Month: July 2024

Some people don’t like to use Amazon, preferring to patronise a physical bookshop instead. And who can blame them? I love walking in to a local bookshop and seeing ranks of books just waiting for me to browse through. Sometimes I’ll make impulse purchases, sometimes I’ll set books aside and sample a chapter or two, and build a little stack of books that I’m going to bring home with me.

There are a few really good independent bookshops in Nottingham (the nearest big city to this tiny village). I love the different flavours of each of the independents. You know what I mean when I say ‘different flavours’, yes? You do? Good.

Waterstones is a fish in a different kind of a kettle. Floor upon floor upon floor of books and books and books. Comfortable chairs to sit in while I’m sampling chapters and building my stacks. It feels more like a kind of a library than a bookshop and I can’t quite put my finger on why but that’s how it is. By the way, I was in my local library today and someone I knew took me over to a row of books in a rack and showed me Tempest!

Anyway, that’s not the point of this post.

I’ve been doing a lot of pushing and pulling and heaving and a little bit of bumping and the end result is that my books are now available in High Street bookstores. Particularly Waterstones (but other bookstores are available, right?).

As soon as I can (but I’ll give it a few weeks because I don’t want to appear too needy), I’ll go in to the Nottingham branch of Waterstones and ask to speak to the manager/ess. Then I’ll ask if my books could be featured in the Local Author section. And maybe we could do a book-signing or something?

Well… we’ll see what they say to that.

It has been suggested that I might like to have a trailer (like a film/TV trailer) made for Tempest, Storm, Hurricane (or all three). Well that’s appealing and goes straight to my vanity funny bone. Because it would be great to have a hard-hitting, hooky/eye-catching, explosive (lit and fig), quick cuts away, dark, mysterious, brooding, threatening, perilous, shady, bullet-infested trailer for Tempest, Storm, Hurricane (or all three).

So I looked on the website of the company who was recommended to me and there are a few examples of their work, videos of different length. I watched one.

Yep, it was exactly the kind of eye-catching, explosive (lit and fig), quick cuts away (etc, etc) trailer that had instantly popped into my mind. I watched another.

It too was exactly the kind of eye-catching, explosive (lit and fig), quick cuts away (etc, etc) trailer that had instantly popped into my mind.

The first one… there was a bit of shade over a stand-out piece of text. And there was a misplaced apostrophe on another piece of stand-out text. So, hummm.

The second one… I couldn’t see any issues with that. Except for the length. 1m 17s is an odd length – and slightly long? Or is that just me?

If I went down this road (and that’s a big, big if!) trailer length would have to be thought out carefully. Mainstream broadcast media commercials are usually 30 seconds, but MSM book/film trailers can be minutes long.

I think the trailer length would limit the subject to just one book. Tempest (as the first in the series) would be the obvious choice. There’s a lot of material in Tempest which could sampled. And then what, when it’s done?

Stick it on my (little used) channel on YouTube? And TikTok? And Insta? And FB? And then boost the trailer through paid inserts/adverts?

Hmm.

Anyway, the jury is out on this idea. I mean, I really love the idea, but I’m not sure it’s for me.

We were at Newark Literary Festival yesterday and Oh My Goodness what a terrific day it was.

The organisation was first class; the information we were given in advance was timely, accurate, and helpful.

Once the stall was set up and open for business – you have to understand we were LitFest virgins! – we took it in turns to browse around the other stalls and chat to stallholders.

Our stall looked like this:

It was a thrill and a pleasure to discuss my books with people, and to watch the enthusiasm for my project catch their imagination.

To everyone who bought my books: thank you so much. I hope you enjoy reading them.

To the organisers of the Newark Literary Festival: thank you for your hard work and brilliant organisation. I look forward to coming back next year with a fourth book to complete the series.

Time to check out how book #4 in the Tempest adventure/thriller series is shaping up… What do you reckon?

I’m thrilled to be able to tell you that we will be appearing at the 2024 Newark Book Festival on Sunday 14th July.

If you’re in the area (look, this is the original Newark, not the Johnny-come-lately one in the USA), feel free to pop by. You’ll find us on stall #28 with a supply of sweets as well as copies of Tempest, Storm, and Hurricane, which we’ll be selling at a specially discounted boxed-set rate for visitors to the book festival.

Unfortunately we’ll have to leave the spaniels at home, but why don’t you come along and see what we’re like when we’re not herding dogs? We’d love to see you.

Of course, if you can’t make it for a geographical (or other) reason, you can get Tempest, Storm, and Hurricane from this website at a discount (though not as much as the discount we’ll be offering at Newark).

Or you can get the books on Kindle or paperback through Amazon.

But if you can make it to Newark, we’d rather see you there; that would be nice.