Free at Last!

'You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.' Kahil Gibran.

I've been enjoying a few sales and some excellent reviews of my first novel, The Last Changeling.  It's an alternative history, fantasy thriller.  It deals with conspiracies and a lot of 'what ifs'.  

 

We've had wizards and vampires, and I wondered what other supernatural beings would appeal to readers?  After a dream, I came up with the idea that it would be fairies - not the cutesy pink confections of modern cartoons, but the ancient malign creatures that haunted the forests, and stole children.

I called them 'metahominids', (literally 'other men'). What if population pressure meant they started moving out of the country, and began invading our city spaces, like urban foxes?
What if we've been at war with them for centuries and the evidence was all around us? If Churchill's black dog was not depression but a haunting spectral hound; if Myxamatosis hadn't been developed for rabbits, but as a chemical weapon to spray on the barrows, the metahominid strongholds?

I found it hard to believe that so sharp a mind as the one that created Sherlock Holmes could be so easily deceived. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle embraced the cause of the Cottingley Fairies, (a series of faked 'fairy' photographs), the whole world stood and wondered. Perhaps the metahominids had cruelly manipulated him, using his fame and position to prove to the world that they, 'the fairies' simply do not exist?

 

These are the subjects of The Last Changeling, a story that unfolds through time.  Now if anyone is to enjoy my storytelling, I have to change hats and start telling people that the book exists, and where to find it.

 

My life as a writer is compelling and for the most part blissful, but I still feel the whole world of marketing is someone else's territory - that of the dark masters of the arcane arts of salesmanship.   

I've learnt a little about 'key words' and SEO, whilst the dreaded algorithms that allegedly affect a book's 'ranking in the charts', have achieved an almost semi-mythical state in my confused mind.  This is as a result of various conflicting blogs.  Some writers swear search engines ignore a huge percentage of keywords after much misuse by the very salesmen that sought to promote them in the first place, whilst others insist certain terms still prove a powerful attractant to the swarms of crawling web spiders.

I sit in the midst of the web as confused and entangled as any other non-techie, like a tasty morsel about to be encased in silk and gobbled up by the mother spider. 

All I know is that in The Last Changeling, I have written a book I am proud of, and even whilst I am nurturing the mewling infant that is Book Two of the series, I have to propel Book One, (The Last Changeling), even further out into the cruel world that is the virtualsphere. 
The Last Changeling is taking its first steps out onto the brink, whilst I stand by like a vigilant but terrified parent, willing it to spread its just-fledged wings and fly.

I have provided it with a strong title and an eye catching cover, and a clutch of glowing reviews are the wind beneath its tiny wings. 

Now I have to stand back and watch it soar; the thermal is the giddy gust of promotion. 

Today, the 7th of April, just for the day, for the first time ever, The Last Changeling will be available for free.  Readers will pay nothing, nada, zero - and maybe just for this one, brief day, the book will fly further and faster than it has ever done before. 

 

If, by chance, you should find The Last Changeling fluttering onto your Kindle, I would be very grateful if you could take it into your heart, and maybe get back to me and let me know what you think of it?

Thank you.  From a Concerned Parent.   
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Changeling-Enigma-Wars-ebook/dp/B00B90EIRQ
 

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Changeling-Enigma-Wars-ebook/dp/B00B90EIRQ