Tribute to Michael Crichton

Best-selling and world famous author, Michael Crichton passed away on the 4th of November 2008 at the age of 66. I think he was best known as author of Jurassic Park and its sequel, The Lost World. Both of these were turned into highly successful and world-famous movies - who hasn't seen them, or at least heard of them? The total sales of all his books were in excess of 150 million copies worldwide. He was also the creator of the very successful TV series, "ER".

To me, Michael was a born storyteller, but also with a fresh slant on the "science thriller" genre. Some of his work may be classified as "science fiction", but he has usually put so much scientific research into his work that the "science fiction" became real and achievable science, if not now, then soon in the near future. However, never did his "science thriller" stories become boring due to the science contained in them, but the science became part of the story. He masterfully created a flow of events that encompassed the science without the reader getting the feeling that he or she was being peppered with a lot of dull facts.

To Michael, I salute one of the masters of the craft. Thanks for creating all those terrific unput-downable books!

Strike of the Black Mamba soon available at more online outlets

The paperback version of my thriller novel "Strike of the Black Mamba" will now also be published by CruGuru (ISBN: 9781920265137) and be made available at most online book retailers. It has already appeared at many of these websites, but some of the book's information still needs to be updated by the retailers.

I will let you know where else you can find the book when the information has finally been updated...

Reading thriller fiction

Not only do I like to read good thriller novels for pure enjoyment, but I also do it to study other authors' mastery of the craft. I truly believe that if one wants to write in a specific fiction genre, then one should make a good study of what is available out there, especially the good stuff.

I have started to post reviews of some of the books I have read on Amazon and GoodReads, so go and take a look if you want to see how I've experienced them.

Strike of the Black Mamba Now Available as an E-book!

My thriller novel "Strike of the Black Mamba" has now been published by CruGuru as an e-book in both PDF and Microsoft Reader formats. The ISBN for the PDF version is 9781920265342 and for the Microsoft Reader version is 9781920265359.

The novel is sold via most large online e-book retailers, such as Diesel eBooks, ereadable, Powell's Books, BooksOnBoard, eBooks About Everything!, eChapterOne.com, etc.

The retail price is $6.99, but some of these sellers are selling it at a discount; I've seen prices as low as $5.59. If you are into e-books then please check it out!

Research, research...

The research work for my new thriller novel is keeping me quite busy. Not that I mind, though - I love the research as much as I love the writing part.

At the moment I am mainly reading books on topics that I need to know more about and then searching the Internet for additional information. Everything of interest that I find on the Internet, I save on my hard disk in special folders, but some of the stuff I also bookmark.

The trick is to know where the information is stored so that I can go back to it when I do plotting or writing. Naturally, I will have to sift through the information and cut out what I need and assemble it into a comprehensible whole.

When I start to write, I will constantly have to guard against wanting to use too much of the research material, but with time that becomes easier to handle...

Preparing e-book

I'm currently preparing an e-book version of my thriller novel "Strike of the Black Mamba". It will be sold via most large online e-book retailers in about 2 months' time and it will be available in both PDF and Microsoft Reader formats. I will keep you updated when it is ready.

New thriller novel

I have started to work on the outline of a new thriller novel. At this stage I only have a good idea of how the first two chapters will go. The rest is mostly a blank, but what I do know, is that the largest part of the story will play out in the Namib desert, in Namibia, of course ;-). Many scenes will also take place at different international destinations. I cannot really divulge anything about the plot at this stage.

I will keep you updated as I progress...

TV interview update

The TV interview with SABC News International was quite an interesting experience. It was a quick affair, about five minutes in total, sandwiched between news items. They did not brief me beforehand about the questions I could expect, but it was more or less the standard book interview - although I was asked to give my views on nuclear terrorism. I did a lot of research for the book, so it did not catch me off-guard.

TV Interview

I've been invited for a TV interview about my thriller novel "Strike of the Black Mamba" tomorrow morning (18 May) between 07:30 and 09:00 South African time (about GMT + 2 hours) on SABC International. It is on The Weekender Show's book slot. The station transmits to the U.S, most of the African continent, & parts of Europe & Asia.

I'm quite thrilled about it and will let you know how it went!

Updated book video trailer now finished!

The updated and hopefully improved version of the book video trailer for my thriller novel Strike of the Black Mamba is now finished and available on YouTube or my website for viewing. I would love to hear your comments! Please leave a comment on my Blog or on YouTube.

Full cover image available

You can now download the full cover image for Strike of the Black Mamba. You can use this image as the image displayed on your computer's desktop. There are two sizes available: 1024x768 pixels and 800x600 pixels. You can download the images from my website on the download page. This is what the image looks like:

Amazon, here we are!

Finally my debut thriller novel, “Strike of the Black Mamba”, is now available on Amazon.com. Please take a look at my Amazon book page and if you do read the book and like it, I would really appreciate if you could write a review on Amazon for it!

Book video trailer is ready!

I have completed the book video trailer for my thriller novel “Strike of the Black Mamba”! Although I have plenty of experience in creating and editing videos, not serious professional stuff, this video took me much longer than I thought it would. I had to scrap the first version, because I realized that I used clips from other video material that may infringe on copyrights. Thereafter, I started in all earnest again and I am pleased with the outcome of the final version. Please view it on YouTube or from my website.

A New Beginning

A new year heralds a new beginning, and so it may be fitting to get my book published in the beginning of 2008. You can view more about my first novel, “Strike of the Black Mamba”, on my website.

I have done extensive research on self-publishing and Internet promotion, and decided that I first wanted to go this route and test the waters. Seeing that I love to write, have some artistic ability and have done plenty of computer programming and web development, it just makes sense to me that I can go the self-publishing route with a minimum budget and a lot of courage. But knowing that I have nothing to lose, and a lot of new experiences to gain, the courage part diminishes somewhat and can rather be replaced by plenty of hard work (as I have experienced recently).

Thus, I want to inform you, the readers of my blog, how I travel this journey of writing, publishing and promoting. One thing that I have promised myself, is to have fun doing it, or else stop doing it. So far I’ve had lots of fun!