It’s what fiction writers do, see? We lie. And the paperback version of Diamond Splinters is already available from Amazon right here even though I promised it would be out next month.
Next up, a single-volume collection of the entire trilogy. Promise…
For most indie authors, all the focus is on Amazon. Kindle sales account for somewhere around 85% of all ebooks. Of course by no stretch of the imagination can Apple possibly be considered “the little guy”, but people don’t only buy apps and songs from iTunes, they buy books too. In Canada, where I live, the Kobo ereader is a surprisingly popular device for the consumption of digital literature, and it’s pretty much the equivalent of Barnes & Noble’s Nook in the US.
So… with only three days to go until the release of Diamond Splinters, it’s time to give a shout-out to the other platforms.
Here’s a link to the book for iOS devices:
Fancy a Nook book full of Diamond Splinters? Here you go:
And last but by no means least, here’s where you can find the final book in the Embodied trilogy for Kobo:
If you like science fiction with a big dash of urban fantasy, or are a fan of Doctor Who’s blend of soft sci-fi, extra-terrestrial feels and savvy female characters, then I think there’s a good chance you’ll love all the books in the Embodied trilogy.
Diamond Splinters, book 3 of the Embodied trilogy, will be published in ebook format on May 5. To mark the occasion, I’ve organized a virtual launch on Facebook.
I’ve also rejuvenated the Embodied trilogy Pinterest page with a bunch of cool images that relate to the trilogy’s storyline, monsters and aliens.
The new book is already available for pre-order on Amazon and will also be on the Kobo site and in the Apple iTunes store any day now. Stay tuned!
As everyone knows, time flies when you’re having fun. And also when you’re writing a novel (which can sometimes be fun as well). So this video from 2013 of Kevin Spacey giving a speech about the importance of good storytelling has now become an “oldie but a goodie”. It recently popped back into my mind because I finished watching the third season of House of Cards on Netflix, in which Spacey stars as Machiavellian US president Frank Underwood. That, by the way, is a fantastic name for his character. He seems frank, while Underwood is a white-bread Anglo-Saxon surname that matches Frank’s down-home public persona. But on a subconscious level, the “underwood” is a dark place where things crawl, scuttle and lurk. This is the seedy underbelly of Frank’s political trajectory – the rotten roots of a gnarled tree that he and his wife Claire have watered with murder, deceit, sex, and drugs. Come to think of it, House of Cards is basically a Shakespearean supervillain tag team featuring Richard III and Lady MacBeth.
Click on the photo to hear about storytelling, Spacey-style.
All this to say, storytelling is the currency of great entertainment, whether it appears on the small screen(s), big screen or the pages of a book. Just as television series such as The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and House of Cards are now arguably more artistically and culturally relevant than motion pictures, multi-novel book series have also increased in readership, relevance, and publishing income over recent years. Was the trend started by Harry Potter or the Twilight series? In Young Adult fiction, series have certainly become the norm, with subject matter varying from the Hunger Games to Mara Dyer and pretty much everything in-between.
The opportunity for an author is to do what Kevin Spacey describes in his speech: weave a storytelling web over literally years that features characters who change, grow, love, and sometimes unexpectedly die, leaving fangirls and boys wringing their hands and cursing the authors (all the while secretly loving the epic level of emotion, or as the parlance has it, the “feels”).
If done badly, a series of YA books becomes nothing more than a constant re-hashing of the storyline from book one. That’s just lazy. It means the author realized he or she had a cash cow and then milked it dry. The other option is to create a fictional world then keep expanding it in every direction. That’s keeping the cow and building a farm around it. And that’s what keeps readers coming b
Sitting at your desk isn't work 