Since I last posted here, the one about my latest Nova Scotia birder mystery ‘The Final Tick’, Sandra and I have been busy.
Aside from writing new books, more on that later, we decided to re-do our Australia travelogue. The prime reason was that, as it was our first travelogue, it was an experimental version and we always intended to apply what we’d learned there to produce a better version later, or three as it turns out. One of the issues was the print price of that book, a whopping $56. This was because we selected the best quality, which I know sounds like a no-brainer when it comes to a book full of photos, but it makes a $20+ difference if you drop the quality one level and it doesn’t seem to affect the finished article.
Another issue was an imbalance in written contributions. My text was largely what I posted on my blog, so a re-write from me was in order. In the end, we decided to break the trip into its three constituent parts, now called ‘Bimbling Round Brisbane’, ‘Cruising Round Cairns’ and ‘Meandering Round Melbourne’. The eBooks are 2.99, the print versions range from $16.00 to $26.00. The astute amongst you, will see that the cumulative print costs exceed the original $56.00. It does, but there’s a lot more in the books now, both in text and photos and besides, the print books are for us unless you have more money than sense. In which case I can offer my full catalogue at retail.
Below are the covers, each intended to tell a bit about the places we went.
Project two involved ‘Survivor’. This book is living something of a chequered existence. Right from publication we had issues with Amazon, in that it seemed to get put somewhere in their system that made it hard to find. All my books, bar ‘Survivor’, can be found by searching my name and the book title in the general Amazon search. For ‘Survivor’, you have to go to the book category first to find it. A small step, true, but not one people expect to have to make, and so they haven’t.
The second issue with the book was the cover. The book is about the rising seas and the surviving of all that such an event entails. It’s a gritty tale, but then it would be. The end of our species isn’t going to be made any easier by having the latest iPhone. We discussed a change and we both felt that a cover which showed an old boat heading for a foreboding place might convey more of an accurate message. They say the cover is what gets people interested in the book, this is only partially true, reviews get people interested. Sadly, we live in a time where TripAdvisor now covers what to expect when you open a Mars Bar and so people want to know what someone else thinks before rashly dropping 99c on a book. So, we re-did the cover and ironed out a handful of typos, something we do every time we do an update because the little buggers get missed.
It would be nice if the new cover tempted people to read ‘Survivor’, because it’s good, in fact it would be nice if more people read it altogether. Writing a book is a big investment of time and emotion and an author, naturally, hopes that the reader will want to be a part of the journey when it’s finished.
If you have the eBook it will, eventually have the typo corrected version for upload free.
Some time ago I had an idea for a story and started to write things down. It grew a bit, and soon I had what felt like a solid base for a book, but not one of my current series books. Then I inserted something else and, while Sandra wasn’t sure about it at the time, I was. Now that original writing, suitably supplemented by new material, is forming the theme of the new Nova Scotia Birder Mystery ‘Fragile Lives’. I won’t say too much here just yet, but it will be pretty dark in places while staying true to the genre in others. I found ‘The Final Tick’ quite frustrating to write, and it took me some time to get everything I wanted to say written down and in an agreeable order. I haven’t read it since we hit ‘publish’, but Sandra has and she likes it. I find I wait about a year before re-reading something I’ve written, then I can be pleasantly surprised at how good it is.
When I published ‘The Seven Year Twitch’, the tales of my first seven years of birding in Nova Scotia, I had intended that the next chapter would be spread over a similar lengthy period. Now I’m more inclined to do something for the year 2023, because it has been a quite spectacular year and I’d rather like to have it somewhere readily available for myself. If it happens, and these things can change quickly, naturally I’ll tell you all about it. I haven’t got a real title yet, my working title is ‘Another Year in Paradise’, but I think I can do better.
Soon, hopefully, Amazon will introduce the opportunity for authors to make audio books. Thinking about that, and playing around with Microsoft Clipchamp, Sandra has produced a video which features a reading of part of ‘The Harvesters’. How it works is that you paste your text in, and the programme generates a selected voice, Canadian for us, then it reads the text. You can also embellish the visual experience with their various inserts, in this case it is something ethereal in keeping with the story. The end result is a YouTube video that you both watch and listen to. The spoken voice struggles a bit with context, but otherwise is surprisingly effective. Take a look and listen here if you’re interested.
Finally, I’d like to thank you if you’ve read any of my books. I’m always open to criticism (or praise) and more than happy to discuss books, plots, characters and in fact anything related to my work. You can use the comments section of the blog or email to contact me, and I will get back to you unless you’re a scammer.
Here’s hoping everyone has a great 2024 and I look forward to sharing my stories, old and new, with you.
Mark Dennis Books 