All together now...

The collected stories of the Empire of Steam are now available as both ebook and print HERE.

Red Mercury, Neptune Rising, and Titan's Fire - all three novels available in one single edition.

I've totally revised all three of them (and practically rewritten Red Mercury!) for this edition and I'm delighted with how they're now looking.

If you fancy some good old-fashioned adventure, with a dash of steam-driven sci-fi then please give it a go!

Here we go again...

My new book, Titan's Fire, is available now on Amazon for Kindle. The print version should be up in a couple of days as well.

This one was hard work - maybe an author's third book is the equivalent of a band's "difficult second album"? I don't know. All I'm sure of is this took longer and was a bit more painful to pull together than either Red Mercury or Neptune Rising.

However, my lovely beta readers have all said the same - they think it's the best thing I've written yet, more complex and ambitious than the previous two, with a smoother and more flowing style. Who am I to argue with such lovely feedback - even if it was buried amid other criticism that meant three months of rewriting!

So, if you fancy a good old-fashioned adventure with a dash of steam-driven science-fiction, you should give Titan's Fire a go. It's in the same series as my previous books, but there's no real requirement to read them in any particular order. If you do try it out, I'd love to hear what you think.

And the reviews are in!

So Neptune Rising has been out for about a month now and sales are going pretty well. It's definitely moving faster than Red Mercury did at the same stage of launch - which is good.

The thing I hadn't expected when I launched the new book was to see a spike in the first one's sales. With hindsight I suppose I should have anticipated something like this as publishing a second will prompt a bunch of people who had previously abstained to try the first (they probably figure if you've gone to the trouble of writing a second one then the first one might not be as terrible as they assumed).

My main route for publicising Neptune Rising was through Facebook, Twitter and this blog. Once again, my Facebook friends were incredibly generous in their support and sharing. Thanks to them, Neptune Rising broke into the Top 20 in Sci-Fi on Kindle in the UK for a few days, and peaked at 30-something in the US.

The first few reviews are slowly trickling in, and I'm delighted to say they've been very positive. Here are some excerpts...

"the perfect Steampunk boys own adventure - in fact it reminds me a lot of the old Ian Fleming "James Bond" books I've been rereading recently. Impossible missions supported by fabulous gadgets and contraptions, a little bit of love interest, and a LOT of style"

"a fast-paced war-pirate steampunk mash up. The cliché "couldn't put it down" is a perfect description of this book - the story is off like a whippett and doesn't slow down"

"all the action and high jinx needed to be a great read"

"Read this through in a single sitting as it was so easy to read, clipping along at a good pace. I would recommend it to anyone"

Overall, I'm delighted with the comments. If you've read it, I'd love to hear what you thought.

If you haven't read it yet, then what are you waiting for? Get thee to Amazon...

Neptune Rising

My new book Neptune Rising is out - available now at Amazon in both ebook and paperback.

I'm genuinely delighted with how this has turned out - from an initial crackpot idea of "Steampunk Pirates" into a continuation of the world I put together for Red Mercury.

It's funny, whilst I'm very proud of Red Mercury, this new one is definitely better - a smoother read all round. Interesting how much better my writing has got as I've got more practice.

If you fancy a good old-fashioned adventure story with a dash of steam-driven science-fiction AND PIRATES, then maybe give it a go?

If you do, I'd love to hear what you think of it.

So how's it all going then?

Pretty good actually.

I'm very happy with how sales of Red Mercury are going. Whilst I'd obviously have been delighted if it had become a surprise bestseller, I was fairly realistic about the prospects of that happening! It's ticking along quietly but nicely, probably shifting an average of a copy a day now since the initial rush died off.

90% of my sales are still coming through Amazon, with about a quarter of those being actual print copies through Createspace. This was a real surprise to me. I assumed I would hardly sell any of the print version, and really only set it up so I could get one myself. Beyond the copies sold, I think the availability of the paperback also makes the e-book a more attractive proposition in price terms, and a couple of friends actually said to me that they only thought it was a "proper book" once it became available in print. So it probably does something for the book's credibility too.

I would heartily recommend any first-time writers set up their book for Createspace as well as for Kindle etc. It's relatively simple and whilst I love my e-reader, nothing beats the joy at having an actual physical copy of your own book in your grubby little paws!

I've been delighted with the reviews Red Mercury has received on Amazon in the UK. You can read them here, if you're interested - a whole bunch of 5-stars and a couple of 4-stars. The best bit about it all? Only two of the reviews are from mates, and even those were from folks who I have no doubt are blunt enough (no disrespect intended) to have told me if they thought the book was rubbish!

One small frustration is that UK reviews don't appear on Amazon in the US. A real shame, as the book is yet to really get much traction in the States. To date, only 5% of my sales are from outside the UK. I've got a couple of ideas to get a bit more attention over there - I might try leveraging some of my LEGO contacts! We'll see.

Publish! (And hopefully don't be damned)

Well, it's done. Red Mercury has been released into the wild.

I will post in a couple of days about the fun (or otherwise) of formatting a book for final publication on Kindle, and then re-formatting it for publication in other formats for other e-readers. Overall, simpler than I expected, but it still took me a whole afternoon and evening.

However, forget all that. I am totally stoked with excitement because Red Mercury is out and for sale on Amazon - in the US, UK and Europe. And it's also available in other formats at Smashwords.com

If you think you might fancy a good old-fashioned adventure story in the grand tradition of The Guns of Navarone, but with an added dash of steam-driven sci-fi then please check it out.