Author: PaulineMRoss

‘The Fire Mages’ launch: promotion results

My first epic fantasy book, ‘The Plains of Kallanash’, was published in September with no promotion, apart from me wittering excitedly on social media. It performed exactly as you might suspect (around 60 sales in the first month before flatlining, and only 3 reviews). I always intended to delay heavy promotion until I had at least three books out, but the new book, ‘The Fire Mages’, is a much more marketable candidate (coming of age, young girl finding her powers, loads of magic), so I wanted to give it a bit of a head-start without pushing the boat out financially. The plan was to keep it at $0.99 for the first two weeks after release, combining that with some promotion every day. The first week would be smaller sites, with the big hitters in the second week. The objective was to generate steady sales which would give the book some […]

Posted February 10, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Publishing/marketing, The Fire Mages / 3 Comments

Five-star archives: ‘The Lions of al-Rassan’ by Guy Gavriel Kay

I read this is 2011, as a follow-on to ‘Tigana’, and while it avoids the flaws of that work, it has a few all its own. I went on to read ‘A Song For Arbonne’, which I gave 4 stars, and haven’t read any Kay since. I do enjoy his work, but it is terribly over-wrought, and I have to get myself in the right frame of mind for it. My tastes nowadays veer more towards smaller, less ambitious tomes. Or perhaps just writing that doesn’t take itself quite so seriously. Well, this was a three Kleenex book and no mistake. That’s three boxes of Kleenex, of course. Not a book to read on public transport, unless you have no embarrassment gene. No one does grand tragedy quite like Kay. But I’m not totally sure what genre this is. It’s more fantasy than anything else, but the world-building is lifted […]

Posted February 8, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Archive, Review / 2 Comments

Fantasy Review: ‘Watersmeet’ by Rachel Cotterill

Some stories keep you on the edge of your seat with non-stop drama, and some are gentler tales, of people learning about themselves and each other, quietly resolving their problems with thoughtful research or experimentation or negotiation, instead of reaching for the swords every time. This book is in the latter category, which makes it very much my kind of story. The opening of the book is a nice introduction to the background, one of a basically illiterate population, where both magic and writing are frowned upon. Ailith can read and write, but she has to keep that secret. However, a meeting with a mysterious older man, Malachi, reveals that she has another secret – she is a mage. Ailith is one of twins, with several other sisters and (maybe?) a brother, too. Her twin is about to be married to a man three times her age, a match arranged […]

Posted February 4, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 2 Comments

Fiction Review: ‘One Fine Day’ by Mollie Panter-Downes

This is a book from another era, in every sense. Written in 1946, it shines a light on a different age, a brief moment of history, and quite a narrow aspect of history, at that. In the aftermath of the war, an upper-class couple in southeastern England adjusts to the reality of life without servants and wealth. The main character, Laura, is the slightly dippy wife whose day we follow as she goes about her chores. No longer able to sit idly at home, or gad about the countryside visiting or walking, she shares the household chores with her sole remaining ‘help’, queues for food at the shops with other matrons, tries to arrange for a gardener and cycles off to retrieve a missing dog. Meanwhile, husband Stephen and daughter Victoria are going about their equally mundane lives. And if this sounds dull, indeed it is, as a story. The […]

Posted February 2, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Magic in the Brightmoon world

With ‘The Fire Mages’ now out, I thought it might be interesting to look at the way magic is used in the book, and compare it with magic in ‘The Plains of Kallanash’. WARNING: slight spoiler for ‘The Fire Mages’ at the end. ‘The Fire Mages’ is set in the realm of Bennamore. Magic is invoked by the use of spellpages: a trained scribe writes out the words of a spell using magically imbued paper, pen and ink. A special script is used, with many flourishes and symbolic additions to each letter, which can subtly modify the spell, for instance to change the strength, to add constraints or expand it. The spellpage is then burnt in a crucible, with an invocation to the gods: “By the sun, bring light and fire and colour; by the moon, enable the darkness.” The Bennamorians believe that the gods are the final arbiters of […]

Posted January 30, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Brightmoon world, The Fire Mages, The Plains of Kallanash / 3 Comments

Five-Star Archives: ‘The Name of the Wind’ by Patrick Rothfuss

I thought it might be amusing to dig out some of my old reviews from the mists of time. This is one I read and reviewed in February 2011, and despite the glowing five star review, I haven’t yet got round to reading the follow-on. Hmm. Maybe I’m just less interested in wordy, doorstopper books these days. This is a debut book, and inevitably the first in a trilogy (‘The Kingkiller Chronicles’), by this author, and it is quite stunning. It is focused quite tightly on just one character, for it is his story, told largely in autobiographical form, from the perspective of a point in his life when he is still relatively young but has already become something of a legend. Unlike many fantasy books, the reader is not dropped headfirst into a morass of names and places and customs. Rather it builds very gently and precisely, a step […]

Posted January 27, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Archive, Review / 0 Comments

Fiction Review: ‘See You’ by Dawn Lee McKenna

I hardly know what to say about this book. I cried almost all the way through, yet I couldn’t put it down. Actually, I laughed almost as much as I cried. So be warned – unless you’re made of much sterner stuff than I am, you’ll need a good supply of hankies nearby while you read. This is an extraordinary book. It’s a love story, and no, that’s not a euphemism for romance, this really is a story about love. And not your conventional couple, either. Jack was raised by his best friend’s mother, Miss Margret, and returned every year to visit her and her granddaughter, Emma Lee. When Miss Margret died, the visits stopped but now Jack’s back, and finds Emma Lee still living in the same house, and raising her own daughter. Jack has some secrets to share, but Emma has a secret of her own – she’s […]

Posted January 22, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 4 Comments

Fantasy Review: ‘To Whatever End’ by Claire Frank

This is an unusual book in a couple of ways. For one thing, the main protagonists are a happily married couple. When Daro is kidnapped, Cecily sets out to find and rescue him. No, no, that’s not the other unusual thing. Surely it’s not unusual for a woman to rescue a man? The second unusual thing is that this story is set some years after a major upheaval in the kingdom. The old king was overthrown and his son and heir killed in a bloody war which Daro, Cecily and their friends helped to orchestrate. The first section of the book, where we meet the companions in ones and twos, and they mull over the previous events and remind each other of this or that close shave or dramatic moment, made me wonder if I’d strayed into the second part of a trilogy. Actually, no, this is the first part. […]

Posted January 20, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 2 Comments

‘The Fire Mages’ still at a special low price

Just a reminder that ‘The Fire Mages’ is still available at the new-release price of $0.99. To buy, click the link in the box at the right, which takes you to your local Amazon. You have a few more days to buy before it goes to the normal price of $3.99. If you’ve already bought it – thank you! Please tell your friends about it, too. And if you’ve read it, an honest review on Amazon, Goodreads or your blog would be very much appreciated, to help other readers decide if they would enjoy it. The book has had a few reviews already. Here’s a snippet from the first to hit Amazon.com: “The main characters were more authentic than I think you usually get in fantasy stories, but just like Robin Hobb, Ross is a master at crafting authentic characters. This story had everything I look for in a fantasy […]

Posted January 17, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Publishing/marketing, The Fire Mages / 2 Comments