My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday by Jason Ayres

This was a rather clever time travel novel, I hugely enjoyed reading. I like when a writer really thinks about the logistics of an unusual situation. It was one thing that attracted me about writing about a vampire. How you manage being not quite normal. I gave it 5 stars.

My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday by Jason Ayres

Jason Ayres has created a very intriguing book set on a simple idea; what if I lived my live backwards? Thomas Scott, begins his life on his deathbed and finds himself everyday a little further back in a past he doesn’t remember. When he puts some of the pieces together he knows 3 things; I died prematurely of lungcancer, I have a daughter, and my wife was taken too soon in a road accident.

This is a fascinating tale of an ordinary man playing detective in his own life. Armed with the the knowledge of how things turns out he sets about making changes, whilst making sure he doesn’t mess up the good things.

What I liked most about Thomas Scott, is that he is so normal. He discovers that his daughter and wife are the most important things in his life and the scene of his wife’s happiness at their daughter’s birth, juxtaposed with his depression at soon seeing her for the last time was heart breaking. Thomas is lovable and easy to relate too. I especially related to his journey back through music and technology as I’m practically born in the same year as this character.

This is a time travel novel with real warmth and depth and it was a joy to read.

The Green Book by Penny Luker

This is another author i'm honoured to soon be sharing the pages with in the forthcoming anthology: You're not Alone. I've perviously reviewed the Thruthfinder by Penny luker.
This is the first time I'm reviewing a children's book. Even though it was a very easy read, the review is much harder. It's a long time since I was a 10 year old and as I live in France I couldn't get an opinion of a young child. I personally would have liked the children to have been way more irresponsible with the magic book. Apart from asking the book to provide a third helping of ice cream and getting punished for it things don't get out of hand any further. But this book is not aimed at me but at the 5 to 10 age group and you don't want to stray into the occult or have kids setting bad examples. So I decided for a 5 star as for the very young ones they will be nice bed time stories, without nightmares to follow.

The Green Book by Penny Luker

A spell book appearing one day in your room is a dream for any ten year old, especially if you just been told to tidy up that room. Alana is the lucky girl with the book. It must have chosen her as she is really very responsible; choosing not to use her spell book when it asks her if she wants it to magic her exam. I’m not sure I would have withstood the temptation. I also doubt that my friends would have given me a moment’s peace if they had discovered that I had a book of spells. But Alana and her friends learn a lesson early on; if you misuse magic it will have consequences. This is a short and entertaining book for young children. I think this would make a good book for bed time, as it will leave you having sweet dreams about having a spell book that makes all your troubles go away.

The Oscar Dossier by Lesley Hayes

I have the great honour of soon to be sharing the pages with this author in the upcoming anthology: You're not Alone. I look forwards to reading her contribution to this. Here is the review to an excellent but very short collection.

The Oscar Dossier by lesley Hayes

I recently came across two stories by this author. They were so well written and clever that I was more than keen to try another selection of shorts by Lesley Hayes. The Oscar dossiers didn’t disappoint. I do love an English eccentric, and Oscar is a fine specimen. Flamboyant and loud but also riddled with insecurities. He always falls for the same type, thin broken women that are oddly robust in blocking his advances. This is a book of four short stories, about Oscar, a parrot and some of the people in his life. The stories are well written, witty and entertaining. If I have one quibble it would be that the book is very short and that a larger than life character like Oscar could have generated more material. I do hope Lesley will revisit this character and add some more pages to the dossier. However this book left me very hungry to read some more of this author.

Highly recommended, if you like colourful characters and a quick, easy read.

Advertising

So far I've only spend money on paying my editor (who gave me a better than friends rate.) The rest I did my self. One day I will probably have to pay someone to redesign my covers as I'll be the first to admit that they are not great. I've just been of the opinion that, why waste money on something that nobody wants to buy. Since I published my first book in 2013 I've been steadily growing in confidence. I had some good responses and reviews. I'm now waiting for my 4th experience in indie publishing. On the 11th of July the Anthology 'You're not alone' will be out. I contributed a short story to this book.

 

  

So having grown in confidence over the last 2 years I thought I do another book promotion and actually pay for some advertising. I used Facebook post boost and I'm pleased with the results:

4,212 People reached.

61 Page engagements of which 50 website hits.

12 New Page like, but this is not all due to the post boost.

Twitter:

I've now started to build on my twitter network. I've not spend any money on this and it is very time consuming. It is still a dark art to me, but I now have a 164 followers and I use @roundteam so I find that my posts with #PDF1 #IARTG and #ASMSG get retweeted about 9 times. I'm still not convinced there is any usefulness to Twitter, but it is something I want to use and understand better.

Facebook

Twitter and Facebook were the only means I used this time to run my book promotion. I wanted to see how it did with putting a fair bit of effort in. I posted my promotion twice a day on Twitter and on 6 Facebook groups. Plus the boosted post that ran for 2 days before and 2 days during the promotion. 

The results

I managed to give 199 copies of Language in the Blood away. Of course I'm hoping this will lift the sales of the other books, but only time will tell. It is hard to say if my first foray into advertising can be called a succes, but it certainly provided more results than I had so far with promotion. I'll try a few more things with sites other authors have recommended and see how that goes. But for the moment I want to concentrate a bit more on actual writing!