A Plea for Help and a New Anthology Alert!

My current WIP is in need of some assistance. I’ve posted a small piece on my blog, requesting input from readers and writers to stimulate my fast shrinking grey matter to produce some apposite expletives to replace those that are inevitably religiously based. Head over to my blog, here, to lend this failing brain a hand, please.

On a more positive note, I was asked some time ago to contribute a short story to a new science fiction anthology. Since it was for my brilliant publisher, Dan Grubb, of Fantastic Books Publishing, I was happy to oblige. By coincidence, Dan was also about to publish the ebook version of my scifi novella, The Methuselah Strain, as a hardback print book and we both thought the occasion called for some added value to the original. I combined both features by writing a new episode for the novella and then converted that event into a standalone short story for the new anthology.

The anthology, Synthesis, a collection of 27 science fiction stories from many different authors, has now been published by Fantastic Books Publishing. You’ll find a review of the book, together with a buying link, by clicking here.

Introductory Price for A Shackled Inheritance

For a limited time, the Wild Rose Press - www.wildrosepublishing.com - is offering the e-book version of A Shackled Inheritance at the introductory price of $3, instead of $5.99. For the price of a cup of coffee, the reader gets a few hours enjoyment, and an escape from the cares of the daily life. 

However, I trust my publisher’s marketing strategy. The company has been in business for almost ten years and won the Best Publisher award in the Preditors and Editors readers’ poll in seven of those years. In today’s market conditions, a publisher cannot rest on its laurels. Thanks to digital publishing and print on demand, a tidal wave of new books hits the market, day after day.

  

As in an old-fashioned second-hand book shop, how is a reader to distinguish between the good, the bad and the indifferent? So publishers push special offers, in the hope that readers will recognise quality and come back for more. Like it or not, discounting is here to stay. 

Being Wise With Buying Links

Linda Acaster runs occasional posts on marketing and promotion for authors. Her current post concerns ways to tame over-long buying URLs.

Are you making the most of yours? Check out her advice HERE.

A Shackled Inheritance

A Shackled Inheritance is launched today with a Saturday Spotlight feature on  www.romantichistoricalreviews.com. In the book, my heroine discovers after her father's death that she has two unknown half-sisters, free women of colour who live on the family plantation in the West Indies.

Researching the lives of  free mixed-race people 200 years ago took me down some fascinating by-ways. In 1802, the Governor of Barbados highlighted the ambiguous status of free persons of colour in a slave-owning society when he wrote: "I think unappropriated people would be a more proper denomination for them, for though not the property of other individuals they do not enjoy the shadow of any civil right." Nevertheless, an archive of wills revealed that white fathers sometimes left substantial assets to their reputed (acknowledged) children, even if they never married the mother. Money and education gradually created a settled, prosperous class of tradesmen, teachers, seamstresses or overseers. Some became planters and slave owners. By the early 1800s, as the abolitionist movement gained force in Britain, free persons of colour in the West Indies were also challenging the established order, but they focused their demands on improving their own situation.


 

A Shackled Inheritance is released on 11th March and can be pre-ordered on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01BBCBX38

Things get scary

Prepare for a shiver down your spine. Hornsea Writers have been dabbling in the occult.

East Yorkshire publisher, Fantastic Books Publishing, has been running a horror competition with a difference. Entrants are invited to submit a horror tale of exactly 666 words. Play the short trailer on THIS PAGE to listen to Dan their CEO intone his spooky competition trailer. He calls these 666 stories fantabbles.

Fantabbles? Stories of exactly 666 words? Yes, we thought, we could write those. No problem. Of course we didn’t write a single word, let alone 666. We just left it at ‘we could if we wanted to.’

Then Dan called our bluff.

‘I want some 666 stories from Hornsea Writers,’ he told us.

All of Fantastic Books’ anthologies include invited professional contributions and on this occasion one of those professionals is to be our own Linda Acaster. As members of the group we have heard and shuddered at her 666 words, but I’m afraid you will have to wait.

However, you won’t have to wait to hear two other contributions. As well as his invited professionals, Dan asked me and one of his other authors to provide contributions he could use to help launch his new sound studio.

Read by the actor, Penelope McDonald, Music at Full Moon and my own Opening Doors are already available as audio downloads and will probably be included in the final anthology although they won’t be in the pot competitively.

So whose fantabbles will win the cash prizes? No one knows. The winning entries might not even have been written yet. None of the invited contributions mentioned above are eligible. The competition doesn't close until 31 March. HERE’S THE LINK. Sharpen your quill! The winner might be you.

Don't Abrogate Your Own #Editing

Linda Acaster was recently handed a published paperback with the comment, 'You aren't going to like this.'

She didn't.

Abrogate your own editing skills at your peril. Read the full post on her site HERE.

The sometimes inescapable lure of being diverted. April Taylor

There are times when a writer, seemingly set on a certain road, gets interrupted and, in consequence, ends up going down another road completely.

This happened to me a couple of weeks ago. And the experience is proving to be a mixed blessing. I normally wouldn't open one eye for anything younger than the Elizabethan period. However, that has changed and if you want to know more, just click on the link below. I'll give you a clue in the shape of a photograph.

www.apriltaylorauthor.com/blog


The Tudor Enigma and The Georgia Pattison Mysteries

Website & Blog  FaceBook  Twitter  Amazon UK  Amazon USA

LAUNCHING TODAY - Whistles After Dark - the Introductory Georgia Pattison Mystery

Hi, April Taylor calling in! After a hiatus in my creative writing, I am delighted to announce today the launch of the introductory novella to my contemporary detective, Georgia Pattison. Georgia is an early-music soprano whose musical travels introduce her to all kinds of problems. Problems that her nosy genes impel her to explore.

In this story, Georgia finds herself recovering from an horrific experience on the last night of her European tour playing Alcina. The resultant police investigation leaves her with terrifying memories and her parents decide she should recuperate from her trauma in Whitby where they have a holiday cottage and where smuggling has been an occupation for centuries past.

Georgia almost trips over the body of Melissa, a girl she used to babysit. She is so outraged that her determination to track down the killer and bring him/her to justice knows no bounds. Little does she realise how perilous a decision she has made. Can she stay alive long enough to bring the murderer to book?

In addition, you can read Chapter One of Dearly Ransomed Soul,  the first full-length Georgia Pattison Mystery.

You can find April Taylor on:

www.apriltaylorauthor.com
https://www.facebook.com/britwriterapriltaylor/
https://twitter.com/authAprilTaylor


Whistles After Dark is available on:
Amazon for £0.99 - http://amzn.to/1ZDimIr
 Amazon USA -  http://amzn.to/1P60pNH