Every Wednesday ALLi will tell the world about our members' latest book launches, news, awards, freebies, workshops and updates on the writing life and take a look at the projects and businesses of our partner members.
ALLI News
Voyage Media Teleseminar: Sell Your Book to Hollywood
We’ve been thinking a lot about rights here at ALLi recently, what with our recent partnerships with IPR Licence and Pubmatch, which help you to manage your translation and sub rights. This week, we are looking toward dramatic rights, TV and film.
Film adaptations from novels are nothing new, and production companies are becoming increasingly interested in acquiring self-published work that’s suitable for adaptation directly from authors. ALLi is keen to explore the various ways you can pitch and sell your rights to film companies, which is why we are introducing you to
Voyage Media
Run by Nat Mundel, Voyage Media works with author-publishers to help get their books sold in for TV and Film. You may have already received an email about Voyage Media, but if not, take a look at our blog post here on the SPA blog for the full run down.
Kobo and ALLi – Opening Up to Indie Authors Update
We're delighted to receive so many emails of interest in our forthcoming series of events to mark the publication of our Opening Up to Indie Authors guide later this year. But with Kobo offering a potential 19,600 retail locations for us to utilise, we'd be delighted to see more of our members volunteering for readings across the world – especially as this is a fantastic, unprecedented way to connect with a whole new readership.
Bring yourself up to speed here with the full details (including contact information).
Peter O'Donnell
Sonoma Knight: The Goat-Ripper Case (July 2013) is a sexy romantic crime thriller set in the heart of California wine country.
Jake Knight wants to become a P.I. Just back from Afghanistan, he must heal, save the family farm, and fall in love…before stopping a puffed-up wine adulterator bent on murder. First in the Sonoma Knight series, it'll be followed by Gurl-Posse Kidnap and Gut-Check Green.
Interview: Peter Prasad, author of Sonoma Knight: The Goat-Ripper Case
Mary Louisa Locke
M. Louisa Locke's Victorian San Francisco Mystery, Bloody Lessons, will be 99 cents as part of a Kindle Countdown February 9-13 in both the U.S. Kindle store and the U.K. Kindle Store.
Bloody Lessons is set in the weeks leading up to Valentine's Day, 1880. The teachers of San Francisco are under attack: their salaries slashed and their competency and morals questioned in a series of poison pen letters. Annie Fuller, the reluctant clairvoyant, has been called in to investigate by Nate Dawson, her lawyer beau, and the case becomes personal when they discover that Laura, Nate's sister, may be one of the teachers being targeted.
In this third instalment of the series, readers will find the same blend of a cozy mystery and romantic suspense, played out against the historical backdrop of late 19th century San Francisco, that they found in Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits.
For readers who are new to this series, they will still enjoy spending time with the lively residents of Annie Fuller's boarding house and visiting San Francisco when Golden Gate Park was filled with horse-drawn carriages, politics were controlled by saloon-keepers, and kisses were stolen under gaslight.
Mary Maddox
My short story “Mandarian Training School” has just been published at Huffington Post.
The story centers on a group of teenagers attending a summer program for students gifted in mathematics. Here is the link.
Amy Shojai
Hide and Seek is the latest in Amy Shojai’s “Thrillers with Bite!” series, which has struck a chord with pet lovers and thriller readers alike. This sequel to Shojai’s debut thriller Lost and Found continues the story that’s filled with twists and turns, nonstop action and a terrifying story of stalking, heartbreak and hope.
A STALKER hides in plain sight.
A VICTIM faces her worst fear.
AND A DOG seeks the missing—and finds hope.
“I’ve always wanted to write fiction,” says Shojai, “and am delighted to be able to include dog viewpoint and pet behavior and care information in the storyline. Writing fiction is very different than nonfiction, and it’s been an exciting journey. I especially enjoy writing in the pet viewpoint, as well as including a hero cat in the story that literally NAILS the bad guy.”
Amy Shojai has been reinventing herself for years. She’s a certified animal behavior consultant, and the award-winning author of 27 bestselling pet books.
Rohan Quine
On 21 Feb, four novellas will be released on all platforms. They’ll be available as a paperback called The Platinum Raven and other novellas with this cover by Jane Dixon-Smith.
Four individual e-book novellas with the four covers I revealed in Showcases #40, #45, #47 and #48 also designed by Jane Dixon-Smith will also be revealed. These will then be launched a week later on 28 February at the London Author Fair, along with the first paperback version of my e-book novel The Imagination Thief from 2013.
These five tales are as follows…
- The Platinum Raven is a triple convulsion whereby our heroine Raven escalates herself into the Chocolate Raven and then the Platinum Raven, from London to Dubai to the tower in the hills in the desert – then back down again, forever changed. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/393716
- The Host in the Attic is a hologram of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, digitised and reframed in cinematic style, set in London’s Docklands in a few years’ time.
- In Apricot Eyes, a cat-and-mouse pursuit through the New York City night involves a preacher, a psychic and a dominatrix, broadcast live on air – until a horror is unearthed, bringing two of them together and the third to a sticky end.
- In Hallucination in Hong Kong, sliding from joy to nightmare and back, a plane-flight frames a journey into Jaymi’s and Angel’s polarised identities and perceptions, where past and present merge in an obsessive fantasy of love, death, horror and apocalyptic beauty.
- And The Imagination Thief is about a web of secrets, triggered by the stealing and copying of people’s imaginations and memories. It’s about the magic that can be conjured up by images of people, in imagination or on film; the split between beauty and happiness in the world; and the allure of various kinds of power. It celebrates some of the most extreme possibilities of human imagination, personality and language, exploring the darkest and brightest flavours of beauty living in our minds.
Fran Pickering
My new murder mystery, The Cherry Blossom Murder, comes out next Monday 10th February. Fran Pickering has just released the first book in the Josie Clark in Japan mystery series, The Cherry Blossom Murder. Behind the scenes a killer is lurking…
When Tokyo-based Londoner Josie finds a body under the cherry blossom, she sets out to track down the killer.
But she finds that everyone has a secret and no one can be trusted as the questions pile up. What is sinister Ms Kato up to? Who is the strange man who waited for the victim and does glamorous actress Tammy know more than she should? And who could get through the locked door?
Josie must shatter the smooth surface of Japanese life to solve the puzzle and stop the fan club killer striking again.
An entertaining murder mystery that takes you backstage at Japan’s spectacular Takarazuka Revue, as British amateur sleuth Josie tries to expose a murderer, save a priceless treasure and sort out her tangled love life. Available in Kindle and paperback from Amazon and as an ebook from Smashwords.
John Yeoman
Writers’ Village International Short Fiction Award summer 2014
With a £3000 top prize, the Writers’ Village contest is now one of the world's largest short story competitions that welcomes new writers from anywhere in the English-speaking world. Indie authors are invited!
$4800 (£3000) top prize for short fiction in Writers’ Village Contest summer 2014
$4800 (£3000) is the top prize on offer for short fiction in the Writers' Village International Short Fiction Award summer 2014. The second prize is £$800 (£500), third prize $400 (£250) and there are 15 runner up prizes of £50 ($80). The top 50 c0ntestants also gain a free critique of their stories, win or lose.
With £4500 ($7200) in total prize values, the Writers' Village award is one of the world's largest short story competitions that welcomes new writers from anywhere in the English-speaking world.
Winners will be awarded the title ‘Winner, the Writers’ Village International Short Fiction Award summer 2014’ and see their work showcased online.
Any genre of prose fiction may be submitted up to 3000 words, except playscripts and poetry. Entries are welcomed world-wide. The fee is £15 ($24) and multiple entries are permitted. Deadline is midnight 30th June 2014. Entry rules plus all winning stories since 2009 can be found here.
Orna Ross
Jane Dixon-Smith has just delivered the covers for the Yeats-Gonne trilogy, Between The Words, and yes, I’m a tad excited! Jane’s done a wonderful job as always.
These novels have been a long time in the writing. WB Yeats was 23-years-old when Maud Gonne came calling and what he called ‘the troubling of his life’ began.
Yeats went on to forge a poetic career out of his unrequited love for Gonne, writing long and often about how he wanted to marry her. To this day Wikipedia accepts him at his word but the emotional truth of this fascinating relationship was a little different.
That’s what’s explored in the first part of the trilogy. The second looks at Yeats’ relationship with Iseult, Maud’s daughter, to whom he also proposed marriage twenty years later.
And the final book centres on the relationship between the mother and daughter, Maud and Iseult.
The research took ages, as I wanted to keep to the facts, which are more bizarre than any fiction I’ve ever written. Much of the dialogue has its origin in a letter or journal or notebook and as I wrote and researched, the line “you couldn’t make it up” kept coming to mind.
Here’s a sneak peek of the covers. All going well, I’ll be publishing the first of the three, Her Secret Rose, in May.
Lorna Fergusson
I’ve just been updating my Fictionfire Press site with news of a collection of short stories I’ve been working on.
The title story was written some years ago and deals with Charles Dickens’ affair with Ellen Ternan from an unusual angle. The impetus to publish it came from learning last month that Ralph Fiennes’ film on that very subject will be released on February 7th.
This in turn led to the notion of producing a collection of stories featuring famous literary figures. It turned out to be a forlorn hope to get this published in such a short timescale but I’m having a ball writing the rest of the stories and I hope to publish Informed with other Passions in the spring.
Jane Dixon-Smith of JD Smith Design has produced a beautiful cover for it. In the meantime, for tasters, news and offers to come, please join the Fictionfire Press mailing list.
Philippa Rees
I am due to give a talk on Involution- An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God on ‘tomorrow' Thursday 13th at 6.30 at Watkins Bookshop in 19-21 Cecil Court, near Leicester Sq. Details are on their Programme of events here .
This will do duty as an informal launch and the talk will be followed by a Q&A and signing, and will be filmed for the Watkins YouTube featured authors. Obviously free and all are welcome.
I have added the ‘tomorrow' because if it appears on Wednesday that will be the case but if it appears earlier then can you remove the ‘tomorrow'? I think you have an image of the cover but I attach in case it makes life easier.
Could you also add that I am due to be interviewed by Joe Moore of Occult sentinel which will be available on their website in due course.
John Logan
I’ve just released my new novel, Agency Woman, on Kindle only.
Here’s the Amazon UK link:
A dark, Scottish tale of conspiracy, espionage, murder and terrorism, with an existential edge, and the spirit of an ancient mountain looming at its centre.
The Liberty Series has garnered 400+ rave reviews. The Impossible Wish, the third book in the series, is now available on iBooks, Kobo, Amazon and Barnes & Noble:
Hector Levendakis has failed at every job he’s taken on. Now he’s determined to do something right.
The notorious swindler and master of disguise Wish Kaminsky is about to arrive in Liberty and that means trouble. Liberty is the town that open-heartedly welcomed her daughter. Recently engaged, Birdie has turned her life around—and Wish is the last person she wants to see.
When Hector learns of the reward posted for the capture of Wish, he leaves Philadelphia to take up the challenge. Haunted for years by an inescapable guilt, he’s seeking redemption by bringing the con woman to justice.
The hunt for Wish brings Birdie and Hector together in a story of friendship and trust. As they try to set things right, each will discover that dreams are possible when friends join together and lovers forgive in equal measure.
iTunes: Amazon: Barnes & Noble: Kobo:
Tom Evans
Tom Evans has just released a new ecourse called Shift Your Relationship with Your Thoughts based on his book, Flavours of Thought. It's available via DailyOM and you choose what price you want to pay for it.
If you are an author interested in connecting with your Creative Muse, it explains where inspiration comes from and how to tune into it any time you like. It's available here.
In celebration of the ecourse launch, the Kindle version of the book that inspired it, Flavours of Thought, is available for the whole of February for just 99p.
Matthew Wayne Selznick
I've got a title in a new bundle offered by StoryBundle. Author and creator Matthew Wayne Selznick is privileged to have his The Charters Duology, a two-novel omnibus edition regularly priced at $7.49, included in StoryBundle.com's SciFi Saturday Night Bundle, a collection of seven titles curated exclusively by the popular SciFi Saturday Night podcast
The Charters Duology features the Parsec Award-nominated Brave Men Run and Pilgrimage, two full length novels set in Selznick's storyworld, The Sovereign Era.
According to ALLi friend Mark Lefebvre, Director Self-Publishing & Author Relations, Kobo Inc., “Matthew Wayne Selznick creates a universe and characters that are real and genuine and live on in your heart.”
The SciFi Saturday Night Bundle is a rare chance to immerse yourself in that universe at a greatly reduced price… and get six other books, to boot!
What Is A StoryBundle?
A story bundle is a collection of DRM-free ebooks for which the buyer sets the price.
Pay a minimum of $3.00 to get four e-books, including the Pushcart Award-winning Bad Apple by Kristi Petersen Schoonover. Or, to get the most for your money, pay at least $10, and you'll get three more books, including Selznick's The Charters Duology (two books in one!) and Hollow World by Goodreads Choice award winner Michael J.Sullivan.
StoryBundle's curated collections are dedicated to independent authors, and to supporting literary causes. No matter what price you decide these books are worth, you'll have the option of allocating a percentage of your purchase to Mighty Writers or Girls Write Now, two literacy charities. You also get to decide what percentage goes to the authors, and to StoryBundle.com.
The SciFi Saturday Night Bundle featuring The Charters Duology by Matthew Wayne Selznick is only available for until February 18, 2014!
For more, visit StoryBundle.com
If you are a member of The Alliance of Independent Authors and you would like to showcase your work on our ALLi Showcase, please send it to [email protected] to reach me no later than the Friday proceeding the Wednesday you would like it published.
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Happy Birthday Members’ Showcase! And thank you Karen Lotter for editing this post for us every Wednesday. What a fabulous array of books and projects.
Wow, what a bumper edition!