Thank You, Rudyard

So yeah, earthquake. Again. This time, it hit close to the city, in the middle of the day. The devastation is pretty goddamn insane.

Now, as so often in life, I've taken my cues from the words of Rudyard Kipling. I've spent most of my life trying to 'fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' distance run', and quite a bit this last year I've had to learn how 'being lied about, not to deal in lies.'

This week, with the flooding of my tattoo shop and the condemnation of its building, I know I have to 'see the things I gave my life to broken, and stoop to build 'em up with worn-out tools.'

So once again, thank you Rudyard Kipling. Your words guide me through life...

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

And as far as that sixty seconds' worth goes, not once this week have I missed my daily word count.

A Dollar's Worth of Poison

Poison Door went live today. You can buy it on Amazon, Smashwords or, once Smashwords goes Premium with it, just about everywhere else.

This book has always been near and dear to my heart. It was my third prose novel, and the first I wrote in what was truly my own voice. Poison Door was also the novel that got me my agent and gained me a few fans among editors when it was being shopped. It came close to publication, except that a certain marketing department felt American readers wouldn't identify with New Zealand characters.

Now readers get to make up their own minds.

And to make matters that little bit easier for them, I'm bringing Poison Door out at an introductory price of just .99 cents! Seems like a sweet deal to me: Spend a buck and I'll make you a fan for life. :)

Anyway, for those of you wondering what the book's about:
One tough cop.
One vicious killer
A fourteen year old girl caught in between.
When their lives meet, nobody wins...

POISON DOOR

A Noir thriller, dark and violent, packed with action and laced with steamy sex.

Sarah Crane is one tough cop. In a country where police don't carry guns but criminals do, she has to rely on the strength of her wits and the skill of her bare hands. Faced with a series of brutal murders and the disappearance of young women no one else seems to miss, she'll stop at nothing to get to the truth. In troubled young Michelle, Sarah sees a reflection of her own dark past.

Tommy Knowles is a vicious killer. From a London orphanage to the shores of New Zealand, he has risen from life on the streets to control this small country's heroin trade. Now his own success has led him to the edge of disaster. To secure the weapons he needs in the fight for his life, Tommy will trade as many innocent lives as necessary to secure his survival.

Michelle Swanston is fourteen and in danger. Safer on the Christchurch city streets than she is in her own home, Michelle's night wanderings take her into a hell worse than any she ever imagined. With no way of knowing who she can trust, no one else she can rely on, this terrified young girl is determined not to go down without a fight...

What are you waiting for? Go buy it!

Free Ebook Download

FREE E-BOOK!

FREE EBOOK DOWNLOAD

FREE KINDLE DOWNLOAD

FREE EPUB DOWNLOAD * FREE PDF DOWNLOAD

That's right (in case you didn't guess from the headlines), I'm giving away one of my thrillers ABSOLUTELY FREE!

For the next two weeks, all you have to do is send me an email (steve_malley at paradise dot net dot nz) and I'll send you a copy of Poison Door, free of charge. Whether you read your ebooks on Amazon's Kindle, a Sony eReader, the Barnes and Nobles Nook, a Kobo, an iPad or even your PC or Mac, I'll send you a copy of Poison Door in the right format for your reader.

And don't worry if you like the feel of old-fashioned paper in your hands. There's no need to feel left out-- just take the PDF copy and print it out!

What's Poison Door about, you ask? In brief:

One tough cop.

One vicious killer

A fourteen year old girl caught in between.

When their lives meet, nobody wins...

POISON DOOR

Poison Door is exciting. I write suspense, and I write it well-- be ready to turn pages faster and faster right up to the end.

Poison Door is scary. This is a Noir thriller, a dark and violent story packed with action and laced with steamy sex.

Sarah Crane is one tough cop. In a country where police don't carry guns but criminals do, she has to rely on the strength of her wits and the skill of her bare hands. Faced with a series of brutal murders and the disappearance of young women no one else seems to miss, she'll stop at nothing to get to the truth. In troubled young Michelle, Sarah sees a reflection of her own dark past.

Tommy Knowles is a vicious killer. From a London orphanage to the shores of New Zealand, he has risen from life on the streets to control this small country's heroin trade. Now his own success has led him to the edge of disaster. To secure the weapons he needs in the fight for his life, Tommy will trade as many innocent lives as necessary to secure his survival.

Michelle Swanston is fourteen and in danger. Safer on the Christchurch city streets than she is in her own home, Michelle's night wanderings take her into a hell worse than any she ever imagined. With no way of knowing who she can trust, no one else she can rely on, this terrified young girl is determined not to go down without a fight...

Sound like something you might like to read? Great! Just drop me an email and I'll send you a copy!

There is one catch. I want you to review my book.

Poison Door goes live in two weeks, and I want to do everything I can to make it rise in the search rankings. Love it, hate it, all I ask is that you tell the world. Amazon reviews are great, same with other sites where fine ebooks are sold. Review it on Goodreads or Facebook or your blog-- anywhere the world at large is going to see it.

But all that's not for a couple of weeks yet. Right now, you send me an email (or even just leave your email in the comments) and I'll send you one heck of page-turner!

Buying Books Just Got Easier

Gots me a widget!



Now, if I can just get it to display in the sidebar.... :-j

Memory Lane

So, I recently re-read my ebook, Crossroad Blues. I wanted to see how it played out on Kindle, correct any formatting errors, etc. I did find a few (corrected now), which was good.

Thing is, I also found something more.

I started out reading with my editor's hat on. But as the book progressed, I found myself actually sucked in to my own work. It was a strange experience: on the one hand, I wrote the damn thing. On the other, I couldn't wait to see what happened next.

Not to pat myself on the back, but Crossroad Blues hums. I love the pace of it, the action, the murderous intensity of Maeve, the overwhelming arrogance of Jack Terraboone and the sheer creepy monstrosity that is Harlan Winters.

I read that book, and I hated the novel I'm working on. Right now I'm lurching from scene to scene. I can see revelations coming, but I have to write my way through where I am before I can get there. If where I am even leads me there at all. My current novel is nothing like the streamlined mayhem of Crossroad Blues.

And then I remembered:

At one point, Jack Terrabonne had a wife. She was the real genius, stifled by her husband's success and terrified of his fixer, Harlan.

At one point, Kane was in a love triangle with Maeve and Beth. Sometimes he was with Maeve and attracted to Beth. Sometimes vice versa.

At one point, Harlan Winters was a dapper little gray man, sharp and slick and looking to capitalize on his employer's indiscretions.

By the end of the book, things changed...

Jack's wife left. There were some great scenes between her and Harlan, real scary stuff. But as Harlan developed, I realized there was no way in hell he'd keep his hands off something he wanted. She shows up off-stage as a soon-to-be-ex, with a younger boyfriend, a hit album and a scandalous photo spread in (I think it was) Vanity Fair. It was the least I could do for a woman who suffered so much only to be written out.

As Kane revealed himself, I realized I was writing a Western. He's the classic cool-eyed stranger in town, a gunslinger who doesn't pack a gun. He was honest and decent and upright, a solid moral point in a wicked, wicked world.

That guy couldn't be in a love triangle. I lost scenes where he met Maeve and traveled with her for a time. Where he found himself disgusted by her wickedness (back then she wanted to hook a rich man, which is how she fell afoul of Jack) and was increasingly attracted to local girl Beth. I lost something like 30,000 words of that plotline.

And Harlan. What to say about Harlan...

He started out dapper and smooth. In those days, Jack's sexual appetites led to the death of the French girl and Harlan stepped in. He covered up the crime and began to extort Jack for his own purposes. There were some mighty nice scenes where the balance of power in that house shifted.

And I cut them all.

The Harlan who stepped up about halfway through the book was half based on a ruthless predator in my family, and half based on a family friend who used to babysit me-- a man now wanted for questioning in the rape and murder of one of his neighbors.

What I'm getting at is, Crossroad Blues came to be streamlined. It grew into something fast-paced and coherent.

This memory, this process, helped me. My current novel is nowhere near such a mess as that one was- and look how that turned out!

Just for Angie

Angie said in the comments that she'd heard of escrima/kali but hadn't seen it.

Turns out, she probably has:

It's all over the Bourne movies. (The jerks disabled embedding, so you actually have to, like, click on it.)

The arts also feature in Fight Club, Tomb Raider 2 and The Book of Eli... :)

Resolved

One of the finest martial arts I ever studied was Kali/Eskrima. It's the art Kane uses in Crossroad Blues, though the bit where he talked about it didn't make the final cut of the story. Kali's a Philippine fighting style, and a big component involves taking the other guy's (or guys'-- dealing with multiple attackers is definitely something they work on) machete/knife/broken/etc away from him and making him regret he was ever born.

There's a tendency to push people behind you as you cut their throats. One reason is not to have flailing bodies in the way or blood spray blinding you as you deal with the dead guy's buddies. Another, maybe even more important reason, is so that the fighter doesn't have to actually see the results of the damage they do.

With that in mind, I'm not looking back at 2010. Too much blood on the floor, a lot of it my own.

So what's next for 2011?

Resolved:

I will bring out AT LEAST THREE more novels as e-books. (Since I've already got one *almost* ready to go, this one's not that hard)

I will bring out SERINA Vol. 1 as an e-book. (Graphic novels are an *enormous* pain in the ass to e-book, but it'll be nice to see them again)

I will finish my current WiP (I wanted another easy one-- of course I'm going to finish the latest novel)
and last, but not least...

I will build that online awareness that will help people find my work. (This one's going to be the hardest for me-- I'm happy toiling away at all my various projects, but I suck when it comes time to market them. This year, I'll do whatever it takes!)

That's it. No resolutions about languages or classes, diets or exercise or love or sex. I want more people reading my books.

How about you?