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Cover Reveal for the New Austerley & Kirkgordon Adventure

Generally the third one is the hardest to do in a sequence. Bowlers taking on the batsmen for that elusive hat-trick realise there are many more 2 wickets in a row hauls than hat-tricks. There are plenty more strikers who score twice in a game than three times. Only in golf is there more three putts than two putts.

However I think my artist Jake (Jake’s website) has managed to pull this one off. He has taken the elements of the previous covers (the shadows of our heroes, the 60s B-movie titles and the centre piece of the main enemy) and changed the colours away from the previous dark tones. Yet there still remain the promise of threat and evil.

The story this time is taking us to an unknown land and central to the story is a large temple that is seen on the cover along with our old friend Dagon. Entitled Dagon’s revenge, I feel I’m not letting any of the story slip away too freely by stating this.

If you haven’t read any of the story so far you can get a starter for free by clicking on either of the books below and joining my newsletter for further updates. You’ll receive an eBook in return and be kept up to date with new books and many offers.

Look out for the new book Dagon’s Revenge prior to Christmas!

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Why I find it hard to be a woman

writing as the opposite gender

Have you ever wondered what your better is thinking or why? Maybe you just got to know someone you find attractive and you’re wondering what makes them tick. Understanding and writing as the opposite gender (and sometimes our own) is no mean feat. We are only armoured with our own experience. Usually some stereotypes do not do justice to the other half of the species.

Writing as the opposite gender

As a writer, I often find my female characters hard to drop into the mind-set of. In today’s PC world, there is always the temptation to hold back on certain observations about a character lest these be offensive or damaging to the self-esteem of a generation. We feel that we must portray characters as empowered and uplifting. Few interesting stories consist only of uplifted, empowered men or women.

I find it best to approach these difficult lines by simply writing how I see a character initially. Then the joy of trusted beta readers comes in, as they pick away at your misconceptions. Sometimes it’s just mere misunderstanding but occasionally our ignorance will show through. But surely it’s better to put your thoughts out there and receive correction than to harbour a misconception through this life.

Furthermore some women are not self-reliant, some men are not gentlemen and some children are wicked. For every desirable character in this world we have many more broken and battered ones, leaving them predisposed to horrible traits. One must guard against how our gender sees itself. It is better for a writer to observe and then commit to paper than try to assimilate perfect traits into what are after all, imperfect beings.

My main female character so far has been Cally, an 800 year old vamp. Guess I gave myself extra challenges there to portray a character I certainly have no personal experience of. She appears in the Austerley and Kirkgordon series, which in itself contains situations I’ve never been in. You can let me know how I did by leaving a comment.

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Grass cutting – the easy way!

grass cutting
You know when you have held off buying something because of the cost. Then when you do, you realise it’s so much more efficient than the old thing. Ultimately you realise you’ve been a bit of muppet not splashing the cash. Well, I learnt a valuable lesson in grass cutting this week.

How grass cutting suddenly got easier

This week I’ve been cutting the grass (otherwise known as the jungle!) with my new mower and it has sliced the time it’s been taking to hackdown the weeds. I had perservered for a couple of years with our old one. But this week I completed the front lawn without injury, an overexcuberance of swearing, and without kicking the living daylights out of the mower.
Writing is similar. Getting a decent ebook creator has saved time and money and has freed me up to produce more writing quicker. Which is all the better for everyone. It’s also allowed me time to get stuck into a first draft I have waiting, the first book in a new series, “Dark Wen”. It’s about a detective who finds his city under a dark paranormal attack and has to leap into action against creatures and spirits he has never imagined. All being well, it’ll be available in August!
Anyway, strimmer time now. No point in perfect lawns with imperfect edges…. or maybe a coffee instead (edges can’t be that important).
If you like paranormal adventures, then you will like Austerley and Kirkgordon. Their battle against evil forces begins with “Crescendo”. Or if you want a taster of it you can download Footsteps, the first Austerley and Kirkgordon Origin Story, free.
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What is it With Covers?

When you go hunting for a book, do you judge a book by its cover? And if so, in what way. I’m a self-publisher and so covers are important to me as they are the first line of attack in amongst a mass of books of reaching my audience. But I have a dilemma. Is the cover I like, the cover I want and which I think best suits my book, the cover that will draw the audience?

In short, no!

If there is a cover that is unusual, wacky or just downright weird, I’ll probably pick a book up and read the synopsis. The natural assumption in my mind is that everyone else will do the same. The trouble is that I always assume I am normal. Well in taste, though my wife happily points out quite often(too often!) that I am not normal in most things. The grapefruit yoghurt with mushrooms incident is a common example she quotes. Alas some people do not like adventure! (By the way my son keeps pointing at the cover above and saying “Mum-ma”. He has many people fooled.)

And so it would seem with books. Readers seem to want a book to have a cover that is similar to something they liked or know is already popular. Thrillers these days tend to have someone in shadow on the front, especially thrillers about gunmen or agents. Others go for the title in large lettering and some sort of fast motion behind it. And then there’s romance which has varying levels of couples in arms, fully dressed but big loving smiles for the gentle romance and naked but very carefully positioned bodies for the erotic tales.

I get what is going on but in honesty I feel very sad about it. Not that it will stop me following suit. To not do so as a newbie author would be story suicide. So expect my upcoming novels to reflect the genre. It’s all marketing these days alas.

I once bought a book by Clive James based on the cover called “Cultural Amnesia”. Simple but intriguing, I sought out what was inside. It remains to this day one of my favourite books. And yet I doubt I would have ever have read it if someone had simply said to me it was a collection of short essays about people of our time. I owe a debt to that artist.

And isn’t this a life lesson. Sometimes we need to go with the flow for good and solid reasons. But you know what, we don’t have to like it.

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Pressure

pressure

One of the things common to us all is that at some point in our life we will have been under pressure. Be it a moment that jumped up in front of us, say a bank robbery or seeing someone about to be hit by a car. Or whether it’s the slow build up of a situation which requires us to endure some sort of pain to see it through. Whatever it is, we all experience pressure.

How do you convey pressure in fiction?

When writing, especially action and adventure, or dark fantasy, there are situations where the characters are in wild moments I have never faced. One wonders how they would react. Personally, I have never looked a demon from the deep in the eye, swung from a hangman’s noose or faced strange creatures intent on taking my head off. The only way I know to generate these feelings is to drift into the characters shoes, drawing on my own reactions to horrors I have had in my own life. Not that my life has been a rollercoaster of disaster, it’s been bloomin’ good to be honest. But we all have the well of dark moments to draw from.

Sometimes people say my books would make a great movie, or that they could see it as a TV drama. I think I know why. When I write, I write describing the movie in my head. The creatures move for me, I hear the drop in the noose, I look into those demon eyes. And I then feel what comes. I don’t see words, I see pictures and then the job is to put that picture into words. The further distillation by the reader reversing the process hopefully brings the movie back to life.

Character development, making the unreal seem real

It begs the question, are my characters real to me? Only in my head, only in the movie. And that’s a good thing. I wouldn’t want a mad cap professor summoning up who knows what, an emotional father pulled from his family by every woman that walks past, or an ice cold winged femme fatale. Life is weird enough. When you put these people under pressure the real emotions come out. Hopefully then the real life heroic decisions we make or fail to make surface.

If you haven’t got it already, then you can purchase the first Austerley & Kirkgordon novel “Crescendo!”. The follow up “The Darkness at Dillingham” has just been released.

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Sarcastic Innocence – Here’s Nefol!

One of the joys about writing fantasy, be it dark, urban or whatever, is that you can play around with the “norms” of society in one facet of a person while keeping their everyday traits. In my new novel, “The Darkness at Dillingham”, I introduce a new character Nefol. She’s the daughter of a priest, only twelve, and a sarcastic bane to Kirkgordon. But she’s also a stronger fighter than Kirkgordon and better versed in the weirdness of the A&K world than he’ll ever be.

This allows for the normal dynamic of senior and junior to be challenged and often overturned. And in that I believe lies an important point to the real world. Too often we quieten down those around us with less life experience or who are weaker in body or mind. And yet we get the most honest assessment from these people, too honest for us more often than not.

When taking Kirkgordon and pairing him with Austerley, the insane but highly driven seeker of the weird, Kirkgordon has a perfect forum to unload all he sees as wrong with getting your hands dirty in the occult world. But lest our hero becomes too high and mighty, here comes Nefol to show up his ineptitude and blast his fondness for all the wrong women! Ultimately the book highlights how paths to our redemption become blocked or at least sullied by others and that a little humility can help get us on the real path, the one so rarely seen from the mountian top!

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Coming soon from Carpetless Publishing “The Darkness at Dillingham” the second Austerley & Kirkgordon adventure. Not read the wild ride that is “Crescendo!”, the first A&K adventure then you can pick it up here.

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Writing Update and a Sneak Peak at a new cover!

So last time I was explaining that Book 2 of Austerley and Kirkgordon’s adventures, “The Darkness at Dillingham” was with the editor for a final pass and should be available pretty soon. But what else am I doing?

I have a mermaid fantasy based around a Scottish Island at second draft stage. The concept is that mermaids arrive on the shores of the island causing many different reactions ranging from hate to joy, wonder to disgust. A media circus ensues and the normal island life is upset as greed and then rumour cause many to fear the creatures. Meanwhile, a young islander finds and then protects one of the mermaids causing some comedy moments as he involves a woman of his dreams. All in all it’s a fun romp with some serious tones.

I have also embarked on another urban fantasy series but this time with a female protagonist. Scarlett is a bored call centre clerk who gets involved with a race to explain the signifigance of a prized glass which seems to be wanted by evil hands. It’s early days but it is fun to have to see everything from the other sex’s perspective.

Also in the mix is an allegorical piece set in a fantasy land, a world war one ghost story and the tale of a Singaporean bin inspector. Yes, I know, how rock and roll!

But back to Austerley and Kirkgordon. Book 3, with a working title of “The Nether Lands” is first draft complete. And when I say working title, I do mean working title as so far none have made it onto the final cover. But also at first draft stage and rapidly advancing is a novella piece to accompany Book 2 and which will be available in the hardback edition of “The Darkness at Dillingham”. It’s entitled “Cally”, and guess what, it’s about Calandra. Providing a more detailed back story to the characters is fun and certainly “Footsteps” helped bring Austerley and Kirkgordon’s relationship in “Crescendo!” to life for me.

And as promised, here is a cover reveal and it’s for “Cally”. Personally I think this is one of the best covers my artist has compiled for me. Jake has really grabbed Cally’s persona for me and the essence of the story in one picture. So I’ll leave you with the cover and look forward to talking more next time!

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If you haven’t got into the joy and wonder that is the Austerley and Kirkgordon series then you can find the first book “Crescendo!” here in all formats. The “Cally” cover was designed by Jake Clarke and you can see more of his work here.

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That Difficult Second Book!

Well, it’s been a while but here I am back on the old blog. Little did I know after getting Crescendo!, the first Austerley and Kirkgordon adventure, out there that the second would take so long. The crazy thing is that most of the difficulty has had nothing to do with writing or editing or graphics production. Instead it has had all to do with personal difficulties that have happened to the team involved in putting the books together.

It has been a trying time and one which has been frustrating but I have kept on writing through it all and now have a number of projects at the “first draft complete” stage and some even further along. But the even better news is that the second Austerley & Kirkgordon adventure is with my editor for a final pass. The artwork is complete as it can be before final production and it should be all systems go for launch in about a month.

This time Austerley and Kirkgordon are sent to the English seaside town of Dillingham for Austerley to recuperate before an important operation. But it isn’t long before the boys are getting into trouble with the locals. Composite monsters, a witch and more special agents, all wrapped up amongst ghostly pirates, give our boys the run around and drive one of the pair to a very dark place. If you thought they had it tough in the first book, just wait until Dillingham gets a hold of them!

And just to whet your appetite further, here’s a wee pic of the ebook cover. The Darkness at Dillingham, coming soon!

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If you missed “Crescendo!”, the first Austerley & Kirkgordon adventure then you can grab it here.

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Writing Life moves on

Well I haven’t been attacking the blog due to my previous successes.After completing the Kickstarter, I have been engaged in looking at proofs, setting up publishing accounts, checking t-shirts, pondering over prints and most recently sending out the eBooks to my backers. Next on the agenda is to get the book up and live in its various formats on the myriad of sales sites available.

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One lesson I have learned over the past week is that this is an important perod to just take a breath and when proofs arrive, sit back and check. Take a pause. Don’t ram-stam at them. Instead try and allow yourself some time to consider what’s in front of you. Even when working with the best artists, formatters and editors, errors occur and this is a chance to nail them before you commit to any significant amount of stock.

I’m also learning, slowly albeit, that the real effort and drive to get a book out there comes after the writing. As much as the editor will work you hard, it is nothing to managing everything and pulling all the pieces together to produce a book in the right format at the right time.

But the journey has been a fruitful one. I have a book winging its way through the UK postal system which I will be handing out to my Kickstarter backers. Hopefully it will also be on local bookshops shelves. I still have many things to complete from my Kickstarter with regards to marketing and these will occupy my Christmas run in. But already I’m having to think about the next one. Actually next three in fact – two more in this series and another in a lighter fantasy style about mermaids arriving at a Scottish Island. I actually have two books beyond second draft, one at first draft and a short story in the writing as well as another novel. The plates are a-spinning but it’s a lot of fun!

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G R Jordan author, poet, and top Dad apparently!