Tag: D C Macey (page 1 of 2)

New book out now – Post Contact: Breaking Back.

Post Contact: Breaking Back.

I’m delighted to announce the publication of Post Contact: Breaking Back. This is the third book in the Post Contact series. As with the other books in the series, it’s available as an ebook and in print. I do hope you enjoy it.

Post Contact: Holding On

New book published today. I’m really pleased to confirm 30th November sees the publication of Post Contact: Holding On.

Post Contact: Holding On – available now

This second in series novel finds humanity beset at every turn and desperately clinging on. Now the threat to humanity is focused, unforgiving and truly alien.

Post Contact: Holding On is available in print or ebook via Amazon. Do take a look now, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading it. Here is a direct link to your local Amazon store: https://mybook.to/PCHoldingOn

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.

Hadrian’s Wall

Chesters Fort - cavalry quarters

Chesters Fort – cavalry quarters

I recently took a break from writing my third novel to make a research trip south to visit Hadrian’s Wall, which will play its part in an upcoming book. This was my first research trip away since visiting the River Wye earlier in the summer. It was nice to get away for a little while and it gave me a chance to think about where story ideas come from.

Clearly, there are memories to draw on and we are subject to many external stimuli every day. However, I have begun to notice how my mind is forever formulating strands of future stories even as I’m busy getting the current work written down. It seems, to some extent, that the act of writing is a key trigger for the generation of further ideas. All those scenes, characters and incidents that emerge through the writing but don’t quite fit into the current work are set to one side and gradually the mind starts to weave them into other quite separate stories.

And hence, the visit to Hadrian’s Wall – to ensure my memories of past visits were up to scratch and fitted with the now forming story ideas. The visit was enhanced when one of my brothers and his family made the journey north to link up for a meal there.

This trip was to part of the Northumberland section of Hadrian’s Wall. Here some of it is buried, while over the centuries other parts have been swiped to build roads and farmsteads. Yet, in spite of man and nature’s efforts, there’s plenty still to see. Most things were pretty much as I remembered them and I got to see exactly what I was looking for. There were stretches of pale grey wall, remnants of forts and barracks, the support buildings and, of course, the archetypal Roman road cutting straight through the landscape with no concessions to topography.

Chesters Fort - bath house

Chesters Fort – bath house

This section of the wall crosses areas of agricultural land dotted with farmhouses, the unchanging and beautiful environment of memory; though it quickly becomes bleak once winter takes a grip. Seen through modern eyes it’s certainly a benign place, if a little remote. Today, in these isolated landscapes, the remnants of Roman constructions are impressive. At the height of Rome’s power, these stone fortifications must have been perceived as awesome by a local population more used to wattle and daub huts.

Standing on a hillside amidst the excavated remains of the Chesters Roman Fort, just outside Chollerford, I was able to see across an unchanging landscape and my thoughts scrolled back nearly 2000 years: suddenly I could imagine other eyes looking at the same scene. Roman eyes – confident within the stone fortification, gazing out to where the hillside sloped quickly down into a little river valley. There, directly beneath the fort, the river eases gently into the shallows of a natural ford – a crossing point drawing trade and conflict. Here the Romans built a bridge. Those Roman eyes would have constantly scanned the far bank and the rising land beyond, searching for the men of the wild northern tribes. How often had the river here turned red with blood? Had my Roman fought in the river’s shallows, ridden out with his cavalry troop across the river and on into the wilderness? Had those Roman eyes died there, beyond the safety of the walls?

Chesters Fort - view to river

Chesters Fort – view to river

With my northern heritage, it was just as easy to stand on the far bank and imagine tribal eyes looking back across the river towards the Roman fort. Angry eyes looking at Hadrian’s Wall, resentful of its intrusion into their landscape and at its representations of wealth and power and exclusion.

 A little behind the wall, the Romans built up the infrastructure that underpinned their strength. The roads and support bases like Vindolanda from where reinforcements and stores of every kind could be quickly dispatched to the wall. And such places would probably have provided the R&R that legionnaires would need following periods of service patrolling the wall.

Temple of Mithras

Temple of Mithras

Finally, I took in a little place set just back from the frontline. Here, isolated and exposed to the elements was the remains of a temple dedicated to Mithras. A god worshiped by many Roman soldiers. The site of the abandoned little temple with its weathered stone imagery seemed to illustrate exactly that nothing lasts forever. It was a stark reminder that even the greatest and most powerful of systems eventually come to dust. Inevitably, all their buildings and conceits gradually fading away, lost amidst mankind’s constant struggle with today. Then, from that moment of really quite sad reflection came a little flash of light. What had they left behind? Was there something here? Something still to find?

Altar at the Temple of Mithras

Altar at the Temple of Mithras

I left the Wall with a gentle buzz of excitement, well satisfied I had seen what was needed for now. It’s safe to say that over the years the United Kingdom has built up its fair share of secrets, yet Rome ruled much of this island for longer than the United Kingdom we know has existed – those Romans must have built up quite a store of secrets in their time too, some lost forever, some still waiting to be found. And that certainly does offer up some interesting possibilities.

 

The Temple Scroll

The Temple Scroll is my second novel and I’m delighted that it’s now available to readers through all the planned channels.

The Temple Scroll

The Temple Scroll

There has been a little delay in announcing the official release while all the channels were harmonised. Happily, everything is now in line and I’m certain the few extra days wait have been worth it.

This second book in The Temple series has been a real pleasure to write. Looking over it now, I’m very happy with the way pacing, action and some scary parts weave together as the narrative flows towards its conclusion.

Now it’s out, I’m particularly looking forward to learning what readers think, and that will be very useful while I’m busy writing the third book, which I’m really excited about too. If you would like to express an opinion or ask a question, please do feel free to send me a message via the contact facility on www.dcmacey.com.

Thanks to you all for your support. Best wishes,

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

 

 

Edinburgh Festival 2016

It’s Festival time again and as usual, there’s Lots to see and do – it’s looking really exciting.

Edinburgh International Book Festival 2016 - Programme

Edinburgh International Book Festival 2016 – Programme

After a hectic few weeks, there’s finally a bit of time to take the foot of the gas and enjoy the festivals. And like every year, there’s so much to take in it’s going to be impossible to see even a fraction of the shows and events that catch the eye.

I’m mainly focusing on two areas this year, the Book Festival and the Festival Fringe – including some comedy and two or three exhibitions that look really interesting.

I’ve already organised tickets for some Book Festival events. There are several writers who I think are going to give really interesting talks. The Book Festival always has such a good atmosphere that I’ll be dropping in to visit on other occasions too, just to wander about and soak it all in – maybe take in one or two extra events in the process. I’ll look forward to passing on some observations as the Book Festival plays through.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2016 - Programme

Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2016 – Programme

It’s a similar approach for the Fringe Festival. With so many shows on offer, it’s almost a fulltime job just to study the programme. Edinburgh is such a big event that just about every well-known comedian and performer turns up to do a gig at some point. So I’ve booked up a couple of shows that we know we’ll enjoy. Then plan to follow the performance reviews as they’re published to see what’s catching attention – to pick out something extra to see. Finally, we’ll mix in a bit of pot luck, just drop in and take what’s on offer.

Should be lots of fun. I highly recommend the whole experience. If you haven’t been before just try it. Follow the links to check out the programmes. There really is plenty of choice with lots to suit every conceivable taste.

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