LAST LINE now available to buy on Amazon

LAST LINE, the sequel to DEAD DROP is now available to buy on Amazon!

As riots rage on the streets of London, a bank robbery puts Britain's most dangerous secrets in the hands of an Irish terrorist with a bloody score to settle. Honora Blakely finds herself the nation's last line of defence in a secret power struggle that could end in civil war, while the only person she can trust hasn't been seen for twenty years and has demons of his own to conquer.

Set two decades after the events of DEAD DROP, LAST LINE reunites Honora Blakely and Robert Armstrong for an explosive adventure taking them from a chase across the rooftops of Kowloon Walled City to war-torn Belfast and riots on the London streets, facing off against renegade Irish nationalists, villainous bankers and deceitful politicians.

You can buy it from the UK marketplace here, or the US marketplace here. The book comes in two flavours: a SPECIAL EDITION containing a 10k word 'Making Of' feature, 'Analysing Last Line: How To Write An Action Thriller Sequel', and a Standard Edition, without the additional feature.

The Special Edition is available for £2.25/$3.50, while the Standard (which you can find by going to my author page by clicking on my name at the Amazon link) is going for £1.99/$2.99.

LAST LINE - First Chapter: Rob A Bank

[LAST LINE, the sequel to DEAD DROP, is out now. Click on the following links to read excerpts from the novel's fourth and seventh chapters.]

CHAPTER ONE: ROB A BANK

The night belonged to the savage and the free
Screaming and dancing through the smoke and debris

The police beat a retreat

Through a hail of bricks and glass

No hope of enduring their unwelcome trespass

The sky glowed orange from the blaze below

London was liberty's inferno.

Through the chaos walked three young punks. Their dress was the common uniform of torn denim and studded leather. Each carried a heaving backpack over their shoulder. Tinted driving goggles and cloth face masks protected them from the noxious fumes corrupting the air from the flaming shell of a nearby car, which spread pools of roaring heat and light across the walls of the chasm separating the soaring city skyscrapers.
  

LAST LINE Excerpt #2: You're Driving Me

[LAST LINE, the sequel to DEAD DROP, will be released in October 2015. The following is an excerpt from the book's seventh chapter. This draft may differ from the final version and some minor changes have been made for clarity.]

 

The stormclouds darkened overhead as the bike whipped along the narrow country lane. After a few minutes, a sign indicated a turn onto a dual carriageway in half a mile.

Honora wiped away the raindrops whipping against her face. The bike swerved onto the dual carriageway, gaining speed as it veered between beeping cars.

LAST LINE Delayed Until October

As I've been editing LAST LINE over the past few months, the book has slowly been transforming into something special. It's a work I'm proud of and look forward to sending out into the world. The wait will be a little longer than planned, however, as I've decided to push back its release date into October.

The reasons for this are twofold. The first is that, while I could still hit the original date, there are certain parts I feel need a little more time to perfect. The 'How To Write An Action Thriller Sequel' feature, which will be part of the book's Special Edition, is also not quite finished and I don't want to rush the editing in the days leading up to release. The second reason, why I've decided against giving a concrete day for the book's release next month, is that an agent has shown interest in one of my manuscripts, which I'd like to tidy up before sending out. I've a good idea of what needs to be done, so it shoudn't take too long, but again, rushing through it would only be counter-productive. The delay will give both books the chance to be as brilliant as they possibly can be.

In the meantime, more excerpts are on the way in the run-up to release and will be sure to let you know as soon as a set date can be announced. Thanks for all your support!

LAST LINE Excerpt #1: Reunion In Kowloon

[LAST LINE, the sequel to DEAD DROP, will be released in October 2015. The following is an excerpt from the book's fourth chapter. This draft may differ from the final version and some minor changes have been made for clarity.]

The room's stone walls were cracked and turning yellow in patches. Installed on the right was a grimy wash basin. Considering the state of the rest of the room, the mirror above it was conspicuously spotless. Mounted above a refrigerator at the back was an antique Chinese sword in a brown leather sheath.

In the centre, overlooked by a fizzing lightbulb hanging by a loose wire from the ceiling, was a table around which four men had gathered for a game of mahjong.

First draft of LAST LINE complete!

At first, it was planned to be no longer than 65-70k words.

Then, it was definitely going to be finished by 80k words.

After that, it was absolutely, positively, conclusively not going any further than 90k words.

102,441 words later, the first draft of LAST LINE is complete and I have a new book to read. This September, so will you!

Chapter titles follow the jump. Thanks for your support!

Announcing LAST LINE, the sequel to DEAD DROP

I'm delighted to finally reveal LAST LINE, the sequel to DEAD DROP, which will be releasing in Standard and Special Editions in October this year. This latest adventure reunites Honora Blakely and Robert Armstrong in an adventure taking them from Kowloon Walled City to Belfast and London in a bid to stop an Irish terrorist from inciting civil war across the UK.

The Special Edition will come with an additional 'making of' feature entitled How To Write An Action Thriller Sequel: Analysing LAST LINE and will be priced at £3.49. The Standard edition (story only) will cost £2.99. However, early buyers will be rewarded with the Special costing £1.35 and the Standard £0.99 during the first week on sale. Both LAST LINE and DEAD DROP will go to the aforementioned higher prices seven days later.

In the meantime, head over to LAST LINE's newly created homepage to learn more about the plot and characters. Enjoy!

New Year Update on the DEAD DROP sequel!

The first update for 2015 on the DEAD DROP sequel!

My aim when starting out was to have the book published one year from its start date, which would mean a release date of late May 2015. Even with the first draft telling a story much bigger and lengthier than planned, it's still on course to meet that deadline, though a delay isn't out of the question depending on how long the editing process takes: with the scale of the plot, the action and its themes bigger and more ambitious than anything I've written before - as sequels should be - it's a tough call. However, end of May remains the target for release. As you'll discover soon enough, Robert Armstrong understands the frustration of a long wait.

As far as title and plot announcements go, the timing is also dependent on a few decisions to be made in editing, but if all goes to plan, hopefully in the next two months or so. That's a fair old wait for sure, but it'll be worth it if the book lives up to its potential. Your support, whether on DEAD DROP or my writing elsewhere, means the world to me and I want to make sure to deliver a story which blows away all expectations.

Meanwhile, a small DEAD DROP update as well: thanks to VAT changes in Europe, Amazon have automatically raised some of the prices on both editions of the book in that region. If you buy through Smashwords, prices are still the same and the best value no matter where you are. Some time after the sequel is out, I'll be raising prices to a more standard level ($2.99 for the basic edition) but DEAD DROP will remain at its current price until then and the sequel will also start out at that price as an introductory promotion. In other words, when it does arrive, be sure to pick it up quickly!

Finally, a few words to whet your appetite for the adventure to come:

RIOTS

FIRE

IRELAND

COLLAPSE

PUNK

THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS

...

Speak soon!

www.dead-drop.co.uk

DEAD DROP now available from Smashwords in epub, pdf and txt formats

EDIT (15/04/14): Updated versions of both manuscripts are now live on Smashwords. Update will follow on Amazon shortly.

For those of you who want to read DEAD DROP but don't own a Kindle or compatible e-reader, the book is now available from Smashwords in a variety of formats including pdf (compatible with any computer with Adobe Reader downloaded, which should be virtually all of them), epub (standard ebook format) and txt (plain text compatible with almost everything). Due to Smashwords-specific formatting demands, the book looks a little different from the Amazon edition but the text is exactly the same. All revisions described in the previous blog post are naturally included in the Smashwords edition.

Also worth noting is that, because non-US readers buy direct from the American site rather than a foreign affiliate, the price works out slightly cheaper as Amazon sets a minimum price for foreign editions of ebooks which generally work out slightly pricier when the American version is set below a certain threshold.

Download DEAD DROP from Smashwords here

If you enjoy it, please consider sharing the link or writing a quick review. To find the cheaper Standard Edition, scroll down the page to the 'Also By This Author' section.

DEAD DROP revisions now live on Amazon

As mentioned on my Twitter last week, I've been working on a couple of revisions to the DEAD DROP ebook, both Standard and Special editions, which went live on Amazon on Good Friday.

The changes are almost entirely cosmetic, the most notable being a change to more standard ebook text formatting (removing the empty lines between paragraphs, adding indentations) based on feedback I've received. An extra blurb has been added to the 'About The Author' page, plus links to this blog, Facebook and the aforementioned Twitter, while a few spelling mistakes have also been corrected and a handful of adjustments made to the prose/dialogue to keep them flowing smoothly or distinguish the characters' voices a little more. In all likelihood, nothing anyone will notice.

If you've already bought the book (thank you!), you should be able to download it again to receive the latest version. Anyone buying new (welcome!) should get it automatically. Because the new formatting is a little more complex than the previous version, get in touch if anything is out of place. I've tested it extensively so, fingers crossed, there shouldn't be any problems, but it'd be very useful to hear should anything unusual be spotted in the wild, so to speak.

Thanks kindly, and please consider leaving a review if you enjoy the book as much as I hope you do!