Eight days to go haiku

Christmas cards posted,

Meals planned, presents wrapped, tree up.

Soon friends will arrive!

#MGBookElves – a fireside chat

In a cosy room at Castle Marsh, Fred and George are relaxing after a nice meal with their guests, Max the Tonkinese cat from the Shadows of the Past series and Stanley the labrador dog and Katrina von Cat from the Perpetual Papers of the Pack of Pets.  Fred tells all here.  After the conversation there is a chance to enter the BookElves Giveaway to win one of these books, or others from the 12 Authors of Christmas.

In which Fred tells what happened when Stanley, Kristina and Max came to visit Castle Marsh.

Tuesday haiku #31

I think it’s number thirty-one.  I’ve been popping them into other posts lately and not kept the sequential titling going.  Sorry!

Leaves, golden and bronze,

Frost rimed and tossed in the wind.

Soon they’ll all be gone.

And now, a word from our sponsors

No, I don’t have any sponsors.  I would be happy to mention them regularly and give them appropriate exposure if I had.  Given my personal principles they would also be ethical businesses, belong to one of the ethical registers on their stock exchange, be non-consumerist in product terms, or be of a charitable, philanthropic or not-for-profit nature.  That means most indie authors would get a look-in!

But, you say, why are there advertisements appearing at the bottom of your pages?

How should I be marketing the books in India?

The news from Smashwords that they are now shipping the books to Flipkart.com, an Indian online book retailer, made me think about the market for my books there.

I do have readers in India.  Judging from names and email addresses, this blog has followers in India too.  Greetings!  Amazon only recently started separating sales in India, but on the Talent Seekers free days a few people downloaded it at Amazon.in.  Why should I think about marketing it any differently from the way I market it in the rest of the world?

Round-up of the Blog Tour

Well, that was exhausting!  Thank you everyone who hosted a Blog Tour spot, and for reviewing the book, interviewing me and George and all the other fascinating things that went on.  And of course HUGE thanks to Renee at MotherDaughterBookReviews.com for organising it, and for finding the photo of Viggo Mortensen (I know how hard that was for you).

Blame Chuck Wendig

I’m sure Chuck Wendig can be blamed for a lot of things, particularly my flash fiction.  Ok, I’ll take responsibility for that myself, but he sets the challenges each week.  No, this time it was his excellent blog on being an indie author, or a self-published author.  Or, rather, a published author who happens to be the publisher too.

These ideas are right up there at the start of his post 25 Steps to Becoming a Self-Published Author. If you click the link, be warned that Chuck labels his blog NSFW – which as I understand it means Not Suitable for Work.  It has language, and occasionally concepts, that are not suitable for Middle Grade readers, that’s for sure.  But the sense he talks keeps me going back for more.

Five star reviews from Readers’ Favorite

For some reason I forgot to tell you about this.  Then the second review came in, so I thought I’d better catch up. 

Princelings trilogy review submissions

I submitted the three Princelings trilogy books for review at this professional or at least industry-recognised, site back in May or June.  As you can imagine I was delighted to get a five star review for Princelings of the East.

Friday Flash Fiction: Willow’s Day Off

Ten words – use all of them in your story.  That was the challenge from Chuck Wendig in this week’s flash fiction challenge.  I went blank to start with, then was tempted to do a little backstory since one of the words was Willow, and Willow is Hugo’s number two in his original journey down the time tunnel in The Traveler in Black and White.  There was one word that gave me trouble, since it is really too modern for the Princelings world.  I ended up deciding they have good enough scientists to have discovered molecular structure!  This is 995 words – amazing how much you can edit to get within the 1000 word guideline.

Who’s stealing your ideas?

I don’t know whether it’s summer madness, but there seems to be a lot of anti-social behaviour on the internet at present.  From plagiarism and piracy to threats and bullying, all the baser side of human nature appears to be online, with nothing better to do.

Kindle Free Days – some conclusions

The last days of the free promotion for the Talent Seekers took place last week.  I went into them not expecting much.  It seemed to me from the very disappointing first three days that either I had a book I couldn’t even give away or that the world of free promotion had changed so much I wasn’t going to crack it without a massive number of reviews or a lot of costly promotion.  Or both.

What am I writing next?

Ok, so I’ve left Camp NaNoWriMo for another year.  It’s a really good challenge to keep me focused on writing every day.  What it stops me doing, really, is reading long books (I can read something that takes me one or two days), and writing other stories (like flash fiction, or character interviews).  However I did have a long train journey at the start of the month, and that made me think, not only of how the story went, but other stories as well.

Friday Flash Fiction: The Orichalcum Library

“Easy. All you have to do is randomize a title from the two columns,” said Chuck Wendig. Then he gave us two numbered lists, I got my random number generator working, and drew 7 & 3 to give me “Orichalcum Library”.

Wikipedia: Orichalcum is a metal mentioned in several ancient writings, including the story of Atlantis as recounted in the Critias dialogue, recorded by Plato. According to Critias, orichalcum was considered second only to gold in value, and was found and mined in many parts of Atlantis in ancient times. By the time of Critias, however, it was known only by name. In numismatics, orichalcum is the golden-colored bronze alloy used for the sestertius and dupondius coins. In many sources of pop culture, such as novels and video games, orichalcum is presented as a valuable ore that can be mined and crafted into powerful armor and weapons.

Hmmmm.  So, I give you 1078 words making up a largely inoffensive tale…

Tuesday Haiku #11

My third week at Summer Camp, and the new version of the story is going – well, ok, slowly – choose your adverb. I’m now about a week behind schedule, but that’s largely due to my flu.  Still time to catch up.

This week’s haiku:

The keyboard rattles.

The fingers fly across it:

The writer at work!

Postcard from Camp 1

Well, here I am at Camp NaNoWriMo, beavering away at my new story.  I hope it will turn into the sixth book.  Some of my original ‘Victor’s Story’, written three or more years ago, may survive and be included, but most is going to be consigned to the great snippet scrapbook in the sky.  It’s hard to say goodbye to it, and even harder when I’m struggling to find a new home for an inn called the Cheeky Parrot.  I may yet relocate it, so fans of the cheeky parrots – any cheeky parrots, but I particularly think of Peepers and Tweek – shouldn’t lose hope yet.

I’ll probably give you some excerpts later in the month, but the bad news is that I’m not doing Chuck Wendig’s flash fiction in July.  Just to save your disappointment a little, here is an even shorter flash challenge I did for Indie Book of the Day at the end of June.  It’s in the class of the Empress and the Peanut or Sir Woebegone and the Dragon, entered in the Fantasy class with a maximum 45 words including the title!

Calculation

“3,000,001, 3,000,002…”

The dragon stopped counting.

“I have come at the behest of the empress!” the knight announced.

“Bah, empress,” the dragon said, and sneezed.

A smell of roast beef filled the air.

“Where was I?” asked the dragon. “Oh, no! 1, 2, 3…”

IBD Flash Writing Honourable Nominee!

Did I mention I’d entered the Indie Book of the Day Flash Writing Competition last week?  It really was flash – short notice, short entry time, and very short stories!  And a short wait for results!  Well done to all the people involved in setting it up, judging and getting the results out.

And the winners are….

Well, not me, although I did get an Honourable Mention for my poem in the 40 word Adventures of Max Little, Children’s Poem, category!  You can see all the winners here: http://indiebookoftheday.com/ibd-flash-writing-contest-june-2013-results/

This was my poem…

Max Little, Superhero

I once knew a hero,
His name it was Max.
He liked jumping puddles
And stepping on cracks.
He rescued a kitten
He found up a tree,
And brought it safe home
To Mummy and me.

Results from Talent Seekers’ first free day

Thursday last week was the first free promotion for the Talent Seekers and I thought it went reasonably well.  Since Traveler was out, Amazon, or Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), or both, have changed a number of features of free days – the main impact of which seems to be fewer websites promoting them for authors and mixing them up with ‘bargain’ books as well.  In addition, there are now a huge number of authors self-publishing –  from the ranking levels where my books usually linger during ‘quiet times’ I would say there are probably twice as many as there were this time last year.

Paradisio

This week’s flash fiction challenge from Chuck Wendig is a mashup of two films out of a list of twenty.  I think it’s pretty obvious which two films I drew.  It’s a bit long; but last week’s was short – so they average about right!

I give you…  Paradisio…

I was just clearing the bar for the night when Nova Kimtrych, the head of what passes for the police on this godforsaken dirtball of a planet, came in the door.

“We’re closed,” I called, making sure he knew I knew which side of the law I was on today.

Working on the overall story

Believe it or not, there is an overall story happening in the Princelings series.  In the trilogy part it was obvious and complete, but as the stories continue, they are working towards an end point in my mind.

The Professor and the Portrait Cat

The professor and the portrait cat is my first contribution to Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Friday at terribleminds.com. My stories are child friendly, but terribleminds has an adult content warning. There is a key phrase included which is the prompt for this week’s flash fiction.

Professor Saku lay on his bed in his den at the back of the cola brewery, ignoring the people around him.  Aurora was concerned about his continuing indigestion, but he’d had it before and it always passed.  He shouldn’t have had that extra helping of fresh herbs at breakfast, he thought. He couldn’t take rich food these days.