Two Free Lockdown Reads!

Bored during lockdown? Have a couple of free ebooks on me! Through the end of this weekend I'm offering my novel The Last Hotel Room and my novella The Scavenger for free.

The Last Hotel Room deals with the Syrian refugee crisis and is based on several refugees I interviewed in Iraq and Morocco.

He came to Tangier to die, but life isn’t done with him yet.
Tom Miller has lost his job, his wife, and his dreams. Broke and alone, he ends up in a flophouse in Morocco, ready to end it all. But soon he finds himself tangled in a web of danger and duty as he’s pulled into scamming tourists for a crooked cop while trying to help a Syrian refugee boy survive life on the streets.
Can a lifelong loser do something good for a change?

The Scavenger is set in my Toxic World setting for the series of the same name.

In a world shattered by war, pollution, and disease, a lone scavenger discovers a priceless relic from the Old Times.
The problem is, it's stuck in the middle of the worst wasteland he knows--a contaminated city inhabited by insane chem addicts and vengeful villagers. Only his wits, his gun, and an unlikely ally can get him out alive.
Set in the Toxic World series introduced in the novel Radio Hope, this 10,000-word story explores more of the dangers and personalities that make up a post-apocalyptic world that's all too possible.

Enjoy!

The Case of the Purloined Pyramid and The Last Hotel Room available again as ebooks

As I mentioned in my previous post, I recently asked for the rights back from Kindle Press for two of my books: The Case of the Purloined Pyramid and The Last Hotel Room. I have now republished them. After a day or two, the Amazon bots will link them up with their print editions and put the reviews back. Glad to have them on the market again!

In other news, the next issue of my newsletter will be coming out within a few days. Feel free to sign up! Every issue includes a travel article (about Fez this time), a short story, and a coupon for a free or discounted book.

Two Ebook Titles Temporarily Unavailable

The two ebooks I published with Kindle Press, The Case of the Purloined Pyramid and The Last Hotel Room, will be unavailable until November 8. Print editions are still available. As followers of this blog know, I signed a contract with KP for the ebook rights to both those titles a few years ago. I got an advance and some nice promotion, but now Amazon is putting its efforts elsewhere and I felt it best to get my rights back so the titles could get the attention they deserve. The rights revert to me on November 7, and they will be back up on Amazon the following day.

The Case of the Golden Greeks, the third in my Masked Man of Cairo series, will go up that same week.

The Last Hotel Room is on sale for 99 cents!

Just a quick note to say the Kindle Press has put my novel about the Syrian Refugee Crisis, The Last Hotel Room, on sale as a 99 cent ebook on Amazon US until Friday, January 25.
A portion of the proceeds goes to help refugees.

Writing and Travel Update, Plus A Sale!

I've been a bit silent on here of late, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy! I have two books coming out soon--both, as it happens, historical mysteries set in my favorite stomping grounds of North Africa. One is the next in the Masked Man of Cairo series, and the other is the start of a new series set in Tangier during the International Zone era. Both will be coming out in late June or early July.

There's some travel in the cards too. Next week I'm off to Málaga for four days. It's a historic port on the Costa del Sol in Spain with a couple of castles and the home of Picasso. You'll be getting some posts on that when I get back. Later in the summer I'll be back in Oxford for my usual research trip/escape from the heat of Madrid. The focus this summer will be trying to finish up a book I've been working on for a while on the writing habits of highly prolific authors. The Bodleian Library has a lot of good source material.

Also, my Tangier literary novel The Last Hotel Room is on sale as a 99 cent ebook through June 24 in the Amazon US store. Grab it if you haven't read it already!

Some Good News and Some Bad News

Bad news first. . .Kindle Press is no longer taking submissions. As of today, the Kindle Scout Program, which was the one way to get into Kindle Press, is shutting its doors. Kindle Press will continue to market the 200+ books it already has on its list.

So it looks like The Last Hotel Room and The Case of the Purloined Pyramid will be the only books I will have with Kindle Press. While I am disappointed that I won't be able to launch a campaign for The Case of the Shifting Sarcophagus later this month like I intended, I can't say I'm all that surprised. Kindle Scout always felt like an experiment. Amazon was trying out various marketing strategies (with us as paid guinea pigs) to see what works and what doesn't. I suppose after more than two years in operation, they got their data and are moving on.

The Case of the Shifting Sarcophagus, the next in my Cairo detective series, is now with the beta readers and will come out in a month or so via Kindle Direct Publishing.

In other news, The Case of the Purloined Pyramid is on sale in the Amazon US store only for $1.99 until the end of April. So if you didn't vote for it during the Kindle Scout campaign, here's a chance to grab it. A big thank you to all my readers who helped support my two campaigns. I wouldn't have been publishing with Kindle Press without you!

My Travel Year: A Look Back and a Look Forward

This past year has been pretty good for travel with me. I went to Egypt twice, spending a total of six weeks there to start my Masked Man of Cairo neo-pulp detective series. I made some great friends, explored Cairo more thoroughly than I did when I was first there way back in 1991, and got to see the pyramids again. Always a plus! I also had an all-too-brief trip to Tangier. I've been to that city a dozen times now and it still relaxes me. It's a quick and cheap getaway from Madrid, being only an hour's flight away, and I always seem to get a lot of writing done. You see, I hardly ever go on a real vacation. All my trips are work trips but enjoyable anyway. As usual, my family and I spent Easter and the summer in Oxford as we do every year. I get lots of research done at the university library.

So what's in store for 2018? More Egypt, certainly, and perhaps a trip to Fez, a fascinating Moroccan city I still haven't explored. For Egypt I intend to go to the western oases, which I have never seen, and perhaps up the river again to revisit the sites around Luxor and Aswan. There will be the usual trips to England and around Spain, and perhaps a few other short trips. One trip I and my family would like to do is a visit to Paris. A good friend lives there and my son is taking French in school, so he can be our translator. And who knows what else 2018 will throw at me? We shall see.

The Last Hotel Room is on sale for 99 cents

Kindle Press is promoting the electronic edition of my novel, The Last Hotel Room, for 99 cents from July 5-11 in the Amazon US store only.

It deals with the Syrian refugee crisis and an American who breaks out of his self-pity and apathy to try and help. I wrote it to be timely and political, and never thought it would get as timely and political as this! Please share. A portion of my royalties goes to Syrian refugees.

Check out the Kindle page and you'll see that several Kindle Press reader favorites are on sale during this period, so look through them and gather up some great reading!

And a big thank you to all who voted for it during the Kindle Scout competition. You rock!

Travel Tuesday: Some Tangier Locations From My Novel

"An old man in a brown djellaba hobbled up the hill, his face obscured under the pointed peak of his hood. Tom could tell the man was old only by the way he moved—stiff and slow, yet sure, one foot after another as he ascended the smooth, steep slope of bare stone, rising up over the lip and silhouetted by the water like some pagan sea god. "

When I was writing my novel, The Last Hotel Room, I spent a few months living in Tangier to get the setting and details right. The novel centers around Tom, a broke American who has lost everything and is stuck in Morocco while the last of his money runs out. He's decided to kill himself at that point, but soon finds himself a precarious income helping a crooked cop extort money from tourists. He used much of this money to support Asif, a Syrian refugee boy who's living alone in Tangier.

My publisher, Kindle Press, has put the ebook edition on sale for 99 cents on the Amazon store through April 3. To celebrate, I thought it would be fun to share some of my photos of Tangier along with associate quotes from the text. They're in chronological order. Enjoy!

"On the days he didn’t have tea with Mohammed, he would round the corner to the Petit Socco and sit at one of the cafés, either the Central, with its wicker chairs and awning, or the Tingis, with its little patio on the high end of the Socco, looking down across the plaza’s length."

"The muezzin’s call lilted over the medina, to be picked up by another muezzin in a mosque further away. The alleys echoed and reechoed with their mingled songs as half a dozen mosques near and far sang out the same song a few words apart from one another."

"The tower was square and made of flat bricks faced with a thick coating of plaster, most of which had flaked away. It would take some time to get the details right in his drawing; it was a bit like the tile work on the mosque but with no regular pattern. The general shape looked easy enough: square with saw-toothed battlements on top. The whole thing listed a little over the cliff. Five centuries of Atlantic rain and wind had gnawed away at the cliff until it reached the base of the tower and then taken a big bite out of the tower’s base. As he watched, a couple of teenage boys popped out of its open front (the wall having tumbled down the precipice long ago), edged around the top of the cliff, and sauntered past him."

"Straight ahead the slope plunged steeply down, allowing them an open, sweeping view of the Strait of Gibraltar glittering in the sunset. Asif stepped out to the edge of the slope, looked over his shoulder at Tom with a smile, and then stared out over the water. Tom stepped up beside him and stared too, resting a hand on his shoulder."

“That is the boat from Tarifa, in Spain,” Asif said quietly, pointing at the catamaran. “So easy for them.”

“Spain looks close,” Tom said.

“Fourteen kilometers. Can you get me on the ferry, Tom?”

“You don’t have a visa. They’d never let you on board and they won’t listen to me. There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.”

Asif looked disappointed but not surprised.

“I afraid to go the other way,” he whispered, then turned and headed back through the gate. Tom followed, feeling helpless.

Massive Kindle Scout Anniversary Sale With All Ebooks 99 cents!

Kindle Scout is celebrating its second year of reader-powered publishing by running a promotion on the entire Kindle Scout catalog on Amazon.com. All Scout-discovered titles are available for purchase for $0.99 from March 20 through April 3. This includes, of course, my novel about the Syrian refugee crisis The Last Hotel Room, which was published last September after getting enough support on Kindle Scout to win a contract with Kindle Press.

I have big hopes for this sale. Kindle Press did a similar promotion for my book for all of February and my ranking leaped up to 10,000 for much of the time, and even reached 6,000 for a few days. Here's hoping I'll top that this time.

There are plenty of other great books in this sale, a total of 215! You can see the entire list here.

Get The Last Hotel Room for only a Buck!

Kindle Press is promoting the electronic edition of my novel, The Last Hotel Room, for $1 all this month.

The deal is only available on the Amazon US store so all you furriners will see it at the regular price. It deals with the Syrian refugee crisis and an American who breaks out of his self-pity and apathy to try and help. I wrote it to be timely and political, and never thought it would get as timely and political as this! Please share. A portion of my royalties goes to Syrian refugees.

And a big thank you to all who voted for it during the Kindle Scout competition. You rock!

The Last Hotel Room is out!

My novel about the refugee crisis, The Last Hotel Room, is being released today by Kindle Press, an imprint of Amazon. They bought the ebook rights. A print copy will be available next month. Yesterday I chatted about writing the book over at Alex Cavanaugh's blog. A blurb for the book is below.

He came to Tangier to die, but life isn’t done with him yet.
Tom Miller has lost his job, his wife, and his dreams. Broke and alone, he ends up in a flophouse in Morocco, ready to end it all. But soon he finds himself tangled in a web of danger and duty as he’s pulled into scamming tourists for a crooked cop while trying to help a Syrian refugee boy survive life on the streets. Can a lifelong loser do something good for a change?
A portion of my royalties will go to a charity for Syrian refugees.

The Last Hotel Room available for Preorder!

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, my novel about the refugee crisis, The Last Hotel Room, was accepted by Kindle Press, an imprint of Amazon. Yep, Amazon has gotten into publishing as well as distributing. Thanks to everyone who voted for it during my Kindle Scout campaign, and a big thanks to my brother-in-law Andrés for the great cover! Everyone who voted for it should get an email today with instructions on how to download your free ebook copy. A print copy should be available next month.

For those who missed the Kindle Scout campaign, you can preorder the book here. It will be released September 20. A blurb is below.

He came to Tangier to die, but life isn’t done with him yet.
Tom Miller has lost his job, his wife, and his dreams. Broke and alone, he ends up in a flophouse in Morocco, ready to end it all. But soon he finds himself tangled in a web of danger and duty as he’s pulled into scamming tourists for a crooked cop while trying to help a Syrian refugee boy survive life on the streets. Can a lifelong loser do something good for a change?
A portion of my royalties will go to a charity for Syrian refugees.

Handed in the Final Edits for The Last Hotel Room

This morning is submitted the final edits for The Last Hotel Room to Kindle Press. They'll look them over and shoot back some edits of their own, and then the book will be on preorder. Watch this space!

The Last Hotel Room Selected for Publication!

My novel The Last Hotel Room has been selected for publication by Kindle Press. Thanks to everyone who voted for it during my Kindle Scout campaign, and a big thanks to my brother-in-law Andrés for the great cover! Everyone who voted for it will get a free ebook copy when it comes out in a month or two. When I have an exact publication date I'll post it here.

Thanks a million!

Last Three Days to Nominate my Novel on Kindle Scout!

I'm in the final days of the Kindle Scout contest for my novel, The Last Hotel Room. Writers upload their unpublished book for 30 days, and readers get to vote on them. Those with the most votes are considered for electronic publication via Amazon, with a $1500 advance and 50% royalties. If the book is published, those who voted for it get a free copy of the ebook.

My book is the one I was writing during all those trips to Tangier. It's set in contemporary Tangier and deals with refugee crisis. A blurb is below.

He came to Tangier to die, but life isn’t done with him yet.
Tom Miller has lost his job, his wife, and his dreams. Broke and alone, he ends up in a flophouse in Morocco, ready to end it all. But soon he finds himself tangled in a web of danger and duty as he’s pulled into scamming tourists for a crooked cop while trying to help a Syrian refugee boy survive life on the streets. Can a lifelong loser do something good for a change?
$500 of my advance will go to a charity for Syrian refugees.

You can check out the book's page and read a sample here. Voting requires you to sign in to your Amazon account or create one if you don't have one. I could use some voting love!

Insecure Writers Support Group: About to Lose A Contest

It's that time again, when the Insecure Writer's Support Group airs its angst to the world. I have two bits of angst myself. The first is that I've just come back from my writing retreat in Tangier to all the distractions and annoyances of regular daily life. In Tangier, since I had few distractions, I was hitting a daily goal of 4,000 words. Not a chance I can do that here, but I have to keep from getting discouraged.

The main discouragement is that my novel The Last Hotel Room, is not doing well over on Kindle Scout. This is an Amazon popularity contest where those books that get the most nominations are considered for a publishing contract. My book is 22 days into its 30 day voting period and it hasn't garnered enough votes to make it into the Hot & Trending column, which I suspect is what Amazon is really looking for.

Part of the reason I'm not doing well is that I'm truly craptastic at self-promotion. I'm also up against a lot of books in the "Literature and Fiction" category that are actually F/SF/H. There are separate categories for that, but people double tag their books to get more visibility. I can't do that too since my book doesn't fit into those categories. Ah, well!

If I don't win the contest at least the book will be out this month. It's ready to go.

Keep on writing!

Back from Tangier!

I just flew back from Tangier, and boy are my arms tired!

Actually it's my fingers that are tired from all the writing I did. Now that The Last Hotel Room is up for nomination on Kindle Scout (please vote!) I've been working on some new projects in my regular Moroccan writing retreat. The first is a ghostwriting project that takes the characters to Morocco, plus I'm also writing a Western. Yeah, it takes some stretching of the imagination to do that one while living in a Moroccan medina.

Anyway, I had a great time as usual, seeing old friends and making some new ones. Being away from email and editors helped me focus on the writing, getting 4,000 words done on most days. While I write for a living and usually have a good daily word count, when I'm in Madrid there always seems to be some sort of distraction or unavoidable timesuck that keeps me from usually hitting so high.

So what's next for the traveling writer? I might have a quick trip here in Spain this month, but otherwise I'll be in Madrid until mid July, when we head up to Oxford for our usual summer stay. After that maybe Turkey and definitely Tangier!

Off to Tangier!

I'm heading down to Tangier this morning for one of my regular writing retreats. I'll be there for two weeks and probably take a trip to the Atlas Mountains as well. So I won't be on this blog much, but I will be trying to promote my Tangier novel, The Last Hotel Room, which is up for voting on Kindle Scout. Click on the link and check it out.

If you vote for it and Amazon decides to publish it, you get a free copy and I'll donate $500 to a charity to help refugees. There's some stiff competition, so winning is far from assured!

See you when I get back!

Help Me Win A Book Contract Through Kindle Scout!

I've just launched a campaign for my latest novel, The Last Hotel Room, on Kindle Scout. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the program, writers upload their unpublished book for 30 days, and readers get to vote on them. Those with the most votes are considered for electronic publication via Amazon, with a $1500 advance and 50% royalties. If the book is published, those who voted for it get a free copy of the ebook.

My book is the one I was writing during all those trips to Tangier. It's set in contemporary Tangier and deals with refugee crisis. A blurb is below.

He came to Tangier to die, but life isn’t done with him yet.
Tom Miller has lost his job, his wife, and his dreams. Broke and alone, he ends up in a flophouse in Morocco, ready to end it all. But soon he finds himself tangled in a web of danger and duty as he’s pulled into scamming tourists for a crooked cop while trying to help a Syrian refugee boy survive life on the streets. Can a lifelong loser do something good for a change?
$500 of my advance will go to a charity for Syrian refugees.

You can check out the book's page and read a sample here. Voting requires you to sign in to your Amazon account or create one if you don't have one. Also check out the other titles, there are some good ones. I've already put a vote in for a science fiction novel I wouldn't mind getting for free!