The Anatomy of a Bad Review
If you take a look over on Amazon.com at the reviews for The Last Observer, you will discover a couple of 1-star reviews there. I’m not sure if these two people know each other but they sound remarkably similar. There is nothing wrong with bad reviews. We don’t all like the same things and constructive bad reviews are useful in growing as a writer or whatever it is we do. In fact, go to any book on Amazon with several reviews and you will find a range of reviews from bad to great. I was just reading Anthony Peake discussing a bad review he got for one of his books too. Sometimes, people are not just critical but personal and its then that I feel things cross the line to
Read More »Just Words
If I am honest I would say at times I wonder why I write anything at all. I sometimes feel like there isn’t much point as I really don’t have an avid fan base or readership to talk of. I often feel as if my words go unread. Despite that I keep writing. I guess that there are a number of reasons why including the hope that one of these days one of my books will sell a few copies, because I enjoy writing whether or not I am very good at it and I have things to say. I think those are all good reasons. As I have said before, its a competitive business writing. I am comfortably in the majority when I say nobody reads what I write.
Read More »Pushing Books and Chasing Royalties
Over the holidays I managed to add a chapter and a half to The Lord of the Elements (the prequel to The Last Observer). To be honest, I am still trying to plan the story a bit….. I mean, I know what the plot is but it needs a few twists, turns and subplots and I am still ironing it all out so progress is slow. Meanwhile, I am starting a new business book with my colleague Patrick Reames that we hope will be out later this year. I am also preparing a new version of Poems for the Little Room that will be better suited for Amazon and Kindle….. Of course, books need to find a market too. It would be great if my books occupied a particular niche
Read More »Before It Was Never the News (Or Ever Will Be)
You know, I write about things as I see them in my blogs and books. I don’t think I am a great writer but I confess to liking to write and so I do. Occasionally, I get on my high horse and have a rant about something that bothers me and I do try to be controversial from time-to-time in the hope that I find a new audience or two. I have a few folks tracking the blog and the books sell a few hundred copies over the space of a few years. I wish it were different but I am clueless as to how to build an audience beyond simply writing and hoping. I had hoped that The Last Observer would be the one that would find a broader
Read More »Mark Stavish’s Review of The Last Observer
My thanks to Mr. Mark Stavish for this review – it may be found on Amazon.com…. A Fun and Interesting Book for an Rainy Afternoon The Last Observer is one of those wonderful novels that can be read in an afternoon and discussed with your friends for weeks afterward. Since the release of Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code and subsequent best-seller sequels the world has been awash in books dabbling in the occult but like Brown, never truly crossing the line, or worse yet, taking the leap and the reader wishes they had stayed in place. It is not that there is anything wrong with magic in novels specifically dealing with the occult, it is instead in the way most authors write about it. Best selling authors like Brown titillate us
Read More »Things That Went Bump in the Night
Growing up and leaving my version of Neverland, things took a turn for the worse. I guess it started around age 12 or so and maybe peaked at 17. Nights became sheer living hell at times as I lay in my bed scared to death. It started innocently enough in seeing a ghost. The man dressed as a Cavalier was sat at a desk writing, got up abruptly and walked out through my bedroom wall. My brother who I shared a room with saw him too. It went a bit pear-shaped after that though. Strange noises…. bangs, cracks, deep sighs, all unexplainable. Then footsteps. I hated the footsteps. Listening to ghostly footsteps moving closer and closer and closer…. Doors opened by themselves, things vanished inexplicably to turn up equally inexplicably
Read More »Searching for Direction
As you may of noted, I haven’t really posted here for a while. I have been writing short and hopefully funny articles at my other blog but spiritually I am at an impasse. So much so, that I decided to own up to it, lay it out and see what people have to suggest – if anything. My problem is that I don’t know where to go next. I really fancy (I use that word deliberately) going in the direction of real magical practical work – evocation/invocation – but I am an amateur and so I seek a rock solid and reliable school to help me. On the other hand, I feel a certain calling from the Goddess and so I have looked at Wicca and Celtic paganism. Then as
Read More »Saturday Night Thoughts on Promoting Books…
So its Saturday night and I find myself sat in front of the PC wondering yet again just how in thee world you actually promote a book. You see its November and believe it or not but The Last Observer hasn’t yet made any best seller lists and quiet honestly I am a tad disappointed. I reckon that by now my friends and family are sick to the back teeth of the hearing about the bloody book and probably do the internet version of crossing to the other side of the street when they see me coming! I reckon most of them that will buy it already have so I need a broader audience. But how? I must have spent hours googling ‘how to sell my novel’ and similar search
Read More »Peering at the World Through A Haze
Pretty much all week and through the weekend I have been seeing the world through the haze of a severe head cold. As a result, I have been trying to avoid doing any writing as I can’t think straight. Even today, I am still riddled with this dreadful cold virus thingy. Instead of writing then I decided to do some promoting. Always a good thing to do if you write as otherwise you write for no reason as no one reads your stuff! I decided to promote my poetry for a change and I made Astral Messages and Weird Tales free for the weekend on Kindle. Said promo ends at midnight tonight so you STILL HAVE A CHANCE! As of last looking, over 150 copies of Astral Messages had been
Read More »Mother Nature’s Rhyme
The evening darkens Light dying to the night Eye of Horus horizon Sol dies to be reborn Rising on the horizon In the new pinkish dawn An eternal cycle Of life and death Rising and Falling Patterns seared in time And the certainty of Mother Nature’s cyclic rhyme If you enjoy my poetry, then please check out my poetry books on Amazon; Astral Messages (2013) Poems for the Little Room (2011) Weird Tales (2007)
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