Another Round At The Crow Bar: #28 April 2019

Hello friends and fans!

Welcome to my 28th newsletter!

In Brief:

Hello again folks!

As you probably remember from last time, I mentioned that I’ve been really busy revising all the titles in the Quantum Series, so again – I haven’t been doing much else in my spare time!

The revision task for Quantum is now completed, up to and including book 6: “High Steaks”, and I’ve started work again on the brand new book 7, to be followed naturally by book 8 – although the working titles have changed in the meantime!

Some of you may remember I mentioned the titles for these previously – book 7 was to be “Fortitude” and 8 was to be “The Last Hurrah”. In the meantime a couple of things have changed, as they often do, and I’ve revised the titles to be “Underground Movement” and “Moon Jockeys”. I feel they suit the stories better than the working titles, and I’m sure readers will as well, once they get to reading them!

Now, on with the show!

New Releases

All the titles below have been released or recently revised and given the new cover design since 2018 (including The Galaxii Series, and the Quantum Series – 2019).

For more information on my current writing projects, see below.

On A Personal Note

You might be wondering why I changed the names of the next two titles in the Quantum Series, and yes, that’s a very good question. The first reason was the title “Fortitude” which was the working title for book 7. That’s the name of a city on Deanna, which you would know if you’ve read books 5 and 6 – or any of the other newly revised titles. Unfortunately I noticed that a new completely unrelated TV series had come out in the meantime, called “Fortitude” – which I still haven’t watched, and I certainly didn’t want my book to be associated with someone else’s work! That aside, I felt that the title I’d given to another project – which was to have been a shorter story slotting between books 6 and 7, called “Underground Movement” would be better suited to the story as a whole – and so I substituted the title. Also, the content of the short story is now part of book 7. Below is the tentative cover of book 7, although it might still change.

Book 8, similarly, had the working title “The Last Hurrah” – which it has been since about 2006 when I first thought of it – but that seemed too unwieldy and also a little too “final” if you know what I mean. After all, I don’t want book 8 to be the end of the series – I have plenty more ideas for Quantum! That said, another shorter story that would’ve fitted into the series between books 6 and 7, called “Moon Jockeys” has been stripped and built into book 8’s draft – and the title as well!

I’m not really sure how long it will take before book 7 is ready to launch, but it should still be before the end of the world! 🙂 Book 7 and 8 are harder to complete than the original first 4 titles in the Quantum series, because they’re essentially a continuation of the same story, each one leading into the next – and so I have to get it exactly right, while cross-referencing events that happened in the previous book – and events that need to happen in the next one that I haven’t written yet!

That said, I’m really looking forward to getting books 7 and 8 finished – their stories have been pounding on my brain and shouting to get out! I know there aren’t that many of you, but I really hope you enjoy reading my stories as much as I did writing them!

On the marketing front, last weekend I made “Blachart” available for free all of last weekend – I hope those of you who made use of the opportunity have been enjoying the read! I’ll be doing some more occasional freebies soon, so keep your eyes open for announcements.

I’ve also done a massive clean-up on Facebook – deleting literally hundreds of “page likes” for things that have simply cluttered up my fb timeline – with me shaking my head at some stuff that kept on showing up while I wondered where it came from! Argh! I’ve been on fb since 2007, so yes, there was quite a bit of cleaning up to be done! I also “unfriended” a stack of those folks that post a plethora of crap in my timeline – pro-fascist tripe, gun-nuts, homophobic rhetoric, transphobic prattle, political waffle, hysterical religious memes, Brexit, Brexit and Brexit – and shemale porn! Seriously! (How do they find me? They always find me!)

Since I am maintaining my Facebook profile solely for the purposes of interacting with my readers and marketing my books, it doesn’t help to simply accept every friend request that pops up, does it! There are so many fake accounts these days, that one day your page has over a thousand “likes” – and the next time you look, it has only around 600.

The same can be said for groups. At one stage my author group had over 7000 members – and suddenly, after Facebook implemented a clean-up, whoops – only 2600 left! That said, this week I also left 90% of the book marketing groups I was part of for the last year or more. What’s the point of posting ads for my books in groups designed solely for authors to do that? I mean – other authors aren’t likely to want to buy your book are they? No – they want YOU to buy their book! As a consequence, I’ve become more discerning about which groups I’ve stayed in – and these are groups over 10,000 members with a mix between authors AND readers. Groups of 700 or under 9k just aren’t going to help me diddly squat.

• Fan Mail & Honorable Mentions

1. In the past week joined a website called HubPages, which is a free platform where writers can post articles – be they short stories, articles or poetry, and I’ve put a few items up just to try and get some traffic directed back to my websites. In the meantime though, I’ve received a number of positive comments on some of my work posted there!

I display my Fan Mail & Compliments with pride, gratitude and humility. You are always welcome to have a look.

• Hate Mail & Horrible Mentions

I’m rather proud of my hate mail, and you can review it here – but be forewarned, don’t do it while eating or drinking or you might choke while laughing at it!

• Interviews

If you would like to do an interview with me about my works, please do get in touch!

Support The Author

Although most titles listed are available in ebook form through most online retailers internationally, Christina prefers readers make their purchases via her website. This is because unlike other platforms, when you buy from her website, you pay HALF THE PRICE you’d pay elsewhere, and it ALL goes to the author – which is really, really important …especially if you’re the author! 🙂

In Closing

Well, that’s all for this time, folks! 🙂

Thanks again for all your support, friendship and interaction! Until next time, keep reading!