Scooters Yard

Well, I’ve finally done it! Published, that is.

Scooters Yard is now out and about and hitting the internet.

It’s been quite a long haul and took far longer than I expected but I got there eventually. I’m pleased with how it turned out and I hope that you will be too.

myBook.to/Scooters

A radical move ruffles more than a few feathers.

The introduction of female officers into the Police Force has an effect that Commander Jethro MacGillicudy wasn’t intending — someone isn’t happy.

A Watch-House mysteriously catches fire, a cart carries a strange load and there’s a neatly folded pile of clothes.

MacGillicudy joins forces with Cornwallis, Frankie and Rose to dig out the truth: a truth which has consequences, a truth which runs too close to home for comfort, a truth which must be discovered before it’s too late.

Another visit to Gornstock and its inhabitants as the crime-solving team seek out the not-so-good guys with the help of a cat and twelve very eager girls.

Cover Reveal!

Well, here it is. The cover for my new book. Hope you all like it as much as I do!

Scooters Yard will be out on 9th of May!

If anyone wants to be an ARC reader then please get in contact via the “contact me”  button on the top bar with an email address and preferred format. Thanks all.

The blurb:

A radical move ruffles more than a few feathers.

The introduction of female officers into the Police Force has an effect that Commander Jethro MacGillicudy wasn’t intending — someone isn’t happy.

A Watch-House mysteriously catches fire, a cart carries a strange load and there’s a neatly folded pile of clothes.

MacGillicudy joins forces with Cornwallis, Frankie and Rose to dig out the truth: a truth which has consequences, a truth which runs too close to home for comfort, a truth which must be discovered before it’s too late.

Another visit to Gornstock and its inhabitants as the crime-solving team seek out the not-so-good guys with the help of a cat and twelve very eager girls. 

An update on Scooters Yard

Seeing as I’ve not been around so much recently, I thought I would give you an update on how Scooters Yard, the second Gornstock novel, is going.

Well, it’s going through the appraisal stage. I’ve sent it out to a few people who are at this moment giving judgement on storyline, plot, general writing, to see whether it works as I meant it to. I’m certainly not going to press them to get on with it, I’m just sitting back and waiting for their opinions to come in.

I’ve also got my cover designer looking at it and he’s scratching his head to come up with some ideas for me to go through. If you’ve seen what he did with Banker’s Draft, you know that something special is in the pipeline!

What I don’t know is where all the time has gone. The problem with writing in your spare time, as I’m sure everyone knows, is trying to juggle loads of balls (i.e. projects, family, work etc) at the same time. This book is late in coming out, I regret to say, but I hope my readers will appreciate that I’ve taken my time in order to do it properly.

Watch this space because when I am finally ready to press the publish button I will be offering a few people the chance to read a pre-publication copy free of charge, gratis and for nothing – ain’t I the generous one!

Twitter twats and twots.

Now, I’m not an expert at using various social media platforms for the purposes of promoting my book. However, I’m an expert in what riles and annoys me.

When I first signed up for twitter I hadn’t a clue how it worked; it might have been an age thing, it might have been a limited knowledge of all things technical. I sat there for a while watching to see how things worked, following people who seemed to know what they were doing, until  I then tentatively started to follow suit.

What I didn’t do though was to follow people and then as soon as they followed back hit them with “a here’s my book go and buy it. It’s the best book ever and you don’t know what you’re missing” type tweet….or indeed a DM to the same effect.

What the hell do they think they are doing?

Spattered all over twitter, blogs, web-sites etc there is information regarding this practice. It universally tells you not to do this. I found this out and I know diddly-squat, so why do some cretins still do it?

All the authors on twitter have books to sell; but, be true here, who clicks on a book link from a new follower and immediately spends hard earned cash on a book that you know nothing about? Who amongst us is waiting with baited breath for that tweet to come flying into notifications so that we can find out what a total stranger has written. Of course you know it’s a bestseller and it is going to take the publishing world by storm; how do you know? Because they’ve just told you.

It gives authors a bad name. It gives the self-publishing industry a bad name. It gives book promotions a bad name. It gives YOU who do this a bad name. It is not a nice thing to do, so don’t do it!

Build your platform slowly. Interact with the people you follow. Be friendly. Let people find out a bit about you, and about your book, organically. Don’t be a pain in the arse. Above all, learn how to use social media properly.

Okay, rant over. I will now crawl back into my comfy little scribbling hole.

Book promotions!

We’ve all heard the story about a pretty young girl who gets spotted by an agency as she walks down the street and is then catapulted to international stardom via the catwalks. Within a year or so she’s a multi-zillionaire; she has a yacht, diamonds the size of golf balls and a social life to rival any WAG.

It happens, not often, but it happens.

But it happened once, so others hope that it is going to happen to them too. Cue hundreds of girls walking down that same street in the hope that the very same person who did the spotting is still there.

A little clothes shop owner sees what’s happening and starts to talk to the girls.

‘You’ve got to dress better; I have all the latest fashions here that are guaranteed to get you noticed. Make up too, tons of the stuff, all new and the latest products; wrinkle free skin and a suntan too. What more do you need? Oh, a new hairstyle? I can sort that too, I know someone cheap, does a wonderful job with hair.’

He starts to make lots of money from all these girls and each and every one of them appreciates that he sees something in them, he convinces them that they have talent and that he is really only helping them out.

All the while his till is going ‘ker-ching ker-ching,’ hundreds of times a day. He’s getting rich beyond imaging and all because he saw the girls and realised what they were hoping for. He was savvy enough to realise that they had virtually no chance of ever meeting the agency spotter but he was making money, so why should he care. He’s spotted a gap in his market and he was going to grab all the money he could from it while he had the chance.

Seem familiar?

Paid book promotion.

Now I have no doubt that there are some book promoters out there who are genuinely interested in, and good, at helping an author sell their books. I would guess that they also charge a lot of money for their services, but they have the contacts, they have access to that elusive group of people who are actually willing to part company with their cash for books; i.e. readers.

There are also those book promoters who bring together all the authors they can and charge them a small fee, miniscule in the great realm of things, and offer to promote their books for them. They offer to put the book on a website that has on the banner-heading the word “Readers” so all the authors flock to them. Books are now listed all over the site. But who actually sees them? Not readers, that’s for sure! Sometimes (or once) they tweet to their followers, thousands of them to let them know your book is available on their site; er….their thousands of followers who also happen to be authors.

The author then tweets and facebooks and google+’s etc that their books are on this site which then encourages other authors to sign up in the hope that they too can find the holy grail. ‘Ker-ching!’

Thus the book promoter has a steady stream of hopefuls (mugs) signing up to give them MONEY freely.

This book promoter is now making so much money from hundreds, if not thousands of authors who hope to get noticed by that elusive group of people called “readers”, that they rub their hands in glee as their till continually goes ‘ker-ching ker-ching’, they don’t have to do much now as more and more trusting authors sign up to their services and promote THEIR website. (See what’s happened there? The author is now promoting the book promoter!)  The book promoter can now sit back and watch the dosh come rolling in; and he doesn’t have to do a thing!

That’s the trouble with most hopeful authors; they’re a trusting bunch of people and only see the good in others.

These book promoters know that.

They will promise you the earth, but give you only a speck of dust; and even that grudgingly.

Look very carefully at any book promotion service. If it looks and sounds too good to be true, then it generally is…..or am I just being a cynical old git?

My review of ‘Echoes of Narcissus in the Gardens of Delight’ by Jo Robinson

This is the story of a woman who finally sees a chink of light after thirty years of marriage. As the shutters fall from her eyes, blazing sunshine floods in and she can see how she has suffered at the hands of her husband Marco, a control freak – a narcissist.

Donna is a fifty five year old woman who believed her life was as it was meant to be.  Her only refuge was her garden, filled with exotic and rare plants. She tended it lovingly and treated the plants as her only friends while she herself was treated as a downtrodden simpleton, an imbecile, somebody not worth giving the time of the day.

A chance encounter at the moment of realisation changes her life, she finds someone who wants to be a friend. The new friend sees things that weren’t at first obvious to the reticent Donna, but with her gentle encouragement Donna finally breaks from her shell and begins to blossom, finding more new friends along the way.

Life for Donna will never be the same again, but can she do what she needs to do? Escape is her only option, but with a narcissistic husband that is not as easy as it sounds. Can she achieve the impossible with the help of her new friends?

Jo Robinson has produced a wonderful novel here. I love the easy style and the way the characters leap of the page. You get to know them intimately and with Donna you find yourself urging her on, a lifelong loser who can finally cast her shackles aside to run forward and win.

This is quite a thought provoking book.

There is an obvious appeal to female readers, but I think that this crosses the gender barrier and male readers will enjoy it too.

The subject matter brings to light something that is hidden in many lives, but if this work of fiction resonates with just one reader in the future then the author has done more than just putting pen to paper.

The pen is mightier…..

I have decided to relent.

After the last few years of bashing away at the computer I’ve decided that picking up pen and paper and scribbling away in my hard to read handwriting is more productive than sitting at the keyboard and hammering away at the digits.

I’ve gone back to writing my writing down by actually writing!

When I first started writing I did so at work. Being in the ambulance service, the wee small hours were then a bit slow for calls, and I hated being woken up and having to rapidly get my brain into gear before careering off down the road to deal with whatever some person decided to do with themselves at that ungodly hour, that I always stayed awake whilst my crew-mate counted the z’s in the next room. I had to write on bits of paper, loose-leaf and stuffed into a battered and ripped A4 beige folder. I used to hide away in the ciggie room in my comfy battered chair and scribble away, making regular forays out to the kitchen for endless cups of tea to sustain me during those strange dark hours.

Technology has its good points, but you can’t beat the good old-fashioned technology.

I reckon people can lose sight of how it feels to actually write down, properly, the prose whizzing around in the mind. I find the flow is easier and more tangible and you don’t highlight and cut with pen and paper, you just write down what you’re thinking, warts and all. There’s a connection that you don’t get with a computer and it’s a bloody sight easier to just pick up a pen and add a line when it suddenly occurs to you.

It’s less of a distraction too. With a computer you’re just a click away from everything, and I mean everything. It’s all too easy to wander off and then find that for the last hour you’ve been scrolling through e-bay or looking at the house you’re going to buy when your latest book hits the best-seller list; the book that you’re not writing because you’re looking at the internet!

Give me a nice fountain pen and a few bits of paper and I’m happy as the pig in the proverbial.

I reckon that’s not a bad thing either!