Author: lazloferran

This week’s Blog – Mars Attacks!

Hot off the Press!

Hot of the press replaces previous ‘Excerpts’. It will be excerpts that I have just written; little tasters of what I am up to, but not too much. I think I can just about manage this final one from Iron III: Worlds Like Dust.

Worlds Like Dust

Copyright © 2011 by Lazlo Ferran

All right Reserved

“Good thinking, Caron. However that still doesn’t help much. I don’t think any of us would get far … wearing a suit outside the port is gonna look pretty strange … And I don’t even speak Ischian!” After half hour deliberating they still had no decent plan. “Anyways, I am gonna get some kip. Bryant, you are on watch. Wake me in one hour. I’ll sleep on it!”

When they drifted cautiously into Dock 422 in Mars Space Port, they still had no plan beyond the inchoate one suggested by Caron. Continue reading “This week’s Blog – Mars Attacks!” →

Too Bright the Sun – Progress in Promotions

BookCoverPreview

As you will see in the post below, I was very happy to find out today that Too Bright the Sun entered the Top 100 FREE Kindle books list on all three: Amazon US, UK and Canada on Monday. Promoting my work takes me away from writing so it’s really nice to get some reward for all the effort I have put in over the last few weeks. I only wish I knew exactly what number it reached. You can rest assured I am watching the progress of Vampire: Beneficence (Short Stories III) very closely. Below I will discuss the results of the Amazon KDP Free Promotion for my books so far.

Vampire: Beneficence (Short Stories III)

So far there have been 131 downloads, 17 of them in Germany. It seems to be taking longer to get people’s attention with this one although it’s doing much better in the US than here. Perhaps the UK market really isn’t so keen on Vampire stories. Then again it’s been my experience that lycanthropy stories do well here in winter and not summer whereas for Science Fiction it’s the other way round. Continue reading “Too Bright the Sun – Progress in Promotions” →

Too Bright the Sun in top 100 Free list!

BookCoverPreviewI was very happy to find  out today that Too Bright the Sun entered the Top 100 FREE Kindle books list on all three: Amazon US, UK and Canada on Monday. Unfortunately I wasn’t there to see it because I simply wasn’t expecting it to do that well! The book  has been in a Free promotion over the last week and so I was expecting high download volumes but what I didn’t realise is that there are not that many eBooks offered for free at any one time. Hence I was looking the wrong way. Thanks to @JessieBTyson (an author in the Facebook Group Authors Tweeting Authors for noticing. Only wish I had taken a screen grab but I will be watching closely during the next Free Book Promotion.

I have no idea what number I reached although I checked Amazon UK, US and Canada today and there were no Science Fiction books  in any of them so that in itself is a victory for Science Fiction.

Looking at the books in the #1 position for Free Kindle books on Amazon UK and Amazon US they generally rank first in their category and somewhere between 20 and 300 for all the Kindles on sale. The ones at the #100 position vary anywhere from 300 to 3000 in the sales ranks. Too Bright the Sun peaked at #17 (UK) and #38 (US) in the sales rank for its category and therefore it could have been anywhere really in the Top 100 Free kindle books.

There may be a very short blog this weekend – I will be sipping a margarita and reflecting on the success of Too Bright the Sun. It’s not just my success though but a team effort. Thanks to everybody who tweeted for me or posted, shared and commented on Facebook. It all helped a lot.

High resolution images of the MCS (Mobile Command Station) and SU 401 are available in the deluxe edition of The War for Iron: Element of  Civilization: Boxed Set.

Ship’s Log: Supplimental – MotoGP

I just have to say how happy I am that Valentino Rossi won the Assen MotoGp. It’s been a long time coming and I doubted myself that he could do it again. After what has happened to him in the last few years, I think there are very few men who could rise to the top again; it’s not far short of miraculous. Lorenzo’s finish with his injury was also not far short of a miracle. It was a great race. Rossi looks like a man who has had a great burden lifted from his shoulders, and I hope he can go on to more wins.

Deep Cover: Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate

Excerpt of the week.

Here is the new Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate cover – designed and completed by Omri Koresh.

Image

I hope you like it! Omri and I have worked together over the last few weeks to produce a cover which expresses the soul of the book as well as illustrating one of the scenes in the book. Those of you who have read it will recognise the Cover Girl. The cover will appear on the Kindle in the next 48 hours and on the paperback in the next two months.

I am also repositioning this book as an Occult Thriller. I have always had problems fitting this book into any genre: mystery/detective, historical fiction and fantasy/historical or fantasy/myths and legends don’t seem quite right so  let’s see  how the new genre works.Amazon applies categories very loosely to the books anyway so it might not make much difference.

Free Books! Continue reading “Deep Cover: Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate” →

Welcome to the new WordPress Blog

I was tired of issues with the Blogger Blog and it didn’t even give me stats on followers. When I investigated whether you could do this using Blogger, the opinion of the experts was that it couldn’t!  Hopefully our new home at wordpress will be a happy one and allow our little community to grow. Thanks for following me. Tell all your friends about the blog. And don’t forget the free offers this month on Amazon!

Reminder of Free eBook Offers Dates

Don’t forget the 3 books that are going to be FREE on Amazon in less than a week now. Here are the dates again:

24-28 June: Iron I: Too Bright the Sun
29 June-3 July: Unknown Place, Unknown Universe
2 July-6 July: Vampire: Beneficence

Please tell your friends, your neighbour, your parents, your neighbour’s dog – and the cat and hamster if they have one, and retweet or post on facebook and anywhere else you can think of if you like my work. Thanks!

21 June – Back to the Future

Excerpt of the Week might have to replaced by moan of the week at the rate things are going!
First of all, I have badly pulled a muscle at the base of my back so that’s one reason for the title Back to the Future this week! The other is that I simply feel I am going backwards at the moment. I simply cannot get my blog accessible in mobile devices whereas it did work before I pointed my domain lazloferran.com at it. But more of that later!

Problems with Barns & Noble
As promised here is the story of my problems with Barns & Noble on their website BN.com. Theirs is the most useless Customer Service system I have yet come across. I participated for the last 5 years in the Premium programme for my books sold through Smashwords.com. This meant that other affiliates like Sony, BN.com could sell the books for their own devices (Sony Reader and Nook). Now I want to try the Amazon KDP programme, as you may know, and this requires me not to have my ebooks (entered in the programme) for sale anywhere else than Amazon. Consequently, I removed most of them from the Smashwords programme and they should have been removed from all the affiliates’ websites. However Too Bright the Sun was still available on bn.com two weeks later. Continue reading “21 June – Back to the Future” →