Smashwords Debut

Lots of people have talked to me about Smashwords over the years but I’ve never got a roundtooit and gone to look … til now. Aside – I’m sure you know roundtooits are somewhat rarer than hen’s teeth or unicorn shit!

Whatever, I’m there at last and (as usual) sort of by accident. To do self-publishing you have to get your head around some weird-sound stuff like Book Funnel and Draft2Digital, as well as KDP, in order to get your books into the right format, especially for eBooks. D2D (Draft2Digital) is the one that’s dragged me into the 21^st century and so onto Smashwords.

Now I’m actually here it looks quite useful, both for me-the-author and me-the-reader, and offers me all sorts of deals. And it’s now offering me a special deal on Dancing with a Daemon – you can get it on Smashwords for just 99c American – so hopefully that will entice more people to have a read.

I so enjoyed writing that book, all the uphill slogs and the downhill roller-coasters that books take you through as they get you to write them! Many authors say their book are the boss while they’re writing them and that certainly goes for me. Right from the beginning the place and/or the character sneak up on me and keep harassing me until I get my act together to write them and they won’t let me off the hook. Indeed, I’ve got a bookcase full of them all haranguing me to be next in the queue to be my WIP (work in progress).

But Daemon was very special, still is. It wanted to be about the problems of gaslighting. That’s a psychological problem whereby a person gets taken over by another and made to do just what that other wants. This happens so often through love, the person usually has no idea they’re being gaslighted until something awful happens and then they get the shock of their lives.

I had several clients when I was practising transpersonal psychotherapy full time in this place. They came to me often having been told badly by a friend that they were being gaslighted, refusing to believe it but, at the same time, sensing something is wrong. Walking them through and out the other side of this experience is hard and dangerous work, it would be so easy for me to have damaged them further. But it gave me a wealth of experience to use in the story.

I’m not telling you much more about it or I’ll be giving away spoilers but I will say … just imagine how it could be if you were gaslighted by someone with superb magical abilities. Scary … yes very. And if part of the issue was that had just found your soulmate.

Hmmm … sounds like a boiling cauldron about to boil over!

Yes, Dancing with a Daemon is all that, and a full on passionate love story too.

I’d love you to read it, and give me a review, and it looks like Smashwords is offering you a very good deal to do just that.

How about it? will you have a read and then write up what you feel about the book?

• Trigger warning: there’s beautiful explicit sex in there and some nasty violence, all very necessary to the story, so take care if you find that difficult.

Here’s the Smashwords link.

PS – I’m two-thirds deep into the sequel to Daemon – Hollowbone – and hope it will be out in the new year. In the meantime if you sign up for my Celtic Noir Readers Club you’ll be able to get a free sample copy of the first 3 chapters to whet your appetite 😊