To celebrate the publication of Renewed, the final chapter in the Reborn Trilogy, this weekend you can pick up a copy of Reawakened, Book Two absolutely free.
ighly recommended fantastic read.”
5 out of 5 stars “Hope there’s many more to come!”
5 out of 5 stars “Second book in the series and again I was gripped from the start”
4.5 out of 5 stars “An engaging young adult supernatural romance.”
I know many of you have been waiting for the final book in the Reborn Trilogy, and since its release this morning, I’m excited to see so many people have already snapped up a copy. If you’ve been following Abbie’s story, here’s where you finally find out what everything was leading up to.
Available on Amazon, you can download straight to your Kindle or reader, or you can purchase the paperback for delivery.
US customers can find Renewed on Amazon.com, and UK customers can find it on Amazon.co.uk . It’s also available throughout Amazon worldwide, so take a look at my author page to find yours. Happy reading!
Do you like stories that end all wrapped up with a ‘happily ever after’, or do you prefer a little left to the imagination?
Most people want to see the characters they’ve invested their time reading about to finish on a high, nothing left unsaid, their lives happily wrapped up with a metaphorical bow on top.
I have recently finished the third and final book in the Reborn Trilogy, and it wasn’t without a sense of loss. Everything ties together nicely, although there are a fair few twists, turns and surprises along the way, but as I wrote the final words I felt like I was losing touch with close friends. I’ve come to know everything about these characters, who came to life on the blank pages of a manuscript, and evolved over the course of three books and more than 1000 pages. The time I spent telling their stories, before I went to bed, on my lunch break at work, long into the night at the weekend, all of these moments resemble grabbing a coffee with friends, or meeting mates for a beer in the pub, or just catching up over a quick lunch.
Even though these are fictional characters, there’s a certain sense of loss I think most authors feel when they put pen to paper in their story for the last time, whether it’s a series or a standalone novel. I hope the characters in the Reborn Trilogy are as real to my readers as they are to me, despite their paranormal existence.
Although I have plans for a future spin-off series, I’m currently working on a very different paranormal novel, based on real events, and though the characters are still fictional, they loosely relate to the very real people who lived through the bizarre and inexplicable occurrences that are the basis of the book. I wonder if knowing these people in real life will make a difference to how I feel when I finish this book…I’ll let you know when I get there.
Hidden Shadows is due for release in the autumn, and I hope you’ll enjoy it. It’s less fantasy-based than the Reborn Trilogy, and perhaps aimed at a slightly older audience. My daughters loved Reborn, Reawakened, and Renewed, (yes, they got a sneak read of the final book in the trilogy!) but I don’t think I’ll let them read Hidden Shadows until they’re a little older.
Isn’t it the same for everyone? Even the most skeptical amongst us has been known to hesitate, if only for a second, at an unexpected sound in the middle of the night, or that sudden shivering awareness that someone’s watching you.
The paranormal, by its very definition, is an event or occurrence that’s beyond the scope of scientific explanation, and today is Paranormal Day – an opportunity to throw away your skepticism, open up your mind, and admit that there are at least some things that just can’t be explained.
Regular readers of this blog know I’m a big believer in all things paranormal, and I have a certain fascination for angels in particular. Not of the biblical, harp-playing kind, but more a companion through life that watches out for us, occasionally messes up, and is there to provide some comfort when they do.
The Reborn Trilogy is based on these phenomena; angels who are just like everyday people with a bit of sass and attitude thrown in for good measure. So, if you’re looking for something to do to celebrate Paranormal Day (other than watching movies like The Omen), grab a copy of Reborn for just $1.99, and Book Two, Reawakened, which is free on Kindle Unlimited.
Whether or not you celebrate Easter, why not relax this weekend with a free copy of Reawakened, Book Two in the Reborn Trilogy? For 24 hours on Good Friday, you can download it from Amazon absolutely free.
Books are great, free books are even better, and if you like paranormal romance, this is a perfect read for a relaxed few hours over the weekend.
If you haven’t yet read Reborn, Book One in the trilogy, click the link to download it on Amazon too.
Fifty-four years ago, on April 9th in 1963, Sir Winston Churchill became the second person to become an Honorary Citizen of the United States, and since then, this day has been known as Winston Churchill Day.
As well as being Prime Minister of the UK during the war years, Churchill is fondly remembered as an incredibly talented and inspirational writer, and today, many authors continue to learn from his wise words.
As authors, our goal is to bring our readers into a world of our making, to convince them, if only for a while, that our stories are real. To give them an escape wrapped in well-written sentences, and weaved through pages of imagination. When I wrote the Reborn Trilogy, I first had to believe my story myself.
It’s because of this that this is one of my favorite Churchill quotes.
“Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself, believe.”
Winston S. Churchill
If you’re an Indie author, you’ve heard it all before. It doesn’t matter how many books you actually sell, without reviews your book is going to take its own sweet time getting anywhere.
The publishing world has changed dramatically over recent years, and if we’re completely honest, there is some utter crap out there; poor storylines, pointless characters, and appalling grammar and spelling (my biggest personal bug-bear!)
But despite it all, some of these books are out-selling some truly amazing, well-written books. Why? Reviews, is why. A book without reviews is like a movie without a budget – it can be brilliant, but if no-one knows about it, then no-one’s going to read it. Conversely, get enough people talking about a truly awful book (mentioning no names, but they come in varying shades of grey!) and it’s flying off the shelves.
This is where Amazon comes in. Amazon is a titan in a sea of giants, with a monopoly stretching, well everywhere. And we, the consumer, have put them there. In the book and publishing world alone, as well as Kindle, Amazon also owns Goodreads, Audible, CreateSpace, AbeBooks, Alexa.com…the list goes on.
The problem is, Amazon has got a little too big for its own boots, which, incidentally, it’s using to trample the very people who got it to the gargantuan status it has today.
If you have a book on Amazon, you’ll be all too familiar with the ‘culling’ of reviews, the very breath of your book. Amazon says it does this to prevent friends and families from giving five stars through nepotism rather than genuine deserving. What Amazon doesn’t explain, however, is the algorithm it uses to determine who constitutes friend or family.
The Indie publishing world is quite small, and most of us know fellow authors in the same way that footballers know fellow footballers, nurses in a hospital know other medical staff, or teachers from one school know many in surrounding schools. It’s not because we’re ‘friends’, it’s because we’re fellow professionals.
We’re used to different shopping sites using our shopping habits to make suggestions for future purchases based on our preferences, but isn’t there something wrong when it’s determined that two people are friends simply because they’ve maybe commented on the same blog post?
If you have a book (or many books) on Amazon, chances are you’ve lost more reviews through their Friends and Family Algorithm than you’ve got remaining. And that’s just wrong.
Amazon aren’t very forthcoming about how their algorithm works, but it’s generally accepted that people with a similar last name will be flagged (mine is Gray, there are a lot of Grays out there that I’ve never heard of, but that, it seems, is irrelevant if they post a review!) If you’ve spoken to someone on Social Media, and either of your accounts are linked to Amazon, reviews will be flagged (no networking allowed?) Or if Amazon are just being snarky, showing off the power they yield over the lowly Indie author, expect flagged reviews. And all the time, potential readers are skimming right past hundreds of good books because they’re lacking in reviews.
What’s even more amazing is that, with all its advanced technology, Amazon is unable to ensure a review posted on Amazon.com, for example, is automatically duplicated across all Amazon countries. Your book can be posted instantly to all Amazon sites, just not your reviews.
You have to wonder, if Amazon had been around in the good old days, would any of us have heard of the Bronte sisters? Virginia Woolf? Or more recently, James Herbert or J.K. Rowling?
Writers are in the business of smoke and mirrors. No matter what the genre, we like to use words to lead our readers along a winding path of subterfuge, magic, and surprise. We all search for the holy grail, that fine line between predictability and ridiculously obscure.
Sometimes the smoke is thinner than it could be, sometimes the mirrors are slightly disproportionate, but our goal is always to give the reader a break from reality, a release from the mundane.
Sometimes the mystique is completely, and deliberately, unexpected. As authors, we can tell enough of a story to guide the reader to draw their own conclusions, only to pull the metaphorical rug from under them when they reach the end. When I wrote the Reborn Trilogy, I knew where the final book was going to finish, but I didn’t want my readers to know until they got there.
As authors, we indulge the darker traits of humanity – like lies and deception – in a way that’s not only acceptable to society, but expected by it when they curl up with our books.
Today is Smoke and Mirrors Day, referring to how magicians use all manner of distraction to make sure an audience fails to see what’s really going on. As authors we do the same thing, but words are our smoke, paper is our mirror, and the book is our trick…the only difference is that we make sure our audience understands how it’s done by the end.
A short video telling more about the Reborn Trilogy, and an excerpt from Reawakened (Book Three), due for release June 2017.
Click on the links to get Reborn (Book One) available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Reawakened (Book Two) available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
I’ve given a few author interviews recently, and they typically ask how you got into writing, what your books are about, if you have any advice for other authors etc. All great questions, but I’ve just completed an interview with the very lovely Fiona McVie, and she asked one question I’ve not been asked before.
“Do you have anything specific you want to say to your readers?”
I love that this question acknowledges a book is nothing without people reading it. It’s a bit like a cold cup of tea – full of all the right ingredients, but without the warmth of fingers turning the pages.
To see my answer to this question, and the rest of the interview, pop over to Fiona’s blog, and if you want to give some warmth to a book or two this weekend, pick up a copy of Reborn and Reawakened, the first two books in the Reborn Trilogy, available at Amazon.
CM Gray 