The Worlds of Michael J. Parry

Blog

  • The October Update

    Having both of us been laid flat with a very bad cold things have not moved as quickly as I would have liked. Hopefully in the next few days Kylie’s voice will have recovered enough for me to lock her in the cupboard to record more episodes of The Oaks Grove. I will be able to do some much delayed promotional work, and also writing on the third story.

    In the meantime you can subscribe to The Oaks Grove here on podiobooks and download the first five episodes. Or you may want to revisit the podcast of The Spiral Tattoo?

    Or even better buy the ebook version of The Spiral Tattoo for either for your Kindle, or for other formats. What would be really great if you did would be if you left a nice review or rating on Goodreads or Librarything?

  • What Would Make You Follow A LInk On Twitter To Buy A Book?

    As I grapple with this whole shameless self promotion thing and try to sell my book [Buy here] 🙂 I am constantly looking for new avenues and better ways to do things.

    I have been using Twitter to promote my book, which is good, but I have been trying to figure out some things. So a couple of questions for you;

    1. How often should an author tweet their links? Is there an optimum ratio of sales pitch to interaction? What is overkill?
    2. What makes you follow a link? What’s a good short pitch in 140 characters or less minus hashtags, links and title [there goes 40 characters already]? 

  • After The Long Wait, The Oaks Grove Drops On October The 3rd On Podiobooks

    We have a date; October the 3rd (US). That is when the first episodes of The Oaks Grove start dropping on Podiobooks.com. When they go live I will post a link.

  • Fellow Podiobooks Author Helps Me Pimp The Spiral Tattoo

    Fellow podiobooks author Marc Vale has kindly posted up my promo for The Spiral Tattoo on his blog….

    He even included our book trailer!

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYhRvCAWi-o]

     

     

  • Nathan Lowell Presents: Me On A Blog Tour

    Nathan Lowell has opened up his site to fellow authors to plug their wares. He kindly let me put this up:

    A Kiwi, A Fairy, And A Troll Walk Into A Bar…

    The punchline to that story is an interview. In this instance, the author isn’t interviewing his characters, but the other way around. For today’s entertainment, Nathan Lowell Presents…

    Michael J. Parry

     

    Gurt: So why’d you want us to interview you?

    MJP: There is an art to writing good posts, there is also an art to writing good advertising material and then there is the art of writing good stories. If you can do one it does not necessarily follow that you can do the others. I think I can do the third, but I am not so hot on the first two.

    Elanore: I can understand that. When writing my recent philosophy treatise, I found that very different to writing reports for the Captain.

    Gurt: That’s why I let you write them.

    Elanore: I had noticed that.

    Continue Reading at Nathan’s

  • An August Update

    It has been a while since I have updated everyone with what is happening in my writing world.

    I have finished writing The Oaks Grove, the second Gurt and Elanore tale. It’s now slated for release as an eBook early next year. This means it probably won’t get looked at properly by the editor until later this year. I had thought of waiting until it had gone through to it’s final draft before podcasting it, as it would then be consistent across versions. Since that would mean it wouldn’t be podcast until next year I have decided to go early. I need to finish a few tweaks over this weekend, and then we shall start recording next week. I hope to be able to squeeze it into the release schedule on podiobooks sometime in late October/early November. Besides which my wife is desperate to be locked in the cupboard again 😆

    This means the podcast version of The Oaks Grove will be a “beta” version like The Spiral Tattoo. I think I will do that with all of the Gurt and Elanore tales.

    After tweaking The Oaks Grove, and while podcasting it, I will set too with writing the third tale in the series.  This was meant to be called The Honey Garden, however I have a much more exciting plotline, which means a change in title. The new title will be The Bluebell, and will revolve around the hunt for demented serial killer amongst the snow laden streets of Delvenport.

    The Bluebell is due for release mid next year in ebook, but I hope to have it finished to a satisfactory level by the end of this year so we can podcast it early next year.

    On the paperback front. My publisher has been finalizing details on that front and hopes to be able to bring out a paperback edition of The Spiral Tattoo early next year. I guess how well that goes will inform on when the other titles will appear in paperback.

  • The Quest To Personalise The EBook: Kindlegraph

    Here is a problem that will become more of an issue in the future; how do you autograph an eBook?  

    One solution I discovered is Kindlegraph.

    First the problems;

    • You are not actually signing the eBook, rather you will receive a separate PDF of the cover with a message
    • The signature won’t be the authors real one. There was no option for uploading my real signature – which is a good thing too on reflection.
    • Is it really the author leaving the message – there is no guarantee that at the end of cyberspace is the real author or anyone associated with the author…

    On the positive side;

    • You can receive a genuine message from the author
    • You can create an old fashioned signature scrapbook – just an eversion.

    So if you want me to send you a real genuine message to store on your kindle/pc then here is my Kindlegraph page: http://kindlegraph.com/authors/Michael_J_Parry

    And let me know what you think of the service….

  • Book Launch For The Spiral Tattoo

    Although since it has been available for a couple of months now, maybe I should just call it a meet and greet?

    So, better late than never, on Thursday the 18th of August, at 2pm, at Levin library I will be holding a book launch for The Spiral Tattoo.

    It will be interesting for everybody involved since there won’t be any hard copies to sell and sign, but it’s the first one.

  • Happiness Is…

    A screenshot of the Amazon page for The Spiral Tattoo where under “Customers who bought this item also bought” appears Stig Larssons The Girl Who Kicked A Hornet’s Nest…

  • The Spiral Tattoo Book Trailer – Version One: No Cute Puppies!

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYhRvCAWi-o]