Latest Novel - Flame of the West

 

It's time for another Novel publishing announcement. Flame of the west is a heroic action/fantasy novel full of fighting, magic and sex. My novels are generally getting longer and more narrative, this one being around 100K words. I'm actually quite proud of this one, even if I still struggle to get enough drama into the story.

As always, it is available from Amazon in hardback, paperback and Kindle editions. I've also started this one as a bi-weekly serial on TAPAS.IO.

Find out more on the NOVELS page

New Novels Publishing Now

 

There can be big gaps between books being published, but sometimes, the way I work brings two at once.

So, The Lion Sleeps and Another World are now becoming available on Amazon, Kindle versions first, followed by the other versions in the next few days. The Lion Sleeps will also appear on Lulu from Wednesday August 7th.

See the Novels page for details and links.

Publishing Updates

I guess I need to apologise. Firstly to my readers and secondly to myself. I just forget to do things in the right order sometimes.

This time I managed to publish a whole set of books on Amazon without actually properly posting here about them. I even created the page on this site to showcase them and promptly forgot to make a post about that as well.

So, take a look at the link to Shorts above and see what I've been up to. I'm loving this 8.5-inch square format for Amazon, but I do wish that they would do slightly bigger, even when I can understand the limitations that they are working to. The full-colour printing is really very nice and the price is basically impossible to match anywhere. I've a few more ideas for shorts like these, so I'll try and keep them coming. I'm only making them available as paperbacks for now. The photo-heavy nature of them doesn't really suit kindle.

In other news, I've finally completed my latest novel. This one has taken a long time to get there, but I am reasonably happy with it. It is a sequel of sorts to Hard-wired for Love and follows on about 300 years after that novel finishes. At very nearly 82,000 words, Another Horizon is the longest thing I have ever written by far and it might suffer a little for this, but if you get to enjoy the first novel, then maybe give this a try as well.

Take a look at the Novels page above to find out more and link to availability on Amazon. Kindle edition is always first, followed by paperback and hardback once I've checked a printer's proof copy.

I seem to have the bug again - it must be something to do with the time off over Christmas and New Year. The third novel in this sequence has already been started and I'm feeling good to keep up the momentum!

Proofs and Proofing

I tend to write at a breakneck pace, 10,000 words a day isn't out of the question. Inevitably, I make a lot of mistakes when charging along and this leads to many proof reading passes, alterations, expansions and changes. Then everything has to be proofed again.

I'm still very new to this and I've got to define and develop my own strategies as I migrate from journals and memoirs to fiction. Talking to a friend, more qualified that I'll ever be, I decided that I would be sensible to take a break from the endless rounds of re-reads and then come back to the manuscript with a fresher eye.

Out of My Shell Cover Proof

The solution? Start a second novel and work on that one for a while. Once at a similar stage of near-completion, switch back to the first novel and take a fresh look. I might even feel the need to start a third one, as my head is full of possibilities.

I'm still finding it hard to make the plot dramatic enough, or at least I think so, but I like a gentle slice-of-life story and it doesn't worry me too much. Not everybody needs drama and crisis in a book. The thread that binds the two novels together so far is my subconscious need to make them deeply, sensually, graphically erotic.

Hard-wired for Love Cover Proof

So, two very different potential novels in different stages of the process are keeping me busy when work takes a break. As you can also see, I take the time to work on the covers, finalize the layout and begin to navigate the intricacies of Kindle Direct Publishing. I'm sticking with Lulu for the printing and paper publishing, at least for the short term, but I'm happy to get Kindle eBook stuff sorted direct with Amazon.

The Writing Bug

 A Growing Addiction

Writing is one of those things that, for me at least, is highly addictive. When I first started writing about my travels, I would work feverishly to complete the text select the photographs as quickly as possible after my return.

Now, as the text for a typical trip has expanded to be anything up to 15,000 words, I find that I have to write it as I go. Or, at least write a first draft while it is fresh in my memory. I take my laptop and spend the hot African afternoons in the shade, writing a few hundred or, at most a few thousand words about the adventures of the day. When I return home, I read through this and make whatever corrections and changes that i feel it needs to be more coherent.

The thing is, though, once I'm finished, I'm left with this urge to write something else. Normally, I can push back against the urge and, after a few days it works out of my system and I can get on with other, more mundane everyday tasks. This year, however, I have not been able to do this.

Words, Words and More Words

Since I returned from Tanzania at the end of February, I've simply kept on writing, probably about 100,000 words so far, with no end in sight. I've written the book about my trip, both the coffee-table photobook and a smaller paperback version - they are both now published and available worldwide.

I've also written 'A Slice of Love', a deeply personal, frank, honest and explicit snapshot of probably the most important part of my life. I wrote it for myself, as a form of therapy, to help my ongoing need to rationalize and compartmentalize my thoughts and feelings. I couldn't settle until I had completed it, cover and all and had ordered a copy for myself. There will only ever be a single copy. I'll never order another and this one will stay in my publishing cabinet for the rest of my life. If someone happens to read it after I am gone, I think that'll be fine. The other person the book concerns will hopefully forgive me for my hubris and candour. I might tell him that I've written it when I next see him, giving him the option to have it left to him in my will.

I'm still not finished writing though. I'm trying to get out of my head that novel that I always thought I might have buried in there somewhere. It's a bit more difficult than biography - actually, a lot more difficult - and there might be still too much of me in it. It also might be a bit too graphically, erotically, explicitly gay, which limits any potential audience severely.

Whatever, I'm not stopping now and, If I don't like it at the end, I'll simply try again in a different genre. I've found something that I can do whenever I feel like it. I can pick up at any time and let go when I've had enough. It's equally taxing and relaxing and I think I love it.