Alba is Mine

Publication Day yesterday!

Sad to say I may have caused a temporary problem for anyone trying to buy the book - I made a typo in the original book description on the KDP pages and have tried to alter it more than once while it was on pre-order. Yesterday I tried again, and once I'd done it, I realised that I'd effectively put the system out of action until they'd re-processed it.
Here's what I want the description to say: -

BLURB



In 1034, the fuse has been lit that will change the kingship of Alba. When his place in the succession is rejected, Finlay of Moray rebels against his grandfather the king and sides with half-brother Thorfinn of Orkney.

With his intended bride married off to his cousin, his boyhood friend joining the opposing side and the threat of war looming, there is little happiness for Finlay. Wanting to cement the bond between them, Thorfinn badgers him to marry his beautiful sister, but Finlay, reluctant to abandon hope of his first love, grimly resists the idea.

This absorbing, fast moving tale of power, greed, family rivalries and one man's vision of the future for his troubled kingdom will keep you turning the pages into the wee small hours.

Here are the links:

https://tinyurl.com/ycyymrmq (US)

https://tinyurl.com/ybq33rgp (UK)

This is my tag line:
Scottish-Viking struggles for a crown amidst treachery and love.

New Release - VIKING MAGIC

Yesterday I published by accident! VIKING MAGIC  is now on the market.
I had intended to download it to Kindle Previewer as a final check that everything was OK, but hit the wrong button. By this morning it was up for sale, so I bought it, hastily checked it and it looks OK. If there is anything wrong with it, I expect I'll soon hear about it!  So there we go - rush out and buy, everyone!

Now I shall give myself a well-earned rest and potter in the garden for a bit until the urge to write strikes again. These last few weeks have been a struggle to get the editing done to a high standard, and the cover gave me some tough decisions. I wanted something striking and simple, something that would stand out from all the covers that feature bare chested men and heroines with long flowing locks - but would still suggest romance as well as Viking adventures.

I could turn my attention to my other novel, the one that has been on the stocks for so long. Maybe it is time to self-publish that one as well. If I were twenty, I might persevere with the seeking-an-agent thing, but I'm not twenty and don't have time to waste. So, I think I have a plan - a few days well earned rest, and then focus on Matho and his pals.

The link to the new book: http://tinyurl.com/qayzzz7

Titles and covers again

I have my new cover to match the new title on my upcoming release. For better or worse, this is it!

The worst of the double edit is behind me now. There are about six chapters printed out and waiting my attention. I've edited them on screen, but tomorrow I shall edit the print-out and make necessary adjustments. (There always are!) I think by tomorrow night I shall be finished. What a relief!

One thing I've discovered with covers is to get the size right for Amazon Kindle first of all. They recommend 1563x2071, and getting that right after you've worked on illustration can be soul destroying. To get the right size you sometimes need to be able to free up proportion constraints and that, as you can imagine, sends your illustration through the wringer. Dragons come out looking like swans and vice versa.

Colours are important. I want the cover to stand out among all the others, and somehow Black and Red just didn't do it for me this time. It looks fine close up, but viewed among many others, it just faded away, whereas the orange cover still drew the eye.
Well, OK, it drew my eye. 

I hope the dragon head says Viking to everyone who looks at it. The story is a romance, but I didn't want to put a bare-chested man in a fur tunic on the cover. Tell me I'm wrong or old-fashioned if you must, but that sort of cover says to me that there is only romance in the story. My stories have romance, sure, but they also have adventure, death and disaster. The villain certainly gets what he deserves in this one! The hero is Oli, a sixteen-year-old who falls head-over-heels in love with a girl who has rather a lot of problems to solve. Oli was nine years old in my book Far After Gold and his life with Flane and Emer has been fairy easy up until this point. If he wants to win the girl,he has to rise to the challenge and Karli Olafsson is no normal Viking.....
Look out for Viking Magic on Amazon Kindle in the next couple of weeks.