Book Post - Shemlan Chalks Up LitFest First!

Gerrard King's amazing pill skull image, 

wot graces the cover of Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy.

I didn't realise until the dirty deed was done, but my third Middle East spy thriller, Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy, today became the first book ever to be published at the Emirates Airline Festival Of Literature's spiritual and temporal home, the Dar Al Adab.

Today's workshop, part of the LitFest's 'Open Door' series of workshops and writerly things, was for the Hunna ladies writer's group and explored how to publish a book - both getting an agent and publisher and doing it yourself.

As part of the latter bit, I showed how to format, upload and manage a printed edition using CreateSpace, a Kindle book using MobiPocket Creator and Kindle Direct Publishing and also an Epub standard ebook (for Kobo, B&N and Apple among others) using Mark Coker's brilliant Smashwords.

What better example than the book I have just finished editing and proofing?

All three took well under half an hour, underlining how essentially easy and accessible self-publishing platforms are these days.

So Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy is now published - available here right now for your Kobo, Sony or iPad and here for your Kindle.


It's a funny old feeling, actually. Shemlan became something of a project on hold after I decided to self-publish Olives - A Violent Romance and then Beirut - An Explosive Thriller. Shemlan completes the Levant Cycle (three books set roughly contiguously but NOT a trilogy) and comes at the end of a lot of enjoyable but hard work.

I'm wondering what people will make of it, actually. I love it to death (obviously!) and think it sits somewhere between Olives and Beirut. I've already had people express strong preferences for both of those books at the expense of the other, Gerald Lynch appears to be the Middle East espionage thriller equivalent of Marmite and the strength of feeling he provokes from readers can take a chap aback occasionally. It's fair to say his behaviour in Shemlan will do little to dampen down the love/hate debate.

Needless to say, one will be having a quietly celebrative quaff this evening...

Book Post: Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy - The Cover

The cover of Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy.

Australian artist Gerrard King created the cover image for Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy. I stumbled across it during a session of frustrated Googling, having found various images that just wouldn't really do the job. I was looking for a combination of pills and death, two themes that run through the book, and you'd hardly find a better themic concatenation than Gerrard's decorated skull - one of a series he created as part of a perhaps worryingly extensive exploration of the artistic potentialities of skulls.

I had tested a tentative image or two with my pals over on the mailing list only to find them definitely 'meh' about the ideas. But this one really does the job - it's got impact, vavavoom and lipstick bullet following kabamm - in my humble opinion.

The image file (1600x2500 resolution both for Kindle and Smashwords, people) is ready to upload, as is the full Createspace cover. I have yet to finalise the .prc format text file for Kindle, the .docx file for Smashwords (all Meatginder-ready) and the Createspace text file. That's today's job.

And then tomorrow I'll be pushing various buttons at the 'How to self-publish a book' workshop at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature's spiritual and temporal home, the lovely and tranquil barjeel-laden Dar Al Adab tomorrow. The Hunna ladies group of writers will be gathered to watch in puzzlement as I wrestle with the various feersum endjinns involved in actually making a book happen in this brave new eworld of ours.

And then, gradually, pixels will pixellate. It's all quite exciting, really...