Neon Sands KindleScout & reading update

I'm not reading half as much as I wish I was! Something about writing a book that is all consuming... hmm, I wonder what that could be.

However, I am currently taking a break with Daniel Barnett's 'My Hungry Friend' (which you can find on Goodreads here). His book, Longreave, is my favourite indie book to date, so I'm looking forward to getting stuck in.










It's also the final week of Neon Sands' Kindle Scout campaign. It started really well but then began to flounder in the pool of words and titles on offer. I barely marketed it when it was 'Hot & Trending' and when it fell out of that category, it was a killer. Went from 400-500 pagereads a day to single and double figures. If you want to put your book on Kindle Scout, never let up on the marketing!

Still, you never know, it could be picking up the nominations in the background without the numbers of pagereads (that's not a stat you're allowed to see). Either way, it's good publicity, and has taught me a lesson in case I try the same approach again.

If you haven't checked Neon Sands out yet, you can do so from here. It's book one in the first trilogy of three trilogies, with mysteries to discover, strange technologies, and sand to clean from eyes and otherwise clean cracks. It gets everywhere.

Read the Ends Meat short story introduction.

BOOK review: Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides

My favourite author is such and such, this guy or that gal. We list them off like old friends, knowing we share a private stash of memories; even if someone else was present their experience of the same moments will have been different. The list becomes commonplace, and we become complacent in our recitation of it. It’s easy to remember that we may like something, but more difficult to remember why we liked that something in the first place. And when that something is a Jeffrey Eugenides book, with countless yawning years between each release, the remembered joy of the pages remain while the words that caused it may fade.

So, good to see you old friend. I have a fresh complaint – that you don’t visit more often! There wasn’t one story in this collection I didn’t enjoy. They’re all vignettes of sometimes poignant and sometimes mundane moments in life. There’s life and death and tragedy, apathy and sex and emotional dysentery. Each story is best experienced spoiler free, so what I’m going to do is just take a favourite line from each for you to enjoy.

The Economy of Trickle Down

Whenever you hear that there is going to be a tax-cut, what your government is actually doing is giving you a massive middle-finger. They're telling you in no uncertain terms that they don't give a damn about you, that they exist purely to line the pockets of the powerful.

Here in the UK, and recently in the USA, we have a corporation tax so low even Mini-me would struggle to limbo beneath without risk of decapitation. Additionally, both the Tories and the Trump administration, under different guises, have put more money into the pockets of the average Joe, through personal income tax threshold raises and higher allowances. A ruse, to make it seem as though we have more money when in fact we don't. It says, we're giving these corporations a break, and you too! Everyone wins!

DailyFlash: Neon Knight Art

Alvaro Escudero took my Neon Knight flash fiction and created this awesome piece of artwork - all cyberpunk and glittering. You can check out how he did it by clicking here.

Short Story: Accident

He had the most boring job in the city – for real – it ranked bottom in a Kingdom-wide satisfaction survey. Traffic control warden. There were only six of them, and they rotated in eight-hour shifts, two a shift; relinquishing their soft, warm seat and sweat-sticky headset to the next with a wordless, faceless expression.

                An expression that didn’t change.

                He could see through the ‘eyes’ of the drones and direct their movement through the headset and from the ‘comfort’ of the office. There were physical monitors too for when the heavy feeling on the eyes became too much, but for the most part, that faint blue glimmer of the screens was a pale facsimile of light on his skin and nothing more.

                Two minutes into a shift and he became a dislocated entity, a city-bird without a roost.

                A little longer and red triangles flashed in his periphery. An accident. Two traffic control drones were needed on the A5 road. He despatched them and connected to their cameras; autocars shifted in synchronicity around him, keeping their distance and speed in check. As he got nearer to the accident he began to overtake them as their speed decreased, and then stopped altogether. Up ahead, one autocar had overturned. The wheels hadn’t thought to stop turning.

DailyFlash: Crawling the sands

Inside the forward cockpit was a beep. The metal detector had detected something large; it stretched long and metallic left-to-right, or perhaps right-to-left, before them. Walker brought the crawler to a stop and the last few track revolutions dug into the sand before finally halting.

                He sent Caia out to investigate. She dropped to the sand, blower on back and sand-boots on feet, and walked forward, sweeping the blower in arc before her. The sand swirled up and became a red mist around her. She pulled the scarf around her face a little tighter.

                A shiny green surface appeared just below her. The more sand she cleared the clearer the pipe became, arching over to the other side. She removed her hands to touch it and felt vibrations running through her arm, and when she placed her ear to the cool metal, the sound of gushing water bellowed.

This flash fiction was inspired by the world of Neon Sands, the first in a trilogy currently accepting nominations on Kindle Scout. Like this world and want to read more? Please vote for Neon Sands on Kindle Scout and get a free copy!

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/M0AVK7KHQVAB

Short Story: Ends Meat

There it was again – the smell. Barrick glanced at his father, who had his eyes closed but he probably wasn’t asleep, just too exhausted by hunger to keep them open. His cheeks were shallow, as though sucking air, his lips two thin lines of scabs.

                Father’s hemp shirt had become a shawl these last few weeks. The same was true for Barrick, his brothers and his sister.

                Finally, father’s eyes opened, his nostrils twitched, and with energy summoned from a dark place, he rose. “Again…” he said, barely moving his lips; tension in the jaw and scabs that would split.

                “I don’t know how they can do it,” said mother, head limp and resting on her raised knees.

                Father swung his legs from the bed and stared into space. The look was a disease, and they all had it. Barrick had seen it first in the faces of the eldest; at night, sharing a bowl of thin soup and disappearing as the first songs began, taking a bottle of moonshine with them. One by one, others caught the look and stopped turning up at all. He’d see them by day, afflicted by the vacant gaze as they sat beside the transparent wall of the dome. They’d stare at the sands but Barrick had no idea what they were looking at; perhaps they saw mirages of visiting caravans that no longer came.

DailyFlash: Within Means

“How do you want them?” asked Mireille.
     The wanderer held her rations out. The temptation to eat them right away had slowly vanished the older she got. Now it was the exact opposite. “Dried.”
     Mireille took the fruit from her hands and placed them in the condenser. In an hour, the grapes would be raisins, the apples one third their size and hard, and all the liquid would be collected in the bottles. They would make a nice meal out on the sands, sometimes accompanied by jerked meat.
     It used to be a challenge to spread the meals out; make it last as long as possible. Now, she’d find shelter and be surprised by how much she still had left. Might even take fewer rations than offered.
     “Can I trade these for extra clothes anywhere?” she asked.
     Mireille looked at her as though she was crazy.

This flash fiction was inspired by the world of Neon Sands, the first in a trilogy currently accepting nominations on Kindle Scout. Like this world and want to read more? Please vote for Neon Sands on Kindle Scout and get a free copy!

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/M0AVK7KHQVAB

DailyFlash: Lightning Rainbow

"The rains are coming on! The rains are coming on!" shouted the little boy. He jumped into an excited run and tried to pull his sister with him.
     She stood, knowing there was no need to rush. There was a little bubble of excitement within, but it wasn't quite as big as it used to be.
     The boy lead the way, bounding up the stairwell from level three where he shared accommodation with his family - and a few others. Neon strip-lights lit up as he passed beneath them. The girl watched him disappear into the courtyard of the dome through heavy double doors that swung back into her face.
     In the courtyard her brother was already standing with his friends, waiting for the weekly shower.
     "30 seconds..." said Kirillion's voice over the loudspeaker. The girl looked up to the apex of the dome and the saucer-shaped shadow of the watchtower from where Kirillion spoke. Where the important things were done.
     Then it began. The pipes that ran adjacent to the shaft leading to the watchtower gushed with water. She put a hand on one and could feel it vibrate. At the top, the pipe passed from their dome and into the outer dome - the Agridome - and there; they watched as the water cascaded in a rainpour they could see, but not feel.
     Lightning rainbows shimmered on the inner lining as the rain made its way down to the crops below, and all the kids "wooowed" in wonder.

This flash fiction was inspired by the world of Neon Sands, the first in a trilogy currently accepting nominations on Kindle Scout. Like this world and want to read more? Please vote for Neon Sands on Kindle Scout and get a free copy!

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/M0AVK7KHQVAB

Neon Sands - Kindle Scout Nominations

Hi everybody! The first book in the Neon Sands trilogy is now up on Kindle Scout awaiting nominations.

Link spam: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/M0AVK7KHQVAB

What is Kindle Scout? It's an Amazon affiliate - if a book gets enough votes in a 30 day period, they publish it and market it, making the whole exercise a lot easier for the self-published authors. Voters also get a free copy!

Link spam: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/M0AVK7KHQVAB

Sand like powder smothers the decimated planet; those that eke an existence scavenge and utilise old technologies they barely understand, wanderers drifting from outpost to outpost. But the sand hides secrets, and when it shifts, questions unasked and allegiances long forged are challenged. What else is the sand hiding? A sci-fi/punk adventure in an inhospitable landscape, Neon Sands is the opening book in an epic series that will explore Man’s technological and innate potential, and the search for hope when all looks bleak.

IF YOU VOTE I WILL BE ETERNALLY GRATEFUL!