Ruby Barnes's Blog, page 3

The seasons roll by, or in the case of here Ireland they all just roll together. Marble City Publishing's Summer Draw is closing in just a couple of days and someone is going to win a $100 / €90 / £70 gift card or a Kindle Paperwhite. Make sure you're entered in the draw here because if you're not in, you can't win. (Existing Marble City subscribers are automatically entered.)

Also just to mention that I'm slowly migrating this blog to a new website rubybarnesbooks.com which has more flexibility. The front page highlights my new Zombie series (thanks to Jane Dixon-Smith for the cover designs) and book 1 is available for free to subscribers. Please wander over and help save the human race! My crime fiction, thrillers and historical blog posts will be following over to the new place once those ninjas have tidied the zombies up a bit.

   

Marble City Publishing had a terrific response to their Spring 2015 free prize draw for a Kindle Paperwhite. The lucky winner was Robin in Estacada, OR, USA.
In response to public demand, Marble are running another draw and expanding the choice of prize as a lot of us already own a Kindle. This time they are offering a $100 (or local equivalent) Amazon gift card or a Kindle Paperwhite. The draw will close on 31 August 2015. If you are an existing Marble City subscriber you don’t need to do anything. You will automatically have an entry in this and subsequent prize draws. If you haven’t signed up then go here…
https://bitly.com/marblecitykindlereaders and good luck!

The time is approaching to unleash the undead. Zombies with a twist (of the knife), featuring good old John Baptist as the crazy second coming guy, D.I. Andy McAuliffe as the long arm of the law, and yours truly as the oldest ninja in town. Zombies v. Ninjas: Origin is the first in a series of non-quite-serious zombie novels. How could I ever be serious?

Marble City Publishing is running a paperback giveaway for Zombies v. Ninjas: Origin on Goodreads (see badge below to enter) and an e-book giveaway on LibraryThing Early Reviewers . The e-book is also available on Amazon for pre-order here . If you don't want to take your chances with a giveaway and want a review copy then give me a shout in the comments below or mail to admin <at> marblecitypublishing <dot> com


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Goodreads Book Giveaway Zombies v Ninjas by R.A. Barnes Giveaway ends June 15, 2015.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter to Win
Oh, and also a mention that Marble City's latest $100 Amazon gift card free draw is now open. Clickety click!

Best of luck and watch out for those zombies. Come to think about it, watch out for the ninjas too.

The free draw at Marble City Publishing is closing on Sunday 31st May, two days from now, and the choice of prize has been expanded to add a $100 (or local currency equivalent) gift card. This is due to popular demand because a lot of people already have a Kindle but everyone can use a $100 gift card! So spread the word and make sure you've entered the draw here.

Marble City have a few special offers coming up on Ruby Barnes and Jim Williams books, so keep an eye out for those, not to mention the upcoming release of book 1 in my Zombies versus Ninjas series. Here's a sneak peek at the cover...

It's time to breathe new life into a couple of my book covers. Much as I love the cover for Peril, the way it sums up the MC anti-hero and his isolation, it doesn't really convey crime fiction. I also love the sequel cover for Getting Out of Dodge, with its mix of red-blooded murder and sex, but some have said it's derivative and the book has been refused ads on occasion. Another factor is these titles are the first two of a series and the covers don't have a series feel (see existing covers on the right side bar of this blog). So I've shortened the second title to Dodge and commissioned some new cover options. Now I need your help, by giving your feedback on which of the cover sets below do it for you (oh, and feel free to enter my publisher's draw to win a Kindle Paperwhite).

A - that dark, noir feeling? 


B - a softer, more colourful look?
C - a crisper, more colourful look?
Please drop a comment below on this blog post, email me or leave your thoughts as a note if you enter Marble City's free prize draw for a Kindle Paperwhite plus leather cover . Much appreciated!

Ruby

I've joined the team at BookMuse.co.uk and here's my first review of a contemporary fiction novel, The Ground Will Catch You by David Powning. Please head on over and have a read of my review. Here are the first couple of lines.

A thought-provoking, character-driven novel. The main character and narrator, Steve Hollis, is an anti-hero who has difficulty fitting into the world around him. He’s successful at his advertising sales job but feels no pride from it and dislikes his work colleagues. His former interest in Judo was put aside when he abused the martial art for purposes of revenge, and guilt denies him a return to the sport. A passion for life is something that he keeps locked away, like a miser saving up money with no foreseeable hope of ever spending it. Life picks Steve up and slams him down on the mat. He lets the ground catch him and bounces back for more punishment. Rinse and repeat. Steve haphazardly wanders through existence without making any real life-choice decisions. Until he meets two new, very different people: Jack and Emily. .... Read the rest at BookMuse.co.uk

I picked up this hardback after Mrs R had left it lying around. Her book club has been going through a Misery Lit phase (like forever) and she had chosen The Age of Miracles as a little light relief. I noticed that she fairly flew through the book and thought it must be lightweight, but something piqued my interest – probably the cover. I read the blurb and gave it a go.


Well, several exhausted days later I’m glad that I’ve finished reading this book. Reviewers on Amazon variously describe it as a coming of age novel or YA. Genre schmenre, this book freaked me out. The premise of uncontrollable changes to planet Earth is not unique, but the way it was handled captivated me. The narrator is a young girl who is a bit of an ugly duckling. She describes the slowing of the Earth’s rotation and the multitude of impacts it has on everyday life. Through it all she remains fixated on a boy around whom her world revolves. The changes to the Earth are gradual, not apocalyptic, although there are disastrous consequences for the other animals with which we share the planet. More central to the story are the social divisions and the impact of extended daylight and darkness hours upon characters and relationships.


It was only on day three of reading this book (my free reading time is at breakfast and lunch) that I realised what it was doing to me. I was watching the early morning sky as dawn broke in winter Ireland and wondering if it was a few minutes later than the previous day, although we’re heading into spring and the day should be gaining on the night. Then, as I let the dog out before bed, it seemed that the day had lengthened. In the mornings I thought my sleep had been extended, my circadian rhythms challenged. I was living through the slowing of the Earth’s revolution. If by Bread kept playing in my head. If the world should stop revolving, spinning slowly down to die, then I did want to spend it with my wife and family. I wouldn’t desert them: as all the stars went out, one by one, we would simply fly away.


When the book was done I breathed a sigh of escape and could reflect upon the distorted behaviour of those characters in The Age of Miracles as they dealt with the inevitable. More music, this time Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden , flooded my head. Faced with “The Slowing” would we be able to keep our act together? People sometimes ask what you would do if you had three minutes to live. Or one last day? What if you knew the end was coming but you didn’t know when? It would be gradual and creeping.


I highly recommend The Age of Miracles. If you’re looking for planet-splitting, cataclysmic apocalyptic disaster then this isn’t the book for you. If you’re interested in an honest and guileless perspective on what people really value and how to decide the important things in life for however long we have left on this Earth, then this is a thought-provoking read.

Last summer we received my son’s school report. End of Year 4 in the primary school, he was ten years old. His marks per subject were pretty much what we had grown to expect – very strong academically, just about getting by in activities. However, the overall commentary from the teacher came as a bit of a shock. He was labelled as something of a sociopath (my word, not the teacher's) – "needs to be more tactful, is uncooperative, a loner". We thought this might have been mentioned during the school year, at PT meetings, in notes home to us, maybe even a phone call or an email, but it hadn’t.
I know my son pretty well. He’s a chip off the old block. Very attentive to detail, studious but impatient, strong with figures and language but reacts badly to criticism, mediocre at all sports - (focusses intently on one thing at a time), not too interested in investing energy in friendships. A bit of a lone ranger. Well, as they say here in Ireland, he didn’t lick it off the stones. He and I, we may well both be somewhere on a behavioural spectrum but life has been, is and will continue to be good. After a few minutes of “that’s my boy” we went hunting for his report for the previous year.

The individual subject performance was virtually identical, although it had been a different teacher. The overall commentary was full of positivity, encouragement and hope. Strangely it said exactly the same thing as this year. Except for last year’s teacher the glass had been half full. This year’s teacher was a glass half empty character. We asked our son what his opinion was of this year's teacher versus last: “She didn’t like me, the one this year. Last year’s teacher was much nicer.”
September brought a new school year and a new teacher. When we received a bad behaviour note home (a rare event) in week three we were on the case to intercept any psychopathic tendencies. He and another lad were accused of being disruptive during a visit to a local secondary school – one he might attend in the future. When we took him to task over the note he denied the misbehaviour and insisted it was a misunderstanding or a case of mistaken identity. Discreet inquiries at the secondary school (his elder sister attends) suggested he hadn’t been any rowdier than the other thirty kids in the room. We met with the new teacher and she said the note and punishment (confiscation of all points earned for good class performance) was based upon an admission of guilt. He had already told us he admitted to whatever to avoid confrontation and embarrassment. 

Another story was related where the teacher had opened the last few lines of his homework poem up to the class of thirty ten-year-olds for improvement and he had "clearly felt uncomfortable about accepting constructive criticism". I remember opening up my writing to a peer review group at age 40 and the difficulty of coping with that, so I wondered about the teacher's tactics.
We all smiled, nodded and decided to let life go on, no serious issues. By the end of the week we were receiving worried phone calls from other parents about various notes sent home and punishments meted out. Turned out we were dealing with a new teacher straight out of college. Strict disciplinarian. At least we know where we were. Glass half empty.

After half a year of experience the new teacher had calmed down and abandoned various divide and conquer strategies in favour of a quiet life. Half a year of learnng at the expense of our sons and daughters. Grrrrrr! Next year they'll probably have another new teacher. The reason? It's an Irish language school (only English is taught in English) and there's a shortage of qualified teachers able to teach the curriculum of subjects through Irish (Gaelic).
  Ruby Barnes getting ready to fight his son's corner
A few weeks ago my son and I competed at the Best of the Best martial arts competition in Dublin. It was his first time and he won a gold medal for weapons (sai dagger form performed to Animals by Martin Garrix) and a bronze for points sparring. I was beaten 7 – 4 in sparring by a veteran black belt, enough said about that. As we got into the car to head back to Kilkenny my son said it was the best day of the year so far. I asked what he had enjoyed the most and he said the sparring bronze medal was his highlight as it was more of a challenge. He wants to compete in divisions where he has to push himself to achieve success. His glass is (at least) half full.
When half full meets half empty, two worlds collide. How does your glass look today?
C'mon and raise your glass.

If you've enjoyed reading Ruby's blog then please sign up to Marble City Readers where you can grab a free e-book (e.g. The Baptist by R. A. Barnes) from any of the Marble City authors and receive info on other freebies, advance review copies of upcoming novels and occasional updates. Thanks!

This post first appeared on Ruby's regular 26th of the month slot on Authors Electric.

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If you've enjoyed reading Ruby's blog then please sign up to Marble City Readers where you can grab a free e-book (e.g. The Baptist by R. A. Barnes) from any of the Marble City authors and receive info on other freebies, advance review copies of upcoming novels and occasional updates. Thanks! - See more at: http://rubybarnes.blogspot.ie/#sthash...

A recent Authors Electric blog post about the use of swear words in fiction reminded me that The Baptist deserves a bit of Christmas exposure for its alleged profane content. (If you are offended by profanity then stop the #$%!!! right there and here are some cute kittens instead.)

The Baptist - a psychological thriller
available in e-book and paperback

A couple of winters ago I emailed a pdf of The Baptist to a friend's work. My email was intercepted and she received an automatic report from her employer's Mail Sweeper program.

This e-mail has been stopped in Profane Messages. 

The MIMEsweeper Analysis results were attached. The report was studied by all and sundry at tea-break and the content provoked a bit of discussion. Irish tea-breaks are an occasion for great craic. The consensus was The Baptist contained a lot of action but not enough components to perform it. More parts of speech were needed. They're a very droll bunch.

The report results are below and I have to say that, while I didn't intend to write a profane novel, I can still now remember exactly each and every page where the offending words occur.

The phrase 'arse' was found at location 70126
and so on. I'll just share the count.
arse x 1
balls x 2
bang x 3
bastard x 12 (a dozen, one of them capitalized therefore a pronoun?)
bitch x 6 (half dozen, imperial measure)
bloody x 8 (quaint that bloody should be a profanity these days, actually mostly describing murder weapons)
blow job x 1 (shouldn't I have hyphenated the blow-job? Is that what I've been doing wrong)
bollocks x 1 (shouldn't there be at least two of those fellas? No wait, it's a plural)
crap x 2 (in UK and Ireland it's an expletive, in the ROW it's a game, apparently you can shoot it and everything)
cunt x 3 (I do apologise, it's a very vulgar word but, in my defence, it was, or rather they were, components of dialogue. Vulgar dialogue. Not uncommon in Ireland. Lady Chatterley's Lover is full of them.)
fag x 5 (means cigarette in UK and Ireland and that was the intended meaning)
fuck x 10 (no argument there and good to see it's gone decimal)
fucker x 4 (nice alliteration and I'm getting an idea for a Christmas song now)
fucking x 21 (more than a score - in fairness, there is a lot of that sort of thing in The Baptist, it's not all murdering)
penis x 1 (poor little lad, all on his own, but just goes to show it takes only one)
prick x 3 (oh, right ... well, now we have a handful)
queer x 1 (surely acceptable as an adjective?)
sex x 7 (vanilla version is profane?)
sexy x 2 (sexy too)
shirt-lifter x 1 (at least it's hyphenated. Homophobic, but forgivable as it's in dialogue)
shit x 11 (one short of the dozen)
shite x 1 (the Irish for above, to make up that dozen)
slut x 1 (so few?)
wanker x 1 (there's always one)
white trash x 2 (I'm still confused, is that profane?)

Right, Christmas approaches. So, in the spirit of the season, I offer:

The Baptist Profane Twelve Days of Christmas

(I'll just go to straight to the last verse)

Twelve days of ChristmasOn the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Twelve bastards bragging
Eleven shits a fan-hitting
Ten fucks a flying
Nine fucking expletives (cheated, there wasn't nine of anything)
Eight bloody bus stops
Seven sex in the opens
Six bitches barking
Five ... fags ... a ... puffing!
Four fighting fuckers
Three quiet cunts
Two dangly balls
And a slut arse-wanker penis blow-job bollocks.

(The leftovers are a spare queer sexy shirt-lifter shite white trash, sounds like one of my characters.)

Now, singalong everyone.

All in the name of literary art, my dears.

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If you've enjoyed reading Ruby's blog then please sign up to Marble City Readers where you can grab a free e-book (e.g. The Baptist by R. A. Barnes) from any of the Marble City authors and receive info on other freebies, advance review copies of upcoming novels and occasional updates. Thanks!

Peril - a Ger Mayes crime novel - is on special offer on Amazon right now. 99c / 77p via Free Kindle Books and Tips or here . 41 reviews with an average 4.3, if you like crime fiction and thrillers then this is a good read.


And at the moment The Baptist - a psychological thriller - is also on offer here .