General tinkering and stuff

Of late I've been doing a lot more non-writing than writing, which while frustrating at times is sometimes necessary.

After a month of flash drive failures and feelings of general burnout I've managed to get writing again, but I've also found myself having to do a lot of non-writing writing-related stuff too.

One of the things I got done just today was to create a mailing list for new releases.  This is something for the casual fan who might not want to listen to me blathering on about how many words I've written this week or whatever, something I will put a link to in the back (or probably the front) of each of my ebooks so that people who like them can find out easily when I put out a new release.  The email box on the blog should be directly to the right of this paragraph, but in case it's gone walkabout the link is here

http://eepurl.com/qceDj

Click it, put in your name and email, and that's it.  Just to clarify, I will be using this only to send out a notification of a new release, nothing more.  The absolute maximum number of emails you'll get per month is one, because I'm running out of short stories to publish and there's only so fast I can write.

While there is another email subscription box further down that one is for this blog, but I have no clue how many people have signed up for it (or any way to find out) so I'm thinking to can it altogether.  It's in the consideration phase...

Something good that happened this week is my short story, Fallen from the Train, which was my first published story on Smashwords, has been price-matched to free by Amazon.  The whole point of putting my short stories on Amazon in the first place was to advertise my novels, and I'm hoping that this way it'll get lots of downloads and people who like it will want to buy Tube Riders, which is connected to the story.

 

Free now forever - click pic to download

I had to hassle the hell out of Amazon to get them to do it, sending in about 20 or so notifications of a lower price, but now I know they'll do it I'm going to start shifting my short stories out of Select and onto Smashwords.  It's easier to have them free all the time rather than go about the hassle of putting them on promo and all the messing about that comes with it.  Plus, if it's free all the time there's no need to worry about getting your downloads in a certain period of time.  It's easier all round, and since I've probably made $30 total across 13 short stories since January I have more to gain than to lose.

As part of the process, Smashwords requires higher res covers to make a book eligible for its premium catalogue (going to Apple, Barnes & Noble, etc) so the shorts getting moved across will be getting an upgrade.  First to get the treatment is The Cold Pools.  While I quite liked the old cover, I liked this one more -

I got the high res pic of pond5.com and added the text using Picasa Creative Kit.  The font is a wonderful one called "Steak".  Yeah, I know it has "cold" in the title but the story is set in a world ravaged by global warming so the deep red is kind of appropriate.  While I have a couple of awesome people who design my novel/novella covers for me I tend to go it alone with my shorts just to save a buck.  They can be a bit ragged but I think this one is great.  In an ideal world I would like to get them all professionally done but I don't have the money for it at the moment.  One day.

The Cold Pools is now on Smashwords and available for free download (click the pic), and once it's up on the premium catalogue I'll be going gung ho to get it price-matched.  I think this one would do well as it already has six reviews on Amazon (four 5s and two 4s) so will get a lot of notice.  I didn't put any sample chapters in this one but I think if people like it they'll check out my other stuff.

And the final thing I've been up to is trying to get the paperback for Man Who Built the World ready.  I have a wonderful cover courtesy of Su Halfwerk just waiting to go but after several weeks of wrestling with the formatting I've finally had to send it for external assistance.  I thought I had all the issues resolved, but checking the PDF tonight I see there are still one or two problems, namely some of the pages are shorter than others.  Very strange.  I've already put the poor formatter through hell so I hate to keep hassling her.  I really want it out by Christmas though.

So, with Christmas coming up, I'm closing in on a year of self-publishing.  I'll of course be doing a first year summary in January when the anniversary comes up but just to let anyone who thinks self-publishing is easy know, it really isn't.  I've broken my back on it this year, but while I've made almost no money I've made a lot of wonderful friends and learned more than I could possibly have imagined.  I always knew I could write and that hasn't changed, but there's so much more involved.  I don't like to think of the hours I've spent on things that many people might view as meaningless, or all the nights I've stayed in to write when I've wanted to go out drinking with the boys.

The first year is always supposed to be the hardest.  I really hope so.  But anyway, it's late, and so I'll leave you with a picture of what I really want to be doing right now...

 

 Miffy knows where it's at.

CW

4th Dec 2012

What makes a good character?

What makes a good character?

I’ve been reading a couple of books recently (yes, really) and a couple of thoughts came to mind regarding characters, their development, and the empathy readers have with them.

In one book I’m reading, a YA dystopia, the male lead’s only recognizable feature is his spiky hair.  On top of this he appears to be good-looking.  No surprise there.  The female lead is a teenage girl who appears to be Bella out of Twilight with a different name.  Several reviewers have mentioned “great characters”.  Um, why?  The guy is a TV presenter transposed into a sci-fi novel.  The girl is a high-school girl of regular attractiveness and intelligence who will obviously at some point get with the guy.  There’s nothing at all that makes either of them special or makes them stand out.

And perhaps here we have the answer.

Do readers, particularly young adult readers, merely want a character that they can pretend to be?  So that they can pretend to be in the book itself, interacting with the other characters as if they were real?

Another recent book I read, a so-called sci-fi classic, had a review bemoaning the lack of character development.  The book was set on a foreign planet, and revolved around a guy finding out what was going on in his world.  Which he did, and it was great.  Why would I need the guy to have some kind of big change in his life?  The story wasn't just about the guy, it was about the whole world around him.

Another issue I have is with empathy.  Matt Cassidy, the central character in The Man Who Built the World (that's him looking miserable on the cover), is an alcoholic borderline wife-beater who hates pretty much everything.  He’s intentionally detestable, in fact I went out of my way to give him no redeeming features.  The point of the book is such that through his story you discover why he is how he is, and whether he can find redemption. You're not supposed to like him.

I recently had someone pull out of reviewing the book because they couldn’t identify with him.  While I fully respect the reviewer’s opinion this pleased me in a certain way because I don’t want my readers to identify with him.  I want them to pity or hate or be repulsed by him.

I don’t write books with swimwear models or high school nice guys for characters.  If you find one, you can be sure he or she won’t last long.  Charles de Molay, star of my favorite of my unpublished novels, Hooks, is a cripple.  Dan Barker in Head of Words (forthcoming) is mentally insane.  Even the Tube Riders have their issues.  Marta - the only one close to being good-looking, hardly ever gets to wash and her dreadlocks are a case of more grime than intention.  Switch has, for want of a better expression, a fucked up eye, and Paul is balding and overweight.  It’s not just about their looks, either, but their actions.  In a lot of books nothing seriously bad ever happens to the main characters, or they never do anything bad, take your pick.  In Tube Riders, Marta sleeps with guys to pay her rent (or at least she did before the book starts).  Paul does even worse.  Switch kills without thinking whether his victim deserved it or not.

A reviewer recently said my book contained “real people”.  This was perhaps the biggest compliment someone could ever give me.  It doesn't matter if they liked it or not, they got it.  In real life people don’t always do the right thing, and they certainly aren’t always good-looking.  For every Che Guevara (cool enough to spawn a billion t-shirts) or Aung Sung Suu Kyi (gorgeous - at least in her youth, damn) there are hundreds or thousands of 'heroes' that are nothing much to look at.  It is totally possible for someone who isn’t cool or an oil painting to have an adventure, to be a hero.

So what do I think makes a good character?

I used to suffer from something I call the Steve Syndrome.  I would have a couple of main characters who were more distinctive then everyone else would be a Steve (apologies to anyone called Steve!).  This would be a character who had no real features or definition and often a generic name (the first character I identified as having this problem, in my third novel, Resort, was called Steve - hence the name).  In Tube Riders, both Paul and Simon were originally Steves.  Marta and Switch were always pretty well-defined, but I had to make a real effort to make Simon and Paul distinct.  Paul I made fat and more unattractive, while with Simon I went the other way, making him more feminine, almost androgynous.

Therefore, the first thing that I believe is important is memorability (is that even a word?!).  A character has to be memorable.  And not just by having a cute smile - that’s not memorable, it’s generic - they have to have some feature or mannerism (or both) which makes them stand out.  It doesn’t have to be good, and it doesn’t have to be bad.

Also extremely important is voice.  People talk differently.  Some people swear, some people don’t.  Some people say certain words more often than others.  Some people talk in long sentences, others talk in short, clipped phrases.  You should (within reason) be able to write a three- or four- way dialogue without using any identifying dialogue tags yet still have the reader know who is speaking each time.  If you can do that, you’ve got it.

Also very important to me (as you’ll notice from my character descriptions above) is flaws.  I hate good-looking, perfect characters.  Boooorrrriing.  Have you ever met anyone who was perfect?  (Actually, I have met a couple of people who were, and god they were dull).  Perfect characters are only allowed in comedy, because their very perfection can make them hilarious (see my novella series, Beat Down!, for an example).

So what do people think?  Obviously few people agree with me.  I’ve sold 27 books this month so far.  How many has Stephanie Meyer sold?  A billion?  Even the book I was complaining about above has probably sold about 200.  So, I’m likely wrong (except in my own head of course!), but I’d love to hear your ideas on what you think makes a good character.

CW

27 Nov 2012

Frustrations

Be warned, this short blog contains some serious bitchin'.

Recently I've been suffering the inevitable effects of over-writing in the sense of burnout.  While I've got close to 50k written in the last month (20th to 20th) I'd hoped to be closer to 70k or even more, but computers, tiredness and general stress seem to be conspiring against me.

Today I got to work, found I only had a single class plus a test to mark so figured I could get a sly hour of writing on the clock, so to speak (don't call me a waster - I don't spend half my time forwarding joke emails like most office workers do!).  When I inserted my flash drive the computer asked me if I wanted to format it.  Huh?  Yesterday it was working fine, now for some reason it's unreadable.  Last month I dropped my laptop and broke my old flash drive, and only a very skilled mate was able to save all my info on to this, the replacement drive, an old one I've had kicking around for a while.

Seems its time to get a new one.

Since the last time I've learned my lesson to a certain extent and have been backing up my files.  All I lost this time was some updated work reports and about 3k on a novella I was working on, a Saturday morning worth of work.  I LIKED that scene.  While I'm happy enough to write it out again I don't really want to because I liked it the first time.

My NaNo project is also dying a slow death.  It never really recovered after my computer crashed while saving it on the first weekend, meaning I had to write out another 3k over again.  I seem to be having repeated hardware problems and that isn't the first time my computer has refused to save my document, instead deciding to save it as some kind of temp file and then conveniently loosing it.

In addition, I have a tick in my right eye that won't go away.

I looked online and it's not a serious problem.  The causes are -

   1 ) too much caffeine - CHECK
   2 ) too much time in front of a computer - CHECK
   3 ) too much stress - CHECK.

I guess I'm doomed to be ticked forever.

And the icing on the cake is that my books aren't selling.  After a great promo for Tube Riders I had about fifty sales over the next month and then it dropped off a cliff.  Completely.  I've had one sale in 12 days and I'm pretty sure someone I know bought that.  And that's not to mention the rest of my stuff.  I have 20 items on Amazon now - 20! - and I've sold one book in 12 days.  Is it really possible to go so invisible so quickly?

Anyway, rant over.

Yeah, I'm pretty positive about stuff in general.  Even with computer frustrations and ticks and stuff I've still written 225k in the last five months and hopefully will have another novel and two novellas published before Christmas.  I still rock - I've not yet had a review under three stars on Amazon (and that one only complained about a story being too short) yet I've had just one review for Tube Riders out of 4300 free downloads.  One.  Come on, it doesn't take that long to read ....

I'm very careful with Tube Riders 2 as well.  I can handle losing everything except that because its my literary child, but I've been backing it up online.  However, losing any writing is a pain in the ass because you just feel like the Gods of technology hate you.

Right, the rank really is over.  I'm off to eat cake and brew my fifth cup of coffee today.

CW
19 Nov 2012

P.S. Just to make myself feel happier, this is my band live yesterday.  Rock!!!

The Man Who Built the World new covers

So in the absence of any sales I decided it was time to go pro and update the cover for The Man Who Built the World.  Since she did such a great job with Tube Riders, I called in Su at Novel Prevue again.

After possibly driving her near-crazy with endless requests, here's the final result.  I think these look awesome and they capture the mixture of darkness, intrigue and mystery contained in the book perfectly.  I recently had a blogger pull out of a review because of how dark the book was, and I hadn't really thought about how bleak it was before, but it gave me a wake up call.  This is a very dark book that is more horror than supernatural, and with a central theme of the destructive power of love it is not one that a reader should approach lightly.  However, anyone prepared to follow Matthew Cassidy into the depths of his soul and the darkness of his past is sure to be rewarded.

Okay, here's the ebook cover -

 

This is just awesome.  You have a slumped Matt on the front, in a glade in the forest that features heavily in the novel.  The eyes could belong to one of two people - I'll let the reader decide.  And the feathers ... well, they have significance too.  You'll have to read it to find out what!

And here's the paperback cover -

 Here of course you have the grave on the back cover - the grave being a very significant location in the book.  Again, you'll have to read it to find out why!

Many thanks to Su at www.novelprevue.com for these.  Once again she did a great job.

CW

2nd Nov 2012

Writing Update - Month Four

On June 20th, 2012, I decided to try to write 52 short stories in a year.  Since then the challenge has become a lot more, it has become about whether or not I really wanted to push myself to achieve what I felt I had the talent to achieve, which was to eventually become a full time writer.  I have rarely had doubts about my ability, and the number of stories I've published (33) suggest I'm not being a complete ego-manic when I say I think I have what it takes.  But it wasn't just about how good the words I'd written in the past were, but how good the words I hadn't yet written had the potential to be, and whether I had the drive to write enough of them to pretty much blanket the market with my awesomeness, because, let's face it, the likelihood of getting big on just one book is very remote indeed.  In other words, I had to step up to the plate.

So my odyssey shifted momentum from 52 short stories in a year to a minimum of 1000/day and as many completed new projects as possible.  Here's what I've got so far after 4 months, or 122 days.

	Name	Type	Word Count	Status
1	The Ship	Short Story	3793	Finished - to edit
2	Take me Back with You	Short Story	2528	WIP
3	Take me Back with You	Novelisation	29914	WIP
4	The Lost Train	Short Story	4352	WIP
5	The Other Set of Feet	Short Story	3749	Finished - to edit
6	Tube Riders : The Hunter	Novella	14980	WIP
7	Once We Were Children	Short Story	2513	Finished - to edit
8	The Assignment	Short Story	8802	Finished - to edit
9	Never Give Up	Short Story	5111	Finished - to edit
10	Clones	Short Story	1323	Edited
11	Beat Down 1 - Clones	Serial Novella	19774	Editing
12	Sunfall	Short Story	1271	WIP
13	The Tube Riders: Exile	Novel	60434	WIP
14	Beat Down 2 - The Heist	Serial Novella	18533	Finished - to edit
15	Beat Down 3 - Badassaur	Serial Novella	3020	WIP
	Started June 21st	Word Count	180097
		Pages (300w/pg)	600
	4 month target (Oct 20th)	(122 days)	150000
		Ahead	30097
		Total	Month
	One month tally:	33598	33598
	Two month tally:	62217	28619
	Three month tally:	119253	57036
	Four month tally:	180097	60844

So, 60,844 words for the month, or roughly half a novel (depending on what you call a good length - for me its 120,000 words).  The big one, of course, is part 2 of my novel, The Tube Riders, sitting nicely at just over 60k.  About half of what I wrote this month was on that one project, although it stalled for a week or so on a plot knot.  Elsewhere, my other big projects are my action-adventure/comedy/fantasy novella series, Beat Down, of which I'm now on to part 3.  Part 1 will be released on November 7th.  You can read more about it on a separate blog here.  The cover art is done for parts 1 & 2, and looks great.  It's fun to write but there will only be so long I can maintain it if it doesn't start to pay for itself, so I'll probably run it for three or four episodes and see how it goes.  While I have my "art" writing, I also love having fun with creativity, and there has to be a place for situations where you have a portal into another world in which chickens have become the dominant lifeform, hidden in a giant eagle's nest and accessible only by jumping off a ski jump.  Can't really put that kind of stuff into Tube Riders ...

Elsewhere, I also got a bit done on my "romance" novel.  It's got to the point where I'm not embarrassed by it, but if I think its publishable it will definitely be under a different name.

I also got a few more words done on my Tube Riders novella, which I think might end up as a companion novel set in London during the period of TR2, and featuring almost all different characters, some of which will show up in TR3 ... maybe.  It's really dark, and there's nothing I like more than writing dark fiction.  It might even appeal to a different audience to TR, but I don't really care because I'll write what I like, thank you...!

You'll notice I haven't got much editing done.  I'm perfectly happy with this, because I hate it when people rush off to edit their work immediately after finishing it, or worse, send it straight out to an editor to do the polishing for them.  Let it breathe.  Give it time to rest, time for your eyes to get a fresh view on it.  Any completed manuscript needs at least a month on the shelf, and while I have some that have been waiting that long I'm kind of lazy about editing so I haven't got around to it yet!

One thing I did edit was my short story Clones, and it was really f**king good.  I didn't remember it being that good when I wrote it, but I read it four times back to back just for pleasure, and I never do that.  Best thing I've written in years, so I gave it a brush up and sent it off to a literary magazine because it would be a waste to just self publish it and have it sit on Amazon being ignored.  Plus, it's really short, and regardless of how good it is people would moan about the price.  Still, I'm really proud to have it in the can, and hopefully I'll find somewhere to flog it and get myself a useful little payday.

Anyway, enough talking about the craft, back to it.  While I'm happy to have hit 60k in a month, the best thing is I really don't think I'm currently pushing myself all that much.  That's only on an average of 1 - 2 hours a day (perhaps a couple more on a weekend) and is only 2k a day.  I did a couple of big 5k days and as always happens I had a lull afterwards each time, but I think 3 - 4k a day is fairly reasonable, which would work out at a novel per month(!).  I just wish I didn't have to work the regular work so much, but if Tube Riders takes off (it's selling steadily since the promo ended) the first thing I'll do is can the evil kid classes and get my evenings back.

Right, I did say I was finishing ....

CW
22nd Oct 2012

Blop Hop - The Next Big Thing

BLOG HOP – The Next Big Thing

I recently got tagged in a blog hop by my friend and fellow Japan-based writer, Kelly Matsuura, who writers poignant, emotive romance fiction.  Thanks to Kelly for doing this, it’s the first time I’ve had it happen so I’ll try to think of something interesting to say.

The rules for the blog hop are as follows:

****Give credit to the person/blog that tagged you

**** Post the rules for the blog hop

****Answer these ten questions about your current WIP (Work In Progress) on your blog

****Tag five other writers/bloggers and add their links so we can hop over and meet them.

Ten Interview Questions for The Next Big Thing:

What is the working title of your book? 

I’m actually working on four main projects at the moment, but I guess the one that’s getting the most attention is the follow up to my novel, The Tube Riders.  It’s currently titled Tube Riders : Exile.

Where did the idea come from for the book? 

A couple of years ago, after I wrote the first book and was shopping it to agents, I started writing a follow up set five years in the future.  I got about fifty pages in, and while I liked what I was writing I felt there was a gap that needed to be filled.  This is it.

What genre does your book fall under?

It’s sci-fi dystopia.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? 

I’d want unknowns.  None of my characters are ever “star” types, as in I hate gorgeous, muscular leads.  Switch, one of my main characters, has a jippy eye, for example, while Marta, the leading lady, has dreaded hair because she hardly ever gets a chance to wash.  Also, I wouldn’t want a “star” to carry the movie, I would want the story to do that.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? 

Better than the first one (I hope!).

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? 

Self-published, unless I get a really, really good offer.  Book one recently did extremely well on a free promotion and from the reviews I’ve had I’m inclined to believe that I’m on to something, and there could be a lot of money to be made without some company skimming most of it off the top.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I’m only 50,000 words in so far, but about five weeks so far.  Like I say, I’m working on three other projects as well.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? 

Difficult . . . because I hardly read anything!  I’d guess Hunger Games, as that’s a kind of dystopian chase story, or Futuretrack 5, an old classic that few people now have heard of (it’s awesome).  However, the landscape you see in Tube Riders is very familiar.  It’s only set 60 years in the future.

Who or What inspired you to write this book? 

The people that said part one was good inspired this one, definitely.  Otherwise I would have just written something else.  I’m not a big sequel person, so this is definitely for them.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

It’s awesome, simple as that.  Don’t listen to me, listen to the reviewers.

And the writers I'm tagging are -

John Daulton - Author of The Galactic Mage

C.D. Loken - Author of The Gift of the Brass Bell

Ashley Torbeck - Owner of the Drunken Space Penguin blog

Tony Riches - Owner of The Writing Desk blog

Karen Einsel - Owner of Karen's Different Corners

Check them out!

CW

10 Oct 2012

Humour in The Tube Riders

Okay, so its a pretty bleak novel, but there are some nuggets of humour in The Tube Riders.

Here's one of my favourite scenes, Frank vs Switch, from Chapter Twelve.

The others stood around while Frank examined Switch.  With his bloody t-shirt off and the wound wiped down, Marta was relieved the blood had made it look worse than it was.  A thin cut about two inches long clung to the side of his hip, a little wider at the top than the bottom.

‘I fucking twisted on it and pushed it in deeper,’ Switch said, as way of explanation.

‘You were lucky,’ Frank said, prodding it with a surgical instrument.  It went in through the fat on your lower back and got stuck in the muscle here,’ he said, prodding Switch’s side and making him wince.  ‘It was a small knife, I take it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You pulled it out yourself?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You still got it?’

‘In my one remaining shoe.’  He kicked it off and held it up.

Marta smiled in spite of herself.  Typical Switch.

Frank plucked it out and held it up to the light.  ‘Nice,’ he said.  ‘Thrower.  Proper one, too.’

‘You wanna buy it?’

Frank smiled.  He looked around at the others.  ‘Well, I’m guessing Paul said you had money just to get you in the door.  ‘I’ll trade it for stitching you up.’

‘Done.’

Frank got to work cleaning the wound.  Switch yelped in pain as he dabbed at the exposed flesh with TCP antiseptic liquid, but the only thing he could offer to numb the pain was a shot of some cheap homebrewed whiskey.

‘I don’t know what’s worse, the pain or this piss,’ Switch growled, gulping it down.  Simon, who took an experimental swig after him, couldn’t testify to the pain but had to agree the taste was pretty bad.

‘I could put you under, but I don’t think you’ve got enough of those knives to pay me for it,’ Frank said.  ‘And plus, by the look of you kids, I’d say you want this chump on his feet pretty soon.’

Their silence was affirmation.

Frank sewed Switch up, dressed the injury and gave him some antibiotics to keep it free of infection.  ‘Do not lose these,’ he said.  ‘Take one a day, and do not forget.  If it starts to itch, or pus starts to come out of the wound, double up for a day.  It should seal itself over in a week, and then you’re safe.  Until then, take care.  If it gets infected and you can’t get to a doctor, well, you’re fucked.’  Frank cackled.  Marta couldn’t tell how serious he was.

Switch climbed down from the table.  ‘Thanks old man, I owe you one.’

Frank raised an eyebrow.  ‘Many people say that, few deliver.’

‘Well, one day I might.’

‘I hope so.  Take it easy, kid.’

‘And you.’

Switch followed Simon and Jess out into the hall.  Frank turned to Paul.  ‘How’s your brother?’

Paul shrugged.  ‘Still there.  Starting to raise hell.’

Frank nodded.  ‘Good, good.  Keep him alive, he’ll be leading the revolution one day.’  He patted Paul’s shoulder and started to laugh again.

‘Thank you for your help,’ Marta said to Frank in the doorway.

‘No problem, young lady,’ he said.  ‘I just suggest that whatever you were doing for that to happen you try to avoid it in the future.’

‘We’ll try,’ Marta said.  ‘If only it was that easy.’

Frank gazed off into the distance.  His eyes grew suddenly wistful.  ‘Don’t give up on this country just yet,’ he said.  ‘Keep your heads down, one day them dark clouds are gonna clear.’

‘We hope so,’ Marta said.

Frank nodded.  He looked at Switch.  ‘You.  Come here.’

Switch sauntered closer.  ‘Yeah, what?’

Before Marta could blink Frank’s hand had gone to Switch’s throat, the throwing knife held there, hard against the skin.  Switch’s good eye went wide.  There was a collective intake of breath, and then Frank gave a gap-toothed smile and cackled a laugh.  He dropped his hand.  ‘You’ll need this metal more than I will, I think,’ he said, holding out the knife, handle first.  ‘A present from an old man.’

Switch took the offered knife and tucked it under his shirt, his composure once more unruffled.  ‘Thanks.  I don’t suppose you have any spare shoes around?’

Frank pouted.  ‘I doubt we’re the same size, kid.’  He looked around at the others.  ‘Now, if I can give you kids some advice, stay on your guard.  Don’t trust anyone.’  He cocked his head and flashed a smile.  ‘Except me.’

      With that he nodded goodbye and went back inside.  The door slammed behind them without sentiment and several latches thudded back across.

Although he only appears in two early scenes, Frank is one of my favourite characters.  While I can't say exactly where or when, it's pretty likely he'll pop up in later books.

The Tube Riders (full novel) is free October 5th through October 7th.

CW

4th Oct 2012