Over the last few months, I’ve been contemplating doing an audiobook of my title Forty Love in Positano, the shortest of my books, as a way to dip my toe into the audiobook universe. I have finished the first chapter and uploaded it to Soundcloud, and I’d be delighted to hear your thoughts. You can leave me your comments right here. Thank you for your time! Cheers, Robertson
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Good 22nd November to you,
I wanted to post something, and as I’ve returned all my books to their regular pricing, I had to come up with something else, and so I enlisted the services of both of my cats to that end, and this is what we came up with. Obviously they wrote the music and lyrics, but I did play the guitar and did the vocalising of their work. Well, of course I’d need to. Cats don’t play guitar, y’know. Anyway here is the Soundcloud link to the short ditty they wrote for me. Amazingly it seems to feature them being good … who’d have thought? https://soundcloud.com/found4words/little-cat-of-mine/s-ZjCBs Cheers, Robertson Culminating a couple of weeks of mostly frustrating self-promoting slog, today I have reaped the rewards of my efforts. A top-award-winning blog, called “Linda’s Book Bag” hosted me and Book One of my “Kyle in Hollywood” series in a delightful feature entitled, “Staying In With”. Follow the link to read my interview. There are hundreds of literary blogs and bloggers out there, so being featured on one of the very best is a rare honour. My grateful thanks to Linda Hill for her gracious hospitality! The weather has suddenly turned chilly and wet, and I’m indoors working on my least favourite task: promoting my books. I have lined up a number of sales available at Amazon, Kobo, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Scribd, Playster, Tolino, Baker & Taylor, and 24Symbols. Here are the details: 30 October to 5 November - 99 cents/pence Amazon Kobo everywhere else For much less than the cost of a cup of coffee, you get a full-length suspenseful tale with four strong protagonists caught up in a deadly chase after a brazen attempt to avenge a political assassination. The action moves up and down Italy against the glorious architectural backdrops of Venice, Rome and Verona. 4 to 11 November - 99 cents/pence Amazon Kobo everywhere else For those of you who like short stories, my collection of travel-inspired romantic tales is deeply discounted at 99 cents/pence for a week. Early reviewers on peer-critique sites called it “Shamelessly, grandly romantic ...” and “... charming and bewitching.” One reader “enjoyed the sensual, poetic style of the language.” 29 October to 4 November – 99 cents/pence Amazon Kobo everywhere else An irreverent, engaging look at the power struggle between one good-looking Scottish young man, plucked from obscurity in a Roman café, and the ruthless star-making machinery of Hollywood studios. It is my hope that you will become so hooked on Kyle and his hapless adventures that you will want to buy the next two books in the series. In these trying times, you might find one or more of these books a diverting antidote to the everyday mayhem surrounding us. Hoping for an end to the madness, I wish you all the best, and thanks as always for your support. My readers may have noticed that I sometimes weave the creation of songs into the narrative of my books' storyline. In the novelletta “Montmartre” from Riding a Strong Wind, Rory McKay is moved to compose a song to highlight the plight of the homeless. After some sticky adventures, he manages to release it in support of the cause. The song is called “Homeless in New York” and it's one of my earliest produced compositions. In fact, it was produced three times by three different musical producers – but that's an entirely different story. Another example is the song "Winter Bites" which my mature, but charismatic, character Randy Riley composes in Book 1 of the “Kyle in Hollywood” series, Kyle Harrison Movie Star. In Book 3, Just Cause It's Kyle, (available soon on pre-order), Randy Riley composes “Sticks and Stones”, in support of the anti-cyber bullying campaign that Kyle is spearheading. My offer of a free mp3 of the song is now over. To those who downloaded it while it was available, thank you and I hope you enjoyed it. Cheers! If you fancy an irreverent, engaging romantic comedy minus the saccharine, Kyle Harrison Movie Star is on sale for 99 cents or 99 pence. On Amazon US from now until 25 April, and on Amazon UK from 23 to 30 April. For much less than the cost of a cup of coffee, you get a full-length story touching on many current issues, a sneak peak into the lives of Hollywood actors, and an intriguing on-location episode in Almeria. Satire, dry Scottish humour and a dose of romance. And if you fall for Kyle, as many readers have, there is Book 2 already out there, and Book 3 in the works. It might just be the distraction you need to get you through the week. Just a quick update on my current projects. I have been writing on and off, bouncing between two very different stories. Just Cause It's Kyle is in first-draft stage and queued up to receive a developmental edit. In the meantime, I have started to work on a totally new concept, provisionally titled, The Breath of Death.
For those of you who like short stories, my collection of travel-inspired romantic tales is deeply discounted at 99 pence on Amazon UK only, for a week. The book is called Riding a Strong Wind and it will be available at the sale price until 14th April. In these trying times, you might find it a diverting antidote to the everyday mayhem surrounding us. Cheers! Hello, hope your January is not too cold wherever you are.
I wanted to just check in and mention a couple of book-related pieces of info. Now I've been caught up pretty much with thinking music recently because I'm finding the humour to go in my books in short supply, with all the turmoil in current events, BUT I do have some of my books out on Amazon's Countdown Deals, so here are the details: Scot Free in Hollywood – on sale now at 99 pence until 13th January Forty-Love in Positano – on sale now at 99 pence until 14th January Also coming up on UK is: Night of the Webcam - 19th to 26th January – 99 pence Similar Countdowns are scheduled on Amazon US: Night of the Webcam - 12th to 19th January - 99 cents Forty-Love in Positano – 14th to 21st January – 99 cents However, not to just go on and on about book promos, I am thinking of posting my brilliant recipe for cooking carrots here, if there's interest – and yes, they taste pretty good, like caramelized sweets! Not to mention what they do for your eyes … Actually, I admit it's a dastardly devious ploy to have your reading vision improved, so you can read more of my books! Cheers, all the best for 2018 Just completed a short-and-sweet book trailer for Kyle Harrison Movie Star, Book One of the Kyle in Hollywood series. My video creator takes particular care to match the images and text to the music beats, so the whole thing took two entire days of intensive work, from media gathering to assembly to complete revision and production of two versions, and finally the choice of one. As usual, I am delighted with it, but interested in your comments.
The greatest challenge was to make it as short as possible while accommodating a bit of storyline. The musical composition playing behind the images is my own “Homeless in New York” because the instrumental track fit better with the general mood of the book. Those of you familiar with the quirks of my writing process may know that I often integrate some kind of song into my narrative. In this book, the character Randy Riley composes a song called “Winter Bites” for the soundtrack of the movie The Bite of Winter, in which he co-stars with Kyle Harrison. In the movie, Randy portrays an ageing cowboy confronted by outlaws, and the song relates to the moment when the gang is closing in on him. However, the instrumental's somber mood did not fit the imagery and general tone of the book as well as the song I selected. You can still listen to “Winter Bites” for free on Soundcloud at this private link: https://soundcloud.com/found4words/winter-bites/s-wBZph Since we are still in the first thirty days after launch, I have brought the book price down to 99 cents to encourage new readers to the series. You can read a generous excerpt on the Amazon product page, to see if it's the kind of book you would enjoy. Although I started working on this series three years ago, some of the themes are unnervingly topical, like the recent scandals rocking the Hollywood power players. If you read Scot Free in Hollywood, which is now officially Book Two of the series, you might enjoy knowing how Kyle's career got started and how he was introduced to the fascinating world of Hollywood movie making. If you haven't, then this is the perfect introduction to the Kyle in Hollywood series. Book Three (tentatively entitled Just Cause It's Kyle) is coming soon. Cheers! |
Robertson Tait
~ Author of fiction Archives
January 2019
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