Author Archives: Mike

It lives! The Auran Chronicles: Message Bearer is out now

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At last, Auran Chronicles: Message Bearer is alive and well on Amazon after 18 months of hard slog.

For those who may be interested, the Auran Chronicles is a series of Urban Fantasy novels that can be best be described as a mix of a gritty, older Harry Potter-type story mixed with the Matrix and some quantum physics thrown in.

Book 2 is well underway, and will be out 1st half of 2016.

Blurb…

‘You were drawn. I can see it. You are Latent.’

For reasons unknown, Seb is constantly drawn to random places without meaning, following an instinct he doesn’t understand.

One night that instinct lands him in trouble when he encounters Sarah, a young woman hunted by a fiend that can only be described as the stuff of nightmares. Against his better judgement Seb attempts to intervene, only to nearly get himself killed in the process. Before she passes, Sarah transfers something to him, an arcane knowledge that gets buried deep into his subconscious.

Rescued by the Brotherhood warrior Cade, Seb’s life takes on an unexpected turn when he is told he is a Latent, able to manipulate the very energies of reality to his own devices. He is brought into a world within our own where the Magistry and its allies engage with the demonic Sheol in a timeless conflict that has traversed entire universes.

A world where he, and he alone, carries the message that could change the course of the conflict forever.

Cover done!

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AuranChronicles_CVR_SML

Well, the cover’s finally done, courtesy of Steve at Novak Illustration. Great work by a really talented guy!

Next week looks to see the release of my first novel, Message Bearer (part of the Auran Chronicles universe). Very scared, but just thankful to see this one finally getting to see the light of day!

Useful editing tip using the Kindle app

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I’ve just finished the line edit of my final draft of Message Bearer and I thought I’d share an approach I found on this particular draft that I found immensely useful.

One of my biggest challenges is that I seem to have some kind of writer’s blindness when spotting the minor errors that dot a manuscript (double words “the the”, missing words “he opened [the] door” and so forth). These are the kind of errors that don’t get picked up by the spelling/grammar checker and are somehow invisible to my own eyes when looking at the Word document.

So, for this final pass through I wanted to read the book as a reader would, not in Word but on my kindle (well android tablet but you get the idea). Reading the book in this way makes these little errors stand out much more prominently than from the Word doc so I thought I’d give it a go. My plan was to keep a pad alongside and make notes as I went through, ready for the final touch ups.

What I ended up doing though was instead using the Kindle app’s note taking ability. This allows you to highlight text in the document, save a note/comment and move on. I did this for the entire read through and after that was complete I simply whizzed through the Word doc with my tablet next to me, fixing the highlighted text and then deleting the note. It worked a dream!

Hopefully someone else may find this approach useful. For me it allowed me to experience the book as a reader would, not as a Word file. It made it much easier to capture all the minor typos, word errors etc. I know I could’ve done this by printing out the whole thing and making notes on the manuscript but my handwriting is so terrible I’d probably forget what the comment is actually about!

New Star Wars Force Awakens Trailer Lands!

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Wow…

Just…wow…

Questions:

  • How does Finn know how to use a light sabre?
  • Does he even have a chance when facing Kylo Ren?
  • Who’s Rey crying over?
  • Is the Imperial planet basically a giant death star?
  • How, just how, does Kylo use that crazy cross-guard light sabre?

So can’t wait to see this. I will probably squeal in a quite unmanly way when Luke makes his belated appearance!

Cover artists, any recommendations?

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Well, the time has come, the final draft is complete, only 12 months behind schedule(!), and I’m now looking to get this thing in a shape fit to enter the (eBook) indie publishing foray.

One of the things I did consider was doing my own cover, but after a brief effort I realized that my skills lie far, far away from that particular area, so I’m looking to hire a freelance to do it for me.

I’m going to be looking around the old t’internet to see what I can find, but if anyone has any good recommendations for a cover artist please let me know. Specifically, the novel is an urban fantasy along the lines of the Dresden Files or Stephen Mchugh’s Crimes Against Magic series – so I’m thinking a cover that’s moody, urban, with a good bit of mysticism thrown in. Nice and clear, right? 🙂

Any recommendations please fire them over!

Ooh – a review of one of my short stories!

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Found this little piece. It’s only short (as is the story), but it’s nice to read some positive feedback in any case!

For anyone interested the relevant work can be found here.

Courtesy of UndiscoveredTomes.blogspot.co.uk:

Everything within this story needed to be there: Every thought, every action, every word. The writing was exceptional. There was no flowery language, no extra narration. The writing was strong.

Even the dedication at the end fit well. It hit me like a truck, which could only happen with a powerful story.

If you read none of the others on this list, read this one.

http://undiscoveredtomes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/a-halloween-treat-four-free-snack-sized.html

Wayward Pines

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***DISCLAIMER***

I am no way affiliated with Blake Crouch, Fox or anyone else related to the Wayward Pines Trilogy

***DISCLAIMER***

I’m not one for reviews normally, there’s definitely a lot better people out there who are much able to sell the merits of a particular novel than I am. However this time I thought I’d make an exception.

I’ve just finished The Last Town, the final part of the Wayward Pines trilogy –  a creepy, Twin Peaks-esque thriller/horror/all round good yarn about secret service agent Ethan Burke who is sent to the idyllic town of Wayward Pines, Idaho in an attempt to uncover what has happened to his ex-partner. Without giving anything away, here’s the blurb for book one (Pines):

Secret service agent Ethan Burke arrives in Wayward Pines, Idaho, with a clear mission: locate and recover two federal agents who went missing in the bucolic town one month earlier. But within minutes of his arrival, Ethan is involved in a violent accident. He comes to in a hospital, with no ID, no cell phone, and no briefcase. The medical staff seems friendly enough, but something feels…off. As the days pass, Ethan’s investigation into the disappearance of his colleagues turns up more questions than answers. Why can’t he get any phone calls through to his wife and son in the outside world? Why doesn’t anyone believe he is who he says he is? And what is the purpose of the electrified fences surrounding the town? Are they meant to keep the residents in? Or something else out? Each step closer to the truth takes Ethan further from the world he thought he knew, from the man he thought he was, until he must face a horrifying fact—he may never get out of Wayward Pines alive.

I won’t say much more about the plot than the above, as the story itself is fascinating, and whilst the final part is almost like an episode of 24 with it’s relentless pace and action, it serves as a fitting end to an engrossing series. Blake has taken up a familiar premise but added a (to me, anyway) unique slant that made me devour each instalment within hours.

And the last scene of the last book – Wow.

I’m aware there’s a TV series from FOX coming out shortly based on the books, but as with anything like this I would recommend you sample the source material first, just to ensure you experience it from the author’s original version.

Heartily recommended. 5 Stars.

Mike