Prologue of City Whitelight

          I just posted this prologue on the Meet Our Authors forum, so I thought I'd just put it here as well. 

Prologue

           When the destroyers had passed on and the dust settled, the few who remained began to build a maze of narrow alleyways encircled by a wide moat. Within the waters of this Outer Ring, a town grew up which could be defended - defended street by street. They called it the Medina.

Later, after many years had passed, a terrible plague visited the Medina, sparing those who fled across the Outer Ring, mostly people of property and capital - the rich. And just as the Medina was built for defence, so at that time it was easy to surround. While the plague raged, the rich severed the Medina from the beginnings of their New Town until almost all who remained in that warren were dead. Even when the plague disappeared, the people of the New Town remained separate. It suited them to stay that way.

Time passed. And outside the slowly shrinking waters of the Outer Ring, in what became known as the Borders, factories were built. Those from the Medina who could find work, worked there and at night returned to the place where the population multiplied despite the most abominable human conditions, bred and spilled out into the marsh where once the waters of the Outer Ring had been. Soon enough, some from the Medina began to live in towering tenement slums built beside the factories.

But the system which bound together the various parts of the city began to break down and that area at the heart of the place, which became known in its entirety as Centrum, was gradually encircled with wire and a band of derelict waste prowled by wild, ferocious dogs. Except for the Grand Bazaar at the edge of the Borders, where things were bought and sold each day, the inner city was completely isolated.

Yet for many years still men were allowed to pass through the Grand Bazaar and work by day in the New Town. Then one morning, without warning, an edict was posted banning all movement from the heart of the city. Rumours of a new plague, or so it was thought, caused Centrum to be sealed off completely. But nothing was said, no reason given.  

             For almost two weeks now a hush of expectancy hung over the centre of the city, but all that was ever heard from the direction of the New Town were dogs baying at the moon. Yet on this night a storm brewed and the dogs were silenced. ... 

Cold Killing!

PROLOGUE

The detective was wearing a dark suit under an overcoat more expensive than you might expect, and he was flanked on either side by two other men of slightly smaller stature. None of the three men seemed seriously intent on their drinks and sat there quietly, and gave the impression of waiting for someone, or something. All of them, the detective and the two others, were too well dressed to be in such a bar. Incongruous clientele.

The walls of the Horse’s Head hadn’t been repainted in over forty years. The three men, the only patrons apart from the man asleep with his head on a formica tabletop, were sitting more or less facing the double doors. The bar was to the left of where the three conscious customers were sitting, and the bar man stopped rubbing on the beer glass he’d been rubbing on for quite some time, looked up at the clock again, then slipped through to the back.

The double doors burst open right about then and a traffic warden came running into the bar then stopped. He wore a false beard, which seemed on the point of falling off, and his face underneath was reddened, his eyes like saucers on stocks, the pupils hugely dilated. The massive dose of multifarious stimulants on top of the whisky had the sweat bursting, pounding out of him. Pulling a gun from inside his tunic, he started quickly towards the table where the three men sat, firing as he went.

Bullets went into the throat and head of the men on either side of the detective, and he was shot in the shoulder, but then the gun jammed and the man dropped it. He pulled a sharpened chisel with a custom made hand guard from inside his tunic and he grabbed the detective by the hair, knocking over the table as he dragged him onto the floor, stabbing him on the head and neck as he went.

The detective came to rest on his back, the head held down by the hair as he was stabbed in the throat, then many times in his face, then several times through both eyes. He was dead by the time his forehead was being stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and the stabbing didn’t seem to be ever going to end as a furious madness gleamed out of the face of the man in the traffic warden uniform, his lips pulled back, the gnashing teeth bared.

The traffic warden didn’t stop stabbing till the skull over the deceased eyes collapsed into his brain. There was blood all over the traffic warden, the corpse and the floor by the time the murderer finally stopped stabbing and scooped out a handful of the detective’s brains. He stood up and threw the brains, still as if in a mad fury, at the wall. Then he stretched out his arms, one hand still holding the chisel and shouted in exultation.

Traffic Wardens, ya bass! Traffic Wardens, ya bass! Traffic Wardens, ya bass!

Two other traffic wardens came running through the door then, one with a red blanket which he threw over the killer’s shoulders. The other picked up the gun and the beard and all three traffic wardens rushed out.

The drunken man asleep with his head on the formica topped table claimed later that he never heard a thing and neither he did.

   -----------------

I've decided to write another book after all. At first it was going to be called The Revenge of the Traffic Wardens, but it'll probably end up called Cold Killing. This will be the second book in the series which started with Remote Control. I'm going to write at least one more book with Jimmy McGovern as the main protagonist. I've been working on the ideas for this book for quite some time now and all I have to do now is write it.

I going to write it using very short chapters since I like the look of that and short chapters make for easy reading.

I've sold about three books on Kindle during March so far. But this is at the new price of about $3 and I'll make the same from selling three books at that price as I would selling eighteen books at the old price. I'd rather have more readers than more money, but I don't think this current price if off-putting. The problem is, as usual, that the ebooks are more or less invisible, and they are attracting reviews very slowly. But I'd rather spend time writing than going around the net telling folk how good my books are.

A couple of folk with Kindles have told me that they've had trouble finding them, but since I don't own a Kindle, I can't think why that should be. If you put John McKenzie into the Amazon books search engine, the books come up, at least on my computer.

Promoting Ebooks on Kindle again!

14th March, 2012 - 2:50 p.m.

          I managed not to look at the reports section of my Kindle account for nearly two weeks. What restraint! All this month so far I have kept away from the Meet Our Author forums and I've done bugger all to promote the books. Around the 20th of February I put all the books up from 77p to $3:50 since I can't believe it's that sales are that price sensitive.

          As it turns out, it looks like I sold 12 books in February before the 20th, when I upped the price, and since then, according to the month to date unit sales (these are in the Reports section) I've sold one book in March. Though it has to be said that one book at the new price is worth six books sold at the old price to me in royalties, this is still a bit disappointing.

          However, if I look at the Prior Six Weeks Royalties reports, it shows that I've sold about twenty two books since the royalties moved up from 35% to 70% (i.e. from the 20th of February and the price change), but in this section these sales are not showing up as royalties. Well, one of them is. They might be somehow connected to the free book promotions but I don't see how. The books go into the Prior Six Weeks Royalties section seems to receive data week by week and some of these books are registered as being sold in March, but aren't showing up in the Month to Date sales.

           So I'm pretty sure I've sold only one book in March since that looks like being the only one I'll be paid for. But there is something odd about the reports.

            I noticed when I was looking at my Kindle account that I had omitted somehow to put in the IBAN and BIC numbers for my bank account. Probably made a mistake when I was trying to save it. Anyway, this might account for the fact that I've received no money from the States. If I've made £23 or so in Blighty, I must have made ten dollars in the States by now. I guess I'll see at the end of the month.

            I think I saw somewhere that folk got alerts for price drops, so I've dropped all my prices today from $3:50 to $3:25.

             I suppose all this Kindle stuff has given me an interest. But I will try to avert my attention once more from the Reports section, and stop footering with that kind of thing every time I log on. Well, I'll try.

           
     

First Remote Control Review!

Well, here it is!!

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Uppers and downers, 7 Mar 2012

By 

Stuart Ayris (Tollesbury, Essex, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Remote Control (Kindle Edition)

Remote Control is a smartly written, well paced novel that follows a few days in the life of Jimmy McGovern, an ex-army drug addled drug dealer who has just suffered a relationship breakdown. The fact that his ex-girlfriend has been arrested as part of an anarchist plot to assassinate the Prime Minister, well that just adds greater to confusion to his already confused state of mind. As the novel moves swiftly on Jimmy becomes ever deeply involved in all sorts of machinations that lead inexorably to violence.

As a novel, Remote Control has a brilliantly realised main protagonist in Jimmy. His chaos, his daily attempts to get his life in order and his struggles to attain some form of equlibrium in his entirely messed up world are very well written; reflections on life, pragmatism and humour abound amidst the madness. I would go as far as to say that some of the dialogue reminded me of the circular madness of Catch-22 which is praise indeed!

The first half of the novel is cracking although I was left a little confused by the final few pages. Perhaps I had missed something on the way but I struggled to make full sense of the ending.

Overall I would recommend this book highly in order that you can spend a few days in the mad head of Jimmy McGovern. Well worth a read!

H