Man of Famine and Other Updates
The cover for Man of Famine is booked in for the end of June. I'm excited about this. Will it be abstract? Or depict a scene from the book? Whatever it is, it'll be a redesign for the series.
This is the synopsis I gave to the cover designer for Man of Famine:
Ireland is lost. The world has sealed its borders. There is no evacuation.
The Weeping Plague has turned Ireland into a wasteland, its infected roam endlessly, after leaving cities and towns silent. They are drawn by the noise of survival camps. Desperate people flee to Omey Island hoping to get a place on one of the cruise ships stranded in Irish waters. Their only defence is a sequence of tolling church bells in nearby villages that corral a horde of infected around and away from the camp. Those who survive do so on borrowed time – buying safety by ensuring their own destruction. Soon the horde will be too massive to control.
Grace was ready to end it all until she was saved by a bell-ringer who keeps the horde moving. When he fails, she takes up the mantle, knowing it’s a death sentence.
Samantha, fuelled by loss and vengeance, hunts a scientist who may hold the key to stopping the plague – if he can be found before it's too late.
Fin believes he’s infected, forced to accept that he’ll never see his family again. And Burke, an Irish Ranger, tracks a rogue soldier carrying stolen secrets that could hold answers to everything.
But the dead are changing. They’re learning. And as the horde grows, the cost of survival may be more than any of them can bear.
A Walk:
How far do you think it's feasible to walk in a day? What if it's during a zombie apocalypse? I wanted to test that out… as far as reality would allow. I followed the Tain Way and clocked in around 44km. I was fairly banjaxed after the thirty-five mark and had some coffee and ice-cream stops along the route. Something Fin is unlikely to have. This was the middle of April. I also did not have to worry about weeping zombies. In the upcoming Man of Famine, it's still early January. There aren't as many workable hours in the day. I did not have to use a map, or compass. The route is sign posted the whole way.
The story of Weep is not leaving the west of Ireland yet. There's a conversation between Burke and Fin that I'm enjoying. In it, Fin tries to plot a route on a map without understanding how to read it. When he asks Burke for advice, he's told to just keep heading east. In a straight line from where Man of Famine ends, it's approximately 150km to Fins home town. Burke thinks at a push, he could do it in two days. Stopping only for water and to orient himself, but he would arrive compromised. The journey is only the beginning.
Four days is how long he thinks a person of average ability and above average drive would make it in. He estimates at least six for Fin. Throw in the infected and the time between him and his family keeps mounting.
News and Updates
I recently had a Bookbub featured deal. Any author will tell you these things are golden opportunities to reach more readers. Since starting out in publishing, getting a Bookbub deal was a big thing. It's a daily newsletter that goes out to millions of subscribers with a list of discounted books in every genre. If you're not already using Bookbub to save money on your digital and audio reading, you're missing out. That said, I probably end up spending more now because of it. After years of applying on and off, I got one for Slack Jaw.
People are inclined to try something new at a discounted price, but the results of mine were underwhelming. That was a great lesson in itself. Why? It made me scrutinise my book package. Does the cover tell my ideal reader that this is for them? What about the blurb?
I think the biggest obstacle was the blurb. I've written hundreds of thousands of words, but blurbs give me the heeby jeebies. You have two hundred words which are supposed to sell over a hundred thousand. So I outsourced the writing of Slack Jaws blurb to a company that specialises in back copy. It's very competent copy, but I don't think it's the right hook for post-apocalyptic readers. Without knowing the content of the story, you might think Slack Jaw is a romance. When readers know all hopes of a happy ever after are dashed before the introduction ends. The beauty of self-publishing is you can make changes.
I love the cover, but is it ideal for post-apocalyptic fiction? I don't know. When I use post-apocalyptic images on TikTok, with snippets of story written over them, there's a lot of momentum that builds up to the cover of the book. People arrive on Amazon with a very short horror story snippet and might not even look at the blurb. TikTok allows me to try out different hooks, and it has shown how you have a limited time to catch attention. So I've to reel in Slack Jaw and put a sharper hook on it.
I look forward to changing things and applying for another Bookbub to see what happens.
Audiobooks
Nearly every day now I'm asked about audiobooks, so I'll leave the answer hidden away here at the bottom of a blog post. I'd love to have the series in audio and it's bound to happen, eventually. My aim is to do it independently, which comes at a cost. To get the series so far in audio and edited, you're talking around 20,000. These are chunky stories.
On the Kindle dashboard beside my books, there's a little green sentence that lets me know I'm eligible for an audiobook made with a virtual voice. I don't want to do that and I don't want to enter a long contract either. When I'm finished with Man of Famine, I'll start chipping away at the audiobooks. If you've followed me for a while, you know if I set a date, that's just a point in the calendar when you can be disappointed. Let it be an ambiguous disappointment.
If you have come across Irish narrators that have stirred you, suggested the book they voiced and I’ll have a listen.
Selling Direct
Until recently, readers could not get a physical copy of Slack Jaw to Ireland from Amazon. This coupled with the rise of indie authors selling direct had me curious about trying it out. I found a local printer and got a price on a run of paperbacks. Selling direct comes with its own headaches - living with a thousand copies of the book - but it also means being able to set a lower price while still earning more from the sale of each book. I think for the release of Man of Famine I'll have the paperback and digital copies available to sell direct from me.
At the moment, the ebooks are exclusive to Amazon. This means I can enrol them in Kindle Unlimited and subscribers to that service can read for free. This accounts for a quarter of 'sales.' Going back to what I mentioned regarding people trying something new when the cost of disappointment isn't say, the equivalent to a pint, or cup of coffee. If you're on Kindle Unlimited and try the book, you don't like it, you're down nothing but time. So there is a use case there. Unfortunately, everyone outside of the Amazon ecosystem doesn't really have a legitimate option to read.
If you buy one of my books on Amazon at the start of a month, I won't see royalties from that sale for 90 days. Whereas with selling direct, you have immediate access to funds which can be invested back into the books as audio/covers/edits. I'll give it a go with Man of Famine. Short stories might be the way to trial this out.
Shorts:
The next short in the Weep Last Letters series will be Tracks. Set just after the outbreak. A law enforcement officer realising that this chaos may be a playground for some, crosses a line he can't come back from.
Chestnut Heaven
I have an actual short story appearing in an upcoming anthology of Irish writers. Not the normal 10K+ short I usually write. It's about a boy looking for a place where the chestnuts are so plentiful it's as if they grow on trees, would you believe? His grandfather dies before revealing the location of this secret grove. Chestnut heaven is based on an actual place. My grandad would wake me up before school to help pick mushrooms and then we'd go to chestnut heaven where you'd leave with bulging pockets, bags full and a jumper bowed beneath the weight of so many mahogany jewels. In life imitating art, he passed away recently, before telling me where chestnut heaven is. The divil.
Cottage Core
I used to joke about becoming a writer-hermit. Then I became one. You wouldn’t think to look at it, but I got a lot of post-apocalyptic horror written in this idyllic seaside cottage. I enjoyed it so much, it’s in the first chapter of Man of Famine.
