Moving Swiftly On:

Well it looks like the summer is drawing to a close and we writers have to turn our sights to the forthcoming autumn and winter. There’s going to be lots of things happening in the next few months…

I’ve just finished writing my next Diana Rivers Mystery Drama: Children of The Plantation and it will be released on Amazon in the next week or so – final editing pending. For my regular readers, I believe you’ll enjoy this as much as my other two novels, perhaps more so as the mystery and clues are quite subtle. I’ll let you all know asap once it’s in print and there’ll also be a paperback for those who still prefer the feel and smell of paper!

During the next few weeks I’m going to be VERY busy as I’m featured all over the place. Quite how this has turned out I don’t quite know but it’s very exciting. Here is a little list of some of what’s to come:

** SEPTEMBER 2 – 5 ONLY ***

The first ever INDIE BOOK BLOWOUT – To celebrate this exciting event, I’ve reduced the price on my book: Echoes of Life and Love to only 99¢!

Yes, it’s a weekend to remember! To score dozens of FANTASTIC indie books for only 99¢, visit indiebookblowout.com. While you’re there, register to win a brand new Kindle & up to $ 100 in Gift Cards (entry form on the site).

You can purchase Echoes of Life and Love for only 99cents or 49pence here.

Amazon US

Amazon UK

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2nd September I’m the featured author on DailyCheap Reads.com (the US site). DCR is featuring:  The Assassins’ Village at the bargain price of $3.45/£2.14 from 4pm US central time.

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Please click on your copy to buy now!

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5th September I’m the featured author on the whizzo author Glen Gamble’s website. Please take a look at his website; full of interesting author interviews and reviews of some great books. http://www.glenngamble.com

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5th September I have been chosen by Frugal Reads to represent  them as Frugal Find of the Day. Again, I’m delighted to say, The Assassins’ Village has been chosen by Frugal Reads for book content, style, brilliant reviews and price. Another excellent reason to click and download your copy!

Amazon US

Amazon UK

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For those who want to meet me I’m taking part in at least four book signings before Christmas. The first is at the Happy Valley Fair on 17th September. Come and claim your paperback copy of either The Assassins’ Village or The Crossing (2nd edition).

25th October Limassol Ladies book signing at 10 am.

6th November Winter fair at The Computer Shop, Trimiklini – time TBA

9th December featured on Speak without interruption/Speak at night

I’ll fill in more details as things become more finalised. (Remember you can purchase your copy of either The Assassins’ Village or The Crossing in paperback form, from either The Book Depository – link  http://bit.ly/oCON7U  or from Amazon.)

So a bust time ahead – but exciting and just the way I like it!

Happy reading and many thanks to all of you who have given me such wonderful support by reading ,reviewing, commenting on my website/blog, messages of friendship and of course buying my books! Bless you all1

Faithx

Why these unwelcome guests? ~  Hurricane Irene


Is it me? I can’t believe what’s happening these days and it’s one thing after another. I’ve just spent a wonderful ten days holiday in beautiful Turkey; great food, amazing scenery and some of the kindest and friendliest people I’ve ever met. But I come back home and…

Sometimes, I’m a coward as I dread switching on the news.

After Britain was gripped by terrifying riots, I find the constant fighting in Tripoli continues. More bodies have been found piled dead whilst Gaddafi continues his murderous grip on Libya. I despair as our boys are still coming home from Afghanistan dead and injured. Then in greater Africa there are hundreds of innocent lives being claimed every day by famine, disease and disaster. I now fear the worst every time I log onto the internet.

Today, we send our thoughts, prayers and all best wishes to all our American friends and readers. Hurricane Irene is just yet another disaster and has caused mass mandatory evacuation of low-lying areas in New York and New Jersey. Please spare a thought to all those around the world who are in precarious places.

Please everyone, take care and keep safe.

Faithx

PS I nearly forgot! On a much lighter note I’ve just finished writing my latest novel: Children of The Plantation. It’s set in the fifties and sixties Malaya. A time of intrigue, skirmishes with Indonesia, love, hate, passion and mystery. I'm doing the final edits at the moment and I hope to have the book published in e Format in September. The paperback will follow shortly for those of you who still love the smell and feel of a book. I know you’ll love this one!

Also!

The first ever INDIE BOOK BLOWOUT, LABOUR DAY– To celebrate this exciting event, I’ve reduced the price on my book ~ Echoes of Life and Death to only 99¢! From now until and including the 5th September

Good day.

I’m currently away enjoying a holiday with some very good friends on their gorgeous sailing boat. A lot of the regulars to my blog posts will know I am an avid sailor myself so this holiday is just perfect! You might also know I wrote most of The Crossing whilst on board our own yacht (before we swallowed the anchor and sold her), and now history is repeating itself as I endeavour to finish my current work in progress, Children of The Plantation, a rather spooky and mysterious novel about a family living in Malaya in the 1950’s and 1960’s. So far it's been going well and I hope to publish sometime next month...watch this space!!

Today’s blog post is all about writing and readers. Now this next sentence of mine my strike you as strange.

 “Writers don’t WANT everyone to read their books.”

Why? Because in fact we have specific readers we want our work to reach, and some people we genuinely don’t want to have as readers.

It’s taken me a little while to understand this. For some time I believed I had to chase every living person out there to get them to read my work. And this is absolutely the wrong thing to do. With some clear thinking and time taken to sit back and explore I now have a very clear and specific idea of the person I’m writing for when I’m planning and writing each novel.

This is because I know what I write is not going to appeal to everyone.  Simple. My writing is going to appeal to people who share certain values that matter to me, and who love some of the same genre and content I love.

In writing what I love—my ideal readers will love the same, and consequently, my fiction will fit them.

My stories all have a certain retribution factor within them.

So you’re my reader if you love real-life heroes who are usually the underdogs and struggle to do what’s right against enormous odds. You’re my reader if you believe in right and wrong, and you want the characters that are struggling in my story to do things right to win.  You’re my reader if you love stories where one person beats the odds to make a difference.  You’re my reader if you value creation over destruction. You’re my reader if you love characters in worlds where things go wrong more often than they go right, and the solution to the problem is simple, plain common sense. You’re my reader if you love the shivers you get when you first open a new book and the mysterious story begins to unravel itself, word by word. You’re my reader if you know love matters above all else, and you’d never hesitate to save your love if facing death.

If you fit this ‘mould’ you’re my reader, welcome.  I have a whole cornucopia of stories to tell you.

To Thine Own self be True, Writing with Integrity & Should Everyone like You?

Good Day.
I've been taking part in the #100blogfest - great fun! 100 blogs written by 100 writers in a month. See the link at the bottom of this blog post to see more.

Integrity; a beautiful word and one that we should all wish to emulate.

 You may not hear this today or indeed in the next year, but sooner or later a ‘friend’, an editor or your mother or someone you barely know are going to tell you, “You need to change what you’re writing to appeal to a broader audience.”

You’ll hear it from someone who wants to see you do well, who wants your sales numbers of books to zoom up the charts or who thinks you could be doing better if you were writing work “like that fantasy/vampire/thriller et al writer.”  Or, sadly, one who doesn’t respect what you write and wants you to change your style for your own good – according to them of course!

Depending on how much credence you give to this person, you may be tempted to listen.

I would be very careful.  Before you change what you’re writing in order to appeal to a broader audience, consider why you may not want to. Ask yourself some questions before you spend a huge amount of time and energy doing something different. All in order to catch those people who don’t like what you do right now.

But I say that writing with integrity will make you as a writer.

If you have a fan base of readers who love what you do, you have a connection.(The Assassins' Village). Your readers are real people who have found things that matter to them with your words, in the way you view the world, in the stories you tell and the characters and situations you create. I have a good solid fan/friend/follower base. Not huge but a good core of some fantastic people.

To thine own self be true, (Shakespeare) - if you have been writing true to yourself, you have connected with people who think the way you do. You’ve found people who understand how the world looks to you, sharing some of your views. This is a rare and wonderful discovery.

If you have no respect for what you’re writing and presenting, yes, walk away.  You aren’t writing honestly—you’re pretending to be someone you’re not.

But if your work comes from you, right from the heart, pulling you out of bed in the middle of the night because you’ve thought of that one brilliant line you have to record before you lose it, or you find yourself fighting alongside your heroes/characters as you’re creating them, and desperate to know how their story will move forward, then you are living your work, and you are writing with integrity and creating something that matters.

My earliest fans are up to any challenge, and they are the fans I want to keep, and I want to keep adding new fans to this fan base. My fans are important, they’ve been with me from the very beginning, thick and thin, and I value their criticism and friendship (SBF:Sharing Being Friends) – and integrity too. They’re good and solid and I know they empathise with my characters, always rooting for the underdog and loving the retribution I deal out. (The Assassins' Village).

I want to continue writing complex, mysterious plots and layered, complicated characters, which matter to my readers as much as it matters to me.  I want to know my readers will look for the subtle clues I plant and understand the plot without me holding their hands.

I jotted down a description of whom I believe my current readers to be.  I took into account their age, interests, other authors they like, type of work (s) he does, and what they like most about the stories I tell.  I know my stories appeal to a good cross-section of readers, and I know what common ground I share with each cross-section, and because of that I care deeply about these people together with their likes and dislikes.

I can do the same thing with those readers I want to reach, but don’t.  Who are these people?  Why am I trying to reach them?

If I’ve identified more people I want to tell different types of stories to that my current group of readers won’t like, then I have to expand and write in both genres.That’s good – I’ve potentially increased and broadened my fan base(s)(Echoes of Life and Love ).

If I’m writing true to myself the people reading me now are going to be the right people for me.  They understand me, I matter to them, and they matter to me.  We belong to each other. The people who don’t like what I’m doing aren’t good enough for me – not the other way around.

If I have to change to win over people who don’t like me, I’m going to lose parts of myself that matter.  I’m going to lose the people who liked what I did because I turned my back on values we shared.

So, don’t change who you are for any reason except that you’ll like yourself better. Changing yourself and your work to please people who don’t like you and what you do is a guaranteed way to make sure your life will never be what you want it to be.

I hope you enjoy this blog post today. I like to write about what I feel is important between me and my friends and fans. Connecting together is really important and I'm sure if you don't like my work - you'll let me know!

My books are doing well despite current world problems - I'm pleased how they're being received. My work in progress is Children of The Plantation and I'm about half-way through it. I can see the golden path I have to take to finish it, but I do like to change the way things run! I'll be posting an excerpt in a few weeks time.
If you'd like to go on my email list, informing you when it's ready before publication, please fill in the comment form. I'm going to let my reader/friends have a copy at a special SBF price.  I promise your name will not be divulged to any other person.

Keep safe and thank you everyone who've bought any of my books - I can't do it without you - we're a partnership x



The #100blogfest blogs are all about fun and sharing. Thank you for reading a #100blogfest blog. Please follow this link to find the next blog in the series: http://martinkingauthor.com/blog/7094550076& SBF

A Child Barefoot in the Far East

Day 5. The #100blogfest blogs are all about fun and sharing. Thank you for reading a #100blogfest blog. Please follow this link to find the next blog in the series: http://martinkingauthor.com/blog/7094550076& SBF

When I was five, my family was living in Singapore and Malaya. My childhood memories are often as clear as if they were yesterday’s while at other times I only have a hazy recollection of events.

Like all youngsters our days were filled with the joys and sorrows of childhood in that outdoor zoo of perpetual Summer that is Malaya.

The colours of Malaya are the colours which built our minds, the orange-red laterite soil, the dusty vegetation before the rains and the vivid greens of flowering trees, orchids, and shrubs after them, and – most importantly – the smiling faces around us.

There was the freedom of playing without a chaperone out of doors. My sisters and I roamed over what seemed to us, vast areas, gardens, farms, jungle, and plantation and scrub land, getting into all kinds of scrapes and disasters, such as the near kidnapping from the gold-toothed Chinese ‘taxi-cab’ driver, who invited us ‘Missies’ for a ride in his car (shudder). There was the wild life, never far from our doorsteps; the Siamang or gibbons high in the trees singing their characteristic whoop whoop noise to each other; Malay tigers prowled the thick impenetrable jungle and families of elephant took cover in the cool humid forest.  Inside the house, exotic pets also had the opportunity to live like domestic ones.  My friend wore a baby monkey like a cat round her shoulders, and like the cats, it ‘purred’ loudly. When some recently arrived visitor said to her; “what a life-like toy you have, little girl,” the monkey took one bound on to her shoulders. She fainted and came round to see three horrid little girls laughing themselves silly as they comforted the baby monkey.

My memory contains recognition of the ever patient Malay who surrounded us, they silently swept the house and verandas, showed us how to make cakes from a blue flowering climber, knowing which leaf from the garden would take away which sting, what fruit was edible, which snake was deadly, and was so willing to let us “help” in whatever job he or she was doing.

There was the down side of course; children had to go to school. The day came when I was eleven, my parents said boarding school was necessary. We were living in the shadow of trouble from Indonesian President Sukarno who was intent on making Malaya part of his Empire. Every day on the journey to school we had an armed guard and frequently had to take a detour due to rioting and tear gas bombs along our usual route. Boarding school in Singapore took away that danger and I was packed off with my trunk of name-tagged clothes, my bottle of Paludrine anti-malarial tablets (I still got Malaria) and my three Singaporean dollars-a-week pocket money.

School broadened our outlook, bringing new interests, and best of all, new friends, many of these friendships lasting a lifetime. However hard the partings, it was better than being sent to far away England where life seemed restricted and cold.

My memories are with me all the time: tiny tree frogs singing after the monsoon rains, the smell likened to rotting flesh after slicing open a durian fruit, the exotic juice of a mangosteen as it dribbled over my hand, the whopping my father gave me when I brought a live snake into our house, my first (and only) time as an angel in the school Nativity, parties with cartoon shows when all the villagers’ children came and sat cross-legged in our courtyard and came again, ever hopeful, the next day, wood smoke from a hundred cooking fires in the kampong, fragile orchids, frangipani, gaudy coloured temples, joss-sticks and incense,  I could go on and on.

I feel privileged to have spent much of my childhood in Malaya and Singapore. It was a time full of spice, exotic tastes and colour; magical.

Thank you for being with me on my barefoot journey back to my childhood. My blogs are all about us, you and me. Sharing being friends: SBF. I love connecting with people of like-mind, I really do.

I love it when you share your revelations with me and mine with your friends ~ it’s still a beautiful world out there.

I love it when you write to me and let me know your thoughts. Please keep them coming! (Just click on the comments link). SBF!

And a huge thank you for taking part on the #100blogfest and for SBF

Faith x


The Bamboo Mirror is a short paranormal story taken from my arrival at boarding school in Singapore. Almost all of the story is true.
Children of The Plantation is set in 1950’s and 60’s Malaya, and Faith’s followers will be pleased to know that this novel features the highly acclaimed and popular Diana Rivers in another exciting, murder mystery adventure. Due to be published in the Autumn.

Echoes of Life and Love ~ five short stories about all aspects of life and love, including The Bamboo Mirror

Novels include,The Crossing &The Assassins’ Village
Faith Mortimer also writes mystery/thrillers/action/adventure/paranormal/romance/rites of passage.

Follow Faith on: Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/FaithMortimer.AuthorFollow Faith on Twitter  @FaithMortimer

Echoes of Life and Love ~ a collection of short stories about life, love, grief and ghostly happenings