KID ATOMIC is FREE on Kindle and KINDLE adjuncts (IPADS, PC'S, IPOD's etc) on BOXING DAY FOR 24 HOURS
(That's the 26th of December for you guys over the ocean?)
Notes:
a) Kid Atomic as approximately 100,000 words long.
b) It is set in Nottingham City Centre and Sherwood.
c) It is the third book ever written by Mark Barry, though, for weird reasons, it is Green Wizard 1
d) It is suitable for all to download
e) It took approximately thirty days to write in late November and December 2011.
f) Chronologically, it was written after Green Wizard best seller, Ultra Violence so I wrote for nearly two months straight. Then I started on The Ritual...
g) It has arguably the best Dark Dawn Creations cover - certainly, the artist thinks so.
Progressive Kid
Do you like Progressive Music? Tangerine Dream? Genesis? Yes? That kind of thing? When I first started writing for Green Wizard, I had a major Prog burst which lasted about a month. I listened to nothing but Prog and if you like Prog - and I'm not sure how many people do nowadays - you'll like the music Kevin and the Box discuss in "Kid Atomic" which is free all day, on Kindle, on Boxing Day.
Boxing Day?
For everyone else apart from British readers, Boxing Day is December 26th, the day after Christmas Day - possibly the biggest single day of sport in the British calendar.
Stultified and unhinged by the dreadful claustrophobia of Christmas Day, the British - all classes, all creeds - get out of the house before they start to eat each other in some bizarre approximation of the Donner Party. They go out in the fresh air and do something, weather permitting.
Seven Million: Apparently, Boxing Day is big for Kindles too. Seven million e-readers will be unwrapped around firesides on Christmas Day worldwide this year.
And when the hangover has abated, the Irritable Bowel Syndrome soothed after too much brandy butter, and the teeth chattering psychosis inspired by demented Uncle Norman's scabby bottomed farting has left the building, you will feel like downloading an e-book on your new kindle. Allegedly.
Admittedly, 90% of you will download one of these categories:
a) Vampire.
b) Romance.
c) Erotica.
ca) Erotic vampire fiction.
d) Non fiction.
e) Horror
f) Andy McNab-style True War tales.
g) Prepping.
...in other words all the cheap paperback stuff you can buy in the WalMart when you carry out your weekly shopping.
So far, so good if you happen to write one of these ubiquitous genres. If you are any good, you must be quids in.
But that still leaves over 700,000 readers who will want to buy something different.
Meet the Indielit Stepfamily
Contemporary fiction, for example - the bastard, one eyed, adopted and shunned child of the Indielit family.
Comedy Fiction - the insane aunt you lock in the attic and hope sleeps through Christmas. And most of next year.
Historical Fiction- the albino cousin who doesn't even get invited to the Christmas Party nowadays.
and even better
Original fiction Innovative fiction. New stuff.
(Julian Barnes, "A Sense of an Ending". A masterpiece.
Magnus Mills:"The Restraint of Beasts"
"Warm Bodies")
When was the last time you got excited about a Fight Club-style innovation?
Do you remember when Chuck Palahniuk wrote "Fight Club"? Do you remember how excited you felt reading that? Wow. How different was that?
So tell me: When was the last time you bought an Indielit book and felt it was original? Never mind well written, formatted, edited, with a good cover. All the stuff they tell you about in e-book writing 101 guides.
But original. I can't think of any to be honest.
I'm not complaining. Many Indies sell in copious quantities. Well done to them. One of my friend's friends sold 28,000 copies of her e-novel in November.
Bearing in mind that this author writes in the number one category - vampire fiction - do we really need innovation? Do Indieliterates need to innovate?
Let's just write about slinky, brunette, gorgeous, looking succubi and handsome, slightly effeminate, pasty faced Lords of the Night. Let us parrot the established authors. Let's follow the winners.
Shall we?
Or is there a spirit of innovation out there.
Anyway, I digress. As bloody usual.
Kid Atomic
Kid Atomic was an attempt to innovate the YA genre, to fuse old fashioned storytelling techniques, while adding young people.
It's a story of two young University students who are sent to London by a revolutionary group occupying the Market Square in Nottingham. They are asked to bring back items for a forthcoming demonstration which they hope will bring Nottingham to its knees.
Young and inexperienced - and frankly, not all that bothered about revolutions - they are duped by nasty Euro-terrorists into bringing back an extra box. A trunk decorated with a bright orange Phoenix.
Things happen and the extra box ends up in a suburban garage. One of the young men - in homage to stories of nagging curiosity such as Pandora's Box and Bluebeard's Castle - develops a fixation with the box.
As his life begins to unravel, and as everyone in the world starts hunting for the box - he realises that to open the box or not is the biggest decision he will ever make.
Except the decision whether to actually use what's in it.
Freebie
I'm giving the book away free because I would like people's opinion.
I love the characters in this book. Kevin is suitably geeky, tall and awkward. I think I got his vulnerability just right. Ricky is cheeky and streetwise and clever beyond his years. Rachel, based on an incredible self-shot I found on Tumblr, is vulnerable, beautiful, clever, kind and loyal.
You can't help but fall in love with her - many female readers feel she is the best character in the book.
Lance, the villain, is detestable and you will want him to fail. Horribly too. You will want Lance to burn.
There are a gang of Panther-style revolutionaries bent on civic destruction. There is a toady faced PHD student with a bad case of eczema and jealousy of good looking people. There is a jolly Harry Worth-style councillor who becomes curious himself.
A beautiful Mum we all wished we had. One of those you won't find dressed up mutton-stylee chatting up boys young enough to be their sons in the Essoldo on a Saturday night.
Typically, the Police are nasty and/or incompetent, except for the mysterious, shadowy Scotsman, who works it all out.
The country is on the brink of a social revolution due to David Cameron's bizarrely oppressive Coalition government - a government now carrying out attacks on civil liberties and the environment that the demonic Thatcher wouldn't have dreamed of trying - because as the French now say, the British are no longer Les Rosbifs - they have become bovine, ripe for the slaughter. Old Etonian child Camoron knows this. (So he strikes...)
All this is in there.
And I guarantee there is no book written in this country in the last two decades which has a conversation about Tangerine Dream's classic synthscape "Rubycon".
Give it a go. It will cost you nothing for 24 hours and I shall authograph it for you and answer any questions.
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Mark Barry at Green Wizard. :-)
___________________________
Heard on the Hell Bus from Southwell to Nottingham yesterday morning.
Two thirteen year old girls painting each others nails in their leggings and Vans, talking about an incident at school, and on their way to buy Christmas presents in the town.
Girl One. "So I said, like, like, like and stuff. Like, I did this, like, like, like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like and stuff, Oh My God, like I was like, like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, so, then I says, like like, like like, like and then, like, I said to her, like, like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like and stuff and then I like,
shouted at her, OH MY GOD, like, like like, like like, like like, and I was like OH MY GOD, and she says, like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, I got SO flippin angry and then I, like said, like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like....flippin maths...I know, I know... like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like like, like and stuff..."
Girl two. "Hold still, you're, like, spilling the nail varnish."
