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A Tale of Three Covers
So, my earnings from publishing independently have surpassed my earnings from publishing with a small press. Exciting, right?! Of course, I didn’t have to earn very much to reach this goal (seriously), but it’s quite a personal milestone nonetheless 
I think it’s helping that I’ve been slowly uploading my back catalogue. You can now buy Dunraven Road (my first dark fantasy novel featuring the indomitable vampire Dylan), A Trio of Devils, a collection of three horror/paranormal short stories (including The Lycanthrope Technician which was awarded the title of Dark Fire Fiction’s Featured Story) and a standalone short called The Lost Fae Realms. In a bid to save some much needed cash, I threw my fear of crappy art skills to the wind and created the covers myself (as you may or may not be able to tell…)
In the sleepy backwater of Dunraven Road, a group of hedonistic friends are trapped in a deadly prison of their own making. When Zach, their enigmatic leader, brings his long term plans to fruition and paves the way for a sadistic vampire cult, their fragile world begins to break apart.
Fuelled by dangerous passions and an insatiable craving for ‘red’, the group must decide whether to succumb to the sweet lure of the abyss, or stand and fight for their very survival.
Devil the First…
Luxuriating beneath the Spanish sun, the most unlikely of vampires plies his trade in awe and seduction; the master of his realm until a fragile human girl appears intent on tearing his comfortable world apart.
Devil the Second…
Tired and bored during her vigil in the lab one night, a lowly technician wonders what it would be like to approach the beast in her care, to feel his immense power pulsing in the skin just beneath her finger tips. One scratch later and she finds herself sweating in her bed, dreaming of flying across the forest floor on sure feet, propelled by the bunched muscles of a colossal animal. Will she be able to return to her ordinary life when she wakes?
Devil the Third…
Marisa, a terrifying vision of beauty and madness, contemplates an eternity of solitude when her only fledging becomes a bitter disappointment who breaks her heart and scatters the last of her sanity.
Three short stories, three deliciously seductive yet ultimately cruel characters from the author of dark fantasy novels Dunraven Road and Jinn Nation.
After a century of sleep Briana wakes up alone, naked, terrified and seared with blue flame. Once she had been part of a great and wise population, known by humans as fairies, elves or angels. They were explained away in folk stories, made tiny and inconsistent. None of the stories grasped their true power, their ultimate purpose.
But that was a lifetime ago. Now the fae have been extinguished, brought down by petty mortal disease as the earth itself sickened and failed. Briana believes her kin are all dead, but another has survived. Amid the filth and desperation of a human tent city her brother Jinx has set himself up as a god, pushing Total World Immersion upon the miserable population. If you can imagine it, you can programme it and actually feel as if you are there. A city, a garden, a vast ship sailing the ocean. Anything is possible. TWI technology has both revolutionised and divided the modern world. Some think TWI is evil. They worry that humanity will never want to venture forth into the real world again, not when the realms of the imagination are so much richer. But Jinx argues that these people have nothing left to venture into. Will Briana join Jinx in what she sees as a betrayal of their own kind and their love of the earth, or will she walk away from her only kin and forge her own path in this terrifying new world?
I was quite proud of my little self, particularly with the Trio of Devils cover because it actually incorporates three different pictures (if there are any graphic designers out there reading this, you’re probably trying not to laugh but this was quite a feat for me!) When I showed them to my digital art loving sister and her digital art dabbling boyfriend however, I was met with raised eyebrows and barely disguised smirks. Apparently The Lost Fae Realms cover is “too busy” and the models on the A Trio of Devils cover look like they’re trying too hard to be “goth”. Sigh. They did like the fonts though…
I stumbled across this a couple of weeks ago, an interactive book cover: Daylight Saving by Edward Hogan
Just try running your mouse over it, it’s strangely hypnotic. It seems like a fairly simple idea but if all ebook covers become interactive, I may have to give up my amateur efforts, dig deep and find a professional designer. I particularly like the “Share” button on the bottom, very clever; although I wonder how it would work with a non-watery themed novel?
Before I go, I just wanted to mention that my novel Jinn Nation is currently part of Patti Roberts’s Christmas Bloggerthon. This is a massive competition spanning three blogs in which you have the chance to win one of 90+ ebooks. From Patti’s website: 3 bloggers will battle it be the first with 100 new followers. Lots of different ebook titles on each blog means – Lots of WINNERS! You’d be crazy not to enter for an opportunity to win!!! New ebook titles and covers coming soon…..Keep and eye out for Author Interviews… Reviews and more on your bloggers site! Find out more and enter.
The Sprogling says... See you next time, puny mortals! Mwahaha!
Art or Business? My Take on the John Locke Method
As you may or may not know, I’m currently halfway through my very first blog tour with my new release, Jinn Nation. As well as being a marketing strategy in and of itself, running the tour and getting people to read my guest posts and enter the giveaways has required a lot of marketing and promotion (ie. a lot of social networking). Although I’ve loved doing this and have met some fantastic people along the way, I’m almost looking forward to next week when the tour’s over and I can get back to what I (hope I) do best: writing (I can’t actually manage both, it’s too hard with a 4-month-old!) This mad marketing has got me thinking about the ‘John Locke method’ of selling e-books, a method I wouldn’t personally adopt because for me it means coming down on the side of writing as business rather than writing as art, and this makes the English Literature graduate in me a sad panda.
Not that the John Locke method doesn’t work of course; it works very, very well. If you don’t already know, John Locke is the first indie author to sell 1 million e-books for the Amazon Kindle, an accolade that was previously only held by bestselling traditionally published authors such as Stieg Larsson, James Patterson and Lee Child. One of his latest projects is a how-to guide to marketing and selling your self-published novel called How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!; the blueprint for the ‘John Locke method’, which seems to basically comprise of pricing books at $0.99 and utilising Twitter. There’s nothing wrong with that (although I often wonder how people view $0.99 novels, whether or not they think they must be crappy because they’re so cheap; but then John Locke has sold over a million books in just 5 months doing this and I definitely have not), but it was the line “my books may not be great literature, but they certainly don’t suck… I no longer have to prove my books are as good as theirs [traditional publishers]” from the book’s sample that put me off purchasing it.
I can’t help but believe that books shouldn’t be a ‘paint by numbers’ affair, written only to make money. I think they should be loved and sweated over, whether it’s a novel about a vampire dating a high school cheerleader or an opus dealing with the stuff of the soul. I know writers don’t aim to live in poverty and it would be weird if they did. Marketing and promotion will always be necessary if you want people to take notice of your work, I just feel that as an indie author it can be all too easy to find yourself focusing solely on the marketing, hopped up on success stories like John Locke and Amanda Hocking. Before long you’re studying the bestseller lists and adapting your work to copy what is selling instead of being true to your own interests and inspirations. But maybe that’s just me. After all, didn’t Dickens often write just for the money? He wrote his novels in segments to be published in magazines, each one ending on a cliff-hanger, and I’m sure I read somewhere that he wrote A Christmas Carol to make some quick cash for the festive season, little knowing how popular and influential it would become. I suppose Charles Dickens and John Locke might have made good Twitter buddies if they’d lived in the same century.
There’s still time to follow my blog tour if you haven’t been doing it already (and if you have, you rock!) Vampires.com have already kindly posted an interview with me, and later today they’ll be posting my guest blog about why I created my vampire character, Dylan (although to be honest, he snuck into my brain fully formed and demanded to be included in the completely different story I was writing; there wasn’t that much ‘creation’ involved, it was more of a hold-up on his part). There’s also still time to read my interview and enter the giveaway to win an e-copy of Jinn Nation in any format of your choice (I’m not formatist!) over at Oh, for the Hook of a Book!, or head to Donna’s Blog Home to read a guest blog about my inspirations and check out the best review I’ve ever had I’ve also been leaving exclusive excerpts of Jinn Nation all over the web (I know, I really should clean up after myself…) So if you fancy reading a snippet from my novel that isn’t included in the bog standard Kindle sample, have yourself a look at these wonderful blogs:
No Trees Harmed
Donna’s Blog Home
Oh, for the Hook of a Book!
Look out for more giveaways, excerpts and blog posts towards the end of the week!
The New Novel is Unleashed!
I can’t quite believe it but I stuck to my own deadline (there’s a first time for everything) and Jinn Nation is now available to buy for the Amazon Kindle – Amazon UK / Amazon US. It’s also listed at Smashwords where you can get a copy for your Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo and lots of other e-readers.
I haven’t used Smashwords before but I was impressed. It was really easy to upload there and the formatting I had to do wasn’t that bad. I’m planning on writing a blog soon about how I got Jinn Nation ready for publication – how I formatted it and how I got it onto Amazon and Smashwords; so keep an eye out if you’re interested in doing this for yourself. There may also be a future blog about marketing, although that’s something I’m still in the process of doing myself!
So go buy, read, tell me what you think. For a limited time, Jinn Nation will be at the very special price of £0.95 / $0.99, bargain!
The New Californian Gold Rush
I’m so happy to announce that my very first offering for the Amazon Kindle is now live on their site – mostly because formatting it took so bloody long. It’s my zombie novella, The Undead Alliance.
Want a blurb? 
A new novella from the author of Dunraven Road.
He’s a stinking, undead, rotting carcass with unfortunate brain activity. She’s a human captive, kept alive so that her vital organs can one day help sustain her rotting zombie masters. Romeo and Juliet they ain’t.
Gabriel thought that waking up as a zombie was the end of the world. In fact, a new world was just beginning – a world of dark, creeping horror overseen by a decomposing eccentric in a pirate costume calling himself Captain James.
Five short years later and the dead have risen up to claim the UK. Gabriel finds himself in charge of the North Sector Harvesting Plant, watching the daily influx of the living with a weary eye. Having become increasingly disillusioned with The Undead Alliance and its practices, the arrival of the very human Daisy seems to be his salvation – but who would ever love a zombie? If he wants to convince her he’s more than just the sum of his maggot infested parts, he’ll have to break her out of the harvesting plant and defy everything the Alliance stands for. All of which is easier said than done, especially when he has to deal with the unwanted attentions of Princess – the icy paramour of Captain James himself.
Is Gabriel strong enough to turn against his charismatic yet ultimately evil leader? Or will he watch Daisy die?
I’m getting ahead of myself though, perhaps I should explain how I came to the decision to self-publish (which will henceforth be known as indie publishing, because it sounds sooo much cooler)…
For those of you who’ve been listening to my radio show, you’ll know I’ve been talking about e-publishing and the Kindle in particular, especially since Amazon recorded astronomical Kindle sales over the Christmas period. So many sales in fact, that at one point the Kindle was outselling the latest Harry Potter book. I’ve always been interested in digital publishing, although back in 2008 I was lamenting the fact that “In the early days… ebooks also suffered from the same snobbery used to demean print-on-demand services. If you had to resort to publishing through an ebook publisher, your book wasn’t worth jack.” Well, I think I can safely say that things have now changed. The Kindle and other major ebook readers such as Barnes & Noble’s Nook steadily grew in popularity over the course of last year, meaning of course that ebooks did too – particularly those published by indie authors who unlike the traditional publishers were putting out their work at a decent price. Paranormal romance author and indie publishing’s current heroine Amanda Hocking has sold over 185, 000 books since April 2010. E-publishing has suddenly become interesting.
Now, of course you’ll always be able to find self-published novels of the same calibre as some of the drek that often stinks up the place over at Lulu; but authors such as J.A. Konrath and H.P. Mallory are proof that this is no longer the norm. J.A. Konrath in particular propounds upon the benefits of hiring professional book designers and cover artists. It seems there really is nothing a traditional publisher can do that an author can’t do for themselves. Social networking even makes promotion easier (and cheaper), often bypassing the need for the sort of large scale advertising campaigns employed by the traditional print publishers (campaigns which have become infrequent to non-existent in recent years anyway, giving new authors about as much support as a cheap sports bra).
Perhaps what has really spurred me on to try my hand at indie publishing though is the amount of control you retain; not only over the content of your work, but over the royalties you can accrue. Many authors claim they’re not indie publishing simply because the traditional publishers rejected them, they’re indie publishing because they get a better deal. All of which is starting to make the traditional publishers and agents sweat into their designer suits.
In the wise words of J.A. Konrath:
“This is the California Gold Rush of 1849. Will everyone get rich? No. But damn near everyone who tries will make more money than they would if they try the traditional publishing route.”
Why wouldn’t you mark out a spot and start sifting for gold?
So, The Undead Alliance is my trial run. I’m planning to do similar things with my latest novel, Jinn Nation and I’m excited
