The Based Book Sale - on now!

I'm participating in another time - this time its the Based Book Sale which runs from the 3rd - 10th September 2025. 

I have two books in the sale, both priced at only 99p/99c! Grab them while you can - before the price goes back up!

The Bournemouth Festival of Writing

The Bournemouth Festival of Writing took place last weekend with a wide range of events, talks, workshops, an author’s marketplace, book launches, writing on the beach – not to mention the now infamous naked writing workshop hosted by the wonderfully named Jonny Fluffypunk. (I didn’t take part – too much of a coward). 

I was delighted to be part of this event, running a workshop called ‘Let’s Get Villainous’ which was a character workshop with a difference – the aim being for all the participants to take away with them a particularly nasty alter ego, to use in their writing however they liked. I ran the workshop with a series of character prompts followed by various role play activities so that everyone could really get into their character’s heads.

This was my first time at the Bournemouth Writing Festival and I’ve not run a workshop for several years, so naturally my biggest fear was the dreaded empty room. All week I had been seeing events selling out, but really I needn’t have worried – mine wasn’t far off capacity.

And the participants themselves were fantastic. They responded really well to the prompts and as soon as the interactive part began, everyone working together in small groups, the room filled with laughter and energy. There were some wonderful characters and scenarios being explored – I really hope that I will one day see some of them in print.

As for the festival overall, it was a huge success. Dominic (the organiser) is really putting Bournemouth on the map with this, and I look forward to being involved again next year, either as a speaker or a delegate.

Let’s Get Villainous

 

Earlier this month I attended the launch event for the Bournemouth Writing Festival which will be taking place in April in the town. I was there because I will be taking part this year, delivering a writing workshop on the Saturday.

My workshop is called ‘Let’s Get Villainous’ and is a character workshop with a difference. The goal is that at the end each participant will take away with them a thoroughly despicable and villainous character, or maybe an anti-hero, to do with whatever they wish.

We will be using a combination of lucky dip prompts and role play activities to create our characters and then really get into their heads and get to know them. It will be quite interactive and hopefully a lot of fun for all concerned.

Tickets are available here: Why not come along and join us.

The launch event itself was well attended and buzzing with energy. It was great to finally get to network with other local writers and I’m really looking forward to this year’s festival.

I hope to see you there.

Dark Mode Stuff Your Kindle

For one day only - the 27th December 2024 - you can grab a whole load of free books from Dark Mode - including Dragons of Dunmoray!

So what are you waiting for? Go now and fill up your kindle with free books!

You can find the full listing of books that are taking part in this event HERE

Stuff Your Kindle Day! Dark Mode

Dark Mode have announced this Winter’s Stuff Your Kindle Day. And One of the books that you will be able to grab for free on kindle is Dragons of Dunmoray.

The master list will be revealed on November the 20th! And the books will be free on December 27th. So take this opportunity to stuff your kindle with some amazing books!

Here is the listing for Dragons of Dunmoray.

Self Publishing promotion update: (August 2024)

Here is my latest update on the various promotional activities I have undertaken to try to spread the word about my self-published books, and how successful or otherwise these activities have been.

1. Social Media

I joined a number of reader and author groups on facebook and did my best to contribute as far as possible. Most have very strict ‘no promotion’ rules but some do offer opportunities such a monthly post where people can post kindle sales or new releases. Apparently the way authors game these groups is to team up and then talk about each other’s books. Unfortunately I don’t have a team of author friends willing to big me up, so I just have to play by the rules. Where I was allowed to I advertised the kindle countdown sale for The Arid Lands and my ARC signups for Dragons of Dunmoray. The main benefit from joining these groups was the helpful advice on offer.

Other social media activities continued as normal.

2. ARC Readers

In the run up to self publishing my new book, Dragons of Dunmoray, decided that, rather than approaching review blogs, I would reach out for ARC (Advance Review Copies) readers. I set up an ARC signup form on google forms and included one important question – Why do you want to read Dragons of Dunmoray? This deterred non humans very effectively. I only had one signup who was clearly a bot.

So far I have sent out 20 review copies. Hopefully this will prove to be a better approach than my previous efforts of approaching review blogs directly.

3. Readers Book Club

The Arid Lands was chosen as book club read for April/May and the organiser sent out six free copies to the participants. There was lively discussion but then one of the participants warned everyone than Amazon frowns on authors leaving reviews for other authors’ books and will cancel your KDP account if they catch you. So this immediately killed off anyone leaving reviews for anyone else, which was a shame.

I did ask the participating authors if anyone would be happy to let me have quotes that I could use in my promotion, but nobody responded.

As of now this group appears to have fizzled out.

4. Indieverse awards

This has come to nothing and I won’t be pursuing it any further.

5. SPSFC4

I plan to enter The Arid Lands into SPSFC4. I thoroughly enjoyed taking part in SPSFC3 and although Red Rock didn’t make it past the first round I feel it raised my profile plus I discovered some fantastic new authors and books.

6. Kindle Sale

I ran a two day kindle countdown deal for The Arid Lands in June. Sales had tailed off over the preceding couple of months so I hoped that this would give it a boost. I did my best to promote it wherever I could but only picked up a handful of sales.

So in conclusion the approach I took to find ARC readers has been significantly better than pitching to review sites. Final tallies for how many ARCS I will send out at the proportion that translate into reviews are yet to be determined.

 

 

Building my ARC team

When I was building up to the release of The Arid Lands I looked into how best to obtain reviews. At the time I decided I would try to approach book bloggers directly. I researched (I found a useful list on Reedsy) to identify bloggers who would accept self published books (many don’t) and who were interested in the SF and dystopia genres (again, this whittled them down). I ended up with a shortlist of 20 to approach.

I pitched The Arid Lands to these blog sites but only one requested a review copy and I’m not aware of them ever leaving a review. A couple of others came back to me asking for money which they hadn’t made clear on their websites which was annoying.

All in all this wasn’t a particularly satisfactory approach.

Now that I’m building up to the release of Dragons of Dunmoray in September I’ve decided that I will try a different tactic. I’m trying to build an ARC team (Advance Review Copies).

If you like dragons, Scotland, volcanos and danger, all topped off with a bit of spice, then you can find the link to my ARC signup sheet below. I will send you a free electronic copy in the hope that you will like it enough to leave a review, although there is no obligation to do so.

Dragons of Dunmoray ARC signup form

Cover Reveal: Dragons of Dunmoray

 Today I am delighted to share with you - the cover of Dragons of Dunmoray!

And I am now officially open to ARC (Advanced Review Copy) signups - so if you are interested in joining my review team please signup below.

Dragons of Dunmoray ARC signup form

The Dragons are Coming

 

I have a new novel in the pipeline, a dark fantasy set in Scotland. I'll be telling you more in the coming weeks, so watch out for my cover reveal! Not long to go now!

The Arid Lands promotion update: (May 2024)

Here is my latest update on the various promotional activities I have undertaken to try to spread the word about my self-published books, and how successful or otherwise these activities have been.

1. Social Media

I continued to be active on social media promoting my books. I’ve pretty much dropped Twitter/X and increased my engagement on threads. I don’t just promote my books there, I try to interact more but have a pinned post with my book details. My author IG is however nearly all book promotion. Social media doesn’t appear to sell books but is useful for spotting opportunities.

2. Review blogs

The review blogs I approached resulted in one review but that review was posted across many platforms. I had approached 16 review blogs. Two asked for money so I didn’t take things any further. Speaking to other indie authors who have tried this one out of 14 is pretty much to be expected. It’s quite a time-consuming endeavour but will be worth doing again.

3. Indieverse awards

This was an opportunity I spotted on Threads. There were a number of free to enter categories as well as paid categories, but I only entered the free ones as I didn’t want to pay for something which is pretty much an unknown. The awards ended up being massively oversubscribed and the organiser implemented some sort of vetting/screening process which is very opaque. However as organiser it’s up to her how she manages this. Nominations were announced on 18th March and unsurprisingly The Arid Lands didn’t make the cut. She has promised opportunities for vetted authors who were not nominated. It remains to be seen how this pans out.

4. Collaboration with other authors

I started looking for ways to collaborate with other authors. The first was with a group of SF authors I knew through SPSFC3. We set up a discord and looked into ways to try to promote our books. I made some group graphics on Canva which we shared. We discussed various ideas such as group sales and largely decided to share opportunities as these arise. I’m not sure how this will evolve. We shall see.

I also joined a readers/authors group being run by someone on threads and entered The Arid Lands into their database. Again, I’m not sure how this is going to evolve.

So in conclusion, of all the activities so far, it still looks like free deals and participation in SPSFC3 as discussed in my December 2023 update have been the most worthwhile

The Arid Lands themes: Zanclean Flood

About 5.3 million years ago, after years of sustained evaporation had resulted in the landlocked Mediterranean Sea almost completely evaporating, the waters returned when the Straits of Gibraltar was breached. This, possibly the largest flood in known Earth’s history, is known as the Zanclean Flood.

Details of the rapidity and nature of this flood remain up for debate but recent studies of deep gully like incisions in the seabed near the Straits of Gibraltar and extending out into the Mediterranean Sea itself, suggest that this could have been a catastrophic event.

Although initially discharge was low, and this may have continued for thousands of years, about 90% of the water returned in as little as a few months to two years. Such an abrupt flood would have seen sea levels in the Mediterranean rising by as much as 10 metres per day.

So how does this fascinating event influence Inez’s story? You will have to read The Arid Lands to find out.

The Arid Lands is available from Amazon in both kindle and print format.

UK Link

US Link

The Arid Lands themes: A vast engineering project

In the 1920s the German architect Herman Sorgel came up with the concept for a vast Engineering project to build a hydroelectric dam across the Straits of Gibraltar. This project was known as Atlantropa and was promoted by Germany until Sorgel’s death in 1952.

The construction of this dam, along with several others at strategic locations, would have the effect of controlling the inflow into the Mediterranean from the Atlantic. It would have generated vast amounts of electricity as well as causing the Mediterranean Sea level to drop by 200m, so freeing up large areas of land for colonisation.

Sorgel saw this project as a gateway to forming a peaceful Pan-European utopia, although critics found many faults with his proposals, including the detrimental effects on coastal communities who would become stranded as the seas retreated, as well as the problem of finding agreement amongst all the counties which border the Mediterranean.

The project was largely forgotten after Sorgel’s death.

But what if it really had happened? What if the dams really were built? Of course, in The Arid Lands the capacity for generating hydroelectric power was never realised, for reasons you’ll have to read the book to find out. This resulted in the Mediterranean inflow being completely cut off, and as a result, some 600 years of evaporation later, the world of The Arid Lands where Inez and her people struggle to survive, has come into being.

The Arid Lands is available from Amazon in both kindle and print format.

UK Link

US Link

The Arid Lands themes: Climate effects of a dried up sea.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, 6 million years ago (Ma) the Mediterranean Sea entered a phase of desiccation when it became cut off from the Atlantic, and almost completely dried up. This is the same scenario I have envisioned for the alternate future world of The Arid Lands, where Inez and her people struggle to survive, not knowing that everything is about to change.

The desiccation of the Mediterranean Sea would have a number of knock-on effects for the climate of the surrounding lands as well as creating a unique environment in the basin itself.

The climate of the basin can only be speculated for no equivalent environment exists on Earth today. But it is likely that as the depth of the basins increased so did the temperatures, possibly reaching summer midday highs of as much as 80C at its deepest points. This would not allow the existence of permanent life and it is likely that temperatures were nowhere near this extreme. But they would have been elevated enough to make life there extremely uncomfortable and difficult.

The surrounding areas would also experience climatic changes. Currently evaporation from the Mediterranean Sea provides moisture to the atmosphere which drives rainfall across much of the surrounding areas. With the Sea drying up there would be no input of moisture to the atmosphere and these rains would fail, resulting in a significantly drier climate over most of the central and eastern mediterranean belt.

In fact, the Mediterranean climate that we associate with Greece, Italy and the Levant would exist only in the Iberian Peninsula and NW Africa.

The desiccation would result in the extinction of much of the marine flora and fauna native to the basins, but the fusing of the two land masses would allow dispersal of terrestrial animals across the region.

Inez’s people survive by fishing for shrimp in the brine pools. In truth such a hypersaline environment would be hostile to life, but life is adaptable and my poor basin dwelling people have to eat something. Hence the shrimp. But apart from that I’ve tried to keep the environment in which they live as plausible as possible.

So how did this scenario arise in the world I have created? That will be the subject of a future post on this blog.

The Arid Lands is available from Amazon in both kindle and print format.

UK Link

US Link

The Arid Lands themes: The Messinian Salinity Crisis

My newly released SF novel, The Arid Lands is set some 600 years from now, in an alternate future when the Mediterranean has almost completely dried out. It is in this inhospitable landscape of salt flats and occasional pools of hypersaline brine that Inez and her people struggle to survive. Inez knows no other existence. But all that is about to change.

You may think that the idea of a vast sea such as the Mediterranean almost completely evaporating is pure fiction, but let me tell you, it is not. For the Mediterranean Sea did indeed dry out, albeit a long time ago.

About 6 Million years ago (Ma) the Mediterranean Sea became disconnected from the Atlantic Ocean. During the period that followed, known as the Messinian Salinity Crisis the sea almost completely evaporated.

The closing of the connections between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean, which is now the Straits of Gibraltar, was caused by the shifting tectonics in this region. This isolation of the Mediterranean from the main inflow happened several times, between 6 and 5.3 Ma.

The initial phase was one of repeated cycles of evaporation and replenishment which led to the formation of thick sequences of evaporite deposits, minerals such as halite and gypsum, deposited from the evaporating seawater.

The connection was then cut off for a prolonged period of time. During this later episode of desiccation, the Mediterranean became a dry basin, as much as 5 km deep, with only a few hypersaline pockets of water remaining. This process of drying out the Mediterranean Sea is estimated to have taken about 1000 years.

The Mediterranean remained dry until 5.3 Ma when the Straits of Gibraltar were finally breached, and water flooded back into the Mediterranean basin in the form of a cataclysmic flood, and so the Mediterranean Sea as we know it today was formed.

But the thick evaporite deposits and the presence of deep canyons in the seabed which cut down into the abyssal plains as water returned to the sea are testament to this arid phase in the Mediterranean Sea’s history.

This is the setting for The Arid Lands. A hostile environment that once really existed. I will talk more about this geological event and how it inspired the world I describe in The Arid Lands in future posts on this blog.

The Arid Lands is available from Amazon in both kindle and print format.

UK Link

US Link

The Arid Lands and Red Rock promotion update:

Here is my latest update on the various promotional activities I have undertaken to try to spread the word about my self-published books, and how successful or otherwise these activities have been.

1. Social Media

I continued to promote Red Rock and The Arid Lands on Twitter/X, IG, my Facebook/Meta page, Threads and Discord. I did pick up sales of The Arid Lands on preorder and downloads of Red Rock from my free promotions, as well as the occasional sale of both outside of promotion.

2. Red Rock free kindle deals

The first free deal which ran for 3 days to coincide with the ten-year anniversary of Red Rock first being published resulted in a modest number of downloads but at least I was reaching potential new readers. I will have to wait and see how many of these translate into reviews.

The second 2 day free deal for Red Rock was run to coincide with the launch of The Arid Lands and produced a similar result.

3. SPSFC3

This contest (The Self Published SF Competition) will run for a year and the first phase, where I fully expect to get culled judging by the quality of some of the other contestants in my group, will run for 5 months. Initially there was no uptick in sales but it is likely that this is where my new downloads during the free offers came from. However, the contest did enable me to gain more visibility for my writing, which is always a good thing, and may well have contributed to those sales I did gain.

4. Review bloggers

I started approaching reviewers with The Arid Lands as soon as it was live for preorder on Amazon and I had set it up on Goodreads. My first observation was how many are asking for money for reviews. I’m not interested in paying but it’s clearly a lucrative industry. I passed over these guys and pitched the book to anyone who looked as if it would be a good fit. It takes a long time to thoroughly check out each review site so I sent these out in dribs and drabs throughout the preorder period. At launch date I had pitched/submitted to 20 reviewers. It is impossible to tell how many, if any, will result in reviews at this stage.

So in conclusion, of all the activities so far, it looks like free deals and participation in SPSFC3 have been the most worthwhile. I will have to look out for more opportunities like this.

Political Thrillers on offer

 

November bargain books - Political thrillers from Bloodhound Books, including my little book, The Sleepers.

UK Amazon link

The Arid Lands Launch Day Deal

 Today I am announcing a very special launch Day deal.

 

To celebrate the launch of The Arid Lands I am making the kindle edition of Red Rock free for two days only, today and tomorrow, so why not grab yourself a copy.

Red Rock and The Arid Lands have a lot in common. They are both what might loosely be referred to as Climate Fiction although the themes involved are very different, and they may also both be referred to as SciFi thrillers with a dystopian setting.

The Arid Lands was originally written as my second book after Red Rock. However it went out on sub just as the market for YA dystopian fiction collapsed, and because it has a somewhat dystopian feel to it nobody wanted it.

So it sat on my hard drive, but I still loved it. I’ve reworked it to age it up, although it will still appeal to a YA audience. And I’m so happy to make it available at last.

Dystopian fiction is still popular among readers if not among publishers. All I need to do is find those readers.

So if you have read and enjoyed Red Rock, then why not give The Arid Lands a try. And if you enjoy it please take a moment to leave a review, however brief.

Pre-order The Arid Lands

The Arid Lands is now available for pre-order from Amazon UK and US for only 99p/99c.

Can one girl hold back the flood?

The Tyrhennians struggle to survive in the dried out basin of an ancient ocean. Inez knows no other world than this endless cycle of heat and brine, but listens to the stories of a distant land of great cities and endless seas.

She never believed them, until the day her brother is injured by a strange craft crossing the desolate plains. So she discovers that the stories are true. But as she tries to find her brother in a strange city she realises that she is not the only person from the salt plains here. Others from the Arid Lands have infiltrated the city - and they have a plan.

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Ten Years of RED ROCK

 It is now ten years since Red Rock was first published.

Red Rock remained in print for nine years until my rights reverted and I self published it so that it would still be available. I’ve enjoyed the process. It’s good having control although I do now realise how much my publisher did with marketing and promotion. They fixed me up as a speaker at conferences and placed Red Rock into libraries (from which I still get a modest income in PLR).

My main market was through those travelling book fairs that do the rounds of schools in the UK, and through these Red Rock sold quite well. It’s a book I am very proud of. I hope my readers, past, present and future, enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

So to celebrate Red Rock’s ten year anniversary I am making it free on kindle for three days only – 12th, 13th and 14th September.

If you would like to grab yourself a copy, now is your chance.

The Arid Lands Cover reveal

Today I am delighted to share with you all, the cover for my next novel The Arid Lands, a dystopian Sci Fi thriller set in the Mediterranean 600 years from now.