Monthly archives: December 2017

Happy New Year

I want to take a moment to wish Happy New Year 2019 to all my readers (and future readers) and thank you for your support during 2016. It was an interesting year with some good moments and bad moments (too many bad ones), but I don’t think it’s going to stand out as a breakthrough year in very many ways.

3 Astronomicon Novels

2017 should be a much better one. I have two new novels almost completed and expect to write another during the next few months. Maybe I can get my Patreon campaign off the ground too. Currently, I write purely as a hobby and I’d love to be able to write full time. My novels are all available on Amazon etc. but don’t make anywhere near enough money (yet!) for me to quit my day job. By the end of 2017, I would love to be able to cut my working hours by one day per week, giving me 4-5 more days per month to dedicate to writing. If I could achieve that, I could easily produce three novels per year.

My next big release in 2017 will be “Sceptic”, my first dystopian future novel. I need to get it out as soon as possible because it’s a predicted future that we are heading towards at frightening speed. I don’t want it to lose its impact by reality getting there first!

Anyway, here’s hoping that we all have an excellent 2017!

Let’s make this a good one.

Paul.

 

ps. Buy my books!!

 

 

A Deadline that won’t be missed

Astronomicon Deadline Christmas offerIt’s been over a year since I published Astronomicon: Deadline on Amazon. Unlike all the other Astronomicon novels, it has performed embarrassingly poorly. Astronomicon #3 Those Left Behind has routinely sold more copies per week than Deadline has sold in total in over a year.

I’m not too upset though. I understand that my books are not all the same and that not everything will work. It would be great to just call it a learning experience but I’m not too sure what I’ve learned from it. Does humour not work in the Astronomicon universe (I don’t think that’s the case)? Was the story not up-to-scratch? Or was it just not as funny as I thought it was (probably likely)?

My problem is that I got very little feedback and what I did get was not too helpful. I suspect that it was a catastrophic failure on my part to successfully advertise its existence. Anyway, whatever the problem, Deadline is no more and is no longer available on Amazon. At some point in the future, I will probably rework it, create a new cover and re-release it, but it is not on my todo list.

Hiccup with Behemoth

UBehemoth Book Cover version 1.2nfortunately, due to a rule change at RadishFiction, there’s going to be a sizeable delay in posting future chapters of Behemoth. Under their new system, chapters are locked (cannot be edited/corrected/deleted) just seven days after posting. It usually takes around 2-3 months before every error has been found and I am not prepared to e-mail RadishFiction admin with every error or change.

The alternative is to ignore errors on Radish and let it fall out of sync with versions on Wattpad and Amazon, which will continue to be corrected as usual. This is unacceptable to me and unfair to readers as it degrades their experience and if the different versions no longer match it makes it more difficult for readers to transition from one system to another.

I already have a lot of details to manage, without having to explain every little change in an e-mail to RadishFiction and hope that whoever performs the change for me doesn’t get it wrong. By my current calculation, I would be sending RadishFiction somewhere between two and five e-mails per day. I simply don’t have time for that and I doubt they do either.

From now on my new chapters will have to go through my full two-month long proofreading and editing process (using my trusty team of proofreaders) before I post them on Radish. Wattpad will continue to update as usual for a couple of weeks and will then suffer the same delay. I apologise for this and really wish it could be avoided.