Anne-Marie Neil's Blog

As promised, here's an update about my fourteenth novel.

Its title is The Reindeer Police; and the Kindle edition is now available for preorder worldwide on Amazon, with a price based on $5.99 U.S. dollars.

Release date is set for December 24th - when I shall also be publishing the paperback edition of the book.

Although completely standalone, the story follows the further adventures of the principal characters from Kraken Fjord.

Product Description:

"Unable to settle after their nightmare experiences in Kraken Fjord, Annika-Mari Nilsen and her niece - Kelda Solberg - move to the remote Norwegian territory of East Finnmark, where Annika takes up a post in a reindeer protection unit.

"But rumours persist that in 1944, the crew of a fishing boat, had encountered a UFO in a bay of the East Finnmark coast.

"Now, strange sightings in the November skies of the Arctic Circle, lead Annika and Kelda into an incredible and most dangerous adventure, upon the outcome of which, depends nothing less than the fate of the Human Race".

I hope that you find the above interesting!

Cheers.

For the last seven years, I've managed (unbelievably to myself!) to publish at least one book per year, in both paperback and on Kindle; but up until a week or so ago, it seemed that 2018 would see an end to the annual run.

However, I now hope that 2018 will see the publication of my fourteenth novel, with a proposed release date for both the paperback and the Kindle editions, of Christmas Eve, December the 24th.

Please watch this space for further details, including any as regards to pre-ordering.

With Kraken Fjord just published, it seemed the right time to upgrade the covers of my Kindle back catalogue; and whilst searching for a more suitable image for William Shakespeare's Wild West Show (of all of the titles, the one whose cover most desperately needed improvement), I discovered www.pixabay.com
This amazing website is a collection of over one million images which have been released under Creative Commons CC0 - which means they're free to use without payment or attribution, even commercially.
As a result, I upgraded fourteen of the covers of the seventeen Kindle books - even that of Kraken Fjord; and subsequently, I decided to port the paperbacks from their original publication platform of Createspace, to KDP.  During this process, all of the paperbacks were given new - and what I consider to be vastly improved - covers.
Interested in seeing the results?
Check out www.amazon.com/author/annemarieneil
Cheers.

On Thursday August the 24th (tomorrow at the time of writing this), I shall be making available for worldwide pre-order on Kindle, the latest book which I have written under the name of Anne-Marie Neil, Kraken Fjord.

The price for the Kindle Book, will be based on the US price of $5.99; and the title - along with its paperback edition - will be available for immediate purchase on Amazon, from September the 21st.


What's Kraken Fjord about?

Please allow me to tempt you with the product description:

A former police officer, Annika Mari-Nilsen, and her recently-orphaned niece, Kelda Solberg, move to a fishing village in northwest Norway, in the hopes of starting a new life together.

But in 1944, a military convoy had a met a terrible fate on a nearby mountain; and soon after the Second World War, a seeming Viking fortress had been built in the village.

Now, mysterious tracks in the snow of a late October morning, will lead Annika and Kelda into a most dangerous adventure, in which they must face an onslaught of monstrous creatures thought to be of Nordic Myth.

I hope you find that interesting!!!

Cheers.

As promised, here are more details of my releases for 2016.

All of the releases will be available worldwide from Amazon – I hope you find something of interest among them!!!


Shinobu and the End of the World
(Paperback, December 20th/Kindle, December 21st - Kindle version available for preorder from November 1st.)

In this standalone story which chronicles her sixth and ultimate adventure, Japanese industrialist’s daughter, Shinobu Yamashiro, faces a global challenge that threatens the very existence of the human race.

Meanwhile – as the apocalyptic storm gathers, a person who figured briefly and yet highly in her life, sets Shinobu off on a path which could offer a ray of hope for herself and her family.

But is it possible to survive the End of the World?


The Complete Adventures of Shinobu Yamashiro
(Kindle, December 21st - available for preorder from November 1st.)

Follow Japanese industrialist’s daughter, Shinobu Yamashiro, in this Kindle-exclusive collection which includes all six novels chronicling her amazing adventures – around the world and through time; and which also includes the tale of Yelena Kovalovski, the Russian cosmonaut whose own amazing adventure touches the life of Shinobu herself.

The seven featured titles are:

Shinobu and the Dragon

Shinobu and the Baby Dragon

The Sea of Okhotsk

Shinobu and the Chinese Watercolor

Shinobu and the Whale

Here be Shinobu and Ice Dragons

Shinobu and the End of the World.

Approximately 382,175 words – fully navigable.

(Please note that all of the above titles are available separately; and that the first three are included in the Kindle-exclusive collection The Killer Whale Books, as well as - along with Shinobu and the Chinese Watercolor - in The Snow Dragon Trilogy collection on Kindle.
Also, Shinobu and the Whale is available in the Whale Tales Kindle-exclusive.)

At present, I'm busy preparing my twelfth book for publication in both Kindle and paperback formats, in time for Christmas of this year; and although as yet I don't want to give away too much about the new title, I will now say that the book - although of standalone content - will be the seventh and final part of the series which was begun by Shinobu and the Dragon, and which currently continues to Here be Shinobu and Ice Dragons.
Also, I plan to publish at the same time as book twelve, a Kindle-exclusive compilation of all seven titles in the completed series.
Further details of the new publications - including price and release dates, will appear on this blog in due course.
Please stay tuned!!!

Alone under the grayness of an afternoon sky during late October of 1857, and amidst swell of the North Atlantic – her bow pointing southwestward towards where, several miles beyond the horizon, lay the windswept island of the small and remote whaling station which was as close as she possessed to a home port, the Crimson Wash was riding a sea anchor, as if uncaring of the favorable wind that would continue to propel her homewards should the sails of her three masts be forthwith again unfurled.            A schooner with facilities for processing a cetacean even the size of a Blue Whale, the Crimson Wash was nonetheless only infrequently used for the horrific and present-day reprehensible scenario of a whale being flensed; and indeed most of the leviathans who fell prey to the black-and-white timber whaleship, were towed to the island station to be stripped of their blubber, which would be rendered into oil for use in lamps of either street or home, or for the manufacture of soap and other products for the relatively fledgling consumer market of the mid nineteenth-century.  Indeed a Northern Right Whale and her calf were now forlornly floating just to the stern of the schooner, in deathly pause amidst being towed to the nearby island of their intended flensing; but it was the Sperm Whale (the waxy spermaceti within the head of such a cetacean, being a prized ingredient of the cosmetic industries of the world) resting amidst the ocean swell some several hundred yards beyond the bow of the ship, which was currently the focus of the spyglass attention of the captain of the Crimson Wash.            A huge bull of a man in his early fifties (in a relative and physical sense, the equivalent of the cetacean towards which he was peering through the spyglass), Captain Abel Hawkrigg was moreover the fearsome patriarch of the treeless island, located some forty miles off the eastern coast of Newfoundland, whose lone settlement was the whaling station which the captain himself had founded almost two decades earlier; and after now lowering the spyglass from an eye, Captain Hawkrigg looked rightwards to where the first mate was standing alongside him and forward upon the main deck of the schooner.  A somewhat less fearsome bearded man than Captain Hawkrigg, the first mate – a weather-gnarled American who had thirty years previously set sail as a cabin boy on a whaleship from Nantucket – accepted the spyglass which was being proffered to him; and as he took an initial magnified view of the whale resting ahead and with its tail facing towards the schooner bowsprit, the first mate listened to words spoken by the captain, and did so with many years of familiarity as regards the Newfoundland accent in which they were ominously delivered.            ‘This cachalot would make a magnificent catch for the end of the season, Mr. Starling; and given that within a handful of days, most of the crew will be sailing back to the mainland to winter there in the bosom of their kin, I reckon that you and I could still be flensing the whale upon Christmas Eve.  Anyhow, do you think that the crew have one more chase left in them for the year?’            ‘Without doubt’.            ‘Very well – give the order for the first and second whaleboats to be manned and lowered into the ocean’.            ‘Aye, aye, captain’.            Two suspended from davits on either the port or the starboard side of the schooner, the Crimson Wash was equipped with a quartet of whaleboats – large rowing-craft graced with what was in effect a bow at each end, and which thereby enabled the boats to be easily switched from being rowed in either a fore or an aft direction; and only a few minutes after Mr. Starling had acknowledged the latter command of Captain Hawkrigg, the forward whaleboat of each of the pairs, had been lowered into the swell of the North Atlantic: half-a-dozen rowers in each of the whaleboats, and the port and starboard craft of the tiny and ship-separated flotilla, respectively under the command of the captain and the first mate.  Oar blades were employed to push the whaleboats away from the sides of the mother ship; and in a silence only broken by the creaking of the rowlocks – and by the lapping of seawater against the planking of their hulls, the whaleboats were steadily rowed to where they now halted and made rendezvous under the unseeing and wooden gaze of the figurehead of the schooner.            As confidently as if upon dry land, Captain Hawkrigg and Mr. Starling assumed positions of standing - facing forwards from what were at present the bows of the whaleboats; and then the captain quietly called out across the several yards of ocean stretching between the two craft.            ‘He’s resting like a babe in a cradle – I doubt that he’s even aware of our presence; but of course we must approach him with a stealth that belies such a belief in good fortune.  Let’s advance to just before the danger of his flukes, Mr. Starling, and there ready our harpoons for the first strike’.            ‘I can smell his blood on their barbs already’.            Almost sixty foot in length – its massive-brained head constituting approximately one third of its bodily length, the whale weighed in excess of fifty tons; and as the whaleboats were stealthily rowed towards the intended positions for the launch of the attack, Captain Hawkrigg mentally made a correct calculation that the cetacean was spouting at a rate of no more than four times per minute, and was thus doing so in inadvertent announcement of not being about to make a dive which, should the ocean be hereabouts deep enough, could take the creature to an astonishing depth of over three miles.  Irrespectively, the understandable fearful tension amongst the men who were rowing the whaleboats, was now virtually palpable to the captain and the first mate; and when the whaleboats floated to a halt following orders for the shipping of the oars, Captain Hawkrigg and Mr. Starling shouldered their harpoons, like ancient Olympians who were readying themselves for the hurling of the first projectiles of a javelin contest.            Each harpoon was attached to an individual rope whose main length at present lay coiled within a wooden tub aboard one of the whaleboats – the ropes themselves each moreover securely fastened to an iron hoop protruding internally from a keel; and as Captain Hawkrigg and Mr. Starling held within their left hands, hatchets which could be immediately used should a dangerous turn of events call for the ropes to be severed to save the whaleboats and their crews, the first mate watched as the captain, by theatrically and individually folding down three fingers of his hand that was nonetheless grasping a harpoon, counted down to the commencement of the attack.            As cold and as steely as the ceiling of cloud that was so high above them, the harpoons – inevitably part unraveling the ropes in their slipstream - were hurled through the air in an ironically gracefully arc, to land embedded deep within wrinkly-skinned flesh to either side of the S-shaped blowhole forwards and to the left of the head of the whale; and as the whale’s next spout proved to be a gush of dark blood which splashed onto the creature’s back before trickling downwards to become diluted and then dissolved in the ocean, the suddenly shocked and injured cetacean surged forwards, moments later to commence hauling the whaleboats in its wake, and do so to the eliciting of a maniacal shout from Captain Hawkrigg.            ‘NANTUCKET SLEIGH-RIDE!’            Such was whalers’ slang for the occurrence of a whaleboat being dragged through ocean waves by a harpooned leviathan; and as the present Nantucket sleigh-ride got underway, the Sperm Whale seemingly possessed a suicidal eagerness to haul its hunters the entire distance to the island of the proposed carving of its carcass.  Nevertheless – in spite of its lungs being insufficiently filled with air, and of it already showing considerable signs of being weakened as a consequence of its grievous injuries - the whale presently attempted a shallow dive; indeed managing to achieve a full disappearance beneath the surface of the ocean, and thus to cause Captain Hawkrigg and Mr. Starling to raise their hatchets, in imminent readiness for cutting the ropes which were attached to the harpoons.            Such a course of severance, however, forthwith proved to be unnecessary, as the back of the speared whale almost immediately reappeared within the autumnal air between the ocean and the sky: the creature exuding a pitifulness nonetheless incapable of eliciting remorse amongst the men onboard the whaleboats, and gaspingly spouting more of its precious lifeblood, with a decreasing frequency which clearly indicated that the creature’s metabolism was rapidly and dangerously slowing.  The near-deafening and terrified clicking of the huge whale, which – save for a brief respite during the failed dive – had filled the air since the time when the harpoons had struck their target, was fading in relation to the breathing of the leviathan; and then the toothed whale gave up the struggle to escape in defiance of its injuries, and so commenced to silently float amongst the indifferent and bitterly cold swell of the North Atlantic.            Regardless of its sudden deathly demeanor, the harpooned whale was in fact floating in a comatose condition, rendered at least temporarily helpless by injuries which nature was nonetheless capable of eventually healing; but so convincing of death, was the appearance of the unconscious leviathan, that as the whaleboats drifted to a standstill close to the apparently lifeless tail, Captain Hawkrigg and Mr. Starling (with an erroneousness which was remarkable when weighed against the experience of their lifetimes as whalers) assumed that their quarry had expired, and did so after a Nantucket sleigh-ride leading to no more than half-a-mile from where the Crimson Wash was anchored to the northeast.  Moreover, the other whalers present were so similarly convinced of the seeming slaughter, that none were alarmed when the following words of Captain Hawkrigg, carried across the swell of the apparent death scene.            ‘Whenever you’re ready, Mr. Starling, use your fluke spade to gouge a pair of holes into the tail of our prize, to ready him for towing to where we shall tether him to the stern of the ship’.            ‘Aye, aye, captain’.            Even the savage action of the first mate responding to the latter order which had been given by Captain Hawkrigg, proved insufficient to raise the comatose Sperm Whale back to consciousness; and so a rope from each of the whaleboats, was now securely fastened upon itself, after being individually threaded through one of the holes that Mr. Starling had gouged out of the tail of the floating leviathan.  Alike the harpoon ropes, the extra lines were attached to iron rings one each protruding upwards from a whaleboat keel; and forthwith – under a further order from Captain Hawkrigg, the oarsmen of the double-bowed whaleboats shuffled round upon primitive seats of planking, and then commenced (to the opening chorus of a whalers’ shanty) the strenuous act of powering the apparent funeral cortege of the cetacean, towards the anchored whaleship silhouetted against the grayness of the seascape horizon to the northeast.            Approximately a quarter-of-an-hour after the whaleboat-led procession had got underway, it was drawing – at a distance of fifty or so yards - alongside the port lee of the Crimson Wash; and in fact was doing so under cheer-accompanied gazes from the more than a dozen crewmembers who had remained onboard the sea-anchored vessel.  However, as the bows of the whaleboats began to protrude beyond the stern of the mother ship - and with a suddenness in keeping with the gargantuan size of the two creatures involved, an albino Sperm Whale with a same-species mature bull at its right-fluke side, broke through the ocean swell immediately after swimming to port underneath the keel of the whaleship: the terrifying emergence not even slowing the ongoing rapid movement of the two whales, who were now leaving the Crimson Washpitching sideways like a bathtub boat in their formidable wake; the crewmember cheers and the singing of the oarsmen, mutated into a chorus of terrified screams and yells; and a glimpse of the almost ninety-foot and barnacle-encrusted white leviathan, eliciting a shout of recognition from Mr. Starling.             ‘ICEBERG JACK!’            An extremely dangerous creature of almost legendary status amongst whalers who sailed the Baffin Bay waters stretching between their namesake island and the western coastline of Greenland – waters in which, as a cabin boy, Mr. Starling had first set eyes upon the fearsome leviathan in question, Iceberg Jack was known to swim in the company of two Sperm Whale lieutenants whose uncharacteristic ferocity was almost the equal to his own; and it was in fact in a bid to rescue one of those lieutenants, that the great white whale was now surging forwards with head partially lifted out of the ocean (regardless of whatever reason had driven him far south of his territorial waters), jaws wide open to sweep up the four ropes which were connecting the whaleboats to their unconscious victim, and to do so into the awesomely toothed domain that constituted the long and narrow mouth of Iceberg Jack himself.            As Captain Hawkrigg redundantly hurled his hatchet towards the white monster - just before, alike Mr. Starling, losing balance and tumbling backwards onto planking between bulwarks, the two whaleboats commenced to be towed, almost side-by-side, in the wash just to the left of Iceberg Jack, moreover whilst the albino leviathan effortlessly chewed the quartet of ropes asunder; and then the whaleboats were spinning free of their fleeting towage by the pink-eyed cetacean: the boat under the command of the first mate, capsizing to the consequence of pitching Mr. Starling and his oarsmen into the bitter coldness of North Atlantic swell thousands of fathoms above the ocean floor.            Indifferent to the fate of the men who were floundering in the water, and of their fellows in the still-upright whaleboat, Iceberg Jack and his accompanying lieutenant veered sharply round towards the north, in readiness for propelling (with a remarkable tenderness that would nonetheless go unnoticed by the whaleboat crews, and indeed by everyone onboard the Crimson Wash) the harpooned and comatose leviathan well clear of the ship, and of the two satellite vessels variously afloat upon the high-latitudes ocean; and indeed – as under orders from the second mate, a whaleboat was lowered from the Crimson Wash to speed to the aid of the capsized men, the harpooned whale was already beginning to awaken (in part thanks to the tender ministrations of its rescuers) from its comatose state of apparent death.            In spite of the fact that the speared leviathan was being propelled away by Iceberg Jack and the third cetacean, many human eyes were nervously and intently keeping the whales under surveillance, for any indication that they might return to the scene of the overturned boat; but it was with an urgency inevitably only in part reflecting the possibility of the whales thus returning, that the operation to rescue the men floundering in the ocean, was very soon fully underway.  The whaleboat under the command of Captain Hawkrigg, was moving to the aid of a man who were being carried away by the swell; and the craft which had just been lowered from the Crimson Wash, was already drawn up close to the capsized boat - which itself was in the process of being returned to a state of floating upright (with unintentional assistance from the ocean), by several of the oarsmen who had recently been the occupants of the now troubled vessel.            Two of their fellows, however – who had been dragged underwater by the left-side wash of Iceberg Jack, were floating face-downwards and dead; and after the bodies had been recovered by Captain Hawkrigg and his half-dozen oarsmen, the trio of whaleboats were sombrely rowed into position alongside the mother ship, in readiness for being winched skywards by a set of davits upon either the port or the starboard side of the schooner, and for thus becoming again loftily suspended just to the seaward side of a bulwark.            Presently - spare sailcloth being employed as makeshift shrouds, the drowned men were wrapped for transportation to the whaling station island where they were to be buried the very next day; and as soon as the corpses had been laid to temporary rest in the hold of the ship, Captain Hawkrigg and Mr. Starling made their way to stand in the stern of the main deck, there to gaze (Captain Hawkrigg by means of the spyglass) northwards to where at approximately half-a-mile distant, Iceberg Jack and the two leviathans with him, were swimming at a pace slowed to accommodate the harpooned whale, and were doing so upon an apparent course of eventually disappearing into an otherwise empty oceanic horizon.            ‘If winter were not to be soon upon us, Mr. Starling – and the Crimson Wash were carrying sufficient provisions, I would this very moment set sail to hunt the white monster and his companions to the furthest edge of the Arctic ice, should doing so prove a prerequisite to slaughtering them in payment for the deaths our two Christian brothers of the harpoon’.            Captain Hawkrigg lowered the spyglass, and then looked towards the first mate, who – in spite of his phenomenal hardiness born out of being a whaler for his entire adult life – was now draped in a blanket, and shivering as a result of still being soaked through his recent immersion in the North Atlantic.  Nonetheless, Captain Hawkrigg continued to speak.            ‘But we must let the winter months chill our revenge into a dish which – God willing, come the spring of next year - we shall serve as fiercely cold to Iceberg Jack as be his very name’.            ‘Some ten years ago, captain, the whaleship Moon Runner sailed into the waters of Baffin Bay, intent on hunting down Iceberg Jack, and was never seen again – although Inuit whalers tell of one of their canoeist brethren, having witnessed the ship being sunk by the great white whale; and as you also may be aware, there are numerous tales of Iceberg Jack launching attacks upon ships other than the Moon Runner, as well as upon their whaleboats’.            ‘If your words, Mr. Starling, are intended to dissuade me from me setting sail next spring to hunt down the white leviathan and his foul companions, those words fall upon ears which are deaf.            ‘As for now, give the order for the Crimson Wash to get underway: the wind is still in our favour to continue our voyage home, and so we should see the lamplight of our island dwellings by the hour that night shall fall upon this mournful day’.

It’s taken a bit longer to write than I intended (partly because I wrote it on an I-pad, rather than a laptop - a mistake I won’t repeat, no matter how much I like my Apple pad), but finally my eleventh book, HERE BE SHINOBU AND ICE DRAGONS, is available for pre-order on Kindle, worldwide through most Amazon sites; and is set to be released to purchase (and loan from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library), from Christmas Day, Pacific Standard Time.

Also - on Christmas Eve, the paperback edition will be published worldwide on Amazon, then to filter its way onto the lists of other online retailers, and to become available to order from bricks and mortar bookstores.

The global price for the Kindle edition, will be based upon the American price of $4.99.  However, at the time of writing this post, the price for the paperback has not been finalised.Anyway, to introduce the novel – and to close this little note, here follows the product description for the title:
 "Thus, with the head of the dragon he died slaying,"Ulfbjorn sailed ablaze in the falling snow of the fjord,"To where the gates of Valhalla stood opened for him". An archaeological discovery in the frozen wilderness of Svalbard, proves the existence of a monstrous creature referred to in a fragment of ancient Norse poetry; and so leads Japanese industrialist Nagatake Yamashiro, into an audacious plan to put three mighty Ice Dragons on public display in the shadow of Mount Fuji.

But in this standalone story which chronicles the fifth adventure of his eldest daughter, Shinobu, the attempt by this woman to thwart the plan in question, results in herself and her sisters (Anzu and Lydia) and her daughter (Satsuki), facing the incredible danger of the trio of Ice Dragons after they become accidentally loosed upon the Japanese mainland.

It's a few months since I last posted a note on this blog, but at least in the meanwhile I've been doing some writing - which means I have some more book news to blog about.
I'm now in the editing stage of my eleventh novel; and with any luck, the book should be published worldwide both in paperback and on Kindle, sometime between the last week in November of this year, and Christmas Day - the Kindle edition, hopefully to become available for preorder on Amazon, several weeks or more before the release date.
When that date becomes available, I will of course announce it - along with other details about the novel - on the KillerWhaleBooks blog.
In the meanwhile, I can reveal that the paperback editions of all of my books, now come with a matte finish to their covers, instead of just in the case of Shinobu and the Whale - the original gloss covers were okay, but I think that the new ones look better.
Anyway, in the world beyond that of books, the season of American summer blockbusters has gone global - and so I'll be out to see San Andreas, Jurassic World, Minions and Inside Out (doubtless amongst other movies); whilst back in front of my computer, I'll be continuing the optimistic task of trying to capture some of the excitement of the cinema, upon the pages of the written word.
I hope some of you think that I'm succeeding.
Cheers.

Just a note to say that on January 15th (2015), I reduced the price of my three Kindle exclusive compilations.
The worldwide price for The Killer Whale Books is now based on the U.S. price of $9.99, The Snow Dragon Trilogy on $8.99, and Whale Tales on $.7.99.
I think that the new prices represent great value for money, especially considering that the collections respectively contain seven, four, and three novels.
Here's hoping that you agree!!!
Cheers.