Updates - Am I Bald?

There's nothing quite like having a laptop go belly-up for causing sheer panic. It didn't die, exactly, the Windows Installer file was deemed corrupted needing a Recovery return to factory settings. Cue a mad session of archiving to an almost full free-standing hard drive.

Recovery itself was fairly painless, as was reinstalling the files. It was the sheer hassle of re-installing the software that caught me unawares. I'd forgotten they, too, would all return to factory settings, needing passwords and all sorts of odd input. The amount of hair-tugging... it's a wonder I'm not bald.

However, as the saying goes 'these things, too, shall pass', and they did. Or, to be more precise, they are. I still have to reload Dragon Naturally Speaking, and for the life of me aren't sure where my 'profile' will be saved, so I may yet have to reteach it all my idiosyncrasies. And we were getting on so well.

Despite the set-back,  there is news:

Dead Men's Fingers is now live at Smashwords for those wanting ePub or other formats, and has already been placed on a reader's Favourites list. There is still a bit of tidying to be done with the admin for this alter ego of mine, like figuring how to run two Google usernames from the same account, but I'm getting there.

The Bull At The Gate, the second in the trilogy of contemporary paranormal thrillers which started with Torc of Moonlight, is finally rising through the gears after far too long a suspension. It feels good to be home.

Tyler Brentmore Rides Again!

Another book cover, another ebook - this time a Western.  

Dead Men's Fingers was written some years ago due to my accepting a dare to write one. Much to my surprise it was taken by a UK publisher, but that publisher didn't want the author name Linda Acaster emblazoned across the cover, so Tyler Brentmore was welcomed to share my desk.

The novella - it's 35,000 words - is still around in normal and large print, so when the rights were reverted I sluiced the dust from my slicker and reacquainted myself with Tyler Brentmore. My androgynous counterpart has a website of his own http://www.tylerbrentmore.com, and its header carries one of my photographs, taken on location as our press officer might say. Well, if I can imagine a writing alter ego I can imagine a press officer.

I'll preserve the site for the Westerns. Yes, there may well be more, but don't hold your breath. I have a queue of ongoing projects to complete, so ideas resurrected from mere notes in a file will have to wait their turn. In the meantime I'll be adding interesting facts about the Old West - well, interesting to me, because that's what fires a writer's imagination.

At the moment Dead Men's Fingers is only available for the Kindle, but other formats will join it, just as soon as I figure how to manage multiple author-names in the software. Life is never dull, huh? God bless technology.

Currently available on all Amazon Kindle store sites including:
Amazon USA $2.99
Amazon UK   £1.95

If you have time, mosey across to read an excerpt.

Writers never stop learning

At least they shouldn’t. The industry is moving so fast that it’s difficult to keep abreast of all we need to, but that doesn’t mean we should disappear into our comfort zones and plug our ears. More than any other time in the last century we have to be all things to all people – writer, editor, distributor, promoter – it’s almost as if we’ve returned to a more technologically advanced 19^th century when the likes of Dickens and Twain had to take their own works by the scruff of the neck and propel them into the hands of an audience.

Over the last ten days I’ve taken two online seminars. They didn’t deliver information I hadn’t already heard, but they’ve not been a waste of my time. I wasn’t looking for something innovative; I was looking for an angle I could transfer to my own situation.

I’m currently revising a Western for upload as an ebook. One look at the array of covers round this post should make most readers blink. Er… another genre?

According to most received wisdom this is spreading myself dangerously thin. Writers should focus, on one genre, on one aspect of that genre… and I agree – to a point. It’s what I tried to do when I first started. But where did that leave me when editors changed, when lists contracted? Even having an agent didn’t help. I have writer friends who have needed to change their author names twice or three times just to keep a foot in the print industry, and those are the ones I know of. It’s not something writers tend to boast about, often seeing it as a failing on their part. I’ve come to see it as anything but.

The Western will come out under a pseudonym, but only because that way it’ll link to the print versions. The cover, though, will be on this blog, despite it standing chalk to cheese beside my other fiction.

At the top of this blog I state that I’m not a pigeon. Maybe I was never meant to be. Perhaps few of us are. Perhaps it’s merely a mantra we’ve been led to believe is the truth.

Talking the Writing

Seaside Radio, local to Holderness where I live, were good enough to offer a joint interview with myself and Crime writer Penny Grubb. Much to our surprise the interview was video, not audio. Our interviewer, Paula Coomber, was after a loose chat with plenty of frivolity. I'm not sure this was quite what she bargained for, but all three of us enjoyed our afternoon, and it sure beats being shut in a room quietly tapping at a keyboard.

Parts 1 and 2 are already up on YouTube. Pour yourself a cuppa, grab a biscuit - both are just below shot - and come join us.

Interview Part 1
Interview Part 2

I can see the potential here for video book chats, and for audio podcasting, especially with Reading A Writer's Mind... Time for some research, I think.