The three books in the Decimation series (Decimation: The Girl Who Survived, Termination: The Boy Who Died, and Annihilation: Origins and Endings) are now available in a Kindle box set and also as an 800+ page paperback.
You can save money by buying the boxset rather than the corresponding individual Kindle versions or paperbacks.
Get the Kindle version here: Universal Amazon link
The word, Decimation, is one which has changed a little in modern colloquial usage. When people talk about something being decimated, they often mean it has been largely destroyed.
However, the original meaning of the word derives from the time of the Romans. Decimation was a form of extreme military discipline in which every tenth man in a group was executed. It was used as a punishment for severe crimes such as cowardice, desertion or mutiny.
… and a sequel (Termination). In fact the third part of the trilogy (Annihilation) is well underway too.
The blurb has also undergone a minor update.
Book one of the ground-breaking Decimation trilogy
Fifteen years ago, the Orestes virus first emerged, sweeping across the globe and infecting every living person within a matter of days. Despite the best efforts of the scientific community, there is no treatment, no vaccine. It lies dormant until a woman gives birth. Then she dies.
Teenage wheelchair athlete, Antimone Lessing, can’t remember how she got pregnant. She thinks her life is over as the doctors prepare to deliver her baby. Meanwhile, a hunt is underway to arrest the man suspected of raping her, but even if the police catch him, it will be too late for Antimone.
When she unexpectedly survives, she becomes a vital clue in the race to develop a cure before the global population declines beyond the point of no return.
But survival comes at a price. As her doctors try to understand why she is still alive, she must choose between preserving humanity’s future and protecting the life of her newborn child.
How far would you go to save the human race?
You can get a copy here (universal Amazon link)
In the last week, The Rage has undergone a refresh. The Kindle version is still available for the same £0.99/$0.99 price at Amazon.
Here is the blurb:
What really killed the dinosaurs? What if the same organism that wiped out the greatest beasts to walk the earth survived into the present day? The residents of the quiet rural village of Netherwell are about to find out first-hand.
Alice Dean becomes concerned when her husband, Dennis, fails to return from a walk in the woods. Her worst fears are confirmed when their dog returns home with a human finger in its mouth.
Over the course of the next two days, the once peaceful location is rocked by a series of horrific murders and descends into a spiral of escalating violence.
But the ancient evil lurking beneath the trees may not be the only source of danger. As the residents battle to stay alive, they begin to question the motives of those whose duty it is to protect them.
You can get a copy here or by clicking the cover below.
It’s certainly not true that all authors earn huge amounts of money and lead a life of leisure. Whisper it quietly, but I don’t make enough as a writer to live in the manner to which I have become accustomed. That means I have a day job, which pays the vast majority (in fact all) of the bills. I try to keep the world of work—in which I am a Software and Systems Manager—separate from my life as an author.
Imagine my surprise, therefore, when the two worlds collided, and I received a message to my work email address referencing one of my books in a lot of detail. With the sender’s permission, I have quoted the exchange below:
Note that the “Ow!” is intended in the style of Michael Jackson rather than an indication of pain.
So what is a MOOC you may well ask. Well, a MOOC is a Massive Open Online Course. The reason I mention it on this blog is that a new course called Start Writing Fiction commences on 12th October. This free course is run by the Open University and lasts for eight weeks. Various authors have been conscripted to provide guidance and advice including Alex Garland, author of The Beach.
Even though I have completed my first book, I still have a huge amount to learn about writing so free advice is always welcome. If some of the input from the successful authors involved in the course rubs off, it will be well worth while. The details page suggests that course work will take up approximately three hours a week so it doesn’t require a huge investment in time.
I took part in a MOOC on a programming language last year (I work for a high technology start-up company during the day) and to be honest it was a bit of a mixed bag. The course started well but then lost pace after the first few weeks. I am hoping that this course will maintain my interest until the end. I intend to go into it with an open mind. If nothing else, it will make good material for a future blog!
Another good source of advice about writing is Marg McAlister’s Writing4Success site. There are literally hundreds of articles about all aspects of writing, many of them thought provoking.
When you want a publisher or agent to accept your book, generally you need to submit a synopsis. The synopsis should be a basic summary of the plot and is written in the present tense. That should be easy, you might think, after all you have just written a hundred thousand words or more. Different publishers and agents have different constraints on the length of this document but for most of them it needs to be no more than 600 words long.
Now try and cram your well crafted novel into that number of words. I have to say that it’s not easy. My first attempt came to about 2500 words – only four times too large. After some fairly vicious cutting I was down to about 1200 words – still twice what it needs to be.
Time for a different approach. I found a good guide at publishingcrawl.com that uses the plot of Star Wars as an example. One of the main pieces of advice is to only name three characters. When you think about it, it’s kind of obvious. If you’ve only got 600 words you can’t describe all your characters, their motivations and their actions throughout the book.
Another recommendation is to stick to the main plot and omit sub-plots. In the context of The Rage, this meant omitting all the stuff that explained the cause of the outbreak.
The final major guidance was to ensure that you reveal the ending. Well I was going to do that anyway but the temptation is there to embellish the finale.
So, after taking this advice, I was left with 620 words. After rewording some parts and culling a few unnecessary details I came in at 598 words.
Maybe next time I’ll write the synopsis before I write the book!
So, that perfect work of fiction that I have created, it contains … wait for it … errors. Yes, you read that right, errors. There are the typos, the missing words, the missing punctuation, the inconsistencies, the implausible behaviour and several other mistakes of one form or another. The question is how to weed them out.
You may have read in an earlier post (Lulu – you make me want to shout!) that I bought four copies of the first draft for review purposes. Well those books are now covered in pencil, red pen and various other almost illegible scribbles. Many thanks to my early readers including Judith, Emily, Tony, Tim, Chris and Ted for taking the time to help me resolve many of the problems.
The second draft of the book is certainly not perfect by any means, but most of the obvious issues have been ironed out and the reviews so far have been very complimentary. So if friends and family like it, a publisher is sure to want to take it. The only problem is finding one who thinks the same way that I do!
More about that in a future post.
… in a good way. So after wrestling with CreateSpace, I turned my attention to Lulu. The idea is the same – print on demand and sell through Amazon if you want.
I could probably have found a 6″ by 9″ template but the site recommended A5 size so I patiently converted the text into one of their templates. I uploaded the Word document and … no problems at all.
Now for the cover. I have to say the online cover designer isn’t as good as CreateSpace’s version but it’s adequate for the job. If you are an expert, you can download a template and design the cover offline.
I save the design and .. the web site is satisfied – happy days! I order four books (for the price of three) and wait for them to arrive. They tell me they will be delivered after printing time plus four or five business days.
Four days later I get a parcel. My books have arrived! I open the package with bated breath and … Wow! These are really professionally printed books. The cover looks a bit dark compared to what I had envisioned but the quality is excellent.
For about the same price each that you would buy a bestseller from a book store, I have four books that look like any book that you would pick up in a um … well a book store.
Now for the reviewing stage …
For those of you who don’t know, CreateSpace is an Amazon owned company that you can use to publish your book. It is what is known as a Print on Demand publisher. The idea is that you upload the text of your book, design the cover and then you can publish on Amazon’s main website or buy copies direct.
So I wanted a few copies of the first revision of my book to send out for review. I used a template that had been created for CreateSpace; being an American company the default size is 6″ by 9″. I faithfully copied the book contents from the Word document I had been using to write it, into the template.
Right, I’m ready to upload my book. The site allows me to select the file from my PC, and a few seconds later it is telling me that it is checking the format. It recommends that whilst I am waiting, I design the cover, so I do. The tools for this are actually pretty good and a few minutes later I have a first draft of the cover.
And that’s when the problems start. The website states that there are two issues with the format. The main issue is that I have to embed the fonts in the document. Google is my friend so I do a bit of research and a few minutes later I upload the new file (which is now ten times bigger so I know it’s got the fonts in it).
The website ponders my new format for a few minutes then states that there are still two issues (the other is to do with the resolution of the map images at the front of the book – easily sorted). Strange … I open the problem page again. It still says I haven’t embedded the fonts. Argh! I know I have because the file’s ten times bigger.
Okay, let’s try converting to PDF. I save the document as a PDF and upload again. CreateSpace ponders for a few minutes then delivers its verdict – 3 errors! What? The fault screen now says I still have the resolution issue, I still have the font issue and now I have another issue to do with the text going into the wrong area of the page (the bleed area to be technical). When I click the fault to see which pages the new problem lies on, it’s all of them.
Well I didn’t give up there – I tried several different options and formats, all to no avail.
I hear that Lulu is really good!
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