Video teaser.

OK, thoughts please.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7j4QcC0gvQ

2nd attempt, the first had too much writing and too many black backgrounds so it had to go.

Feel free to write on the YouTube page, it makes it look interesting :-D
Cheers,
Reg ;-)

2012 and the Kindle experiment.

Well firstly, I suppose I should write "Merry Christmas All" because I haven't done so already on this Blog.


Then I guess secondly I should wish you all a Happy New Year because that, too, went down the Swanee.


And then I suppose I should meander on into the fact that I'm a doddering, geriatric 45 year old now and not the youthful, spry 44 I was when I last made an entry here.

Right, now that's over, what have I to offer by way of news?

Nothing.


The book is still with Tim, I haven't written anything new, or old for that matter. Nothing has changed ...
     ... except that now I have a Kindle!!

I haven't actually read anything on it yet; I mean I've obviously done a couple of test runs and the like but I haven't got down to any serious reading yet because I've just started, "An Enormous Crime: The Definitive Account of American POWs Abandoned in Southeast Asia" by Bill Hendon and I have quite a way to go yet until it's finished.

However, it's truly a cool piece of kit and I CAN'T WAIT to use it properly. Does anyone know if you can swap books on them?

The down side is that my account is with Amazon Germany and they don't have any free deals :-(
Whatever, that's the highlight of my year so far. Hopefully I'll have something more to say soon, lol.


Reg: :-)

The waiting game.

Well Christmas came and went in a haze of Yuletide whiskey and festive ale and here I am, on the other side of New Year's day, wondering at how fast it all fell behind me??

It seems like only yesterday that I knocked off from work and looked eagerly ahead to picking my parents up from Hanover airport to spend Xmas with us.
And now I'm back at work again :-(

It's a cruel trick of life that everything we look forward to slips us a Mickey Fin and is over before we can get to grips with it, and everything we're forced to wait for takes ages... unless it's something unpleasant.

And that's how it is with my book.
I actually won the Night Poll on March 2nd and I don't have the words to describe how that felt. I was confident that I'd have it on Amazon etc for the Christmas frenzy, but it was not to be. I know I told you all it'll only take a few months but there were complications along the way.

Now, with the unwritten sheet of 2012 laid before me I feel it won't be long before it's there.
Tim has sent me the first edits so it's being edited and formatted now as I write.

But when it's actually out there I cannot say.
Soon, soon is all I know.
I'm very grateful for the interest shown and I promise that when it's out I will tell the world, literally
 ;-)
Margaret Thatcher, (not my favourite person in the world but this fits the bill nicely), once said,
"I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end." and that, dear reader, sums up how I am at the moment.

It's coming.

All the best for 2012 peeps, and may Fortuna turn her dazzling smile on all your endeavours ...just hope she's not suffering from PMT when she does.
Reg ;-)

The Kindle tactic...

This is the plan...

  Amazon have suggested an idea that the boss of Night thinks is a good idea.

I do too, as it turns out.

  We give Amazon three months exclusive access to my book, (Division of the Damned, in case you didn't know) and they give me, (well, Night publishing) five days of promotion per month, for those three months.

  Sounds a dream as Amazon are by far the biggest distributor of ebooks and promotion is something you just can't get enough of, right?

I wonder what this promotion entails though?

  Whatever, who am I to ask, Tim knows his stuff a lot better than me, it's in his interest to sell Division so I'll go along with it. Another author, Mike Church, author of the very funny, "Dayrealing", is on the programme now and he seems happy with it.

  If I'm honest, I'm just happy that "Division" is finally going to be out there and that it's being published by a firm I'm MORE than happy to be connected to. It really is the most supportive collection of writers I have ever known on the net.

  I've been lucky in my forays into the cyber world of writing. There are so many forums, writing websites and dubious publishers out there that are either full of self-important, bile fuelled idiots or out-and-out rip off merchants, that it's hard to know where to go? To actually have found a, "community" of like-minded individuals like Night, AND that it's a money making business, is actually very lucky indeed... take my word for it.
(BTW, how I despise that word, "Community". It's been so over-used by rioting Chavs talking about how their communities rose up against the police etc etc. that it makes me squirm to have to use it. I hate it but it's the only one that makes sense so deal with it)

 

  After a very, very brief dalliance with Authonomy, the Harper-Collins peer critic website, (you give me a good review and I'll do it for you), I moved on.  A lot of people on Night like Authonomy but I didn't. The forum is jam-packed with angry, unsatisfied souls whose arrogance and rudeness is eclipsed only by their sycophantic ravings about how good Harper-Collins is.

  However, that's where the bad times stopped. I landed next at Struggling Authors, which moved nicely on to Night. How lucky is that then?

  This is a bit of a pants post, I know. However, after the initial part about Amazon I had nothing more to say, so I wibbled a bit.

  OK, as you were.

Take it easy.

Reg. ;-)

Double DOH!

... and it gets worse :-(

OK, so I send the story off and I'm thinking, "What could possibly go wrong now?" as I pat myself smugly on the back... ... ...

A lot, that's what.

The next day I received this polite but alarmigly cryptic message from the guy in charge.

"My assistant editor has read through your story and has a minor problem. The version you sent us still seems like the work in progress, has all the red and blue deletions and the like. "

Because I'm about as proficient on Word as I am at Astro-Physics, I managed to send the document off without accepting the edits.

So all the lines and boxes that appear while editing WERE STILL THERE !!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!

How embarrassing is that then?

If this story is accepted, then it's one in the eye for those who claim that editors and publishers have no soul, lol.
The covering letter actually read,

Dear blah blah,

So, embarrassing, here is my third attempt at submitting my story,
"The Ides of March" for your Vampyre Anthology.

I am so disappointed in myself... :-(

As you were.

Reg :-/