This weekend Awesome Indies launches their new website with a great sale - over 70 books by brilliant indie authors in a variety of genres, and a competition to win a Kindle Paperwhite.
This is the link to the new website and this will take you to the sales page.
As part of the launch I have two books in the sale - Lies of the Dead and Lives Interrupted. They are both reduced from $2.99 to $0.99 for this weekend.
Lies of the Dead is a crime/mystery story set in Cornwall.
Liam Trethowan disappears in circumstances which the police accept as a suicide. However, Liam's older brother Tom can't accept that the charismatic Liam would ever kill himself. His sister Andi had a stormier relationship with Liam, but finds herself drawn into the hunt for what really happened. This search leads them into a criminal world they're not prepared for, and when Andi and her twin daughters are caught in a dangerous showdown, Tom realises his search for the truth may have too high a price.
Lies of the Dead can be purchased from Amazon for $0.99 this weekend.
Here are some reviews for Lies of the Dead.
This book grabbed my attention from the get go and didn't ease up until
the very end. The characters are well developed, and very real. I
thoroughly enjoyed this read, and based on this novel, would highly
recommend Shauna Bickley's books. I award a strong 5 out of 5 stars to
Lies of The Dead. - Awesome Indies
Bickley paints
ordinary people in extraordinary situations and does it well. Lies of
the Dead is a very human mystery/thriller. Loved every moment of this
novel. - Rabid Readers Reviews
This was a fast paced novel that kept me engaged through out. It would even be a good movie. - Clue Reviews
Lives Interrupted is a contemporary drama set in London. It tells the story of a group of people living and working in the city, and how their lives interweave before and after a bomb explosion on the underground. They all experience the bombing and aftermath in different ways but none of them are left unscathed.
Lives Interrupted can be purchased from Amazon for $0.99 this weekend.
This is a powerfully written story of seven lives intertwined, and the
effect that the London Underground bombings had on them. It's a
challenging feat to handle an ensemble cast like this, but the author
presents each character's viewpoint in a clear and compelling way so
that the threads are easy to follow from scene to scene - Bev Robitai, novelist
Don't forget to check out the new Awesome Indies site and find some great reading bargains.
There’s nothing quite like pulling out a shoebox of photos
or flicking through the family albums to bring back all sorts of memories. Reading through my writing is also a springboard for
memories.
None of the characters in my novels are me, but some of the
things they see or places they visit obviously comes from my experiences. It isn’t always the major turning point scenes either that
elicit memories. Here are a few from Lies of the Dead.
There’s a short lunchtime scene I wrote from exactly
the position Andi sat to eat her lunch.
By the time she’d
chosen a sandwich and paid for it the bench was empty and the man had disappeared.
She walked to the open
area at the other end of the office blocks. The seats surrounding the small
amphitheatre-like circle were all taken as people made the most of the
sunshine, but the steps were deep enough to sit on comfortably for a short
while.
She looked around as
she ate, but no one resembled the man who had followed her.
Tom and Andi’s cliff walks from the fictional village of
Poldrayth all remind me of trips to Cornwall, walking along the cliffs and wandering around the ruins of the pumphouse. The last time I visited, the dark
and light purple heather was a stunning contrast to the yellow gorse and I enjoyed amazing views of the
jade green sea frothing around the rocks at the foot of steep cliffs. I had to make a few changes when I realised that for the time of year in the book,
the gorse would be in flower but not the heather. Reality rears its head!
Anyone who has visited Bristol, or knows the city, will be
familiar with the Clifton Suspension Bridge and therefore The Downs (the rock slide is also mentioned in the link).
She ran around the
paths avoiding the families with prams and people ambling along, and as some
sort of punishment she made herself run up the hill to the observatory. She
stopped and looked at the shiny rocks on the steep side of the hill. They
hadn’t been here for years, but she remembered Sophie and Kristen’s happy
shouts as they slid down the rocks.
Lives Interrupted is set in London, and Dru and Kate’s walk
along the embankment looking at the Sphinx and other memorials reminds me of
my visits to London. I’ve always loved the theatre, and when living in England I
sometimes treated myself to a visit to one of the London shows and always
combined it with some tourist activities. Kate wasn't a theatre-lover so I had to forgo those visits for the book!
I’ve mentioned some of the inspirations for Driftwood in a previous post.
These memories were prompted while I was looking for a passage to read at an event last week. It also prompted memories of the initial writing and then
editing, but that’s another story altogether!
Today I'm over at Bookish Whimsy with a guest post on Charlene's excellent blog. If you'd like to know a little more about me, my writing space and how many houses I've lived in then pop on over and say hello.
The nine months of a pregnancy often seem to last for longer than that, though at times pass too quickly - okay maybe just in hindsight!
In my experience writing a book is a much longer affair, though painful in different ways, but today I'm absolutely thrilled to say that Lies of the Dead is well and truly published and out there.
I had the initial idea for the story and the three siblings who are the main characters about four years ago, though they sat quietly for a while at the back of my mind, but gradually they clamoured more and more to be heard.
Liam, the youngest of the three, was the one who claimed my attention initially, and I intended to tell the story through him, but every time I thought about scenes, or tried to write, it was Tom, the oldest brother, whose voice came through. Eventually I gave in and listened to him.
Lies of the Dead is set mostly in Cornwall, though Andi lives in Bristol and Liam in London. The Cornish scenery and people played a large part in forming the story, and it is an area of England I love.
What would you risk to find the truth?
How well do we know those closest to us? When Liam kills himself, his older brother Tom needs to know why suicide was the only solution.
Tom, and his sister Andi, search for answers but don't know who they can believe. Are Liam's friends and associates the people they claim to be? Tom and Andi are propelled into a world where their ideas of right and wrong don't exist, and where people demand what neither of them possesses.
Liam's legacy of deceit is dangerous, and when Andi and her twin daughters are threatened, Tom realises that truth may have too high a price.
The main idea of the story remains as it first came to me, but the path it took has changed considerably, although I find that is often the way.
Lies of the Dead is available in print and Kindle through Amazon and Amazon UK and the other Amazon stores, and in alternative electronic formats through Smashwords. It will shortly be available through other retailers including the Apple store, Barnes and Noble and Sony store.
If you read the story of Tom, Andi and Liam I hope you enjoy it. Please let me know.
