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Showing posts from February, 2015

My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday - Q&A

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Hi all, The release of my new novel, "My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday", is imminent, so whilst it is with the proofreader I thought this might be a good opportunity to do a little Q&A session on what the book is all about. Q: So, this sounds like another time travel book? Have I got that right? A: You certainly have. And like my earlier Time Bubble book, I think I've managed to come up with a pretty unique concept for a story. It is about a man who lives his life backwards. Q: Sounds good, but hasn't that been done already? I take it you have seen "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button?" A: Ha, you're not the first person to say that. This is a completely different concept, though. Although Benjamin Button had a strange medical condition that meant he was born old and grew younger, he still lived normally through time, from his birth in 1918 to his death in 2003. Q: So how is your story different? A: My character, Thomas, wakes up at the

Amazon pay-per-click promotions

A number of my writer friends have expressed an interest in Amazon's new pay-per-click promotional tool so I thought I would summarise my experiences here. Many are put off by the potential cost. Amazon require that you set a minimum budget of $100 per promotion, a figure most indie authors would baulk at. In fact, the reality is, you only need to spend a fraction of that budget, and if you feel at all uncomfortable with the amounts, you can terminate the promotion at any time. Compared to fixed rate ads, where you pay your $x or £x upfront, with no clue as to whether it has been effective or not, it's an option that I feel a lot more comfortable with. My current promotion has cost me barely anything so far - in fact less than a dollar. Although you have to set a budget minimum of $100, you don't pay any money up front at all and nothing for the ads unless people actually click on them, which the vast majority don't. That's not a reflection on our work, after al

Return Of The Blog

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Come back, all is forgiven. Hello! I'm back! Did you miss me? What's that? You didn't even notice I'd gone? Charming... Actually I haven't been gone that long. Just over two months in fact, which is not a lot in the grand scheme of things. I went four years without a blog post at one point. So where have I been? Well, just here actually, working intensively on my latest novel, to the exclusion of all else, hence no blog posts. However, it is now finished and with the proof readers which means normal service can be resumed here. I did leave our old friend Gerald Mincen in charge of the blog whilst I was busy, with instructions to write a post every week. However, he seems to have only written one and then not bothered. I haven't actually seen him for a few weeks, as he mysteriously disappeared after going on a tour of a crisp factory in Leicester. It seems he signed in but never signed out. He was last seen leaning over a vat of hot oil, ready to fry