Inaugral Blog

Following on from reading Mark Coker's guide to getting the most out of Smashwords (http://www.smashwords.com/) I've created my first blog, to let anyone interested in my books to follow my progress.

The story so far is that this year I've published three books that have sat on a hard drive for some time:

Parallel Lives
The Journeymen
Skin

Intially on Amazon in Kindle format: and, after getting some grief from a friend who'd snaffled a Sony eReader from somebody he knows, on Smashwords.

If you've checked out those links you'll immediately notice that I'm never knowingly undersold!  My books are all available for $1 apiece, which works out at around 1000 words a Cent on average (or in real money about 1300 words a penny).

I'll update on sales progress on those three books in future postings.

Bang up to date my most recently written novel, Skin, has been entered into the Amazon breakthrough novel competition and is through the first round.  To be fair the first round is based on the fastest finger principle - I was among the first 5000 entries submitted.  The next stage is based on the blurb I submitted:

'When Rory Callum walked into Kuwait, barely alive and the only survivor of an ill-fated Special Forces operation preceding the shock and awe phase of the second Gulf War, his lack of memory and the violent, unresolved murder of his colleagues ensured that, for Rory, his Special Forces days were over.

Some years later finds Rory working for Max on the edge of the law, often straying across it, as an undercover industrial spy, inserting himself as an agency worker to discover what next year's cornflakes marketing strategy is, or the launch details of a new promotion. However, his new task is more involved; a deep insertion into Korbins to find out what their new, secret discovery is.

Groomed and primed by the gorgeous but sexually disturbed and violently dangerous Melinda, who can manipulate identities and histories effortlessly, Rory finds himself employed as a trainer in Korbins and begins a process that results in him being targeted by murderous hired thugs, being chased by the Secret Service determined to understand what happened in Iraq years earlier and as an unwitting pawn for Fabin, a seriously complicated and evidently mad scientist in a fast paced and violent story that reaches all the way up to the offices of the British Prime Minister.

In the hard-hitting and complex ending Rory finds his memories released as he races to defeat Fabin and his ex Royal Marine employee, Ron Danvers.

This hard-hitting and complex story of revenge is based in the near future but heavily underpinned by the events leading up to the second Gulf War, which forms a significant back story. The pace is relentless and fast flowing as the truth behind the missing weapons of mass destruction debacle is revealed.'

While I'm waiting for my destiny in the competition I'm working on my fourth novel, DLF.  Currently I'm up to 35000 words and so far at least three characters have died, about my nornmal hit rate for the first third of a book!  I'll update in future blogs about the progress of DLF and will explain a bit about it, starting with deciphering the acronym