Mark Yarwood- A Struggling Writer

  From the mean streets of North London, Edmonton to be precise, came a serious crime group that were determined to right the wrongs they found all around them. It has not been an easy task for them as they have found themselves up against a mysterious arranger of suicides and a serial killer who places his victims in the shape of a clock at each scene. The first thing I didn’t want to do with this series of books is to have the same team investigating every new series of murders that came along. This would be very unrealistic, even though most crime fiction would have you believe otherwise.

What would usually happen is the SIO (Senior Investigating Officer) would pick a team from detective constables and detective inspectors, and these would usually be different from the last team that investigated a major incident like a serial killer case. This is the way I have formed the series, with each book being set around a different team, even though sometimes the members of the team might end up working with each other again.

SPIDER MOUTH was the first of my Edmonton Police Station books. Here’s the product description:

A series of gruesome killings, involving a cannibal, a drug addict and a housewife, leads DI Fred Fairservice through North London on the trail of a sinister arranger of deaths. Near each scene of death, the perpetrator has left a spider in the mouth of a dead old person.

It’s the spiders in the old peoples’ mouths that bothers Fred, just because it’s so similar to something he witnessed when he was a child- it cannot be just a coincidence.

With a new detective, DI Mark South, in tow, Fred has to stop the killings, solve the riddle of the spiders, and help find a missing girl called Heather. All before his bosses make him take early retirement, and his violent past catches up with him.

The second of the Edmonton Police Station series is MURDERSON, which is set around a series of grotesque murders where the killer leaves his male victims in the form of a clock at each scene. Here’s the product description:

London and the South West of England are the hunting ground of a serial killer. The brutal killer, nicknamed The Clock, hunts young men in their thirties, kills them and turns their bodies into macabre clock faces at each crime scene.

Detective Chief Inspector Paul Webb, a tired middle aged policeman with a failed relationship still haunting him, investigates the series of murders with the help of Dr. Kirill Fedorov, a man who believes he can spot potential serial killer behaviour in children and cure it. Webb also persuades the now fully-grown
Luke Wind, the only British boy that Dr. Fedorov cured and treated like a son,
to help him find the killer.

Fedorov convinces Luke that he should still be able to understand a serial killer’s mind, but when Luke looks into himself he begins to doubt that he has been cured after all, especially when the killings begin to look personal.

The next book in the series will be LAST ALIVE, which will be coming to Amazon Kindle soon; this book follows on the format of having another team investigating a serial killer who targets whole families. Even though the main characters are new to the books, some of the supporting cast are from SPIDER MOUTH and MURDERSON, like DCI Paul Webb, who is second in command to DCS Linsey Freeman, the SIO in LAST ALIVE.

Here’s a short product description:

Two years after a family are brutally slaughtered, with only one survivor left alive, the killer strikes again. After the second the second set of murders, the killer sends another sinister text and smiley face to the surviving member of the family.

Racing along aside the police investigation into the murders, ex- Detective Sergeant Terence Marsland searches for the perpetrator, and soon finds that more than just his reputation is at stake if he fails in his mission- his whole world could be turned viciously upside down.

SPIDER MOUTH can be found at AMAZON KINDLE.

  From the mean streets of North London, Edmonton to be precise, came a serious crime group that were determined to right the wrongs they found all around them. It has not been an easy task for them as they have found themselves up against a mysterious arranger of suicides and a serial killer who places his victims in the shape of a clock at each scene. The first thing I didn’t want to do with this series of books is to have the same team investigating every new series of murders that came along. This would be very unrealistic, even though most crime fiction would have you believe otherwise.

What would usually happen is the SIO (Senior Investigating Officer) would pick a team from detective constables and detective inspectors, and these would usually be different from the last team that investigated a major incident like a serial killer case. This is the way I have formed the series, with each book being set around a different team, even though sometimes the members of the team might end up working with each other again.

SPIDER MOUTH was the first of my Edmonton Police Station books. Here’s the product description:

A series of gruesome killings, involving a cannibal, a drug addict and a housewife, leads DI Fred Fairservice through North London on the trail of a sinister arranger of deaths. Near each scene of death, the perpetrator has left a spider in the mouth of a dead old person.

It’s the spiders in the old peoples’ mouths that bothers Fred, just because it’s so similar to something he witnessed when he was a child- it cannot be just a coincidence.

With a new detective, DI Mark South, in tow, Fred has to stop the killings, solve the riddle of the spiders, and help find a missing girl called Heather. All before his bosses make him take early retirement, and his violent past catches up with him.

The second of the Edmonton Police Station series is MURDERSON, which is set around a series of grotesque murders where the killer leaves his male victims in the form of a clock at each scene. Here’s the product description:

London and the South West of England are the hunting ground of a serial killer. The brutal killer, nicknamed The Clock, hunts young men in their thirties, kills them and turns their bodies into macabre clock faces at each crime scene.

Detective Chief Inspector Paul Webb, a tired middle aged policeman with a failed relationship still haunting him, investigates the series of murders with the help of Dr. Kirill Fedorov, a man who believes he can spot potential serial killer behaviour in children and cure it. Webb also persuades the now fully-grown
Luke Wind, the only British boy that Dr. Fedorov cured and treated like a son,
to help him find the killer.

Fedorov convinces Luke that he should still be able to understand a serial killer’s mind, but when Luke looks into himself he begins to doubt that he has been cured after all, especially when the killings begin to look personal.

The next book in the series will be LAST ALIVE, which will be coming to Amazon Kindle soon; this book follows on the format of having another team investigating a serial killer who targets whole families. Even though the main characters are new to the books, some of the supporting cast are from SPIDER MOUTH and MURDERSON, like DCI Paul Webb, who is second in command to DCS Linsey Freeman, the SIO in LAST ALIVE.

Here’s a short product description:

Two years after a family are brutally slaughtered, with only one survivor left alive, the killer strikes again. After the second the second set of murders, the killer sends another sinister text and smiley face to the surviving member of the family.

Racing along aside the police investigation into the murders, ex- Detective Sergeant Terence Marsland searches for the perpetrator, and soon finds that more than just his reputation is at stake if he fails in his mission- his whole world could be turned viciously upside down.

SPIDER MOUTH can be found at AMAZON KINDLE.

Professional cover by Andy Hall of Frank Design Associates Limited

I have to admit I was one of those doubters, one of those paperback grippers, refusing to let go of the printed word, procrastinating about how eBooks will destroy the book industry. Well, we all know that books are still being printed. I love books.

I love eBooks even more than paperbacks now, just because they’ve given me a chance to reach an audience, however small it might be. Now I know I can publish and someone will read my books somewhere. I’m not going to lie and say that I don’t want to make a lot of money, because that would be great. but I’d be happy making a living and having people enjoy my work.

Most of all, I’m happy that other writers have found audiences too, because there is a lot of undiscovered talent out there, like my friend, Aline Riva. Her book MELANCHOLY will be out soon and it’s a great and heart felt and well written novel. Keep an eye out for her.

I’ve just released LAST ALIVE, 3rd in my thriller series – if you enjoy detective thrillers, give my book a go.

Like many other independent ebook authors, I’ve come across a vast sea of troubles when it came to publishing my books. Without a doubt, it seems to every indie author that getting your eBook just right is a tough and thankless task. Undoubtedly, there is a lot of information out there which promises to help indie authors put together that ‘perfect’ product that readers can enjoy on their various eReader devices. But lots of the information out there is either wrong or very complicated. And you have to pick and choose carefully the stuff you take in and the stuff you just ignore.

Yes, it’s a minefield out there for independent authors. I know, I’m one of them. And I’ve spent the last year and a half pulling my hair out (yes, I haven’t got that much left- just look at my Facebook page) and reading through hordes of eBook blogs, books and other such stuff just to find out how to make my book look professional! We’ve all been there- looking at the eBooks produced by the mainstream publishers and wondering how they get their books to look this way or that…how do they get everything to look so neat? Well, they have some poor bastard somewhere to do it for them- I hope they pay the person a lot of money.

Well, anyway, back to the situation at hand – and that is how to get your eBook looking just right. Now, I don’t have all the answers…but before you  go and check your emails…or worse, your sales report page (don’t do it!), let me tell you that I’ve just about put together my eBook in just the right way.  Now I’m talking mainly how to put it on Amazon Kindle, but it should also work for most Ebook formats, give or take a few clicks.

So, you’ve written the best book you could possibly write, and have edited it to the best of your abilities, and maybe you’ve been lucky enough to use a professional editor too. What’s next? Uploading it, that’s what. Oh, and hopefully you’ve got a good cover image. I had my designed by my Brother in law, so I’m lucky I guess. There are a lot of good cover designers out there, trust me. They are hiding just round the corner…quick there’s one…catch them! Sorry, anyway, so you’re thinking, nervously, of publishing and you don’t know what to do next. Here’s what I recommend:

Nuke it! Yes, fly a bomber plane up over the hemisphere and nuke your eBook from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure! But, no, seriously, get your manuscript on your screen- and you’ve probably written it in Word- and ‘select all’ and then ‘copy’ and then shut your manuscript down. Open up the ‘note’ or ‘text editor’ on your PC or Mac and ‘paste’ the book into there. There should be a way from there that you can turn the book into ‘plain text’, but if there isn’t, just ‘select all’ and ‘copy’ and then open up a new Word document. Now, you’ll want to ‘paste’ your book into the new document, but what you need to do is ‘special paste’ and select ‘unformatted text’, so you end up with your manuscript in front of you but with none of those little formats you had in there. I know, it’s going to take a while to put it back together in some kind of order- but it will be worth it in the end. Trust me, I’m a doctor (I’m not a doctor).

Now, think back to when you wrote your opus, and try and remember what little formats you put in there…did you ever press the ‘tab’ key? You did?! You bloody…sorry….right, no worries, just get the ‘find’ window up on your PC or Mac and find the ‘special’ search. A lot of little symbols will be listed. You need to choose the symbol that represents the ‘tab’ key. I tell you what, if the ‘tab’ key was a guy sitting before me now…well, I’d…well, he would be very upset by my language, I can tell you!

So, you’ve selected the ‘tab’ symbol, so you need to enter nothing in the ‘replace’ box. Then you need to ‘replace all’ until you’re told that ‘no replacements’ have been made. You’ve done it, you’ve wiped those ‘tabs’ out of your document. Well done, you’ve just committed literary genocide. But don’t worry, nobody’s going to stick you before a war crimes court.

Now, you should also use the ‘find’ function to find all the extra ‘enters’ you’ve made. Basically get the ‘find’ up and enter two or three ‘enters’. Then put one ‘enter’ into the ‘replace’ section. Again, keep ‘replacing all’ until there’s none left.

Now, what you want in your masterpiece eBook is a nice indent on each paragraph- so you’ll have to get to the very end of your document and you’ll notice that the ruler has appeared at the top of the page. Now, you should be able to see the little metallic thing on the ruler- it looks like a tiny egg timer. If you put your pointer on the top of that, then the words ‘first line indent’ should appear. First, ‘select all’ of your document. Now drag that top part of the ‘egg timer’ thingy all the way to the right, as far as it will go, then all the way back as far as it will go to the left. Then drag it back left until you get to the number 1 in the white area of the ruler. Now you should have a nice indent in all of your paragraphs.

But here’s the problem. How do you stop the first line of each chapter being indented, like a mainstream book? Well, you can’t stop it totally, but you can do the next best thing. What you have to do is ‘select’ the first paragraph of your first chapter- then go to ‘format’ then select ‘paragraph’. You’ll see there is a ‘indent’ section. And there is also a ‘special’ section. Choose ‘First line’, then you’ll see next to that is a box that is titled ‘by’. You need to type in there ’0.01′. Then press ‘OK’.

You’ve now got an indent in the first paragraph of your first chapter that is so tiny, you can hardly see it. And when you publish to Amazon Kindle, it will look like there is no indent at all! Of course, you have to go through your entire book and ‘select’ each chapter and do the same, but it’ll be worth it in the end, trust me I’m an indie author! You can also do it to those paragraphs with spaces between, which is supposed to represent a jump in time or scene.

Anyway, don’t forget to put those ‘line breaks’ back between each chapter and centre each chapter title too. Next time I’ll talk about how to put in a professional ‘Table Of Contents’. I hope this has been of help. Let me know here: yarfur@hotmail.com.

You can check out my eBook thriller, LAST ALIVE on Amazon Kindle.

I also very much recommend this eBook about formatting by Pamela J. Olson. It’s on Amazon and is titled: Simple eBook Formatting for the Technophobic Author. It’s really good and helped me loads.

Professional cover by Andy Hall of Frank Design Associates Limited