Hello, readers.

A bit of an odd one coming from Hollow Stone Towers this week, but more on that anon.

I wanted to draw your attention to something astoundingly cool that I'm a part of, this week only. I don't tend to get involved in these 'book swap discount promos' that you see in an awful lot of newsletters these days, for one reason; I don't really trust a lot of the books you find in them. It's always galling to open up your promo before sharing it to your readers, who you care about deeply (and I do, dear reader), and find your book nestled alongside either a load of bare male chests, or some terrible AI generated artwork. Or, worse, AI generated bare male chests. I used to take part in a fair amount of them, but then I decided not to bother.

Until now.

The Deliciously Twisted Halloween Book Sale from Devil's Rock Publishing has been running for a good few years now, and this year I was lucky enough to be selected for what is, quite honestly, the best promo I've ever seen. I'm telling you now, you're going to want to hit this up and fill your e-reader with some dirt cheap horror brilliance.

32 books, including titles from Flame Tree Press, Eerie River, Sobelo Books, Raw Dog Screaming, and Blood, Guts and Story. Oh, and little old me, with Darkness Come Alive, which is discounted to only 99p/c for the next week only.

So who else is on board this thing? Well, check out this murderer's row:

• Briana Morgan

• Zach Bohannon

• S.Q. McGrath

• Catherine Cavendish

• John Everson

• Lucy A. Snyder

• Tim McGregor

• Michael A. Arnzen

• Dan Soule

• Daniel Willcocks

• Kev Harrison (hey, that cover looks familiar!)

• Dan Howarth (hey, so does that one!)

• Dave Jeffery

• Shelly Campbell

• Mark Towse

• Alan Baxter

And that's only half of the lineup! Quite honestly, you could fill up your e-reader for less than forty quid and not have to buy another book until next Halloween. In fact, that's exactly what you should do. If you can't find something incredible to read in this lot, I honestly don't know how to help you. Check it out now, the sale runs all week!

In other, Darkness Rises news, I'm pleased to report that non-Kindle readers can now get Darkness Come Alive, over at Kobo, Google Books, Apple Books, Barnes and Noble, and all the other bookstores (and at the low price of 99p/c for this week only!) And, all being well, you should be able to grab the pre-order for Dark Horse, the second book, which will land on all those stores this Thursday while you're there. That'll be followed next week by Blood on the Motorway. Make sure to follow me on each of those stores, and you'll get a new book each and every week.

Okay, so that's the good stuff. Now onto the bad.

Like most writers, I don't do this full time. Like most creatives, in fact, this book writing business of mine has to wrap itself around the demands of a full-time, unrelated career. I've been luckier than most in that my career has been pretty successful, to date. But I now, for the third time in that career, find myself staring redundancy in the face, and it's proper glowering at me, all menace and growl.

Now, I'm sure everything will be fine (he says, rocking back and forth in his chair, staring wide-eyed at the hellscape that is LinkedIn) but it is playing merry havoc with the great and grand plans that I've had over the past few months for a strategic pivoting of my author business, which I, ironically, had in the diary to tell you about this week. So, the chances are I'll be writing more about that in the coming weeks, once things are back on an even keel.

In the meantime, however, a small ask. Pretty soon these books will be my only income, so if you find yourself with a few quid left over after you've downloaded every single book in the Halloween promo, now would be an excellent time to pick up a book from Hollow Stone Press. You can find links to all my books over at the Hollow Stone Press website.

I'll be back next week with the launch of Season Six, and hopefully a boatload of other news about the future of Hollow Stone Press. In person events! A new direct bookstore! Other stuff!

In the meantime, happy reading, and make sure you suck all the value you can from the Halloween promo - sales like this don't come around too often.

Thanks

Paul.