RESTORATION is available now - but what's it all about?

"As an uncle, I want to say I hope Oscar will start on his healing process as he walks down the path of restoration. As a family we are ready to support and guide Oscar as he serves his sentence." - Arnold Pistorius. 

RESTORATION (also referred to as 8RESTORATION) is the 8th and final narrative in the Oscar Pistorius Murder Trial eBook Series. Written over the first three weeks of December 2014, before and after the state's successful application for Appeal, the authors examine a brand new narrative theme. 

RESTORATION, in sum, seeks to interrogate hope in the face of #B$. How do we maintain course, how do we break out of the jails of our own making (even when these have become our home) and what gets us to change course when our world is far from perfect (and so are we)? 

Over the course of the RESTORATION narrative, the authors - van der Leek and Wilson - draw on all their resources to tie the remaining loose ends together. No stone is left unturned; no character in the familiar cast is spared their scrutiny. The result: 

HERE BE DRAGONS! 

Unusually, in their analysis of the Heads of Argument (HOA) Gerrie Nel is targeted for dropping the baton in several instances whilst his courtroom adversary, Barry Roux, is ushered into an even harsher spotlight. Carl Pistorius, Oscar's pious brother [aka 'Titanium Hulk'] is also placed under a magnifying glass and tested for #B$. 

Although the authors intended to touch lightly on evidence and unanswered questions, their investigations were so fruitful the majority of the RESTORATION narrative is 'all about Oscar'. Only towards the final chapters do the authors graduate the narrative away from secret whatsapp messages and updated scenarios to take the narrative outside, deep into the heart of the mountain. 

Highlights include: 
- the startling similarities between Dewani and Oscar's plea statements 
- an in-depth study of the crime scene 
- a much deeper contextualisation of social media and other communications 
- a re-examination of motive 
- a re-examination of what Oscar was actually thinking at the time he fired those shots 

Doors will be blasted open, and in the still floating debris, the reader will be asked to walk on through the smoke to the other side. Do you dare? 

Order your copy of RESTORATION here.

#RS Audio Background

The Soundcloud clips below are unedited raw whatsapp communiques between the co-authors over the course of setting up the #RS narrative. #RS is available on Amazon.com on 21/11/2014 Listen to TRANSCENDENCE audio background here.

COMING SOON...#RS...

#RS, the 7th book in the series will be available as an Amazon Kindle ebook on 21 November.

The first 7 people to share this on Twitter (cc @HiRezLife and @lisawJ13 ) win a free copy. Please start using #RS to help us generate some interest...

The first 7 to share this post on Facebook win free copies of RESTORATION which is the 8th and last in the series (available in 2015). Add https://www.facebook.com/NickvanderLeek and https://www.facebook.com/lisa.wilson.775 before you do.  

Thanks for your interest, your reviews, your feedback, thanks for reading and thanks for caring and remembering...this is how we show humanity to our fellow human beings...and how we turn Reeva's tragic death into something life affirming...something positive we can all come together and share in.

The promise is broken, you go on living It steals something from down in your soul, Every day it just gets harder to live, The dream you're believing in #RS

"The Promise"

Johnny works in a factory
Billy works downtown
Terry works in a rock and roll band
Looking for that million dollar sound

I got a job down in Darlington
Some nights I don't go
Some nights I go to the drive-in
Some nights I stay home

I followed that dream
Just like those guys do way up on the screen
Drove my Challenger down Route 9
Through the dead ends and all the bad scenes
The promise was broken
Cashed in a few of my dreams

Well I built that Challenger by myself
But I needed money and so I sold it
Lived a secret I should've kept to myself
But I got drunk one night and I told it

All my life, I fought that fight
The fight that you can't win
Every day it just gets harder to live
The dream you're believing in

Thunder Road, baby, you were so right
Thunder Road, something dying down on the highway tonight

Well I won big once and I hit the coast
Yeah, but I paid the cost
Inside I felt like I was carrying the broken spirits
Of all the other ones who lost

The promise is broken, you go on living
It steals something from down in your soul
When the truth is spoken, it don't make no difference
Something in your heart goes cold

I followed that dream through the southwestern tracks
That dead ends in the two-bit bars
The promise was broken, I was far away from home
Sleeping in the back seat of a borrowed car

Thunder Road is for the lost lovers and all the fixed games
Thunder Road is for the tires rushing by in the rain
Thunder Road me and Billy we'd always sing
Thunder Road, take it all and throw it all away

Confessions of a Failed Author #10

Want the good news or the bad news? by Nick van der Leek

The good news is I'm not going to be begging anyone to buy my (well actually 'our') latest Oscar trial ebook, firstly because a bunch of someone's already have bought it (propelling it to #8 on the UK bestseller charts)...

...and secondly because Transcendence contains some very personal stuff that...on second thoughts, I think I'd rather nobody read.  So what I'm saying is yes it's for sale but I'd prefer it if nobody bought it.  If you want to make sure you don't buy Transcendence, whatever you do DO NOT follow this link.  Thanks.

The bad news is...people who do and don't read my magazine articles may not be surprised to learn that I've been writing novels crap since high school, and I'm still going strong. And since failed authors who keep at it don't have that much of a social life (or any kind of life) I've managed to accumulate a fair amount of writing crap.  As I said, it's pretty bad news.

Which is why right now I am ranked #38,393 on Amazon.  In other words, fucking nowhere.  On the plus side, since publishing my first ebook on 6 June I've still only had 3 non-sales days to date (nuts, ne?), which is probably down to some rich tannie in Clocolan who feels sorry for me, and is buying one five a day so I'll be able to buy milk and bread groceries from Woolworths each month. Hey, aunty Stienie or whoever it is buying my books in the name of charity and not because it's any good - I appreciate it ;-)

Now, I have another confession to make.  One of the reason I suck as a writer is...well...I read a lot of self help books.  I mean, how to get published. Failed authors like me spend at least as much time reading about how to write as they do writing. Don't they? And since I've copped out of the proper way of writing books, since I'm too fucking lazy to make a real effort; which is to spend years writing and then several more years trying to get the attention of publishers, I've started pursuing something new:

studying up on ebooks.  

In other words, how to buck the system.  Hence I came upon this excellent Huffington Post article.

10 Steps to Ebook Success

It's all good, but what struck me was point #4:

4. Have more than one ebook already writtenAmanda Hocking, Stephen Leather, John Locke and many of the first wave of self-published eBook millionaires all had a number of titles ready to go at the same time. More ebooks means more chances to sell, and more chances for a reader who likes one of your titles to seek out the rest, thereby multiplying your revenues. "Having five books available at the same time is probably the best thing I did," said Locke in The Mail On Sunday. 

In fellow ebook novelist Joe Konrath's case, in January of this year he posted on his blog that he'd banked a cool $100,000 in Amazon sales for that month alone -- but this was from a total of FIFTEEN ebooks. Writing three or more ebooks before you even think about publishing is a mammoth task, which requires ninja-like patience, perseverance and planning. Most self-publishers are too eager to get their stuff out there, and so they publish too fast and without any strategy. Better to carefully plan your sequence of titles, and to take the time to write well.

Since I like that number [15] referenced in the article, I thought I might as well add 7 more fiction books to the 6 Oscar Trial ebooks already selling on Amazon (plus two more in the series on the way - once again collaborating with Lisa Wilson) and that way I can sort've get the same magic number.  Since I realise I'm a vrot writer, I reckon I ought to make $100 000  somewhere in the ballpark of R1000.00 a month - well, just as long as that Clocolan auntie keeps bankrolling me at 5 2 ebooks per day.  [R15 profit per book X 2 books x 30 days...= R1000]

I realise most people out there want to not buy my books, so in that spirit I've released this work of fact sort've-fiction. This is Book #7 and it's already available on Amazon; it's something I believe I wrote in 2009. Hey, WTF I write a shitload, don't expect me to remember exactly what I wrote when, kay?   

I have 4 more finished fiction works waiting in the wings but I want to wait a leetle longer just to see how well HOLIDAY does, and see how well it's received in the first reviews.  On debut (basically within a day of putting it up) three idiots actually spent good money on it.

Right now I am actually converting BLOODLINE - the 25 year unpublished epic that I promise I will NEVER finish - for the ebook crowd, which is to say I'm shortening the chapters and trying to trim it down from 175 000 words to 150 000.  If I'm in a foul mood I may just surgically remove another 50 000 just to be brutal. Hey, leave me alone, I'm a writer and I'm into self harm okay, it's my thing.

Meanwhile, what do you think of these covers?

 This should actually read 'the uninspiring satire' of a man's journey into SA's mad media world.

 Yeah, I get that this is the sun and not the moon, but hey, I'm a failed author, I'm supposed to make simple mistakes like that...

Awwwwwwwwwwwww.........And Last but not least...

Bloodline.  Been working on this series for a good long while. Bloodline, a series of 7 books,  is already available for purchase...here.

You know, now that I think about it, I've spent so much time on this Amazon lark I seem to have copped out of magazine journalism too - well, not quite.  I did just sent through a 2000 word article last night...which is being processed for publication like...now.  And ironically, or is it, not ironically, it's an article about print vs digital publishing. Ie paper books vs ebooks.

Okay well I guess that about wraps it up for this installment. If you feel like torturing yourself with diarrhea-inducing bad writing, and an argument can be made that there's even a touch of cradle snatching going on here, then go ahead, read HOLIDAY.  Or Bloodline. But don't say I didn't warn you.

#whatisTRANSCENDENCE?

Find out more here.

Review of Resurrection: Think outside the box, posted 16 July 2014

By MCD
I have read these books out of order, starting with 'Reeva in her own words' and then jumping ahead to 'Resurrection'. 

Ultimately, this is an interrogation of the Oscar Pistorius story, addressing the issues of authenticity, as well as 'could he?' (Pistorius) or 'should he?' be resurrected? 

The paradox of a world renowned Paralympian athlete is highlighted: a Paralympian who has admitted he wouldn't be doing athletics i[f] he was able-bodied. 

A number of questions are posed: 

-should Oscar Pistorius have been allowed to compete in able-bodied athletics?
 -does he, in fact, have an advantage when he runs with is blades? 
-does he steer attention away from other able-bodies athletes when he is in the same arena? 

 There are a few surprises that I did not expect, including a plausible motive, or at least context, which may have led to the tragic shooting on Valentines Day 2013. 

The author picks away at the tapestry of the Oscar Pistorius Brand, posing interesting questions. Although some statements are controversial and the reader may not always agree, this is a well researched and cleverly written comment on Oscar's narrative that will get one thinking outside the box.

 More information here.

To hear the author discussing how and why he wrote the series, go here.