H.O. Charles's Blog, page 13

New idea for a novella

A new idea for a book popped into my head while I was writing Book 4 and I'm quite keen to get started on it as another novella! Watch this space for more publications!

Also, if you haven't already given it a go, have a look at Snowlands. It borrows elements from The Fireblade Array, but is a new story in its own right and is a quick read. You should find it on most online outlets (and don't forget to leave a rating or review :D :D :D).

HOC

The Daily Mail does 'shopping... or tries

I really don't like the way that The Daily Mail portrays women. Readers are frequently invited to assess them according to looks, age and weight. Stories are very rarely based around academic merit or professional achievement. If you look down the sidebar of their website, you'll see at least three articles featuring someone 'flaunting their bikini body', whether attractive or not and another ten featuring pregnant celebrities. It's a formula that generates clicks, comments and site traffic, but I don't think it's good for society. I don't think it promotes very good attitudes toward other people.

The most blatant offence yet has to be this example of Photoshopping. There's an article here, lauding Elle Macpherson's incredible ability to stay in shape, even though she's hit the mind-boggling, eye-watering, inconceivably great age of 48.  Oh yes, who knew people could even live that long?

Anyway, the article goes on about some man she's on a boat with, and then goes on to describe how amazing she looks. And then... oddly... there's a picture that doesn't quite fit.


Now... this is not a picture of an overweight woman, but it's not the body of Elle Macpherson, either. Here's another version from a different site:

Okay, so they've added a weird 'Gossip' logo, but she looks a touch thinner. So what's going on? Are writers at The Daily Mail Photoshopping pictures of women to invite criticism from keen comment-ers? Is this responsible behaviour? 

Call for Amazon.com Reviews

Hello all,

Apologies for my absence, I have been on holiday! It was a fair bit sunnier than the apparent monsoon season that the UK is currently experiencing, and served as a much-needed break.

As the title of this post suggests, I'm on the hunt for reviews of my books on Amazon.com. CoB has been on there for over a year now, and still only has two reviews. I know it's a bit of an ask, especially as so many of you have already rated and voted on other sites (B&N, Goodreads, iTunes or the UK Amazon - thanks so much, whoever you are!), but if anyone has a moment to spare, I would be eternally grateful for a comment or two on the US Amazon site.

Amazon state that all reviews must be unbiased (as if such a state were achievable!) and therefore I am not permitted to offer any presents such as signed, free books in return for reviews. So all I can do is write a 'thank you' on here, even if you slate my work horribly!

Find the book here

In other news, The Fireblade Array series is still moving up and up in the B&N charts. The second and third books were around the 39,000 and 47,000 mark when I last checked. That's hardly best-seller territory, but I'm really proud to see my work up there at all.

Book 4 is coming along and, wow, what a mess the characters are going to have to sort out! Tee hee :-)

Giveaways!

I'm currently listing two giveaways on Goodreads: one for Nation of Blaze and one for Anomaly of Blaze (both paperbacks). These are nice, new copies and will be signed! Please log onto Goodreads and enter the competition if you're interested!

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Goodreads Book Giveaway Nation of Blaze by H.O. Charles Giveaway ends July 09, 2012.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter to win
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Goodreads Book Giveaway Anomaly of Blaze by H.O. Charles Giveaway ends July 09, 2012.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter to win
I also have a few proof editions to shift - these are copies with slight printing errors, the odd typo (not many, mind you!) or old covers. If you'd like one of these, please feel free to email me directly via Facebook, Goodreads or the 'Contact Me' link on this blog.

H. O. Charles is now on Facebook

Yes, I have finally relented and found myself a small space amidst the fray! Please come along and give me a 'like' or two :-) It should be good as a platform for a bit of interaction and regular updates!

http://www.facebook.com/Hadleigh.O.Charles

And if you're on Goodreads, you can also find me here:

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5241538.H_O_Charles

Teaser for Volume Four of The Fireblade Array

This blog has reached 10,000 hits! As promised, here's a small teaser for the next book. Be careful about reading ANY FURTHER if you don't want to spoil the intervening books!




The walk was a long one for Carlin. How many times had he ventured through these dark and damp tunnels? A thousand? More? He offered a nod to the guards at the entrance to the chamber and proceeded through to the prison. A wrinkled and weighty tome was slung beneath his right arm, its leathery pages pressing against his side. The story it contained had been a favourite of his for many years, though for some reason, he had never shared it with his daughter. Now was as good a time as ever. He raised his torch and set it in one of the wall sconces, before sitting cross-legged on the floor. “I see they’ve kept to their word in cleaning up your cell.”

Before him, caged within ivory bars, was Mirel. Her great mass of knotted hair had been shaven off only a few months before, and already it had regained enough length to make her appear rather elfin. She looked happier for it, though the event itself had required a considerable amount of manpower, ropes and poison-tipped darts. Carlin did not like to see her treated in this way, of course, but he had come to accept what she was capable of. What he refused to accept, however, was that his wife had died bringing a heartless creature with no future into the world.

“I don’t know why you bother visiting me, old man. Your words bore me.”

“You should have someone to speak to every now and then, even if you find them dull.” Carlin opened up the book on its first page and appraised the lettering. Its construction was rather fine for a volume that appeared quite unassuming at first glance.

“Have they found her yet?”

“Found whom?”

“Do not pretend you don’t know. I know she died last month.”

Carlin sighed. “I haven’t heard anything, and it would be better for you if you gave up this millennia-long fixation with her. It’s not healthy.”

She sighed and made a noise that sounded halfway between a hiss and a guffaw. “This world is cracked and broken with its own ignorance already. No hope remains.”

“That is a matter of opinion.” Carlin cleared his throat and began to read, “In the Era of Half Light it was said that the clouds never separated to give forth the golden rays of the sun, and that the beneficent glow of the moon was all but forgotten. The skies remained opaque, but-”

“There was sunshine. You had to be at the right place at the right time to find it. And no one was stupid enough to forget the moon was there. No one but the author of that book.”

Carlin cracked a smile. It was the most sensible thing she had said to him yet. “Then tell me what it was like. What did you do then?”

Her voice lowered to a whisper. “It was a very long time ago.” Mirel retreated into the shadows of her cell, and crouched so that her chin rested upon her knees.

“Well, if you won’t tell me then I’ll have to read more of this.” He gave her a moment to speak up, but when she did not he resumed his reading, “The skies remained opaque, but illumination still shone forth from the hearths and homes of the people. And in one town, a town at the very edges of the inhabited world, resided a community of people so tough that not even a thousand years of the harshest winters had succeeded in destroying them. These people were the Furini, The Resolved. And w-”

“They weren’t resolved. They spent half their time drinking and the other half breeding. That was how they survived.”

Carlin blinked. “You met these people?”

“I was born there once. A waste of my time.”

“And this was before your training as an assassin?”

Mirel’s blue eyes flared. “Modern children! Always so ignorant of the past! Of course it was before – two-thousand damned years before!”

Carlin nodded to himself. He really ought to have gotten a handle on her temper when she was smaller. It was clear that her inability to deal with her anger was part of her problem, though he had no idea how to fix it in an adult. He chose to talk to her as he would a child. “Don’t speak to me like that, Mirel. I am still your father. I think I deserve more respect. So, why don’t you tell me about that life so that I can overcome this area of ignorance, hmm?”

There was a look in her eye that he knew was intended to incite fear, but it rapidly faded. She sighed heavily and moved closer to the bars once more. “Ignorance: I lived in it. Fear was not my friend as it is now. It was cold there. And there were always gales outside. They’d whistle… My father was… it was so long ago… he was a whisper on the wind like everyone else. He used to sell… it was… he used to sell fine things. Things that had been brought over the mountains of ice and the rough seas of storms. You couldn’t grow anything there. Not in that wasteland. I had two older brothers; their names are lost now. All names are lost in time. All that remains to us is to reproduce and live, and to befriend fear.”

“Do you remember what they looked like?”

“They looked like fear!” She made a short, sharp noise of frustration and exasperation. “This was always the sort of thing she would go on and on about: ‘Oh, I love the family so, so much. And my fathers… Please don’t kill them - they are everything.’ I had to listen to that sickening bilge for years. Centuries!”

“But surely you loved the families who had brought you into the world, the ones who had fed you and cared for you?”

“They did their duty. I am here to save this world from its own disaster. Theirs was a privilege.”

Carlin had to admit that he did not feel particularly privileged at that moment. But he did have a duty. “If you want to save the world, you cannot do it in this state. And your rivalry with this other girl has hardly done you any favours, has it?”

“You do not know what you are speaking of, father.”

“Well, she is free and you have been in prison these last twenty-five years because of the crimes you committed.”

“She killed more people than I ever did, and she did it through her own selfishness – out of some fool belief that she was saving her precious loved ones. She could never see the importance of detachment, and that sometimes those deaths were necessary.”

Carlin smiled. “Then you admit it. You do have loved ones?”

“Love is reserved for commoners. The Dedicated were never that.”

“But you pursued the old king here, did you not?”

Without any warning, Mirel hurled herself at the bars, her teeth bared. She seemed almost to foam at the mouth. “He was to be my soldier! My ally!”

“Commanders do not need to lie with their soldiers.”

Her ire snapped suddenly and a strange, contorted smile spread across her features. “A girl is permitted a little pleasure, is she not?”

But Carlin knew that he had touched upon an area of some emotional sensitivity the moment she moved a hand to touch her jaw. It was the clearest sign of her lies, and had been present since she was a small girl. A tell, gamblers called it, and it showed that Mirel was not heartless. Not at all. One had to know love in order to know detachment. And if she understood that people were more than just meat to be saved, then surely she could learn the value of each and every life? Surely?

June!

Well, it's nearly here - a full year of being self-published! I can't believe it's gone so quickly and so well :-) I am also very pleased to see that The Fireblade Array is a small but well-formed (can I call it cult yet?!) hit on Barnes and Noble, something that seems to have come out of nowhere!

In addition, this blog is close to receiving its 10,000th view! As a 'woo-yay' celebration, when it hits this number, I'll publish a little teaser for Volume 4 of The Fireblade Array :-)

Woo and yay.

Snowlands now making its way to other outlets

Now that it's free of KDP Select's clutches, my novella will soon be appearing across numerous online stores.

For those that don't know, it features some ideas that are not dissimilar to those found in The Fireblade Array, but the feel and approach of the book is quite different. It's not terribly romance-y, and the main character is... well... I'll let you make your own minds up about her!

Snowlands will be priced at $0.99 or anywhere between £0.49-£0.77, dependant upon how the store does the currency conversion.

Oh yes, and it's finally sunny in the UK! Wow! Hurray! Yay! Off to do some writing in the garden :-)

Volume 3 now on B&N!

Find it here

Kobo have also updated their listings, and it's available here, too!

Happy reading :-)

This is why Anomaly hasn't shown up on B&N yet...

A message from Smashwords (my distributor):

"Our tech team is busy ironing out some distribution issues between B&N and Kobo.  At B&N, several shipments failed or partially failed over the last two months.  As of this evening, the team is completing an audit and will soon reship titles.  If your book is showing as shipped but has not appeared there yet, this is probably the reason.  At Kobo, this week we reshipped several thousand titles, and will ramp up reshipments next week.  If all goes well, missing titles should reappear soon."

So there we go! My apologies for the inconvenience and the wait. Not long now...