I told you I was bad at marketing ...

So bad that within a week of posting a blog trumpeting my latest book, I changed the cover. I do it just to confuse you.

Anyway, here's the latest iteration. I decided to go for something cooler, having spent a lot of time browsing books in my genre to see which covers I liked. I thought I liked the multi-coloured, action-packed whiz-bang ones ... but when it came to it, the covers that appealed to me most were ones that created an atmosphere with a strong graphic and tasteful typography.

So that's what I've moved towards.

The photograph is actually of Aleppo in Syria, and while the city itself isn't featured in the book, the country and its devastation plays a large part in how the story unfolds.

Redirecting ... redirecting ...

It's strange to be using a rare blog post just to direct you somewhere else, but that's how I roll ... So, that wonderful supporter of other writers, my friend Eric Gates, has hosted an article by me on how I created the villains for my latest novel, Storey.

It got me thinking about how I arrived at the characters and personalities of the bad guys and gals, and made me realise, especially, that once they begin to establish themselves in the books, their personalities not only affect how I write them, but how they even begin to 'see' themselves in the books. And that in turn changes how I write them ... a virtuous circle sorta thing.

Anyway, the post is called Criminal Behaviour, and can be found on Eric's excellent site, here:  Thriller-Writer

To buy the book, you can click here to be taken to the nearest Amazon store to your location.

If that doesn't grab you it's also available on Apple's iBook store, on Kobo and the old stalwart Barnes and Noble's Nook.

In other news ...

My fourth Sam Dyke novel, The Bleak, is one of 8 crime novels featured in a new anthology called Britain Turns to Crime. A great honour to have been asked. It's available for only 99p or 99cents, from this Amazon link: Britain Turns to Crime. Here's the ad I've been running on Twitter.