Alex Beecroft's Blog, page 3

Happy New Year to all

Guess who got a year’s subscription to Photoshop as a Christmas present

What book of mine would you most like for free?

Photo by David Iskander on Unsplash

In keeping with the re-vamping of every single thing that is going on in my life as an author, it finally occurred to me that at the end of my books I offer people the chance to sign up for my newsletter in exchange for 4 free books. This is all well and good, but one of those books is Lioness of Cygnus Five, which is now not an Alex Beecroft book at all.

People who want Lioness probably want SF/F and therefore probably ought to be signing up to Alex Oliver’s newsletter, not mine. I need to replace Lioness in my offer with an actual mm romance book.

So, my question is, out of my self-published books – which is now everything except False Colors, By Honor Betrayed, His Heart’s Obsession, Foxglove Copse and Contraband Hearts – which book would you most like to have for free? Which book (if any) would tempt you to sign on for the newsletter?

If I had to guess, I would go with Blue Eyed Stranger, because a lot of people are reading Trowchester Blues, and would probably appreciate getting to try the next book in the series for free, but I’m not hugely good at guessing what readers really want – that’s why I’m getting into the habit of asking

Contraband Hearts named one of the top 11 mm romances

How cool is this? https://wiki.ezvid.com/m/OLuxM0gLspvj9 Contraband Hearts joins books by ZA Maxfield and JL Merrow on this list of top 11 mm romances.

The vid at the top is narrated by a strange robot voice which pronounces slavers (people who take slaves) as slavers (drools a lot), and the actors they’ve got for Perry and Tomas would not have been my first choice, but that’s just me being curmdgeonly.

I’m actually delighted by the whole thing. There are actors playing Perry and Tomas for a start! That’s more than I’ve ever had for a book of mine before. It’s worth watching just for that

Yet more cover art changes

Did I say I’m sprucing up my backlist? I feel sure you must have noticed that by now

I bought “How to Write A Sizzling Synopsis” by Bryan Cohe...

I bought “How to Write A Sizzling Synopsis” by Bryan Cohen recently and read it yesterday at a coffee shop, where I had gone because I felt too ill to actually go into the gym even though I’d come into town to do just that.

It’s quite a short book, with large text, and normally I come out of these ‘how to’ writing books with the feeling that I’ve had maybe one sentence-worth of good advice after having read 100 pages of blather. But this one is really good, and I think quite worthwhile. I’ve taken on board most of its suggestions and re-written some of my book blurbs, in the hope that more people will be moved to buy my books. For example:

Under the Hill

Old Blurb

Voted Best multicultural fantasy of 2013 by the Swirl Awards, and now presented in one volume, Under the Hill is a contemporary fantasy adventure story featuring dragons, elves and world war two fighter planes.

Targeted for abduction by the Faerie Queen, Ben Chaudhry reluctantly turns to Chris Gatrell and his eccentric Paranormal Defence Agency for help.

But it’s hard to keep anything out of the snatching hands of determined elves. Chris himself was abducted from his own time – shot down in WWII, and shot forward seventy years in time, stranded far from his wartime sweetheart Geoff and his Lancaster bomber crew.

When the inevitable happens and Ben is abducted, he finds himself a major player in a game of elven politics that may lead to the invasion of Britain.

Chris has to convince the police he didn’t just murder Ben and hide the body. Determined not to lose another sweetheart to the elves’ treachery, he presses the ghosts of his old crew back into action for a rescue attempt.

But Geoff isn’t dead at all – he’s been on ice in Elfland all this time. Now he has a dragon and he’s not afraid to use it. If only he could be entirely sure which of the elf queens is the real enemy—the one whose army is poised to take back planet Earth for elf-kind.

In the cataclysmic battle to come, more than one lover—human and elf alike—may forced to make the ultimate sacrifice.

~

New Blurb

The fairies at the bottom of the garden are coming back with an army.

Ben is a modern, sceptical man but the fairies are trying to abduct him. When he hires Chris’s paranormal defence agency to protect him, he doesn’t expect to fall in love.

Chris is a refugee from his own time. He’s lost one lover to the elves already. Terrified, but determined that this time he’ll do better, he promises Ben that the elves will get him over his dead body.

If only that wasn’t looking so likely.

Under The Hill was voted Best Multicultural Fantasy 2013 in the mm romance Swirl Awards. Previously presented in two books, this new edition has the whole story in one volume. If you love KJ Charles’ Green Men and Magpie Lord books, you’ll love this.

Buy Under The Hill now and prepare to be enchanted.

~*~*~

Basically the advice was to simplify everything, focus on the characters, cut as much as you possibly could cut and include a clear call to action at the end. And considering that Amazon now only gives you about 200 words above the cut, you’ve really got no space to work with. Making it short is the way to go. What do you think?

Amazing SF/F novel sale bundle

Check out this fantastic bundle of SF/F titles available for 99c over December!

https://storyoriginapp.com/…/1ed7f546-d6d5-11e8-81e3-4b0367…

My Witch’s Boy is one of them, but there are thirty-four other books to choose from! Yes, you heard that right! THIRTY-FIVE sf/f books to choose from. You could buy five books for the price of a coffee

Must the sins of the father be passed down to the sons?

Peasant boy Oswy, sold to witch-lord Sulien FitzGuimar, thinks he’s destined to be carved into spell ingredients. Yet behind Sulien lurks someone even worse – his old master, Tancred, now the king’s mage.

When Tancred stages a coup, dragging the elves into his Empire-building plans, the woman he has set his sights on as a bride – aspiring nun, Adela – sets out to find someone to oppose him. But dark magic is addictive and hard to escape. With all their lives in peril, the fate of the world may balance on Sulien’s traumatized soul.

Writing Resumes

So… Anyone who read my blog in the summer will have seen me going through something of an existential crisis. I’m happy to report that (in so far as these things ever go away) it has receded and now I actually have A PLAN.

I’ve established my three pen names, and they all have websites and at least a few books out. They probably won’t all be blogging, given how hard I find it to keep up even one blog. But I’m converted to the usefulness of Facebook, and you can find me over there on my page:

https://www.facebook.com/AlexBeecroft...

After much soul searching, I’ve decided that I haven’t really given this self-published author thing enough of a try. I’ve only been doing it full time since April, and half of that time has been taken up in reorganizing everything and then writing and publishing Murder of A Working Ghost. It’s time to give it a good go now I AM re-organized.

Yesterday I took a good look at which of my books people were liking the best (measured by which ones people are buying,) and decided that I would give people more of what they want. No more of this artistic “I’m going to write whatever I want to and people will have to put up with it.”

I’m currently writing a space opera with an asexual main character. That’s currently called Curiosity and is planned as a series for my SF/F side, Alex Oliver. When that’s done (which I hope will be before Christmas,) I’ll start on another Alex Beecroft book.

I promised my Newsletter folks that I would do both a Trowchester novel and a new Age of Sail novel, so that’s what I’ve got planned:

Finish writing Curiosity #1
Write Trowchester #4
Edit Curiosity #1
Write a third Dancing Detective book.
Edit Trowchester #4
Write Curiosity #2
Edit DD #3
Write another Age of Sail book
Edit Curiosity #2
Edit the AoS book

After which I will stop and see what things look like again. I know a lot of people joined up with me because they loved the Age of Sail books, and I might make the next AoS book the beginning of a series.

I’m currently writing 3000 words a day, which means that (illness and family crises aside) I can finish a 75K book in a month. But editing takes at least a half to a whole other month, and I need to work some time in here for:

researching and planning all these books
learning how to use Amazon Ads and Facebook Ads in a way that actually makes me money rather than losing it.
making cover art, formatting, uploading, making graphics, blogging, sending newsletters, getting involved in promotion etc…

So, realistically we’re looking at a new Trowchester book in early summer 2019 and a new Age of Sail book in winter 2019. But watch this spot because I may decide to shuffle round the order depending on how things are going.

It’s nice to have a plan!

Grab your free Asexual detective novel now.

Murder of a Working Ghost is currently at #27 in all the Kindle store, at #1 in “Traditional Detectives,” and #2 in “Cozy mysteries.”

If only that was in the paid lists, but alas, I put it on free for a week to try to boost its visibility. In that, it absolutely seems to have worked!

It was downloaded by 4,250 people yesterday. I really hope at least some of them leave me reviews

Sprucing up the cover of Under The Hill

You may have noticed there’s a lot of reorganization going on at the moment. Having now become an almost entirely indie-published author I’m trying to get my backlist into order. When I first put out the new versions of my Samhain books, I was doing it as fast as possible, just to keep them out there, but now I have time to give them the love they deserve.

To that end, I’m thinking that everyone hates getting half the story and then having to pay for the second half, so I may retire Under the Hill: Bomber’s Moon and Under the Hill: Dogfighters in favour of promoting the full story, just called Under the Hill.

In my previous version of the cover, I tried to illustrate a scene from the story, with a dragon attacking a Lancaster bomber. Which could have been epic if I’d had the skills and the photos to work with. But I didn’t. So this time I just decided to feature an element that told you there was something 1940s/WWII going on and an element that said “Spooky Celtic; maybe elves.”

Which one would you go for out of these, if any?

 

(Bear in mind that these are mockups. Strange lines and watermarks will be eliminated in the real thing.)

SF/F Giveaway Bundle – 17 books for free!

This is such a good deal, omg