The Disappointment With Free
Around last Christmas Amazon brought in its Select program which among other things allowed independent e-publishers to make their books free for 5 days in a 90 day period. The results of going free were, in some cases, astonishing. I should know— it worked for me. I made my book The Inquiry Agent free for five days during the holiday period and when it came off the promotion it jumped into the top ten bestseller lists for its category, and hit 70 plus sales a day for a while. This was in historical mysteries, a genre in which I have Read more…
What To Do When You Don’t Feel Like Writing Redux
I was planning on writing a long post about magic and military fantasy this week when reality intervened. I was recently put on medication for diabetes and my metabolism still seems to be adjusting to it. I’ve had to make some dietary changes as well which are not helping. A lot of the day I feel pretty slow, particularly just after I have taken the tablets in the morning. It’s not exactly conducive to writing either fiction or blog posts. Under the circumstances there is only one thing to do: learn, adapt and roll with the punches. I’ve spent the Read more…
Blood of Aenarion Makes Gemmell Shortlist
I just wanted to thank everyone who voted for Blood of Aenarion in the David Gemmell Legend Award. It is a great honour to have made it onto the short list. http://gemmellaward.com/profiles/blogs/david-gemmell-legend-award-shortlist-2012
The Casebook of Jack Brodie
Much to my surprise my Victorian detective novel, The Inquiry Agent, has reached the top 10 in the Kindle Historical Mysteries and British Detective categories on Amazon.com. It was in fact very briefly number 1 in both and is, as of the time of writing, in the Top 100 Mysteries. I would like to do something to encourage you all to rush out and buy a copy (or at least give you some idea of the style) but unfortunately the terms of Amazon’s Kindle Select program forbid me from reprinting any of it here. I am therefor going to post Read more…
Two Different Paths
I have been experimenting with writing 2000 words of new fiction every working day since the New Year. This is in addition to outlining, planning, revising and producing new ebooks. It’s led to some interesting (for me, at least) consequences. Right now I am working on two different projects and my methods are about as different as I can possibly imagine. The first is The Fist of Demetrius, my second Macharius novel for Warhammer 40K. This started off last year as a simple first person narrative and mutated into something else as it progressed. The second project is my sword and Read more…
The Small, Nagging Voice
Yesterday I finished the first draft of my Kormak novel, Mask of the Necromancer. I did it ahead of schedule, just carried along by the flow of the writing. You’d think I’d be happy, but no, being a writer and a neurotic, I’ve found a way to make myself unhappy about this. Since I believe in spreading the misery, I thought I would share my method with you. This week I made a commitment to write 3000 words a day, 50% more than I normally would. Mostly this was a result of reading Rachel Aaron’s 10K a day article and Read more…
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