Tag: Edinburgh

The Temple Series

The Temple Legacy – making #1 in its Amazon.com categories

One of the biggest problems faced by independent authors is achieving visibility in a very busy international marketplace. It’s tough, though I have been happy with the progress made during the past couple of years. Even so, following publication of The Temple Deliverance, the fourth book in the series, I decided to try a little extra promotional push at the start of the summer.

The goal was to raise awareness of my work amongst more readers in both the UK and USA. The particular focus was on the first book in the series, The Temple Legacy, using the BookBub advertising platform for the main thrust of a discount promotion campaign.

The results surpassed my highest hopes. I am really delighted with the outcome. The Temple Legacy made number one in two separate categories at Amazon.com during the promotion.

 The Temple Legacy’s achievement as badged on Amazon.com:

This post is written in large part to express my gratitude to all those readers who previously chanced upon my writing and were prepared to invest their time in reading the novels. Thank you, your early commitment provided the encouragement that supported my writing of the full series.

Thank you too, to all those many, many readers who chose to engage with my recent publicity drive; you propelled The Temple Legacy to number one in its categories at Amazon.com, the world’s biggest online bookstore – brilliant.

and

Still savouring the pleasure of seeing The Temple Legacy hit number one spot in its Amazon.com bookshop categories, I chanced upon another Amazon.com nugget that truly delighted me. This is something that might not happen too often – perhaps only with the frequency of lightning striking twice. So I was pleased to snatch the freeze frame shown below.

On one day only, in Amazon.com’s Most Popular Author Rank – Action & Adventure Category, D.C. Macey and the Temple Series were placed at 25, ranked above George R.R. Martin with his Game of Thrones series at 26!


I have been absolutely thrilled at the response to my marketing and publicity push of late June/early July and intend to undertake some further promotional activities soon. In the meantime, I’m very much aware there is more writing to be done. I hope my next work will prove of interest to readers too – more on that later.

Once again, a sincere thank you to all readers, old and new.

With my very best wishes. D.C.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Temple Deliverance

 

I’m delighted to announce that The Temple Deliverance is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

Do take a look at this fourth book in The Temple series at your regular Amazon store. You can place a pre-order there now to ensure your copy of The Temple Deliverance is automatically delivered to you on 6th April – the novel’s general release day.

United States: Amazon.com

United Kingdom: Amazon.co.uk

Australia: Amazon.com.au

Canada: Amazon.ca

 

 

 

 

The Temple Covenant -Pre-order & Publication

The Temple Covenant Cover

I’m delighted to report that The Temple Covenant, book 3 of The Temple series, is now on pre-order with Amazon and you can access it right now from here. Just follow the link to your home Amazon store:

 

 Amazon.com customers: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BNPQFF9

Amazon.co.uk customers: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07BNPQFF9

Amazon.au customers: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07BNPQFF9

Amazon.ca customers: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07BNPQFF9

 

The Temple Covenant will be released on 7th April and I’m looking forward to seeing it go live. Please do have a look now, and remember, when you pre-order The Temple Covenant eBook it will be delivered directly to your reading device on publication day – once ordered there are no further actions required and no fuss.

Over the next few days, I’ll be busy checking over the finishing touches to the print book version and it will be available for order a few days after the Amazon eBook goes live. The Apple iBook and Kobo release will follow in sequence a little after that. Then it’s straight on with book 4, which I’m very excited about and hope to see released towards the end of the year.

I do hope you enjoy The Temple Covenant and thanks to you all for having taken the time to read my previous works. Thanks too, for all the kind messages of support I have received along the way, they are all very much appreciated and truly treasured.

With best wishes,

D.C.

The Temple Covenant

The Temple Covenant

MYSTERIES UNRESOLVED

What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book? It’s a question put to me recently at the Goodreads website and it brought to mind an incident from the past.

Years ago, a seemingly bizarre incident occurred in West Lothian, the next county along from my home. It caught my attention and I followed the news reports with fascination. A local man had reported an alien encounter that involved his being overcome and rendered unconscious. The cynical might immediately have filed it under the too much to drink and late home without a good reason category. However, the events occurred during the working day, there was no drink involved, and there appeared to be evidence to corroborate the man’s claim.

At the time, the event made news all around the globe and caused quite a buzz, but as with all news, it quickly faded from the headlines. Nonetheless, it remained an intriguing incident. Many years later, I revisited it as a documentary producer. Sceptic I may be, but having done the research there did appear to be something of a mystery underlying the incident.

It was the only such event in the UK ever to have been investigated by the police as a crime, which immediately set it apart from other reports. I spent a lot of time trawling through the archives to get a proper handle on the event. Then more time tracking down those involved – which was not easy so long after the event.

Eventually, persistence paid off. I managed to secure access to all the key people involved: the police investigator, the police forensic scientist, the doctor and a number of others including the victim’s work colleagues and most importantly the victim himself. As the contributors’ evidence was assessed, it gradually became apparent that unlike many other such claims this story had some real substance to it.

The incident is explored in a standard 30-minute documentary programme and I posted a version on YouTube a while back – having first split it into three episodes to work round YouTube’s 10-minute play length restriction.

Here are the YouTube links to the three parts of the documentary:

 

Do watch the programme and draw your own conclusions. All I know is each person involved on the day of the incident was entirely convincing during our extended interviews, and they were certain that something inexplicable had happened that day. None of the contributors had anything to gain from what they said during the interviews and all were respected members of their communities and professions.

So, that incident is certainly a big mystery and while you’ll need to make up your own mind about the balance of probabilities, it undoubtedly represents the core around which a good and perhaps quite frightening plot could be built.

There’s another related mystery that offers an entirely different plot theme, which some might consider equally as sinister. At the time of making the programme, I wrote to the Ministry of Defence with a freedom of information request about the incident. Yes, the MOD actually had a UFO recording and investigation section.

The MOD wrote back to say they had neither records nor knowledge of the incident. Really? This incident featured in all the newspapers, headlined on the radio and television news and uniquely was the subject of a full-scale police investigation. Really? The MOD had simply missed it? Particularly odd when you consider the incident took place just a few miles from key defence assets such as the British Army’s then Scottish Division HQ, and the Royal Navy’s Rosyth Naval Base. It happened at the height of the Cold War, at that time anything odd occurring around such facilities was necessarily logged and monitored. That the MOD had no record of the incident was a mystery within a mystery.

I don’t understand what triggered the initial event, though having met the people involved and thereafter devoted many weeks to study the interview tapes and supporting evidence, I am quite sure all the contributors told the truth, as they understood it – it really is a mystery.

As for the MOD having no knowledge of the incident? It’s just as inexplicable, and almost as impossible to understand, unless some files are too sensitive even to acknowledge they exist. Perhaps there are secret files kept outside the filing system in a place where they can never be unearthed by inquisitive researchers. In any event, one thing is certain, the MOD must have learnt of the incident at that time. Why they chose not to log it or where they actually logged it, and why it appears to remain too secret to acknowledge, only the Ministry of Defence knows.

Edinburgh Lighting up for the Festive Season.

Greetings from Edinburgh.

Princes Street Gardens

Princes Street Gardens

The Dome in George Street

The Dome in George Street

Edinburgh Castle

Edinburgh Castle

Floodlit Edinburgh Castle, apparently in festive red. On the other hand, perhaps the castle commandant has just read the Temple Legacy.

My best wishes and thanks to everyone for your support over the past year. Hoping the holidays turn out well for you all and I’m looking forward to sharing more stories in the coming year.

 Happy Christmas.

DCM

The Party’s Over – again

Festival Crowds

Festival Crowds

Well, August has come and gone. Once again, it’s been a hectic time. The great atmosphere in Edinburgh during the summer festival period never fails to delight – for residents and visitors alike. As in previous years, I’ve spent plenty of time soaking up the atmosphere and attending a wide variety of events.

 

Actors canvas in the Royal Mile

Actors canvas in the Royal Mile

I’ve been to a range of shows, mostly comedy, including some stand up and all great fun. I also took the opportunity to revisit the Celts Exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland – a building that plays a significant part in my first novel, The Temple Legacy.

National Museum of Scotland

National Museum of Scotland

 As might be expected, I’ve made several visits to the Book Festival – some for specific events and on other occasions just to browse around and get a coffee. Its location is really convenient, set in Charlotte Square Gardens at the very heart of the New Town.

 Book Festival

Hats off to the Book Festival, it really takes engaging with younger readers very seriously. Providing lots of good age appropriate events and safe areas for younger children makes it so much easier for families to visit. And with such a wide variety of offerings in the programme, it would be almost impossible for any reader not to find things to enjoy. Talks and engagements were on offer from a wide range of authors who between them seemed to span every theme and genre. Then there were experts giving insights into science, the future, history, business and politics – everything. It has been a really rich and varied programme that offered something new for every taste, every day.

Some high points for me included talks and readings by friends. At the Blackwell’s Writers at the Fringe event, Toni Jenkins gave a great insight into her novel The Sender. On another afternoon, I joined others in the Book Festival’s Spiegeltent where Sarah Eakin was reading as part of the Story Shop event. The author of Wed, White & Blue, Sarah’s seamless delivery was very impressive.   

Sarah Eakin

Sarah Eakin

Of the other events I took in, all were fascinating and met or exceeded my expectations while often providing unexpected insights that have got me thinking about aspects of my own work. These included events on both fiction and nonfiction.

Kate Summerscale’s writing is renowned for lifting the lid on true historical crime incidents. She talked about her research methods, story selection and her latest book The Wicked Boy. Her use of creative narrative to bring real events back to life always provides new insight, knowledge and entertainment. Her new book explores an incident of matricide during the Victorian era to offer an insight into human character and experience. Of course, it explores a shocking crime, the consequent punishment and, eventually, perhaps even some form of redemption.

Well done to Scottish crime writer Val McDermitt who did a great job of interviewing Kate Summerscale and directing the course of the event.

Kate Summerscale

Kate Summerscale

One of my favourite historical fiction writers is Conn Iggulden so I was delighted to take the opportunity to see him at this year’s Book Festival. Having delivered several series of novels, his range of writing is clearly very impressive. With equal success, he’s explored Rome and the world of Julius Caesar, the emergence of the Mongol super power under Genghis Khan and, more recently, the Wars of the Roses. Ostensibly, his session at the Book Festival was to consider the tensions and processes involved in drawing a series to a close. But his talk, both on topic and the frequent asides, was such good entertainment value that I’m sure I would have been happy whatever his focus.

Conn Iggulden

Conn Iggulden

Another summer festival season has come to an end but that’s never it in the Festival City. There’s always something else coming up on the horizon and it won’t be long before there’s something new to see.

Festival Street Crowds

Festival Street Crowds

 

 

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