Fancy a free novel (or five)?

I’ve been trying to persuade a few of my favourite indie authors to jump on the free ebook bandwagon. I’m happy to report that David Kilpatrick and Kealan Patrick Burke have joined me, along with David Moody and A.P. Fuchs, who were already offering novels for download. I’ve put up a page over at Darryl’s Library where you can download several ebooks for free, in PDF format (Adobe Acrobat required). The emphasis is on quality over quantity. I don’t expect this page to grow exponentially. I’m only featuring books I’ve read (or written, ha-ha) - books where my enjoyment can be verified through my own detailed reviews.

So, if you’re short of something to read, consider one of these babies:

• Chion by Darryl Sloan
• Undercover White Trash by David Kilpatrick
• The Turtle Boy by Kealan Patrick Burke
• Axiom-man by A.P. Fuchs
• Autumn by David Moody

[ Link ]

The value of free ebooks (here’s Chion, gratis!)

I’m coming around to the way of thinking that giving something away free is a good thing.

Against this attitude is the notion that every free gift is a lost sale. More than that, given the ability of computers to copy and share data with the greatest of ease, every free gift could mean countless lost sales. We all know about piracy. But the important question to ask is, when someone downloads your novel and enjoys a free read, would they have bought it otherwise? Speaking from personal experience, I’m willing to bet that the answer in most cases is no.

I once downloaded a free ebook of the novella Purity from Douglas Clegg’s website. Was I considering buying it? Nope. However, after reading it and enjoyed it a great deal, I was then on the lookout for Clegg’s work, and at one point I picked up Neverland in paperback.

One thing I’ve learned about self-publishing is that it’s about overcoming hurdles. The major one that sinks most indie authors is that they fall victim to releasing an overpriced paperback that few readers are willing to pay for. I managed to beat that one. But there’s another major hurdle that I’m only scratching the surface of: Hardly anyone knows who I am.

On a good day, I might get forty unique hits on my website. Some of those, statistically, will be brand new visitors encountering me for the first time. I’ve gone to the trouble of making my site as visually appealing as my skills allow. Visitors are encouraged to find out more about my latest novel, Chion. The book cover is on display; the blurb is listed; there’s even a decent-sized excerpt in both text and audio formats. You can do everything that you could do if you had found the novel on a bookstore shelf. Incidentally, I’m amazed at how many self-published authors don’t avail themselves of these benefits, especially with the bad rep that self-publishing has due to the torrent of unedited works for sale out there. Some indie authors expect the public to buy on the strength of a picture and a scrap of text. Forget it! But hey, there’s something I have to face: hardly anyone who visits my site buys my book anyway. Is this some failure on my part to hook the potential buyer? I honestly don’t think so. And I can back that up with a theory.

In stark contrast to the forty visits and zero sales per day my website receives, each copy of Chion (with a few exceptions), listed as a “Buy It Now” auction on eBay, sells successfully, and usually before the listing has accrued forty views. What causes this alarming difference in sales? The book is the same price, both on my website and on eBay, and is presented with the same hooks. So here’s my theory: You have to catch the web surfer when he’s in the mood to buy something. My novel sells on eBay because shopping is in the surfer’s mind when he’s there. Conversely, his credit card is probably the last thing on his mind when he comes across my site as a result of a Google search or a link.

Now, here’s a thought. How about I give an entire novel away free on my website? Chances are, instead of losing a sale that would never have happened anyway, what I stand to gain is a fan. Up till now, I’ve held the conviction that it’s enough to hand over a sizeable excerpt to readers, but now I’m not so sure. Friend and fellow writer James Maxon debates that there’s something far more attractive to the potiential reader about having the whole package. People will be more likely to begin reading an ebook if they know they have the choice to complete it. How much better is that than to have them think, “Well, it’s only twelve pages and then I have to stop. Don’t know if I’ll bother.” The problem is this: in order to motivate someone to read an excerpt, you have to already get them in the mood to buy the book. In the wrong mood, reading an unfinishable work will be considered time wasted. And as I’ve already illustrated, people are not usually in a buying mood when they visit a random website. I would never have have read Douglas Clegg’s Purity if there was merely an excerpt on offer, presented with a buy-it-if-you-want-to-finish-it option. There’s no shame in going about it that way; a worker deserves his wages. But it just doesn’t work.

It could be argued that I’m already giving away free complete fiction, in the form of short stories, and it hasn’t made much of a difference to sales. Actually, it’s worth noting that some people have told me they bought my novel on the strength of downloading one of my stories. But that’s beside the point. The purpose of free stuff is not to get a quick sale. It’s to crack the problem of hardly anyone knowing about you - to create as many people as possible who love your work and who check back often to see what you’re up to. Then, maybe years down the line, when the fanbase is large enough, you might be able to do some significant book-selling. To create that situation, you’ll need more than a couple of free short stories. Isn’t this exactly what Scott Sigler did? He released three or four novels over time in audio form, got really popular, then released a paperback and soared to the forefront of Amazon’s charts.

It all boils down to this: Don’t underestimate the value of creating a fan.

So, I’m going to throw caution to the wind. Here’s a free PDF file of Chion for a start. Read it, copy it, post it anywhere! Ulterior will follow shortly, as well as a massive flood of videos, courtesy of YouTube: the entire Midnight Pictures catalogue, no less. Brace yourself.

“Best book I’ve read this year” - Will Hadcroft on Chion

Fellow author Will Hadcroft (Anne Droyd and Century Lodge and The Feeling’s Unmutual) has posted a review of Chion on his blog. Here’s an excerpt:

What starts out as a science-fiction thriller, becomes, by turns, a tale about a group of increasingly paranoid and frightened people stuck in an enclosed place, an adventure about fugitives on the run, and a love story.

Shades of John Wyndham (The Day of the Triffids) and John Christopher (the Tripods saga) come through as Chion mimics the best of the old post-apocalyptic greats, while at the same time remaining poignant and contemporary.

Darryl Sloan is a keen observer of human nature. His plotting is meticulous and clever. He deserves to have national and international success with this. It is the best book I’ve read this year.

[ Read Full Review ]

New Ulterior cover - Part II

Jerry’s excellent design for the Ulterior creature has proved to be a tricky beast to incorporate into other elements of a book cover composition. I’ve done a number of experiments, but not been entirely satisfied. This one came close, but the two images didn’t quite gel the way I had hoped.

I got a fresh visual in my head this morning for a different sort of cover, and managed to create it pretty accurately in Photoshop. Voila. Make sure you click through to the larger version to see all the detail. The tag line is tacky, but it was all I could think of at the time, since the existing one (”An ordinary school hides an unearthly secret”) doesn’t suit this picture’s theme.

How to bring an eBay thief to justice

Let me tell you the true story of the videogame I purchased that took three months to arrive. As I’ve done countless times before, I got the winning bid on an eBay auction from a seller who had 100% positive feedback (I always check), this time for a copy of Crackdown for the Xbox 360, a game I was looking forward to playing. Unfortunately the seller did not accept Paypal payments. No big deal, except I would probably have to wait a week or more for delivery due to the cheque having to clear. Two weeks went by, and there was no sign of the game. I emailed the seller and got a positive response. I did some more waiting. Still no game. I emailed again. This time no response. Well over a month later, I rechecked the seller’s feedback rating and saw that three negative comments had appeared. So, I wasn’t the only person this guy had decided to rip off. Well, either that or he had died. Who could tell?

Anyway, I added my own negative comment to the others. Fair’s fair; he cashed my cheque and walked away without sending the goods. And if he’s now in heaven, he’ll hardly mind an extra stain on his eBay account. Next, I registered a complaint with eBay. Nothing happened except the seller’s account was shut down. So I had to decide: do I take this further or put it down to experience? Well, this wasn’t the first time I had been ripped off on eBay; it was the third. So I thought, No more. This time I’m not letting it rest.

eBay had turned out to be prettty unsupportive, so I formulated my own plan. First, I used Google to locate the nearest police station to the seller’s address. Then I used eBay’s “Contact Member” form to write a message to the three other victims of the seller. I asked each of them to compose a letter addressed to the police in the seller’s area, detailing exactly what the seller had done, including as much detail as possible, right down to the cheque numbers and dates cleared. Instead of having the buyers forward their letters individually to the police, I asked them to mail them to me. Two of them did so. Along with myself, that made us a party of three. I then forwarded all three letters directly to the police in the seller’s area. This whole approach saved several different police stations having to forward and collate (and possibly misplace or ignore) the data. Instead, I provided them with a nice tidy all-inclusive package. I was prepared to leave nothing to chance.

Sure enough, I eventually received a call from a police sergeant. He advised me there were two ways he could play it. He could either have us fill out an official form of complaint, or he could simply call round to the seller’s house today and quiz him. Collectively, we all agreed to the latter, because it was simple and quick. Boy oh boy, I would have loved to have seen the seller’s face when the sergeant arrived at his door and told him why he was there. Little did the scoundrel know that there were three offended customers from different parts of the country secretly conspiring against him.

Yes, the seller was very much alive, and quick to make his excuses. His story was that shortly after the auction he had been admitted to hospital for three weeks, during which time he also had problems with his girlfriend. And it was the girlfriend who was the actual owner of the eBay account he was using to trade. He was actually able to show the sergeant the very games he had listed on eBay and he then agreed to post them the next day. The presence of the games indicates that there actually was some original intent to make good on the sales, and I’m willing to believe that the seller’s story would check out, if investigated. However, the excuses are rather feeble when you consider how I had been waiting three months for the game. I think it was more theft by laziness than theft by intent. But theft is theft, and if I had never brought the matter to the police, I doubt that I would ever have received the game. Crackdown finally arrived yesterday.

There you have it. Honourable eBay users take note: if someone rips you off, now you know how to bring him down!

7 new book reviews

I’ve written seven new book reviews over at Darryl’s Library:

• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Rising Stars: Voices of the Dead; Bright by Fiona Avery
• Forever Odd by Dean Koontz
• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
• Unreal! by Paul Jennings
• The Terminator: Tempest by John Arcudi
• The Terminator: One Shot by James Robinson & Matt Wagner

My trip to the USA

The story of why I spent August in Kansas, USA, goes like this: About two years ago my local friend Chris was doing his PhD in Astronomy at Armagh Observatory. His boss said, “I want you to attend a conference in Spain.” Chris sighed, bowed his head in resignation, and went. Whilst in Spain, he met an American lass called Stacey. It came to light that both were big fans of Farscape, and Chris just happened to have in his possession a laptop full of Farscape episodes. This ensured that these two spent plenty of time in each other’s company … alone. And so, Stacey soon swept my best friend off to the Land of the Free … or not so soon. Bravely, Chris battled the evil Red Tape for a year, until finally becoming an American citizen. Now he’s married with a kid. So off I flew to Kansas, to see my buddy for the first time in over a year.

One of the unexpected highlights of the vacation was spending time with Isabel, Chris and Stacey’s one-year-old girl. She got accustomed to this big six-foot-four monster quite quickly and we had a lot of fun. It’s amusing figuring out things that make babies laugh. One not so amusing moment was when Stacey decided to sneak out and do some shopping, leaving me alone with Isabel. I was able to keep the kid occupied for about fifteen minutes, then her wee head started looking around for mummy continually and nothing would distract her. After crawling around in frustration, she had a complete tearful, snot-filled meltdown. Luckily, Stacey arrived back within a few minutes.

One evening, Stacey and Chris put the baby to sleep in the bedroom and went out on a date. I watched some DVDs, keeping one eye on the baby monitor. For the most part, Isabel kept still, but occasionally she would give a little moan, then I would give a panicked glance at the monitor and see her changing position in the cot. Don’t wake up! I thought. Please don’t wake up! Thankfully I got through that evening without trauma.

Someone who comments occasionally on this blog is Jeffrey Allen Davis, a fellow indie author from Springfield, Missouri. I always remembered Jeff linking to my site with the words: “A brother in Christ from Ireland that I’ll probably never get to meet.” Well, it turns out that Springfield is only a four-hour drive from Chris’s abode in Olathe, Kansas, and it happens to be the town where Stacey went to college. So, we took a trip down there. Stacey went off to meet up with her old college buds while I met up with Jeff and two of his friends, Evan and Karen. It’s not often that I’ve met up with someone that I know purely from email, and it’s pretty amazing to be able to meet with someone so far from home. The four of us had a great time, chatting mostly about writing and filmmaking. Hopefully we’ll meet again on future trips to the US.

Some snippets of unusual things you don’t experience in Ireland.

• Walking out of Kansas City Airport for the first time and being slapped across the face by a wall of heat.
• Driving down the highway and spotting hawks with a five-foot wing-span gliding overhead.
• Standing in a garden and looking at a tree that’s making more noise than a radio tuned to static. Cicadas are very noisy critters.
• Motorcyclists without helmets, with fashion senses somewhere between Easy Rider and Mad Max.
• Big flatbed trucks with deliberately raised suspensions and tyres that are much too wide for the body.
• Obese people whizzing around indoors on motorised granny carts, far too young to be grannies. It’s a tragedy what some people regard as normal life.
• Watching an incredible lightning storm. The sky flashed every few seconds; the forks were long and laboured. Over here it’s a quick flash every few minutes, if we’re lucky.

The vacation also afforded me an opportunity to obtain a couple of items that are unavailable in Ireland and the UK. I picked up season one of The Fall Guy and the complete series of The Greatest American Hero, two shows that I enjoyed as a kid, and which thus far have not appeared on region 2 DVD. Also purchased Bruce Campbell’s autobiography If Chins Could Kill, which looks like a fun read. Oh, and I bought some new trainers. Over here, they don’t stock my size (13″, although it’s called 14″ in the US; yes, I’m a freak) in shops and I have to mail order. So, it was pleasant actually being able to try-before-you-buy for once.

Americans seem to love the Northern Irish accent. As an experiment, I tried to put on the American accent, but apparently I sound effeminate when I do! You should hear the Americans trying to speak like a Northern Irishman. The ultimate test is to ask them to say, “How Now, Brown Cow.”

I enjoyed my holiday, but it’s good to be home, too. If there’s one thing I just can’t stand about Kansas, it’s the terrible humidity of mid-summer and the afternoon temperatures of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s necessary to be indoors most of the time. On one occasion, Stacey’s brother Loren travelled the fifteen-or-so miles to visit me at Chris’s apartment. Unfortunately the air conditioning in his car wasn’t working properly, and when he arrived, he was soaked with sweat, to the degree that it looked as if someone had thrown a water balloon at his back. I love the cool summers of Ireland and the ability to go cycling whenever and wherever I want. Unlike Chris, if I ever hit it off with an American chick, I will be dragging her back here.

Sleep deprivation

Well, I’m back! And where was I? Not just off the blogosphere, but out of the country. I was in the USA for three weeks - Kansas, specifically. I decided not to blog about the fact that I was going on vacation in case somebody local decided that it would be an opportune time to break into my house, given the fact that I live alone and had to leave it vacant for three weeks. Paranoid? Maybe, but my dad once had his boat shed looted in a similar scenario.

I’ll blog a little about the trip once Chris sends me the digital photos I took. Right now, I’m operating on about two hours of sleep, and not feeling like doing much of anything. I flew through the night for six and a half hours across the Atlantic, arriving back in Ireland on Wednesday morning. Didn’t get any sleep on the plane. A six-foot-four person in a cramped plane seat isn’t conducive to rest; about the only thing it is conducive to is Deep Vein Thrombosis. When I got home, I decided not to go to sleep, because I needed to force my sleeping pattern back into a normal routine. So, at 11.30 pm I finally tumbled into bed … and didn’t wake up until 1.30 pm the next day. That’s fourteen hours of solid sleep! Two nights for the price of one. I really wish I had set the alarm. I knew I was going to pay for that mistake the following night, and sure enough I did. I lay in bed from 11.50 pm until … Well, the last time I looked at the clock, it said 5.30 am, and I had to get up for work at 7.45. I was unable to sleep because my body didn’t need it. So I am operating on two hours of kip, and I have to struggle through the day again until it’s bedtime (and right now I’m back at work). Instead of getting rid of my jetlag, all I’ve done is move it forward a day.

I once learned a couple of interesting things about sleep. There are apparently two rules that help you get a good night’s sleep. One is to get up every morning at exactly the same time, without fail. The other is to go to bed when you can hardly keep your eyes open. This means that some nights you will go to bed earlier or later than other nights. As long as you keep the wake-up time the same, your body-clock knows what time to start knocking you out at night. Any time spent in bed whilst not sleepy is time wasted (as I can testify last night). So there you have it: the cure for insomnia.

None of that helps me right now, of course.

Copy of Ulterior looking for a new home

If anyone out there is interested in picking up a copy of my out-of-print novel Ulterior, it has shown up on eBay as a Buy It Now auction priced £3.00. It’s one of a limited first (and only) edition of 1070 copies, and it hardly ever shows up for resale. Auction ends on 14 August.

[ Link ]

A visit to Kinnego Marina

See that big puddle of water right smack in the middle of Northern Ireland? That’s Lough Neagh. Legend has it that Fionn mac Cumhaill, our national giant, scooped up a giant-sized handful of earth and tossed it into the sea as a stepping stone over to the UK mainland (the hole became Lough Neagh and the stepping stone the Isle of Man, both roughly the same size). The lough is about twenty miles from north to south, so big that all you can see is water on the horizon when you look across it - like you’re on the edge of the sea. I’ve been interested in the lough lately because I can’t get the notion of boating out of my mind. I live a mere ten miles south of the lough, so it’s the most appropriate place to exercise this potential new hobby of mine. A couple of days ago I visited Kinnego Marina on the southeast corner of the Lough, and took a few snaps. Beautiful, isn’t it?

The marina also has an indoor boat shop, so I went in for a browse. The boat that really caught my eye was the Bayliner 246, which is the one you can see me crawling about inside on the photo. I say crawling because, curse my DNA, I’m six-foot-four (I blame that on all the excessive milk-drinking I did as a kid). It would be nice to stand up straight inside the lower cabin of one of these boats, but I’m out of luck. Thankfully there’s one spot where I can stand with my hair touching the roof. Any further towards the bow (that’s the front of the boat; see, I’ve been learning boating terms), the roof slopes downward and I have problems. The saving grace in all this is that the standing-spot-for-tall-freaks is right by the cooker, and the cabin is so small that you’re not likely to be doing a lot of standing, anyway.

I love the thought of taking friends out to the middle of the lough, doing a bit of fishing, then gutting and cooking the fish on board. As the sun sets, with a boat this size, you have the option to drop anchor and make a night of it. The lough has access to the sea via the north coast of Ireland, so there’s the potential for long range trips - to the Isle of Man (and the various other islands in and around the UK and Ireland), Scotland, Wales; maybe even to the likes of France.

I’m dreaming. These boats are selling for silly money, like around £30,000. However, I did see plenty going on eBay second hand for much more affordable prices. Most of them are in England. How would I get one home? Well, smaller boats are often sold on trailers, so I could take the jeep over on the ferry. But I’m a lot more interested in a bigger cabin cruiser. These are generally berthed on a river somewhere. The idea is, you buy the boat and pilot it home on water. Wouldn’t it be nice to be sailing home in a second-hand boat only to hear the engine sputtering to silence when you’re in the middle of the Irish Sea? Did I say sailing? Oops. This is a motor boat and there is no sail. Something tells me I won’t be buying a boat from so far away. What am I talking about? I don’t have the money to buy one, anyway. Like I said, I’m dreaming. And why not?

Cycling vs. driving - Part III

Well, I’ve made good on my decision to cycle to work every day. We’re experiencing some erratic weather here in Northern Ireland these days: continuous brief showers, often several times a day. This has sometimes meant that I wake up in the morning to a pleasant, dry atmosphere, only to open the back door after breakfast to find the rain pounding down. A couple of times I’ve had to bring a change of jeans with me to work. Then there are those evening times (like yesterday), when I venture out on my bike wearing a T-shirt, because the weather has been nice all day, only to feel the first drops of rain on my face when I start to head up the road. I sometimes feel the rain waits for me to emerge from my house before pouring down.

But weather is the least of my problems. Motorists are the big problem. If there’s one rule that should be written into the cyclists’ road safety manual, it’s this: “Expect no courtesy.” Of course, I can’t tar all motorists with the same brush, but a significant percentage of them are bad-mannered and dangerous enough to put me on my guard for every eventuality. Some motorists simply do not view bicycles as traffic. I guess they see a cyclist as something between a pedestrian and a motorcycle, so maybe they wonder what set of rules are supposed to apply. And sometimes they choose pedestrian. This is evidenced by the fact that a motorist barely overtook me before turning ninety degrees left into a side road, causing me to break and yell, “Wake up!” One of the teachers in the school car park did the same thing to me, and I was fuming. On another occasion, a car was emerging from a side road and was required to give way to me; I was cruising along the main road. I saw him preparing to gun forward and I yelled. Unfortunately, this was in the town centre, and every shopper within earshot suddenly whirled around and looked at me, to my embarrassment. Well, at least I got the guy to stop. Sometimes, when I ride my bike, it feels like I’ve put on an invisibility cloak. Once, I stuck my right hand out as an indicator, and the motorist behind me decided to overtake me regardless. Some other jerk had the bad manners to overtake me then blare his horn at me because I wasn’t keeping to the edge of the road; what I was actually doing was trying to filter into the right hand lane of a road that was branching into two. There are now certain junctions that I simply will not cycle through. I get off and walk, and it’s a terrible reflection on the attitude of motorists today. Another trouble spot is when I have to overtake a parked car, and I can hear another car approaching behind me. You’re never sure whether the guy is going to cut you off and force you into the back of the parked car or allow you to overtake it.

I’m not the sort of guy who is prone to outbursts of anger, so I disappointed myself on those couple of occasions when I let loose. It doesn’t happen any more; I’ve learned to simply accept that there are many idiots in the world and some of them drive cars. So I shrug off anything bad that happens. Notice I haven’t spoken out particularly against the “boy racers.” I’ve been quite alarmed that people of both sexes who are older (and should be wiser) are equally to blame in their poor attitude to cyclists.

On another theme, school kids (who recognise me from the school) can react strangely to things that are not often seen - like a member of staff on a bicycle. Often it’s a pleasant, “Cool bike,” but once, some guy spotted me and started laughing his head off like I had just cracked the joke of the century. In his trendy, teenage, pop-culture-infested excuse for a brain, I guess the idea of a thirty-four-year-old on a mountain bike just didn’t compute - because thirty-four-year-olds are just ancient and couldn’t possibly take an interest in something like personal fitness. Oh, of course. How could I have been so dumb? I must look like a fool; I’ll sell the bike immediately and go lie down on the sofa.

I’m now quite a bit fitter than I was when I bought the bike a few months ago. Chinese takeways don’t even have their full flab-increasing effect, because I have to fly down on the bike to get one. Well, in all honesty, I don’t think I’ve lost much weight, but my thigh muscles feel really strong and my endurance levels are much higher than they were. Cycling’s also a lot more enjoyable than all the jogging I put myself through in recent years.

In mid May, I allowed my car insurance to lapse. I actually came very close to selling the jeep (something I’ve been thinking about since a post I wrote in summer 2006), but in the end I put the insurance back on again. Although most of my activity revolves around Portadown, there are certain things that four wheels are indispensable for. I’m especially thinking of my long-standing desire to get into canoeing or boating. Can’t exactly tow one of those on a bicycle.

A couple of days ago I took the jeep out for the first time in about two and a half months. Thankfully, nothing had seized up (although I did find a little moss growing in the door). Today, I’m in work - and, yes, I got here on my bicycle. Now that I’ve managed to make this change in my life, there’s no way I’m going back to driving to work. Well, a good hail-storm might make me keep the bike in the garage, but that’s not going to happen very often. So, my life won’t be going completely “zero emissions,” but close … at least until I get myself a big stonking diesel-sucking cabin cruiser! Well, a guy can dream.

Welcome to the new blog

Well, I’ve decided to migrate my blog from Blogger to WordPress. Whether it now looks better or worse than the old blog, I’m not sure. One thing’s for sure, it’s more functional.

One of the most important things to me about blogging is receiving comments from readers. You’ll notice the new blog lists the last five comments down the right-hand side - a nice touch. Those of you who were in the habit of commenting regularly, please keep ‘em coming. Obviously, you’ll no longer log in from your Blogger account (if you had one), but comments are open to everyone. Just state your name and post away.

You’ll notice there’s now a “Categories” section on the sidebar. This should give a bit more exposure to some important older posts, like my writing and filmmaking tips, that are currently floating way back in the mists of time.

I always hated the navigation (or lack thereof) on the Blogger template. Now, I’ve been able to move all the clutter that was on my sidebar into handy pages along the top.

Expect further changes and enhacements in the coming days.

Welcome to The Dead Club

Last weekend, Midnight Pictures was invited to travel up north to the seaside town of Ballycastle, to do a one-day filmmaking workshop with the town’s already established Film Club run by our friend Harry Hamill (who stars in several of our own films). Only two people showed up to take part (maybe due to the rain), which meant we couldn’t film our intended story. Nevertheless, Andrew Harrison and I didn’t let that dampen our enthusiasm. A quick scout around an adjacent ruined building got us thinking along post-apocalypse lines. It really was a fantastic location (as you’ll see). And what post-apocalyptic scenario did we choose? Do you really need to ask? Well, for the first time since 1993, Midnight Pictures returns to where it all began … zombies!

I’m quite proud of how this movie turned out. We managed to record a complete six-minute movie in the space of five hours, complete with zombie make-up and blood (courtesy of some art paint we found on the premises). I spent yesterday and today editing the movie, and it was a real joy seeing it come together. I was especially pleased with the climactic fight scene, which felt genuinely tense to watch.

Hope you enjoy The Dead Club …

Movie download: The Survivor

Here’s a little 15-minute horror movie for you. I’ve been making this since last October, at the sluggish pace of one afternoon per week, with some of the pupils at Clounagh Junior High (members of the school’s filmmaking club). Long time blog readers will know that one of these movies comes around each year about this time. Last year we released Cat Trap, the tale of a panther that wanders into the school ten minutes before class-change (still available for download at www.clounagh.com). This year we’ve made a ghost story, one that’s a bit tricky to get your head around. But that’s something I like about it. The film went down a treat this afternoon, when we held a premiere in the school assembly hall for Year 8 pupils. I hope you enjoy it, too …

[Readers of Ulterior might like to know that one of the movie's scenes features the infernal elevator that played such a big part in the novel.]

Chapter 1 of 2:

Chapter 2 of 2:

Chion raises money for orphanage

I’ve recently been enjoying promoting Chion among the children at Clounagh Junior High. There are around thirty classes in the school. What I do is individually hijack each class’s library period and spend half an hour talking about the book. Five years ago, when I did this with my first novel, Ulterior, I quickly learned that the best approach was to be interactive. So, I tell the first few pages of the novel in my own words, then I ask questions about the apocalyptic scenario - questions designed to lead them to the conclusion that there is no hope of rescue and that everyone in the story is going to die. Then I throw them a life-line. I say, “One person figures out a way to survive indefinitely.” By this stage, they’re dying to know what the solution is. Do I tell them? Heck, no! The whole point of the discussion is to get them interested enough to buy the book. And many of them do.

So far, I’ve sold around 100 copies to the pupils. And I’m happy to report that this now takes me beyond my initial print-run of 250 books, into a second lot. Any books that I sell through the school are priced at the usual £4, except £2 from that is being donated to Katya Vanchev Orphanage in Bulgaria. So, there’s £200 raised already, and there’ll be more, with the new intake of kids due in September. What’s my profit? Mere pennies, if anything, as each book costs £1.75 (plus shipping) to produce.

Katya Vanchev is an orphanage that the school has an ongoing affiliation with. Each year, the children who take part in the annual ski tip visit the place, bringing money raised from various school activities.

I’m a lot happier about raising money for a small orphanage than for a faceless charity. With Ulterior, I raised money for BBC Children in Need and ended up being spoken to in harsh tones by one of the reps over the fact that I had put a Pudsey logo on my website. Never again. And besides, with a big charity, you never know how much of your money is going to administration costs. At least with an actual orphanage, I know that 100% of the money I’ve raised will benefit the children there - children I can actually see for myself, via the school’s online ski trip gallery.