New Release!

After quite a lot of work, Lullaby of Lies is AVAILABLE.
Americans can get it HERE
Brits need to go HERE

Obviously I'm biased, but I think it's quite good. I'll post in the next couple of days about writing it. In the meantime, get 'em while they're hot...

Lullaby of Lies

Is on its way. I'm squeezing final editing around an epic summer vacation (New York, London, and now Bucharest) which I'll hopefully write about here in the autumn. In the meantime I've got some more work from the legendary Olly Prentice. Here is the draft cover...

and here is a little taste of the content...

Flames blossomed from the windows of the boarding houses. Screaming children ran from burning doorways, but the grass they ran across erupted into fire. A boy chased a football across the field, before realising that flames were chasing him. He stumbled, and fire enfolded his entire body

Cover Designer - Guest Post

When I heard J D Field had started writing a series of novels I hoped to get the chance to design the covers, so when the opportunity came about I jumped at it! It was always going to be an interesting project seeing as we live in different continents, but the initial brief soon set my mind at rest. Reading a snippet from the preface I could see that these were going to be exciting books. 

The brief asked for an image of a lake or pond, at night in the countryside with the water being a rich blue colour. And to have the moon and stars reflected in it, and possibly the title. The image was to be centrally located on the cover and possibly vignetted so that it faded out to black. 

I am a walking enthusiast and photographer as well as a graphic designer, so this project was perfect as I set about looking for the ideal lake near to me to photograph an adapt to fit the brief. There are 2 reservoirs nearby. Arlington and Bewl water. I chose Bewl as it is more natural looking and is also close to Bedgbury Woods which also contains a few lakes so there should be plenty of opportunities. Here's some of the original photographs. The chosen one is in the background. The others were lovely shots but contained too much detail. In the end we cropped in on the horizon of the chosen one:

The typeface to be used was also very important and if possible to try and do something a little different with it. I knew of one called Plantagenet Cherokee that had many alternate versions of each letter plus some glyphs of old letter forms and symbols. These could be used to add some character and a sense of history to the covers. This typeface would also be a defining link  and 'brand' between covers in the series. 

After doing some ideas for typographical arrangements of the title, I chose a photograph to work on and emailed JD Field some initial designs.  

It was decided that the vignette idea wasn't really working, instead we opted to extend the image to the edges of the cover but add in a rocky silhouette to the front to keep the shape. After some more to-ing and fro-ing of the design to perfect the balance of the elements and colours, the first e-book cover of The Levels Series was finished. A similar process was followed for Rock anthem and now it is time to start thinking about part 3. What will it be? Well you will have to wait and see... Here's a selection of the changing designs clockwise around the finished printed book

Read more about my walks,  (some of which I do to support the charity Hope for Children), kung fu training and photography at http://hard-walk.tumblr.com/ or follow me on Twitter @ollyeast

A Dream Come True

Last week I had a dream come true.

It's not often you can say that. It was a dream I've had since - probably - age seven.
Yes. I can fly.




No. It's a different dream. It's the one I've had since I learned 'Roger Hargreaves' on the Front of the Mr. Men books was the name of a person, not a company, like Ford.
The dream was too have a book in print. Of course, back then, I had no idea it would look like this (massive thanks to the creative genius of Mr Oliver Prentice).

The first long story I wrote was more or less a rip off of parts of the Green Grass of Wyoming and Silver Brumby books (you can find them HERE  and HERE). I think the plagiarism is forgiveable. I was ten.

In the last twenty years I've completed three novels, three screenplays, two TV pilots, two radio plays, and written the first halves of five different novels. I've sent a couple of hundred submissions to agents and publishers.

Nothing stuck.

Then I heard about Amanda Hocking's success, thought 'I can do that' and last September published SONG TO WAKE TO as an eBook. I never planned to self publish in paperback, in fact, for years I've felt a little bit sneery towards self-publishers. However, once I released the eBook, it became the natural next step.

Though it was only natural thanks to Createspace, Amazon's astonishing one stop shop. You upload your text and they tell you what to do to turn it into a book. They tell you how to create a cover (or in my case they tell Olly how to make a cover). You decide how much you're going to charge for it, and BANG, it's on sale on Amazon. Every time somebody wants one, they print it. Plus now I have things to give away as prizes in competitions, bribes to reviewers, etc, etc.

But most importantly, those of you who don't read eBooks can get a copy for yourself, HERE

Song to Wake to is FREE

June 29th and 30th Song to Wake to is free on Amazon. If you've already read it, you could take the opportunity to tell your friends, or maybe even get them a copy...

HERE.

The Clockwork Prince, Levels latest, Euro 2012 and Ronaldo in tears

The last month has been all about teams. I've been reading the Infernal Devices and watching the European Championships. It's been dramatastic.

Beautiful young men, running around trying to save the day, while gorgeous girls watch them with bated breath and vicious villains hack them to the ground. Crowds of remorseless enemies attacking like robots and success and failure balanced on a knife edge.

And then there's the Infernal Devices, Clockwork Prince, one of the best books I've read in a really long time. The breadth of characterisation and the complexity of the plot is breathtaking. The romance becomes perfectly complicated, and the mysterious ambitions of the Magister become ever more twisted. The setting is fantastic, Victorian London and Yorkshire and there is such attention to detail. There are minor characters - a slightly deranged old Yorkshireman, and a gloomy Irish kitchen maid who are beautifully drawn and much more than walk on parts.


My one problem with the book is that the reason Will Herondale is like, well, like Will Herondale, is revealed and for me it didn't quite work. It requires the reader to believe that a series of quite odd actions and convictions are possible, and more than that, they can continue for years with nobody finding out about them. I'm sorry if this sounds a bit cryptic, but I don't want to give anything away. if you've read the book, you'll know what I mean.

Returning to my original point,  The Infernal Devices divides its readers into teams. Team Will, or Team Jem, while the book itself is jammed with teams, there's the Magister crowd, there are the Shadowhunters and the Downworlders - themselves split between the Lightwoods and the Institute crowd, and werewolves and vampires. And they all play against each other.

Which of course, the footballers don't, they face off one at a time. The Greeks and the Germans in an occasion crammed with drama, tragedy, a bit of austerity. The English and the Ukrainians, mistake fuelled and cagey. Every night ends in tears. Fat, shirtless men wipe their eyes in the stand. Tonight the Spanish and the French. Each occasion is loaded with excitement, but it's only ever a two-way affair.



And this is why the Infernal Devices beats football. It's just more complicated. Though, at the moment I could do with it being much less interesting and the football itself being very dull indeed. I've got  ,  Song to Wake to to release in paperback and as a free eBook in a week's time and Lullaby of Lies to polish. The 3rd Levels book will hopefully - like Clockwork Prince - split readers into Team Eddy and Team Jon.

No time for distractions!

In the footsteps of Indiana Jones, skirting The Capitol, avoiding Alicante to the Eighth Wonder of the World, accompanied by The Petshop Boys

This was me last week. Really. If you saw this in the movie and thought Steven Spielberg has a fantastic imagination, well you're right, but he didn't invent any of this. Petra is real, and it's completely amazing. You enter it down a winding road through what is essentially a long, narrow crack in the rock.

At the end of the road-in-the-crack you come to what was once the main square of Petra.

Two Thousand years ago. It’s really amazing and it’s really real. Who needs Alicante, or The Capitol, when you have this… I've been to a wonder of the world, and it's pretty cool.

As well as seeing Petra, I was driven around the desert a lot, which is interesting at first, but then all gets a bit samey. Fortunately I filled the time by finishing off the first draft of Lullaby of Lies, the third Levels book.

Now I’m rewriting it, as well as getting ready for the other exciting events this month… I’m going to tell you about two, now, but watch this space.

Song to Wake to is going to be released in paperback.

I’ve given it a bit of an edit (the eBook version as well). The marvellous Oliver Prentice is working on the cover, and it’s going to hit the shelves of Amazon and hopefully other places on my birthday, June 30^th.

The other thing I’ve done is started a TUMBLR for Song to Wake to. Essentially, it’s bits of text and the music or film that goes with them, or maybe even inspired them. Guess which scene THIS marvellous song goes with. Answers on a postcard...

Please go and have a look at all the other bits HERE and tell me what you think. If you've got any suggestions for other clips and bits of text that go together, then pleeeease let me know. Anybody really inspired will probably win a free book, or something.