When is a book not a book?

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When it’s only printed in a ‘Collector’s Edition’ !

Yes, I’d be confused too. Let me explain. An excellent organisation called ‘Incredible Edible Salford’ (IES) had a massive ‘Crowdfunder’ campaign in the autumn of 2021. If you know anything about these Crowdfunder conundrums, you’ll know that the campaigners are obliged to offer some incentives, or – as they call them – ‘Rewards’, to people who contribute cash. Fine. The person who put £10 into the pot was offered a packet of seeds. The person who put in £50 got a tour around the planting site, followed by tea and biscuits on the terrace. The only question, then, is what do you give the person who donated, say, £1,000? Hmm, yeah, it had to be special.

Enter me, Mike. Since the green and growing area that the funding was for was in Buile Hill park, I offered to write a book based around the site. Since I write only Crime Fiction adventure thrillers, it was going to be one of them. Since the prize had to be special, I agreed to only print out 50 copies of a hardback version of the book – no paperback, – an edition that would be numbered and signed by the author. Yes, unique.

Six months went by. Okay, the Collectors have had their day. Now, what about the regular readers, people who enjoy good crime thrillers? Well, the powers that be wanted to hold me to my contract – no paperback – but they agreed I could issue an e-book, if any profits made went to the funding programme. Agreed. That’s what we’ll do. Buy this e-book and you’ll be making a donation to the green and growing project at the bottom of Buile Hill.

So, your chance has come. You can acquire a copy of this story now. It’s one more novel in the series ‘Amelia Hartliss Mysteries’, but it has one exciting extra – fairy folk.

It’s the elves and the pixies that really cause the trouble, this time.

Buy the e-book from this link: https://www.kobo.com/za/en/ebook/tales-of-old-buile-hill

((It’s not available on Amazon. Sorry. Try some other great e-book sites.))

Amazon dictates

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So let’s get this straight. In the real world, you buy something online, and then, when it arrives and you’ve tried it out, you can leave a comment. Amazon doesn’t operate like that. It’s too far away from Common Sense. If you buy a book from Amazon, read it and then write a review, a whole cabal of apparatchiks will review your review, and then decide if it’s worth publishing. In the last fortnight, I have written 3 reviews of the e-books I’ve bought from Amazon Kindle, and the socialists at Amazon have refused to publish any of them.

So, what’s the reason? I mean, there must be a reason, right? Wrong. It’s not as simple as that. The Amazon secret police won’t say which law you have transgressed. Instead, they send a list of 7 or 8 things that you ‘might’ have done wrong. Oh, I get it – they don’t want to commit themselves. Maybe they think we will sue! Or maybe, they really aren’t sure of themselves, and don’t want to put their judgements down on paper in case we see through their completely illogical and arbitrary declarations. After all, if it’s only 8, they could produce a form and let the person doing the judging tick a box, right? Easy. Too easy. It’s just like the Wizard of Oz. The skinny people at Amazon think that if they stay behind the curtain and shout, they’ll retain their mystique and power. Wow, they must have learnt that one from Joe Stalin.

There must be some kind of way out of here – Ah, yes, and now I’ve found it. It comes in the form of a new website called ‘Bookshop.org’. They’ve organised local bricks and mortar bookstores into a list. All you have to do is go to http://www.Bookshop.org, pick the book you want, then choose a bookstore near you and they’ll order the book for you, through that store. It covers the country, so there’s no shortage of choice. Why not? Amazon, being the biggest, (if not the best), have just shot themselves in the foot, yet again. By playing all cloak and dagger with reviews – setting conditions, not applying them consistently and failing to communicate (the thing they’ve always done best) – then people like me are going to be out there looking for an alternative. Sorry, Auntie Amazon, but if you insist on acting like Big Brother, then you’re going to lose customers. It’s only logical.

Author Mike shelters from the storm

Drawing in the park

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Mike goes down to his local tram stop (properly socially distanced, with a mask – in his pocket) and finds himself mentioned on a poster.

Mike at tram stop, stopped in his tracks. Astonished

The drawing is part of a series commissioned from an artist in The Netherlands called Jan. Jane and Mike had several sessions online with Jan, and told him all about their experiences in Buile Hill park in the centre of Salford. Jan decided to include the singing duo in his exploration of the fifty acres.

It’s them! The Jane and Mike Band. (You can find them on YouTube, Spotify, iTunes and all good music stores). Also, they are resident singers on ‘The Green Giraffes and Worms’ radio show, saved as podcasts on SoundCloud – just go to SoundCloud and type ‘Green Giraffes and Worms podcasts’ into the Search Box. It brings up an extended Playlist.)

Thanks to Mark Frith of ‘Growing Togetherness’ for inviting Jane and Mike in to the consultation phase. Mark is responsible for developing the old allotment site at the bottom of Buile Hill (the old Seedley Park bowling green) over the last year and is mentioned also.

Plus, observe the giant words ‘Incredible Edible Salford’, a project that celebrated its eighth birthday in February. Mark was involved at the beginning, but then moved on. (Mike is IES’s Company Secretary at the moment, ongoing.)

Thanks to the ‘Sick Festival’ for inventing the project and arranging the series of drawings of local areas all around Manchester. (As you might expect, this Salford drawing is the best, probably).

NEW COVER – reveal

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The story so far: since Christmas, in this brave new world of 2021, I’ve drawn attention to 2 e-books of mine (see below). The first one you’ll see is called ‘Everybody Lies’ and is Book 20 in the ‘Amelia Hartliss Mysteries’ series. The book below it (that is, mentioned earlier in the year), is called ‘Senctioned’ and is number 15, but in a completely different series (‘Mickey from Manchester’).

Hey, I thought you LIKED mysteries. You’ve wondered, well – 16? 17? doesn’t lead to 20. There’s something missing. You’re darn-diddly-darny-did-diddly-did right! There must be a book called 19 (nineteen) which comes before. So where is it?

More to the point, if you ever took advantage of the offer and started reading ‘Everybody Lies’ you would have been told that it’s Part 2 of a two-part series. Gosh darn it (again). You want to find out what happened in – Oh, now that’s a problem. We’re talking Book 19 (again). Where’s it got to? I can’t get hold of it, you say.

The simple answer is that Book 19 had a cover (which even e-books have) that the bookshops online said was not good enough. They wouldn’t put it on their shelves (their virtual shelves) until something was done. What, like find an artist and get a new drawing? Exactly that. A new cover, and you’re done, they said. Okay, here it is. New cover, same book, and below the picture, a link to an online bookshop (other bookshops are available).

Melia is back in business, but not looking her best

Not three books – FREE books….

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Well, cos you’ve already heard about that one, and that one, and you might be thinking that since all good things come in threes, then there will be another FREE e-book coming your way, being made available for download.

Okay, I give up. Sure, you can have one. The thing is, this time, it’s like a blast from the past. You see I used to be an active member of a website called ‘InstaFreebie’ which is exactly like it sounds – you set things up and they gave them away, for free, on your behalf. But then IF changed their name to ‘Prolific Works’, not so catchy, and I kind of lost touch with them. Still, I’ve been strolling around this week, and guess what – they are still there. I tried logging on with my old details, and bingo, I’m in. They’ve still got all my projects, and they’re all still working. Wow, nothing ever dies on the internet, does it? It might fade away for a bit, but it’s still there, lurking on some server –

Now, down to business. Click on the link below and you will be sent to a ‘Prolific Works’ page with one of my e-books on it. Click on the blue button and they’ll give you a free copy. What’s the catch? Why, in this case, just for once, nothing. You don’t have to do anything, not ever write a review or play nice. Just take the exciting action adventure away and read it at your leisure. Consider it my Easter Giveaway. I couldn’t give you a chocolate rabbit, so have a novel instead. Happy Holidays.

https://claims.prolificworks.com/free/RwsJi3aS

BLACK FRIDAY WEEKEND

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I’ve got 10 e-books out there for free this very important weekend, which, as you may know, starting on Thursday night and doesn’t end until midnight on Monday.

Phew, a long weekend. You could get a lot done in that time – paint the fence, put up a shelf, make a ragout, or – read a book (or 2, or 10).

See how you get on.

Link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07QM1LNH1

BLACK FRIDAY (and weekend, slightly grey)

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https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07DQT6S99

It’s BLACK FRIDAY and I’m giving away 10 e-books free this weekend. Here’s a #CrimeFiction #thriller from the adventuress of North West England.

If you don’t know Amelia Hartliss, she has something to do with The Amelia Hartliss Mysteries series. (The clue’s in the title. Ahh, ‘clues’. Yes, that’s it. That’s where the ‘mystery’ comes from.)

‘Trilogy’? Tri? Try harder!

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When is a 3 not a 3 ? When it’s a Mike Scantlebury Trilogy.

You’ve heard about my ‘Housing Crisis’ series of novels? I started writing in the first weeks of 2020, but then the whole world went mad and I was Locked-Down, literally. The book changed, the story changed. The characters changed. And the plan changed.

The Trilogy changed. As The Spice Girls once said, ‘Two Becomes One’.

(or 3 becomes 4)

Fangs for everything

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Okay, people, it’s time that you met the members of my team.

This is Morris, my Agent. I mean, he looks like a Pussy Cat, right? Don’t you believe it! He has fangs of steel and a grip like a vice. He can slice the flesh off the bones of a contract in minutes, and get to grips with the business like a tiger pouncing on a fawn. Only then, when the signature is on the paper, will he lean back, purr and let you stroke his hair. Spooky, I know.

(What do ya mean, you didn’t think I had a ‘team’. No? You think I can manage all this crazy stuff on my own? Why, only if there’s half a dozen of me – and that’s not likely. Not in this Universe.))

My cup runneth over

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Well, one good thing about Lock-Down and all this ‘STAY AT HOME’ stuff (In Capital Letters) is that I get to finish off a few novels and get them out there, loaded and available to new readers, pushing the steeds out of my stable – which is called, as you know, ‘Scanti-Noir’. (It’s a bit like the books you can get from Sweden and other Scandinavian countries, but that’s ‘Scandi-Noir’ and they are really gloomy. No, I’m not even half way full of gloom. I be a bubbly glass, maties.)