Nick finished narrating Wren 2 MONSTERS on Saturday, after a pell-mell race through the last week of Feb to get it done. His performance was stellar – incredible intensity from Wren, great accents – I just loved it. And so we turn immediately to Wren 3, REPARATION. I blitzed early edits on Sunday so he’d have something to record today, and ended up going to bed feeling a little down about the whole thing. Why? I found problems. It’s a weird thing to find problems in such recent writing. Actually I finished Reparation 6 months ago now (I haven’t had …
Awesome haikyo video – Negishi Grandstand
Occasionalyl I still get contacted by people in relation to my old hobby of visiting haikyo in Japan. ‘Haikyo’ means abandoned buildings – and it was a weekly habit for me to team up with friends and go roam empty hospitals, military bases, hotels. Most recently I was contacted by Kaila AKA The Victorian K, who did a great video shoot at Western Village. She was looking for safety/security information on the Negishi Grandstand – my info is many years out of date, but I shared what I could. Well, Kaila went to the Grandstand, stayed through the night and …
A famous peer, thriller genres and $2.99 – 2020 Writing Week 8
I just saw an old school peer on the TV, Ralf Little! We weren’t friends, but we hung out a few times, chatted occasionally, and I’ve kept a distant eye on his career. When we were at school he was in the cricket drama Sloggers, then around Uni he was in 2 Pints of Lager and Packet of Crisps, which I never felt drawn to, and then he was kind of quiet. Now he’s the lead detective on Death in Paradise! A show I used to watch religiously, then tapered off after they swapped the lead guy for a young …
Crazy work, Saint Justice tweaks and AMS tools – 2020 Writing Week 7
This week was crazy at work – I had my first session in the Main Lecture Theatre – 400 capacity, and it was pretty much full. 340, apparently. I think it was not the easiest group either – the lecturers who mostly run this cohort are struggling to control them, make them be quiet, make them stop cheating. I was running a session on plagiarism. It’s definitely the case with this new job that every new class I come into, I have to grab their attention and hold it. Normally as a teacher you do this once at the start …
Saint Justice sales page tweaks – 2020 Writing Week 6
This week I was kind of busy at work, so had less brain space for writing – but I have been on an emotional rollercoaster re- ads and the sales conversion of Saint Justice. Last Mayor rank/sales For some reason, my zombie boxset has tapered off from sales rank circa 3000 to more like 8000. I’m not sure why exactly, it seems to be selling a pretty consistent 15-20 /day just like the high times. A lot of fellow zombie box sets have dropped also, but a couple haven’t so… I up the AMS spend, try some new targeting techniques …
Saint Justice audio & more AMS trials – 2020 Writing Week 5
This week I’ve been drafting hard behind my fantastic narrator, Nick Cracknell. He finished up reading Saint Justice yesterday, and I put together a helluva edits document, with lots of re-reads, snippets to be cut out, and so forth. He finished it today. Now all that remains is for me to double-check, approve, pay, make the audiobook cover, and BOOM goes the dynamite, my first Wren thriller will be up! Wow. A month, all in. Feb will be for book 2, maybe also book 3. So exciting. And so many edits! I’m really glad Nick is game to do them. …
Repetition! Explanation! AMS Experimentation – 2020 Writing Week 3&4
Oh my word, do the lessons about my writing frailties ever end? Saint Justice edits I thought a had a bead on my tendency to run long, self-indulge and repeat myself endlessly – but actually all those lessons have come most powerfully since I edited the Last Mayor whole series. I blathered via deep-cut technobabble, repeating events from alternate perspectives and just foggy logic. That’s all gone now from the Last Mayor. But the Last Mayor edits took place after I wrote Christopher Wren 1. Oh my. Now, with the narrator reading the book and presenting it to me in …
Wren audiobook, LIA, Wren 4 – 2020 Writing Week 2
This week was my second at a new job, so it’s been tricky to find the time for writing – I got motion sickness from trying to write on the bus, and ended up nauseous for three days. Ugh, never again. To boot, the campus I’m at is right next to an airport (like two hundred yards from the runway across water) so every time a plane goes up or comes down, the air fills with the pollutant backwash of burnt jet fuel. Double ugh. But smile 🙂 I’m much better now, and the weekend is here! Wren 1 audiobook …
Polishing zombies, Wren edits for audio – 2020 Writing Week 1
I finished major edits of the Last Mayor series right on target at the end of 2019, but there were a few little bits to rework in book 1 in the first week of the new year. We had a holiday! Su and I went to Stratford on Avon for 2 nights, stayed in a great hotel with good spa facilities. Our days we spent being inspired by the Bard, our afternoons in the spa (sauna for me), our evenings editing and reading. Wonderful. A mini writing retreat. I chopped The Last a little, then put it up. Now I …
2019 Writing Update & 2020 Plans
2019 has been the biggest year of my writing career to date, with a lot of learning, a lot of rewriting, some new launches and no small measure of success. Primarily three projects defined the year: 1. Mr. Ruin rewrite, rebrand, relaunch I had pretty high hopes for the rebrand of Mr. Ruin as Soul Jacker. I put a lot of time, money and effort into getting various edits, rewriting the books, getting new covers, attaining high-profile blurbs and setting up a lot of promotion in early 2019, only to find that the readers just weren’t there. It was a …