The new book.

This is my latest, a short novel set during WW1 and related to my best selling historical saga: The Prairie Companions. The characters are fictionalised versions of my own grandparents.

The title is based on a curious set of facts about my real name. (David Rory O’Neill is a required pen name. My actual name ‘David Moody’ happens to be already used by a popular horror writer.)

David is Hebrew and can mean: Beloved. Moody is an old Anglo-Saxon name derived from Muddyman. That means a professional warrior. My father and grandfather were both David and both served in world wars.

Thus: Beloved Warrior

Niche Marketing.

The cover.

Some time ago while sitting on a sea cliff looking at the utterly astonishing Skellig Islands, I fell to pondering what motivated men to build a monastery on these remote rocks around the year 650. That fascination led to an imaginative story called Skellig Testament. An historically accurate but fictional first person account of one of the monks who built that monastic retreat.

It had always been my intention to market this book locally in the Skellig Experience Visitors Center and other local outlets. There will be no eBook version and I will not market it elsewhere although it will be available through Amazon and the Createspace shop.

I will continue to look for interesting niche markets like this to sell work aimed at a small audience. That audience may later read some of my back catalog and that will be an added bonus.

Another genre buster!

The latest novella.

My first venture into new genre is out now. It was meant to be straight Erotica but it turns out I can’t be as blatantly commercial as I thought. The novella ended up with greater depth than is normal in this genre. So it’s ‘Literary romantic erotica’ and yes I know that genre is not on Amazon but it’s what this work is.

It’s only $1.99 so hardly a great risk for the reader.

News.

The first of my novels to be put out with my new publisher: bookbaby, is now out at retailers: Surviving Beauty. This is the second edition and has been much improved with the help of my editorial assistant: Miriam. Gratitude and sincere thanks go to her.

The next in the Daniel series: Daniel’s Grip, number five, is with my previous publisher and should be out before Christmas. Then all future work will be with bookbaby.

I have some sponsorship/advertising due for The Prairie Companions. I will be interested to see if this gets me noticed and produces some much needed sales. I am strangely reluctant to do self-promotion and a brief foray into Twitter was a deeply unpleasant experience never to be repeated. Blogging is fine but very few visit this page. How does one get traffic without distasteful self-promotion and disingenuous visiting of others blogs?

Oh well, back to the writing. I’ll forget sales and think only of the creative buzz.