Martyn V. Halm's Blog, page 5
July 16, 2015
In Pocket now on GoodReads and Amazon.
As the author, of course I cannot rate or review my own work. What I can do is give you, the potential reader, some background information about In Pocket.
About twenty years ago, when I was working on what was to become Reprobate: A Katla Novel, I had a half-finished story on a busker who lived in a delivery van and pretended to be blind in order to rake in more money. As such, Wolfgang was the only one who saw a murder by assassin Katla Sieltjes, who promptly sta...
July 4, 2015
REVIEW: How Do You Deal With Negative Reviews?
Can You ‘Deal’ With Negative Reviews?
I don’t ‘deal’ with negative reviews, since there’s nothing to deal with. A negative review is the opinion of a reader, intended to express their feelings about your work to other readers (not, I repeat, not to you, the author, because that is what ‘feedback’ is for). By the way, I make a distinction between a negative review (where the reviewer criticizes the book) and a bad review (where the reviewer criticizes the author).
I read all the reviews I can...
July 2, 2015
ARC In Pocket, now available for reviewers.
Are you a book reviewer and interested in an ARC of In Pocket? Send an email with ‘ARC reviewer In Pocket’, and maybe you can get In Pocket a month early (publication date August 1st).
Picking the wrong pocket might prove fatal…
Nomadic pickpocket Wolfgang gets blackmailed into teaching his craft to the mysterious Lilith, a young woman with no aptitude whatsoever to become a pickpocket. Wolf figures the easiest way is to go with the flow and instruct Lilith in the art of emptying other peopl...
June 17, 2015
‘In Pocket’ won a new cover
While my stand-alone noir novel In Pocket went through the beta-testing, I submitted the cover I had to the 2015 E-Book Cover Makeover Contest, and I won a spanking new cover.
Before:
New cover, courtesy of Farah Evers Design:
You can find information on the contest here. The pitch for In Pocket:
Picking the wrong pocket might prove fatal…
Nomadic pickpocket Wolfgang gets blackmailed into teaching his craft to the mysterious Lilith, a young woman with no aptitude whatsoever to become a pick...
April 7, 2015
Unexpected Fan Mail…
Today I received an email from a fan (name edited out by request):
Dear Katla:
I have benefited from, and very much enjoyed, the tales of your professional life. I have taken it upon myself to promote your skills in the United States (see attached mobile advertisement). As a businessman, I believe you play a very valuable and useful role in the capitalist system. I just hope that one of my competitors (or business partners) never enlists your services to troubleshoot me.
Enjoy and feel better...
April 5, 2015
PUBLISHING: To DRM or not to DRM, is that really the question?
I found that many authors, especially the self-publishing authors, are confused by Digital Rights Management, thinking that DRM is necessary in order to prevent your work from being pirated.
They couldn’t be more wrong.
Let’s start with putting Digital Right Management into laymen’s terms.
Digital Rights Management is software added to intellectual property in order to limit the user in sharing the property.
Well, that sounds fine, doesn’t it? When the buyer of your e-book downloads the file...
March 23, 2015
PUBLISHING: Can You Find The Differences?
My cover designer, Farah Evers, updated my covers to make them more legible at a smaller size. I replaced the covers on Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Nook, Scribd, and all other retailers.
Here are the old covers (left) and the new covers (right).
The differences are subtle and perhaps only noticeable if you have the covers side-by-side, but I’m nevertheless very pleased with the upgrade! What do you think? Improvement or not?
March 22, 2015
PUBLISHING: How To Set This Book Free On Amazon!
Amazon doesn’t allow self-publishers to sell their books for free, as loss-leaders, but I have two free stories on Amazon.
Now, I want to set a third story free on Amazon, and I need your help to do that.
Will you help me? It will only take a minute or so. Here’s what you do:
First, copy this Kobo link: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/fundamental-error
Second, follow this link to the page of Fundamental Error on Amazon.com
If you scroll down the Amazon page, you’ll see this under Pro...
March 18, 2015
REVIEW: Sociopath meets Good Girl… interesting Romance Novel
The Value of Vulnerability by Roberta Pearce
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I read this book recently, after reading Pearce’s other offerings, A Bird Without Wings and For Those Who Wait. And I’ve enjoyed The Value of Vulnerability more, not just because the prose has matured, but also the subject matter.
I’m not a regular Romance reader, so with A Bird Without Wings and For Those Who Wait, I regularly had problems suspending my disbelief. Not because Pearce is a bad writer, far from it, but because...
December 30, 2014
Aconite Attack, the new Katla KillFile, is now live!
Aconite Attack, the fourth KillFile, is now available at Amazon and will soon be available at other retailers*. Click on the cover to go to the Amazon page:
Assassin Katla finds a devious way to get a target to poison himself…
The Aconite Attack KillFile (10,700 words) follows Katla Sieltjes on her first foray as a freelance assassin and corporate troubleshooter, when she gets herself hired by the CEO of a modelling agency to permanently remove his playboy partner, who is quickly draining th...
