Category Uncategorized

Going Under – finalised and upcoming Free Day

February 16, 2013 Uncategorized

The final cover for Going Under has come out, and will be working its way through the Amazon listings and feed today. I am a little nervous as there is a different formatting system in play for the ebook. It is meant to get rid of those annoying gaps between paragraphs, leaving blank lines as obvious scene breaks.

Anyone who picked up the pre-release copy should now have their update. If not, let me know.

And the Launch is tomorrow, when it will be free for a day, so don't forget to stop by Amazon and pick your copy up!

Image from Amazon.co.uk

The main problem I've had is the same as every other author: reaching readers. Going Under will be in Select for ninety days, just to try and broaden my reader

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A bitty week

February 8, 2013 Uncategorized

I've been writing solidly all week: my word count is up by 10,000 words and a lot of that is revision.  There's another novella almost out the door, and another Brooke's Vale story nearly complete (the last one I did is back from editing) and a fresh story started in my notepad: not to mention the 1,500 word short I still need to type up from last week.  Now I just need to decide whether to release the Brooke's Vale stories all as $0.99 shorts or finish the collection first. There's an interesting situation with reverted rights for some media tie-ins I did long before Fire Season was published (I'm fairly sure I mentioned this isn't my first penname), which is taking some sorting out: 14 finished novels, and either a media licence or an extensive rewrite required to publish them... Let's

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Sample Sunday – Going Under

January 27, 2013 Uncategorized

Going Under : The first 1500 words

Amazon USAmazon UK

When Karo saw the woman drowning in the canal, she did not think twice before diving in to save the victim. Too late, the teenager learned that the accident was not an accident. Now the people who tried to drown Liz to keep her quiet want to make sure Karo does not say a word.

A girl who legally does not exist has very few options. As the pressure from police grows and threats from the attackers increase, Karo needs to decide where to turn and who to trust if she is ever going to be able to leave her past behind.

Going Under

Karo did not even think before she dived in. The water in the canal was thick and greenish and she could hardly see the other woman below

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Librarything Giveaway – Fire Season

January 23, 2013 Uncategorized

For the next week there will be a giveaway available on Librarything for UK readers: ten paperback copies of Fire Season.

To apply, librarything members can find on this page:

It's UK only because of postage costs.

Sadly, some of the copies came back to me due to the closure of my local indie bookstore. However the owner has opened a new children's bookstore in Kingston and I wish her all the best.

In other news, I have finally set up an amazon author page:

http://www.amazon.com/author/vhfolland

and switched the feed from my old blog to redirect to this one, which should update any sites I missed that are still getting the old feed.

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Narrative Issue – Updates

January 18, 2013 Uncategorized

Following up on my last post, it has been a busy week. The novella is now fully in third person, gained quite a few words and has gone back for a read-through and editing.  It is surprising how much of a difference changing the viewpoint can make, since the beta readers increased their initial ratings by half a star to a star . One clanger did occur in early editing: I removed an overt reference to political events which could date the story badly, replacing it with a vague replacement. Then the editor came back to me and filled me on a potential way the new line could be taken...and I hastily changed it again to avoid dating the story again.  If there are no major problems there might be a SampleSunday post this week or next, so people can get a preview. It is a great relief knowing that

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A Narrative issue

January 14, 2013 Uncategorized

I had probably the most useful,  short, and pithy feedback from an editor yet on the current novella:"It's better in third person. Drop the I's.  Otherwise good story."(Yes, over email, he can be very terse.) This involves changing a virtually completed novella from first person into third person limited which, not surprisingly, is a lot of work and means going back from near completion to revising several times. So I did the first chapter, and I can see what he means. It becomes a very different story, and I think a better one. Most YA is written in first person, and I used that for myself for The Docks. It is more immediate, you can hide things from the audience that the character would not know, or alternatively put clues in for the readers to pick up that the character misses or

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A good and bad day

January 9, 2013 Uncategorized

Today has definitely been mixed. The good? I got two short stories finished as first drafts and ready for revision.

The bad? I discovered that a story I put out two years ago, that went through two rounds of third-party editing, a spelling and grammar check, and a beta read, has a word missing on the first page.  I find myself rather baffled. Now, overall I'm actually quite pleased. A lot of today was taken up with work on marketing and promotion, which is why I only got 4,000 words completed (not including editing work on a novella). That was enough to get another of the Days in Brooke's Vale stories into first draft. While I could put it live after editing, I'm not sure whether to do so or keep this one back for the full ebook. What it does mean is that I will definitely have

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New Year, New Projects

January 6, 2013 Uncategorized

It's the first weekend in 2013, and Twelth Night so the Christmas decorations come down today and it's time to get down to work for the New Year.

My first project for the year was the two free days in Select at the start. These can be best summed up as "never done it before, very happy with the result, will do it again". The second is continuing to expand the new website, since it is a lot easier to manage than the old website-and-blog and get the book minisites migrated over.On the writing front, I have a few things already underway: My main priority is a stand-alone novella, almost complete at 30,000 words. After editing that should be out in June some time.I also have the other "Days at Brooke's Vale" stories to finalise for the anthology, and I am hoping to get the next one out for

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Sample Sunday – Standing Guard

December 23, 2012 Uncategorized

Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

This Sunday's sample is the first few pages of Standing Guard.

The laws of sea and air are clear: the person who receives a distress call is bound to assist.

Even if they are in a very old aircraft, over a very large ocean, looking for a very small boat.

Amazon Prime members can get this book on loan free to read.

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Samples of other books are available here.

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Standing Guard – a new short story

December 17, 2012 Uncategorized

A new blog, and my first announcement is a new ebook short story. Standing Guard is a short story, part of the series set the season after Fire Season.

Flying home from their display seems a perfect time for Jim to train his wife on radio procedures. An SOS on a non-aviation channel was the last thing he expected to hear. The laws of sea and air are clear: the person who receives a distress call is bound to assist...
...even if they are in a very old aircraft, over a very large ocean, looking for a very small boat.
Originally these stories were going to be one novel, but with everything that has happened this year I have been unable to complete that. Instead the set is going to be released as a series of short stories, hopefully with an anthology at

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