It would appear that what I said at the end of yesterday’s post has done some good.
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…but well worth the wait. Here is what the Flemish author of the award winning crime novel Baudelair’s Revenge – Bob Van Laerhoven, had to say about my extremely short historical novella Autumn 1066.
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As a Fleming, I knew that my knowledge of Britain’s entry into the Middle Ages was sketchy before I started reading Jack Eason’s Autumn 1066, but, after having read his novella, I must admit that it was also based on clichés and vague concepts. Autumn 1066 remedied this thoroughly. Eason has the gift of condensing and presenting historical facts in such a way that, although manifold and thoroughly researched, they hinder in no way the suspense of his war-story. Eason paints a clear portrait of the growing tensions between various factions competing for the throne, and the leaders of various armies, but also of the common soldiers, ordinary men who were forced to fight the wars of the nobility. For his vivid, and shocking, description of the battlefields, Eason focuses on two such ordinary warriors, Aldred and Cynric. When he describes the man-to-man fights and the deadly swarms of arrows, the reader can actually feel the fear and the agony of the warriors. In spite of the extensive historical background, Eason’s cast of characters, high and low, doesn’t degrade into stereotypes. They remain people like you and me, tackling life as best as they can when they are poor, and victims of greed and the overwhelming desire for power when they are rich. Writing historical fiction is all about keeping equilibrium between a passionate story and historical facts. Jack Eason has done that remarkably well.
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Hopefully Bob’s review will appear soon on all Amazon sites. So if he and Sally Cronin can deliver, why can’t everyone else who promised to write a review!
By the way, I uploaded the Kindle version yesterday at the KDP base price of US$2.99. Depending which Amazon outlet you use, determines the price you will pay. But if your quick off the mark, you will be able to get yourselves a free copy tomorrow (Friday 30th June 2017) and (Saturday 1st July 2017).
😉
I do believe Michael is feeling a touch nostalgic. 😉
I’ve been asked how my handwritten novel project was going…
Well, not that well until now!
The fact is, people get used to specific ways of working, I think. I decided to try writing a novel by hand because I felt it would allow me more freedom to work in different places, would give me more time to concentrate on a good, working first draft, and would force me to rewrite into a second draft more efficiently. I do still believe that by handwriting the draft I will end up with a cleaner manuscript in almost the same time as it would take to write on a keyboard.
My lovely Visconti Homo Sapiens: designed just for me!
However, although I did start writing by hand last year, I had to give up. I was delayed for a number of reasons. First and foremost, my great friend, Andy Setchell, had a…
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…for all the wooly-headed dreamers out there who fervently believe that giving away dozens of copies of any book they’ve written is the way to attract readers. Think again idiots! All you are doing is depriving yourselves of the hard earned pittance you as published authors are entitled to, known as royalty payments!!
Over a two day period (last Thursday and Friday) I deliberately offered my archaeological adventure for free. As a result eighty-seven tightwads/skinflints/cheapskates (take your pick) now have a copy, thanks to my generosity of spirit.
Deliberately giving away the product of a hell of a lot of hard work on your part is never a good idea.
About the only good thing I can say about the exercise is that the book’s ranking briefly improved over the two days. Back in 2012/13, thanks to selling (not giving away) slightly over 250,000 copies, it ranked in the top ten books in Amazon’s sales ranking system. No more – #220 in Kindle Store as of 0700am today. That won’t last. By tonight it will have slipped back well past 200,000…
How many of the eighty-seven free copies will be read? At best one or two. How many reviews will the giveaway result in? None. Personally I’d much rather have the one hundred and fifty seven dollars in royalty payments to help supplement my only income (my State Pension), which I won’t get…
Bah humbug
😦
The following short extract from one of the thirty tales of the anthology, describes the real enemy of every living thing in Goblindom…
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Crellen the black wizard stood up, cleared his throat and addressed the assembly. “Aeons ago in the time before, after we had banished the humans, we placed a wall of magic around our part of the world to protect ourselves from everything beyond our borders. If these humans find a way through, we must destroy them where they stand by any and all means at our disposal. Magic still rules here, not metal! We cannot allow these accursed humans to invade. While we fight amongst ourselves, our squabbles are as nothing compared to the evil these creatures present to all living things in Goblindom. How many of them exist is anyone’s guess? There may be thousands of them. I have heard of their ways from other wizards further to the south, as you have too I think Morweth.”
Morweth and Brilith both nodded their heads in agreement. Crellen continued, “whenever humans encounter anyone passing for witch or a wizard in their land, they burn or drown them. In the part of the world humans dwell in, there is no room for magic of any kind, no matter that their ills are still cured by magic’s practioners in the form of healers. They plunder, slash and burn forests, laying waste to every living thing. They kill for food, or for pleasure. They make war on their own kind for land. They share nothing with all the other kinds who live where they dwell. They either kill or enslave all they conquer. Humans are truly evil. They must be driven from here. Then once we have rid ourselves of them, we must reinforce our wall of magic to hide our land forever. In time we may even need to travel to their homeland to annihilate them all.”
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Crellen’s description of our species pretty well sums us up, wouldn’t you say?
More later,
😉
Unfortunately both the social media and our often politically biased news broadcasters and newspaper industry have the tendency to soon forget tragedies like the deaths a few days ago, of seventy-nine innocent immigrants forced to live in a substandard council tower block, ironically located in Kensington, one of the richest boroughs in London. Given that there are four thousand of these tower blocks here in the UK, every man woman and child living in them has the right to be safe.
To date, no one in authority (neither Kensington Borough Council nor the Government) has taken charge of the situation, or admitted culpability. Nor has the borough’s sleeping partner responsible for the safety of the tower block been named and shamed, despite the vast crowd of angry people demanding justice for the victims, who marched on the Council offices!
Instead its the people living in the neighbourhood surrounding what remains of the tower block who are doing what they can to look after the survivors.
Grenfell tower isn’t the first accommodation block to be covered in cheap flammable cladding, resulting in totally unnecessary death and destruction. Read all about Lakanal House.
The rumblings of discontent emanating from the neighbourhood are gathering momentum on a daily basis, largely fed by moral outrage. Meanwhile our Prime Minister who is known as Maybot in Europe because of her callous attitude towards ordinary people, does little except to briefly pay lip service to the tragedy. It appears that the totally preventable deaths of total innocents, forced to live in a multi-story deathtrap is a low priority for both May and her government’s agenda…
Bah humbug!!!
😦
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