All Clear!

A post from Amazon at 8.46 this morning told me my paperback ABDUCTION OF THE SCOTS QUEEN, with updated cover and interior, is now for sale. We won through!

 The final stage was to adjust the spine, where the font had run down into the area that would be cut off when the book was finally trimmed. Having used a smaller font, I moved the sub title and author name further away from the bottom edge and it seems to have worked. Also Bill re-sizing the template to suit their requirements helped. (I respectfully suggest that the template be rendered unchangeable in future.)

So, the paperback and the e-version are now available. There is a "Look Inside" facility and for those people who were kind, or brave, enough to buy my early version, the basic story has not changed. I have corrected the odd typo that crept in, taken out the unnecessary words - mostly dialogue tags - and generally improved the formatting. Kindle Create helped with that on the ebook, but as yet those nifty little separators and themed chapter headings are not available on the paperback versions.

Here are the links and the opening lines: http://amzn.to/1wQTs7F UK 

Or http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OZME2DK US

Chapter One

Northumberland, October, 1543

Dark fingers of shadow stretched across the valley toward the old sheepfold as the sun dipped behind the Redesdale hills. Inside the broken ring of stone, Matho Spirston, grumpy with unease, crouched over a fire and turned a spitted coney. The crumbling walls of the sheepfold gave some protection against the cold wind, but he was very much aware they gave none against the lawless men of Redesdale. Full dark would come soon, and it would be a rare night if the reivers stayed warm and snug in their beds once the moon rose.

“Damn!” He sucked away the sudden sting of hot fat.

Harry Wharton, his back propped against the wall, stopped honing his eating knife against a chunk of stone. “Jittery, are we? You can always ride back to Aydon and waste your life away as Carnaby’s Guard Captain.”

Matho snorted. “Aye. But like yer Da said, you’d never survive on your own.”

Harry smiled the insult away. “The thought of silver must tempt you?”

Matho grimaced at the flames. “Aye, but it’s a chancy business, snatching a queen.”

He still found it hard to believe that Harry’s father, Sir Thomas Wharton, Deputy Warden of the English West March, had suggested that they should ride north and see if they could snatch the infant Scots queen from her cradle with the aim of delivering her into King Henry’s hands. “If stealth fails, we are authorised to take her by force.” Even Harry had spluttered at such a statement.

“I doubt the Queen Dowager of Scotland will agree to that,” Harry had exclaimed. “The child is barely two years old.”

“She is not yet two years old,” his father had replied.

Running a finger lightly across his newly sharpened blade, Harry gazed across the fire with an amused glint in his eye. “You don’t fancy wearing silk shirts and owning a decent horse?”

“Silk shirts are nae use to a dead man.”

“True.” Harry sheathed his knife and rolled his blue eyes heavenward. “But wives, I’ve found, are an expensive commodity.”

So his new bride drained his purse, did she? Alina Carnaby was a demanding young lady, as he knew to his cost, but she had a pretty face. “There’s surely compensations,” Matho said as he turned the coney on its stick. “Like a warm bed on a cold winter’s night.”

“That’s true, too.”

“Your Da will dig his fist into King Henry’s gold, if you ask.”

“Ha! I have to earn my own gold.” After a long pause with both of them watching the coney turn brown, Harry said, “We’ll be across the border tomorrow.”

An excerpt....

"The room was small. The soft glow of a six-armed candelabrum shone on the wood panelling, gleamed on the pewter utensils on the side table and bounced off the gleaming gold crucifix nailed to the wall. A woman sang as she rocked the carved wooden cradle to pacify the child within. Matho released the breath he had been holding, and thanked the Lord that she sat with her back to him.
Unlike the plump, matronly servants who cared for the Carnaby children, this one wore a flimsy white nightdress with soft folds bunched and tangled around her slender feet. A crimson and gold embroidered shawl hugged her shoulders. Thick, glossy hair hung down her spine, and candlelight sparked on the jewelled pin caught in its strands. When she lifted her hand, a large purple jewel flashed in the flickering light.
Did they recruit maids from the nobility these days? Fingers, pink and tiny as a bird’s foot, waved above the cradle and plucked at the woman’s hand. Delight quivered in her voice as she sang.
Matho’s throat ached.
Christ! Harry would think him a soft-hearted beggar. He eased back from the doorway, aware that any sudden movement would betray him. Once safely in the corridor, he rested his shoulders against the cold plaster wall, blinked and swallowed the lump that threatened to fill his throat.
Harry, puzzled, watched him.
Matho shook his head, and jerked his thumb in the direction of the nursery."

http://amzn.to/1wQTs7F (UK)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OZME2DK (US)

The snippet above  is from Abduction of the Scots Queen, out in both paperback and Kindle. The house was supposedly once Darnley's house in Stirling.

Life

Editing can get tedious. I know I'm reaching that point because I find all sorts of excuses  not to knuckle down to it - even though I know I'm almost finished Banners. There's no chance of me touching it before I take Tim for a walk, and then I must have a coffee. Then I find I've drifted off onto checking my blog stats, my Kindle stats, and then collecting info before I have a look at the Nielsen website. Doing this, I've discovered that I have the same ISBN for Abduction of the Scots Queen on the Kindle version and the print copy. Not too sure what to do about it. I suppose the easiest thing would be to assign another to the Kindle copy, or to remove it completely. 

I actually received a tweet from Peter May yesterday. I had read The Critic and couldn't see why the last few lines of the book told me no one knew who killed Braucol the puppy and almost killed Enzo MacLeod. "He's still out there." Had my copy a chapter missing? So I tweeted him, and he tells me the answer comes in Book 6.  Nice of him to respond, but I'm not sure I like the ploy - I'd rather have the answers without reading another two books!

The weather this morning was glorious for  our walk.Some of the trees are green now and the grass has been growing for a week or so. Now it is splattered with dandelions and everything looks wonderful. Since I got home the sky has clouded over and the sunshine has disappeared, though we're not quite at the dismal state we were a few days ago - see pic!

Title-less but going well

Autumn colours are strengthening fast and it is not yet too cold in the daytime though early mornings are a tad on the chilly side.  Long may it last.
This is just the weather for writing a sequel to Abduction of the Scots Queen and I'm deep into it now. I have a first draft, which is a help and around chapter fourteen I decided to remove a couple of chapters and change the direction of travel, so to speak. It should enhance the plot, particularly where Marie de Guise is concerned, and more original that the content I had.

Maybe I'll add a paragraph here on a regular basis as a sort of PR exercise. Nothing is set in stone as yet, and there will definitely be changes before publication. I might even send a submission off to an agent to see what response I get. That means thinking of a title, which I never find easy.

Third time lucky

Finally, on the third attempt, Createspace has accepted my covers. Now all I have to do is proof and publish. Was it all worth it? That's doubtful, since as far as I can tell I've sold very few paperback copies of Abduction, and I doubt the sales will suddenly streak up the charts now. It was certainly an interesting exercise getting to know Createspace, and it was a thrill to hold my paperback copy - the sort of thrill I didn't get with the Kindle books I've published. The cover is slightly different; I decided to do away with the "archaic" font on the cover and went for a plain, bolder style and colour in what some will call a sickly greenish-yellow. I may follow suit with the Kindle cover.

I'm also toying with experimenting with a bought cover and using it on Dark Whisky Road, but it is hard to find anything that will suit a Victorian story. Maybe the dark winter days will seduce me into trying to do one of my own - who knows?

Createspace ~ Unexpected trouble

I have just got myself into a lot of trouble. Deciding I wanted to carry out two corrections to the Createspace copy of Abduction as well as the Kindle copy, I went ahead and made the changes to the interior file. Then a message pops up telling me I have to reload the cover art as well. Duh. I hadn't expected that, and a terrific hunt ensued among the many versions of the cover to locate the correct cover pic. Finally found it, uploaded it and breathed a sigh of relief. Then this morning I find a post that had gone into my spam box telling me that I had failed to upload the back cover, so now my book would be available with a plain white back cover.  Just what I didn't want!

I'm beginning to think that though doing corrections on the Kindle version was easy-peasy, I wish I hadn't bothered with the Createspace paperback copy. The two correction were minor - a surplus "and" and a surplus "her" which would be a hangover from when I changed the structure of a sentence, and if anyone noticed them, the sense would have been clear. Or perhaps Amazon should put a warning note on the website so that authors are prepared to reload the entire cover as well as making changes to the interior text. Now you must excuse me while on go on a further hunt to find out exactly how I get the entire cover uploaded.

Taster of the Scots Queen

Here's a small seasonal gift ~ a little taster of my latest book!

Matho and Meg Douglas meet when she rides into Stirling thinking how best to befriend the Dowager Queen, Marie de Guise. He and his friend Harry Wharton are plotting how best to kidnap the Dowager's infant daughter, Mary. 

"Riding into Stirling, Meg eyed Broad Street with a calculating eye, but decided it was not a place she would choose to live. A cheerful crowd, jostling for a view of the gallows, surged about the open space between the Mercat Cross and the grim old Tolbooth. A hanging must be imminent. Her escort closed protectively around her and forced a way through to the top of the hill.

Both her destination and the castle came into view at the same time. Meg caught her breath at the sight of the Great Hall, pale as day-old cream in the October light, shining like a beacon against the darker stone of the older castle buildings.

‘You there! Shift yer hide!’ The sharp order from her Serjeant snagged her attention. He had halted his horse and glared at two men sitting on the perimeter wall surrounding Douglas House. The taller of the two slid off the wall and disappeared in the direction of Broad Street before she had time to glimpse his face. When she looked at the other man, her heart gave a single, painful bound.

Thomas!

She blinked, and found she’d raised a gloved hand to her throat. Her heart thudded light and fast in her chest. Like Thomas, this man’s skin had been coloured by wind and sun, and his hair held the same dark-red fire of beech leaves. Yet Thomas Howard had been dead these six years. When the fellow slid from the wall, she realised the resemblance was no more than a trick of the light.

He glared at her little company as they rode by. Such insolence! His torn sheepskin and rough, darned hose labelled him as farm labourer in town for the day. She raised her nose in the air. He stiffened, and drew his heavy brows together. With a snort of disgust, he turned and walked toward the town.

She stared after him. The tilt of his head and the lithe grace of his walk were so reminiscent of Thomas. Shave this stranger, dress him in velvet, satin and jewels, and the likeness would be remarkable.

Turning in the saddle, she faced Douglas House and rode into the courtyard without registering the recently refurbished dormer windows and freshly carved stone griffons that adorned the roofline."

Check out the reviews on Amazon: 

Available: http://amzn.to/1wQTs7F for the UK link.

Or http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OZME2DK

VAT Clarity and Reviews

This statement from the Bookseller clarifies my last post -  The new European-wide VAT law causing digital products - including e-books and apps - to be taxed in the European member state in which the consumer is located, as opposed to the country from which the product is sold will be introduced in January.
The change will stop multinational online corporations such as Amazon and Google from diverting their European sales through low-VAT countries, but small companies fear that the new rules will also hurt sales of their digital products.

So the petition I've signed is an attempt to prevent small companies - read authors as well as publishers - from suffering from this attempt to stop giant companies avoiding tax. Everyone wants Amazon to pay taxes as it should, but this seems an unhappy way to achieve it. Surely the business brains could think of another way? The thought of having to be VAT registered and send in returns is enough to make me consider pulling out of this writing lark.

On another topic I am very happy with the first two reviews I've received for Abduction of the Scots Queen. (Check them out here ) If anyone has the time, energy and inclination to review it for me, please get in touch! The pic is present day Stirling Castle, where Matho has many of his adventures

Publication Day

Any minute now, Abduction of the Scots Queen is going to be available in paperback at Amazon. It is already available in Kindle format. That means I am off the hook, free, able to ignore the PC for a while if I wish. Freedom, in other words. Yipppeeee!

Not that I would have missed the experience. Having Matho's story out there for everyone to read is a wonderful feeling after I've worked on it for so long. Some might say it's a coming of age story - how a young man goes off to try and earn fortune in the last few years of King Henry VIII's reign. Not that he and Henry ever meet. Henry never figures in the pages except as the man who bellows that he wants the Scots Queen in England so she can marry his son Edward. He has cogent reasons for that, but the story centres on Matho's experiences as he travels north across the border and runs smack bang into Lady Margaret Douglas. Characters include her father, Archibald Douglas, Marie de Guise, the Dowager Queen of Scots and Mathew Stewart, Lord Lennox.

Others might say it's a historical suspense story - will he or won't he succeed at the task he has set? Will he survive trying?

I don't think anyone will claim it is solely a romance, though there are two romance threads running through the story. For good or evil, Abduction is finally done!

Matho's progress

Final edit run through complete. One of the strange things I noted was my use of a certain phrase. I'm not going to say which phrase because then people will look for it and start counting when they read the book. Needless to say, I've removed some uses and changed others, so it should not be so noticeable now.

I'm so nervous about this that I keep hesitating about trying to load it on Createspace. What if I've missed something horrendous? Maybe I should do just one more run through, to be sure? We all know how correcting one phrase can shake two more loose somewhere in the manuscript and odd things keep happening as the computer tries to anticipate the word we want - and gets it wrong. But I could go on like this forever. So I've made the decision - I'm going to take the plunge very soon.

Autumn is creeping in and changing colours in the landscape. The days are still warm, up there in the 19s and 20s, but the nights are cold now. We've occasionally put the central heating on, and once or twice used the gas fire in the living room but on the whole we are fine. Our gas bill is going to be so much lower this year because we've used it so little.

All the good winter programmes are back on TV - Downton, Scott & Bailey, Strictly, Cilla. to mention but a few. Downton had better pick up its skirts and get going as the first two episodes have been a tad off the mark. Cora and her sickly sweet smile are flirting with Bricker the art critic, and Edith keeps visiting her love child and treating it rather like a doll. The child is going to get sick of that quite soon, I imagine. Cilla proved to be very good and Aneurin Barnard was a big surprise as Bobby Willis. He had played Richard III so woodenly in the White Queen that I despaired of him, but here he was all Liverpudlian and full on even if his dark roots kept showing.

Work in progress

Now I'm at the stage of looking at Createspace. First impressions? More complicated than I expected. But then as you get to know it, like everything else, it doesn't seem so bad. First of all I tried to slot an A4 file into a 6 x 9 format book, so of course, it didn't work. Once I altered my original file, it went straight in - with no errors. Now I know that's not true. For a start it wasn't justified, and when I justified it all the indents and *** scene breaks altered. So I'll be going through carefully to see what else I can spot.

I think I may be stuck with the title I've put in -  Abduction of the Scots Queen. I debated calling it Abduction, but there are so many books using it that it didn't seem attractive. Perhaps The Scots Queen would be simplest. If I can't alter what I've input, I may stick with the longer version. I can always make the fore part smaller on the cover to give it more ooooomph.

I'm working on the cover when I get tired of proofreading. Makes a nice change. I'm quietly pleased with what I have at the moment, but there are no guarantees it won't change in the next few days!