Pre-order for just 99c

After discussing the question of how to develop interest in a pre-order title for someone who is still in the early stages of their writing career, I was given the following advice

Make the book 99c/99p during the pre-order period, and let the world know that the book is at a special price prior to release, make sure you also tell them how much the book will be after release.

This advice is obviously based on the notion that most people like to get a bargain, especially when they know how much they’re saving, and how much time they have in which to make that saving. It’s a simple concept but it’s one that didn’t occur to me until it was pointed out, of course, I’m not marketing savvy so that might be why.

Okay, since I’ve now been hit over the head with what I should have already known, I have reduced the price of my upcoming novel, Written In Blood; you can now get my serial-killer thriller for just 99c/99p if you buy it in the next 23 days, on 1st April it will go up to its full price of $3.99.

Let me just repeat that

99c/99p

That’s the bargain price you can get Written in Blood for until the end of March. If you don’t get it before then you’ll have to pay the full price of

$3.99

If you’re interested in buying the book, and so far I’ve had people from North America, South America and Europe taking advantage of my generosity, you can get it at the following link

Written In Blood for the Kindle

It’s coming – April 1st is the day

Okay everyone, this s**t is getting real; I have an awesome cover, some fabulous bookmarks (who doesn’t like a good bookmark) and I’m halfway through the editing. It’s time to announce the release date for my next novel, and that date is

April 1st

Written In Blood is not a part of my Inspector Stone series, book 2 of which will be coming later in the year, but it is set in a village a little outside of Branton, where Inspector Stone works, and the sequel, A Bloody Rewrite (a little play on words for my writer friends) will feature characters from the series, and maybe even Inspector Stone himself, you’ll have to wait and see.

Here for your enjoyment is the cover and blurb for my upcoming release –

A peaceful village torn apart by murder.

In the small, close-knit village of Oakhurst, residents aren’t willing to believe that one of their own might be a brutal killer.

So when young women begin to die – their bodies found with accusatory words carved onto their skin – suspicion falls on the newcomer to the village. Charming Zack Wild, author of violent crime novels and possessor of a dark history, seems like a perfect suspect.

As they investigate, Sergeant Mitchell and Constable Turner are increasingly unwilling to believe that someone they know could be responsible for such heinous crimes. But will this affect their judgement, allowing the real killer to escape?

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You will be able to pre-order Written In Blood from March, and the book will then be available from April 1st.

Rillington Place – Ethel

Rillington Place

Episode 1 – Ethel

After 9 years apart, John Reginald Christie and his estranged wife Ethel reunite and move into 10 Rillington Place. As war breaks out, the fractures in their relationship reappear beneath the thin veneer of married respectability.

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I watched this for three reasons, the preview looked good, I’m interested in true crime, and I’ve seen both Tim Roth and Samantha Morton put in some very very good performances in the past.

The first of three episodes is seen through the eyes of Christie’s wife, Ethel, and as a result you see little of what Christie himself is up to, only a portrait of an unhappy marriage as seen through the eyes of a passive woman who almost meekly goes back to a husband who she finds in jail and who cheats on her and abuses her.

The era and the environment are very well recreated in this BBC drama, and both Tim Roth as John Reginald Christie and Samantha Morton as Ethel put in wonderful performances, but the lack of action and the slow pace ultimately drag this down. I was tempted after watching this opening episode to forget about watching the rest, but checking IMDB I see that the following episodes are seen from different characters’ perspectives, so I will give them a go and hope it gets better.

Mirror Mirror – an honest review

Mirror Mirror

Jessica Jesinghaus

Nearly twenty years ago a teenage girl was murdered…

Samantha Carlson was just a young girl when her cousin, Emily, was brutally raped and killed in her own home. As a child, Sam’s family did their best to shelter her from the gruesome details. Now, working the crime beat for the Portland Tribune, Sam has the resources at her fingertips to investigate the case for herself.

Through the eyes of a killer…

After inheriting a family heirloom, an antique vanity table that once belonged to her murdered cousin, Sam begins seeing visions in the mirror’s depths. Like watching an old home movie, she bears witness to Emily’s murder. As if that weren’t frightening enough, she starts to see other things too: fleeting glimpses of the killer himself! Are the things she sees just a figment of her imagination or could something otherworldly be trying to communicate with her? When the killer strikes again and leaves clues behind meant specifically for Sam it becomes a race against time to try to catch him.

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I was gifted a free copy of this book for an honest review, and here it is.

First, the good – there’s a good plot, likeable characters, and an interesting plot device in the mirror of the title; the plot device is used cleverly, without being overused, and never becomes boring or annoying (I actually think it could have been used a little more, without detracting from the book). The identity of the murderer remains a mystery until late in the book, which is good, there’s some nice misdirection that makes you think about someone else, and enough hints that if you’re paying attention you might figure out who the real killer is, but you can’t be sure until the author is ready to let you know.

The bad – the writing is not as good as it could be, and there are occasions where phrases and words are used either unnecessarily or incorrectly, and this can be jarring. It’s a short while before you get to the main plot, and while that isn’t really a terrible thing, it might have been better if there was an opening scene that featured the murder of Emily – had there been such a scene, I think I would have minded less that it took a while to get things moving, because I would have already had a sense of what was going to happen.

Overall, this is a decent book, that ends with a twist I didn’t see coming; with better writing it could be great, so if you like a thriller, this might well be for you.

Murder In Oakhurst

Yesterday I finished typing up the first draft of Where There’s A Will, instead of taking a nice break from writing before I get to work on the second draft, I’ve signed up to the #justwriteit challenge on Wattpad – 10,000 words in 30 days.

Since I already have Murder In Oakhurst on paper and I just need to type the first draft up, I’ve amended the challenge accordingly, I want to get at least 50,000 words done in the 30 days, so that’s an average of 1,700 words a day. I reckon I can do it, but the real challenge will be doing it alongside sorting the second draft of Where There’s A Will and working on a short I’ve been doing.

Ah well, I was never one for being idle.

Murder In Oakhurst is a mystery/thriller about a serial killer.

Oakhurst is a peaceful place to live, a veritable sleepy little village, but all that is about to change.
When a young girl goes missing and another is discovered, murdered, the village finds itself in the grip of a serial killer who is targeting its daughters. With no detective in the village, it falls to Sergeant Mitchell and Constable Rawlings to investigate and catch the killer.
Suspicion quickly falls on Zack Wild, the village’s newest resident and a writer who specialises in grisly murders, both real and fictional. He maintains his innocence, but the coincidences keep mounting, and he has a history of violence.

You can check out my progress here https://www.wattpad.com/story/85527494-murder-in-oakhurst and let me know what you think. (The cover is only a basic thing I knocked up quickly to avoid using a placeholder on Wattpad, when I’m closer to release I’ll get a professional cover organised)

A deadly bath

Among my many, varied interests, is a liking for true crime stories, and tonight, while battling my usual sleep issues, I caught an interesting film from ITV about a British serial killer from the 1940’s.

John George Haigh

(24 July 1909 – 10 August 1949), commonly known as the Acid Bath Murderer, was an English serial killer in the 1940s. He was convicted for the murder of six people, although he claimed to have killed nine. He used acid to dispose of the bodies after battering them to death or shooting them because he believed it was an undetectable method of destroying their remains. Haigh dissolved corpses in concentrated sulphuric acid before forging papers to be able to sell the victims’ possessions and collect substantial sums of money.

During the investigation, it became apparent that Haigh was using the acid to destroy victims’ bodies because he misunderstood the meaning of the term corpus delicti, and mistakenly believed that, if the bodies could not be found, a murder conviction would not be possible. Despite the absence of his victims’ bodies, there was sufficient forensic evidence for him to be convicted for the murders and subsequently executed.

(source – wikipedia)

A is for Acid 

This is a TV movie of better quality than is the average, thanks in large part to a wonderfully subtle performance from Martin Clunes, who plays serial killer John George Haigh with a mixture of polite gentility and almost savage violence that makes it easy to understand how he was able to lure people to their deaths and get away with it for a time.

Having seen Clunes in a number of things over the years I was already aware that he is a good actor, but this is perhaps one of his best performances; he plays Haigh as a softly spoken and polite figure who outwardly gives no sign of the violence that lurks within him.

The writing is decent, as is the period setting, though I can’t speak to the accuracy – my research indicates that few liberties have been taken with events, the problem is mostly that the film is perhaps a little too superficial in some areas, at least for my tastes. I would have liked a bit more time to be taken over the development of the relationships between Haigh and his victims prior to their being killed; these were not sudden murders of brutal violence, but killings that were planned and executed for gain, financial or otherwise.

The cast, like the writing, is good enough for a TV movie, with a nice performance from Keeley Hawes as Haigh’s girlfriend, but it’s Clunes that lifts this and makes it something more than average.

If you like true crime stories, this is one to watch, it’s not fantastic but it is enjoyable.