Last Chance Train

June 5, 2019June 5, 2019 / catconnor / Leave a comment

Blog title is a song from “100,000,000 Bon Jovi fans can’t be wrong”.

You know what makes an author happy? Come on, you do. You got this … say it with me, “REVIEWS.” There ya go. I knew you had it. I would be ridiculously delighted if you’d leave a review of the Byte Books you’ve read – but especially ridiculously delighted if you left the review/s on Smashwords, Kobo, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble … pretty well anywhere that’s NOT Amazon or Goodreads. Why? Because most of my books are no longer available on Amazon and I don’t think “3rd party sellers” should be benefiting from my reviews. Thanks in advance for being cool about this.

In other news: I went home. I came back. That’s all I have to say about that.

I’m working on Crashbyte – and kinda feel like it might get a name change because of Cryptobyte. Do we want to C’s back to back? No we do not. So, I’ll be fossicking through my Byte list shortly looking for something suitable … meanwhile, I know where this story is headed location wise. Ellie is going home. Where is home? Where is she really from? If you’ve read the series so far, you’ll know, or maybe have enough information to guess. It’s going to be a fun book. I can feel it in my bones. There’s a few things my bones are good for 1) detecting weather changes and 2) knowing when a story is going to be fun to write.

EDITED TO ADD: Crashbyte is now known as Vaporbyte.

FYI it’s cold and building up to a storm this afternoon. So here’s a picture of Mahau, (where I was for the weekend).

Read an eBook week!

March 4, 2019 / catconnor / Leave a comment

Here are the links you’ll need for the Byte Series books:

In-between bytes are mostly free this week.

Byte novels (including Qubyte) are 50% off.

Boxed sets are 50% off.

That is exceptional value for money right there! Remember the Boxed Sets have an extra story each that you cannot get anywhere else, and those stories give a bit of insight into other things that have happened in the SSA Conway/Delta A timeline.

Get amongst this folks. These are some great deals!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes …

February 18, 2019 / catconnor / Leave a comment

Remember when I said my publisher changed? Yeah? Of course, you do. Due to this change, my books are NOT available in a paperback version from any overseas site. Waiting for it to happen is futile. There are NO plans to make The Byte Series paperbacks available overseas. Remember I am a kiwi. Overseas is EVERYWHERE that is not New Zealand. 🙂

If you like reading paperbacks you can purchase them from Writers Plot Bookshop.

Writers Plot website has a gorgeous shopping cart and Paypal.

When I say they are ONLY available from Writers Plot Bookshop, I mean it. The decision was made to stay away from Amazon with my paperbacks. Why? A few reasons but the biggest is that they allow 3rd Party Sellers to flog off authors books at whatever price they see fit … but (for mine at least) I can find nothing that says those books were purchased from Amazon (or anywhere else) via my former publisher. That means there was no royalty payment. So how exactly are these 3rd Party Sellers getting the books they’re selling? I have no idea! How are they allowed to sell books and cut the author out completely? Again no fucking clue. But I will not be part of this shitty scheme. So, my books are available from New Zealand. And ONLY NEW ZEALAND. For absolute clarity, they are ONLY available from Writers Plot bookshop. Should you see them anywhere else, please do not purchase them. They are not authorized copies, I have not and do not receive any royalty when they’re sold.

Digital versions of my books are available from all good digital retailers. But not all of my books are available from Amazon. Some have been reformatted and are available, for example: Eraserbyte, Psychobyte, Metabyte. Qubyte is available on Amazon. The first six novels are not yet available. Mostly because I don’t have the files for Flashbyte, Soundbyte or Databyte. I didn’t have the files for Eraserbyte, Psychobyte or Metabyte either, so had to find the last edit I did have for those files, cross my fingers and format those. It’s a little bit frustrating and annoying.

On the plus side, you can buy them all in ePub from ePub distributors everywhere. Why? Because Smashwords allows publishers to revert rights to the author and Amazon does not.

Ten years …

January 15, 2019 / catconnor / Leave a comment

This year marks my tenth year in this industry. Obviously, my journey began long before 2009 because, well, you don’t write a book overnight. Nor do you learn your craft, overnight. My journey began in about 1992. It began because I wanted to read something with real women in it. I wrote a lot and then became serious about this storytelling lark. In 2001 my first short story was published. (Yes, back in the dark ages with gatekeepers and whatnot.)

Around about this time of the year in 2009, I approached Rebel ePublishers in South Africa. (Yay for the internet!)

This year is the tenth anniversary of Killerbyte (April 2009) and the tenth anniversary of Terrorbyte (Nov 2009). They are the original publishing dates. Even though, we tend to say terrorbyte was 2010. It wasn’t. The paperbacks came out in 2010.

The tenth year! That’s supposedly a magic time. Any second now and I’ll be an overnight success. I know, right? Exciting stuff.

Ten books, 1 novella, 3 boxed sets, 1 book of poetry, I don’t know how many related short stories, all in the Byte Series. [Never mind the earlier short stories, or the kiwi novel, or the long shorts, that are unrelated to the series.] The work is there and continues.

I’m as prepared as I can be for instant success. Bring it on. 🙂

Ten years with a main-character like Ellie – could be medal worthy!

Playing with Keynote

January 13, 2019 / catconnor / Leave a comment

This was the result of my messing around with Keynote this morning. Haven’t used it before and it was kinda fun exploring. There is no sound. Haven’t figured sound out yet or maybe that’s not a thing that Keynote does. I don’t know. 🙂

Good chance I’ll spend more time fiddling around inside Keynote at a later date, but right now, I should get back to work on #Cryptobyte.

Hope you’re all having a lovely weekend.

Volume Three!

January 6, 2019 / catconnor / Leave a comment

This was supposed to happen last February but it didn’t (remember how my publishing life turned upside down last year?). I’ve spent the last few days trying to find original files and whatnot to make this happen now.

There was much stress. Much blue air. Twice I had to start again with various files. But, this morning, on the last day of my holidays … we have success!

The byte Series Volume Three lives! And look how pretty!

It is available for pre-order across most platforms (not Amazon though, we’re holding off there, for now, mobi versions can be purchased from Smashwords) over the next day or so. I’ll share links as I find them. For now here’s the Smashwords link: The byte Series Volume three

I love the cover, I love these three books, and I especially love the story ‘heard it through the grapevine’, hope you do too.

Cat x