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
DIY Book Trailers Part 2
Way back in early March I blogged about how to make your own book trailers, using my Invisible Fiends: Mr Mumbles trailer as an example. I promised then that I’d do a follow-up post on how I put my Book of Doom trailer together, and this here be that very post in question. First up, let’s remind ourselves what the trailer’s like. OK, now we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about how I put it all together. If you’ve …
Posted in Books, On the web, video
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A Tarzan Trailer Swings In
One of my favourite action adventure series of recent years is Andy Briggs’ Tarzan reboot. It’s dark, gritty and modern, while still harking back to the classic adventure tales which first introduced us to the Lord of the Apes. Andy posted a trailer on Twitter earlier today, and I wanted to share it here. If you haven’t checked out the books yet, then I can really recommend them. Visit Andy’s site to find out more.
Posted in Books, Reviews, video
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Box of Awesome
I’ve been meaning to blog about Box of Awesome for a while now, but a combination of looming deadlines and sheer laziness have prevented me. However, yesterday’s announcement about publisher Simon & Schuster teaming up with the bods at BOA has coincided with me finishing a new book, and created a perfect storm of blogging conditions resulting in everything that follows. I first heard about Box of Awesome quite a while back through my son. He’s always finding random stuff …
Posted in Books, On the web
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First Draft Jitters
Well I’ve done it. This week I finished the first draft of the second book in my brand new and still top secret series. What I can tell you is that it’s completely different to anything I’ve done before. This is 1) a happy thing, because I love exploring new genres; and 2) utterly terrifying. Writing A New Thing is terrifying for a lot of authors because it means venturing into previously uncharted territory, and possibly out of your comfort …
Another Bookseller’s Thoughts
Ace Edinburgh Bookshop bookseller and friend of mine, Cat Anderson (who is responsible for getting a copy of The 13th Horseman into Neil Gaiman’s hands) has sent me her thoughts on some of the posts I made on here recently, specifically those about it being difficult to find my books in England. She has kindly agreed to let me stick those very thoughts up here. Whether you’re an author, bookseller, publisher, reader, Scottish or otherwise, everything below is well worth …
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A Bookseller’s Thoughts
Following my recent posts (here and here) about the grim inevitability of having to direct people to Amazon until such times as more bookshops outside Scotland stock my books, I had a long late night chat with Waterstone’s bookseller, David McCormack. David kindly offered to share his thoughts from a bookseller’s point of view, so authors – you might want to pay attention to the below… Between authors believing bookshops will not take or have their book on the shelves, and …
Posted in Books, Guest Post, Publishing Industry
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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 …
DIY Book Trailers Part 1
Thanks to the rise of YouTube and social media in general, book trailers are becoming an increasingly useful way of getting your novels noticed. For their biggest, most high-profile titles, publishers will sometimes fork out to have a trailer produced, but increasingly the task, like a lot of book marketing in general, falls to the author. For those with no experience of video production, this can be a hugely daunting thought, and many authors simply won’t bother with a video, and …
Posted in Books, Random Writings
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Books I have loved
One of the best things about being an author is that you get to sit around drinking tea and reading lots of books and can pretend it’s all research. Recently, I read Maggot Moon by the brilliant Sally Gardner and was blown away by it. So blown away was I, in fact, that when I found myself circling for several hours in an aeroplane, unable to land due to fog, I sat and read the whole book again. Incredibly, it was …
