Category: Promotion

Constance is available

On By TomIn Achievement, author honesty, author ideas, beta readers, collections, General, Insight, Novel, paperback, Promotion, reading, relaxation, self-publishing, series, thriller, trilogy, writing3 Comments

I’m delighted to announce that Constance, my latest crime thriller, is now available in digital format from Amazon. The paperback edition will be released soon.

Constance began her existence in a supporting role in Crusader, but soon evolved as much more than a female sidekick to the vigilante detective. Here was a young woman with a personal agenda, not too far removed from that of her personal idols, the members of the Beyond The Law (BTL) vigilante team.

Within the story, I’ve used brief selected passages from Codename: Foxglove, and Crusader. These scenes help to develop the tale and the main character, using a mixture of narrative and dialogue, but they’re not simply copied from the other two books. The chosen scenarios are reduced in content, and told from a different point of view.

This story is neither a prequel nor a sequel to Crusader, and is, in effect, an overlapping tale. We see how Constance proved her ability before she moved to London. We also gain an insight to her character while she’s working with Jason (Crusader), and how she operates when he leaves the Met. There’s no need to have read Crusader, however, I’m hoping that readers will be tempted to read about both member of this team in their own stories.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my beta readers from the Indie Author Support and Discussion group, Ruth Coulson aka (Rebecca Bryn), Cherime MacFarlane and Barbara Speake.

Special thanks to Sharon Brownlie of Aspire Book Covers for her advice and assistance in improving my cover solution for Constance.

As always, comments are welcome, and thank you for reading.

Crusader … is available

On By TomIn Achievement, author honesty, author ideas, beta readers, collections, editing, General, Insight, killing your darlings, Novel, paperback, paperbacks, Promotion, reading, relaxation, Review, self-publishing, series, thriller, work in progress, writing

Crusader is available as an eBook, and the paperback edition will follow soon.

Once again, I immersed myself in the story, aiming to create not only believable, but memorable characters and situations. There are only so many plots irrespective of the genre, so it’s the duty of the author to create twists and turns to develop the tale from the first word to the last.

Writers often create a formula which works for their readers, and while this is acceptable, it is the differences that will spell success or failure for an individual story.

Another area that can affect how a new tale is received is the length. My first draft of this story ended at 120k words. It took a lot of work to reduce it to 112k words which is how it went out to my beta readers. In response to their feedback, and because I wanted to tighten up the narrative, I reduced the content to 106k words.

As explained in a previous post, my secondary character was taking centre stage too often, so I removed whole chapters, and Constance deserved her own story. You’ll see from my Work in Progress that her tale will be the sequel to Crusader.

For those of you interested in such things, a handful of characters from the Beyond The Law and Codename titles play cameo roles in Crusader, and they earn the right to be there. I may get Constance: Crusader – Part 2, underway, but I’m in no rush. It has to feel like a different hero taking the lead, and to create that, I must leave the Jason and Constance team alone for a short while.

If you’ve never read my crime thrillers, this would be a good one to try. If you have read my work, I’m confident that you’ll enjoy Crusader.

Thank you, once again for valuable input from fellow author, Carmen Lopez, and from IASD authors: Lesley Hayes, Barbara Speake, Penny Luker, and Ruth Coulson.

My thanks also to those who take the time to read my work, and this writing blog.

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