My first novel is available on Amazon

My first published book is available from Amazon here.

The Joy of Ex was published in 2008 on Oktober Books.

The back page blurb says:

“It all starts with a drunken bet, well actually it starts with a lot of Jose Cuervo, some casual sex with strangers and a drunken concept, the drunken bet kind of follows naturally along behind. Nick is convinced the spark that gets a girl to sleep with him is still there between them forever, however the relationship ends.

His best mate Blake doesn’t agree. Instead Blake believes the fire between two people is gone, on one side at least, when things come to an end.

To find out who is right Nick bets Blake he cannot seduce and bed six of his ex girlfriends/one nighters – and provide photographic evidence. So is an ex girlfriend ripe for seduction, or is everything truly over when one partner says goodbye? Blake is about to find out when he discovers The Joy of Ex.”

not always mad keen on industry prizes

I am not always mad keen on industry prizes, but happened to look at a list of previous winners of the Man Booker prize.

And noted I had only read two of them:

Paddy Clarke HaHaHa by Roddy Doyle (the worst book of his I have read, in my opinion)

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (great book – much better than the film, even though it had Kristin Scott-Thomas in, who rocks in everything I have seen her in).

Two of 44 is not many, and I wonder if I should have read more of them…

I also wonder what will happen to book prizes as publishing changes with the advent of digital business models?

Self driving vehicle getting ever nearer

Self driving vehicle getting ever nearer as shown in the article about a new innovation from Volkswagen.

The web is forever

I found this page while Googling a while back.

I kind of like it, as it feels like a really private frozen moment in someone’s life. Maybe they have forgotten the page is there… I don’t know.

What it reminds me is what we put online is permanent – apparently if you try to stop your Facebook account and then log back into an account you think you have deleted it is still there, frozen in time, like the page I link to. (someone I know gave up on Facebook and then went back to discover his pages mothballed rather than deleted).

 

Harry Potter and the making of another fortune

The Harry Potter books are to be sold as eBooks for the first time.

As far as I can tell from reading the various articles, JK is set to earn herself another fortune as she never sold the digital rights to her books to her publishers.

Which means when Pottermore sells a book, instead of the author receiving 10% of the sale as is often the case in traditional bookselling, as she appears to own Pottermore, she will make every penny.

Good for her by the way.

What this shows is an established author can sell direct to the public via digital means (and remember Radiohead did a similar thing with In Rainbows) but what does it mean for authors without the name recognition of JK and her boy wizard?

Using Firefox approved

Only the other day someone commented it was good to see I used Firefox and having seen this study, I am now doubly pleased with the compliment.