Hallelujah! The Crucible finally lands at Barnes & Noble

The Crucible epub edition

At long last The Crucible Part 1 has gone up on Barnes & Noble and is available there as an epub and paperback. It's a harrowing story of horrifying international conspiracy, religious fundamentalism and global negligence, very close to reality. I'm going to blog further about the background research, controversy and moral message of this book but for now I'd just like to announce the B&N availability because I know very well (from Ruby's News where I ask about e-book file type preference) that a lot of people read epub.

The Crucible paperback edition

This controversial thriller has had some great reviews on Amazon and Goodreads since its release but the process to get the epub up on B&N has taken a long, long time. Pubit! isn't yet available to European authors so direct publishing to the store hasn't been an option for me and Smashwords is the way in. B&N are planning to open Pubit! up to UK authors in the near future, since the recent UK launch of the Nook, and I'll be slipping across the border then to fix things up.


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Rediscovering the spark

(See end of post for free e-book!)
 
It happens. When the Moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars, or whatever. You have a creative idea and it translates. Verse, music, prose, it's a product of the inspiration that grabs you and makes perfect sense at the time, like a dream that lets the new day dawn with a feeling of elation.

Writing a novel is a lengthy process and completing the manuscript can take anything from a few months to several years. That's a long time to maintain the spark of inspiration that initiated the novel idea. Then editing is required, adding time and over-familiarity. At the end, when the work is ready to publish, an author often just wants to get done and over. Somewhere, deep inside, the ember of inspiration remains but the author has long since moved on to kindle another fire.

I get the impression that mainstream authors birth their creations and only revisit them when forced to do so by interviewers or high profile literary reviewers. Ideally they don't even read the critics' viewpoints and certainly never scour online reviews at Amazon or Goodreads. Not so the independent authors! Reader reviews are a valuable tool for indies to gain exposure and garner referral sales.

A Goodreads Giveaway - pre-launch paperbacks of The Crucible

One of the great things about getting reviews for your novels is to find out exactly what it is you've written. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and readers know best. I have learnt so much about my own writing from reader reviews on Goodreads, LibraryThing, Amazon and elsewhere.

The book pages on this blog not only serve visitors to summarise reviews of Peril, The Baptist, The New Author and The Crucible Part 1, they also provide me with a single source of reader input that I use as a guide in marketing existing work and planning new projects.

The Crucible Part 1 has had its first two reviews from Ignite (an Amazon top 1000 reviewer) and Tammy (The Self-Taught Cook). I was a bit nervous as I've deviated from my first person, present tense narrative style and stepped out of the crime / psychological thriller genre into political thriller (in fact I'm still genre bending as you can tell from Tammy's review). The body count is high (Rapture proportions) and the novel deals with themes that readers may well hold strong opinions about - religious fundamentalism, AIDS and far right & left politics. These first reviews are encouraging and so I've decided to go straight to paperback with a launch date of 8th October (when I've recovered from my 50th birthday party!) It's a great opportunity to do a Goodreads Giveaway and there are two paperback copies up for grabs below.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Crucible

by Ruby Barnes

Giveaway ends October 04, 2012.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Now, Ruby is going to be a bit quiet for a couple of weeks, writing up Allen's Mosquito - The Crucible Part 2.










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