From the AMAZON Platform:
The London Necropolis Railway & National Mausoleum Company
Learn why in BUILDING MEMORIES: Bricks and Murder – from #1 Amazon bestseller, Alan Camrose
Cheers,
Alan
Alan Camrose
Departing on 2.2.22
Bricks and Murder
That’s the sub-title of my incoming magical realism thriller, BUILDING MEMORIES.
Coming soon: 2.2.22
It’s a twisted, humorous, action-packed, barking mad PI, procedural, weird, macabre love story. Set in South London (mainly) but steeped in frustrated passion dating back to the time of the trenches in the First World War. It’s a coming of age novel for the main character, PI Becky Slade. She is – literally – shown a whole new world by the events surrounding her new case, one that will have her questioning who and what she is.
That’s a lot to cram into a cover.
My vision was to have a picture of Becky on the cover, showing her usual side and a mysterious ‘other self’ which is explained as the book develops.
Here was where I started. Becky is the central character. I wanted her image to be right.
I played with the image and came up with this dark mock-up of a shadowy PI:
From all of this came the duality in the character – hard-boiled PI and mystery figure:
Ellie very kindly took the design to the next level and came up with this blueprint, which I rather love in and of itself…
Here’s Ellie’s finished artwork, which I think is stunning and creates the mysterious mood that I had wanted from the beginning. Check out the background street lamps and gloomy streets:
This is the final version of the cover, with the text included, ready to go…
…on AMAZON BOOKS
2.2.22
Yours to own – eBook or paperback
Cheers,
Alan
Alan Camrose
AMAZON BOOKS – BESTSELLERS UPDATE
Making our Christmas Present: A Merry Journey (around the bestseller lists on Amazon)
Bestsellers update as at 4pm UK time on Amazon Books:
at #2 historical reference
at #3 parodies
at #4 humorous essays
DOWNLOAD IT FREE FOR A LIMITED TIME ON AMAZON
If you like it, please post a review! Many, many thanks…
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Cheers,
Alan
Alan Camrose
Title Fight!
Working out what couda been a Christmas contender…
I wanted to share with you some of my thought process about finding the title for my new release Christmas book for a chilled out festive season.
It has gone through various incarnations before it goes live on 4 November 2021 – in hardback, paperback and eBook. On Amazon.
First up, it was going to be part of a series that I will be publishing in the New Year about how beds tuck into our popular culture. My Christmas book was going to be the first in the series, called Two Turtle Duvets.
The Christmas project evolved into a stand-alone book on how the Christmas traditions that we have come to know and love have evolved. Nothing too serious, nothing too heavy, but a playful look at our Xmas season.
That demanded soemthing else on the title front, something catchy. I thought I had found it:
Checking it Twice: A List of our Christmas Present
Quite pleasing, I thought, but a bit too “list-y”, not least because of the cunning use of the word “list” in the sub-title… It didn’t last long enough to make it to the spell-checker. I didn’t want a laundry list; I wanted a walk, a search, a romp (no!), a promenade (too formal), a meander (too waffly…)…
A Journey.
I wanted to play with the double meaning of “Christmas Present”, and arrived at:
What makes our Christmas Present – on some sort of journey. Like the Three Wise Men but with a lap-top.
First make it sharper and snappier: Making our Christmas Present. With a better sub-title, then.
First thing that came to mind was A Brief History. That made it sound like an academic treatise, not a journey. So, getting closer, I decided on A Jolly Journey, but that sounded like a booze cruise.
I chose A Merry Journey, because who doesn’t want Christmas time to be a merry way of looking at the festive season?
And here it is:
Making our Christmas Present gives you an idea of discovering Christmas as it now is, with a merry journey to get you there.
There. I’m done, from Two Turtle Duvets to the final version, in the St Nick of time for Christmas…
I hope you like it!
Best wishes,
Alan
Alan Camrose
Santa’s Book is coming to Town
If you are one of my several thousand subscribers and you had a moment, could you please comment/share/comment/communicate on my recent post about my upcoming new book on
4 November 2021
I would love to hear from you to know that the post arrived and if you’re interested in the new Christmas book, under the limited time free download from that date…Or if you’re interested in the paperback or hardback.
Some help here would be much appreciated…
Thanks…
REVEALING THINGS ABOUT MY COVER REVEAL
Why do mince pies no longer look like coffins?
How do you navigate yesteryear’s family games without a fire extinguisher?
Why did Father Christmas trade in his wagon for a sleigh when he first came to town?
Why should you complain if you don’t receive at least one gold ball from the Big Man?
And how do the best Christmas songs jingle our bells?
All these questions that I wanted to answer about Christmas, packaged up in a glossy cover for my new book, Making our Christmas Present: A Merry Journey.
The answers and a lot more will be revealed from 4 November 2021.
This will be a FREE download, which I hope you will enjoy, and I would ask you please please please to take a few moments to post a review. It’s the lifeblood of authors like me, and I would appreciate it very much.
But enough of that!
I wanted to give you here a quick insight into my author thought processes around the book.
I wanted a snappy, Christmassy cover with instant appeal. I don’t know whether I managed that but this is how I got to where I am now.
The book looks at centuries of Christmas, and where the traditional bits came from that individually and together serve up most people’s vision of Christmas. It’s not a history epic or a social commentary or a heavyweight study. The heaviest it gets is fretting over Santa’s belt size…
So I needed light.
I started by thinking about Christmas. There is of course more than one major defining point:
But I fastened onto Santa and how he became the figure we know today – instantly recognisable for the cover, at least today’s version.
I thought about him using an evolutionary cover, something like this, with overlapping pictures merged together:
Too complicated.
Too serious.
So, Plan B was initiated. A Christmas Kiss – otherwise known as A Christmas Keep It Simple, Stupid
Christmas trees. We all think of brightly-lit and decorated trees at Christmas time…
So why not go for a more sophisticated dark background, and a blurry tree.
Much better. I like this but it’s a bit tooo sophisticated for a book that’s supposed to be merry while Santa is “Checking it Twice”. That had been the original title. This pic was too serious, looking like it was dressed up for cocktails…
Third time lucky, then.
I went for Christmas trees again, but not just any old Christmas trees. Toy ones, with the addition of a Santa hat on one of them.
I think (hope) that hits the more amusing, whimsical vibe that I’m after, which fits in with my writing style.
And here it is, in all its glory with the new title, the one that will be published on 4 November: on Amazon Books:
More playful, less creaking with history, not so blingy…
I hope you’ve found this insight into this part of my creative process interesting
More to come on other stuff soon, and you’ll get it first on my blog…
Cheers!
Alan
Alan Camrose