Zanzibar’s Rings on target for February 22nd

zanzibar's rings

Zanzibar’s Rings is due to for release in one month’s time.

It’s finally ready! Take a look inside the paperback by clicking the diagonal arrows (a couple of chapters).

Ebook or Paperback?

You can buy the ebook here:

Amazon ~~~ Apple iBooks ~~~ B&N(Nook) ~~~ Kobo ~~~ Scribd ~~~ Smashwords

And order the paperback from your favourite retailer using the ISBN 9798210005601

It should be available through the Ingram distribution network at most retailers (including Book Depository) within a couple of weeks.

Has it been easy to produce?

No. It seemed so, but the more I looked at the final draft, the more problems I found with it. So I got those sorted out to my editor’s and my own staisfaction, and turned to creating the paperback.

That always introduces errors, especially with the Viridian series where several aliens speak in italics. For some reason the transfer from wordprocessing file to the paperback’s system leaves whole tracts of italics after a correct one. And when I thought I’d cleaned the file up, and got the first proof back, I found a good number of places where I’d missed a non-italic inset between dialogues. Like:

  • Are you ready to go, Baby? He listened to the sounds of the engine. Good, we’ll go.

I’ve made that up to demonstrate. But finding those interim pieces was easy when reading a book, and almost impossible when reading the screen.

And worse – more places where the indent for the paragraph was missing. One where it was there, but in the middle of a paragraph.

The trouble was, the more times I read through the script, the more things I found in the writing I wanted to tweak. These were mainly because I’ve been working on giving you the character’s point of view more meaningfully. That can always be improved. And as I could, I did, till I cried ‘No More!’

And it was done.

Again.

Join me for the launch party – on tour from 15th February to 15th March, or on my blog and the Viridian Facebook page on 22nd February.

Exciting times

This is getting very exciting.

Photo on 22-01-2016 at 13.33 #2Here is the copy of the paperback  from Blurb (printed in the UK, so I got it in 3 days).  Rebecca is kindly proofing the copy of the Createspace one (printed in the US) which only took 5 days to reach her.  I would have to wait at least six weeks for it.

Hopefully the insides will be fine, then I can release them in time for the 16th, which is release day for the ebooks.

Even more exciting: I can’t stop writing book 2 in the series, and after I spotted something when I was browsing around another thing I wanted as the theme, it produced a title.  So at the moment, book 2 is provisionally called Autumn Harbour.  It’s quite a tortuous path to get to it, and it helps if you speak Japanese, and that’s all I’ll say.  Except perhaps that my flash fiction last summer the Alien Among Us immediately became a key part of this story in my head.  It’s nearly got to the stage of putting that on paper.  And then the fun really begins!

Viridian System Sampler releases 28th September

The eight short stories that form a little teaser for you, in advance of the first book in the Viridian System series, is now online and available to pre-order at Kobo, iTunes and B&N.

You can also sample it (sample the sampler!) at Smashwords, but I’ve misunderstood the system and it isn’t available for pre-order there, so apologies to my newsletter subscribers.  Your coupon will be extended to 10th October to let you get it there if you prefer.