Readership!

          Marketing, you'd think, would increase your readership. That means the number of people who buy your books. The only marketing I've done for my ten books on Kindle has been to recommend them to folk on the discussion threads on Amazon. But I assumed this wasn't having any effect at all.

          However, I've been checking my account and I've sold about fourteen or fifteen books in the last nine days (since the start of December) and almost all of them were sold in Britain. One book has sold in France, The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf, so vive la belle France! I wondered why only a few have been sold in America, but I've just noticed that it was Amazon UK where I was leaving the messages. If you stick Amazon.com into the browser, you get a completely different page. And the one for the book I've mentioned has a Buddhist forum.

          This has changed my idea of what I was going to write in this post. I was going to say that I'm really out of this writing game at present, and I'm going to concentrate my energies on my meditations, the Great Vajrayana, and if I'd wanted a readership, I'd have started writing books about a one eyed, one legged detective with a slight heroin problem, and a dog called Spot. This is not that I didn't want to be a "success", but I was never poor enough, or had enough time to devote to writing detective books.

          I wanted to write all kinds of different books and  I have written genre fiction. Remote Control is a political thriller. Ursula Mackenzie was my agent at the time and she suggested that I write a political thriller and I managed to finish it only thirty years later! But it is in a genre.

         I have also written two books for children of between ten (actually, whenever you can read!) and fourteen, In The Land of the Demon Masters and Bugtown. And I know these are excellent books for children and young folk because I road tested them on a lot of kids when I was still a school librarian. Stand on me. Twelve year old kids love these books!

         But the books I would really like people to read before any others are The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf and TheBlissBook. Like Are You Boys Cyclists?, nobody but me could have written these books. The style is, I think, mine. But the reason why I'd like folk to read them is because amongst the travelling (the first one is about being in Nepal and India) and education, and writing, and the jokey bits, these books promote meditation. If more folk meditated, more folk would be happier than they would have been. I've been meditating for over twenty five years and that's something I do know.

         These days I've taken a break from writing so I can practise Vajrayana Buddhist meditations, and this takes all your time.

         I was going to write that I'm very grateful to Allan Guthrie for telling me all about marketing, but I really can't be bothered. I'm  not really wanting to become an indie publisher or a professional writer anymore (though I've been writing for over thirty years!) since I don't need the money, and I'm not going to stop telling folk that half my books have been rejected by almost everyone because they have, including by him in his agent capacity, but now that I realise that I got the sales by promoting myself on these discussion threads - for how else could anyone have found them? - I think I might spend a wee while every day harassing folk to buy my Buddhisty books in the America Amazon site. A Buddhist forum! Eat your heart out, you Dharma bums! Here I come!
9:42  p.m.
        This is later! So I goes to the Buddhisty forums on Amazon.com and it is wonderful! There are threads from folk who want to know about meditating, and how to start meditating, and I think I can advertise my give-away-for-bugger-all books to them, and I spend a half an hour writing this huge post about the Buddhisty books and all, and then I try to post it, and ... zippo! It says that you have to buy something first. I assume buying the one book I bought before doesn't count with these folk since I bought it through the UK site, and, anyway, it was a waste of time and effort. I would have had to spend ages and ages buying my own book off the Amazon.com site, as opposed to the Amazon.uk site, and then some other obstacle might occur.
        I think God is telling me that this is intermittent reinforcement, and don't do this. It's clinging and craving, leading to becoming and then ... grief, sorrow, lamentations ... delusions, disappointments and despair, suffering in this life.
       What we need is a young person. I've already signed away 25% to the boy who helped me set up this blog, who claims he has my signature on a napkin, and fifteen percent to the consiglieri, but if someone would like ten percent of what's left .... Dearie me! I have no problem with the quality of the wonderful writings I used to do. But that's it! It's much better to go and meditate in my hut. Realising voidness is all that matters!

Marketing

          Allan Guthrie was telling me all about how to market ebooks the other day. One of his novellas sold 35,000 copies on Kindle so he should know what he's talking about.

           I told him all I did was put comments and product links into the Amazon discussion threads, and he did not seem too impressed with that. Here's some of the advice he gave me.

            1) Don't ever write anything about ever having books rejected by anyone, or anything negative at all. It's maybe like selling cigarettes. You show pictures of happy people on horses in the great outdoors, but don't mention cancer. I've been rejected by every publisher in the world, just about, as has anyone who's tried to get stuff published over decades. But you don't tell anyone that.

            2)  Pretend that your books are new. This might be a bit difficult for me - well, I could lie - since I've put ten books up on Kindle in the past year, and no one writes books that fast. Also, I'd have to change the covers on two of the books since I've used pictures of the original covers. I thought the fact that they'd been published before would be a sign to a prospective buyer that they might have some quality, but this seems not to be so.

            3) He told me of these sites which might be useful. The Writer's Cafe at Kindleboards.com. Then there was the UK Kindle Users Forum, and Mobile Reads.

             4) He also said to get out there and interact with other kindle writers blogs and that it might be a good idea to leave reviews on Amazon of books which are like your own. Also, be alerted by Google Alerts.

              He gave me some very good input, but it would be time consuming, and I don't need the money, and I've taken a break from writing so I could concentrate on my meditations, and if I had a couple of hours a day to spend on the computer I'd rather write than market my ebooks. What I really need is some young person who likes computery things who would do this for me for ten percent off the top!

Networking

Sunday 2:30 p.m.
                           I don't like meeting folk I don't know. I certainly don't like meeting folk when I'm trying to get something off them or convince them of something. As for pitching something to a director or producer ... that was one of the reasons why I was happy to stop writing drama. One time I didn't mind all this networking stuff so much, but I can't say I ever enjoyed it.

                           Once I was personally rather friendly with a publisher here in Edinburgh, but I let the connection slip partly because I didn't think it was cool to be so friendly with a publisher. With me being a writer and whatnot, it didn't seem like a meeting of equals once his publishing business got on the up and up.

                            Anyway, the consiglieri asked me to arrange a meeting with Allan Guthrie. and we'll be seeing him on Tuesday afternoon. Fortunately, I've met Allan before. He seemed to have liked Are You Boys Cyclists? which he said he read twice back to back when he was working in Waterstone's. He's now a writer  - a very good crime writer. I've read THREE of his books which is some kind of a record for me these days. If you like crime books, check him out.- and he's been an agent for ages, but now it turns out he's also a publisher. I just googled him, as you do, and he's started something called Blasted Heath.

                            I have some memory of the consiglieri mentioning this venture, but we were well into our cups by that time. Hmm? I'm starting to get a feeling now that this is a meeting I don't want to be at.

                            The time I had a chat with Allan I told him that I was spending most of my time these days trying to emanate as a deity. This is really what I want to do. It's what deity yoga is all about, one of the meditational exercises you do while practising vajrayana Buddhism.

                             I think after getting a royalty payment of £10:88 after having my ebooks priced at 86p for a month, I should rest on my laurels!

                             Allan Guthrie seemed like a very nice guy and it'll be nice to speak to him again. But I'm not interested in talking to him about making money or anything like that. How totally uncool that would be!

                           

Sales!

         For the first time in some months I have been able to access my Kindle account. This has nothing to do with the Kindle folk who have been wonderful. But computers make me nervous and sometimes I get annoyed and if I have a problem, I'd usually rather not attend to it at all. However, I got a change of password today and could look at sales. Of course, I got the first royalty payment of £10:88 on Friday, so it was good to have a peek just now.
   
         I think all ten books have only been up a month or so, and the prices were changed to rock bottom (86p or one dollar will get you any of these books!) maybe a month ago.

         29 books were sold from March to October, so that's about three a month. However, this month 15 have been sold already. All my books are selling in dribs and drabs, which is fantastic. They weren't going anywhere. They weren't doing anything. Nobody had a chance to read them, good or bad, and the fact that they are now able to read them is totally excellent!

First Royalties!!

          I was amazed today to see in my emails that Kindle were sending me £10:88 in royalties. I really did not expect to make any money putting my ten books on kindle, especially since I had the idea that the royalty payments were triggered after you'd had hundred dollars worth of sales. Well, it seems not. 

           The only "marketing" these books have had has been done on this blog, which is getting hit at the moment about once a day, and on Facebook. I've got under forty "friends" on Facebook and most of them are relatives! I've also sometimes tried to advertise them on the discussion threads you find on the kindle page, but I don't think you're really supposed to do that. And some folk don't like you doing it!

           So far the books have had only two reviews from folk I don't know. The ones that seem to be selling recently are Alma Mater, (which I don't think had sold any a couple of weeks ago), Remote Control , and The Real McCoy. I would have expected City Whitelight to sell the most since it was good enough to be published twice and was turned into a Monday Night Theatre on Radio Four

          I reckon I get about 26p for every book sold so I must have sold over forty books. That's forty more than I would have sold if I hadn't had them put on Kindle!! If you've bought one, thanks very much.

          There's only seven books listed on my Kindle page. There's ten on Kindle. Dearie me!

           

Review of TheBlissBook!

This review appeared on a friend of mine's blog this morning.

TheBlissBook is the first book I’ve read on my new Kindle.  It is by John McKenzie, and cost only £0.86

I read this book for a number of reasons.  Firstly, I wanted to see how easy it was to download a book onto the Kindle.  It was very easy.  Secondly, I know the author.  In fact, I was John’s line manager on more than one occasion when we both worked for Heriot-Watt University Library.  Thirdly, the lead character in the book is a librarian based in Edinburgh.  A school librarian, in fact, so fortunately it is not based on the author’s time with me in university, but rather on the librarian of ‘St Jobsies for de Boysies’ – a semi-fictitious, disfunctional catholic school.  I say fortunately, because early on, the school librarian’s boss meets a sticky end.

The lead character is a rather unusual school librarian – he is known by the pupils as ‘The Mad Librarian Who Can Stand on His Head’ and who, when he catches a thug kicking in the door of the library, grips him tightly by the collar and tells him “Do that again and I’ll pull your legs off, ya wee shite!”

There’s a lot of humour in TheBlissBook, and I chuckled to myself on just about every page.  Behind the humour is one serious issue – the sad state of many school libraries in the UK.  It all gets too much for the ‘Mad Librarian’, despite his Buddhist tendencies, and mayhem results.

If you have anything to do with libraries, you’ll really enjoy this book.  If you’re a teacher, you may be shocked by it, and want it banned.  If you’re a parent with kids at school, you should definitely read it.  If you’re a pupil attending secondary school, I guarantee that you’ll fall off your seat laughing at it.

Glasgow University Theatre Archive

           When they were googling for The Real McCoy,  someone told me they came across stuff by me in the Glasgow University Theatre Archive. I'd never even heard of it. Here is the link.
          The first two pieces about A Sense of Freedom are not mine, but the other ones are. Oddly enough, I don't have copies of some of these scripts, so it was nice to find out that they were somewhere.

Review of Are You Boys Cyclists?

          Are You Boys Cyclists? got it's first review since it was uploaded to Kindle. It's from someone I knew at university. In fact, he thinks he was in Alma Mater. Anyway, he sent me an email saying he didn't have to exaggerate. But he normally only reads computer manuals, so you can make what you like of it. I don't know what he's got to laugh about anyway!

4.0 out of 5 stars This book is a Celtic American Psycho, October 20, 2011

By 

Alec McClochendichter - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Are You Boys Cyclists? (Kindle Edition)

I couldn't put it down, as they say. Actually I had to put it down, but only to eat. I continued reading on the bus to work, laughing aloud. I hope nobody was reading the graphic parts over my shoulder.

A hugely enjoyable book by someone who knows how to write. Honest and depraved. Who would have thought a postmodern novel could be so much fun!

Promoting Ebooks?

           All ten of my ebooks are now selling for 86p!

           I think I read somewhere that there are 700,000 books on Kindle, and it seems if you sell one copy, you end up about 250,000 in the bestseller lists, so I suppose most of the ebooks there aren't selling at all.

          I was encouraged to set up this blog to get some kind of internet presence and it is actually starting to get hits, about two or three a day. I think they're coming from Facebook. I went onto Facebook about a year ago to help keep in contact with my younger relatives, but I started promoting the books on there. I've only got about thirty five friends, so that's not a lot of promoting!

           The only real work I've been doing on promotion has been advertising the books on relevant discussion threads that you find beneath where the books appear on their Kindle page, but that just seems to piss people off!

             Anyway,  the books haven't been selling at all. The Real McCoy hasn't sold a single copy, which is quite funny because it's the best one there in my opinion.

             Even if they don't sell another copy I'm very pleased to have them on Kindle. Nice to have them parked somewhere. I'm trying to put my writing behind me for a while so I can get on with practising raising inner heat, the foundation for the Six Yogas of Naropa. 

             The books are now all selling for 86p!!

Review of Are You Boys Cyclists?

         This review of  Are You Boys Cyclists? was pointed out to me today. Well, here is it:

         Review of: "Are you boys cyclists?" by John Mckenzie, Serpent's Tail, 1997

This is the sort of book you buy at the newsagents in a bus station or airport to pass the time on a long journey, and the next thing you know you're so enveloped in its developing scenarios that you don't want to reach you're destination before you've finished the last page.

"Are you boys cyclists?" has nothing to do with bikes. It has a minimalist storyline, yet grips the reader from start to finish. Based loosely around the progress of an amateur boxer who has some talent but who lacks both total commitment and a killer instinct, this book repeatedly flashes to scenes of extended gymnastic sex and includes tales of various other activities of a social/antisocial (depending on your inclinations) nature.

John Mckenzie, the author, once worked in Heriot-Watt University Library, which is one reason I am reviewing this book. Another reason is that it is set in Edinburgh in the mid to late seventies and therefore fits in to the leisure time section of the Internet Resources Newsletter. The publishers (Serpents Tail) have a web site where you can find their catalogue, and thankyou to Lisa Clarke for sending me a copy of this book.

Buy it well before you get on the bus!
RM


Are You Boys Cyclists?  is of course on kindle! Yours for 86p. You can get a free download of Kindle of PC off the site if you don't own a device.

TheBlissBook

          TheBlissBook is about bliss, meditation, Tibetan Buddhism, writing and working as a full time librarian in a bog standard Edinburgh comprehensive school. All the incidents and characters in the book are completely fictional however.

          TheBlissBook is written in the same style as Are You Boys Cyclists?  and The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf, so if you like one, you'll probably like the other two! Someone I knew at the school where I used to work bought it as soon as it was uploaded and here's his review:

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!, 5 Oct 2011

By 

Ewan Walker - See all my reviews

This review is from: TheBlissBook (Kindle Edition)

I really enjoyed reading this book nd never stopped laughing the whole way through. Perhaps it's because I could relate to the situation, or perhaps it was the clever mix of humour, teaching and semi-autobiography that made this novel so great. I'd love to read more work by this author!

          Whereas Are You Boys Cyclists? was written in about six months, TheBlissBook took me two and a half years. This was partly because by then I was spending an awful lot of my spare time in meditation and partly because I kept getting really annoyed when I was working on it.

            The first agent I sent it to was Pat Kavanagh, the doyen of literary agents sadly now deceased, and she wrote back with this wonderful response : "It reads to me like autobiography infused with fantastical wish fulfillment and written while high on adrenalin? Speed? Dope?"

             The second agent I sent it to phoned me up the next day at my work and tried to get the book published at the Frankfort and London book fairs, and just about everywhere else, but drew a blank.

              I'm very pleased to be able to put this book on Kindle. It's selling for 86p, a real steal!

Are You Boys Cyclists?

Monday 10th October, 2011
          I  managed to get the last two books up onto Kindle last weekend. It's very simple to upload stuff onto Kindle, but not if you're an idiot like me. Unfortunately, I managed to misspell my name. It's under John McLKenzie, and I can't change that just now because for some unknown reason (probably more stupidity on my part!) I cannot get into my account just now. When I have regained access ...

         Are You Boys Cyclists? was published originally by Serpent's Tail in 1997. It was the fastest piece of writing I've ever done. I started writing it in August and finished at the start of February. I was expecting this to be the last book I'd write and thought when I couldn't get it published that I'd give up writing and train to be a school teacher. I don't think it would have been published if I hadn't been advised by a writer friend of mine to send the typescript to the home address of the publisher, Peter Ayrton. Anyway, it did get published and I got £1,000 advance, some of which I spent on a holiday to Nepal and India. This led to The Buddha And The Big Bad Wolf, also on Kindle.

          It's a true account of my time amateur boxing and a true, if somewhat jaundiced, account of my writing career up to that point. I'm sure I got it published because of the heavy sexual content, a lot of which was completely fictional though I found it difficult to get folk to believe that at the time!!

Delays!!

          I was hoping that all of my ten books would be on Kindle well before this time, but we still have two to go: Are You Boys Cyclists? and TheBlissBook. Tempis fugit. It was the start of July when The Buddha and The Big Bad Wolf, the last one published,  was uploaded to Kindle. I've had problems with the computery things and getting a clean copy of the Cyclists book after it was scanned. Anyway, I'm going to start work on tidying the scan of Cyclists today and I can't see why the last two remaining books can't be on Kindle in the next two weeks.

          The eight books already on Kindle aren't selling, of course. Well, nobody knows they are there. If I didn't know who wrote them, I doubt if I'd be able to find them! They are selling at a rate of about one book a week though The Real McCoy, which is my favourite, hasn't sold any. It might not have been helped by spending the first month or so listed on Kindle as a play!

          In order to let folk know that you have books on Kindle and such like, you are supposed to spend a few hours every day on the computery thing, clicky clickying around other blogs, finding out stuff about book promoting and whatnot. You'd be as well having a job. As it is, I would have spent some time on the computery thing promoting these books, but I've had to spend three nights a week away from home for the past couple of months, and the place I've been going to (my mother-in-law's house) has no computer access. That plus the hold-up with Cyclists and TheBlissBook has stymied my faltering steps at book promotion before they even started.

          I must say that I don't really mind if I don't make any money from these ebooks. I've recently stopped work and have a wee pension to tide me over till forever. It is nice when someone reads one of your books and likes it, but that's not really why I wrote them. Also, self-promotion is something that strikes me as a wee bit naff!! It's okay if someone else was doing it, but going around telling folk to buy your book  ... I know they'd be better off reading Treasure Island which is much better book than any book I'm liable to write!!

          Part of me wants to just park these books on Kindle and forget all about books and writing, but I will make an effort to promote them for a wee while anyway. A netbook has been purchased. I'll buy a dongle on Monday and I should have a computer connection in my mother-in-law's house from now on.

The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf is on Kindle!

          I'm so pleased that this book has at last been published somewhere! It's partly about a journey I made with a friend in India and Nepal some time ago. I'd just had Are You Boys Cyclists? published by Serpent's Tail and this is how I spent most of the advance. After having a book published mainly because of its sexual content, I thought I like to write something that might actually do some good.

          That year I had an amazing mystical experience, and I wanted to write about that, about meditation, and about buddhism. And I wanted to develop the first person narrative style I'd used in Are You Boys Cyclists? What better than to write about going on a buddhist pilgrimage to Nepal, where the buddha was born, and India, where he attained enlightenment? But it didn't turn out like that!

          When I finished the book, I sent it to every agent in the Writer's and Artist's Yearbook. No dice. Then I started sending it around the publishers until I reached the ones whose name began with E. Element Books. They said they wanted to publish it and asked for the usual bit of re-writing. Hurrah! But I was in the middle of writing In the Land of the Demon Masters and told Element I'd start doing the re-writes during my next summer holidays. After some correspondence with an editor at Element, I did the re-writes and after a wee while got a letter from them. I was a bit nervous when I got the letter, but strangely enough I wasn't too bothered when I opened it. It started: Dear John, I sorry to tell you .... there was a big stamp across it saying FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATOR. The publisher had gone belly up!!

          Then I thought I had made a deal with a publisher in Glasgow last year after a friend of mine read it and liked it so much he wanted to sent it to them. I'm really not sure what happened there, but publishing is in such a ferment right now with the advent of ebooks .... anyway, it was very encouraging that someone else liked the book and it was a great night in the pub!

          The Buddha And The Big Bad Wolf is a great title. People have told me it's funny. Yours on Kindle for only £1:71!

The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf cover

          I finished editing the scan of Are You Boys Cyclists a few days ago, so it'll be up on Kindle in a week or so. It's a long time since I read it and I wasn't looking forward to it, but I actually quite enjoyed it. It's a true account of my time as an amateur boxer and it is a memoir of writing books and plays, if a somewhat jaundiced one. The rest of the book is made up of graphic sex and I'd find it difficult to recommend to anyone under eighty. At one point in the book it says it's like a combination of Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski and Kurt Vonnegut, but some of it is funny. If you don't mind a lot of bad language and plenty of sexual depravity, you might like it.
          I got a £1000 advance from Serpent's Tail for that novel and used it to go on a hapless Buddhist pilgrimage to India and Nepal. It didn't quite turn out to be the pilgrimage I was hoping for!! I'll write more about these books when they are uploaded by the consigliere, who will be a wee bit busy with family matters for a week or so.
          Anyway, my wonderful daughter has come up with these covers. I fancied the top one, but I've been told that the writing isn't as clear on it. We'll probably go with the blue one.
          Are You Boys Cyclists, The Buddha and The Big Bad Wolf and TheBlissBook are written in a similar style and as a group I do like them. They are all semi-autobiographical (like Alma Mater) and all of them have something to say about being a writer.
          Alma Mater hasn't made a sale yet, but In The Land Of The Demon Masters made it's first sale today or yesterday. Remote Control hasn't made a sale yet, but I was contacted yesterday by a publisher about it. I'm not expecting that to come to anything, but it was good that someone even noticed it since I haven't done anything to market them except mention them on a couple of discussion threads.

The Real McCoy

          This is my favourite piece of writing. There will be ten books uploaded to Kindle over this spring and summer of  2011, but if I had to choose just one to survive, it would be The Real McCoy!

          When City Whitelight was being published by Mainstream Publishing, I was asked by my radio producer for a drama with a strong narrative line, so I adapted City Whitelight. I was always more interested in writing prose, but I was making money from writing scripts and I did try to combine these things. I would write books I couldn't get published and then adapt them for radio dramas.

           It was slightly different with The Real McCoy. The radio drama producer, Patrick Rayner, wanted  me to write something for radio and not adapt something. Also, at the time the studios in Queen Street were going to be out of operation for a year and the play would have to be done in London. Everything that I'd written so far for radio drama had been very Scottish and when the studios were mothballed, I thought that in London they must have Americans! Wonderful American voices!
   
          So I'm sitting with a few beers on holiday in Yugoslavia, and I'm thinking who would I like to be in this radio drama. Start a list. Albert Einstein. Albert Schweitzer. Sigmund Freud. Jesus Christ. God. My girlfriend was six months pregnant and this was the best of times. I thought I'd write a radio script and then write the novel.

         In London they have wonderful American voices!! The guy who played the commander who freaks out in Aliens played Jacob Merryweather. There was talent all the way through that production. Very clever actors indeed!

         I loved writing that novel. It had a lot in it about American politics. I read American history for three out of my four years at university. I've only ever been to America for a fortnight, but I do love it. American actors and writers and all of that. It would be a great place to live in if you had lots of money. Anyway, so I'm writing this satire of American politics and I'm doing it in the only time since I was thirty when I could write like a professional writer.  I had three months when my girlfriend was nursing the kiddo to write after the kiddo was born. Free time and a new kiddo. It was the best of times. I think that comes through in the writing.

          I sent the manuscript to everyone. I got wonderful rejection letters. It was really written for the turn of the millennium, but I had another look at it a couple of years ago when my agent failed to sell something else. So I updated it and re-wrote parts of it, and I loved doing that, getting my hands on it again. The agent told me he thought it was "wonderful". He tried to sell it at the Frankfort and London Book Fairs, but I think the satire on American politics put the big bucks off.

        There is a radio play embedded in this book. On the last re-write I added a few lines to the dialogue, but there is a radio play sitting in there somehow.

        When I was re-writing it, the character I based the physicality of Angus McSorley on died. I meant to put a dedication into the book, but in the storm of uploading this stuff I forgot. I'll contact his widow right now and see if she thinks that would be alright.
         
         I don't care if nobody buys it! It's a gem anyway.
       

Second Review of Bugtown!

Just found this review of Bugtown by someone called S.J. Macdonald from Wales. I do not know this person!!! Looks as if someone bought one of my ebooks!!

5.0 out of 5 stars Starships and Aliens Review, 28 May 2011

By 

S. J. MacDonald (Wales) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bugtown (Kindle Edition)

Concept/World 
This a children's book written for the 11-14 age range. The setting is a mix of medieval town, aliens and dinosaurs, which I loved - one of the great things about children's fiction is when it jumps out of the box and is truly fantastic. 

Story 
There is certainly plenty of action in this story, which rips along at a good pace. I am still at a loss as to why Robert apparently kept being possessed by the spirit of Robert the Bruce, unsure as to who the King really was and why the Baby had to do what he did at the end of the story. Personally I'm fine with unresolved questions but readers who like all ends neatly tied off in clear explanation may find that unsatisfying. 

Characters 
I felt that Robert was more engaging than Rachel. She seems to be the generic "big sister" while Robert is portrayed in more depth with his problems making him a more sympathetic character. The baby was hilariously obnoxious and the King of the Beggars is a villain in the finest tradition of the Sheriff of Nottingham. 

Presentation 
The cover is amusing and a good fit for the content of the book. There are a few minor editing blarts (they're/their, broken paragraph, passed/past) which did not affect my enjoyment of the story. My Whispernet reader was jumping 12-14 locations at each page turn. I estimated it to be between 30-35,000 words (apologies if my maths is out), which makes it a quick read by adult book standards but a good length for young readers not yet ready to embark on epics. 

Overall ***** 
This book made me laugh out loud three times when I was reading, and I was often grinning at the banter and one-liners. I would certainly recommend it to anyone, kid or adult, who likes zany fun in their sci fi. Embrace the "wonderful shambles" and enjoy. 

Help othe

Alma Mater is on Kindle!

          The Imperial 66 my mother bought me to take to uni was still at home when I returned to lick my wounds after four years studying at Edinburgh University. I got a job as a labourer in the steelworks, working three shifts, and decided to teach myself to type, and maybe to write when I got in from backshifts. I was used to staying up late and there wasn't much else to do.

          That was in 1973. So I started writing about my time at university and probably used the diaries I'd kept. By the time I'd finished the first draft of Alma Mater about four years later, I had about half a million words. I was about twenty six when I gave up my job in Edinburgh Public Libraries and ended up living by myself on the dole in a flat near Meadowbank Stadium. I had an old portable then, but my pal Jared moved in with me and gave me a permanent loan of another Imperial 66. Fine machines. Built like tanks.

          So I halved the book by discarding the first two years of my university life and, I think, I got the book down to ... well, a lot less than half a million words! Then I stopped and tried to write other books. It was after I had my first radio play accepted that I started writing it again. By then I'd written, or half written, about three novels, and I didn't want to give up writing prose for dialogue, so I began to re-write Alma Mater when I wasn't writing radio plays.

          I think the draft that's ended up on Kindle was from about 1983. I'm not dead sure. When I finished it then it was two hundred and seventy five pages of double spaced A4. I had a lot on my plate at the time and didn't bother trying to get it published. I thought I'd wait and hold on to it and re-write it again when I was a bit older, but tempis fugit. I think the only publisher I sent it to was Polygon who were then the publisher attached to Edinburgh University and I think I only did that as a joke.

         When I was in sixth year at high school in Motherwell, 1968 happened. What a year! There was even trouble in Edinburgh. The resignation of the Rector made going there extremely appealing though the reality was extremely disappointing. A quote from Malcolm Muggeridge's resignation speech is at the front of the book along with one by Newman.

 NEWMAN: A university is an alma mater, knowing her children one by one, not a foundry, or a mint,  or a treadmill.

Yet how infinitely sad; how, in a macabre sort of way, funny that the form their insubordination takes should be a demand for Pot and Pills, for the most tenth rate sort of escapism and self-indulgence ever known. -MACOLM MUGGERIDGE, ON RESIGNING AS EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY RECTOR, JANUARY 1968.

Alma Mater  is now on Kindle!
       

Remote Control is on Kindle!

         
          It's been at least thirty years since I started to write Remote Control. I saw in the Bookseller a little notice that a new literary agency called International Scripts was being set up and sent them a letter. Then I sent them some of Alma Mater and then I got a contract sent back.  Soon enough I was on the night train to London to see a literary agent. Nothing to do with agents was ever as easy as this again!

          It was Ursula Mackenzie's first job in publishing. God alone knows what she made of me, but after chatting in her none to salubrious office, she took me for lunch during which I probably drank about five pints of Guinness as I recall. Outside on the pavement as I was saying my goodbyes and heading back for the train, I offered her a little piece of cannabis and she politely refused. You've got to laugh! Just tell your kids to say no and you'll  end up being a master of the universe instead of getting the one way ticket to Palooka-ville.

         She told me I should try and write a political thriller and advised me to read Scotch on the Rocks, a book by Douglas Hurd. I thought this book was so bad it was almost inspirational!

          At this point I went to Strathclyde University to do a post-grad in librarianship and ended up doing a bibliography project on the public sources for information that would help you make a remote controlled explosive device. This was actually quite an interesting thing to do in the days before the internet. I got a copy of the Anarchist Cookbook, an interlibrary loan from my local library. Well,  I doubt if the local library would help you with research like that these days!

          I went to the National Library and researched back copies of the newspapers till I found information on the Angry Brigade, complete with diagrams of how to make bombs. So I ended up with my flat strewn with diagrams and what have you about how to make a remote controlled bomb, and I think these days you can go to jail for being in possession of that kind of thing.

           The book I ended up with after that was pretty lousy, but Ursula Mackenzie did try to sell it before she went on to better things.

           I adapted the book for the stage and brought in another character, so I realised I'd have to re-write the book. Scotch on the Rocks was a masterpiece compared to what I'd written at the time!! Once it was re-written, I hardly sent it out to anyone because I went to live in Australia for a year. Most of the stuff I wrote I only sent out three or four times anyway because I hate rejections and usually didn't have much money to waste on the postage.

           I re-wrote the book again in 2009 and changed one of the characters, added a twist to the storyline and that's the version that's been placed on Kindle by the consigliere just yesterday. Remote Control is a steal at £1.82!


         
         

Provisional Cover for Alma Mater

          My wonderful daughter sent me these possible covers this morning. I told her to hurry up with them and not bother spending so much time on them just now since I'm pretty desperate to get all these books uploaded to Kindle, but I've really like the fast covers for Remote Control, Ancient Futures and this one for Alma Mater. The covers she did for In The Land Of The Demon Masters and Bugtown were paintings, I think. I have no idea how she's come up with these.

          I told her the keywords for the book were Edinburgh University, hippies, drugs ... nobody would buy a book called Alma Mater, and most folk might not know what that expression means, but this cover with that title works, I think. Maybe I'm biased, but if there's any of these you particularly fancy, let me know.

          I was at one point thinking of changing the title to Drug Tests, but there's a quote from Newman about Alma Maters at the beginning, and It's been called Alma Mater since about 1973, so ....

           The consigliere has a lot on his plate at the moment and he's still attending to the relaunch of Ancient Futures, but I'll let you know when they get uploaded!

Remote Control!

          My daughter just sent me this provisional cover for Remote Control. I like it so much I think we should just stick with it. So I've just written the product description, or the blurb as it used to be called when books still had them inside the covers and at the back maybe.  I really don't like writing blurbs and I put this one together in five minutes, paraphrasing the review Gregg Ward gave the play in Scotland on Sunday. The book was adapted and produced to some acclaim at the Traverse Theatre about 1989. On stage it was called Bomber.

          I re-wrote the novel for more modern times and finished it about fifteen months ago. Sphere Books didn't want it, but Dan Mallory gave it a brilliant knock back. Serpent's Tail, who published Are You Boys Cyclists for me, didn't get back to me about it, and Luath here in Edinburgh still haven't got back to me about it either though they wanted to see it after reading what Dan Mallory of Sphere said about it. Great not to have to wait for book publishers anymore!!

                 Here's the blurb that'll go with the book on Amazon Kindle.

               Remote Control is a compelling multi-layered thriller which once it's grabbed you never lets you go. Jimmy McGovern,  a petty criminal and drug dealer, learns while in the middle of a three day drink and drug binge that his girlfriend has been killed in a police raid on a terrorist hide-out. Hauled in for questioning, he is released without charge only to find himself stalked by a top ranking counter terrorism officer who eventually gives him no choice but  to construct a remote controlled explosive device. Is he trying to bolster the case against the terrorist cell, or is he really going to assassinate the Prime Minister? Will Jimmy McGovern kill him first?

                 Fast paced and tinged with violence, Remote Control rushes forward at great pace, but what makes the novel so intriguing is the continual emotional switchbacks and wealth of hidden agendas. This is an intricate novel which compels the reader's attention with it's almost classic use of horror movie makers tension and release techniques, but by diving deep in Jimmy McGovern's personal agonies it brings a deeply human element to the story which keeps us from dismissing the action as so much filmic pap. In short, a thoroughly unique and satisfying novel.

                Here is the rejection the consigliere got from Dan Mallory of Sphere.

                Following up on Remote Control. Short version: I’m going to pass. Longer version: I do so fully aware that you’ve got a very talented author on your hands. The writing is crisp and clean, the dialogue distinctively edgy, and the plot very smoothly engineered. That said, I wasn’t especially taken with the protagonist, who seemed to me rather difficult to like, and I worry that some of the book’s more serrated edges would rub a broad readership the wrong way.

While I’m going to pass, I wish you much luck with the project, and I can’t wait to see where John lands. Thanks again very much for letting me take a look.

Yours    

Dan

 

Relaunch of Ancient Futures!

         When the consigliere and I uploaded Ancient Futures onto Amazon Kindle about a year ago, we weren't really taking it seriously. Self publishing, I thought, wasn't going to bring home the bacon. Recently, I've been persuaded otherwise, so we are now going to relaunch it with a cover by Rosalynd McKenzie and a new product description by myself. The product description is just like the blurb you get on books. Here's the product description:

                    This epic adventure is set in a world without any real place in geography or time, but it is a world with many similarities to our own..

                This world was once a barren place where life was hard and the population sparse, but due to the secret elixir, produced by The Factory, the wealth of the planet increased and the population multiplied and multiplied and multiplied until it seemed to some that the planet could no longer support such numbers. The weather began to change. The atmosphere grew thinner and the sun became hotter. Where once it had been warm was now cold. Where it was once still, storms raged. Strange illnesses began to appear in people everywhere.

            The ordinary people saw these changes as signs, as portents, as omens. Among the poor and dispossessed persisted a belief in a Hidden One, a messiah who was silent and waiting till the time was ripe to wage holy war against the evil ones governed by mammon, ego, and lust.

             They prayed for this saviour to come among them, unite the people and drive their enemies into the sea. His coming would right the wrongs of the world and usher in a new age of justice and purity and truth. His coming was foretold for the end of the millenium and the year was 996.

              It was about this time that King Oroc began to wage war ....

Bugtown is on Kindle!

      
          I knew as soon as I finished In The Land Of The Demon Masters that I was going to have trouble getting anyone in the publishing business to read it, but I enjoyed writing it so much that I wanted to write another one. This time I reckoned I'd write something just for fun, something that kids might enjoy, something with a lot of humour in it.

          Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the cartoon, was phenomenally successful just over twenty years ago. The creator said he thought of all the things that were around at the time and just put these together. Ninja, mutants, teenage and turtles. So I remembered this when I was trying to think about what to write about for the second book for this age group. Aliens, alien abduction, time travel, dinosaurs, castles, knights, and sometimes funny! So that is what Bugtown is really about. And the main characters had to be siblings; one about eleven and one about fourteen, a boy and a girl. That covers the target audience, I guess.

          I couldn't get anyone to read it at all. I think I got two folk in the business to read the first one. That's why I'm so pleased to be able to put it on Kindle. I had a lot of school kids read these books and really like them, so I'm confident about the product.

          Since In The Land Of The Demon Masters owes so much to Tibetan history and mysticism, I sent a copy down to a nun I know who lives in the Samye Ling, a Tibetan Centre and Monastery. I wasn't expecting her to read it. I said she could pass it on to any buddhists she knew with twelve year old kids. There aren't a lot of books with buddhist connections for kids of that age. Anyway, I got this very nice response yesterday:


Thanks for sending your story.  I had a look at it and I think it's great.  We have a new tour guide for school groups so I've passed it on to her so she can use it for a rainy day activity.  Who knows, it may even generate some sales!

In The Land Of The Demon Masters is on Kindle

Easter Sunday
                     The Land of the Demon Masters is now on Kindle. Hurrah!

                     This story, for ten to fourteen year olds, is very heavily influenced by Tibetan history and mysticism. I was particularly taken by the account in Magic and Mystery in Tibet by Alexandra David-Neel when she creates a phantom monk in her meditation cell. Of course, in this story this is exaggerated and the baddies create demons, but in much the same fashion.

                      In fact, the book is brimful of Tibetan associations. The sage/magician is called Padmasam, which is a shortened version of Padmasambhava, and he does sweep the demons out of the country in  much the same way as Padmasambhava is said to have done in Tibet during the 8th century.

                     There is also a foreign invasion in this story. The Chinese of course invaded Tibet.

                     I'm  a school librarian. When I finished this book, I had about fifty pupils in first and second year at high school read it and fill in questionnaires. They did this thinking the book was written by someone called Alison Main, not me. One of the questions asked the readers if they liked the book better than the last book they had read. Four out of the five pupils who had read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone before this book preferred In The Land Of The Demon Masters.

              

Bugtown cover!

Just got this cover. It's brilliant! Told the kiddo there was a bit in the book where this Tyrannosaurus Rex was trying to get into the city through this portcullis, and voila! Some cats got it and some cats aint!

In The Land of the Demon Masters cover.

          I wish these Kindle books, which I'm getting uploaded over the next couple of weeks, didn't need book covers. I'm a school librarian and book covers don't really make the job any easier in that part of it is trying to get the right book for the right kid. So maybe you have twelve year old boy standing in front of you and he's got a book he wants to take out which you know he's not going to like, and isn't going to read. You ask the kid why he wants to take the book out and the kid says because it looks like a good book. The kid hasn't looked inside the book. The kid hasn't even read the first sentence, but the book has a great cover and it looks as if it might be about vampires. But it's not really about vampires. It's about kissing vampires (thirteen/fourteen year old girls love these books!) and .... don't get me started about book covers. If you tell a kid that the person who designed the book cover almost certainly hasn't read the book ... it's like telling a kid that lawyers sometimes defend folk they know are guilty. Yes, it's a terrible world out there! It's a successful book cover if it makes you spend your money.

          But I do like this book cover. It was drawn by my daughter who is a glass artist. I gave her £20 for it, but told her if the pirates don't completely ruin this ebook business, she might be getting royalties from the book long after I've passed away. She read the book when she was twelve, but she couldn't remember what it was about. Until last week, the book was called Light in the Dark, but that doesn't sell the book. In the Land of the Demon Masters might.

City Whitelight

Tuesday 7:40 p.m.
                           City Whitelight was published in 1986, long before there were electronic/digital copies of novels, so I had to break up a hardback, scan it, and then edit the scan so that my friend can upload it to Kindle.  Of course, you have to read it while you're editing the scan. Must be more than twenty years since I last looked at that book.

                            When I first read it after it was published, I cringed and cringed, and didn't enjoy the experience at all. There was a typesetting error on the first page, which didn't help. Once I decided there were seven or thirteen good paragraphs in it - I can't remember which.

                             But this time when I read it I couldn't remember bits of it at all. And it must say I really quite enjoyed it. Here's what I wrote yesterday on my facebook page:

Just finished editing the scan of City Whitelight. Written by another joe a long time ago. Forgot a lot of it. Haven't read it for decades. Class war, ya bass! A wee gothic gem, so it was. I think I impressed myself this evening! Anybody wants a free look, just ask. Otherwise, it should be on Kindle as soon as the consigliere can do. Hurrah!


                     One of my facebook friends is Colin MacDonald who makes his living writing plays and screenplays, something which he is very good at, and left this very kind comment:


Colin MacDonald John it is a wee gothic gem. Wait, that sounds like a Sunday Post review. It is a shaft of brilliance illuminating a dark world. You are right to have been impressed!


                      I read that before going to work this morning. What a nice start to the day!


                          

Children's Books

          I saw an advert today for a competition for children's book writers. None of the submissions are to be from an agent, so they're looking for fresh talent. The winner will get published, get an agent, and get £10,000. Hurrah! I'm going to be rich! I'm going to be rich!

          I've written two suitable books. I am a school librarian. You't think I might know something about books for schoolchildren, so I wrote two books for ten to fourteen years olds back to back when I found myself unwillingly in full time employment.

          When I finished each of the books, I gave them out to schoolchildren, telling them they were written by someone else, and handed out questionnaires. This was most satisfying thing that ever happened to me through the wonderful writings. Kids can love books. Much more than adults. So all these kids are coming up to me and handing back these folders with the questionnaires, and giving me the big, beaming smiles. The kids, by and large, really loved these books. I thought they would and was much chuffed really.

           As a boost for this children's book competition, Michele Paver writes of competitions when she was unpublished. "The also gave me the assurance that one of those godlike beings in the 'publishing world' would actually read what I've written.'

           I was hustling the children's books for over two years. I sent letters out to all the appropriate publishers and almost all of them  told me to send in three chapters. So I did that along with photocopies of the reader reports .... and not one of the publishers asked to read either of the books.

           I found out after all this palaver that no one had ever heard of anyone getting published in this area without an agent. So sending three chapters to publishers is a complete waste of time. Why they pretend they're going to look at these three chapters ....

           I finally got an email from Nicky Singer and she said that there was no chance of getting anything read without an agent and you probably wouldn't get published unless you were with one of the six "killer" agents.

           So I sent submissions to all of the agents in Britain and managed to get two of them to read it. At least, they wanted me to send in full manuscripts. Whether anyone got round to reading them is another matter.

            I met someone a couple of weeks ago who'd just had a book published in this field, her first. No advance. I'd never heard of gettting published without getting an advance. I thought that was all the money you'd ever see. Not only was she given no advance, she only got seven and a half percent off sales. I'd never heard of anyone getting under ten percent.

           So it looks as if getting into a competition might be the only chance you've got of getting a book published in this field unless you are .... very fortunate indeed!

            But you've got to pay them to read your book. They're charging £15 to enter. So they'll read your book for £15. Or at least the first couple of pages. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of folk will send in stuff. The publishers will make a fortune!!

            Roz McKenzie  is preparing the covers for the two children's books I've written. They be on Kindle within the next couple of weeks, I hope!