As promised, Big Bad Media has put out a pre-release edition of the TimeSplash audiobook at just £4.95. Click the Buy Now button below and you will be taken straight to Paypal to make the transaction. If you’d like to hear sample chapters from the book, [...]]]>

Download the TimeSplah pre-release audiobook at a massively discounted price.

As promised, Big Bad Media has put out a pre-release edition of the TimeSplash audiobook at just £4.95. Click the Buy Now button below and you will be taken straight to Paypal to make the transaction. If you’d like to hear sample chapters from the book, this link will take you to the TimeSplash page at Big Bad Media. This price will no longer be available in a few weeks when the full release is published.

After just six months as an ebook from Lyrical Press, TimeSplash has been picked up by publishing house Big Bad Media and will soon be appearing in Print and as an Audiobook.

I can’t tell you how excited I am about the deal I have just signed with Big Bad Media. [...]]]>

A new logo on the spine.

After just six months as an ebook from Lyrical Press, TimeSplash has been picked up by publishing house Big Bad Media and will soon be appearing in Print and as an Audiobook.

I can’t tell you how excited I am about the deal I have just signed with Big Bad Media. This is a new and very energetic multimedia publishing house, based in Denmark and run by ex-pat Brit, Greg McQueen. (You may well know them for their amazing success with 100 Stories for Haiti, which is still helping to raise money for that devastated country.) Greg is a big fan of techno-thrillers and his enthusiasm for TimeSplash is both gratifying and energizing.

I have been working with the amazingly talented YA author, Emma Newman, to record the audiobook for a couple of months now and I’m pretty sure you’ll like the result. Emma’s podcasts of her own novel “Twenty Years Later” gathered a huge following on her blog Post Apocalyptic Publishing – not just because it is a great book (which it is), but because of Emma’s unique voice – and I am extremely lucky that she was keen to record TimeSplash. If you’ve read TimeSplash already, you’ll know what I mean when I say she gives just the right tone of vulnerability and toughness to Sandra’s character.

The audiobook should be available in just a few weeks as an iPad/iPhone app (with lots of added extras) and shortly after that it will be available through Audible.com and other leading online retailers. I just can’t wait to hear what you all think of it! Before then, though, Big Bad Media will make a pre-release version available. This will happen in the next day or two. If you are considering buying the audiobook of TimeSplash, you might want to grab the pre-release as it will be significantly cheaper than the full release when it arrives. We’re rushing this out partly because we just can’t wait to get it out there, partly so that it will be ready in time for WorldCon next week, and partly because we know people love a bargain.

The print version of TimeSplash should be out before Christmas. So start making a list of all the people who would like to receive a copy from Santa

One really special thing about this for me is that my daughter, Becky, who is a graphic designer (among many other things,) had already done a design for a TimeSplash cover, and when I showed it to Big Bad Media, they liked her work so much they asked her to do both the print and audiobook versions (as well as a couple of other books they are about to publish!) I’m going to be so proud of my book for so many reasons.

Lyrical Press will continue to publish the ebook edition, so if you were planning to feed your Kindle, don’t worry, it is still available.

You can probably tell what a big deal this is for me. Being in print and audio means TimeSplash has access to between ten and thirty times the audience that it has had as an ebook (depending on whose figures you believe). That means a lot more people will read it and that, at the end of the day, is what writing it was all about.

I’ll keep you posted when the pre-release is available and then when each of the new editions arrives in the shops.

What I can mention is a great review I found at 1889 Labs just now by author MCM. One of the delights of having a book ‘out there’ is [...]]]>

TimeSplash has been having a good day. Sadly, I can’t tell you about most of it (sorry) but I hope to be making a very exciting announcement soon.

What I can mention is a great review I found at 1889 Labs just now by author MCM. One of the delights of having a book ‘out there’ is that, sometimes, reviews just pop up out of nowhere. This one was a particularly fulsome one but, better still, MCM really appreciated the world-building and research that had gone into making the future world of TimeSplash as rich and believable as possible. I really take a pride in making sure I get everything as close to plausible as I can, so it is is great when a reader notices.

Like every reader of every book ever written, MCM didn’t think TimeSplash was quite perfect. For him (I think it’s a him!) the protagonists were just too young to be saving the world. He was especially concerned that Jay (who is just 20 at the end of the story) is working for MI5 and wouldn’t have had time to complete his training. Luckily, I can set MCM’s mind at rest on this one, as this just happens to be one of the things I was careful to check as I wrote the book.

MI5 takes in recruits at all age levels from school-leavers (18) upwards. They give intensive training courses and these don’t take as long as you might expect. A graduate recruit will be given six months of training (plus training in specialisms as their career develops.) For comparison, this is a few weeks longer than the 20 weeks of training given to FBI Special Agent recruits at Quantico. When we meet Jay the second time, he has been in MI5 for two years, has been in training for a lot of that time. He has also gained a fair amount of field experience.

I think it is also fair to say that Jay’s prominence in the action is not at all of his own choosing. He is pushed forward (manipulated, you might say) by superiors, and thrust reluctantly into the limelight when he teams with Sandra. Nevertheless, he is a very highly-motivated young man – for reasons that come up early in the book – and, while he’s no genius, he’s not daft, either. When he is given an opportunity to make a difference, he takes it without (much) hesitation and does a good job.

But why did I make Jay so young?

There are two reasons. Firstly, Jay and Sandra were both part of the splashparty scene at the start of the book – no grown-ups allowed. Secondly, as the book proceeds, a relationship builds between Jay and Sandra. Now, neither of them is stupid, yet they are both pretty inept at making it work. True, they have their problems, but if I’d made them both mature adults, the only real excuse they could have for not being sensible about their feelings, is that they are idiots. I didn’t want people to think that, or to lose sympathy with them. So I made them young and (especially in Jay’s case) inexperienced.

Planning a book is a tricky thing. You have endless choices to make and a huge number of parameters to nail down. It is probably the part of writing a novel that I enjoy most. It is certainly the most creative part. I don’t know what it would take to make a book that everybody agrees is perfect. (Genius?) Perhaps it has never been done – I can only think of a couple of books off-hand that are almost there. Even Lord of the Rings had the irritating Tom Bombadil

Now, third place may not sound great, but when Cherie [...]]]>

It is six months now since Lyrical Press published my debut sci-fi novel, TimeSplash, and it is just starting to be noticed by genre fans. One of the signs is that it popped up today in a poll of Goodreads sci-fi authors – and in third place!

Now, third place may not sound great, but when Cherie Priest is #1 and C J Cherryh is #2, you can see why I’m particularly chuffed about this.

Of course, I have my friends to blame for this – that’s you guys! If anyone else would like to drop in at Goodreads and, oh, I don’t know, vote for TimeSplash, you could help keep me on Cloud 9 for a little while longer – at least until the gigantic fan bases of the big name writers who are below me in the poll (people like John Scalzi and Elizabeth Bear, fer cryin’ out loud!) find out about it and flex their mighty mouse clicks.

The poll is at:

http://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/37511-september-sci-fi-theme-goodreads-author-search-phase-ii-first-vote

And, if you haven’t visited Goodreads before, this would be a good opportunity to sign up and take a look around. It’s a great site for people who like to read and are looking for recommendations – or somewhere to make your own views felt.

Of course, I already owned the copyright in TimeSplash as soon as I’d finished writing it under Australian and International law, but America is special. There, to protect your rights, you have to bung the Government a few dollars, [...]]]>

Here’s something I didn’t expect to see. It is a certificate from the US Copyright Office for TimeSplash.

Of course, I already owned the copyright in TimeSplash as soon as I’d finished writing it under Australian and International law, but America is special. There, to protect your rights, you have to bung the Government a few dollars, donate a copy of the book to the US Library of Congress, and fill in a form, whatever the Hague Convention says.

But it was all worthwhile because, look, they gave me a certificate.

It's a bit crumpled but it travelled a long way.

Speaking of the Library of Congress, TimeSplash is also registered at the Australian National Library and is in their digital collection. To protect my publisher’s rights, I asked them not to make it publicly available until 2013, when my contract expires. Until then, if you want to look it up in the collection, you need to visit Canberra, where, I’m told, they have a room with a single PC on which it can be viewed but not copied or printed.

The amazing thing about Ms Harte’s review is her summary of the book. It is far better than any that I have written and better than the one my publisher is using. If only she could [...]]]>

And, hot on the heels of the review by Booktaste, this wonderful review of TimeSplash by A. M. Harte at Quillsandzebras.

The amazing thing about Ms Harte’s review is her summary of the book. It is far better than any that I have written and better than the one my publisher is using. If only she could bottle that skill, there are a million writers out there struggling with synopses who would pay large sums to acquire it.

Well, actually, even more amazing – or, at least, gratifying – is how well she speaks of the book Just listen to this:

Set in the near-future, the novel is action-packed, full of political intrigue and a sprinkling of romance. Look out — science fiction is far from dead!

I think I’m going to grin broadly all day.

And, don’t forget, while you’re over at Quillsandzebras, to have a look around the blog – lots of book reviews, author interviews, events, links, and more – and the quality is excellent.