The Masked Man of Cairo Gets a Sequel!

 

The next book of my Masked Man of Cairo historic mystery/adventure series is out, and it's a prequel! The Case of the Dastardly Djinn is set in 1917, two years before The Case of the Purloined Pyramid. Faisal has to solve a mystery without the help of Sir Augustus and Moustafa, but he doesn't have to face danger alone. A blurb is below.

 

A homeless boy. A hunted girl.

Cairo, 1917. In a city plagued by poverty and war, ten-year-old Faisal begs and steals to survive, hiding at night from the things that prowl after dark. The nimblest and most clever of the street boys, he’s terrified of the unseen spirits he’s convinced haunt the ancient city.

But when he discovers a girl his age left homeless by a terrible tragedy, Faisal decides to do what no one ever did for him—help. With no shelter and facing the many dangers of Cairo’s darkened streets, Faisal’s loyalties are tested when together they uncover a criminal ring more sinister than his worst superstitions. 

This prequel to the Masked Man of Cairo mystery adventure series will thrill new readers and long-time fans alike!

A portion of the proceeds from this book will go to help Egyptian street children.    

Available now in ebook. Print edition coming soon!

A Free Book, A New Look, and New Markets for the Toxic World Series!

As you can see from the photo, my cover designer has switched out the cover for Radio Hope, Book One of my post-apocalyptic Toxic World series. The old cover was a bit flat and this one has more pop. I hope you like it.

I've also taken the series out of Kindle Select and published it wide. You can now find the series on Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Scribd, and many other outlets. Click on the title to find a list of links for Radio Hope. Hitting on your favorite store will take you to that title and the rest of the series.

Also, I'm giving away The Scavenger, a novella set in the Toxic World, for free on all those venues. Click on the link to grab your copy today!

Book Five of The Masked Man of Cairo Available for Preorder!

Book Five of my Masked Man of Cairo historical mystery series is now available for preorder and will be released September 10. The Case of the Asphyxiated Alexandrian was written in Cairo and Alexandria and edited in Madrid and Oxford. Only the first two locations show up in the book, though. A blurb is below.

A mysterious murder. A lost pharaoh.
Sir Augustus Wall came to Egypt to escape his old life, but when a comrade from the trenches is found murdered in a Cairo hotel, Augustus realizes his past has finally caught up.
Now he must discover the reason for the baffling murder, leading him and his friends Moustafa and Faisal on a dangerous hunt for the most sought-after treasure in Egypt.
The long-awaited fifth book in the Masked Man of Cairo series sees the trio on their greatest adventure yet!

 

I'm back in Cairo later this year and will be working on the further adventures of Sir Augustus, Moustafa, and Faisal.

More of my Books Available in More Places!

As ebook buyers know, some ebooks are only available on Amazon while others can be found anywhere. This is because Amazon gives certain advantages to writers who make their titles exclusive to Amazon. One of the big advantages is to have the books available on the Kindle Online Lending Library, where writers get paid by page view.

There's also an advantage to going wide--not everyone shops on Amazon. Because of this, I've recently put several more of my titles in all the other venues such as Kobo, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble, etc. These titles include:

The Trench Raiders series

The Interzone Mystery Series

Warpath into Sonora

A Fine Likeness and its sequel The River of Desperation

Writing Secrets of the World's Most Prolific Authors

The Night the Nazis Came to Dinner

The Rat Killer

The Quintessence of Absence

Tales from the Toxic World

 

Two series, The Masked Man of Cairo and Toxic World, remain exclusive to Amazon for the foreseeable future. They are quite popular in the Kindle Online Lending Library so I think it's best to keep them there for now.

Facing Tough Times? Here are two free ebooks

Stuck at home and need some free reading? We're all bored right now and many of us are taking hard economic hits, so Smashwords has come up with the Authors Give Back program. From now until April 20, heaps of authors are giving away books for deep discounts or free. I've enrolled two of my books, Trench Raiders, a World War One action novel, and The Rat Killer and Other Weird War Tales, a collection of short stories.

While some might think it odd to be promoting war novels at a time like this, I don't feel that way. We are in tough times, to be sure, but the folks in these stories had it tougher. They showed grit, teamwork, and courage, and made it through. We will too.

If my books don't appeal, check out the Smashwords website for heaps of free and cheap ebooks in all genres in the Authors Give Back sale.

Stay healthy, and best of luck to you.

Trench Raiders on sale for 99 cents!

As I mentioned in my last post, I will be getting back into my Trench Raiders series of WWI action novels later in the year. I've been away for that series for too long and I've had readers pestering me to continue, so I will. In celebration of that, and for the release of the movie 1917. I'm putting the first Trench Raiders book at 99 cents until the end of the month. You can get it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and anywhere else ebooks are sold. A blurb is below.

September 1914: The British Expeditionary Force has the Germans on the run, or so they think.

After a month of bitter fighting, the British are battered, exhausted, and down to half their strength, yet they’ve helped save Paris and are pushing toward Berlin. Then the retreating Germans decide to make a stand. Holding a steep slope beside the River Aisne, the entrenched Germans mow down the advancing British with machine gun fire. Soon the British dig in too, and it looks like the war might grind down into deadly stalemate.

Searching through No-Man’s Land in the darkness, Private Timothy Crawford of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry finds a chink in the German armor. But can this lowly private, who spends as much time in the battalion guardhouse as he does on the parade ground, convince his commanding officer to risk everything for a chance to break through?

My Third Cairo Mystery Novel is out Now!

The Case of the Golden Greeks, the third in my Masked Man of Cairo historical mystery series, is out now. A blurb is below.

They thought the case was solved.
When an eminent Egyptologist is murdered giving a lecture in front of a packed hall, Cairo’s chief of police quickly rounds up those responsible.
Or at least some of them.
Sir Augustus Wall, antiquities dealer and amateur sleuth, knows there’s more to the crime than it seems. With little to go on but an exotic murder weapon, a map of a desert oasis, and some gilded Greek mummies, he sets out across the Sahara with his assistant Moustafa Ghani and the street urchin Faisal, who is the only person to have seen the killer’s face. They soon find themselves in the midst of international intrigue on Egypt’s remote border with Libya.
Can they discover what mystery lies beneath Bahariya Oasis?

The Case of the Golden Greeks is available on Amazon, Amazon UK, and all the other Amazon branches.

A New Collaboration Out Now!

I've hinted before on this blog that I was doing a collaborative project. Well, now it's out! I teamed up with bestselling science fiction author David Ryker to write a space opera with a lot of political intrigue, friendly and hostile aliens, and a colony ship that's going to have to go through hell to save the last remnants of the human race. A blurb is below:

The Earth is dying.
Her people have fled.
And Mitch Ayers is having a real bad day.
Fifty years ago, our home was dying. We identified worlds that might be able to support human life. We built Ark Ships: huge colonization vessels carrying thousands of crew. And we set out, not knowing if we could make it to the other side of the blackness, or whether there would be anything there if we did.
Mitch wasn't supposed to have to care about any of this. He was supposed to be happily dreaming in stasis for another twenty years. That's until he wakes up on the Ark Ship Nansen, three light years off course, staring right up at the barrel of a gun. All around him, he hears the screams of the dying. Terrorists are wiping out the Nansen's crew while they sleep, and he's the only one who can do a damn thing about it.
But ain't that always the way.
Mitch knows the Nansen's crew might be the only humans left in the universe. The problem is, he quickly learns that humans aren't alone in the stars. Aliens aren't just out there, they're everywhere. And the first one he meets tries to sink its teeth into his neck...
Mitch is a long way from home, and it's not just the aliens he's up against. It's the traitors within his own crew.
Now humanity's fate rests on his shoulders. So he'll have to think fast...

David and I are hard at work finishing up the trilogy and books two and three will be out later this year.

Right now it's available at an new -release price of 99 cents. It's available here.

The Fourth in the Toxic World Series is Out Now!

The fourth book in my Toxic World post-apocalyptic series is out now. It's called Emergency Transmission and takes up where We Had Flags left off. Yu-jin is back, and we get to learn more about some of the other characters who have been in previous books but haven't had their chance to shine. A blurb is below:

Trust is the only thing that can save the world.
The problem is, everyone has their own agenda.
When an offshore platform starts emitting toxic fumes that threaten to destroy the last outposts of civilization, the residents of New City have to team up with a foreign freighter to fix it. But a lingering mistrust remains, and neither side has the resources to stop the leak.
That is, until help comes from the least reliable source.
Can old enemies finally set aside their differences for the greater good?

Emergency Transmission is available on Amazon US and all the other Amazons.

My Latest Morocco Mystery Is Out Now!

My latest book has just come out. Three Passports to Trouble is the second in the Interzone Mystery series that started with Tangier Bank Heist. This time Shorty has to cool a tense political situation while causing a bit of mayhem of his own. A blurb is below.

Back in the days when Tangier was an International Zone, the city was full of refugees. People fleeing Stalin. People fleeing Franco. People fleeing the Nuremburg Trials. Tangier offered a safe haven from the chaos of Europe.
The International Council had to keep a delicate balance, tolerating everything from anti-capitalist agitators to Germans with murky pasts. It was the only way to keep the peace, and it worked.
Until an anarchist was found dead with a fascist dagger in his chest.
And I got stuck with the case just when I had to smuggle a couple of Party operatives out of town.

It's available now on Amazon!

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.

End of the Year Ebook Sale!

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!

If you're stuck at home immobilized because you've eaten too much, try some discounted reading on me. From December 25-January 1, all my titles at Smashwords will be 50% off as part of their Year End Sale. My titles there include the Trench Raiders series, my Civil War novels, my book on Writing Secrets of the World's Most Prolific Authors, and a few other goodies. The discount will automatically be applied at checkout. You can find all my discounted books on my Smashwords page.

Enjoy!

(This was written ahead of time. When you read this, I'll be in Tangier working on another North African mystery. I'm really enjoying writing those.)

July Sale: Two Ebooks for 99 Cents Each!

You folks deserve some cheap summer reading, so until the end of July, I'm slashing the price of two of my novels to only 99 cents each. Radio Hope and Trench Raiders have both been around since 2014 and they've sold steadily, but in the past year they've been eclipsed by some of my more recent efforts. So this is a chance to rediscover some of my earlier writing. While both are the start of series, they can be read as standalones.

Radio Hope is the first of the Toxic World series, which has three books and a spin-off novella. Book Four is coming out in the autumn. A blurb is below.

In a world shattered by war, pollution and disease. . .
A gunslinging mother longs to find a safe refuge for her son.
A frustrated revolutionary delivers water to villagers living on a toxic waste dump.
The assistant mayor of humanity's last city hopes he will never have to take command.
One thing gives them the promise of a better future--Radio Hope, a mysterious station that broadcasts vital information about surviving in a blighted world. But when a mad prophet and his army of fanatics march out of the wildlands on a crusade to purify the land with blood and fire, all three will find their lives intertwining, and changing forever.

Radio Hope is available on Amazon, Amazon UK, and all the other Amazons. Enjoy and please spread the word!

Trench Raiders is the first in the Trench Raiders series of World War one action novels, which includes three novels and a novella. Here's the blurb:

September 1914: The British Expeditionary Force has the Germans on the run, or so they think.
After a month of bitter fighting, the British are battered, exhausted, and down to half their strength, yet they’ve helped save Paris and are pushing toward Berlin. Then the retreating Germans decide to make a stand. Holding a steep slope beside the River Aisne, the entrenched Germans mow down the advancing British with machine gun fire. Soon the British dig in too, and it looks like the war might grind down into deadly stalemate.
Searching through No-Man’s Land in the darkness, Private Timothy Crawford of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry finds a chink in the German armor. But can this lowly private, who spends as much time in the battalion guardhouse as he does on the parade ground, convince his commanding officer to risk everything for a chance to break through?
Trench Raiders is the first in a new series of World War One action novels that will follow the brave men of the British Expeditionary Force through the major battles of the First World War a hundred years after they happened. The Battle of the Aisne was the start of trench warfare on the Western Front, and it was there that the British and Germans first honed their skills at a new, vicious brand of fighting.

Trench Raiders is available at Amazon, Smashwords, and within a few days will be available at all other online outlets. 

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!

The Case of the Purloined Pyramid available for preorder!

My neo-pulp detective novel The Case of the Purloined Pyramid is now available for preorder. This recently won the Kindle Scout program and is being published by Kindle Press. Thanks to all of you who voted for it and you should have already received an email from Amazon on how to download your free copy. I'm in Cairo now working on the second in the Masked Man of Cairo series, The Case of the Shifting Sarcophagus. You can get the first book here. A blurb is below.

An ancient mystery. A modern murder.

Sir Augustus Wall, a horribly mutilated veteran of the Great War, has left Europe behind to open an antiquities shop in Cairo. But Europe’s troubles follow him as a priceless inscription is stolen and those who know its secrets start turning up dead. Teaming up with Egyptology expert Moustafa Ghani, and Faisal, an irritating street urchin he just can't shake, Sir Wall must unravel an ancient secret and face his own dark past.

My next newsletter coming out this week, sign up for a free ebook!

The third issue of my newsletter, Sean's Travels and Tales, will come out later this week. This issue includes an article on an odd artifact I spotted in the National Museum in Cairo, a short story from my Toxic World series, and a coupon for a free ebook.

So click on this link to sign up to my newsletter. I promise not to share your email with anyone, because that's a sure way to tank my career!

Results of an Amazon Ebook Giveaway

As I mentioned in my last post, last week I had a giveaway for my ebook Warpath into Sonora, a Western from the Apache point of view. This book came out last September and while it moved a couple of hundred units in its first two months, after that sales plummeted. It seemed that no one was much interested in Westerns. Sales got so bad that novellas I wrote five years ago were outselling it.

I decided to do one of Amazon's five-day giveaways to try to drum up some readership. I took an ad out on the Fussy Librarian's newsletter for free ebooks, which set me back five bucks. The ad went live on Thursday, July 27, the first day of the giveaway. Here are the numbers, broken down by country:

Thursday, July 27: US (296) UK (10) Germany (1) Total: 307

Friday, July 28: US (281) UK (4) Canada (4) Australia (1) Total: 290

Saturday, July 29: US (49) UK (3) Australia (5) Total: 57

Sunday, July 30: US (46) UK (3) Australia (1) Total: 50

Monday, July 31: US (41) UK (3) Canada (1) Total: 45

Grand Total by Country:  US (713) UK (23) Canada (5) Australia (7) Germany (1)

Grand Total: 749

What's most apparent is the big jump the newsletter gave me. It put Warpath into Sonora into the top five in free Native American (at times it was number one) and top 20 in free Western, where it remained for the rest of the giveaway. This, of course, added visibility and led to more downloads after the initial rush from the newsletter faded. I'll be using Fussy Librarian again.

One thing that annoyed me about those lists were the number of off-topic titles. In Native American, the Collected Stories of Conan vied for position with my book. The Western section was dominated by Western Romance, which is a different category. For a time there was also a romance featuring a muscular fellow with a kilt on the cover. I didn't realize my Scottish ancestors were actually Native American! 

What is also noticeable is the weak showing in the UK and other countries, lower than giveaways and discounts and even my regular full price sales figures. Generally the UK makes up about 10 percent of my overall sales, with the rest of the world being another five percent. This was not the case with this title.

So was the $5 expenditure worth it to give away so many books? I would say yes. First off, it got my book (and ads for my other books) in front of 749 sets of eyeballs. Also, it put my book into the Amazon algorithms so that it would show up in the "customers also bought" section. Since my sales had faded so many months ago, I was slipping out of that.

There was also an unforseen benefit. My Kindle Lending Library units went way up for that title, from almost nothing to the low hundreds of pages in the last couple of days of the giveaway and from then on. I suppose this was because people on Kindle Prime saw it and downloaded it. With these customers, while they get it for free like the regular customers who donated it, I get paid for page views. My ad has already paid for itself in real dollar terms. 

Free Summer Reading: A Western from the Apache Point of View

My Western novel, Warpath into Sonora is free through Monday. A blurb is below:

Arizona 1846
Nantan, a young Apache warrior, is building a name for himself by leading raids against Mexican ranches to impress his war chief, and the chief’s lovely daughter.
But there is one thing he and all other Apaches fear—a ruthless band of Mexican scalp hunters who slaughter entire villages.
Nantan and his friends have sworn to fight back, but they are inexperienced, and led by a war chief driven mad with a thirst for revenge. Can they track their tribe’s worst enemy into unknown territory and defeat them?

You can get it on Amazon, Amazon UK, and all the other Amazons. Enjoy!

Get Radio Hope for only 99 cents!

For the next week, through July 19, my post-apocalyptic science fiction novel Radio Hope is only 99 cents on Amazon. This is the first of the Toxic World series, which has three books and a spin-off novella. Book Four is coming out in the autumn. Radio Hope, however, can also be read as a standalone novel. I'm not pulling you into some sort of crack dealer arrangement. :-) A blurb is below.

In a world shattered by war, pollution and disease. . .
A gunslinging mother longs to find a safe refuge for her son.
A frustrated revolutionary delivers water to villagers living on a toxic waste dump.
The assistant mayor of humanity's last city hopes he will never have to take command.
One thing gives them the promise of a better future--Radio Hope, a mysterious station that broadcasts vital information about surviving in a blighted world. But when a mad prophet and his army of fanatics march out of the wildlands on a crusade to purify the land with blood and fire, all three will find their lives intertwining, and changing forever.

Radio Hope is available on Amazon, Amazon UK, and all the other Amazons. Enjoy and please spread the word!