After nearly 7,000 posts about unicycling over the last 15 years, I hope you won’t mind a one off bit of shameless self promotion:
My first novel, Bridge of Otherwhere, under my real name, Michael Wilkinson, is now available for download on Kindle.
<<When Jonathan Maydock runs over an old woman on a dark country lane, it is no ordinary accident. Who — or what — is she, and what is her interest in him? As his experiences become increasingly bizarre, Jonathan, struggles to balance the everyday demands of work and family with his desire to explore and understand the unknown, until he fears for his own sanity. Nothing is as it appears, and no one is as they seem, but it is only when he is forced to confront the way that others see him that he begins to understand who he is and what he really wants. A story of loneliness, friendship, and love — and of magic, or at least something very similar to it.>>
If you enjoy it, please leave a positive review. 6 months of writing is only half the battle. People will only buy it if it appears in their searches, and that depends on Amazon’s algorithm. Thanks.
Some of you will remember my many write ups of my adventures on a unicycle in Sherwood Forest.
No immediate plans to bring it out in print. On Kindle download, I can set a reasonable price. Printed versions are printed individually to order at about 2.5 times as much. For paperbacks, general fiction and fantasy, downloadable is the most popular option.
Kindle is available as an app for phones and tablets. My wife reads most of her Kindle books on her Samsung Galaxy.
However, it looks like some people strongly prefer the paperback option so I may have to consider that.
Writing the book was six months’ hard work, virtually a full time job. That was the easy bit! Getting it in front of people in such a competitive market is the real struggle. It’s like trying to make it as a musician: ability is only part of the battle.
Please let me know if a print version becomes available I would gladly pay 2.5 times the kindle price to be able to put a copy on my shelf. Congratulations, Mike. Your write-ups already showcased your prose skills.
I have always enjoyed your writeups, so thought I would check out this book and started to read the sample portion of the book available free on Amazon.
I usually reserve my recreational reading at work to the lunch hour but it was captivating enough I just about wasn’t prepared for my 3:30 briefing since I kept going back to it between tasks and phone calls.
Good stuff and I want to find out what happens next!
writing is so difficult!
I will try to download your book from Amazon (though I don’t use Kindle but Calibre -I am an EPUB format fan-).
I try to write science-fiction … I started with a book … but I am suffering from the “George Mc Fly syndrome” so tried with short novels instead.
Since there are more SF magazine in English I started with novels in english.
Pro: responses are (nearly) immediate; Con: all where rejected.
So I bundled all these in an epub and put it on the web -> reviews are bad :o
(the title anticipated this result since it’s: “Paperbasket anticipation”)
So I switched to French. Con: responses take months or years; Pro: some get published.
It’s so difficult to write: there is the problem of style (mine is poor) and of scenario (I stubbornly stick to speculative fiction and it’s not the current trend) but it keeps my last remaining neuron alive and well.
keep writing, keep riding ! kudos !
Just finished Michael’s first book. I was following one of the recent blog lines, read a couple of Mike’s comments, and saw that he had written a book. I read the first couple of chapters on Amazon, and was hooked.
I really enjoyed it! At 66, it takes something special to capture my attention and keep it; his book did exactly that. This book was a warm love story with a hint of the mystical, and kept my interest throughout. Thanks for the great tale, and I’ll be waiting for the next one!
