News, Progress and Round-up for May 2016

Yeah, the usual look at the sales and WiP and stuff.

But first! MILESTONES IN REVIEWS

The US Amazon site logged it’s 200^th review! On 31^st May, Hao-Ying Feng logged a 5 star review after a binge re-read of the series. Thank you! And thank you to each and every one of you who reviews on Amazon, Goodreads or by messaging me. All hugely welcome and important for me.

AND while I’m talking reviews, 95% of the SoH reviews are 4 or 5 star. That I wouldn’t have predicted when I started.

Almost at the same time, Angel Stakes hit 50 reviews in the 6 weeks since launch, and the percentage of 4 & 5 star has remained the same.

What are the next milestones? I guess 250 for SoH or 750 for the series on US Amazon (currently 604). On the series total, I will ‘cheat’ once Winter’s Kiss is written, because then it and The Biting Cold will be part of the series. 🙂

And then 1,000 for both US and UK Amazon added together (currently 711), or 350 on Goodreads (currently 303).

WRITING PROGRESS

Winter’s Kiss is more than half way done. As I mentioned in posts on Facebook, this sequel isn’t the same length as The Biting Cold (20k words). TBC was written to a specification on length for an anthology, and WK is just to link the story in with Bite Back, so I have more leeway.

I’ve given a couple of teasers on Facebook, linked by mentions of jazz (Amanda loves jazz). In case you didn’t see them there, here they are again:

“Morning found us just a few miles east of Marquette. The sun inched above the horizon, flooding the car’s rear window with hazy gold, etching the edges of the long, low buildings, and throwing our shadow out in front, where the road unwound like an old jazz song in a smoky club.”

and later…

“I switched switches on the music center. Little LEDs started to glow, and I pulled out LPs at random until the words jazz and soul songs caught my eye. A collection of instrumentals based on old songs. The list had some of my favorites, spanning the years.

I put the LP on the turntable. It was lucky it was one of those that loaded the arm automatically, because my hands were shaking.

I closed my eyes and waited; part of the drama and romance that I loved about LPs was that moment at the beginning.

A quiet hiss and crackle, full of anticipation, then the music started. A few falling notes were tossed out from a sax, as a ticking drum marked the beat. The piano picked up a couple of the notes, tossed them back. The saxophone held one note, almost too long, and then just let it drop and tumble and flow into the bittersweet melody of Ain’t No Sunshine.”

What else have I been doing?

The print books are a mess. Cool Hand and Angel Stakes not yet available, the sizes have changed, the covers don’t match. What I thought would be a simple overhaul turned into a nightmare. And to help out, CreateSpace (Amazon’s Print-on-Demand company) have changed their specifications. Everything is a PDF now. Not such a problem for the body of the book, but I have no graphics programs that save as PDF. I ended up loading the image into Word and using that to save. Which of course leads to warnings that my resolution is low. Grrr.

Adding to the frustrations, I use Word for writing, and Word’s print book formatting functions are flakey.

Anyway. I have submitted Cool Hand and Angel Stakes to CreateSpace and they now enable reviewing online, allowing me to skip the physical book review process. The print books *should* be available in the next week or so.

I apologize for the covers. What I’ve done is simply take the eBook cover, added black for the spine and back page and written on the black. All fine as long as the I’ve allocated *exactly* enough width for the spine.

I will do a rework of the covers and get everything to match in size and style, but it’s not on the critical path.

The print book fiasco means that I haven’t progressed with my other non-writing writing project, which is to create cast lists and summaries of story-so-far for each Bite Back sequel.

SALES

I did a big review last month, so I’m not going to repeat that since the figures haven’t changed dramatically. Instead, I’ll look at the overview and implications.

Averaged out at the moment, I guess I’m selling 600 books a month and that needs to be 1,200.

I’m still selling 70-80 Sleight of Hand a month, and a percentage of those go on to read the entire series. Amazon only knows the exact figures, but the sales stats suggest to me that about 80% of people who pick up SoH now go on to read all of the books in the series. This is as opposed to the figures of readers who picked up SoH back in 2012, which is about 25%. That low percentage is based on the total sales ever of Cool Hand as a percentage of total sales ever of Sleight of Hand, and it does creep up as some people just take their time going through the series.

What does this mean? Very approximately, I believe that if I had ten Bite Back books now, my monthly sales would be 1,200. The problem is that writing that next 5 will take me 5 years, and in the meantime SoH would slide.

What am I going to do about it? Write realted or unrelated shorter stories that I believe may bring in readers who wouldn’t otherwise have picked up Sleight of Hand, but who like the shorter stories enough to try the series.

I’d like to try out writing novels in two parts – a short story of around 10k words which tells a story but ends on a cliffhanger, and leads straight into a novella of around 50k words. This is close to the way The Biting Cold turned out. TBC was actually 20k words and Winter’s Kiss will be about 40k, and TBC didn’t end on a cliffhanger, but you get my drift.

I have a couple of ideas kicking around in my head – one in the Bite Back world but set in Canada and sharing none of the cast, another a SciFi novella and completely different. Oh, and one set in the 17th century Caribbean that popped up in a conversation with Debra Dunbar (that one might be related to Bite Back).

This does NOT mean that I’m less committed to Bite Back, but I think I can do these things and still get one Bite Back novel out every year. We’ll see.

Other projects – German

German translations have stopped at the moment. I need to get another translator, but I have to say that I need to re-examine the income to see if the cost is justified. I think I’d prefer to hand over to a German publishing company who do this as a business. I need to talk to people.

Other projects – Audio

Julia Motyka is unavailable until September, but assures me she’ll be back in the studio with Angel Stakes then. Audio sales are reasonable (as far as I know) – SoH 1,578, HT 668, WC 504, CH 273. Are there any writers out there with audiobooks who would be okay to share their sales with me?

Anything else

I asked people on the Facebook site what music Amber listens to. What a wonderful response, and a huge playlist to sort through! Great fun. Thank you all.

I’m planning a trip to America this year. My bio says I’m frequently in the Rockies and I haven’t been. At the end of August & beginning of September, I’ll be with my daughter in New York. After that, I hope to work my way down the Rockies from somewhere around Bozeman, Montana to Albuquerque, New Mexico, taking in Denver, Cheyenne and the loneliest road in the States. I hope to end up returning to UK via Boston and maybe catching some fall colors. This is a research and writing trip, not a book signing journey, but I’ll be happy to sign books, meet readers and attend conventions. If there’s interest, I’ll publish an itinerary closer to the time.

 

April 2016 roundup

Lots to talk about as I’ve been quiet recently.

What’s happened

I released the Angel Stakes ebook and the Cool Hand audio. Yay!

Angel Stakes had the biggest first week of all my books so far, both in sales and reviews. Angel Stakes (890) beat Cool Hand for sales by about 40, and generated a massive 40 reviews in that first week alone.

Thank you for the reviews. Just on Amazon.com today, there are already 35 reviews, with only 1 negative. On Amazon.co.uk there are 8, and on Goodreads there are 17.

Thank you also for the feedback on the Facebook page and by email. All good, all welcome.

In the second week, however, Angel Stakes (1,442) has fallen behind both Hidden Trump, which sold 2,078 in the same period, and Cool Hand, which sold 1,498.

Cumulative Sales

Sales is the usual number, cumulative since I started in 2012. I’ve included a column for ‘Pages Read’ – this is the measurement you get when a book is included in the Kindle Unlimited program, but I’ve only tracked this for the last 6 months. Amazon pay on a basis of fractions of a cent for each page read, so the actual effect on my income has been small. For example, those 14,000 pages of The Biting Cold have been worth about $70 to me over the last 6 months.

…                                         Sales                  Pages Read

Raw Deal                            20,637              9k
Sleight of Hand
English                           22,682              128k
audio                              1,504
German ebook              1,571                  106k
Hidden Trump
English                           16,412                91k
audio                               602
German ebook              873                     118k
Wild Card
English                           7,784                  113k
audio                              426
German ebook             529
Cool Hand
English                          4,382
audio                             70
Angel Stakes                     1,532
The Biting Cold                785                       14k

(Sorry about the table. Having trouble getting tables into WordPress)

In summary? I have wonderful, wonderful readers – just look at the reviews. But I don’t have enough of them.

As I’ve said before, my real concern is the drop off between Hidden Trump and Wild Card, and the further drop between Wild Card and Cool Hand. Both are around 50%, which is extremely disappointing, especially given the reviews and ratings, which show no hint of a problem of that magnitude.

What I expected, when I published Sleight of Hand and Hidden Trump back in 2013, was that I’d lose the highest percentage of readers between SoH and HT. The series isn’t for everyone, and SoH gives a reasonable idea of what’s to come. That’s not what has happened.

One positive for the series from the launch of Angel Stakes is the boost it caused in sales of previous books in the series. And, although it’s difficult to make generalizations on the data, it looks as if people who come in with SoH because they saw the reviews for Angel Stakes don’t drop out after SoH or HT – the boost goes through the whole series.

I guess the question the numbers pose is this: am I losing readers because they (1) don’t like the story, (2) don’t like it enough to check for the next release, (3) never see information about the next release and just forget over time, (4) don’t want to invest in a story till it’s complete.

I’m not sure I can do much about (1) or (2). The story is relatively dark for Urban Fantasy, and it’s more complex than most. It deals with real trauma. It’s in a definite minority with the viewpoint on sexual issues. The ‘magic’ is constrained at the moment. All in all, I understand it may not be what people are looking for when they pick an UF title (but would still expect them to leave after SoH, not 2 or 3 books in).

I’m not sure I can do much about (4) either, except grind my teeth. I’m a reader too, I know it’s hard waiting a year for the next episode, but I can’t write this kind of story quickly. I don’t think anyone can. I’m not going to stop writing till the end, but if this was a traditionally published series, the publisher would pull the plug.

Maybe I can do something about (3).

And that leads to Marketing…

Marketing

What have I done?

I moved the prices down on SoH, and tried the same thing on HT. I’ve moved them back up again, and it really doesn’t seem to make much difference. I know other indies have stuck at the $2.99 as the ‘sweet point’, and that Amazon suggests $4.99 is the sweet point.
Susan Illene has stuck with me on $3.99. Debra Dunbar varies her prices up to $4.99. Skye Knizley sticks at $2.99. Connie Suttle varies up to $4.99.
And some of the indies who are acknowledged big hitters… J. R. Rain varies, but tends to $4.99. Lindsay Buroker’s prices all seem to be over $5.

Readers have posted on the website suggesting that a long, complex book is worth a higher price. I don’t know. In the end, a book is worth what enough people will pay for it.

I may put the series up to $4.99.

On other marketing attempts, I put the first three of the series in Kindle Unlimited, where readers enrolled in the Amazon program can read for free, and I get paid on the ‘number of pages read’. That’s in quotes because it has emerged that Amazon is just making it up. Anyway, SoH in English is earning about $100 a month on the KU program. Again, all good, but not setting the world on fire.

I also changed the covers again. It’s difficult to tell whether this had any effect, because I did it at the same time as Angel Stakes was launched. I’m still not happy, but maybe I never will be!

The latest marketing fine-tuning is ‘Tags’. This has a couple of effects.
(1) Tags are used as searchable text in Amazon. So, if I tagged SoH as being about ‘ex-military private investigator’ and someone typed that into the Amazon search field, they’d be offered SoH (among any others tagged the same way).
(2) Tags sometimes link books into best seller lists.

(Here’s a blog talking about the subject: https://ebooksuccess4free.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/7-tips-for-amazon-keywords-and-best-selling-books/)

It’s a subtle business, picking the right tags. I got an easy win by labelling SoH as being about a ‘superhero’. It’s not a widely used tag and that resulted in SoH appearing on the Superhero best selling lists. Visibility on these lists do generate sales. Higher ranking=greater visibility.

At some stage, I would like to do an organized promotion using BookBub, BookGorilla and other newsletters, Goodreads and Amazon. There’s a surprising amount of work involved in these promotions, and they do take away from writing time.

There is a writing task that does promote books – launching new books raises visibility and boosts the back list. But in order to use that I have to write something shorter…

Which leads me to my current project file…

What’s next

Writing & editing:

I have promised for ages to edit my mother’s unpublished murder mystery set in colonial Africa and called So Many Doors. It’s good, really good, but needs editing and a cover. I have gone out and commissioned lovely cover art, and I’m slogging through taking out ellipses and exclamation marks. And a few other bits & pieces. My sister and I should be putting this on Amazon by the end of the month.

I’m drafting up a short story sequel to The Biting Cold, which I’ve tentatively named Winter’s Kiss, and which will weave the story into the Bite Back series. This shouldn’t be long (famous last words), and should be simple (ditto). The only real problem is TBC was really an experiment to write a romance and include a sex scene which was essential and fundamental to the story. (I still got someone commenting that it was gratuitous). The draft I have for Winter’s Kiss at the moment is more like an Amber story with chases and explosions. Amanda does, of course, need another love interest. Or two. It’s just how I introduce that person.

Bian’s Tale 1. Okay. Enough sitting on this. I nearly wrote it a couple of years ago, but it wasn’t quite working. I have some much better ideas now, worthy of the opening chapters. It’s strange I found it much easier to write nine-year-old Bian than fourteen-year-old Bian. For those who haven’t seen them, I’m happy to provide the chapters of nine-year-old Bian as a mobi, ePub or PDF. Email me at the usual contact address.

Bite Back 6. No name yet. Based back in Denver. Full of House Farrell and Adepts and the aftermath of the closing chapters of Angel Stakes. However I promise you to make it simple and short and quick, it will end up complex and long and slow.

Other projects:

I need to resubmit all the books to CreateSpace to provide new print books. This is because I’m late with Cool Hand and I need to do Angel Stakes, and all the covers have changed and the first two books are different sizes and the internal format is different for different books. It’s all a mess and needs putting in order.

My narrator, Julia Motyka will start recording the Angel Stakes audio in September. I need to mark up the text to make sure what I hear comes through.

German translation. I’m undecided. The translations aren’t really paying for themselves.

And I’m looking at some writing-as-marketing projects. These are basically short stories which are also the first chapter(s) of novels, so the short story serves as a teaser for the main novel. I haven’t been able to see how to do this for the main Bite Back story. I have some ideas which may be in the same world, but set elsewhere – one is about a young girl fleeing along the infamous Highway of Tears in Canada, pursued by a terrifying monster.

There’s more. There’s always more, but this post has gone on FAR too long.

Cool Hand audio

Cool Hand is now on audio, at Audible.

http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Cool-Hand-Audiobook/B01ENXFFI6/

It will become available at Amazon and other retailers over the next few days – schedules entirely under Audible’s control, not mine.

I hope you enjoy the audio version of Cool Hand.

We have some scheduling problems over this summer. Julia Motyka was going to do Raw Deal before the summer, but that’s not going to happen now. Instead, she’ll go straight into recording Angel Stakes when she’s next available, which is in September. That means Angel Stakes audio should be available in November sometime.

 

Angel Stakes first chapter

I’ve been asked to put a teaser up. This is the first chapter, which is a real teaser 🙂

It follows directly on from Cool Hand. I originally planned to write Cool Hand and Angel Stakes as one book, with the flight to LA being the mid-point, but only authors like GRR Martin can get away with huge books at such long intervals.

If you want more of a teaser, ask and I’ll email you the first 3 chapters. Be warned, Amber’s situation is not resolved in those chapters, so it would be just another cliffhanger.

ANGEL STAKES CHAPTER 1

NIGHT FLIGHT

Floating…

Floating down the river of night toward the city of dreams…

Our Lady, Queen of Angels. Where the long dragon spine of San Gabriel sprawls over the trembling San Andreas Fault and four million people cluster in its shadow. Bad Feng Shui, the Chinese mutter, and spit to clear their luck.

Los Angeles. Where glittering streets of plenty cut like knives through the desperate barrios. Where gangs and cults, earthquakes and hill fires, riots and despair and madness, all simmer just beneath the surface, waiting, like the abiding desert, to erupt out through the drains and engulf the city.

LA. The laconic arrogance in the initials of the city that lives, full of myth, pulsing with tales. The city that feeds on dreams, leaving nothing but dust and nightmares. And we are such stuff as dreams are made. Or nightmares.

I knew I was on a plane, flying to Los Angeles, because Skylur had called us, and my oath bound me to him, as tightly as Diana or Bian were bound to him, or my House was bound to me. And I knew that I was teetering on the brink of insanity. That I’d been over the edge. That I’d gone rogue—become an unthinking, instinctive killer, consumed by rage and blood lust. And that I’d been brought back by my kin. Brought back as Were by Alex’s dominance. Brought back as Athanate by Jen’s Blood. And whatever part of me was Adept had been torn and stunned by grounding all the energy that the whole Taos community of Adepts had poured into a lock to hold Diana prisoner on that cold hillside up in Carson National Park. The energy that Kaothos, Tullah’s dragon spirit guide, had reversed somehow.

They’d told me the Athanate would drive my Were rogue, or the Were would drive the Athanate. That the Adept would drive them both rogue. It hadn’t happened like that.

You are none of the things they will think you are.

My great-grandmother, Speaks-to-Wolves, had said that to me in a vision, and she’d been right. My paranormal sides balanced each other. I’d escaped that nightmare, only to emerge into the same one—with a different face. The tide of darkness in my mind wasn’t caused by my competing paranormal instincts, but by the meddling of Colonel Petersen’s psychologists, as I’d lain defenseless in Obs after being bitten by rogue Athanate in the jungles of South America. I saw it as a storm in my head, sweeping in across the cold, high plains, threatening to obliterate me under towering clouds and cracking lightning. My body twitched and jerked with every electric strike.

My kin had saved me, but they hadn’t cured me. The darkness was returning.

And yet, it was as if there were two halves of me. A half that lay shaking and muttering feverishly on the floor between my worried kin, and a half that floated through the cool cabin, granted a clarity of vision that was painful. I’d bound my eukori tightly into my head so that the stain of my madness could not spread, but I was listening to Diana and Bian.

There was a crisis ahead. An opportunity and a danger twisted around each other like mating snakes.

We were going to LA, a place where you could toss away your old life like a bad hand and get a new deal. But also the place where the hollow-bellied god of fame lured dreamers to the great light, only to let it flicker and fade, leaving them blind and starless in the stone jungles, unable to tell truth from artifice. And still believing, still believing, as they offered the last things they had left. Their passion. Their health, heart, soul and youth. Finally, even their children. And the place where Basilikos and Panethus might end their shadowy battle, consuming each other utterly, that a new hope might rise from the ashes.

So close.

Floating down the river of night toward the city of dreams…

Floating…

As they touched the cool, gray asphalt of Van Nuys airfield, the plane’s tires began screaming, and I went into convulsions.

End of March roundup

Reviews

Cool Hand is continuing to generate wonderful reviews and feedback.

There are 33 reviews just on US Amazon, along with 15 on Goodreads (mysteriously split between two ‘versions’ of the book). 7 reviews on the UK Amazon site, 4 in the rest of the world, and a couple on Kobo. Thanks to all of you again.

Sales

Raw Deal                        20,187

Sleight of Hand             22,046

Hidden Trump              15,483

Wild Card                        6,601

Cool Hand                        2,101

Hidden in the raw numbers is a boost for the sales of all the books – they’re selling ten times better than they were last month.  And Wild Card retention has jumped a couple of percentage points.

Comparison

Hidden Trump is still my leading launch.  In the same period that Cool Hand has just sold 2,101, Hidden Trump sold 3,596. Launching HT for the Christmas/New Year book-buying season while there was still a big buzz from the launch of Sleight of Hand had a dramatic effect.

Bite Back 5 progress

I have a few scenes already written. This always happens at the start of a book – there are scenes that are yelling at me and I have to write them. ‘Progress’ appears very quick at the start.

The first chapter is finished, because it’s really just a prologue, linking Cool Hand with BB5. From chapter 2 to about 6 covers the resolution of the cliffhanger, and I can see myself rewriting that a few times as it’s such a key to Amber’s life story.

Overall, I’ve spent more time plotting than writing. As mentioned before, the structure of the story will be a non-paranormal PI case, but the paranormal world goes on, with very important events happening (Basilikos, Were halfies, Empire of Heaven to name three), and I need to tie the two together neatly.

New covers

My son, his partner, and my daughter (Gideon, Sophie and Jessica) are doing these. They should appear in May, I estimate. I’ll reveal them here first.

Others…

Bian’s Tale – The Reach of Lies

I will be working on this as well, re-plotting and re-writing from section 2 onwards, but I’ve not spent any substantial time on it yet.

The Biting Cold II

This will be needed as part of the process of binding Manda and Scott into Amber’s story during BB5.

So Many Doors

Actually, not my book. My late mother wrote this book in 1964. It was never published. It’s a murder mystery set in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia (where I was born). I’ve long promised to tidy it up and publish it, and I guess now is as good a time as any! That won’t use the same part of the brain as writing, so it won’t interfere with BB5.

 

That was the week…

Reviews

Undoubtedly the highlights of the week are the reviews and feedback that I’ve been getting for Cool Hand.

There are 33 reviews on Amazon now: 29×5-star, 3×4-star and 1×3-star. There are 13 reviews on Goodreads: 7×5-star, 5×4-star and 1×3-star (and a bunch of good ratings as well). It’s not so much the ratings as the words that have given me such a buzz, whether delivered on reviews, here on the blog, the Facebook pages or email. Thank you all. I love ya.

Ranking

Cool Hand was in and out of the top 100 Urban Fantasy books, and averaged about 2,500 in all books over the last week (where 1 is the highest rating).

Sales

Cool Hand sales now stand at over 1,600, of which 550 were added in the last week. In that time, Sleight of Hand added 150, Hidden Trump 100 and Wild Card 130.

Audio book sales of Sleight of Hand topped 500 in total, but the last week was slow with only 28 sales.

Comparison

Hidden Trump is still my leading launch.  Both HT and CH took 9 days to reach 1,000 sales, but HT was launched into the January book sales and continued to sell very strongly. In the comparable week that CH has just sold 550, HT sold 1,300.

 Some thoughts about Cool Hand

No book is ever just right, or exactly what the author wanted to say. Any author who tells you that is lying. Cool Hand was especially difficult for me because of the number of times I wrote and re-wrote the penultimate section (essentially what ended up as being chapters 47-55 – Santa Fe to the start of the Carson National Forest scenes).

When you rewrite that much, you lose a feel for the quality of readability of the work. I mean, each word is better selected, each sentence is better put, each plot strand better presented (otherwise what are you doing), but you lose a sense of how it feels as a reader.

The enthusiasm of the reviews vindicates Lauren’s insistence I could do better, and I hope justifies the delay in release.

 And some thoughts about the next book

If you’ve caught your breath after the ending of Cool Hand…well, it could have been more complex and longer. Or shorter and simpler. And of course, there is that cliffhanger. Longer? Well, I could have resolved the cliffhanger, but the end of the book would have then become unwieldy and either the existing ending(s) or the resolution of the cliffhanger would have felt anti-climactic. Shorter? Well, one of the things that happened at the end, you’ve been waiting very patiently for, but I could have let it slide into the start of the next.

The point I’m trying to make is that there is some leeway in the scheduling of the resolution of ongoing threads. And I’m interested what you, the readers, absolutely have to have resolved sooner rather than later.

The core structure of Bite Back 5 is going to be provided by an ostensibly non-paranormal PI case, with threads for paranormal and relationship arcs woven in. What do you have to see progressed and/or resolved? Or, just who/what you have to see more of. Or less of! 🙂

I’m not promising to implement these!

(Progress on writing at the end of the month)

A final point

I never expected everyone to like my books, and frankly, scathing reviews of Sleight of Hand did little more than make me grin.

However…I do feel a responsibility to those of you who have come along for the ride and are unhappy about some direction developing in the books, or the balance of the story, or didn’t like Cool Hand, or parts of Cool Hand, or whatever.

I’d just like to say I’m happy to receive constructive negative feedback. By that I mean ‘I didn’t like this because…’ rather than ‘I didn’t like it.’ As with positive feedback, any route is fine – reviews, postings or emails to me at the contact address.

As with the last section, I can’t promise to change anything!

 

Cool Hand first week summary

A week is a long time in publishing.

But not as long as the time since I last gave you the sales numbers.

Total sales

• Raw Deal 20,000 (between 5,000 and 7,000 free downloads)
• Sleight of Hand 21,000 (+1,250 German translations and 460 audio books)
• Hidden Trump 15,000 (+500 German translations)
• Wild Card 6,250
• Cool Hand 850

Each book’s first week of sales

• SoH 20
• HT 700
• WC 660

So Cool Hand is way out in front. Thank you all for your continuing support.

The USA leads the way with 49,000 total sales to UK’s 9,000 and Germany’s 6,000.

With the USA leading the sales, all the rankings below are based on the USA Amazon site.

SoH went all the way up to about 1500^th most popular book over the last week, but is back down at around 8,000-9,000 now. The others moved in a similar fashion, but are lower in the rankings. Cool Hand was ranked at 1,300 overall this morning, and at 65 in the Paranormal & Urban fantasy list.

I have 15 reviews for Cool Hand already on Amazon and GoodReads, and many very positive comments in posts and by email. Thank you all! This writer runs on that kinda fuel.

I am still delighted to be selling well, and remain puzzled at the cause of the drop after Hidden Trump.

 

Bite Back 5, as yet unnamed, is under way. The core of the book is a bit more like SoH – there is a non-paranormal investigation which determines the overall structure. I may link in Manda and Scott from The Biting Cold, which would mean a short story to bridge from where they are now to being part of the Bite Back series arc.

I’m also looking at re-starting Bian’s Tale.

As per my comments on earlier posts, I’m unhappy with predicting release dates after getting it wrong, but I’ll get back to end-of-month updates on writing progress.

Thank you all again.

 

 

 

Friday is here! Cool Hand …

Has been sent to the Amazon servers!

I will send it to Kobo soon, and I will post a link in a comment below as soon as I see it come up on either site.

Amazon say they take ‘up to 12 hours’, but it varies.

 

 

Cool Hand – Friday release

The last round of editing is still going on…

But I feel confident. Friday 6th March. (2015).

Here’s the temporary cover, and the first page. The book has grown another 3,000 words.

 

“Sometimes, nothing can be a real cool hand.”

Paul Newman as Luke Jackson in Cool Hand Luke.

Chapter 1

WEDNESDAY NIGHT

“If you don’t believe your whole life has been a path leading to this one point, you’re not focused enough.”

That had been Top, while I was training in Ops 4-10.

But he’d also said: “You’re every second of training we’ve hardwired into you. Focus on the big picture and your instincts will handle the rest.”

What happened if my instincts led me down the wrong path?

 

It was just after midnight. I was burrowed into a thick layer of snow, peering through a gap in a field of winter wheat, scoping out the hideout of the last remaining Matlal Athanate in Denver. Or rather, an hour east of Denver in a remote location on the high plains—one reason why the place had been so tough to find.

In fact, I wasn’t the one who’d found it. It was Nick Gray, the skinwalker, who’d sent me the intel. I was grateful, but also wary. He’d already gone above and beyond the terms of his original contract in helping me rescue Emily Schumacher from Dr. Noble. In my current exhausted, foggy state, I couldn’t even remember what I’d promised him if he could hunt down the remaining Matlal. Anything he wanted, probably. With a bonus of extra ‘anything’ if we managed to rescue the toru—their blood slaves.

 

Cool Hand update

Just to reiterate what I scribbled in a comment on another post – I have reached the end of Cool Hand!

I’m reading back through it today and I have a short list of maybe-edits to think about.

Tomorrow the draft will go to Lauren. Unfortunately, I missed my slot with her (by some distance) and she’s currently working on something else. She says she thinks she should be able to do the final edits starting on Wednesday. The bulk of the book has been edited already, so this shouldn’t be a huge problem.

I’m currently estimating that the book will be on Amazon on the 26th February.

It is currently 59 chapters and 132k words long, so longer than SoH and a little shorter than HT.

Many threads get tied up. Some new ones get started. 🙂