Read An E-book Week
It’s “Read an e-book week” over at Smashwords, and for the time being, you can read all of my published titles there, FREE. Yes, free, gratis, for nothing, and not just a 20% sample download, the full burn.
I’m a Yorkshireman and we’re not known for our generosity. To me every sixpence is valuable. So have I suddenly lost whatever sense I had?
And here’s another poser for you. Why has this blog been dormant so long?
The two questions are inextricably linked.
Coming up to the New Year I was working on a series of novels under the umbrella title Old Nick & The Countess. Halfway through Book 1 it occurred to me that they were wrong. The theme and format were not working and I had no wish to carry on with them… at least for the time being.
I gave the matter some considerable thought while working on the 100 Stores for Queensland project and eventually I came up with a different idea. Once again, it went through a number of theoretical incarnations before I finally got it right(ish) and the Stasis Center books were born.
Writers are strange creatures and none is stranger than me. Book 1, working title The Dead Web, was already written and stored on the hard drive. Simple enough job to pull it out, reorganise it, and knock it into shape. That took up a good part of January/February and it was only when I’d finished it that I realised it wasn’t Book 1 but Book 2. I needed another title to lay the foundation. I spent most of February writing that, again drawing from older material.
I won’t go into the premise of Stasis Center here. There’s a link to the web page further down. To summarise, they’re time–travelling, zombie filled, sci-fi/horror tales with a single, central enemy and a couple of goodies chasing him. They’re not specifically YA, but they can be read by anyone from the age of about 13 upwards.
My original plan was for short, sharp action-packed reads, and the first title, Coldmoor, is exactly that. Less than 45,000 words long, it is all action, choc full of zombies, ghosts, evil doers, good guys trying to sort it out, served with a soupcon of suspicion. It’s already been described as a cracking little read and the price is unbelievably cheap: $1.14 (it should have been 99cents but we Europeans have to fork out 15% VAT on the cover price.)
With Book 1 safely uploaded and beginning to sell, I turned my attention back to what had become book 2: The Dead Web.
By this time, I’d been reading up on successful e-novels and I learned that the longer works actually do better. This was a surprise to both me and my editor, the incredibly accurate and reasonably tolerant Maureen Vincent-Northam. We’re both fans of print, and we thought that short, punchy reads would do better on e-readers. Not so, say the big sellers, and their sales figures back them up.
The result is that The Dead Web, which is coming close to completion, has expanded from its original 40,000 words, to 60,000. None of the action has been sacrificed. In fact, it’s been added to. Characterisation has been strengthened and there is more background material.
Book 2 will be followed by Book 3 as is the tendency. Little work has been done on Book 3 (working title Layla’s Moon) but it should be with you by the late spring.
For now, if you’re a sci-fi/horror reader, click the link below where you can learn more about Stasis Center, the theme, the novels, and then follow the links to Smashwords where you can pick up Coldmoor and get a taste of what is to come. And if you do that before the end of the week, you can get it for FREE.
The Stasis Center web page is here
Stasis Center also has its own Facebook page, where you can keep up to date with events and forthcoming titles. When you visit the page, click “like” and updates will post to your Facebook wall. You can find the page here
The Stasis Center novels are not the only titles you can get for free over at Smashwords. My latest major novel, Voices can be found on my Smashwords page, and that’s free for the coming week (normal price $3.99) and so, too, can my Spookies mystery, The Man In Black (usually on sale at $2.99).
All the titles can be found by following my page at Smashwords here
When purchasing the books, don’t worry that the system is telling you the price. There’s a coupon code in the top corner of each book’s page. Just look for the “sitewide promotion” link.
Enjoy!
I’m a Yorkshireman and we’re not known for our generosity. To me every sixpence is valuable. So have I suddenly lost whatever sense I had?
And here’s another poser for you. Why has this blog been dormant so long?
The two questions are inextricably linked.
Coming up to the New Year I was working on a series of novels under the umbrella title Old Nick & The Countess. Halfway through Book 1 it occurred to me that they were wrong. The theme and format were not working and I had no wish to carry on with them… at least for the time being.
I gave the matter some considerable thought while working on the 100 Stores for Queensland project and eventually I came up with a different idea. Once again, it went through a number of theoretical incarnations before I finally got it right(ish) and the Stasis Center books were born.
Writers are strange creatures and none is stranger than me. Book 1, working title The Dead Web, was already written and stored on the hard drive. Simple enough job to pull it out, reorganise it, and knock it into shape. That took up a good part of January/February and it was only when I’d finished it that I realised it wasn’t Book 1 but Book 2. I needed another title to lay the foundation. I spent most of February writing that, again drawing from older material.
I won’t go into the premise of Stasis Center here. There’s a link to the web page further down. To summarise, they’re time–travelling, zombie filled, sci-fi/horror tales with a single, central enemy and a couple of goodies chasing him. They’re not specifically YA, but they can be read by anyone from the age of about 13 upwards.
My original plan was for short, sharp action-packed reads, and the first title, Coldmoor, is exactly that. Less than 45,000 words long, it is all action, choc full of zombies, ghosts, evil doers, good guys trying to sort it out, served with a soupcon of suspicion. It’s already been described as a cracking little read and the price is unbelievably cheap: $1.14 (it should have been 99cents but we Europeans have to fork out 15% VAT on the cover price.)
With Book 1 safely uploaded and beginning to sell, I turned my attention back to what had become book 2: The Dead Web.
By this time, I’d been reading up on successful e-novels and I learned that the longer works actually do better. This was a surprise to both me and my editor, the incredibly accurate and reasonably tolerant Maureen Vincent-Northam. We’re both fans of print, and we thought that short, punchy reads would do better on e-readers. Not so, say the big sellers, and their sales figures back them up.
The result is that The Dead Web, which is coming close to completion, has expanded from its original 40,000 words, to 60,000. None of the action has been sacrificed. In fact, it’s been added to. Characterisation has been strengthened and there is more background material.
Book 2 will be followed by Book 3 as is the tendency. Little work has been done on Book 3 (working title Layla’s Moon) but it should be with you by the late spring.
For now, if you’re a sci-fi/horror reader, click the link below where you can learn more about Stasis Center, the theme, the novels, and then follow the links to Smashwords where you can pick up Coldmoor and get a taste of what is to come. And if you do that before the end of the week, you can get it for FREE.
The Stasis Center web page is here
Stasis Center also has its own Facebook page, where you can keep up to date with events and forthcoming titles. When you visit the page, click “like” and updates will post to your Facebook wall. You can find the page here
The Stasis Center novels are not the only titles you can get for free over at Smashwords. My latest major novel, Voices can be found on my Smashwords page, and that’s free for the coming week (normal price $3.99) and so, too, can my Spookies mystery, The Man In Black (usually on sale at $2.99).
All the titles can be found by following my page at Smashwords here
When purchasing the books, don’t worry that the system is telling you the price. There’s a coupon code in the top corner of each book’s page. Just look for the “sitewide promotion” link.
Enjoy!
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Always Writing
The trials and tribulations of life in the slow lane as an author
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