I mentioned earlier I was going to add new bonus art for subscirbers to my email newsletter list, at the end of both Soul Jacker and The Saint’s Rise. I did it! It took ages. I made them with the benefit of some templates, some photoshop work by yours truly, and by sticking in some of the artwork I’ve had made for both series over the years. PLUS – I have an artist now working on a map of The Saint’s Rise, which will go into that goodie bag, then some schematics for Soul Jacker, which will go into that …
Soul Jacker review from Pat Mills!
I am over the moon – having just secured a blurb review of Soul Jacker from my first established author in the SF space – Pat Mills (and his wife Lisa)! Pat is considered the godfather of British comics, and created 2000AD which was where Judge Dredd got started! Awesome. I am tickled pink. Here’s the full blurb: “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, Soul Jacker had me gripped from the start. If you’re a fan of Stephenson and …
Sweet new book pages
Phew, spent a good few hours today micro-managing the Soul Jacker trilogy book pages into existence. They look about 10x cooler than previous book pages I’ve made. At some point I’ll get around to doing this for all my books. New style: It looks cool and it works really nicely on mobile as well – which is how most people will see it, if they click through from their ereader. Old style: There’s not really any ‘style’ here, it’s just straightforward. Not cool in the slightest, and not intuitive on mobile. Having the book on a black background makes it …
New newsletter giveaways
Since I started out writing I’ve been giving away a free book as a gift to get people to sign up to my newsletter list. Has it worked well? I have no idea – I have no stats on this, but I’m not sure it was ever all that likely to work. Why? I always gave away a book in a different genre. When people finish my fantasy books, they get offered The Last, a zombie apocalypse. Same for when they finished Mr. Ruin. It’s a different thing. I always gave the same book! So even if they are finishing …
Writing Update 2019 week 9 & 10
Another two weeks gone by, and it’s looking like that’s my natural rhythm for these updates. Lots of things going on as ever these days: I got 2 Bookbubs! I finished up my Facebook ads experiment (unsuccessfully 🙁 ) I wrote about my Soul Jacker promo plan In overview, I’m still buzzing with the Bookbub promotions. I haven’t done any pre-promo for The Saint’s Rise yet, which is in 2 weeks, so I will get on that tomorrow. Rather, I’ve been busy setting up the Soul Jacker promo – and putting final touches to the text of book 1. It …
The Anomaly by Michael Rutger – book review
For 20 years I’ve been reading books by the author variously known as Michael Marshall Smith and Michael Marshall, beginning with his sci-fi triumvirate of Only Forward, Spares and One of Us – three mind-slappingly entertaining thrillers – and moving through his Straw Men series as well as various creepy standalones. Now he’s writing under a third pen-name, Michael Rutger, and the first book is The Anomaly. As soon as I saw it, I picked it up. I still have those early MMS SF books on my shelf, despite having lived in Japan for 10 years – I took them …
Soul Jacker art + promo plan
I thought I’d be done with all this Soul Jacker editing by the end of January, freeing me up to get on with my thrillers, but the vicissitudes of merciful fate have conspired to make the Soul Jacker launch a #prettybigdeal. It launches March 31 at 99c. All of April will be promo time: I have the Bookbub after 3 days, multiple other promo sites already booked in (including Robin Reads, Fussy Librarian, Bargain Booksy, Booksends and others). I’ve got potential blurbs from famous folks coming. I’ve got NL swaps underway. I’ve got art and targeting for FB and AMS …
Media Review 2019 week 8 & 9
Books Dead Pines – This debut Scandi-thriller by Brit Will Dean has been the talk of the town. I briefly met Will at theFebruary First Monday Crime session and he seemed a very interesting chap – lives in a Swedish forest off-grid with his wife and kid, chops wood, freezes his waste, etc… The book flummoxed me though. His character is a deaf journalist ‘investigating’ several murders in the forest. We learn a great deal about the experience of being deaf: pillow alarms that shake you awake, recharging hearing aid batteries, putting the aids in desiccant when they get wet, …
Facebook ad February – $1000 spent and 300 book sales
My month-long experiment with Facebook ads may be at an end. Here’s the story so far: Restarting Facebook ads 2 weeks in 3 weeks in In summary – a month back I read Michael Cooper’s book about Facebook ads, which focused heavily on the essential importance of getting good book readthrough in order to make a profit, and decided I wanted to give it a real go. Now I have. I pushed book 1 in the 9-book Last Mayor zombie series and book 1 in the 2-book epic fantasy Ignifer Cycle. I experimented with ad copy, ad images and targeting. …
2 Bookbubs!!
This is insane. A few days ago I got approved for a Bookbub on The Saint’s Rise – a 99c wide promotion that’ll go out to over a million people on the Bookbub lists on March 24. It costs $500 but I expect to make much more than that back. That was dizzying enough. Now today I’ve just been approved for another Bookbub a week later! Normally you need to be 3 months apart on Bookbub promos, I think, but in this case it is a New Release Promotion. This is a new thing Bookbub are offering, and they don’t …