Shaun Jeffrey's Blog

I've been spending a lot of time sculpting lately, and my Etsy shop, Deshca Designs (the name comes from the first two initials of each family member) is now open for business: http://t.co/XxywRzbWCS 

You can also get £5 toward your first Etsy purchase! Redeem now or use later to buy something you’ll love. http://t.co/qpWOyVySuY

I hope you might find something you like. At the moment, postage outside of the UK is expensive, but if you live outside the UK, and there's something you really want to buy, just contact me and I'll let you know the price. 

Edited by Paula Guran and due to be published by Prime Books in September, Zombies: More Recent Dead will feature my story, Till Death do us Part. The collection contains stories by Neil Gaiman, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Joe R. Lansdale, Jonathan Maberry and many others, and I'm pleased to have been selected to feature alongside such great names. 
The living dead are more alive than ever! Zombies have become more than an iconic monster for the twenty-first century: they are now a phenomenon constantly revealing as much about ourselves—and our fascination with death, resurrection, and survival—as our love for the supernatural or post-apocalyptic speculation. Our most imaginative literary minds have been devoured by these incredible creatures and produced exciting, insightful, and unflinching new works of zombie fiction. We've again dug up the best stories published in the last few years and compiled them into an anthology to feed your insatiable hunger... 
http://www.prime-books.com/shop/print-books/zombies-more-recent-dead-edited-by-paula-guran/

I've started a new hobby, making metal sculptures. I've still got a lot of learning to do, but I'm enjoying 'creating' my metal menagerie. Each one takes me a few hours, and I'm learning more with each one I make. These are what I've created so far:








I always enjoyed metalwork classes at school (yes, I can just about remember that far back), so I'm rekindling an early passion. Like anything, practice makes perfect, or at least helps you improve, so now onto the next one ...
My first commission (from my son) for a rhino beetle:

Although it was done a couple of months ago, I didn't update on here that my novel Evilution has a new cover by Karri Klawiter and it's been re-edited by Stacey Turner. Both of these people are a pleasure to work with.

It seems a lifetime ago when this was originally published back in 2003! I've learned a lot since then with regards writing, but you never stop learning.

http://www.amazon.com/Evilution-Shaun-Jeffrey-ebook/dp/B004S81HW0/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Evilution-Shaun-Jeffrey-ebook/dp/B004S81HW0/

Humankind is about to change ...
Shrouded by fog for nearly two years, the picturesque village of Paradise harbours more than its share of secrets. Having won a cottage in a competition she can't remember entering, Chase Black moves to Paradise, only to discover that its beauty is skin deep - murder and madness fester in its shadows. When her travelling companion, Jane mysteriously disappears, she starts asking questions. Why are the villagers behaving so oddly? Who are the strange figures she sees lurking in the fog? As Chase becomes afraid that something terrible has happened, events escalate dangerously out of control. A virtual prisoner; too late she discovers the real reason she's there ... 

Now I have the rights back to both these books, I've re-released them both on Kindle. Fangtooth was previously only available as a limited edition hardback and as a paperback.

After the death of his wife, Bruce Holden moves to the quaint coastal fishing village of Mulberry with his son, Jack. He is hoping for a fresh start, but the locals greet their arrival with mixed reactions, from friendliness to open hostility. Bruce puts it down to them being outsiders, but when a tourist is killed while swimming, the real horror is unleashed. There's something ravenous in the sea. Something that's coming ashore in search of prey. Now Bruce and Jack find themselves embroiled in a nightmare where humankind is no longer at the top of the food chain. 

First there was the Creature From The Black Lagoon… 
Then there was Jaws… 
Prepare yourself for Fangtooth.

http://www.amazon.com/Fangtooth-Shaun-Jeffrey-ebook/dp/B00H6QKXP8/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fangtooth-Shaun-Jeffrey-ebook/dp/B00H6QKXP8/

Herein are found a diverse mix of the sinister, erotic, strange and surreal. From the foreboding alleyways of Venice to a bleak Scottish island, the horror is never far away. A young boy fixes dead things. You can't always judge a man by the cut of his suit, especially when the suit isn't made of cloth. A relaxing cruise is anything but once the passengers start to die, only to then come back to life. And a trip to the past has dire consequences for the future. Now turn the page and join the voyeurs of death.

http://www.amazon.com/Voyeurs-Death-Shaun-Jeffrey-ebook/dp/B00H6UJO18/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Voyeurs-Death-Shaun-Jeffrey-ebook/dp/B00H6UJO18/

I've spent the last week building a Summerhouse, which is to be my new writing retreat. It's a cabin that I don't have to trek through the woods to reach (unless I use my imagination). Some people might call it a shed, but regardless of what it's called, I hope that it will help inspire me to write more. It can be hard to write in the house, surrounded by distractions, so I hope that it helps, otherwise I'll have to turn it into an outdoor bar and get drunk instead ;)

Jumping through hoops is for circus animals
Life would be so much easier if I could learn how to jump through hoops. Not doing has been a character flaw I’ve had since birth. Teacher’s told me to question everything and then became irate when I asked why?Where others backed their books, did the assignments and prepared for lessons, I was the kid doing his homework in the playground, a few scribbled lines instead of a page. Term marks were one of those hoops I didn’t understand.The school said I was intelligent and had to work hard so that I could go to University. I had other ideas. I wanted to work and had no intention of staying in school for any longer than I needed to, far too many rules.Even when I started working, the first thing I was told was “You’re really bright. It would be a waste not sending you to college, maybe even university.” What was wrong with these people?Once, I even tried to do what they asked and went back to school. I’m big, loud and noticeable. When I’m bored, I become even more noticeable. When I’m in a room with a halfwit, who doesn’t know the subject they’re teaching, I’m obnoxious.Probably the main reason I started to write is I love to entertain. Of course I’d like to get rich from it, but I need to enthral and make people laugh. I can be a show-off, always craving an audience.I wrote, wrote and wrote again until I believed I had something worth showing to the world. The time had come to publish. After a few queries I found the route to the audience was barred by publishers and agents.No problem, I’ve got a good product (I thought.) After a few rejections, I started to research more about what these people wanted. I knew it had to be modern (tick,) well written (tick), grammatically correct (tick), targeted at the agent’s market (tick).Then I started to notice the weirder conditions coming out in blogs, tweets and interviews. “If I see ‘was’ on the first page, I reject it.” “If I can touch two -ly words with two fingers, I give it two fingers.” Onethat really cracked me up was, “I hate books with a character called Isabel who is called Izzy.”To the best of my knowledge I’d never break a law, but I don’t get along too well with rules.Mathematics is governed by laws, such as, BODMAS. Publishing appears to be governed by rules. When the runaway successes of recent years ignore them, there’s little incentive to join the game.For me, when a story is done. It’s done. I’m not going to revisit it to rework the style, remove or add characters because somebody else feels it might help. I need to file the job away and move on.This is why I decided to self-publish; I’d rather have a smaller audience now, than keep waiting for the gate-keepers to give me a chance to play on the big stage.What’s it cost so far?I don’t count the cost of the writing course. That was about three hundred pounds and proved the best money I’ve ever spent. I loved it and when it finished, I seriously considered going back to do it again.I needed an editor to work through the story with me, a cover and ISBN’s. So far, that totals six hundred and twenty-five pounds. As leisure activities go, I think this is acceptable.The biggest cost by far, is time. That’s a commodity I don’t have enough of.Writing time is my most precious. I try to guard that, but often find I can only manage twenty- thirty minutes a day. Oh, the delight of a client at the end of the train line, rather than up the M6.The editing, I originally thought was boring, but now appreciate as part of the creative process. Michael Angelo didn’t hack David out of a block of stone with a single massive chisel. He used increasingly finer, more delicate tools. I swap from screen, to paper, to Kindle as I progress, going around the loop about three times.Preparing the documents for publication has been fairly trivial. The Kindle format took a couple of days. Createspace will be easier next time, taking about five days. One of my biggest glitches was that I’d not included the first three pages, copyright, title etc. They took hours to get right.By far, the most begrudged cost is the time spent marketing. I know I should love it. Whilst I’ve already hinted I’m an extrovert. Seeking an audience has always been on my terms. Marketing is staying active, regardless of how I’m feeling.If I didn’t see Dawn French and Richard Madeley doing Breakfast TV, I’d feel hard done to. They have to get up, wear makeup and appear cheerful at that god-awful time. Hang on, that’s how my day starts …
Amara's Daughter by E H HowardOne Liner:Swords, Sandals and Sex – High fantasy on speedBlurb:Carved from ice with blades of fire, the rigidly feminist state of Serenia breeds heroes. Unimaginably perfect, Amara the Magnificent, the legendary Ultimate Warrior is their greatest.Five years since Amara’s mysterious disappearance, her daughter, Maryan, struggles to escape her mother’s formidable shadow. Shunned by most, her only friends are oddball characters from the edge of society.The Queen sees Maryan as an asset to the nation, a pawn to play with and a pretty bauble to appease the neighbouring king, but lurking beneath the surface, an ancient terror plots to wipe out Maryan’s bloodline.Friend, lover, and more, Amara’s Daughter is a turbulent, rite of passage story tracing Maryan’s growth from naive schoolgirl to the woman destiny needs her to be.Extract:On the arena floor, Asti dropped her full weight through her knee on Barag’s windpipe. A short stab wedged her tiny scissors deep into the man’s left eye. She stood up and pounded them into his brain with her heel.In the silence that followed, she pointed at the Queen. “If you won’t honour our traditions, maybe it’s time for us to change the leader of our nation.” Keeping her back rigidly straight, she marched purposefully across to the shadow of the tunnel.
Nobody moved and nobody cheered. The body of the fallen man twitched in a growing pool of blood.
Biography:Living in Cheshire with my wife and our two dogs (Milly and Molly,) I’ve run a successful computer consultancy for many years. The business continues to thrive and I feel blessed that people pay me to solve complex problems for them.One day, we hope to spend a portion of our year on the Greek islands, where I would love to spend most days writing, but for now, I’m content that with three adult children, I’m being presented with grandchildren at a fabulous rate.I split my writing time between short stories and novels. I love to take the challenge of creating a viable story in a reduced number of words for flash competitions.At the top of my list of all-time favourites are CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein. Following them are Robert Jordan and Trudi Canavan, with a whole host of modern writers cramming up behind, including Kim Harrison (Hollows series), Margaret Stohl/ kami Garcia (Caster Chronicles) and Ben Aaaronovitch (Rivers of London.)Links:Website:www.shudalandia.co.uk
Blog:www.shudalandia.co.uk/blog
Facebook:www.facebook.com/ehhoward.author
Amara's Daughter is available from:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Amaras-Daughter-ebook/dp/B00DBCPVKI
http://www.amazon.com/Amaras-Daughter-ebook/dp/B00DBCPVKITwitter: @ehhowarduk

After the last promotion blitz that I did for The Kult, I decided to plan another one for the second book in the series, Killers. Using the results from last time, I am using the following places for ads to promote the 99c sale:

June 25th: Bookbub
June 25th: Ebook bargain news
June 25th: Indie Book Bargains
June 27th: Bookblast
June 28th: ENT
July 1st: Kindle Books and Tips





Three of those are prepaid ads, which have cost $325 ((£211). ENT charge after the promotion, asking for 25% of the money from the sales their ad generated. 

For the last promotion, Bookbub ran the The Kult as a horror novel, this time Killers is being run as a thriller. 


The results after the first day are excellent and any reservations I had about promoting the second book have been blown away.

Amazon.com total sales: 811
Amazon.co.uk: 8

Amazon.com sales rank: #150 Paid in Kindle Store

Sales of the first book, The Kult at full price, 42

Barnes & Noble sales rank: 30 (won't know actual sales there until Smashwords updates)


http://www.amazon.com/Killers-Prosper-Snow-novel-ebook/dp/B005U3KOUI/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Killers-Prosper-Snow-novel-ebook/dp/B005U3KOUI/

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/killers-shaun-jeffrey/1107044351?ean=2940032810643&itm=1&usri=shaun+jeffrey

My experiences with paid advertising have been mediocre, but in those cases, it's usually been a single random add posted now and again. Now I've planned a promotion blitz with my novel, The Kult, starting next weekend. I'm using lots of sites to see whether combining them over a few days will work better (of course what works for one book won't work for another and there are lots of variables).

 So first, the stats. The Kult has been out for a few years now, but I've decided to give it a big push. The story has been filmed by an independent production company and is currently in post production. On Amazon.com it has 28 reviews and an average of 4.4 stars. On Amazon.co.uk it has 25 reviews and an average of 4.4 stars too. (On Goodreads it has 191 ratings with an average of 4.02).

Now I've already reduced the price from $2.99 to 99c to avoid any mishaps for the planned week, and I'm promoting utilising the following sites: 

May 11th
http://www.bookbub.com/home/
http://bargainebookhunter.com/ 
http://storyfinds.com/ 
http://www.booktweetingservice.com/
http://www.indie-book-bargains.co.uk/
http://booksliced.com/
http://mommasaysread.com/
http://addictedtoebooks.com/
http://www.freebookshub.co.uk/
http://www.eBookLister.net
http://www.fkbooksandtips.com/ 

May 12th
http://www.freebooksy.com/
http://kindlenationdaily.com/ 
http://bookiniste.com/
http://www.ehorrorbargains.com/

May 13th
http://www.thekindlebookreview.net/
http://www.kboards.com/
http://thecheapebook.com/live/
http://www.ereaderutopia.com/
http://ereadernewstoday.com/

May 14th
http://www.bookblast.co/
http://thefrugalereader.com/
http://digitalbooktoday.com/

May 15th
http://www.kuforum.co.uk/ 

(I've also contacted the following sites, but promotion is not guaranteed and I've not heard back from them at the moment: http://www.pixelofink.com) and http://blog.booksontheknob.org/)

Of course I'd love any help people can give me by reposting any ads or links they see during the promotion.

The total cost of this promotion blitz is $613 (£393) and to recoup my costs I've got to sell 1751 copies. I'll post the results after the event. And here's a couple of links to the books:

http://www.amazon.com/Kult-Prosper-Snow-novel-ebook/dp/B004TGT3S6/ 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kult-Prosper-Snow-novel-ebook/dp/B004TGT3S6/ 

Barnes & Noble

Have you ever turned left when you should have turned right, or vice-versa? Ever wondered why? I did this last week when taking my son to the hospital at Liverpool. Although we make the trip a couple of times a year, and although I know the way perfectly well, at the end of my road, I turned left instead of right, and it wasn’t until I was a hundred yards or so along the road that I realised my mistake and turned around. But my question is ‘why did I turn left?’ Did something happen subconsciously that made me take the turn? Did my subconscious know something that I didn’t, such as if I’d turned right as I was supposed to, we might have been involved in a traffic accident? I’d like to believe that we do things for a reason, even if we don’t know what that reason is, and that sometimes, a far greater power steps in to help us avoid incidents. Of course I could have just not been concentrating, and I’ll never know for sure, but it would be nice to think someone was watching out for us.
As anyone who has read my blog knows, I sprained my ankle in a mudrun last year, and I’ve been plagued by problems with it since. In order to help my recovery, last week I went for some acupuncture. I also had treatment for my hip, which is also painful, and although I was a little sceptical, I must say that a couple of days later, the pain has noticeably lessened, which is a good thing as next Sunday I’m competing in the Mad Monk run. I will be going back next week for some more treatment, but I wonder who first thought it would be a good idea to use people as pin cushions to help treat them, and who was the first person to actually let them do it? It sounds more like something a sadist would do, but as long as it works, I’m quite happy to continue with the treatment. 

Now although these two things are about different things, they are tied by another strange occurrence. When I was in a running shop in Chester a few weeks ago having my gait tested and buying some new running shoes, the lady serving me mentioned that if I hadn't tried it, then acupuncture might help with the pain from my sprained ankle. I didn't think much of it until a week or so later I was on a course and the instructor mentioned that he had just been for acupuncture, and that he swore by it. Again it seemed that someone or something was guiding me to give it a try, so I obtained the details of the person the instructor used, and well, if you've read this far, you know the rest. 

Serendipity. Chance. Good fortune. Divine intervention. Whatever it is, things often fall into place for reasons we cannot fathom. Shakespeare said it best when he wrote: “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”