Sink or Swim - I'm taking the plunge

It's all change here at Archive Towers - well, it's actually my spare room but Archive Towers sounds cooler. I've been at this writing game for my entire life, and a lot of water's gone under the bridge since I saw my first novel published back in 2009. Immediately the book was accepted my Robert Hale and before the contract was signed I started promoting and the book benefited by topping many western charts. My second book, Arkansas Smith did even better and is still getting strong chart showings.

After that it was a slight departure and I saw my crime novel, A Policeman's Lot published first as an eBook and then in print by Solstice Publishing. The book didn't do as well as I'd expected and so I recently had my rights reverted and republished the book as The Rhondda Ripper on both Amazon and Smashwords, and you know what the book is doing much better. It's still to find the audience I think it deserves but I have faith.

My third western, The Ballad of Delta Rose came out from Robert Hale last year and in a few months my fourth,  Wild Bill Williams will see print. I am currently working on a book entitled The Afterlife of Slim McCord which will hopefully be my fifth book for the Black Horse group. I love writing the westerns and will continue to so so even if my current self pubbing activities are proving much more profitable.

And speaking of self pubbing - I have published a novella straight to Kindle which is a sequel to Arkansas Smith, and can currently be found on Amazon. Add to that you have The Dead Walked Book One written using the pen name Vincent Stark, with the second part coming out at the end of this month.


My latest book is a cozy crime thriller called Granny Smith Investigates and it is proving my first real self published hit - it's selling a few hundred copies a week which provides a healthy income.

I've been working towards this position for a long time and I've made some mistakes - particularly in self publishing where I learned not to rush product onto the market until they had been properly proofed. Still  the beauty of self pubbing is the ease in which editions can be revised, and by the time Granny Smith had gone off its free promotion, I had sorted out all the issues with the book.

And so I have now decided to take the plunge and devote myself full time to my writing, for only by giving 100% can I hope to grow and develop and take myself further in my chosen career path. I've been driving a taxi for several years and it does pay the bills, but it takes up a disproportionate amount of my time. And so I'm going to stick with it until the New Year - Christmas being a very profitable period - and then on JAN 1ST 2012 I am going to hand in my license and become a full time writer.

It's a scary prospect but if my sales remain as they are at the moment and I see no reason why they should not get better, then I can make a better than average living. I will also have the time to develop and grow as a writer And besides I'll still take the odd acting job when I can get it, but I am now at a point where if I do not allow myself the luxury of writing full time I feel my work will stagnate.


And that is not good - I'm a writer. I've been writing since I knew how and I feel that I am at the stage where if I put everything I have into it, I can make quantum leaps. And that's what I intend to do.

The Archive will be kept up as much as usual, hopefully improved upon because it is my hope that by providing good content I will encourage some of you to buy a book and support my work. I will also have more time to devote to my sister blog, Let's Write and hopefully this will provide a useful source for other writers. And of course there's old Vincent Stark's blog,  Scary Motherfucker to maintain. Blogs, social networks are, I think, or paramount importance to the modern writer.

There's also the fact that The Tarnished Star is still under development for a big screen version, which will be directed by Neil Jones under the title, LawMaster and hopefully this will get off the ground before too much longer.

Readers of the Archive can help by Tweeting, Blogging or leaving a review on Amazon when you enjoy any of my books. After all the Archive takes a heck of a lot of time to produce, so think of it as supporting this writer and thus this blog. It's one way of ensuring you get more and more of the eclectic shit the Archive serves up.

Anyway...wish me luck.


Available now:
Granny Smith Investigates
The Dead Walked Book One
Tarnished Star
The Ballad of Delta Rose
Arkansas Smith
Arkansas Smith II

And soon

Wild Bill Williams
The Walking Dead Book Two

Simple MARVEL...ous

Marvels
Graphic Novel - NO 13 in the Ultimate Graphic Novel Collection

by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross


Originally published as a four issue mini series in 1994.

Those with a knowledge of comic books will have heard of this groundbreaking title, but this is the first time I've come across it. I enjoy graphic novels and have read a great many over the years but they form only a small portion of my reading and the Marvel Ultimate Graphic Novel Collection is proving a must buy for me and allowing me to catch up on classics that originally went beneath my radar.

Before I talk about Marvels - I just want to say it blew my mind.

It really is that good.

It's basically the entire history of the Marvel universe,encompassing all the key events, but told through the eyes of ordinary people - our ordinary Joe is Phil Sheldon who just happens to live and work in New York. Marvels super heroes, unlike DC's, tend to live in real cities, most often the Big Apple and  so Phil  gets plenty of photo opportunities to snap the various super heroes or, as he calls them, Marvels. The graphic novel kicks off with a prologue featuring the original Human Torch and then takes us into the Second World War and the appearance of Captain America.

The story continues through until the present day, well the 1990's in any case, where Phil is now an old man who has grown tired of the way the world at large treat the Marvels.

 "It would have served us right if the Marvels never returned. We didn't deserve them."


The death of Gwen Stacy hits Sheldon hard and our story ends with him retiring from photo journalism to be with his family.

The art by Alex Ross is absolutely stunning with each incredibly detailed  frame hand painted- there is some humour too and in the frame depicting the wedding of Reed and Sue Richards, The Beatles can be spotted amongst the guests. And when you've got artwork this good twinned with a script as strong as this one, you've got something very special indeed.

It works on a few levels - on the surface it's an incredibly entertaining read, but underneath it serves as a fitting tribute to everyone who over the years worked on building the Marvel universe.


It is also a stroke of genius to make out narrator an everyman and make the super characters part of the supporting cast. It all seems so real and this graphic novel is as complex as any straight novel and really shows what the medium is capable of.

The deluxe hardcover edition published this week as part of the ultimate graphic novel collection part work is excellent value - priced at £9.99 you are getting a book that is easily worth double the money.


The original mini series won several awards and turned both the writer and artist into superstars.

• Won "Best Finite Series" Eisner Award
• Won "Best Painter" Eisner Award, for Alex Ross
• Won "Best Publication Design" Eisner Award, for Comicraft
• Nominated for "Best Cover Artist" Eisner Award, for Alex Ross
• Nominated for "Best Single Issue", for Marvels #2 "Monsters"

BLACK HORSE WESTERN CHARTS -

Charts supplied by Black Horse Express

1. Buck and the Widow Rancher by Carlton Youngblood (29 Feb 2012)

Available for download now £2.74

2. Wild Bill Williams (Black Horse Western) by Jack Martin (31 Oct 2012)

Hardcover Available for pre-order £12.38

3. The Ghosts of Poynter (Black Horse Western) by Amos Carr (30 Jun 2012)

Hardcover  £9.52

4. All Guns Blazing by Doug Thorne (30 Dec 2011)

Available for download now £3.43

5. Shadow Man by Andrew McBride (30 Dec 2011)

Available for download now £3.43

6. Trail to Fort Laramie by Jack Edwardes (30 Dec 2011)

Available for download now £3.43

7. Arkansas Smith (Black Horse Western) by Jack Martin (30 Apr 2012)

Available for download now £3.43

8. Twilight Trail (Black Horse Western) by Lance Howard (31 May 2012)

Hardcover £12.38

9. Last Man in Lazarus (Black Horse Western) by Bill Shields (30 Mar 2012)

Hardcover  £9.94

10. Colorado Kid (Black Horse Western) by Dale Mike Rogers (29 Feb 2012)

Available for download now £2.74

Old Age Delinquents

Mr Lennon Dobbs

Us writers are an insecure lot - we sit alone all day, staring at the screen, with only Lennon for company and he's too busy chewing on his rawhide bone to take any notice.

 We don't really get any human interaction during the working day.

And that's why reviews are so important to us - because it gives us some indication that all those hours of torture from characters who refuse to do what we want, and take us off on tangents not imagined in the outline, are worthwhile.

I was especially pleased to see a review of my novella , Granny Smith Investigates on The Not The Baseball Pitcher Blog.

In Gary Dobbs’ latest book, we have a cozy mystery with the elderly lady and amateur detective known as Granny Smith. Though Smith is her married name and she is indeed a grandmother, she’s had the nickname a lot longer. It comes for her love of the same titled apple. Granny is as different from the Christie character as one could be. Miss Marple was a prim and proper lady of her time and Granny is a pipe smoking, heavy metal listening woman of hers. Oh, she does the grandmother things: baking cookies for sales and tending to her grandchildren.SEE THE FULL REVIEW HERE


Granny Smith Investigates is available on Amazon for the Kindle with other versions to be rolled out shortly.

I'm pleased to report that Granny Smith is proving a bit of  hit with strong sales, particularly in the UK but the book is picking up steam in the US. The rock music loving, pipe smoking slueth is currently enjoying some downtime by reading Fifty Shades of Grey and bothering her long suffering husband, Arthur, but she will return next year in a full length novel. Yep, old Granny's wild oats may have turned to all bran but there's plenty of life in this lady who is just too damn stubborn to let old age get in the way of adventure.

As Granny says - "Wrinkles merely indicate where smiles have been."

Go get the novella now.

“It’s Miss Marple on steroids.”

A brutal murder in a small Welsh village and the police are stuck without a clue. With no motive and no real suspect the investigation soon grinds to a halt. Enter Mary Alice Smith, otherwise known as Granny Smith, the rock music loving, pipe smoking, chaos causing amateur sleuth with a difference.

Granny has a talent for mayhem and soon those talents are put to good use as our intrepid pensioner starts the unravel the case, which finds her provoking Chief Inspector Miskin as she comes up against a full scale police investigation, proving that you’re never too old to make a nuisance of yourself and that sixty three is actually the new twenty three.

Murder's never been so much fun.

Tainted Stats

Weekly Stats Report: 9 Jul - 15 Jul 2012
Project: THE TAINTED ARCHIVE
URL: http://tainted-archive.blogspot.com/

Summary

	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat	Sun	Total	Avg
Pageloads	541	541	491	544	458	585	499	3,659	523
Unique Visits	396	391	358	423	376	401	377	2,722	389
First Time Visits	377	364	322	391	358	361	340	2,513	359
Returning Visits	19	27	36	32	18	40	37	209	30

Dark Knight Rises tipped for Oscar - seriously!

You wouldn't think it possible but there are some critics, who have been lucky enough to see The Dark Knight Rises, are saying that this could be the first superhero movie to get a best picture nomination.

There is a press embargo on reviews but there have been some snippets posted to Twitter -

auren Heistand @nickcarterroxs – “The Dark Knight Rises has just finished screening for the press and critics, receiving a STANDING OVATION!!!”

Brian Limond ‏@DaftLimmy – “Just back from a special preview screening of The Dark Knight Rises. Very good. It’s everything and more. You’re gonnae LOVE IT!”

Zach Pincus ‏@ZachPincus – “The Dark Knight Rises is not only easily the best Batman movie yet, but now one of my favorite movies I’ve ever seen. It was unbelievable!”


There's now something like four days to go before we in the UK are able to get along to the multiplex and see the movie. It's been a good year for superhero movies, and after enjoying both The Avengers and Spiderman I am especially looking forward to this one.

Django Unchained and on the page

This is great news - There will be a four issue mini series based on Quentin Taratino's forthcoming, Django Unchained from DC Comics. Tarantino made the announcement himself at San Diego's Comic Con Convention.


"We have worked out a situation where we're going to do a 'Django Unchained' comic. It's going to come out -- I think the first issue is going to come out a couple months before the movie opens and basically take the entire story of the film and do it as a comic book from beginning to end. What I'm really excited about -- not only do I love comic books, I always loved western comics in particular along with the superhero stuff. So I was really excited when it come up with doing a comic about the film. One of the things that I'm really excited about is that 'Django Unchained' is a big epic. When I write big epic scripts like 'Kill Bill,' there's a lot of stuff that doesn't make the movie because they're too f-ing big. They'd be four hour movies if I did everything that was in the script, so there always is this aspect that the script is this big literary piece that I'm always taking it out and changing it and transforming it to make it a movie by the time it's all finished. That's the process, I'm always adapting my movie every day, my unwieldy script into a movie every day as I do it, but what's really cool about doing a 'Django Unchained' comic book is that it's the entire script. Even though things might have changed in the movie, I might have changed something else, I might have dropped chapters, I might have dropped big pieces -- that will all be in the comic. The comic will literally be that very first draft of the script. All that material that didn't make the movie, all of that will be part of the piece. And I'm really excited about it. So, be looking out for 'Django Unchained' in a comic book store and 7 Eleven near you!" Tarantino