So, as they say on the BBC, here is the news.  Gas prices have shot up.  Whatcha gonna do?  But I digress…

The cover painting‘s now had its professional photograph taken.  I was very privileged to be able to hang out at Jon’s artist studio and meet the photographer, Grant, who was amazingly knowledgeable and clearly knew exactly what he was doing with photography.  It was almost a mini-lecture on digital photography techniques, and I learned a lot.  Then, last night after some amazing bangers and mash cooked by his own fair hand, Jon showed me the pretty much finished design which will actually go on the front of the ebook (and we hope, in future, the spy book).  Honestly, it’s awesome!

Talking of which, those jolly nice people at BookBaby recently announced that they’ve taken on more retailers and distributors.  This is great news!  My espionage novel will be sold via Amazon, Apple iStore, Sony Reader Store, Barnes and Noble, Baker and Taylor, Gardner’s (in Britain), Kobo, Copia and eBookPie.  This also means that it’ll be available in over two hundred countries!  Holy cow… I didn’t even know there were that many countries.  But whether you live in Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, India, Ireland, the United Kingdom or anywhere else in the anglosphere, it’ll be available to you.  Heck, you’ll probably be able to buy it off Kijiji eventually!

My internet marketing entrepreneur friend Steve is busily organizing the social media marketing aspect.  I’ve made him an admin on my Facebook page and he’s already working on getting video up there.  He’s made a preliminary video and written some music for it, which is kinda cool.  This will all somehow lead to a page where you can download a PDF of the Prologue (although the last line of it will be missing, so as not to spoil the book).  Anyway, as you’ll doubtless have gathered if you’ve been reading for a bit, all this computer tech geek bananas is somewhat beyond me, so I’m leaving it to the experts.  Me, I’ll just try my best to be a faithful blogger and blog this blog.  Please forgive my slight overuse of the world ‘blog’ though.

Had an excellent meeting and beer yesterday with a new colleague, Devon from Thread Media.  He’s another marketing whiz and knows a thing or two about the publishing industry having worked for a publisher in New York.  Devon’s also writing a novel although he’s currently a couple of months away from publication.  However, it’s really good to talk to other writers about the process.  I’m looking forward to being able to help Devon as I’m traveling ahead of him, so to speak.

I don’t know whether you’ve been keeping up on movie news recently, but there’s a film coming out called Act Of Valor, starring genuine US Navy SEAL personnel.  Although the trailers look great, it’s receiving some negative reviews, so I’m not sure whether I’ll go to see it yet, but I do wonder how it’ll do in the Oscars / Academy Awards.  I will confess that the movie’s title is slightly similar to the title of my novel, but as my title was planned at least twenty years ago and, according to copyright law, you can’t copyright a title anyway, I think we’ll be okay.

That’ll do for now.  You have a great weekend!  Roger and out, X.