From today, for a fortnight, I’m running a Goodreads Giveaway, which means that one lucky person has the chance of winning a paperback copy of my newly published novel, Noah Padgett and the Dog-People.
The Giveaway ends at midnight on September 28, but don’t leave it to the last moment. Enter the draw now, before you forget.
This novel is aimed at anyone aged 10-18+, so you might like to win a copy either for yourself or for a child you know.
I hope that dog-lovers in particular will love this quirky and exciting adventure story, which I had such fun writing.
I’m so excited and a little bit nervous. The big day has arrived. It’s adventure time for twelve-year-old Noah Padgett and his chocolate Labrador puppy, Bluebell. With one click of a link they’ve landed themselves in the Zyx-dimension, where the predominate species is Canis sapiens. These intelligent dog-people view the boy and his puppy as mutants and alien collectibles, forcibly separating them and putting both their lives in peril. Will they survive, or won’t they?
Not telling. You’ll need to read my book to find out.
For readers aged 10-18+, this is a story for all the family.
Harry Potter had a magic wand at his disposal, but Noah Padgett must survive by his wits alone.
Noah Padgett and the Dog-People is available to buy from Amazon (Paperback & Kindle Editions).
Fingers crossed, official publication day forNoah Padgett and theDog-People is set for Friday, 9th September, although I might have a soft launch a couple of days earlier to marry up the paperback and kindle editions on a single Amazon Product page. With my début novel, Desiccation, I had to email Amazon to ask them to do this, despite the fact that it’s meant to happen automatically. Such is life.
Before things go live, I’d appreciate a little feedback on my product description for Amazon and/or your votes in a 24-hour poll.
I’m happy with the four sentences below that are a replica of the blurb on the back cover of the paperback edition, but please let me know if there are any glaring errors that I’ve missed. I’m also happy with the Audience Guidelines, which will go at the foot of the blurb.
The area that I need help with, is deciding which of the two excerpts from the novel would work best as a prefix to the blurb. In other words, the excerpt is the first thing a prospective customer will see, so it needs to draw them into looking at the rest of the description, encourage them to read the sample pages in the “Look inside” feature on the product page, and then buy the novel.
I’ve decided to market this novel under the main category of Juvenile Fiction/Animals/Dogs and the secondary category of Juvenile Action and Adventure. The reason for not marketing it under Fantasy, is because there isn’t a Juvenile category for “General Fantasy”, only “Fantasy and Magic”. Noah may have many attributes, but magic isn’t among them. He has to survive by his wits, not the waving of a wand!
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The Blurb
Noah Padgett’s new stepmother Kate treats him as the worst inconvenience in the world and wants him to disappear out of her life, along with the nuisance puppy that his father bought him for his birthday. Her wish comes true, although too fast for her to notice.
Mad entrepreneur Monsieur Percival Poodle is the self-appointed ruler of Zyx, a dimension where Canis sapiens is the predominant species. Percival likes to collect alien specimens, and two of them have just arrived in his dimension from Earth. One is a primitive four-legged chocolate Labrador and the other a human boy.
Mercenary Lurcher Sergeant Salt works for the highest bidder and makes it his policy to extract maximum profit from jobs. This means selling his alien captives separately, however much distress it causes them.
Fate has already stolen Noah’s beloved mum from him, replacing her with a stepmother from hell. Now it seems that Fate has struck again and stolen Noah’s beloved puppy, leaving him to languish in a high security hospital for criminally insane Canis sapiens, with no apparent means of escape.
Audience Guidelines
Average Grade level 6
Readability fairly easy
Younger Middle Grade Advanced Readers (aged 8/9)
Upper Middle Grade/Lower Young Adult (aged 10-13)
Older teenagers and adults who enjoy reading children’s fiction
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The Excerpts
A. The hall clock strikes midnight. Noah counts its chimes from one to twelve. He tells himself the ravenous clouds are just a preview to a fantasy game: that there’s no harm in checking things out.
He clicks the link.
B. Witheverybeatofhisheart,hisyearninggrowsforhome,orratherforrandomthingstodowithhiscity.Thesoundofseagulls,swishingwaves,andagale-forcewindwhippingflagsaboutpoles;thesmellandtasteofsalt;slimygreenrock-poolsfullofcrabs;oldshells; vinegary fishandchipswrappedinpaperandeatenoutinthefreshair;hotpavements;shimmeringroads;cyclingthroughtrafficjams;thestinkofpetrolanddieselfumeslockedinaheathaze: anythingotherthanthissterilewhitenessanddeepsilence,broken on and off by muffled dog barks.
Lest my dear blogging friends are feeling somewhat neglected of late, I’ve been lost in another dimension ruled by Canissapiens.
This has made a change from fighting giant inter-dimensional woodlice (pill bugs) in a girls boarding school, as in my science fantasy novel Desiccation.
Please bear with me a little longer, while I finish checking through the proof copy of Noah Padgett and the Dog-People, which is an upper-middle grade crossover children’s fantasy novel.
It’s quirky, of course!
Recently, when I suggested it was time that I wrote something straight-genre and non-quirky, a few people reacted along the lines of “being normal is just not you“. I’m hoping they meant this as a compliment.
Under acknowledgements in my canine novel, it says, “Thank you to my husband, Victor, for designing the book cover and surviving the experience”. In fact we only had one argument (not that heated) about the choice of font and its size; especially the latter, when it started out too small to read easily as an online thumbnail image.
My official launch will be in the early part of September. I will confirm the date shortly, plus whet your appetites with a preview of the blurb.
Isa Maxwell’s second adventure proves to be even more entertaining than the first and decidedly more dangerous. This time, the dippy but well-intentioned blonde, having made oodles of money from writing a book, embarks on a trip to India to use some of her wealth to help the poor and dispossessed, plus a supposedly down-on-his-luck prince.
On her flight out to India, Isa meets the glamorous and bejewelled Vivian, who seems like best-friend material at first acquaintance. [Anything further about this relationship would be a spoiler, so my lips are sealed.]
Isa’s arrival in Delhi is a total culture shock. Noise, fumes, chaos, locals haggling for business, police corruption, Indian mafia activities, you name it, Isa finds it, or it finds her. It’s as if her naïvety, combined with good-heartedness, acts as a magnet to those looking for easy pickings. But to underestimate Isa’s ability to pull out all the stops (albeit with plentiful blunders on the way), is to assume that she isn’t capable of great ingenuity when it comes to survival.
Shizzle, Inc (Isa Maxwell Escapades Book 1) was primarily comedy chic-lit, but Indiot is a thriller with OTT elements that amount to comedy of the variety that makes you cover your face or clutch your head as you wonder if things can get any worse for Isa. It would make a great comedy thriller movie, and the fact that I kept seeing it as such, says a great deal about Ana Spoke’s ability to paint an extremely vivid picture of India as seen very much through her central protagonist’s eyes: the idealistic outsider learning the hard way about an alien culture.
Ana Spoke gave me an advance copy of Indiot in exchange for an honest review, although my apologies to the author for not making it until nearly a week after publication day. I actually read the novel in two sittings, which says much about its ability to grip the reader’s attention.The only negative to me–and it’s only something small–was that I felt that there could be a little more about Isa’s relationship with Mr Hue and with her friend Harden in Book 1. This was necessary both as a recap for those who read the previous novel soon after it came out (about 9 months ago), as well as to anyone who picked up Book 2 first and read it as a standalone. So, everybody, read both novels, and read them in the right order.
And when you reach the end of Indiot, I can pretty much guarantee that Ana Spoke will have left you dying to read Isa Maxwell’s Escapade Book 3.
This is an author whose writing gets better and better…
From today, for a fortnight, I’m running a Goodreads Giveaway, which means that one lucky person has the chance of winning a paperback copy of my newly published novel, Noah Padgett and the Dog-People.
Sarah Potter Writes 