduous part of being an indie. I have a trusted team who help me on a regular basis. Three of them work as teachers, but still typos creep through the net. It is so annoying. You think you have it nailed and then something leaps off the page at you.

Though in all fairness to Charles O'Donnell, I'd have to say that his novel is one of the most professional looking indie books I have ever read. It is edited superbly. And, so far, typo free!
It is also a cracking story, and I absolutely love the cover! 

http://theindieomnibus.blogspot.co.uk...

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to All!

I'd like to send Best Wishes to everyone on Goodreads, and wish you and your loved ones a Happy Christmas and Peaceful New Year!



Thanks also to all of my friends here on Goodreads, for all of the laughs we have enjoyed over the past twelve months.

Thank you too, for all of the advice and kind words I have received in support of my writing. It is truly appreciated!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Don't forget December 10th, 2013 - is Read Tuesday - for massive savings on Indie books!

Read Tuesday, the brainchild of author Chris McMullen, will soon be here!

http://readtuesday.com/

Many, many hundreds of authors have pooled their resources and agreed to crash their book prices for one day only - that day is Read Tuesday!

Authors have created their own Black Friday type of event, but with the solitary aim of providing bargains for the book loving public.

So, if you are still on the lookout for some pre-Christmas bargains, then please consider making a gift of a book.

And if you are an author who hasn't yet signed on for Read Tuesday - then hurry, it's not too late to participate.

READ TUESDAY: Authors supporting book lovers.

Success is always relative... maybe so, but I'm still buzzing! Plus, news of another giveaway!

I would just like to take a moment to say thank you for the wonderful support I have received from my Goodreads friends!

Thank you for the positive reviews and supportive emails. Your kind words always act as inspiration for my writing.

And thank you for helping to push two of my books up the charts on Amazon UK!

Dark Albion
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #7,360 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
#4 in Books > Fiction > Horror > Anthologies
#21 in Kindle Store > Books > Fiction > Anthologies
#57 in Books > Fiction > Anthologies

Carmilla: The Wolves of Styria
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #7,029 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
#22 in Kindle Store > Books > Fiction > Fantasy > Historical
#27 in Books > Fantasy > Horror

Sure, success is relative. Nevertheless, to see both Dark Albion and Carmilla: The Wolves of Styria climbing to new, albeit modest, heights on the UK Amazon Bestsellers list... well, let's just say that it gave me a sizable buzz.

So once again, Thank you for your continued support!
It is, as ever, always appreciated!

Quick announcement of a new Goodreads Giveaway, for a chance to win a signed copy of Kaleen Rae: And Other Weird Tales.

The Giveaway begins November 29th-December 6th.
So why not add your name to the entry list, because you never know, you may just be a winner!
Good luck!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Carmilla: A Dark Fugue - free on Goodreads!

Carmilla: A Dark Fugue - is a stand alone tale of terror, which unfolds parallel to the events in Carmilla: The Wolves of Styria, and it is a story I have decided to post as a Goodreads, Halloween freebie(!).

I hope you'll enjoy the events which are about to unfold before you, and any feedback or reviews posted will, of course, be gratefully received.

If you are a fan of vampires and werewolves then read on. However, be warned. Nobody sparkles around here. We are about to go 'old school!'

Chapter 1

Excerpt from the private journal of Thomas Bennett. September 11th, 1860.

I have spent long hours pondering the facts revealed to me these past days, it is a truth only fully realized by the discovery of my old friend’s journal. Strange then, that even after all which has occurred, and even in light of these further revelations, I still refer to him as friend.

Certainly his hands are stained crimson, and I knew this already, but such deeds as these he has undertaken, did I ever truly know the man?

Even now as I stare at the weathered pages of his journal, which now lays open on my desk, placed carefully alongside my own. I wonder, did he choose to abandon the book, that the crimes contained within be better understood, or did the necessity of circumstance force uncharacteristic haste?

So many questions remain as a result of these recent horrors, and it is likely I shall never attain all the answers I would seek; however, there is one thing which does remain most likely. Should the church elders in Gratz, or the gendarmerie learn of the General’s discarded tome, then they will almost certainly seek to claim it. I sense there is a wish on their part to remove these occurrences from history, but too many wives and daughters have already been lost, and as a father myself, how could I be complicit with such a deceit?

I have therefore taken the conscious decision to transcribe the most relevant of these events onto the pages of my own journal. It is important the world remains steadfastly aware, for Satan’s minions move freely amongst us, as we in Styria have discovered to our recent great cost.

My friend’s words present as an affront to my senses, jarring at my soul, and reaching out to me from the yellowed pages of his book. However, I must move past my own scorn of this man, as it is, I feel, imperative I set down his account of the events which unfolded.

The book before me rests open on pages dated June 29th in this year of our Lord 1860.

THIS BOOK IS NOW ENLISTED IN THE KDP SELECT PROGRAM, SO I AM UNABLE TO LEAVE THE FULL STORY UP ON GOODREADS. APOLOGIES.


http://www.amazon.com/Carmilla-Wolves...

http://www.amazon.com/Carmilla-A-Dark...

Thanks for reading. And happy Halloween!

David

Gothic Press review of Carmilla: The Wolves of Styria.

Back in August I was contacted with the news that Carmilla: The Wolves of Styria would be reviewed in the November edition of Le Fanu Studies (http://www.lefanustudies.com/), an online magazine offshoot of Gary William Crawford's Gothic Press (http://www.gothlitdata.com/gothicpres...).

Le Fanu Studies (as the name suggests) is dedicated to all things J.S. Le Fanu, and therefore placed me in an interesting situation.
Would they be intrigued by my derivative reworking of a classic, a novella written by the man their journal is named after, or would they be horrified (no pun intended) by my offering?

I was told that the review was to be written by David A. Sutton, and this news too induced within me a degree of trepidation.

For those who don't know, David A. Sutton is a big name in the world of British horror. As well as being the owner of small press Shadow Publishing (http://www.shadowpublishing.webeasysi...), David has been writing genre fiction since the 1960s, and is also a highly respected editor of horror fiction.
In 1994 David received The British Fantasy Society’s ‘Special Award'. He has also received the World Fantasy Award, The International Horror Guild Award, and twelve separate British Fantasy Awards since 1978.

http://davidasutton.co.uk/index.html

Daunting enough then to have such a well respected 'name' reviewing ones work, and made even more so by the knowledge that David is 'not' a fan of derivative fiction.
I confess to having awaited his review with a degree of trepidation. Thankfully, although being upfront about the 'crunching together of different horror icons' not being to his personal taste, David nevertheless presented a very well rounded summary of Carmilla: The Wolves of Styria, and describes the book as a creditable re-creation (of Carmilla).

I can certainly take a degree of satisfaction from the kind words of such a respected literary figure.
You can read the full review by following the link below.

http://www.lefanustudies.com/wolves.html

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

The Cthulhu Child: Download free on kindle, August 27th/28th/29th

Hi, folks. Just a quick shout out to let you know that The Cthulhu Child will be free to download on Amazon's kindle device* for three days this month.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Cthulhu-Chi...

It's only a short read (less than sixty pages), so for fans of darkly twisted fiction, come and grab yourselves a free copy!
Any reviews or feedback will, as always be gratefully received.

Enjoy:)

David

*The review posted by kezwebb suggests a problem with the file (continually re-booting), but this seems to have been a problem with their device. The file downloads and plays correctly.

Vampires with bite and pages filled with frights! or August giveaways and kindle freebies!

Just a quick shout out to announce another Goodreads giveaway.

Running between August 8th/15th, this giveaway is an opportunity to win yourself a signed copy of Kaleen Rae: And Other Weird Tales.

http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sho...

So if you like vampires, witches, werewolves, ghosts and all manner of things which go bump in the night, then get your name down now!
Good luck!

As an extra bonus, for those who like their 'vampires with added bite!' Lonely Is The Night - a story which is featured within the pages of Kaleen Rae: And Other Weird Tales - will be available as a free download on Amazon/kindle, between August 8th/12th.

http://www.amazon.com/Lonely-is-the-N...

Good luck to all who enter the giveaway!
And for you kindlings out there, happy reading!

David

I taut I taw a puddy cat! or Alien big cats in the English countryside!

Okay, here goes. I have been sitting on this for some time, considering whether I should actually blog about what I witnessed, or better maybe to just keep my lips tightly sealed... at least insofar as the internet is concerned - after all, no one likes being ridiculous.

Actually, the title of this blog post is factually incorrect, because I did indeed see a cat - a bloody big cat!
But how can that be? As everyone knows, there are no big cats in the U.K. - at least not officially.

May 27th, 2013, turned out to be a day and date I will never forget. It was a Monday, and much of the country was enjoying a mini-heatwave as temperatures soared.

Ralph and I (Ralph is a two year old Staffordshire bull terrier - whose personality resonates somewhere between highly intelligent and comically dense), well, we were out walking, the sky was blue with not a cloud in sight, and as we moved in the vicinity of the Boughton Triangle the sun blistered overhead.

The Triangle, in centuries past was the scene of Boughton Fair, and more famously still was an area regularly raided by Captain Slash.
Captain Slash was the last Highwayman to be hung in Northampton, but that is a tale for another time.

But I digress, Ralph and I moved out towards the point of the triangle, and as we made our way through fields of golden rapeseed and on towards the mound, Ralph continued to lead the way.
I noticed his body had tensed, his head now held high, nose sniffing for a scent in the slight breeze.
I assumed he had caught a whiff of rabbit, as I'd already noticed a number of them scrambling away as they spied our approach.
But then a sizable animal broke from cover!

Fifty meters in front of us the cat chose to move free from concealment, moving at pace diagonally away from us. It was probably 4ft long (maybe longer?), a height of well over 2ft, and a coat of grey-reddish-brown was marked with darker (black?)lines.
It produced in Ralph, who, because of the lie of the land, could not actually see the animal, a most odd reaction.

Now, normally, if my dog ever chases a fox to ground, he will produce a howl which he repeats over, each call being in bursts of three at a time.
He does this until he realizes 'I ain't coming to check it out' at which point he gives up.
Ralph couldn't catch a cold!

On this day he howled repeatedly as he set off in pursuit. Thankfully I have him trained for good recall - because the cat was a whole lot bigger than him!

People have asked me why I didn't take a photo, but It all happened so fast.
But it was a cat - to be more precise I believe it to have been a lynx.

Bizarrely, over the last several years there have been plenty of big cat sightings where I live, but these have usually involved a puma or panther type creature.
I based my own assessment on the coloring, and also on the lack of a lengthy tail.

It turns out that over the years there have been numerous sightings, and even cats captured and killed in the U.K. - always being explained away as escapees from private collections.

Having looked into it I believe there are breeding populations here. In the last twelve years there have been at least four lynx captured in the north of London alone, and each time explained as escapees, although the owners are never traced.
Of course, if D.E.F.R.A. were ever to admit these animals were here then action would have to be taken to eradicate the (perceived) problem.
So perhaps best that they continue to deny the obvious.

Check out these links (No Pun)if this topic interests you.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/artic...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknew...

http://www.britishbigcats.org/evidenc...

http://news.sky.com/story/1082804/can...

http://www.gazetteherald.co.uk/indept...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/lincolnshire/con...

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/...