Barry's Books
The Darkest Corners
The concluding part of this darkly funny, horror series Darren Shan called... read more
The 13th Horseman
Drake is surprised to find three Horsemen of the Apocalypse playing snakes and... read more
Doc Mortis
The fourth thrilling book in this darkly funny horror series Darren Shan called... read more
Raggy Maggie
The second book in the award-winning Invisible Fiends series. Billy is the... read more
Author Archives: Barry
The Truth About Amazon – Part 2
My post about my inner turmoil over linking to Amazon yesterday led to some really interesting debate, and a few suggested alternatives. These conversations both reminded me just how brilliant real live booksellers are, and reassured me that I’m far from the only author having issues with getting their books stocked. One suggested alternative to linking to Amazon is linking to the Hive Network. The Hive is run by book distributor Gardner’s, and is an online bookstore in much the …
Posted in Books, Personal
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The Truth About Amazon
Right, here goes. This is something I’ve been thinking about posting for a while, but I’ve always decided against it for one reason or another. Following some recent conversations with other authors, though, I’ve decided to go ahead and post it. As you probably know, what with being here on my website, I’m an author. My six Invisible Fiends books and two Afterworlds books have received rave reviews and even won awards. I get regular feedback from parents and teachers …
The Book of Doom Competition Winners
Back in January I launched a competition to celebrate the upcoming release of The Book of Doom, which gave one lucky winner the chance to get their hands on a Kindle Fire 8GB and a copy of the book. The Book of Doom (my one) there is another book by the same name. This Book of Doom (the fictional one, not my one) can take on any form, and no two people see it as the same thing. It may be …
Posted in Competitions
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The Terry Pratchett Comparison
Several reviewers have compared my books to those of Terry Pratchett. Find out what I think of that and why…
Posted in On the web, Personal, Recommended Reads
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Blog Swap: Bart’s Bookshelf
It’s time for another Blog Swap, despite the fact none of us are any the wiser yet as to what the purpose of a Blog Swap actually is. It’s a larf though, innit? Today I’m swapping blogs with Darren from Bart’s Bookshelf. You can find my post for him here. Over to you, Darren… Kate de Vries So, a week or two back I was asked If I’d like to take part in Barry’s blog-swap thingamajig, and of course I …
Iain Banks
It was with real sadness that I reads reports of Iain Banks’ terminal cancer today. For those of you who haven’t heard the news, here’s his personal announcement on his website. I’ve met Iain a couple of times, but I don’t know him as such. I know some people who do know him, though, and through them I’d heard that he had been ill recently, but I had no idea – nor did he, it seems – that things were …
Posted in Personal
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BookZone’s Car Boot Booty
For reasons even I don’t yet fully understand, I’ve decided to do a series of ‘blog swaps’ with some of my favourite book bloggers. As none of us have any idea what a ‘blog swap’ actually entails, we’re just posting whatever takes our fancy. Today I’m swapping blogs with The Book Zone – a firm favourite of mine, and one of my biggest supporters. Here’s what Darren decided to share with us, largely – I suspect – to make me jealous. …
Posted in On the web
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North East Book Award 2012
Slap bang in the middle of a mad old month, between winning the Scottish Children’s Book Award, being on the telly, and running dozens of events (including four at the utterly brilliant Aye Write! festival in Glasgow last week). Just got time to let you know the good news - The 13th Horseman has been shortlisted for the North East Book Award 2012! It’s up against some amazing books (see the poster below for full details) so we’ll just have to wait and see …
Posted in Awards
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Winner: The 13th Horseman
So, um, yeah. I won an award yesterday. Go me! The award in question was the Scottish Children’s Book Awards 2012 and The 13th Horseman rode to victory in the older readers category. It was a grand day out, with magicians, music, and a number of bewildered authors being forced to dance Gangnam Style in front of a thousand strong audience of book lovers. One of my favourite part of the whole day was meeting loads of pupils who’d voted in the …
Posted in Awards, Events, Personal
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Blog Swap: SisterSpooky
A couple of weeks ago, while chatting with Darren of The Book Zone, I had an idea. I decided I would swap blogs with some of my favourite book bloggers for a day. They would post something on mine, and I would post something on theirs, for no other reason than it might be a bit of a laugh. So I picked four lovely bloggers and asked them send me a post on any subject under the sun. It could …
Posted in On the web, Random Writings
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