a little bite of christmas

Season's greetings, one and all.
Yup. It's that time of the year, folks, when I get to remind you that in the Free Fiction section of this blog you can read a short Chrismas story . . . For Free!

I know, I'm so giving . . .

It's called "Christmas Calories", and you can get to it easily by clicking Here.

Merry Christmas, "Ho, ho, ho," and all of that.

Mark

paperback writing

I haven't seen the cover art yet, so can't post any images, but in the spirit of full disclosure I just thought I'd mention that my western from the other year, NO FIRE WITHOUT SMOKE, is due a paperback release in the first quarter of 2019. It's being published by Throrpe, as part of their Linford Westerns range, and they're the same lovely people who put out the paperback of my first western, HOUR OF THE BLACK WOLF.

NO FIRE's official release date is January 1st, but I can't see many people out on New Year's Day seeking it out. Still, it should be good.  We of course thank the people at Thorpe kindly and look forward to seeing the copies out there in the real world.

I'll just reiterate something I've said before, because it bears repeating and remembering. It's a treat to be published, and shouldn't be taken lightly. Seeing a book alive and in print is a rare enough and special thing, given how many folk are out there, writing without reward. Seeing a book go from hardback into paperback is a heart warming experience, and a help getting through the cold months of winter.

So. The paperback of NO FIRE WITHOUT SMOKE should be in the libraries next year, and there will be copies available on all the good - and some of the not so good - bookselling websites.

(Incidentally, and should you be interested, I've notied that a couple of copies of the hardcover of NO FIRE have sprung into existence on amazon.co.uk. For a while no such copies were available. Both the hardcover and paperback of BLACK WOLF sold out quickly, and are only available through dealers these days, some of which I would suggest are being a bit hopeful by listing the hardcover for over a hundred pounds . . . But, you know, maybe they have children to feed. If you so fancy, you're allowed to buy a copy of NO FIRE at less than the cover price on amazon. I promise you, it's fine. It's no crime. And Christmas is coming, if you were still looking for gifts . . . Click here for a copy.)

north of midnight

It's that month again, the one where the witchy goings on go on, and the ghosts and the ghoulies come out to play. It's that time when the leaves on the tree light up, and then fall and make rust of the gutters and the pavements. It's the time when kids come knocking on your door for goodies and the cold comes nipping at your bones. It's also that time when I have a new book out and it is, appropriately, witchy-ish, ghostly-ish, and halloween-ish. (I decided not to write ghoulies-ish, because, well, you know . . .) Anyway, it's called North of Midnight, and it is a collection of darkly slanted tales, all with a kink of the supernatural to them. Just right for this time of year, perhaps.

There are nine pieces in North of Midnight, of which about half of the content is published for the first time. Technically, all but two of the pieces should have been published before, but owing to magazines and anthologies collapsing it just never happened. And rather than send the tales out elsewhere, I elected to put them together and make a collection. It's not a massive collection. It's about 240 pages long, if we're to believe the page count, and I think that's a nice length. I'm not a big fan of enormous anthologies and collections. The commitment required to start new story after new story can be a bit too much to ask a reader over the course of 400 or 500 pages. That's how I feel anyway. Give me a 130-pager or at a push a 250-pager any day of the week. Sometimes less is more, and as it's true about the prose in a short story, it makes sense to me that it should be true about how many pages there should be in a collection.

I won't say much about the pieces inside, other than that if you're read my supernatural-flavoured tales in books and magazines, then you'll have an idea of what they are about. If you haven't read any of those pieces before, then hey, it can be a surprise.

North of Midnight is available as a paperback:

HERE for you if you're in the UK

HERE for you if you're in the USA

and via your own local amazon store if you're in the EU (here's the German link. Here's the French. Both are written in English).

All being well, an ebook version should be available before or around the New Year, via Kobo and Amazon Kindle.

Thanks for reading.

Happy Halloween.

the deception glass

So I’ve been quiet. Or I have been as far as the e-ther is concerned. Has anyone noticed? Probably not. And fewer have probably cared. But such is life.

I have been a bit lax, though, I must admit, in recording a few more blog entries. And at least one is deserved.

Which of course you can take either way . . .

So. Deserved or not, here we are.

As sales of my YA/portal fantasy novel A Clash of Ichor and Blood roared off to a terrible start and then declined rapidly, I put up a bit of a promotional ebook short story on a couple of ebook retailers’ sites. It’s a piece called "The Deception Glass", and like A Clash of Ichor and Blood, it’s low-fantasy. And just what, I hear you ask, is low-fantasy? It’s essentially fantasy linked to a real-world setting, in the way that CS Lewis’s fantasies were, rather than set in the high-fantasy realm of Tolkien’s otherworldly Lord of the Rings. To use but two of the most famous examples.

"The Deception Glass" is just shy of 7,000 words, and comes with the first few chapters of A Clash of Ichor and Blood with it, to tempt the unwary into parting with the price of, oh, say a cup of tea and a half for the ebook . . . or a few notes more for a rather handsome and nicely designed UK trade paperback edition. Or US trade paperback edition for that matter.

If you are wise and lucky enough to be a Kobo owner (or at least have installed the Kobo reading app on your smart device of choice and/or affordability) then you can own a copy of "The Deception Glass" for free. If however, you are one of the crowd and have opted for the big river company Kindle e-reader (or app) I am afraid that – as of the moment – it’ll cost you money. Less than most places will sell you a cup of tea for, it’s true, but it’s still money.

Why does one cost money and the other not? Simply because Amazon doesn’t allow you to list books for free. Pretty much all the titles you see on there for nothing have been price-matched to a competitor’s price. So if someone gives a tale or book away for free on Kobo, it can take a while for Amazon to follow suit. If enough people get in touch with Amazon and say, Oi, it’s free on Kobo, then they might knock the price down to free. But I have no real say in this in relation to my tale.

It is my intention to put perhaps a slightly longer version of "The Deception Glass" into a collection at some point (yeah, yeah – always in the future with you, Lynchy. . .), but for now it’s my hope that someone somewhere might stumble across it, maybe download it, maybe even read, and perhaps – long shot – like it . . . and then buy A Clash of Ichor and Blood after reading it. They might even put up a nice review for it. Who knows?

If not, then not. But a boy has to hope.

Anyway, the image of A Clash of Ichor and Blood over to the right on this screen should have links to the ebook versions of the novels.

 Here's a link to the UK free version of The Deception Glass. (Click on this, no matter which country you are in, and theoretically it should take you to the Kobo free version in your own land. If that doesn't work, there are links in the Free Fiction section of this website.) Also, while we're at it, here's a  link to the UK Amazon version. The image of the short on the right hand sidebar should have links too. I sincerely appreciate any purchase, whether you pay for it or not.

In the meantime, what else have I been doing? Getting iller, slowly going about the process for getting checked for cancer (something which may well curtail the future plans I mentioned above, depending on the results, should I actually find the strength to get through the tests), somehow staggering over the line with a second draft of a new book that may or may not be called Tindermass if it is ever to see the light of day, and trying to look after people and myself as best I can. It ain’t easy, believe me. I had a nice few days away with my special one, up in the Lake District, and the sun was quite kind too. What does tomorrow bring? Time of its own, long or short.

Take care.