Mail lists, newsletters, RSS, email, follow - what to do?

Several months ago I congratulated myself on all the twitter followers, facebook friends, Goodreads and LibraryThing friends, Triberr tribemates, email and RSS blog followers, Google connected friends, Google Plus friends, LinkedIn folks and Pinterest followers I had (sure I missed some there). One day I would contact all these folk in the social swim of life and tell them I have a new book out or some other bit of information that might be of interest. Then I wondered how it could be done and quietly brushed the issue under the carpet.

Well, after a few very busy months with building a fledgling independent publishing imprint, Marble City Publishing, and working closely with Jim Williams, Booker nominated author of ten internationally published novels, I lifted the carpet and found the news quandary still there, unmoved. In the meantime I had read a few interesting pieces around the world about how best to communicate and decided to switch off some of the multiple registration points, concentrating on one single Ruby's News list. I offered a free ebook of choice to all subscribers and the list started to grow. Migrating friends / followers to a new list isn't easy and the level of followers' familiarity with Ruby Barnes varies from "Oh yes, I'd love to see your newsletter" to "Who are you again?"

So here's Ruby's News for those that aren't yet on the list. Click this link or below the banner to read what's going on - 5 new releases planned before summer 2013, £450 prize in a short story competition and get published in the Knife Edge anthology, plus ARCs of new releases and free ebook for new subscribers!

Read Ruby's latest newsletter

Get the WIP out and get on with it, Ruby!

Over Christmas I shared the first 38k words of the sequel to Peril with my beta reader and things are looking good. Now I need to knuckle down and get it completed. Peril has reviewed well on Goodreads, Amazon dot com and UK. I've learned a lot from those reviews and hope readers will enjoy the sequel just as much or even more. In the meantime Peril is featured on the UK site Indie Book Bargains - please take a look by clicking the badge below.

 

If you've enjoyed reading Ruby's blog then please sign up to Ruby's News for freebies, advance review copies of upcoming novels and occasional updates. Thanks!

His decisions, their lives - Peril by Ruby Barnes

Since launch fifteen months ago as an ebook and three months ago in paperback, my quirky crime thriller Peril has received a good numbers of reviews on blogs, Amazon, Goodreads, LibraryThing and other places. A lot of readers have enjoyed the book, some haven't, but the main character Ger Mayes certainly provokes a reaction. He's a hedonistic anti-hero whose bad decisions lead to layers of disaster. Do I wish I'd written a less genre-bending, more vanilla crime thriller? Sometimes, yes. Other times, when Peril gets a great review like the one below, no.
I enjoyed writing peril so much that I'm now 21,000 words into the sequel, working title Yellow Ribbon.

Here's the latest feedback on Peril from John Gaynard, an Irish author living in Paris.

In line with my reviewing policy of only giving a write-up to books I have enjoyed, I now have great pleasure in making a few comments on Ruby Barnes's Peril, a novel which could also have been titled, "The Power of Positive Thinking for Feckless Scots Bent on Raising Levels of Dissatisfaction Among Irish Wives, Mistresses, Relatives, Beggars and Rail Customers Who Have the Temerity to Make Complaints".

Ger Mayes is a loveable ne'er do well from North of that Border uniting Scotland and England. Married to an upright modern Irish woman who, needless to say, indulges in quickies with her personal trainer, Ger is paid what seems to be a reasonable salary by the complaints office of Irish Railways. His minimal investment of time, and low respect for his customers, makes Ger a poster boy for the most negative, biased sorts of comments made by Dubliners about immigrant labor. Ger's only self-questioning comes from the wonder and anger generated when he does not get promoted over the heads of some, admittedly obnoxious, colleagues who do, however, respect reasonable standards of productivity, putting in an hour of work and a full five hours of gossip and back-biting on the days when they're in the office--and not taking their statutory sick days off.

Although Ger is more than a bit of a wine and food snob--and should know that after two or three glasses his taste-buds will have had as much as they can reasonably enjoy--when out with the lads he has a habit of drinking himself into that state of mindlessness where his head stops working but his feet keep walking. One night, in a city of Dublin that could pass for the capital of the Chechen Republic under attack by the Russians, he wanders befuddled and lost, finding it impossible to suss his way to the train station and back home to the outer suburbs, where he can reconnect with the middle-class way of life as it developed in late 20th and early 21st century Ireland: memorization of suburban railway time tables, calculating which train will get him into work just after time and out of work just before time, formal dinners where he can whimsically analyze--in the company of mortgaged-up-to-the-hilt neighbors--the merits of different types of pasta, tomato sauce, red wine, white wine and Indian or other take-away dishes while ogling and caressing the knees of his wife's best friend.

Ger stumbles into a fight with a Romanian beggar, kills the man and flees the scene. The next day, unsurprisingly, the murder does not trouble his conscience. Its consequences only begin to concern him when he realizes he didn't dispose of the murder weapon so that it couldn't be found. His worries are compounded when it turns out that another member of the beggar clan saw him do it. The only one of the ten commandments that Ger respects is the eleventh one, "Thou shan't get caught", but, when he does get found out, every problem becomes an opportunity, in line with his innate approach to life, that of the devil-may-care chancer. Any event that would render a less hedonistic man catatonic with fright becomes something to flip to his advantage in his only serious quest: how to satisfy every one of his five senses, every day, in every way.

Paying it back to readers and authors

I recently made two small changes on this blog. Hopefully they won't slow down the loading of the page, but I think it's worth it.

As a self-published author and a reader I'm a member of a lot of different groups on the internet (e.g.Goodreads, facebook, LibraryThing, Triberr, Awesome Indies. Book Promo Group). Groups like these can be a great source of support when looking for a new book to read, asking peer authors for technical and marketing support, or making new friends in the book e-revolution. When I come across a friend's blog I want to promote I add it to my blogroll (down this page and right) but there are other ways to connect, and I've added two of them to this blog.

On the top right of my blog you'll see a new box titled 'Indie Author Ring'. At time of writing this is a ring of 19 blogs from the Goodreads UK Amazon Kindle Forum (1559 members, readers and authors). Click on next and previous for writing and reading related blogs.

At the foot of this blog you'll find Irish Crime and Thriller Writers Online. If you've read and enjoyed my Ireland-based novels Peril and The Baptist then you might be looking for more Irish fiction (I'm busy writing all the time but it takes a while to produce). So I've listed 41 Irish crime and thriller authors with an online presence for you to browse. There's something there for everyone! (Many thanks to Joe McCoubrey for letting me steal his hard work!)

If you've enjoyed reading Ruby's blog then please sign up to Ruby's News for freebies, advance review copies of upcoming novels and occasional updates. Thanks!

Writers and Readers both

If you're a UK Kindle user then here's a great group on Goodreads:

UK Amazon Kindle Forum

Unlike facebook groups or Amazon threads, you can be sure that it's a spam-free zone.

I'm a member of a lot of Goodreads and LibraryThing groups (not to mention facebook) and I have to say that I enjoy my anonymity and can indulge the reader side of Ruby on the reader-oriented platforms.

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If you've enjoyed reading Ruby's blog then please sign up to Ruby's News for freebies, advance review copies of upcoming novels and occasional updates. Thanks!

Nineteen reviews - time to clear the decks with a new page for Peril fans

It's nearly ten months since Peril was launched as an e-book and there have been nineteen reviews posted by readers on various public access websites (Amazon, Smashwords etc). So, to decrease clutter and stop me blowing the Ruby trumpet, I've created a new page for Peril reviews to keep the blog clear for general articles.

The summertime has come (and gone) and the hills are softly blooming

As Gary Newman (who?!) would say, it's a burning car. The cool autumn draws in and our citizens resort to the traditional method of generating warmth. Pic taken recently by a mountainviews.ie member near Bohernabreena, County Dublin.

Well, there hasn't exactly been a summer here in Ireland, but I've finished my free giveaway of PERIL on Smashwords. If you downloaded it then I hope you enjoy the trials and tribulations of Ger Mayes. All reviews gratefully received - the good, the bad and the ugly.

P.S. If you're a LibraryThing member, look out for PERIL as a member giveaway.


If you've enjoyed reading Ruby's blog then please sign up to Ruby's News for freebies, advance review copies of upcoming novels and occasional updates. Thanks!