Harper Fox's Blog, page 7
November 8, 2012
Half Moon Chambers trailer
http://bit.ly/Rl3EQh
November 6, 2012
A Midwinter Prince - update
Hmm. It's late. I think it's time for me to go and put my brains to steep in some nice cold water. There's a worrying smell of burning wires around here!
November 4, 2012
On why too little political involvement can be as bad as too much...
Mrs H: “So, you’re launching Half Moon Chambers on the 6th?”
Me: “Yeah! I made my little joke about being the best bang since Bonfire Night, and it’s all fine. Set to go.”
Mrs H: “Did it maybe occur to you that... um, your US readers might be a bit distracted on that day?”
Me: “No. Why?”
Seriously. She had to tell me. Total scheduling fail! I mean, I knew it was happening, but not that it was happening on my launch day. So, my friends, US and UK and worldwide, I think it might make sense if I put back the release of HMC until the end of the week. Shall we maybe say Friday? I’m just afraid that everyone’s FB newsfeeds will be moving so fast that my posts will zip by unnoticed! And, you know, I wouldn’t want to distract anyone from keeping that nice young man in the White House firmly in his place...
Oh, no – I expressed a political view! I try never to do that, mostly because I don’t know my political arse from my elbow. :-D But I guess, being who I am, that one was pretty much a no-brainer...
So – Friday 9th November for Half Moon Chambers, and I’ll try to release A Midwinter Prince (print volume and re-released ebook) around the same time next month, in time for your festive stockings!
November 2, 2012
Half Moon Chambers - release-date news!
How do you follow up Firework Night? Why, with a new release from Harper Fox, of course!
Okay, that is my cheesiest marketing line ever. I do believe I’m rather proud of it. Yes, things are looking good for a 6th November release for Half Moon Chambers, my shivery, wintry, grittier-than-usual cop drama set in Newcastle upon Tyne. I do love my hometown. Despite all millennial improvements and funding, it obligingly remains hard-edged and bleak, an endless source of inspiration.
The draft is completed, the edits done, and the usual group of lifesaving people who hammer my raw product into ebook shape have performed their usual miracles. The promo trailer is ready, and my brilliant composer friend RI Archer is putting the finishing touches on a truly striking soundtrack for it.
You can find a nice long excerpt on my website here...
http://www.harperfox.net/books/
..but I hope you might enjoy this little taster too. Watch this space on release day for freebies and prizes!
I lay down on the bed. No—not even that much of an effort. He laid me down. He pushed me by the shoulders until my legs buckled, then he planted a hand flat on my chest, wrapped an arm round my back so I wouldn't go down too hard, and before I could protest, reached to scoop me up from behind my knees. That last gesture—so fearless and sudden—broke my control, and I burst into the dangerous peal of laughter that I'd managed to avoid before. “What the fuck are you playing at?”
“What's it look like? Just lie still a minute.” He grinned down at me. “Oh, you do look fetching there.”
I doubted that. I imagined I looked like an idiot knocked flat on his arse, not daring to encounter the indignity of trying to get up. Then Rowan began to unbutton his shirt, and I left off thinking about anything at all.
He was beautiful. He didn't hurry, and he never broke his eye contact with me. What had looked like skinniness beneath his clothes turned out to be lean muscle when it was revealed. I tossed away the last of my professional reserve and allowed myself one low whistle as he shrugged out of his shirt, and he grinned and blushed. “Thank you, DS Carr.”
“Now I can see how you hauled me up all those stairs.”
“It's not virtue. Looks like I have to be hooked on something, and I figured it had better be the gym.” Involuntarily I glanced at the insides of his arms, and he shifted, showing me the pale unmarred skin. “I am clean. I wouldn't let myself be with you otherwise.”
“Rowan, you don't have to tell me—”
“I do. You're a cop, and I saw the look in your eyes when you heard the word junkie.” His jeans were button-fly, and again he took his time. He pushed them down his thighs, then bent and stepped out of them. He stood naked by the bed. His shaft had sprung up, stiff and dark with blood. “All right,” he said softly. “Now you.”
I wasn't sure what he meant until he knelt over me. His thighs corded tensely with the care he took not to put any weight on me, and he took hold of the hem of my T-shirt. “Can you lift up a bit?”
“Why?”
“I want to see you too. All of you. Can you sit up?”
I could, with a good careful crunch of my abs. The ogre of the physio department had taught me that, a way of getting off my back without too much pain or embarrassing struggle. His lips parted as I made the move, a hungry appreciation gleaming in his eyes. I held myself taut in position, glad to be able to do one thing with a little grace, while he peeled the T-shirt up and over my head. He ran his palms down my chest. “Lovely,” he said. “Now lie back and let's see about the rest.”
Lifting my hips for him wasn't so easy. The second bullet was lodged just above my sacral vertebra. I tried to smile up at him, but he saw straight through that and sat back lightly on my thighs, resting both hands on my hipbones. I growled in frustration. He was so lovely, and I'd moved from shocked resistance to an urgent desire to get myself fucked. “Damn,” I rasped. “I used to be good at this.”
August 7, 2012
Published, published and published...
Here are the buy links for Amazon Kindle, ARe and Smashwords -
http://tinyurl.com/ISoS-Amazon
http://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-insearchofsaints-906370-145.html
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/212784
August 5, 2012
Saints, Monks and Vikings - quite a harvest!
Between work and rain, I missed Lammas Day on 2nd August, but Celtic festivals have a built-in bad-weather clause and I’ll get another chance on Tuesday, the Crossquarter. Lammas or Lughnassadh is the first of the triad of harvest festivals, and I’ve been harvesting like crazy. :-DIn Search of Saints is finished, through all its edits and off for formatting, and I hope to release that early next week! I’m excited. Saints is a little longer than All Roads, coming up to novella length at about 24K. And – at last – I’m done with the proposal for Brothers of the Wild North Sea, three good solid chapters I shall now rip apart with pre-submission edits. Not much fun, but I’m happy with my location set-up and the introduction of my warrior monks. (I know the connections have been forged because I’m lying awake at night worrying about their long-term happiness.)
So do watch this space for In Search of Saints over the next couple of days! There’ll be fun and prizes. I’m getting a nice mug made up with the FoxTales logo, and maybe a couple with book covers. (Mate Kate, I hope you’re reading. I will need your help!) It’s tricky to come up with non-cyber prizes in terms of shipping and everything, but All Roads Lead to You has done so well that I’m more than happy to send a couple of gifts out to my lovely readers across the globe. (That sounds very fancy, but I do appear to have ’em, and thanks to you all for buying!) And of course there will be ebooks up for grabs. So happy harvests, everyone, whatever you are trying to bring home from your mental or actual meadows! Xxx
(The image, by the way, is from one of our Hedingham Fair cards. We buy most of our festival cards from this lovely company – hedinghamfair.co.uk)
July 8, 2012
Three books, three winners!
Whitestar
Aurenenfae
and Carl Mariani (from Facebook).
Congrats to you all! Drop me an email at harperfox777@yahoo.co.uk and let me know which ebook you'd like. I'll be happy to sign them by Kindlegraph for you if you're on Twitter. There's a handy link on my webpage http://www.harperfox.net/news/
Thanks so much to all who entered or just came along to chat with me about my post. A huge pleasure, as ever! xxx
July 2, 2012
All Roads - some thoughts on self-publishing, and a giveaway!
I’ve just released All Roads Lead To You on All Romance eBooks, which kind of “completes the process” on my first FoxTales endeavour. The book is now available via Amazon Kindle, Smashwords and ARe, and because I have a whole new set of self-promo obligations, here are the buy links! :-D
Amazon Kindle - http://tinyurl.com/cfkjz2o
Smashwords - http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/171547
All Romance eBooks - http://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-allroadsleadtoyou-857378-145.html
I’m proud – unnerved – hugely excited, and... well, generally still quite wide-eyed and overstimulated by the whole self-publishing experience, and I wanted to share a few thoughts – and, although I’m way too new at this game to be offering serious advice to anyone thinking of entering it themselves, maybe I can share with you what helped and hindered me!
Firstly, “self-publishing” was a bit of a misnomer for this Fox. “Published with the help of a small army of miracle-working friends” would be a better fit. I can safely say I went into this clueless. I know a fair amount now about what it takes to write a book and bring it to market, having gained priceless experience through working with publishers, and the combined voices of my publishing-house editors were in my head while I wrote All Roads. Plot, pacing, continuity, timelines! But of course there was no “official” editor waiting for me there at the end of the road, catcher’s mitt outstretched. So I was all the more determined to deliver a flawless product.
And did I? Of course not. This is where the army comes in. I was astonished at the different demands imposed by the restrictions of a short story. The fact is that I’d never actually written one for publication before. I’ve been used to stretch myself lazily out over the word-count of a novel. The first thing Major General Josh Lanyon said when he saw the All Roads outline was – “Too much! There’s just not room within your structure and your word-count limitation to do all the things you’re proposing to do here. Simplify.” Mrs H, also recruited at this point, immediately said, “This is the outline for a novella, not a short.” So before I started, I was already having to rethink my preconceptions, which really hurt because I was excited about hitting the road, getting another book out there, and – of course – generating some income from it. But once I’d reined in my ego and my wildly galloping plot-horses, I recognised what an enormous favour Josh and Jane had done me. Big thanks to you two, and I will pick up all the toys I chucked out of my pram at some point, honest.
That was just the beginning. I like to think that I give good first draft. Editors at publishing houses have told me I do. Before sending the completed story to Josh, to my proof-reader (and brilliant webmistress) Julia and to Antonella, who had kindly agreed to check the document for errors of Italian and English, believe me, I went through it with such nitpicking thoroughness that I was almost convinced I’d be passed clear through all checkpoints.
Er, no. Humbling Experience #2. I pride myself as a proofer but there were plenty of mistakes, many of them tiny but enough to catch a reader’s eye and prompt the response I wanted to avoid above all others: “That would never have got past an editor.” I can’t account for it, except that often when I’m reading through a document I see what I want to see, kind of expect something to be right and almost hypnotise myself into not noticing when it isn’t! Also, I was up too close. No matter how hard I tried to detach and just coldly proof, I was feeling my protags, their desires; hearing their voices – and, as a result, almost constantly distracted. I am certain there are authors out there who can outline, write, proof and publish on their own, but I am not one of them. I value my advisors and my beta readers more than I’ve been able to express to any of them. I’m really not taking an advisory role here but what I would say to self-pubbing authors is, if you can get people like that around you – wow. Use them. Cherish them. Pay them where possible, and where their guidance is offered freely, grab it and give thanks!
I believe that authors entering the market under their own imprint have a certain torch to carry. We’re working in an incredibly exciting new world where you actually can sit down, write a book and get it out there, in ebook or print format, with absolute minimum expense. It’s a recipe for total personal freedom – and, I think, total personal responsibility too. Each time one of us goes out there, we’re bearing with us on our tired authorial shoulders the reputation of the ebook industry, the reputation of self-published novelists everywhere. We have this massive opportunity right now to convince the reading world that indie writers care as much, work as hard, and are just as damn good as authors who have passed through a professional publishing process.
Hmm. Despite my promises, there I am on my soapbox. What I really want to say is, thank you to all the people who helped All Roads Lead To You – and FoxTales – through the birth pangs. And thank you to the readers who have welcomed the book with open arms. It’s not my prime motivation – I’m a writer, so my prime motivation is simply that I need to write – but it is absolutely wonderful to see the story selling so well, and to know that by taking this step I’m considerably further along the road to my goal of being able to support myself and my family on a writer’s salary.
To celebrate earning, I’d like to give something away! If you’d like to win a free copy of any of my ebooks, including All Roads, just leave a comment here or on my Facebook. You can check out your choices here
http://www.harperfox.net
at my attractively revamped web page! (Thanks again to Julia.) I shall pick three lucky winners at the end of the week.
June 26, 2012
FoxTales has a Logo!
June 13, 2012
Lauro and Sam - the author's view
Well, my best friends wouldn't accuse me of being any good with image manipulation, but searching for inspiring pictures which come close to my vision for my protags is one of my favourite occupations, and just does nicely when I'm too exhausted for anything else. I was so happy to come across these two - they're really good for Lauro and Sam. For those of you who have already read "All Roads", I hope I'm not dislodging your own images of my boys, but I did want to share this!In other news - good news I hope for those of you waiting for a PDF of the story - All Roads has just released in a wide range of formats on Smashwords. Something there suitable for all of you, I hope! https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/171547
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