New Release: The Eurasian

A few days ago, I released my novel, The Eurasian, which I have been working on for over two years. It's my fifth full length one, and I suppose it's too early to judge if it's my best. It took the longest to write, because some parts were difficult. Some of the settings were rather daunting, so I had to take long breaks from it to let it settle, and come up with more inspiration and do research. I hope I've done a good job.

Right now, it's a free download at Smashwords.com, and $0.99 at Amazon Kindle (they don't allow me to make it free there).

What follows is the longer description:

The world of the late 21st century is divided between Greater China, the Western Block, the Islamic Block and the Southern Free States of Africa and South America. The Western Block is dominated by the multinational corporations, who have created a paradise for its citizens -- so everyone thinks.

Mickey O'Brien is the Eurasian, half Asian and half Irish. He has a problem with that, because all his friends are fully Asian. However, no one has actually met each other -- only their virtual projected images they show on their on-line classroom environment. He and his classmates meet each other for the first time as they go on a class trip to America. It turns out they all had things to hide.

In America, they accidentally discover what the Multinationals have been trying to hide. Their hover van is hijacked, and they are left trapped in the great American outback, a vast area of what was once U.S.A., now divided between countless republics. Some are Nazi, some are militant Christian and other redneck cowboy states, some Native American Nations, Mafia kingdoms, etc etc. The wild west is again wild. Once having stumbled in, can they ever find their way out again?

It's a story of finding out what's real, and discovering true faith as they become involved in an espionage war trying to prevent a Nazis takeover.

my novella is a run-away best seller -- ok, as a freebie, but still...

Amazon Kindle did me a favour. They decided to make my novella, The Wrong Time a free download to match a promotion of it elsewhere on the internet. I wish they'd do that with a few of my other shorter ones.
The result is that, at this point, between Amazon.com (the U.S. site) and Amazon.uk there have been over 5000 downloads of that novella, and four reviews. Besides that, you'll find two more reviews at GoodReadsj.com, and one comment on one of my posts last year by Carl Bridges. Some of the reviews are useful to me in that they point out errors that I need to correct.

Once I realised what was happening, I put up a new edition, correcting some of the mistakes from the first review I received (corrected "rout" to "route") and then made sure the adverts at the end pointed to the right place, and added a graphic for Pepe. I'd be getting more exposure than I do on my websites -- so long as people are actually reading them.

I know I read only a small fraction of the free e-books that I download.

Print editions coming soon

The last posting said my print books were available at Lulu. That's no longer so. I've decided to have all my books available for print with Create Space. Pepe will also be available in print through them as well -- more on that later.

My novels now available in Print edition

I've now had my three self published novels released in paperback at Lulu.com.

In my previous experiences with POD print editions, I've had two problems: I usually can't use the cover design of my own design, and the price tends to be expensive per copy. With Lulu.com, I've got around both problems. The covers are of my own work, both front and back, and the prices are fairly reasonable. Eetoo is US$12.60; Catrick is US$9.00; and The Zondon is US$13.83. The difference in cost reflects the size. They're all still US$1.99 at Smashwords.com and Amazon Kindle Store.

Anyway, mosey on over and have a look...

From New York Times: The deminishing stigma of being self published

Times are changing, as this article from New York Times suggests -- entitled The Rise of Self-Publishing:

In this time of Twitter feeds and self-designed Snapfish albums and personal YouTube channels, it’s hard to remember the stigma that once attached to self-publishing. But it was very real. By contrast, to have a book legitimately produced by a publishing house in the 20th century was not just to have copies of your work bound between smart-looking covers. It was also metaphysical: you had been chosen, made intelligible and harmonious by editors and finally rendered eligible, thanks to the magic that turns a manuscript into a book, for canonization and immortality. You were no longer a kid with a spiral notebook and a sonnet cycle about Sixth Avenue; you were an author, and even if you never saw a dime in royalties, no one could ever dismiss you again as an oddball.

But times have changed...