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!
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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! 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! Well, here we are. I'm ready to go directly to the publishing phase, but once again the busy editors at Kindle Scout are taking their time releasing the title back to me. Since we are approaching the 10th day of 15, I expect to hear by the end of the week at the latest. Meanwhile I wanted to let you all know that I've decided to throw in a couple of days of free download to thank those who have nominated Kyle Harrison Movie Star, and to encourage anyone not familiar with my writing to have a look. Usually I never give away my books, but it seemed like the thing to do as this title has received so many page views during the campaign. I'll publish the free days here as soon as I know when that will be. Comments, feedback and, especially, Amazon and Goodreads reviews would make my day, so I hope the sheer brilliance of the writing will motivate some of you to post a few lines (brilliance is, of course, in the eye of the beholder and, if you think it's brilliant, I will certainly be beholding!) Kyle Harrison is not a typical romcom. There is romance, there is humour (at least I hope you will find some amusement in the story), but there is also a good dose of social commentary based on my own experiences and observations from many years ago. With the recent power abuse scandal rocking the very core of the Hollywood apple, I find myself horrified to discover that the old gossip about the "casting couch" culture is not only accurate, but that it reveals a rotten core a thousand times more disgusting than I could imagine. In the series "Kyle in Hollywood" my hero acts, risking his career and his freedom, whenever he is aware of sexual abuse. One can only wish that more real people had done the same when the situation called for affirmative action, instead of voicing shock and surprise (and, even worse, regret) decades after the fact. So, if you feel like a break from the depressing reality, let Kyle's adventures entertain you with a more optimistic take on the fascinating world of movie making. Books 1 and 2 are already published, and I'm busy working on Book 3, with a tentative release date of early next year, if not sooner. Subscribe to my newsletter to receive advance notification of promotions and new releases, and to get free content. Also remember that I promised a link to Soundcloud for my Nashville-produced song, which my character Randy Riley composes in the book. Details in the "Thank You" email from Kindle Scout. |
Robertson Tait
~ Author of fiction Archives
January 2019
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