Paul Stephenson's Blog, page 3

A Free Festive Scare

I’m a sucker for Christmas. I may be a middle aged man who writes horror novels about the end of the world and whose musical tastes run to the ‘oh-god-make-it-stop’ end of the spectrum, but I’m just a big sucker for it. Weird, really, especially when you factor my total absence of any religious curiosity.

But Christmas hits all my high notes. Family. Food. Not being at work. Will Ferrel and Jimmy Stewart. Not being at work. Mince pies. Not being at work. Hell, I even tend to take it as a break from writing, which is something I rarely manage to convince myself to do. But, for two weeks, I will be closing my laptop and only opening it again when it’s time to watch Arsenal lose a game of football. So, about every three days.

However, 2020 has been, well, I don’t think I need to tell you. So, whatever your particular deistical or non-deistical denomination, I thought I’d spread a little Christmas cheer, in the only way I know how. Through the judicious use of extreme violence and terror. So I wrote you all a little story, and I’m giving it away for free at the online bookstore of your choice.

BLOODY SANTA

Come Christmas Eve, Ted's the kind of man you might find in your street - waiting for all the kids to go to bed, waiting for the mince pies to be set out, for the reindeer food to be scattered across your lawn. But Ted's no jolly fat man, and he's more likely to take things from under the tree than set them down.

But when Ted enters the last house of the night in the sleepy town of Chester Burrow, he might find more than he bargained for under the tree. He might find out who's naughty, or nice...

I hope you enjoy this twisted festive tale. If you do, please be sure to check out some of my other books. But that’s not important for now. There’s only one question that is…

Have you been naughty or nice?

Get BLOODY SANTA FOR FREE

Paul Stephenson is an author and blogger. His first series, the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy Blood on the Motorway, is available now. Sunrise, the first book in the Sunset Chronicles, is also out now. Check out these and more at the links at the top of the page.

Get Short Sharp Shocks, a collection of three exclusive free short stories when you join the reader’s group. Subscribe to the blog to get a weekly roundup of all posts sent directly to your inbox. Also you can share using the buttons below, or why not buy Paul a coffee?

The hope that gets you through

I never particularly thought of myself as an optimist, certainly not as a young man. The world was terrible, and most of those who sailed in her. But that was a front, an affront to the reality crafted out of some strange notion that despair was the cooler option.

There’s always been so much to find despair in, after all. Hope is the harder thing to find, especially in the face of such reckless hate as we’ve seen these last five years. Ten years. Twenty. And yet it was as the world took each of these dark turns, I found myself more buoyed by hope than I was before.

I’ve often wondered how much of the psychic scars faced by the western world start with the events of 9/11. Sure, there was plenty to despair of before then, but how much of the great divide, the schism that seems to have cleaved all discourse in two can be traced back to that moment, and the reaction to it? The reckless headlong rush to war in an orgy of flag waving and corporate contracts, and the normalisation of islamophobia that gave cover to the great reframing of the immigration debate.

In the years that followed, I had my first professional writing gig, first as a writer for an Asian magazine and then editor of an Asian newspaper covering Leeds and Bradford. If I think back to the roots of my own turn toward hope, I trace it back to that time, to seeing disparate Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh communities rally to each other, to seeing how different each of those communities and the people within them were to the people you saw in other papers, on the television.

In recent years, hope has been harder to come by. The schism widened, as did the gap between those who have, and those who have not. The former rallied enough of the latter to their cause with lies and fear, and we found ourselves sewn into chaos. Brexit. Boris. Trump. Fox. Tommy Robinson. National Rally. Nigel Farage’s grinning maw. Q-anon, and, finally, Covid.

Part of my own internal battle between hope and despair shifted when I started writing my first book, Blood on the Motorway. Strange that an apocalyptic thriller with a serial killer at its heart should prove that catalyst, but it wasn’t until I’d written the book and looked back at the central themes of it that I realised – I’d written a book about hope. About ordinary people overcoming despair to find a way forward. The same with the next book, and the next. When it came to my new series, The Sunset Chronicles – I found the same thing. I’m writing hopeful horror.

I’ll admit, for a few minutes last week, that hope faltered, and I thought all was lost. There’s not much about 2020 that any of us have been able to find much hope in, so far, and the thought that Trump might just have found his way around the will of the people once more, that he could have used all the levers of institutional power to cling onto power, that so many millions of people could look at such a clear liar and a fraud and think, yep that’s my guy… it was too much.

But then the votes kept coming. By the time the race was called I was stood in a supermarket aisle staring at videos of celebrations in the street, getting messages of joy from American friends, getting slightly misty-eyed in the bread aisle. And today news of a Covid vaccine, and the prospect of a world made normal (whatever normal is) by next year.

Sure, there’s a lot to despair about. The great schism remains. But so does hope, and as long as we have that, there’s nothing we can’t achieve if we don’t put our minds to it.

For the last six years, I've been a participant in something called NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, a global undertaking by thousands of authors worldwide, all striving to write 50,000 words in one day.

Almost all of my novels have had their first drafts conceived in the fiery cauldron of NaNo pressure, and it's been one of my highlights of the year for many a long year. Not this year, however - my writing course is taking precedence, and given that it could last up to four years, I'm wondering if my NaNo days are over.

I miss it more than I thought - from the write-ins in coffee shops with handfuls of other writers, to the stickers each year that now adorn my laptop lid in a cluster thick enough to rival the laptop itself, to the sheer thrill of crossing the finish line. I’m sure it’s all very different this year, what with the whole nobody-leaving-their-home thing, but I do miss the community aspect of NaNo. Maybe I will be back, one day.

Since we’re talking about hope, let’s have a little book sale. If you fancy reading some dark and scary books of hope, I’m going to put all my ebooks on sale at 20% off when you buy direct from me, for the next two weeks. Click any of the buy buttons below and use the code HAVEHOPE at checkout.

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Paul Stephenson is an author and blogger. His first series, the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy Blood on the Motorway, is available now. Sunrise, the first book in the Sunset Chronicles, is also out now. Check out these and more at the links at the top of the page.

Get Short Sharp Shocks, a collection of three exclusive free short stories when you join the reader’s group. Subscribe to the blog to get a weekly roundup of all posts sent directly to your inbox. Also you can share using the buttons below, or why not buy Paul a coffee?

Win a bundle of Sci-Fi and Fantasy books

Hello from an apocalyptically rainy Cirencester.

It's a tad end-of-the-worldy here today, which means our trip to the local beach was ill-judged, at best. As I type this I can feel wet sand still clinging to my calves, and my t-shirt is acquiring the vague odour of a wet dog. Still, I have an incredible offer to let you know about, so I figured it couldn't wait.

Sunrise is part of a huge BookSweeps competition that launches today and gives you the opportunity to win thirty sci-fi & fantasy novels (including Sunrise), as well as an e-reader. All told, that's $350 in value, and all you have to do is follow me and the other authors in the competition over at BookBub. That's it!

Hell yeah I want free books!

Paul Stephenson is an author and blogger. His first series, the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy Blood on the Motorway, is available now. Sunrise, the first book in the Sunset Chronicles, is also out now. Check out these and more at the links at the top of the page.

Get Short Sharp Shocks, a collection of three exclusive free short stories when you join the reader’s group. Subscribe to the blog to get a weekly roundup of all posts sent directly to your inbox. Also you can share using the buttons below, or why not buy Paul a coffee?

So much for the five-year plan

Like a lot of creatives, I’ve spent a lot of this global pandemic reassessing almost every aspect of what I do. I started off with a huge slab of enthusiasm that I was privileged enough to be able to hole up in my house with laptop in hand and spend the months whittling away at the big word tree I keep in my office until I had a few more elegant word statues I could bundle up and sell to you, dear reader. That lasted about as long as it took to realise how difficult home schooling is.

I also thought it was a great opportunity to put some real thrust toward something that’s been a goal of mine from, oh, say, the age of thirteen — to become a full-time author. I had a chunk of money I threw toward some ads, and I set about trying to grow this writing enterprise into a full-throated BUSINESS.

Long story short — I threw away a chunk of money.

I’m not going to lie, it hurt. When I set out on this journey to become an author, I gave myself five years. That particular milestone hit on the exact day I realised I’d wasted a chunk of money on advertising that hadn’t worked. Cue much authorial introspection, wailing, gnashing of teeth, and being grouchy with my family.

What I was left with, at the end of all that soul searching, was a series of irreconcilable facts:

I still love writing books

I still love being a DIY publisher

I hate the fact that indie publishing has become a pay-to-play model, with advertising a must

I hate Amazon, yet know they’re the only game in town

I have no interest in pursuing a traditional book deal

Where does that leave me? Well, if I really want to become a full-time writer, it pretty much leaves me bollocksed. But what if I decide not to go for that dream? What if I just become… a writer? I have a decent career that fulfils the ‘putting the food on the table’ thing that we all have to do, and which I don’t entirely hate.

If I make a decision, right here and now, that I’m doing this as a hobby, then I don’t actually have to do any of the things I don’t want to do. I can write what I want, put it out there, and if people like it then that’s an added bonus. I can sell books on Amazon, but I don’t have to give them ad money for them to deign to show them to people who might be interested in it. I don’t have to give that money to Facebook, either, for that matter. I can do things like selling my books directly through this website, for example, and by supporting the other stores who aren’t pure evil personified in corporate form.

None of which is to say I don’t want success. I’d love nothing more than to have The Sunset Chronicles be a huge success, or the vampire series I’m writing find a voracious readership. And I’d still love to go full-time with this gig.

What it does mean, however, is that I can refocus my efforts. Currently I spend an inordinate amount of time on Admin and Marketing that can now be spent in a thousand other ways. I’ve been thinking of writing a pilot TV script for Blood on the Motorway, for instance, and I’ve had a few ideas for a graphic novel kicking around my head that I need to find an artist for. Not only that but I can perhaps go back to some of the things I sacrificed in order to put all my focus on the books — music writing, for one thing.

The upshot of all this is that I have more time to put into being a creative, which is really the only part of this that interests me. It also means I don’t really have to worry so much about pissing people off, because I’m deeply uncomfortable with the way this whole industry is going, as I suspect is the case with a lot of my peers. By placing myself out of the need to sell books to put the aforementioned food on the aforementioned table, I can feel a lot more free to talk about that, and about other things that I’ve spent time feeling like I can’t really talk about, because I’ve been honestly worried about damaging ‘my brand'.

Who knows where this will take me? In all probability, it’ll leave me languishing under the same broad anonymity I’ve enjoyed these past few years. But I probably won’t burn out because of it. I hope you’ll continue to join me on the journey. And if you feel like checking my books out, click Store at the top of the page, safe in the knowledge that your purchase won’t be helping Jeff Bezos line his pockets any more.

Paul Stephenson is an author and blogger. His first series, the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy Blood on the Motorway, is available now. Sunrise, the first book in the Sunset Chronicles, is also out now. Check out these and more at the links at the top of the page.

Get Short Sharp Shocks, a collection of three exclusive free short stories when you join the reader’s group. Subscribe to the blog to get a weekly roundup of all posts sent directly to your inbox. Also you can share using the buttons below, or why not buy Paul a coffee?

Listen to me!

One of my favourite things about being an independent author is the wonderful community that’s sprung up on the internet in the last few years. It’s a groundswell of authors who’ve decided to eschew the traditional publishing world that’s gatekept the books that people get to read for centuries, sharing tips and tricks with each other, helping find ways to navigate the murky world of internet marketing, sharing innovation, and getting together in all the dark corners of the internet to laugh at each other’s one-star reviews.

Naturally, there are the rock stars of the indie world, the ones pulling in seven figures each year and with the kind of brands that even have the old trads sitting up and paying attention. Here in the UK, not many names burn brighter across the indie constellation than thriller writer Mark Dawson, who has both led by example with his blockbusting Milton books, but who has consistently been one of the biggest advocates for indie publishing and one of the community’s biggest ‘instructors’. He leads the Self Publishing Formula, home to courses on Indie Publishing, digital marketing, cover design, and much more. SPF has one of the biggest Facebook communities across several groups, and Mark himself is the host of the Self Publishing Show, one of the best podcasts out there for indies. Oh, and he threw a full one day conference in London’s South Bank Centre earlier this year with a huge range of speakers and a boat cruise on the Thames. The price? £60 all in.

I’m a little bit in awe of Mark — not only does he make the kind of money from his books that can buy you an island, but the things he puts out under the SPF banner are always exceptional quality and good value. I might not agree with him on a few things (he’s almost entirely Amazon exclusive, and he’s a great advocate for advertising) but I really appreciate what he’s done for the community.

Which is why I’m extremely proud to have been asked by the SPF team to appear on the Self Publishing Spotlight podcast, a little brother/sister to the main show, where they shine a light on some of the up-and-coming authors coming through the ranks. I’m on the most recent episode, which is apparently going to be the last one for a while. I can only assume I was so good they realised nobody else will ever be worth interviewing again.

It was a fun chat about my origin stories, my biggest mistakes, and what I’d tell anyone starting off on their indie author journey. Maybe one day I’ll be big enough to make it to the main stage. Fingers crossed.

You can check out the podcast at https://selfpublishingformula.com/spotlight-53/ or on their YouTube channel.

Paul Stephenson is an author and blogger. His first series, the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy Blood on the Motorway, is available now. Sunrise, the first book in the Sunset Chronicles, is also out now. Check out these and more at the links at the top of the page.

Get Short Sharp Shocks, a collection of three exclusive free short stories when you join the reader’s group. Subscribe to the blog to get a weekly roundup of all posts sent directly to your inbox. Also you can share using the buttons below, or why not buy Paul a coffee?

Cutting out the middleman

I've set up my very own webstore, which means that you can now buy my books directly from me. No more middleman, no more giving money to that company made of evil named after a long river. And what's more, I can offer discounts!

whenever you buy one of my books direct through this website or my Payhip store, you can get 10% off straight away when you share the book with a friend, or on your social media. And if you buy a book in a series, you'll get a discount if you buy the next one, too. That means you can get a whopping 20% off the cover price, share your favourite author with your friends, and I'll still get more of the sale than I would do through one of the book stores. Not a bad deal, eh?

The books are delivered as a downloadable file, but if that doesn't work, it's followed up with a link from the good people at Bookfunnel, who are great at sorting that kind of thing. The whole thing is run through Payhip, and offers fully secure payment processing through the card of your choice or Paypal, and the book is compatible with any device. From now on, these are the links I’ll be sending out, and you’ll find these buy links if you visit the links at the top of the page. You’ll also see a link to my Payhip store at the top of my website.

What's more, as a special launch giveaway, I'm giving you an exclusive extra 25% off if you buy in the next seven days. Just use the coupon code MYCORONA and fill your boots with as many books as you like.

Let’s have a quick run-through of what you can get, shall we?

SUNRISE

The first book in my new series the Sunset Chronicles, it’s a Sci-Fi/Horror novel for all fans of space horror, dystopian tales of corporate corruption, telepaths crushing people with mind bullets, or of diverse casts in epic tales. Legendary horror author Steve Stred, author of the excellent Father of Lies series reviewed it for Kendall Reviews and said "this book whipped along and Stephenson writes the characters lean and true, making for some fantastically done action sequences, all the while retaining that claustrophobic feeling you need with outer-space-based books."

The year is 2107, and Earth is dying. For Wyn, Lois, and Judd, that’s the least of their problems.

Buy Now

Wyn is the pilot on the ISS Minos. Its mission: a race to the ice moon of Europa to cure the disease destroying humanity’s crops. But she’ll have to overcome dark secrets from her past and darker secrets on the ice to find out which of the crew is trying to stop them. If she doesn’t, humanity is doomed.

Lois is an Interpol agent investigating the world’s biggest company. But when her handler is murdered in the street, the road to justice holds a mystery that could change Earth’s destiny.

Judd is hiding as far away from humanity as he can, working in a cheap tourist attraction on the Moon. But when an old man pries a long-forgotten secret out of his head, he can no longer hide from the truth he’d buried even from himself. Because Judd is a telepath, and a weapon badly wanted by both sides of an unseen war.

Each holds a key to Earth’s cure and humanity’s survival in this first book in The Sunset Chronicles, the new sci-fi horror thrill-ride from Paul Stephenson, author of the apocalyptic horror trilogy, Blood on the Motorway.

BLOOD ON THE MOTORWAY

The Blood on the Motorway saga is an epic trilogy of murder at the world’s end. Starting with an apocalyptic storm and a serial killer and weaving several narratives through to humanity’s final stand, it’s a must for all fans of Apocalyptic Horror. Elisabeth Carpenter, bestselling author of 99 Red Balloons and The Woman Downstairs said ‘It has everything you could want in an end-of-the-world story. Perfect for fans of 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead, and ITV's Survivors.’

Buy Now

Tom is a layabout ex-student waiting for his life to start or the power to get cut off, whichever comes first. Jen works two jobs, hates both, and most days is too hungover to deal with either. Detective Burnett is trying to work out who the hell has turned his sleepy English village into a murder town.

On a flight back to her family, Lydia is too busy trying to ignore the annoying passenger next to her to notice the sky filling with lights. Max works for a bank, more concerned that people might mistake him for a banker than how to survive each day.

When the skies fill with a mysterious storm, all will wake to find the world they knew has gone, and their old lives with it. Over the months that follow they will have to deal with psychotic murderers, genocidal monsters, bandits who would take everything from them, and one final, deadly storm.

Together, this disparate group must attempt to survive this gripping, epic, and blackly comic saga of murder and stale sandwiches at the world’s end.

WELCOME TO DISCOVERY PARK

Chronicling one man's increasingly frustrated attempt to listen to every album on Rolling Stone's Top 500 Albums of all time list, this comic and acerbic book looks at why we feel the need to quantify and rank our art, revels in the complex musical world we live in, and wonders why anyone would voluntarily listen to Bono.

“Here’s a lesson for all aspiring singers. Bono can hit lots of those ‘notes’ that you hear about. Tom Waits, by contrast, can’t hit any of them; nor can he sound like anything other than a drunken vacuum cleaner. But I would rather listen to Tom than Bono from now until the end of time.”

Buy Now

Michael Legge (Sony Award Winning presenter of Do the Right Thing) said “even though Paul likes Pearl Jam, he’s really really funny.” Which was nice of him.

Don’t forget, you can enter the code MYCORONA for 25% off every one of these books, and get and extra 10% off when you share them with your friends and family.

Paul Stephenson is an author and blogger. His first series, the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy Blood on the Motorway, is available now. Sunrise, the first book in the Sunset Chronicles, is also out now. Check out these and more at the links at the top of the page.

Get Short Sharp Shocks, a collection of three exclusive free short stories when you join the reader’s group. Subscribe to the blog to get a weekly roundup of all posts sent directly to your inbox. Also you can share using the buttons below, or why not buy Paul a coffee?

The Sun Rises Wide

For the last few weeks, I’ve been furloughed from my day job, which, it has to be said, has been pretty fine with me. I've been taking the opportunity to write like a demon (40,000 words in three weeks, not bad going), but also take care of a lot of the little things I've been meaning to do for ages (like getting my books on the Google Play store as I mentioned last week) and trying to make the business a little less reliant on the old Amazon.com.

So, I'm immensely pleased to report that my new book, Sunrise, is out of its period of exclusivity at Amazon, and is now available at all the other good digital retailers. You can check the links at the bottom of the page, or go to the books section in my header to go buy it.

Now, I hear you say, that's all great and lovely, but why should I pick it up? Well, that's a good question. Well, legendary horror author Steve Stred, author of the excellent Father of Lies series reviewed it for Kendall Reviews and said: "this book whipped along and Stephenson writes the characters lean and true, making for some fantastically done action sequences, all the while retaining that claustrophobic feeling you need with outer-space-based books."

The book is the first in my new Sunset Chronicles series. Do you like a bit of space horror? Do you like dystopian tales of corporate corruption? Do you like telepaths crushing people with mind bullets? Do you like diverse casts and epic stories? Then you'll absolutely chuffing love this.

The year is 2107, and Earth is dying. For Wyn, Lois, and Judd, that’s the least of their problems.

Wyn is the pilot on the ISS Minos. Its mission: a race to the ice moon of Europa to cure the disease destroying humanity’s crops. But she’ll have to overcome dark secrets from her past and darker secrets on the ice to find out which of the crew is trying to stop them. If she doesn’t, humanity is doomed.

Lois is an Interpol agent investigating the world’s biggest company. But when her handler is murdered in the street, the road to justice holds a mystery that could change Earth’s destiny.

Judd is hiding as far away from humanity as he can, working in a cheap tourist attraction on the Moon. But when an old man pries a long-forgotten secret out of his head, he can no longer hide from the truth he’d buried even from himself. Because Judd is a telepath, and a weapon badly wanted by both sides of an unseen war.

Each holds a key to Earth’s cure and humanity’s survival in this first book in The Sunset Chronicles, the new sci-fi horror thrill-ride from, well, me.

Want to check it out? Well, here’s all the links you need:

Apple books




kobo books




Google Play




Everywhere else

Paul Stephenson is an author and blogger. His first series, the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy Blood on the Motorway, is available now. Sunrise, the first book in the Sunset Chronicles, is also out now. Check out these and more at the links at the top of the page.

Get Short Sharp Shocks, a collection of three exclusive free short stories when you join the reader’s group. Subscribe to the blog to get a weekly roundup of all posts sent directly to your inbox. Also you can share using the buttons below, or why not buy Paul a coffee?

Here to (Google) Play

For the longest time, I’ve been hoping that there’ll be some store out there with enough clout to challenge Amazon’s dominance of the ebook market. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing but admiration for the way that Amazon revolutionised and democratised publishing with the release of the Kindle, but let’s face it, they’re fast becoming the ultimate end-level-boos of bad capitalism. They’re also where the vast majority of readers are. And if the music industry has taught us anything in the last few decades, it’s that you’ve got to go where your customers are; not where you want them to be.

That being said, bar a brief foray into exclusivity with the World’s Longest River, I've always tried to make my books as widely available as possible. You can currently buy my books at Apple Books, Kobo, Nook, and about a bazillion tiny e-retailers. It’s my serious hope that one of these gets round to ploughing enough resources into growing their ebook markets that they can make a play for Bezos’s ebook crown. Dude’s got enough crowns, he won’t miss just one.

My money is on one of two players with enough clout already — Apple, and Google. I know, way to go on not having evil corporations as your only options, eh? But both make sense. Between them, they have approximately 99.9% of the mobile phone operating systems in the world, each with a native app to read on, right there on your phone. The infrastructure is there. Sure, people might not much like reading on their phones, but they said the kindle would never take off for the same reason. And how many tablets are running Android or iOS?

My books have been on Apple Books for ages now, but they don’t sell much there. But Google Play Books has been a closed shop for years now, with it all but impossible to get distribution there, and the methods you could find left you with no control whatsoever.

But that’s all changed now - Google have opened up their doors to authors again, and you have to hope that this heralds their intention to start paying attention to this area. There are apparently over 2.5 billion Android devices active in the world right now, and for people who maybe can’t afford snazzy devices just for reading but want to be able to read when they’re on the go, Play Books is the perfect avenue for them.

And, I’m glad to say that as of today you can read the full Blood on the Motorway trilogy or Welcome to Discovery Park on Google Play Books. Not only that, but Google have happily discounted all my books for some reason, so why not pick yourself up a massive bargain today. Click on the cover of your choice to be taken straight to the store.

Paul Stephenson is an author and blogger. His first series, the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy Blood on the Motorway, is available now. Sunrise, the first book in the Sunset Chronicles, is also out now. Check out these and more at the links at the top of the page.

Get Short Sharp Shocks, a collection of three exclusive free short stories when you join the reader’s group. Subscribe to the blog to get a weekly roundup of all posts sent directly to your inbox. Also you can share using the buttons below, or why not buy Paul a coffee?

How’s your pandemic?

I’ve been thinking about what I can offer in these times of woe. Unsurprisingly, I came up with ‘words’.

How's your pandemic?

These are difficult times, and not a little scary, as I'm sure you're finding. I find that every time I try to think about all this madness too hard, my head hurts from the enormity of it. On the one hand, me and mine are healthy, I'm working from home (and getting a fair chunk of writing done) and we have at least two rolls of toilet paper. But it’s hard to look at the world outside and not feel a fair chunk of despair.

As someone who’s spent the last ten years or so writing about the end of the world, I wish I could say that I’m taking the current coronavirus panic in my stride, but like everyone else, I’m not. I’ve been alternating between trying to be as productive as possible with this suddenly confined time and staring at the screen permanently attached to my hand as it spews blue light and bad news directly into my brain. One of these activities is definitely healthier than the other.

I’ve been thinking a bit about how I can help with all this. Obviously, it’s staying indoors, socially distancing, not panic buying, keeping up payments to local businesses, all that kind of thing. But what else can I do? Well, I guess it’s words. We all need a distraction right now. And we all need hope. And, if there’s one thing my books are about, it’s hope. About people pulling together in the face of adversity, staring that motherfudger down and saying… No.

I can't follow the suit of a lot of other writers out there at the moment and offer my books for free to everyone. I just can't. I suspect that before too long I'm going to really need to have this writing business not just as a side-gig but as my full-time income, and that's pretty terrifying. But at the same time, I want to give back and help in whatever tiny way I can.

So, here's the deal. If you're someone for who doesn't know where the next cheque is coming from right now, who's finding this all a bit much and just wants a world that isn't this one to fall into for a while, please email paul (at) paulstephensonbooks dot com and I'll send you as many books as you want, for free. No questions asked.

But if you can manage a few quid and you're looking for something to distract from *flails wildly* all of this, now would be a really good time to pick up a book of mine from your favourite digital retailer or order a paperback from Amazon.

What should you buy? Well, here are your options:

Blood on the Motorway Trilogy

My apocalyptic thriller trilogy set across a Britain ravaged by apocalyptic storms. Oh, and there’s a killer on the loose, too.

Buckle up for an apocalyptic thrill ride to find out who will survive this epic trilogy of murder at the world’s end. Readers have called it a ‘totally compelling story.

Lots of twists, turns, and cliff-hangers, with a mixture of likable characters and some you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley.’

You can pick up the whole trilogy for only £/$6.99 in ebook, which means for the price of a bottle of wine you can have three complete novels, and you’ll be getting them for roughly 20% off the normal asking price. Can’t say much fairer than that!

Get the full trilogy today












































Sunrise

My newest book a thrilling sci-fi horror set a hundred years in the future, with space exploration, terrifying creatures, spies, assassins, and hell, even telepaths. It's a rip-roaring good read, and damn fine value for money, too. Over a hundred thousand words for less than a pint of beer.

The excellent GBHBL blog said of it in their 8/10 review that it was ‘a delightful read’ and that ‘this is a book that is difficult to put down and anticipation is high for the next in the series.’

And hey, if you prefer the feel of a paper book, this is by far the sexiest paperback that' I’ve ever made, and when you buy it from Amazon they’ll get it out to you within only a few days, come rain or pandemic.

Check out Sunrise today












































Welcome to Discovery Park

If you want something as far removed from the current news climate as you can, this is the book for you. Chronicling my increasingly frustrated attempt to listen to every album on Rolling Stone's Top 500 Albums of all-time list, it looks at why we feel the need to quantify and rank our art, revels in the complex musical world we live in, and wonders why anyone would voluntarily listen to Bono.

It’s even had a thumbs up from Michael Legge, the Sony Award-winning presenter of the funniest podcast in the whole world, Do The Right Thing: ‘Even though Paul likes Pearl Jam, he’s really, really funny.’

Which you can imagine brightened my day somewhat.

Check out Welcome to Discovery Park

If that’s not enough for you, why not sign up to my mailing list and get three exclusive short stories completely free?

These are scary times, my friends, but we will get through them. As my favourite radio doctor is fond of saying; 'It'll all be alright in the end. And if it isn't alright, it isn't the end.'

Stay safe, stay indoors, stay healthy.

Paul Stephenson is an author and blogger. His first series, the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy Blood on the Motorway, is available now. Sunrise, the first book in the Sunset Chronicles, is also out now. Check out these and more at the links at the top of the page.

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