When I launched the Soul Jacker box set last week, I also took a hard look at the blurb I was using for Soul Jacker book 1. This blurb was only a few months old. It’s a book I’ve re-blurbed multiple times. But somehow, this time around I could see how little of the ‘sizzle’ was coming through. It was all steak. Descriptive. Interesting. Not exciting. David Gluckman Case Study Maybe it was doing a mentoring session with David Gluckman, inventor of Bailey’s Irish Cream, a few weeks back that helped me see this. In advance of our session I …
The astounding binge power of book box sets – Writing Update 2019 Week 41
Some hard talk to start – and one possible reason I stopped the Weekly Writing Updates 24 weeks (half a year!) ago: My big Soul Jacker relaunch failed. No point beating around the bush. It hurt at the time – like any setback. I’d spent a lot of time rewriting this trilogy which I first wrote in 2014/15 – paid for developmental editing, got new covers, labored for the 5th year on the blurb. I got amazing testimonials from top authors in the game (Michael Marshall Smith!, Pat Mills!) built a hell of a promo stack around a Bookbub New …
Chris Wren 3, Last Mayor Rewrites & Mentoring – Writing Update 2019 week 39 & 40
Hoo boy. It has been 24 weeks since I last updated this writing blog! What have I been doing? Wrote book 3 of the Chris Wren thrillers, Reparation. Substantially rewrote and released book 4 of the Last Mayor series, The Loss. Just now (an hour ago) got done rewriting book 5 of the Last Mayor series, The List. Mentored another writer on marketing 1-1. Spoke to a writer’s group on marketing. Released books 1-3 of the Chris Wren thrillers. Ramped up Facebook and Amazon ad spend such that I’m now making around $40 profit a day. Put all the Last …
A Shadow Intelligence by Oliver Harris – Review
As a big fan of Oliver Harris’s Nick Belsey police thrillers, I came to this book loaded for bear, expecting a rollicking ride in the grips of a dark hero operating on the fringes of legality/lethality. I ended up getting scooped up and swallowed whole. Damn, Harris knows what he is talking about, and damn if he doesn’t stream that knowledge hard and fast through a sniper’s ricocheting trickshot of a plot. We begin with MI6 agent Eliot Kane, man of many identities and worlds, getting pulled from a mission and furloughed in London for reasons unknown – in the …
Writing Update 2019 week 15 & 16
Hardly anything has happened with my writing in the last 2 weeks – it’s all been focused on getting Soul Breaker (Soul Jacker book 2) ready to go out the door, then Soul Killer to follow it. Now Soul Breaker is out, Soul Jacker is up to full price at $2.99, and I am still tallying up sales… Otherwise, as I finish up the third pass on Soul Killer, I’m also looking ahead to my new incarnation as a thriller writer. I’m reading thrillers and studying their covers and blurbs to get a better idea how to market what I …
Writing Update 2019 week 13 & 14
It’s been an overwhelming week with the launch of Soul Jacker. I’ve sold more books faster than ever before, got influencer testimonials like never before, and heard back from readers like never before. Yesterday I hit 1,000 sales 2 major influencer plus 2 medium influencer testimonials Reports from all readers that they couldn’t put the book down SALES I looked back at my track record to get some sense of perspective here – The Saint’s Rise, which was my next most successful launch and itself also a relaunch of an earlier title, sold 800 books in the first 4 weeks. …
Soul Jacker is out!
After a year of rewriting Soul Jacker is finally out, and on sale for just $0.99 in launch week, so pick it up now! I’m far too excited about this launch. Hard to sleep. Jittery. I should stop drinking coffee as I’m already wired enough! With 2 stellar testimonials from giants in the field, it’s drawing more attention than I’ve ever had before. $0.99 Amazon USA £0.99 Amazon UK REVIEWS “Superb – a Fantastic Voyage into the soul. Grist has produced a taut, clever cyberthriller that messes with your mind. Blending hard science, metaphysics and high-octane action, SoulJacker had me …
Soul Jacker review from Michael Marshall Smith!
This is immense news for my author career, as well as being an amazing personal accomplishment that I probably was distantly dreaming of 20-odd years back, when actually writing and publishing novels seemed very far away. I gulped down Michael Marshall Smith’s novels back then: Only Forward, Spares and One of Us. I loved them. Re-reading them recently, I’ve come to realize how much his work has influenced my own writing. Soul Jacker definitely owes a debt to Only Forward. There are certainly similarities – in tone at times, in world, in the concept of hacking into a mind/dreams. So …
Michael Marshall Smith’s ‘Only Forward’
I first read Only Forward 20 years ago when I was 18, shortly after it came out. Now I’m 38 and just reread it, and it blew me away just as much as it did back then. For a debut it is phenomenal. For any book it is phenomenal – there is just SO MUCH STUFF in it, all of it cool, fascinating, prescient – I highlighted a section and got my wife to read it too and it made us both smile – about a tablet screen that shows where you are on a map and gives you directions …
Writing Update 2019 week 11 & 12
Another 2 weeks gone, and I’ve been hard at work setting up my: website book pages newsletter automation and special offers for backmatter signups. I was also lucky enough to get that awesome blurb from Lisa and Pat Mills. So what else has been going on? I’m in the run up to tomorrow’s US 99c Bookbub on The Saint’s Rise. Today it’s a BargainBooksy promotion. For the past few days I’ve been ramping up my Facebook ads- $70 today. I also set up AMS and Bookbub ads, but they don’t spend… I hope today it sells 100 copies. Well below …