Simon Royle's Blog, page 9
March 26, 2012
Decisions, decisions, The Path Taken
I've been sitting on my balcony, drinking a cognac, smoking a cigarette, thinking about starting another journey.
I've undertaken many journeys in my life to date. Some short, lasting only a few hours or a day. Others, much longer, longer perhaps than I know now. Writing a novel is a journey and before you begin any journey, common sense dictates you need to know the beginning, the starting point. Starting without such knowledge, we may find we haven't yet begun on the real journey, because a journey is defined as having an end. Only then call we call it a journey. If we have not yet reached the end nor know what that end is, then we are simply on a path.
No, a journey is something we can look back upon when complete. It began and ended.
All we need to begin is a start, a beginning, one that has an ending, to begin our journey. Once known we can pack according to the trip. Carefully stow what we will need in the days, weeks and months ahead.
This journey, the one I am thinking about, starts with A Death in the Morning, but in truth this is a false beginning... the real beginning, began sometime ago, set a hundred years in the future, with, A Request...
Tag
"And he was drugged?" Well it might be stating the obviousbut she was clearly expecting me to say something, and I still had last night'sleaving party for Milo banging around in my head. The last thing I needed was arunner.
She looked at me like I was some kind of novice. "Yes, ofcourse he was drugged. Under the situation this was natural and after clearinghis medical we proceeded with the Truth Treatment."
"I see, and how did he respond to that treatment?"
At this Agent Sharon Cochran looked just a little perturbedand a slight edge of doubt crept into her voice, "He, um, appeared to resistthe Truth Treatment, although that is hard to prove."
I sensed she was dodging around something here that shedidn't want to talk about.
"Well, in what way was it hard to prove that he wasresisting?"
She looked me in the eye. "Under the Truth Treatment hestated that he was an alien being from another dimension."
¬¬¬¬The above was written 23 August 2009 and published 5 December 2010.
And now... ZOO, the sequel to TAG, and the prequel to, K:OS is the path we're on....
I've undertaken many journeys in my life to date. Some short, lasting only a few hours or a day. Others, much longer, longer perhaps than I know now. Writing a novel is a journey and before you begin any journey, common sense dictates you need to know the beginning, the starting point. Starting without such knowledge, we may find we haven't yet begun on the real journey, because a journey is defined as having an end. Only then call we call it a journey. If we have not yet reached the end nor know what that end is, then we are simply on a path.
No, a journey is something we can look back upon when complete. It began and ended.
All we need to begin is a start, a beginning, one that has an ending, to begin our journey. Once known we can pack according to the trip. Carefully stow what we will need in the days, weeks and months ahead.
This journey, the one I am thinking about, starts with A Death in the Morning, but in truth this is a false beginning... the real beginning, began sometime ago, set a hundred years in the future, with, A Request...
Tag
"And he was drugged?" Well it might be stating the obviousbut she was clearly expecting me to say something, and I still had last night'sleaving party for Milo banging around in my head. The last thing I needed was arunner.
She looked at me like I was some kind of novice. "Yes, ofcourse he was drugged. Under the situation this was natural and after clearinghis medical we proceeded with the Truth Treatment."
"I see, and how did he respond to that treatment?"
At this Agent Sharon Cochran looked just a little perturbedand a slight edge of doubt crept into her voice, "He, um, appeared to resistthe Truth Treatment, although that is hard to prove."
I sensed she was dodging around something here that shedidn't want to talk about.
"Well, in what way was it hard to prove that he wasresisting?"
She looked me in the eye. "Under the Truth Treatment hestated that he was an alien being from another dimension."
¬¬¬¬The above was written 23 August 2009 and published 5 December 2010.
And now... ZOO, the sequel to TAG, and the prequel to, K:OS is the path we're on....
March 16, 2012
Saint Patrick’s Day Special – Money Changes Everything
Tag and Bangkok Burn on sale .99 cents from today till Sunday night. All part of David Gaughran’s Saint Patrick’s Day Blowout sale. 26 authors, 30 books all at .99 cents. Head [...]
Saint Patrick's Day Special - Money Changes Everything
Tag and Bangkok Burn on sale .99 cents from today till Sunday night. All part of David Gaughran's Saint Patrick's Day Blowout sale. 26 authors, 30 books all at .99 cents. Head on over.
March 9, 2012
The Select Experiment Continues and some of my thoughts about people downloading my books for free
It's been a good couple of days for my books, Tag, and, Bangkok Burn.
Pixel of Ink was kind enough to pick up both books on the 7 March, and that boosted Tag's sales tremendously. I also dropped the price back to the original US$2.99 price point. The result was pretty cool; shot up the rankings, made the best seller lists in High Tech, and Technothriller, and sold a bunch of books.
I'd be lying if I said I don't get a thrill when someone shells out their hard-earned cash for one of my books - not for the money, but for the validation - show me a writer who says they have no ego and I'll show you a bullshitter.
Bangkok Burn was free for the 7 and 8 March. The downloads were meager at 9am on the seventh. I thought, since this was the second run, and having read on other writer's blogs, that the numbers would be significantly less than the first free run. On the first free run Bangkok Burn ran to over 10,000 downloads and reached 43 in the overall kindle store. And then Amazon's back-end fell over... but that's another story.
I had a busy day on the Seventh. Lot of running around, and my time zone is +12 hours on New York. Which of course means I'm always at least twelve hours ahead of what any of the Big Six are doing. Anyway, I digress, but the truth is I fell asleep about eleven pm i.e. 8am in California. The next day was even worse Day Job-wise, busy-ness reigned supreme, so I rigged up someone to handle some tweeting for me because by then downloads had once again hit several thousand.
At peak ranking hit 64 in the free list for the Kindle Store. So very successful from the point of "getting the book in people's kindles", but what does it tell me?
It tells me that the genre is popular (yeah, call me Sherlock, but it's a valid data point).
It tells me my cover and blurb work. How? There're are a lot of thrillers, and there are a lot of highly rated books in the "hard-boiled"category on Amazon (the reason I chose to be there). Any given time, a "hard-boiled" is running free, so to be at or near the top in the category for free means more people are selecting your book over others (it's the nature of the beast). Oh, and I think reviews are super important as a factor in downloads (some disagree with this, and I've seen books with 1 review have seriously great ranking free and paid - that's just luck or a good cover, or a good blurb, or a good sample, or..., who knows :)), but that's just a personal viewpoint.
What else does it tell me? Nothing else really. All it tells me is what I've stated above - I got a lot of people, with the help of Amazon, to download my book. My current estimate is that BB is now on about 15,000+ Kindles. It doesn't make me a great writer, or publisher or whatever. It means I got a bunch of people to download the book.
And I think that's pretty cool. Why? At a minimum, assuming there aren't robots doing the downloading, people read the cover and my name. A few of those people will actually read the book. I know that already from CB Edwards who downloaded Bangkok Burn first time around, and then wrote a review.
Pixel of Ink was kind enough to pick up both books on the 7 March, and that boosted Tag's sales tremendously. I also dropped the price back to the original US$2.99 price point. The result was pretty cool; shot up the rankings, made the best seller lists in High Tech, and Technothriller, and sold a bunch of books.
I'd be lying if I said I don't get a thrill when someone shells out their hard-earned cash for one of my books - not for the money, but for the validation - show me a writer who says they have no ego and I'll show you a bullshitter.
Bangkok Burn was free for the 7 and 8 March. The downloads were meager at 9am on the seventh. I thought, since this was the second run, and having read on other writer's blogs, that the numbers would be significantly less than the first free run. On the first free run Bangkok Burn ran to over 10,000 downloads and reached 43 in the overall kindle store. And then Amazon's back-end fell over... but that's another story.
I had a busy day on the Seventh. Lot of running around, and my time zone is +12 hours on New York. Which of course means I'm always at least twelve hours ahead of what any of the Big Six are doing. Anyway, I digress, but the truth is I fell asleep about eleven pm i.e. 8am in California. The next day was even worse Day Job-wise, busy-ness reigned supreme, so I rigged up someone to handle some tweeting for me because by then downloads had once again hit several thousand.
At peak ranking hit 64 in the free list for the Kindle Store. So very successful from the point of "getting the book in people's kindles", but what does it tell me?
It tells me that the genre is popular (yeah, call me Sherlock, but it's a valid data point).
It tells me my cover and blurb work. How? There're are a lot of thrillers, and there are a lot of highly rated books in the "hard-boiled"category on Amazon (the reason I chose to be there). Any given time, a "hard-boiled" is running free, so to be at or near the top in the category for free means more people are selecting your book over others (it's the nature of the beast). Oh, and I think reviews are super important as a factor in downloads (some disagree with this, and I've seen books with 1 review have seriously great ranking free and paid - that's just luck or a good cover, or a good blurb, or a good sample, or..., who knows :)), but that's just a personal viewpoint.
What else does it tell me? Nothing else really. All it tells me is what I've stated above - I got a lot of people, with the help of Amazon, to download my book. My current estimate is that BB is now on about 15,000+ Kindles. It doesn't make me a great writer, or publisher or whatever. It means I got a bunch of people to download the book.
And I think that's pretty cool. Why? At a minimum, assuming there aren't robots doing the downloading, people read the cover and my name. A few of those people will actually read the book. I know that already from CB Edwards who downloaded Bangkok Burn first time around, and then wrote a review.
March 7, 2012
Bangkok Burn Free 7 & 8 March 2012
Red Adept reviews gave it five stars, calling it, "The Godfather - Thai-style... a Thailand in the midst of political and social upheaval, used as a backdrop for the story of a Thai mafia family and their struggles to survive. Think of it as The Godfather, Thai-style, and you've got the idea."
Free today and tomorrow 7 and 8 March 2012. Download Bangkok Burn Free
February 12, 2012
Kindle Fire Department: Bangkok Burn: Today's Book of the Day 2/12
Kindle Fire Department: Bangkok Burn: Today's Book of the Day 2/12: You won't find an edge-of-your-seat ride like Bangkok Burn from author Simon Royle. I have to admit that as soon as I saw in the descriptio...
January 17, 2012
SOPA Blackout day
Simon Royle - Supporting anti-SOPA Blackout dayOn the Tuesday 24th January 2012, the US Senate will vote on the internet censorship bill.
Whilst it is an American law, it has far reaching repurcusions for the web as a whole.
There are many companies against SOPA, such as Google, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, and today I am lending my weight to the argument by taking my site down for the day.
If you think SOPA doesn't affect you, please think again. Watch the video below, or use the form below to force politicians to take notice.
Thank you
January 16, 2012
Graduation Day - Welcome to the Real World
On the weekend I went to the graduation ceremony of the daughter of a close friend. I hadn't been to one of these in a while and it was great. Proud parents, happy ex-students, and a sense of hope for the future.
Driving back in the afternoon, I was listening to the radio, Wave FM88, here in Bangkok, is the only 24 hour English language radio broadcast. The news was on and the first item - McDonald's is sponsoring the Olympics, again. Saturday was also children's day in Thailand.
What message does this send to our young, the inheritors of our future, our hope? It sends a message that money is what we admire above all. It sends the message that we are okay with allowing a company more responsible for child obesity than perhaps any other single entity or product; to be aligned with the pinnacle of human achievement in sports.
Olympic Committee you should be ashamed of yourselves. What you have done is disgusting.
Copied from the Olympic Charter (the highlights are mine)
1. Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the
qualities of body , will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism
seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good
example, social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.
- Just what part of good example is McDonald's food?
2. The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development
of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the
preservation of human dignity.
- That would be Happy Meals harmonious would it?
3. The Olympic Movement is the concerted, organised, universal and permanent action,
carried out under the supreme authority of the IOC, of all individuals and entities who
are inspired by the values of Olympism. It covers the five continents. It reaches its
peak with the bringing together of the world's athletes at the great sports festival, the
Olympic Games. Its symbol is five interlaced rings.
- You should add the Golden Arches to the rings. Inspired by your values? No. Disgusted, yes.
4. The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of
practising sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which
requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.
- Being a really fat kid because you got sucked in by happy meals, doesn't enhance the possibility of practising sport - how do Happy Meals fit into "fair play".
In summary Olympic Committee - epic fail.
January 8, 2012
Bangkok Burn - A Thriller - The book blurb
Product Description
Take a walk on the darkside.
Orphaned as a child and raised as the only son of a Thaimafia Godfather. Chance, plans to quit the family business for the woman he loves.
Chance's father, Por, is The Godfather of Pak Nam, and ownerof the largest crocodile farm on earth. He didn't get to where he is, withoutknowing a thing or two about people and how long it takes for a crocodile todigest one. Before Chance can quit, his father asks him to, "take care of alittle something for me." Then a bomb goes off.
Waking up in hospital later that night, his father in a comanext door, Chance's troubles have only just begun. There're three guys dressedin black down the corridor, and they're not carrying flowers. Worse, Uncle Mikeisn't answering his phone, and a guy with a lisp is asking for a hundredmillion dollars in a week or "I'll kill him, sthlowly."
While figuring out who is trying to put the familypermanently out of business, where to get a hundred million, and who's gotUncle Mike, in a Bangkok gone crazy, quitting the family business takes abackseat to survival.
Survival begins with dying. And dying was the easy part.
***So what do you think?
Planning to release the novel in early February depending on wind direction.
December 31, 2011
Bangkok Burn: For release early 2012
If you'd like to sign up for an advanced reader copy (ARC), (which will be a pre-release in epub and mobi format), let me know by leaving your email addy here.
