Update and Angel Stakes cover reveal

The first featured image is Andrew discussing handling weapons with Maria at White Box Studio.
Inside Straight
I’ve completed my major edit pass and the text has gone to Lauren for the final checks on spelling and grammar. The book will be published on the 31st October, and I’ll put it up for pre-orders a week or so before. I’ll make sure you know it’s up on Amazon. š
Relaunch of series
The pre-order of Inside Straight will be combined with a relaunch of the whole series with new covers. That means I have to reformat all the print books (previously printed by CreateSpace), change the audio covers, sharpen up the blurbs, and insert a brief (!) summary of previous books and cast list into books 2 – 6. I am so looking forward to that. Lol.
At the same time I’ll start releasing ‘bundles’. The first will be books 1-3 combined into one eBook, and sold at a discount. This is to capture those readers for whom one book at a time is not enough. Yes, this is a thing, and quite a large thing apparently. The second bundle of books 4-6 should go up sometime in December. These bundles will require their own eBook covers, which I will reveal here on the blog.
The relaunch will combine the new covers and bundles with an advertising campaign.
When I first published on Amazon, the only marketing tools under my control were covers, blurbs, newsletters, Bookbub (and similar), reviewers etc. With the possible exception of Bookbub, these tools have less and less direct, primary effect. Why? Because Amazon has changed. They used to have fairly neutral ranking and promotional algorithms. If you sold, and got good reviews, your ranking went up in a straightforward manner, and they promoted you in their newsletters. Now, to get the same effect, you have to reinvest part of your sales in the Amazon advertising machine. That’s what I’ll be doing, to the tune of approximately 20% of my target income. Gulp.
(This is not to say that reviews no longer work. I’m still very keen on reviews. Just a few words if you haven’t already. Please. š )
I may also try Bookbub and similar newsletters as well. And I’m considering building my own newsletter too. I have a current mailing list, but that is *strictly* for new book releases. The general newsletter will (among other things) explore the lore of the Athanate/Were/Adept world, especially those parts that don’t quite make it into the books. I may write some short stories which would go out in the newsletters.
Merchandise
I hear you. I’ll have some T shirts, coasters and stuff made from these covers and some photos that don’t make the covers. I have no schedule yet.Ā š
Angel Stakes cover
Books 1-4 have concentrated appropriately on Amber with weapons – the handgun, submachine gun and the shotgun. These demanded action poses to convey the best impact. However, although Amber uses weapons in Angel Stakes, there’s a different feel to the book. Amber rights old wrongs. Amber stalks her enemy almost as a personification of justice. The second werewolf ritual takes place in this book as well, and whereas Amber can almost convince herself that the first halfy ritual down in New Mexico (end of Cool Hand) was a fluke, the evidence that it’s an ability she has becomes overwhelming in Angel Stakes.
So I wanted something less to do with physical weapons, but more to do with a rather spooky, witchy Amber coming to get you.
I think Andrew and Maria hit this brief out of the park. What do you think?
Print book image
And the eBook cover
Long post! Pictures at the end š
Writing update
Iāve written another short story for an anthology, but itās not due out until Q1 2017. I havenāt even settled on a title yet. Itās about 16k words (a little shorter than The Biting Cold). Itās in the Athanate universe, but itās set in a fictional island in the West Indies (āSt. Markāsā in the Leeward Islands) in about 1800. Itās pre-edit, but hey, thereās only 16k words so it canāt change much. Hahahaha.
Iām working on Bianās Tale companion series book 1, Saigon: The Reach of Lies. Iād say itās going well, but I got to a point last time, about 75% through the whole book, and suddenly, it wasnāt going well. Iām going to be cautious this time and say itās going okay. Iāll start to engage with beta readers sometime this month or next.
Iām also working on the plot of Bite Back 6. Itās time for the Adepts to come to the fore, and many threads need to be woven in. Those of you whoāve read The Biting Cold and Winterās Kiss (Bite Back: Outsiders companion series) know that there is input from that companion series as well. A couple of chapters early in Bite Back 6 will actually be the next step in the Outsiders series, and I will be telling the same events from the two different points of view.
I have a lot of other projects I would like to start, but theyāre all on the back burner.
Road Trip Report
Readers of this blog will know I did a US road trip in the fall. I visited Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. It was too much and not nearly enough. I have been promising to show pictures and report back, but I donāt want to swamp you with 20GBytes of photos and pages of musings. Iāll try it a state at a time and no more than a couple of photos per road. This post is just an overview. Next post will start the actual road trip and cover Wyoming.
Why did I do it?
Planning started back in 2014 when I was sketching out the plot for what became two books ā Cool Hand and Angel Stakes. The internet is amazing for writerās research, but thereās a lot to be said for being at the place that youāre writing about. Talking to people. Seeing with your own eyes. And Iād done a lot of research on Denver in 2011 when I was planning the story that became Sleight of Hand and Hidden Trump.Ā So… I planned to visit New Mexico and Los Angeles in preparation for Cool Hand and Angel Stakes.
Butā¦life happened. I didnāt go. I wrote those books using internet research and some feedback from people in the area.
How many mistakes did that produce?
Not as many as it could have been. On the Cool Hand audio, I had Julia pronounce Ute as āoo-tehā and it should be more like āyootā. In Angel Stakes, I had a desk sergeant at the police station, and apparently LAPD does not use sergeants to man the front desks. This was pointed out to me at great length by a reviewer (who managed to miss some other deliberate fictions, got his own facts wrong and got completely the wrong end of the stick on other non-LA items – LOL).
Stillā¦the Bite Back action will move north in BB7 and I wanted to get a feel for the states involved. I also wanted to see some of the places Iād written about using just the internet and friends, hence the trip to New Mexico.
I could also use the photos for backdrops in book covers.
And I wanted a road trip. For me, thereās nothing like the vanishing point to free the imagination.
The planā¦
Came together when the whole family wanted to see my daughter, Jessica, on the set for Iron Fist, filming in New York from summer to late fall. The family would fly out in the last week of August and spend about 2 weeks, and I would go from there when the rest went home. The timing was exactly what I wanted ā to be touring after Labor Day, when the prices would drop (hahahaha) and it wouldnāt be too cold in the mountains (hahahahaha).
I couldnāt work LA into the trip. Instead, I concentrated on the Rockies.
The research required me to visit Wyoming and Montana. I wanted to start in Denver, and on a road trip, you should not travel any road twice, so that gave me my first loop:
Wyoming, taking in the areas where the Cheyenne pack run (Medicine Bow National Forest), and including the places where two of the founder packs of the Confederation are basedāWind River and Bighorn.
Montana, taking in Bozeman.
And returning through Idaho, along the Bitterroot and Salmon-Challis areas, where the Bozeman pack runs. (I was originally thinking of missing Idaho, but readers told me I had to see places like Stanley and Sun Valley, and it just worked).
Having done that, I needed to come back through Utah to Colorado.
I knew Iād need some time in Denver to write up, and then set off on the second loop.
For the southern section, I wanted to head to Nevada first. There is the potential for a scene in the Humboldt-Toiyabe area, and I also just wanted to drive along the āLoneliest Road in AmericaāāHighway 50.
Then down to Taos, Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Back to Denver and complete.
(The requirement for returning to Denver was simple economics of return flights and car hiring).
That was the plan. It went right and wrong. Tune in to the next post to see how it turned out in Wyoming in detail.
How did it go overall?
It was awesome. As I say, things went wrong, Ā and Iāll tell all in the next few posts.
The important thing was that the principle reasons for the trip went very well ā I finished the draft of Winterās Kiss, edited and published it while travelling. I talked to dozens of people. I got lots of photos. Loads of ideas. I came back to the UK with my head full of scenes for Bite Back and other books. My imagination went into overdrive.
There are some photos on the Bite Back page, both from New York and from the road trip. Go to (https://www.facebook.com/TheBiteBackSeries/ and scroll down), I wonāt repeat them here, but instead, have a look atĀ some tasters of whatās to come.
I needed a car. Plain Toyota Camry ā on a couple of occasions, I was sorry I hadnāt got a 4×4, but it did the task. Yes, things went wrong with carsā¦
I needed places to stay, hotels, motels and AirBnB. (I didnāt stay here ā Jackson, Montana). Yes, things went wrong with hotels…
I needed a camera. During the trip my Canon G9 died slowly, and thereās a tale to that too. Ended up with the current Canon equivalent, a G7x. High quality, fast lens, reasonable zoom, no filters, no changeable lenses, manual and auto programs, robust, fits in pocket ā basic parameters for my kinda road trip.
I needed money. Mix of credit and cash. I have to say, I was offended by some of it! Cos Iām speshul.
I sought out views of scenes Iād already written. For instance, here is where Jen and Amber looked down on DenverĀ from Lookout Mountain (at night), after the meeting about the quarter horse race venue in Hidden Trump.
And scenes Iām going to write. A chase, a fight. Bite Back 6 or 7. This is part of a disused railway track in north Denver.
But mainly I took photos just because the scenery was AWESOME. Every bend in the road seemed to bring something new and incredible.
Trees and mountains and rivers…
And the drama of Great Dunes and a dark butte under threatening clouds.
As I said, it was awesome, and I look forward to telling you more about it – the little things and the large.
Would I recommend a road trip in the Rockies?Ā Hell, yeah.
I will continue to update progress on writing as well!