A Free Historical Mystery!

 

From now through Sunday, July 19, my award-winning historical mystery, The Case of the Purloined Pyramid, is a free ebook on Amazon. A blurb is below.

 

An ancient mystery. A modern murder.

Cairo, 1919. As Egypt struggles for independence and fortune hunters scour the desert for ancient treasures, Sir Augustus Wall hopes to leave the horrors of the Great War behind him.

Scarred beyond recognition, he hides behind a prosthetic mask and moves to the native quarter of Cairo to open an antiquities shop. 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 brilliant Egyptologist Moustafa Ghani, and Faisal, a mischievous street urchin he just can't shake, Sir Augustus must unravel an ancient secret and face his own dark past.

Kindle Scout Winner in 2017 

 

Download it now on Amazon! 

A New Website and other News

I've got a new website! It's been a while since I had one, so I hired designer Stuart Grant to design a website for author Sean McLachlan. I think it looks pretty good. It's still being tweaked, though, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to add them in the comments section.

In other news, I'm back in Oxford for my usual summer research in the Bodleian Library. This year I'm doing research for my upcoming Weimar historical mystery series, as well as some reading on the Sudan in anticipation of a trip there in the winter. Fingers crossed on that one.

On the 16th of this month I'll be releasing the next issue of Sean's Travels and Tales, my monthly newsletter that comes out on the 16th of every month. If you sign up via my website, you also get two of my books, Radio Hope and Tangier Bank Heist, for free! Not a bad deal, eh?

Radio Hope is now Free!

Radio Hope, the first volume in my Toxic World post-apocalyptic series, is now free on all platforms. That's right. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and all other vendors have it listed as free. So if you like gritty, realistic science fiction, give it a try! 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.

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!

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.

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!

The Scavenger: Post-Apocalyptic Ebook Free Through May 22

I'm offering my post-apocalyptic story The Scavenger for free on Amazon for the next five days.

This story is a 67-page adventure set in my Toxic World series, which starts with the novel Radio Hope. The Scavenger a standalone story, but it gives a different perspective on some of the places and characters that appear in Radio Hope.

The blurb is below:

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.

I'd like to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible. So please, between now and Monday, May 22, feel free to share, like, tweet, etc!

The Scavenger: Post-Apocalyptic Ebook Free Through January 22

I'm offering my post-apocalyptic story The Scavenger for free on Amazon for the next five days.

This story is a 67-page teaser for my Toxic World series, which starts with the novel Radio Hope. The Scavenger a standalone story, but it gives a different perspective on some of the places and characters that appear in Radio Hope.

The blurb is below:

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.

I'd like to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible. So please, between now and Sunday, January 22, feel free to share, like, tweet, etc!

Free Christmas book!

Back from three weeks in Morocco! More on that later. In the meantime, I wanted to mention that I'm having a giveaway on a Christmas book. It's called Christmas Truce and is about the famous truce on the Western Front during World War One. It's part of my Trench Raiders series but can be read independently.

You can get it for free at Smashwords, B&N, Kobo, the iStore and various other online vendors. It's at 99 cents on Amazon because they're Grinches. Here's the blurb:

Christmas 1914
In the cold, muddy trenches of the Western Front, there is a strange silence. As a crack English trench raiding team enjoy their first day of peace in months, they call out holiday greetings to the men on the German line. Soon both sides are fraternizing in No Man’s Land.
But when the English recognize some enemy raiders who only a few days before launched a deadly attack on their position, can they keep the peace through the Christmas Truce?

Get the Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Radio Hope for Free!

For the next five days, through July 11, my post-apocalyptic science fiction novel Radio Hope is free 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 early summer. 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!

More Honest Numbers from a Kindle Giveaway

Back in March I blogged my numbers for an Amazon free promotion of my post-apocalyptic novel Radio Hope. Click the link to see the data. I just finished another giveaway, this time for The Scavenger, a 10,000 word short set in the same world. It also includes the first three chapters of Radio Hope as a teaser.

As usual when I do a promo, I tweeted and blogged about it, and I bought an ad in Book Barbarian, a newsletter catering to fantasy and science fiction fans. It goes out to more than 12,000 subscribers and my ad was posted on their Facebook page, which has 12,867 fans. The ad cost $25 and ran on May 6. Here are my numbers broken down by country:

Thursday, May 5: US (47), UK (3), Germany (1), Spain (1)

Friday, May 6 (Book Barbarian ad): US (616), UK (1), Germany (1), Netherlands (1), Canada (1), Australia (1)

Saturday, May 7: US (118), UK (2), Germany (1), Canada (1)

Sunday, May 8: US (52), UK (1)

Monday, May 9: US (29), UK (1), Canada (1)

TOTAL: US (862), UK (8), Germany (3), Spain (1), Netherlands (1), Canada (3), Australia (1)

GRAND TOTAL: 879 downloads

As you can see, there was a major spike on the day of my ad, and a sizeable tail for the following day. That launched me into the top five in two categories, where I remained for the next couple of days.

Otherwise the giveaway was rather lackluster. I have a couple of explanations for this. First off, this was the fourth time I've done a giveaway for this title, meaning quite a few people who search for this genre have already downloaded it (or decided they're not interested!). Second, note that my categories are in Kindle Short Reads. When Radio Hope got in the top ten for post-apocalyptic novels, that led to a lot more downloads than I'm seeing this time. It's been shown time and again, with my data and others, that readers prefer full novels to shorts. It appears that considerably more people are checking the top free books in novels than in Kindle Short Reads. I'm one of those people!

It's also interesting to note how few downloads I had outside the US. Normally about 15% of my sales on any given month are to the UK, with another 5% to the rest of the world combined. But for this giveaway non-US downloads accounted for only a little more than 2% of the total. The Radio Hope giveaway also didn't do so well beyond the US. I have no idea why this is the case, although part of it certainly is that low initial downloads kept me from getting into the top ten of these markets, hurting visibility and stifling downloads.

So was it worth the $25 I paid for the ad? Yes. Getting my book on 879 devices will lead to a lot more readers, some of whom will go on to buy the other books in my series. These giveaways are part of an ongoing process to raise the profile of my writing. There won't be any overnight successes, but a gradual climb upwards. It's already been heading that way thanks to my previous giveaway.

I hope this helps some of my fellow writers out there!

Free Post-Apocalyptic Story!

I'm offering my post-apocalyptic story The Scavenger for free on Amazon for the next five days, May 5-9.

This story is a 67-page teaser for my Toxic World series, which starts with the novel Radio Hope. The Scavenger is a standalone story, but it gives a different perspective on some of the places and characters that appear in Radio Hope.

The blurb is below:

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.

It's free on Amazon US, Amazon UK, and all the other Amazons. Enjoy!

Free Post-Apocalyptic Ebook!

For the next five days, through March 14, my post-apocalyptic science fiction novel Radio Hope is free 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 early summer. 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!

Merry Christmas! Have a free ebook!

Merry Christmas! I'm here in Morocco avoiding the holidays. This is the third year we've hid from the silly season by going to a Muslim country.

But I'm no Grinch, and to prove it I've made my novella Christmas Truce free until the end of the month. This is part of my Trench Raiders World War One series but can be read independently. It is a fictional take on the real-life miracle of a ceasefire during the war's first Christmas. A blurb is below.

Christmas 1914
In the cold, muddy trenches of the Western Front, there is a strange silence. As a crack English trench raiding team enjoy their first day of peace in months, they call out holiday greetings to the men on the German line. Soon both sides are fraternizing in No Man’s Land.
But when the English recognize some enemy raiders who only a few days before launched a deadly attack on their position, can they keep the peace through the Christmas Truce?

You can find Christmas Truce free at Smashwords (where you can get all formats), Barnes and Noble, Kobo, the iStore, and many other outlets. Unfortunately I could only put it as low as 99 cents at Amazon. They don't let you put it for free unless you go exclusive with them. Grinches.

Happy Holidays!

The Scavenger free through March 8!

My post-apocalyptic novelette The Scavenger is a free ebook on Amazon through March 8. This standalone novelette is part of my Toxic World post-apocalyptic series. So go ahead and grab yourself a copy, and feel free to share! A blurb is below:

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.

Happy Holidays! Have A Free Ebook

I'm headed to Tangier on Friday for a couple of weeks so this blog will probably go quiet until the new year. In the meantime, enjoy a Christmas story on me. I just published Christmas Truce, a novella in my Trench Raiders series of WWI books. It looks at how the men of Company E react during the real-life Christmas Truce of 1914, when British and German soldiers skipped the war for a day and met as friends in No Man's Land. The blurb is below.

Christmas 1914: In the cold, muddy trenches of the Western Front, there is a strange silence.
As a crack English trench raiding team enjoy their first day of peace in months, they call out holiday greetings to the men on the German line. Soon both sides are fraternizing in No Man’s Land.
But when the English recognize some enemy raiders who only a few days before launched a deadly attack on their position, can they keep the peace through the Christmas Truce?

You can get it as a free ebook on Smashwords or, if you have a spare $2.99 you not doing anything with, you can buy it on Amazon.