We have now reached into the new age of 2016 the Hogmanay parties and get-together's behind us for another year. The Winter and dark days lie ahead and what way's are better to alleviate the winter gloom but a warm fire, a sustaining drink and a good book with which to while away the hours. "Nut Brown Eyes" is now available to buy and warm those cold winter evenings.
Nut Brown Eyes is; A wondrous tale of the dark woods of Scotland. A holiday trip gone wrong, a perfect holiday ripped apart by nature. A young girl left alone in the depths of the forest is found by a Hiker that cares. He resolves to look after her and to get her to the Hospital that she needs to attend. He will do anything to get her there and see that she is alright. They are a long way from salvation and the medicine that home promises. They are in the dark woods of Northern Argyll where only, woodsmen, nature buffs and walkers exist. There are no roads, no cars, few tractors other than those working the land. There is only Rob, the man that loves walking in the forests, and the poor girl that he has found wrapped in the brambles of an abandoned building. Hurt, Abused, perhaps raped, Rob makes it his mission to save her but they are out in the wilds of Scotland. They are a long way from help, a long way from salvation. Rob is going to save her. Rob is going to save her no matter what it takes.
As things happen even before He who walks on Ancient ground is Released what was once written in the stars , also known as the online novel will be first. Trying to promote my US website I had the thought of trying to do a linear novel on line. It was a good idea and many people read it but then I had a glitch with the site. It has been sorted now but by then I had lost many of my US readers. I decided to add it also to my European website (this one) and I found that many liked it here also but more than that in actual fact. I found it an easy book to write. No effort all and so I have now finished it though everyone will have to wait a couple of months to find the outcome.
Before it is all online on the net, where of course it is linear. I will have finished it (I hope) and have the novel complete published. I have always worked a little ahead and you can tell from this site where I have published the next couple of chapters a month early. but then I still I have to fix it all and change bits but it will be my next published novel.
Strangely something that started out as a writing exercise and a promotional item has become quite well known and successful. It does not come as a surprise to me as this has happened before but none the less I am really glad that so many like it.
"He who walks on Ancient Ground walks with its spirits" will be released mid October and ready for Christmas for those of you who wish to give it as a present. It will be available in a collectors edition hardback format only and will contain all three of the Kilmartin Novel's as well as a long introduction and an additional story that will only be available with this volume. I hope everyone likes it. As I always say though, do not buy it if you own all three novels for they are the same. Just nicer print.
Written In The Stars.
Recently I launched a U.S. website. I am told that most Americans have their browsers set to .com sites only and therefore it seemed only sensible to launch a ".com" website which was then done giving birth to www.raytwalker.com which essentially is the same site as this but aimed at the US public rather than the British public. Trying to get the site up and running quickly with a few visitors instantly we devised a wee promotion.
This promotion consisted of a competition in which anyone that wished to could vote for a subject matter and genre that they liked and then I would write a book online with a chapter being produced a month until the book was complete.
As you can imagine there were very few votes it being a virgin site but luckily there were some and so it was decided that I should write a novel that was a romance but also science fiction. They tied and so I promised to do such a thing and have been on my US site for four months now. I think it unfair that only my American readers get to see it and so I am publishing it as of tonight on my UK site simultaneously each month from now on.
Have you read the book? No? Well listen to it on audible.co.uk
i-phone, pc, kindle, mac.
Driving, walking still you can hear the best lirerature as well as your favourite authors on the go, just download and see.
"Moonchild and other Tales" was added to the competition for "The best collection of short stories of all time" and it has done well. Truth be told I entered "Tales from this Northern Land, "A River of Tears" and "Moonchild" into the competition. "Tales from this Northern land" fell first, as there were more than five thousand entries, and as it was always an unfinished work this came as no surprise. I personally think it a great collection of short stories and novellas but then as its writer I am going to think so. It fell early in the race but I still had two runners that for me (if me only) were of high quality.
That quality told and as the field was whittled down from five to three thousand, from three to the top one thousand and further from that one thousand to three hundred still both books held in. I still held two ( "A River of Tears" and "Moonchild and other Tales".) places in the top hundred. I thought I had a chance of winning until I viewed the competition. It really did mean the best collections of short stories ever. Though my two remaining entries are great, I am aware that I cannot compete with those that stood there menacing and wonderful above mine. Mark Twain s, life on the Mississippi. Jack London's, Tales of the Klondike. I could not and cannot win. There are so many more that are all good though I do not really know of Maya Angelou except by reputation. But now another phase has gone and "A River of Tears" has gone now. Yet it made the top one hundred in the greatest collections of short stories ever.
To have gone that far into such hallowed ground is enough for me. My surprise that "Moonchild and other Tales" has reached the top thirty astounds me, It pleases me immensely, but still astounds me. I am in a list with many of the heroes of my childhood, with many that I would never even consider a work of mine should be mentioned upon the same page. In fact in this same competition Both books surpassed "A Room to Let" written by Gaskell, Dickens and Collins (perhaps) and In my mind I should not be there.
Whittled down again from the top one hundred and then to the top fifty and thence to the top thirty. It makes me think of my youth and "top of the pops" and I suppose for the first time ever I have truly made it.
The next list is for the top ten. I will not make that, even with the best will in the world. I am shocked that I have gone so far. I would not vote me into the top ten and that is not modesty. There are better works than mine. I have read them. I do not mind. Having reached the top thirty gives me a a certain immortality. I am happy with my place.
I am surprised that i have gone this far.
Soon to come is; "He who walks on Ancient Ground Walks with its Spirits"
This will be a compendium of the Kilmartin stories all gathered in the one place. The full trilogy complete as well as another short story and a story from me about the area. It will only be available in hardback as a collectors edition and as far as I am concerned it looks pretty good. It will be a couple of months yet until it is released but as soon as it is I will post a link here.
Well that's the mock up of the cover added here but it is unlikely to remain the cover. For a start I don't really like it but more if the picture has to be of standing stones would not then the stones at Kilmartin be better this is after all the Kilmartin trilogy. Obviously as well more suitable. Anyway we shall see it is still a long time away until it is finally published.
Keep an eye on the information and musings page and my blog for more information as and when I have it.
Well thats it "The Secret Inside" is now available to buy. Unlike the comments below for "A Pale Shadow Creeps" I have made the deadline for a change and even surpassed it slightly. The official release date is the first of June 2013. However here it is three weeks early; a record for me. It is difficult these days to get the release date exact mainly due to the various digital formats out there. Even now you will be able to buy this in paperback right now. Just click on the book cover to buy on any page. You can also buy it immediately on the epub format , Amazon kindle, and digital on kobo and nook but it will be two weeks before you can purchace it for your i-pad unless you have an app for another format.
I cannot say for all the retail stores yet but they do have it advertised online on Amazon. co. uk and .com and they have copies of it in my local Waterstons. ( Waterstons is a book Store- here in GB- for anyone from other countries reading this) So i think it will be obtainable most places already.
I am rather pleased with the result and even enjoyed re-reading it again, though as you can imagine i have read it so many times in the production that i should have grown tired of it. I did with most of my other books but this one just made me smile again (despite some of the more graphic content). It was an easy book to write unlike one or two of the others.
Cornelius was almost my nemesis and i hate that book even now. Everything went wrong in the writing of it. I had problems with my computer initially and lost most of the start of the book when i was about half way through. Well you would not have liked to have heard the language that i used at the time, hmmm, lets just say your average wrapped egyptian mummy carries a few less curses and i suspect that they also would not be as virulent. Oh and then things went from bad to Much worse.
with a computer crash and well i just gave up at that point. I decided i was never going to write again there was just too much pain involved. Eventually i forced out a conclusion to the story. I am sure that everyone that read it (and there were few thankfully) realised that it just fell apart about half way through. I tried to make the best of it and i had to finish it, had i left it i would never have produced another book. I explain this only so you know that this was the opposite. A joy to write. I had to reign myself back and often for the novel grew huge. Oh and i could go on and on about this for ages. Never mind all that i just hope that you enjoy the new novel
A Pale Shadow Creeps
As everyone could tell I never quite made the first of June that i had envisioned, in fact i missed it by two months and the official release date became the first of August and so thats it out now and freely available.
It is available from Amazon.co.uk and .com, all major bookstores and is available in most digital formats. i-pad, kindle, kobo, android and many others.
My apologies for the wait but it is now here in both paperback and tradeback formats as well as the digital formats mentioned earlier.
I Hope everyone that buys it enjoys it. Personaly i think it rather good but hey i am bound to think so.
I will hear what everyone else thinks as time goes on.
On the first of June, the new novel (A Pale Shadow Creeps)will be freely available to anyone who wishes to buy it.
It is available, at first, only on Hardback and tradeback but will follow soon on paperback and for digital download formats. Android, i-store and kindle.
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In The dark depths of a Scots winter, A Pale Shadow Creeps. From
Its tomb of stones and broken bones; It rises into the cold and forsaken night. This shade, has a dire purpose. For it to live again its place must be taken beneath The Cairn from which it rose.
Whosoever wakened it or one of their choices shall take its place beneath the wet sod of the Argyll hills.
Rob is too busy enjoying his new home. He worries about the novel that he needs to write, the money he needs to earn and the new love that he has found. Threats from shades, shadows or wraiths are not something he takes seriously.
But he should.
Raymond walker again jumps genres with ease creating a very current ghost story with a rather Faustian feel. A romance that will leave you spellbound whilst darkness falls and shadows haunt ancient Scotland, Its standing stones cairns and sepulchres.
Rob thinks about love and life and money and never worries about the scratching at the door, the howling in the night and the very strange dreams he has been having.But he should.
The next Novel will not be "Feathers" after all though that will follow soon after. A pale shadow creeps will be the new novel which hopefully will be out in a couple of months. For a full update see information and musings.
A Shiver.
Raymond Walkers new novel; "A Shiver" is published today.
As time passes, everything changes. The world we live in is in turmoil, we stampede from one crisis to the next, never heeding the grand design,If indeed there is one. Imagine now that nothing changes, the world turns and adapts through time but now. The now we know here and today is the same as it always was, the same as it always will be. Has not the world always suffered from turmoil, are our lives not the same as those who have gone before us with few differences? An explanation of time, the characters essentially the same though they live centuries apart, their thoughts, hopes and fears differ little from the reality of today, their goals essentially the same; to eat, have happy lives, to love and be loved, to search endlessly for a contentment that can never be realised. As usual Raymond Walker has brought these unanswered questions to life in an exciting tale of love, passion and loss, Romance and war that will keep every reader mesmerised from the very first pages to the dramatic conclusion.
An Incursion upon the trials of love through the ages this is a tale that will carry you upon the back of Cronos himself to the far reaches of the past, where little more was required than food in our bellies and thoughts in our head to the very reaches of this fabled land; the present, where we invent cares to distract us from life. Raymond Walker, As always carries us coherently from the future to the past and we begin to realise that nothing changes for humanity from age to age apart from our wants. Our needs never change.
For such is our nature.
All is as it always has been. All is as it is. All is as it always will be.
Tales from this Northern Land
Tales from this Northern Land is now available in a Hardback format with much larger print making it easier to read.
Twisted Sisters
Twisted sisters is now available in hardback format
Cornelius.
Cornelius Has had various working titles along the way as some of you probably know but strangely enough through its various incarnations i have always thought of it as simply Cornelius. It was at one time to have been Cornelius (or the dragon) you will realise why when you read it. Then it was to be the origin of the species (a rather grand title for what should be nothing more than an entertaining read). But never mind the titles that have gone before it is (finaly) here. The release date is the first of October 2009 and here is the blurb which i hope will be of interest to you.
The young Cornelius marches with the fifth legion to chastise the barbarian hordes of Dacia who dared cross Roman borders; He dreams of glory wealth and a later life of ease in the senate. But his life is to change; in a decisive battle the legion is crushed. The few survivors, fleeing to the Carpathian Mountains, harried by war bands; starving and dying from the extreme cold find that there is something more to fear. There is something stalking these mountains, something older and darker than simply death. Cornelius finds himself welcoming this darkness and becoming part of it. This is a story of blood and treachery. War and power, it is a story of horror pain and damnation. But it is also a story of friendship and eternal love for all changes in an eternity. This tale takes you from the mighty civilisations of Rome, Samarkand and China to the barbarian lands of Scotland and Romania. It is a tale of gut-wrenching battles, ambition and blood; fought both with friends and between them.
I have included at the end a couple of chapters from my new book "Feathers" (still only a working title) which should be available in the spring of next year. I hope that you like them.
Feathers.
Feathers becomes more than i expected and less at the same time for i have removed a couple of characters from it, two that were central to the plot in the first place but became superflous as the story advanced. These two now form the basis of a new tale of wonder and amazement.; one where they fuse with the world and the world begins to appreciate them.
The same two charactrers still appear though only one takes centre stage "so to speak" in feathers.
His counter part will be the hero of another story as yet un-named but the focus of a surprising (lol- especially to me) sequal.