Hidden Trump, Bite Back Book Two

I’m very pleased to announce that book two of the Bite Back series, Hidden Trump, is currently ranking in Amazon’s top contemporary and paranormal fantasy sales. As always, thank you to everyone who has shared Amber’s journey with me. Happy holidays!

“I knew I was going to be betrayed this week.”

Amber Farrell, Denver PI, is coming to terms with being part of the paranormal community, but she’s about to find that includes very dangerous responsibilities for her. Nothing is quite what it seems, least of all, Amber herself, and to survive, she must form alliances with powerful groups whose interests are in conflict. But she knows she’s expendable and betrayal is inevitable…

Denver is hosting a meeting of the opposing Athanate creeds who are stirring after a hundred years of peace. War between them would be disastrous for everyone, human and paranormal, and it’s Amber who’s being blamed for the troubles in the run-up to the Assembly.

And it’s going to get very personal…

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To buy Hidden Trump in the US, please go here.

For the UK, you can buy your copy here.

And for those of  you who want to catch up on Amber’s adventures so far, book one of the Bite Back series is available here and here.

And – one last link – to keep up to date on all Bite Back news, you can find the Facebook page here.

The Eve of Christmas

I’m sorry I didn’t update on writing and marketing at the end of November as I promised.

Finishing Hidden Trump took over my life. I wanted to publish in the last week of November. Then the first week of December. As it is, I am pleased to have it out just before Christmas. The ‘last minute’ edits took a lot more than the last minute.

Hidden Trump is longer than Sleight of Hand by about 16k words/60 pages. I think HT is more plot and action focused than SoH, despite having to do recaps from SoH. I tried to keep back story to an absolute minimum – just barely enough for someone to read HT without reading SoH first. I’d be interested, as always, in feedback on the balance between pace and detail.

Anyway, book 2 is there, so I’m already plotting book 3, which is where Amber spends more time with the Were and Adepts. I’m tentatively calling book 3 Long Odds. I’ve also promised to produce a free prequel short story, Hacha del Diablo, covering the Ops 4-10 mission on which Amber was bitten, and I’ve started Bian’s story. I’ve written about 8 chapters so far.

How’s the marketing going?

I made some predictions in an earlier blog –

I predicted 4,000 sales by the end of November, and I made that.

I predicted 10,000 sales by the end of January, and I’m not going to make that. Sales in late November and December fell from the peak in October – November. How close I get depends a lot on how big the January effect is (book sales in January go up a lot apparently). At the moment, I’d say closer to 8,000.

Current results:

SoH is currently at 5,250 sales and is ranked (average best daily rating for December to date):
USA : 2,300 out of all eBooks and 48 out of all Contemporary Fantasy
UK : 2,040 out of all eBooks and 24 out of all Contemporary Fantasy

HT is at 200 sales. The rankings don’t mean a great deal until the book has been selling for a while, but it’s looking good – ranked 19 in Contemporary Fantasy in the UK today, for example.

Many thanks again to my readers. Thanks especially for the jump-start of sales on HT and the wonderful feedback. I like feedback (hint, hint, ‘contact’ form on the web site gets to my inbox and I read everything).

Wishing y’all a Merry Christmas and a fulfilling 2013.