My Haunted Life

My Haunted Life – Extreme Edition Available

Today, I have a new paperback about to hit the market in the form of My Haunted Life – The Extreme Edition. Weighing in at 210 pages and $12.99, its birth was actually relatively painless as it is essentially My Haunted Life, My Haunted Life Too, My Haunted Life 3 and two additional, never published before stories as a bonus. The cover is I think pretty spooky too!


My Haunted Life Series
I started writing My Haunted Life last year as an idea to expand on some of the material in Inner Journeys (my first book back in 2005). In Inner Journeys, I talk about growing up with poltergeist and ghosts and how that made me interested in the supernatural and magic. The point of the book was to talk about studying with a real school of magic in the form of the Servants of the Light however. So, I took some of the mentioned experiences and added some more in the form of true short stories and put it out on Kindle. The result was – a minor hit. Something of a first for me.

Given the success of that book, I decided to continue the theme and so My Haunted Life Too was born and went to #1 in two categories on Amazon. It still regularly appears in the top 10 of those two categories. Quite a thrill. Only last night, I got a new follower on Twitter who told me they were reading the book and enjoying it. It feels good to know that people I have never ever met, total strangers – are buying and reading my books.

My Haunted Life 3 came out earlier this year as a final follow up. It also is doing well.

Being Kindle books, they are all around 60-80 pages long and so I abandoned any thought of a paperback version of each (I did try with the first book but I found the pricing uneconomic). However, by combining all three Kindle books and adding a couple more stories what I end up with is a rather nice collection os short stories at a reasonable price.

I am done with the My Haunted Life phase of my writing career now though. I am not done with books about the supernatural however, and I am working on three new books right now. Two will be the shorter Kindle-type books and one will be a longer paperback novel. I’m having fun.

 

An Independent Website

Well, after a year on wordpress.com, this blog has made its bid for freedom once more and is now a stand alone website again. I still have a wordpress.com version – you can find it here and, if things are working correctly, my updates here will also automatically appear there…. There may yet be a few bugs and tweeks to be made.

I moved the site because, while the social interaction offered by WordPress.com is excellent, it is at the expense of many other functions. For example, I can’t link to my books on Amazon properly, I can’t add an embedded newsletter sign up form and much much more. On this site, I will be adding all of the functionality over time.

Meanwhile, My Haunted Life – Extreme Edition, the paperback, has had its button pushed too and at some point in the next 24-hours will be available to purchase on all the amazon sites and elsewhere besides. The paperback contains all three kindle books and two never before published additional stories as a bonus. So, for those of you who like to smell book smell and hold a real book in your hands, you can now do so and read My Haunted Life…..

 

my haunted life extreme (1)

 

 

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Grand Cover Reveal – My Haunted Life – The Extreme Edition

As many of you may be aware, the final act in the My Haunted Life series is a paperback and probably super value Kindle bundle called My Haunted Life – The Extreme Edition. This will feature the contents of all three My Haunted Life book as well as two additional new stories never published elsewhere….

The book should be available later in March and will make a lovely bedtime reading book or gift to the one you want to keep up all night scared sh1tless…….

Here it is.

I love it!

my haunted life extreme (1)

Battle Cry! (From My Haunted Life 3)

Here is a short story from My Haunted Life 3 – out now on Kindle…..

My Dad told me this creepy story several times when I was growing up. His childhood wasn’t so great and so he liked to escape at weekends or whenever he could. His best friend, Jack, and he, loved to cycle, camp and hike around East Yorkshire and that’s what they did just anytime they could. It was the years directly after the war and there was little traffic or other people to bother them.

One night, they pitched their small two-man tent in a farmer’s field near Long Marston. They knew very well that, in the vicinity, many years ago, a battle had taken place there during the English Civil war – The battle of Marston Moor. It was partly why they were there as they both had a love of history as well as the outdoors.

They retired as dusk came as they were heading back in the morning and needed to get up early to allow sufficient time for the trip. Cycling all day is tiring and so they had no problems sleeping.

Around 1am, a hand shaking his shoulder woke my Dad up. It was pitch black. As he awoke he heard Jack’s voice,

“Nev, Nev, do you hear that?”

Dad listened and to his amazement he could hear the thudding of horses galloping, men shouting and screaming and the clash of steel on steel. This was taking place in a thunderstorm and was accompanied by the sound of rain, thunder and huge flashes of lightening. He was horrified.

The two of them sat in the dark listening to what he described as a cacophony of battle sounds all around their little tent in the field. They dare not move. They dare not look outside the tent. They simply sat there wide-eyed with cold sweat dribbling down their icy cold necks listening to the sounds of a Civil War battle in a thunderstorm going on around them.

As soon as dawn began to break, the sounds faded. They got up, skipped breakfast, and got out of there as soon as they could. The field was totally empty when they finally summed up the courage to leave the tent.

The experience obviously had a big impact on him because he would often tell my brothers and I the tale of the night the Battle of Marston Moor took place. I think what had shocked him more was that, when checking up on the battle years later, he discovered that it did actually take place in a thunderstorm.

Battle_of_Marston_Moor,_1644

If you enjoyed this, why not buy one of the My Haunted Life series? Or, if you would like to write a review of one of these books on Amazon, I will gift you the book (provided you agree to sign up to my mailing list and promise to write the review!). You can buy one of these Amazon supernatural hits below;

My Haunted Life

My Haunted Life Too

My Haunted Life 3

My Haunted Life 3 Readied for Release

Yesterday evening, I finished My Haunted Life 3. It needs editing now and so on but it will be available later next week. Here is a listing of stories for you;

  • SCARED OF THE DARK
  • GUARDIAN ANGEL
  • THE MONSTER IN THE CUPBOARD
  • PROOF
  • THE APPARITION
  • DÉJÀ VU
  • ORBS
  • THE FACE
  • THE LODGER
  • THESE SHOES ARE MADE FOR WALKING
  • BATTLE CRY
  • YOUR LIFE IS ONE BIG FAT LIE!

Again, some of the stories are about me but several are stories I have been told by friends. I hope people enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

my haunted life 3

However, thats the last of The My Haunted Life series – at least for now. They have proven to be popular and both My Haunted Life and My Haunted Life Too are on several Amazon best seller lists still (The latter in the top 10 in the UK!). I do hope this continues and that the third installment does even better. I also see my other books selling more strongly so hopefully, I have begun to build an audience.

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There is much, much more in the works…. and I feel good about the future for my writing.

Thanks to everyone who may have bought one and please do remember – reviews – good or bad – are important and don’t take so long to write.

My Haunted Life Too Giveaway Has Now Ended

So the 5-day give away has now ended and I am delighted to say that 226 people downloaded the book which, for me, is a new record for a give away on Kindle. I would like to thank them for trying my work and to ask if they would kindly consider writing a review?

I am hopeful that many of these people will now purchase My Haunted Life or My Haunted Life 3 as well.

Right now, I am still hard at work on My Haunted Life 3 stories. I already have some really great stories written based on a meeting with my brother’s brother-in-law at a christmas party. He was a font of great paranormal and strange stories, many of which I have included in the book but also, some of them triggered memories of other similar stories as well.

Later, my intention is to bundle all three together as a new paperback of short stories.

Meanwhile, all three books can be purchased on Kindle at any Amazon site.

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Ghost Stories

This week will see the launch of my new effort and probably the last book for 2014 – My Haunted Life Too. We will do a cover reveal this week as well so stay tuned. It’s a ferocious cover! My Haunted Life Too is a new set of short stories of the strange and the paranormal but this time, the stories are about people around me as opposed to things I have experienced directly. Those who have read it say its better than the first as well – scarier. It will be out on Kindle later this week. Of course, all good things come in threes so there will certainly be a third to follow in early 2015. I can probably recast all three as one paperback book too in the end.

I am now interested in ghost and strange stories again as a result of writing these two short books. I am also intrigued by the short story format especially when supplemented by material on this blog. So, no doubt, there will be a few books from me next year along – hopefully – with The Lord of the Elements – the prequel to The Last Observer.

Meanwhile, My Haunted Life is still available at 99 cents on Kindle but only for a couple more days…..

Finally, A Hit?

Recently, I decided to experiment a bit with writing and publishing. I decided to try to broaden my audience a bit and see what worked in terms of covers and content and so on. In writing this blog, I actually generate a lot of material that eventually gets buried and lost in time but is eminently re-usable. I also had the weirdest experiences growing up with ghosts, poltergeist and all sorts of strange paranormal phenomena. I hit upon an idea and wrote My Haunted Life as a small book, primarily designed for the Kindle paranormal and supernatural market. I took some blog articles and turned them into short stories and added several new short stories – all true. I topped and tailed it with some thoughts about reality as it relates to the supernatural and then put it out. It was also meant to double as a bit of a commercial for my earlier books.

At first, it didn’t get much attention. We changed the cover. That helped. We did a one-day free giveaway. That helped a lot. I send it to a review site on Facebook and got 5 reviews – that also helped. Finally, I understood that people looking at the free preview were only seeing an advertisement for The Last Observer and the Introduction which isn’t about ghosts initially anyway. So I edited the content and added a new pre-intro page with bullet points of what was in the book along with a few endorsements. We also did a banner across the cover for today – Black Friday and set it at 99 cents. It will go up in price in a week or so.

Interestingly, it seems to have started to sell. It is also being lent. OK, so its only a minor hit at the moment but it seems to have momentum. Amazon seems to have found it too and is actively merchandising it. Additionally, my other books seem to have started to move too. I think I have learned a lot in this exercise about publishing perhaps as opposed to writing. Thanks in large part to book publicist and fast becoming a friend – Nick Wale. I won’t say exactly what the secret sauces are but I am excited that finally something is happening with my books and My Haunted Life is on the best seller lists (not in the top 10 but still).

The next step in all of this is that in early December, My Haunted Life Too will appear. Probably on Kindle only at first. Let’s see if the momentum can be maintained and even made greater by the new book. The new book has a rather eye catching cover too. Just wait until we reveal it. It will scare the pants off you all! Meanwhile, I have discovered a new interest in the supernatural so expect more in the vein.

Meanwhile, The Lord of the Elements is still being worked on. Hopefully, by the time it comes out, it will have an audience. black friday gary cover new