It's a Steal!
The Colony is now available for download onto Kindle from Amazon. It is priced at £1.53 in the UK and $2.40 in the US. I wanted to make it cheaper, but those prices give me a modest return and it means that you get a 100, 000 word-plus novel divided into 13 chapters for less than the price of a Starbucks latte. For those of you who like an extra shot, you even get an epilogue thrown in …
What else do you get? Well, there’s a rather startling apparition early on. There’s a sea chest belonging to a long dead ship’s captain far wiser left unopened. There’s a character with a psychic gift she would definitely prefer not to have. There’s ego, vanity, violence, intrigue and eventually, there’s the dark solution to an enduring mystery.
I wrote this immediately after finishing Brodmaw Bay. That was a character-driven novel which examined a close-knit family’s gradual absorbing into a closed and ultimately sinister community. After Bay, I needed to write something on a bigger scale with a more diverse cast of characters. In musical terms, Bay was a chamber piece and this is full-blown orchestral. If you prefer metaphors with a rock orientation, Bay was an acoustic solo performance and this is the full band all plugged in with the amps cranked up to 11.
I’m talking about scale there, rather than schlock. Anyone who has read my paranormal thrillers will know that I’m much more attracted to atmosphere than gore. And there’s plenty of scope for atmospheric chills on a remote island off the Scottish coast from which a religious community vanished without trace more than a century ago.
I say a religious community. But they were a cult and they were isolated and what they got up to before they vanished, hardly really bears thinking about.
An uninhabited Island, I could add. Uninhabited since the vanishing, at least by the living, at least by the recognizably human …
Not a place you’d necessarily like to visit, New Hope Island. It’s somewhere better read about, than physically explored. I do hope some of you explore it in words and I hope you’re entertained by what you find there. For the price of a cup of coffee, I think it’s worth taking the risk.
What else do you get? Well, there’s a rather startling apparition early on. There’s a sea chest belonging to a long dead ship’s captain far wiser left unopened. There’s a character with a psychic gift she would definitely prefer not to have. There’s ego, vanity, violence, intrigue and eventually, there’s the dark solution to an enduring mystery.
I wrote this immediately after finishing Brodmaw Bay. That was a character-driven novel which examined a close-knit family’s gradual absorbing into a closed and ultimately sinister community. After Bay, I needed to write something on a bigger scale with a more diverse cast of characters. In musical terms, Bay was a chamber piece and this is full-blown orchestral. If you prefer metaphors with a rock orientation, Bay was an acoustic solo performance and this is the full band all plugged in with the amps cranked up to 11.
I’m talking about scale there, rather than schlock. Anyone who has read my paranormal thrillers will know that I’m much more attracted to atmosphere than gore. And there’s plenty of scope for atmospheric chills on a remote island off the Scottish coast from which a religious community vanished without trace more than a century ago.
I say a religious community. But they were a cult and they were isolated and what they got up to before they vanished, hardly really bears thinking about.
An uninhabited Island, I could add. Uninhabited since the vanishing, at least by the living, at least by the recognizably human …
Not a place you’d necessarily like to visit, New Hope Island. It’s somewhere better read about, than physically explored. I do hope some of you explore it in words and I hope you’re entertained by what you find there. For the price of a cup of coffee, I think it’s worth taking the risk.
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Martin
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Aug 25, 2012 03:04AM
That's brilliant news! I'm going over to Amazon.co.uk right now to buy a copy. Best regards, Martin.
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I have chills just from reading this post! Nothing shall stop me from an immediate trip to my Amazon to purchase! Not hurricanes, tornados, electrical failures, nor apparitions!!
I am so stoked!!! I just read your post and went right to Amazon to buy it. :) Thanks,
Roz
Just went to Amazon and bought it. Looking forward to reading it!
Buying within in second of reading! Cant wait.
Just read it yesterday and did a brief five star review on Amazon. I'm definitely going to do future seminars on this book: the format makes it available to all and affordable. It is as scary as anything you've written and the storm theophany accompanying the good/evil motif was spectacular and so gripping I reached for my raincoat. I saw the connection to Brodmaw yet it was distinctly different....there were also connections to your other "F. G." novels ...and I enjoyed, as always, unlocking the hints in the character/place name symbolism. Another element I appreciated that we saw in Brodmaw was the decimation of the unlikeable individual...this is so satisfying in a horror story!...although a good one or two went as well, it was satisfying to see karma at work and not out to lunch..:)......The only issue had nothing to do with the book itself: the editor unfortunately missed too many spellcheck (sexton instead of sextant, knave instead of nave, etc.) and typing errors, so it wasn't ready for prime time in terms of appearance. Otherwise it was a truly stellar work. Your books remain at the top of the scare factor scale. Each is better than the last (and this reader loves them all). I reread them and make new discoveries each time! Thanks for another fine novel. Will be writing more about it....it's a masterpiece.
Will there be a hard copy for all of us non-kindle-users?
Nothing planned. But you can download the Kindle app from Amazon onto your computer for free and read it there.
