Just a short update for everyone. As you can see there is a new novella out. The Shed. I think it is pretty good. It has been done in a Lovecraftian style and similar content really but obviously set today rather than at the turn of the last century. It is quite a cool wee tale of mystery and horror.

Really though it is simply a precursor to all that will be happening this year. Very soon, perhaps in a couple of months or so the lavish hardback "He who Walks on Ancient ground walks with its spirits" will be released, though i am told at a rather hefty price. It contains all three of the Kilmartin novels in order as well as a novella based around the same subject lines and a rather long introduction by me. Then about summer time The Miscast fate will have been rewritten and changed from the basic version that you have been reading on here and will be released as a novel. Probably hardback only at first but online and paperback versions to follow soon after. 

I hope that you like all three of them.

 The Romance quotient I confidently expected as I tend to sell my few romance novels better there than here but then perhaps it was the idea that as I said "I have never written Science fiction yet I have always wished to. For some reason I had never got around to it. And so with equal measures from the UK and US I decided that I had to do both. A romance it was going to be but somehow I wished for a sci-fi idea. 

The Idea came easily as it turns out and I started writing what I thought was going to be a very short novel.

Linear writing also comes to me with difficulty. I tend to start novels in the middle and work forwards and backwards from there. The idea I had  was nothing that new original but I had thought of a new take on it and I started writing this short novel really to attract people to the new US website. But for some reason the idea caught hold and grew, blossomed and caught light in my head and....  I began writing more and more of it. More than my schedule allowed to be honest 

But it was so easy to write. I have always had a taste for science fiction though I have written little of it sticking more to fantasy and romance as any of you who have read my books would know. More recently I have written a ghost story and a horror novel. This one came as surprise to me but as I have been writing it more and more has occurred to me and so  within a few months it will be my new novel.

You will like it more than you think. A miscast Fate, is what it will be called and I still need to rewrite a couple of bits but otherwise the book is almost finished.

Written in the Stars

As of today that is part's ten, eleven and twelve published hope everyone is still enjoying it. More next month. The twentieth of November at the latest.  Todd will be surprised, Mary Shocked and Ken will just be generally annoyed about everything.

Well it is that time again and I am way ahead with this story (very unusual for me) and so tonight I am posting under written in the stars the next part. Hope you like it,

Independence for Scotland- A challenge

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.

 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.

 . Therefore it will be a while until "Moonchild" is out.

Over the years now I have released a few novels and a couple of compendiums of short stories, some better than others but mainly pretty good if I do say so myself with the exception of "Cornelius" which I have always hated. "A River of Tears" has never been a best selling book, in actual fact it has sold very few copies despite the amount that it is talked about.

I have no idea of the reason for the lack of sales other than the obvious fact that a book of short stories will never sell as well as a novel. Yet it has engendered more comment (bad as well as good) Made more headlines, Been quoted by the press and talked about more than anything else that I have produced. Much to both my joy and dismay it is always the book that people want to talk about when someone recognises me or I tell a group of people who I am.

I still get the comment all the time; "You're the guy that wrote about the forests dying, the faerie people

The Moonchild.

The Moonchild will almost certainly be the next book that I produce and will be a follow up to "A River of Tears" although it will take a completely different style and format to the first volume which essentialy consisted of five (long) short stories and a novella. This time around it will be a novel though it will be made up of six or seven different stories that intertwine and that have a shared beginning and ending. It stays true (I think) to the first volume though is far more complex which I hope does not let it down . I do not think that it will and I think people will be happy with the combining theme. It will still be a work of romance and fantasy coupled with an ecological background peopled by strange and diverse creatures not the least of whom will be we humans.

It is obviously still some time away, "The Secret Inside" is only just out and I am hoping that people will buy it. Of course it is a very different beast of a novel and I would not like to confuse anyone by having two new books out at the same time that could not be more differentbeing killed by our factories, you dont believe all that shit do you?

For a book that has sold so little it seems to have affected those that have read it and so I have always thought to do a follow up. I did not wish to just rehash the same old ideas and so I have waited until I could do it justice and now I am ready. The follow up will be a self contained novel as opposed to five short stories and a novella. It will explore the same themes but reach deeper and there will be many new surprises on the way.

 "The Secret Inside"

Perhaps it is just me but I love the new cover, i think that though it is not involed directly with the story it gives an idea of what the story is about. There have been many arguements about this cover. More discention over the cover than the story itself to be honest. But hey its my book and i love the cover.  I have been told that I could do with doing another re-write and those that have told me so are not wrong.

I just wished to do something original for me and not play with the language just stick with the story and hope that the story carries it. I think it is a good story with believeable characters and unusually for me there is very little of an under-story though i suppose you can see one if you wish to.

No it is meant in this case to be pretty much a play but in novel format. There are asides and thoughts but the vast majority of the story takes place in real-time and in easily placed locations. I have actualy thought of re-doing it as a play but hey . Its me, i hardly have time to lace my shoes never mind rewrite what is already a good novel. Of course as you can see below it is no longer called "feathers" rather "The Secret Inside".

"Feathers" is now complete though as you can see my working title of Feathers was put aside in favour of the more serious title "The Secret Inside". It is something that does not bother me. At first I was surprised that the title was to be changed but the more I have thought of it the more I like it. The book is complete, i have the hard cover version in front of me as i am writing this and am rather pleased with it though there will still be changes to the cover and possibly even the release blurb

 I Was asked the question that if there is intelegent life out there then why would they not have contacted us?

And i need to ask a question in return. Why would they contact us?

There is a universe out there, quasars, pulsars, nebulous clouds and perhaps even species without number. Why do we think we are so cool that they would want to get to know us. In fact we live close to a very average white dwarf star in a pretty much unexciting spiral arm of a pretty average galaxy. There is a very good chance that many planets, moons and even gas giants harbour life in our own galaxy and given that we still know so little about the building blocks of life. Perhaps there is flora and fauna on almost every habitable planet. and even some on uninhabitable planets to us. Imagine the shellfish that feed on sulphur and volcanic eruptions on the ocean floor of our world.  Approx 36 billion planets exist in our galaxy alone. Why bother with us? I think we are just a tad self absorbed there. pretentious and a tad vain.
If i had the galaxy to roam never mind the universe i wouldnt be bothered with a

tiny blue green planet on the fringes  of a spiral arm circling a white dwarf.
Hey do you ever think to your self that i will go to the end of the street on holiday?
No you go to somewhere strange new exotic. Hmmmm, i rest my case me lurd.

As things transpire, the second volume of "A River of Tears", it seems.  will appear as a novel as opposed to short stories with a link in style and content.

Alernatively what was once going to be the second volume of a river of tears is now going to be billed as a novel. It will probably be called either moonrise or moon child or mabybe something different from those ideas. I know not myself as yet but i do know it it is well on its way to becoming complete.

As usual i just need more time to edit the stories and make  the links complete. Additionaly i just need time to ensure that they are all what i wished for. I hurried out the last volume needing the income and so the reader got a mish-mash of great stuff mixed with a couple of substandard stories.

This time as luck would have it i have had time to create all the stories from the beginning, taking time to craft and develop them and i think now i will provide a worthy succesor to "A River of Tears".  The new book will take the form of a novel the stories (of which again there are six)  congeal, thier warp and weft remain the same being set around the same river that featured in this first book. This time the stories are interlinked to a greater extent and though the characters vary the setting continues to adapt. And so what you may imagine with the first story is simply a lead into a wider world and all will be explained in the end. I do not yet know what you will think of it but i love it. Hopefully not to long till you get to read it . Raymond.