Check this out for a great idea… I was invited by my good friend @mariam_kobras to get involved in the Lucky #7… It’s where you invite 7 of your writer friends to post 7 sentences from page 77 of their current WIP, starting from the 7th line on the page…

My Lucky #7 contribution is below. It’s from a story currently called ‘Heaven’s Waiting Room’, which is about a dead girl called Portia. Dying before her life really got started, she has to learn how to exist as a ghost here on earth, with heaven getting full she didn’t make the cut! Coping with her living family’s problems, as well as falling in love for the first time, she has a pretty confusing ride…

It was a glorious afternoon and we were both lying in the long grass of the walled garden, while some way off, we could hear Beth singing to herself somewhere in the distance. The lilting refrain was the perfect companion to the mood I was in, everything around me seemed beautiful.
‘What are you thinking?’ David asked, rolling over onto his front so he could look into my eyes.
‘Nothing much,’ I replied wrinkling my nose. ‘I’m just content. Although, I wish I could feel the heat of the sun, it still seems rather strange to me, not being able to physically feel the warmth.’
‘We still have that,’ David said, pushing a hair from my face. ‘We just need to get it from one another.’ He placed his hand on my cheek and I felt the burning heat from him flood through my system.

The Seven friends I have chosen to invite are:

@geekplanetmatt

@nettiewriter

@robynmcintyre

@carvaggio12

@mruku

@rebeccaebrown

@goldenageofgeek

I hope you find this as fun as I did!

A small fry writer with a small independent publisher, I was recently charged with getting my book ‘The Long Staff’ up as an ebook online.

I did some online research and received some great advice from great fellow writers on Twitter, and decided that I would go with Kindle first. It seemed like a good place to start, and I figured that I could always go to other electronic formats later. Since its rise, I have read many articles on Kindle and Amazon, and generally find myself swaying between thinking they are the rebel alliance, helping to free poor writers kept down by the traditional publishing establishment; and thinking that they are in fact the evil empire, slowly trying to destroy the publishing industry from the inside out…

I’m sure that neither statement is actually true, but there are a lot of people on both sides of the argument, and since I sit somewhere in the middle of traditional publishing and being self published, I find it easy to sympathise with both sides… Therefore, I was slightly torn as I took this tentative step towards my majority share royalty payments… surely there’s a catch?

I put these worries aside, it would be a good way to reach new readers, especially some of the great people I have met from outside the UK through Twitter and Facebook. Also, the version of the book being uploaded is a new edition of the story, with some minor changes made and, hopefully, almost all of the technical errors picked up… Ask any author, sometimes the little buggers just hide until you see the book in print, then they jump out and shout ‘Ha, ha!’

I tried my best to read through the Kindle Terms and Conditions thoroughly and carefully tried to gauge a fair price for my work. This again, is an issue I have come across on other writer’s blog posts. Is the ‘Buy this for $0.99’ the right route, or is this simply undervaluing your work? Also, with the amount of completely self published work out there on Kindle, does the ‘$0.99’ approach simply brand you as being cheap and cheerful? I decided to go with a similar amount to some of my peers, half what the hard copy costs, but not ridiculous.

So, with bated breath, I pressed the submit button, and now my baby is available electronically for all of you lovely people out there… I hope that if you do decide to invest in a copy of the book, you enjoy it. Also, if you use this function, the book is available in the Kindle Lending Library. Feel free to post any reviews on Amazon, or send them to me directly and I can post them to my site.

Go on, you know you want to!! Order now for only £3.99!

Well… it’s finally happened. Today I finished ‘Inheritance’, the final book in ‘The Inheritance Cycle.’ As I sit here on a train from London to Glasgow, I decided to muse upon how this has made me feel. I haven’t had a series like this, where I’ve been waiting on books being published, since Harry Potter or Ink World…

I can’t lie, I thoroughly enjoyed it as a read, and given my last rant on here, Paolini did something very simple that I think all high fantasy authors should… he had a short summarised catch up at the start of the book.

When I tentatively picked up the book, I was fresh from finishing the ‘A Dance of Ice and Fire’ series (so far) and didn’t relish the thought of having to go back to ‘Eragon’ and work my way through before the final book would make sense. Paolini didn’t disappoint. Within twenty pages I was right back in the heart of Alegaesia with Eragon and Saphira, and it was as though no time had passed since the cliff hanger ending of ‘Brisingr.’

So… what are my thoughts now that the epic YA series has been concluded? My first comment would probably be, READ IT! They are compelling books and the characters really make you care. Plus, his style of switching between varying locations in short, sharp chapters, keep you glued to the page.

I must be honest, there were some plot twists throughout the series that I did see coming before they happened… but hey, I’m almost clairvoyant when it comes to plot twists. I told Mr Staffwielder who the murderer was at the interval of ‘The Mouse Trap.’ Speaking of which, I’m still owed a shiny penny…

I won’t give away any plot points, for those of you who haven’t made the right decision and picked up these books, but this Tolkien-esque epic series definitely has what it takes. I can’t wait to see what Paolini will commit himself to next. At such a young age and having reached this milestone, he’s a fantasy writer to watch!