The Midnight Eye Files: The Amulet Now an ebook. Only $2.99

[williammeikle]

The first book of my Midnight Eye Files series, in print since 2005, is now also available as an ebook



A priceless family heirloom has been stolen and everyone in town is looking for it.

The stars are right once more, and an ancient evil has been awakened from its dreaming sleep.

It was supposed to be an easy case, fast money. But pretty soon PI Derek Adams is up to his armpits in bodies, femme fatales and tentacles.

"Derek Adams could be a detective out an American detective show with his rumpled appearance and quirky, affable demeanor." -- The Eternal Night Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror

"Raymond Chandler meets H. P. Lovecraft meets Willie Meikle--a darkly magical mix." -- Randy Chandler, author of Bad Juju

[Ann in Arlington]

Welcome to KindleBoards, Willie, and congratulations on your book! 

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[williammeikle]

The Midnight Eye Files: The Amulet is now also

On Kindle at Amazon.co.uk

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Midnight-Eye-Files-Amulet-ebook/dp/B0044KMNYI

And in other reader formats at The Merchants Keep

http://merchantskeep.com/#ecwid:category=428269&mode=product&product=1469298

[Harvey]

Willie wins the "quick draw" award by being the first person to sign up for our KB Book of the Day.

The KB Book of the Day is displayed at the top of every forum page, and the author's thread for the book is "stickied" for the day.

As a thank you, we're stickying Willie's thread a couple of hours early. The display of the book at the top of the forum pages will start appearing at 12:01am Mountain time.

[williammeikle]

Willie wins the "quick draw" award by being the first person to sign up for our KB Book of the Day.

The KB Book of the Day is displayed at the top of every forum page, and the author's thread for the book is "stickied" for the day.

As a thank you, we're stickying Willie's thread a couple of hours early. The display of the book at the top of the forum pages will start appearing at 12:01am Mountain time.

Thanks Harvey

For anyone interested, THE AMULET is an occult detective novel set in Glasgow, Scotland, featuring a down at heel PI, the Great Old Ones, a beautiful client, and beer. Quite a lot of beer.

Nice review here at Chizine: http://www.chizine.com/amulet_review.htm

It's the 1st book in an ongoing series. Book 2: THE SIRENS is in print and coming to ebook very soon. Book 3 will be published in print and ebook later this Fall.

It has been in print for 5 years now, and also is optioned for movie production. (The production company is currently seeking funding to start next year). This is its first ebook release.

Glasgow is a city of contradictions. It is the place in Scotland where you’re most likely to get into a fight with a total stranger for no apparent reason. It is also the place where you’re most likely to meet with random acts of altruistic kindness.

When I was a lad, back in the early 1960s, we lived in a town 20 miles south of Glasgow, and it was an adventure to the big city when I went with my family on shopping trips. Back then the city was a Victorian giant going slowly to seed. It is often said that the British Empire was built in Glasgow on the banks of the river Clyde. Back when I was young, the shipyards were still going strong, and the city centre itself still held on to some of its past glories. It was a warren of tall sandstone buildings and narrow streets, with Edwardian trams still running through them. The big stores still had pneumatic delivery systems for billing, every man wore a hat, collar and tie, and steam trains ran into grand vaulted railway stations filled with smoke. To a young boy from the sticks it seemed like a grand place. It was only later that I learned about the knife gangs that terrorized the dance halls, and the serial killer, Bible John, who frequented the same dance floors, quoting scripture as he lured teenage girls to a violent end.

Fast forward fifteen years, and I was at University in the city, and getting an education into the real heart of the place. I learned about bars, and religious divides. Glasgow is split along tribal royalties. Back in the Victorian era, shiploads of Irishmen came to Glasgow for work. The protestants went to one side of the city, the catholics to the other. There they set up homes… and football teams. Now these teams are the biggest sporting giants in Scotland, two behemoths that attract bigots like flies to [crap]. As a student I soon learned how to avoid giving away my religion in bars, and which ones to stay out of on match days.

Also by the time I was a student, a lot of the tall sandstone buildings had been pulled down to make way for tower blocks. Back then they were the new shiny future, taking the people out of the Victorian ghettos and into the present day.

Fast forward to the present day and there are all new ghettos. The tower blocks are ruled by drug gangs and pimps. Meanwhile there have been many attempts to gentrify the city centre, with designer shops being built in old warehouses, with docklands developments building expensive apartments where sailors used to get blow jobs from hard faced girls, and with shiny, trendy bars full of glossy expensively dressed bankers.

And underneath it all, the old Glasgow still lies, slumbering, a dreaming god waiting for the stars to be right again.

The Midnight Eye, Derek Adams, knows the ways of the old city. And, if truth be told, he prefers them to the new.

[Harvey]

FYI - I just did a quick check on sales rank, and The Amulet has moved from 39,137 in Kindle Store (at 1:00am Pacific) to 18,657 (at 7:00am Pacific).

[williammeikle]

FYI - I just did a quick check on sales rank, and The Amulet has moved from 39,137 in Kindle Store (at 1:00am Pacific) to 18,657 (at 7:00am Pacific).

Thanks Harvey....

I started a "tracking" thread here: http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,38077.0/topicseen.html

[Ann in Arlington]

For those authors checking out this thread. . . . .Willie's post above is EXCELLENT as far as providing additional info during his "book of the day" stint. . .that's exactly the sort of thing we readers like to know!

[williammeikle]

For those authors checking out this thread. . . . .Willie's post above is EXCELLENT as far as providing additional info during his "book of the day" stint. . .that's exactly the sort of thing we readers like to know!

Yay! A gold star from Teach :-)

[Ann in Arlington]

Well. . . .it did tip me into clicking that 'buy' button. . . . . .

[williammeikle]

Well. . . .it did tip me into clicking that 'buy' button. . . . . .

And here's some more. I was recently asked what the attraction was about mixing crime and the supernatural in my books.

Here's what I replied:

It's all about the struggle of the dark against the light. The time and place, and the way it plays out is in some ways secondary to that. And when you're dealing with archetypes, there's only so many to go around, and it's not surprising that the same concepts of death and betrayal, love and loss, turn up wherever, and whenever, the story is placed.

Plus, there are antecedents - occult detectives who may seem to use the trappings of crime solvers, but get involved in the supernatural. William Hjortsberg's Falling Angel (the book that led to the movie Angel Heart) is a fine example, an expert blending of gumshoe and deviltry that is one of my favorite books. Likewise, in the movies, we have cops facing a demon in Denzel Washington's Fallen that plays like a police procedural taken to a very dark place.

And even further back, in the "gentleman detective" era, we have seekers of truth in occult cases in John Silence and Carnacki. Even Holmes himself came close to supernatural conclusions at times.

I've recently explored this for myself, in the Midnight Eye Files stories, in a series of Carnacki stories, and I even got a chance to have Holmes fight a Necromancer in Edinburgh in an anthology appearance in Gaslight Grotesque. It seems there is quite a market for this kind of merging of crime and supernatural, and I intend to write a lot more of it.

[Harvey]

I'm sold. Looking forward to reading it.

Thanks for posting that tracking thread - that's great info and interesting to see how it progresses through the 24-hour period.

[williammeikle]

I'm sold. Looking forward to reading it.

Thanks for posting that tracking thread - that's great info and interesting to see how it progresses through the 24-hour period.

Thanks Harvey... update coming soon. Looks like it's taken another jump in the right direction.

And here's more ramblings about why I wrote it for people who like that sort of thing...

Most of my work, long and short form, has been set in Scotland, and a lot of it uses the history and folklore. There's just something about the misty landscapes and old buildings that speaks straight to my soul. (Bloody Celts... we get all sentimental at the least wee thing).

But I think it's the people that influence me most. Everybody in Scotland's got stories to tell, and once you get them going, you can't stop them. I love chatting to people, (usually in pubs) and finding out the -weird- [crap] they've experienced. My Glasgow PI, Derek Adams is mainly based on a bloke I met years ago in a bar in Partick, and quite a few of the characters that turn up and talk too much in my books can be found in real life in bars in Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews.

I grew up in the West Coast of Scotland in an environment where the supernatural was almost commonplace. My grannie certainly had a touch of “the sight”, always knowing when someone in the family was in trouble. There are numerous stories told of family members meeting other, long dead, family in their dreams, and I myself have had more than a few encounters, with dead family, plus meetings with what I can only class as residents of faerie. I have had several precognitive dreams, one of which saved me from a potentially fatal car crash.

I have a deep love of old places, in particular menhirs and stone circles, and I’ve spent quite a lot of time travelling the UK and Europe just to visit archaeological remains. I also love what is widely known as “weird [crap]”. I’ve spent far too much time surfing and reading fortean, paranormal and cryptozoological websites. The cryptozoological stuff especially fascinates me, and provides a direct stimulus for a lot of my fiction.

So, there’s that, and the fact that I was grew up with the sixties explosion of popular culture embracing the supernatural and the weird. Hammer horror movies got me young, and led me back to the Universal originals. My early reading somehow all tended to gravitate in similar directions, with DC comics leading me into pulp and to finding Tarzan.

Tarzan is the second novel I remember reading. (The first was Treasure Island, so I was already well on the way to the land of adventure even then.) I quickly read everything of Burroughs I could find. Then I devoured Wells, Verne and Haggard. I moved on to Conan Doyle before I was twelve, and Professor Challenger’s adventures in spiritualism led me, almost directly, to Dennis Wheatley, Algernon Blackwood, and then on to Lovecraft. Then Stephen King came along.

There’s a separate but related thread of a deep love of detective novels running parallel to this, as Conan Doyle also gave me Holmes, then I moved on to Christie, Chandler, Hammett, Ross MacDonald and Ed McBain, reading everything by them I could find.

Mix all that lot together, add a dash of ZULU, a hefty slug of heroic fantasy from Howard, Leiber and Moorcock, a sprinkle of fast moving Scottish thrillers from John Buchan and Alistair MacLean, and a final pinch of piratical swashbuckling. Leave to marinate for fifty years and what do you get?

A psyche with a deep love of the weird in its most basic forms, and the urge to beat the s**t out of monsters.

[Thalia the Muse]

Wow -- I love your influences, and you write very thoughtfully about writing. You just talked me into sampling ...

[williammeikle]

Wow -- I love your influences, and you write very thoughtfully about writing. You just talked me into sampling ...

Thanks for that.... here's some more ramblings that I hope give some insight into why...

I've been asked many times why I write what I do. I choose to write mainly at the pulpy end of the market, populating my stories with monsters, myths, men who like a drink and a smoke, and more monsters. People who like this sort of thing like it.

I've also been criticised for it by people who don't get it. Willie Meikle is..."the author of the most cliched, derivative drivel imaginable...the critical acclaim he receives from his peers is virtually non-existent." is only one of the responses I've had.

Now, I don't write for the critical acclaim of my peers. I couldn't give a toss what other writers think of me. I'm writing for two reasons... myself and a readership. Posterity, if there is one, can decide on whether it's any good or not. Besides, the harder I work at it making my writing accessible, the more readers I get, so I'm doing something right.

But that's still not why I do it. My pat answer has always been the same. "I like monsters."

But it goes deeper than that.

I write to escape.

I grew up on a West of Scotland council estate in a town where you were either unemployed or working in the steelworks, and sometimes both. Many of the townspeople led hard, miserable lifes of quiet, and sometimes not so quiet desperation. I was relatively lucky in that both my parents worked, but they were both on shifts that rarely coincided, and I spent a lot of time alone or at my grandparent's house.

My Granddad was housebound, and a voracious reader. I got the habit from him, and through him I discovered the Pan Books of Horror and Lovecraft, but I also discovered westerns, science fiction, war novels and the likes of Mickey Spillane, Ed McBain, Alistair MacLean, Dennis Wheatley, Nigel Tranter, Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov. When you mix all that together with DC Comics, Tarzan, Gerry Anderson and Dr Who then, later on, Hammer and Universal movies on the BBC, you can see how the pulp became embedded in my psyche.

When I was at school these books and my guitar were all that kept me sane in a town that was going downhill fast. The steelworks shut and employment got worse. I -could- have started writing about that, but why bother? All I had to do was walk outside and I'd get it slapped in my face. That horror was all too real.

So I took up my pen and wrote. At first it was song lyrics, designed (mostly unsuccessfully) to get me closer to girls.   

I tried my hand at a few short stories but had no confidence in them and hid them away. And that was that for many years.

I didn't get the urge again until I was past thirty and trapped in a very boring job. My home town had continued to stagnate and, unless I wanted to spend my whole life drinking (something I was actively considering at the time), returning there wasn't an option.

As I said before, I write to escape.

My brain needed something, and writing gave it what was required. That point, back nearly twenty years ago, was like switching on an engine, one that has been running steadily ever since.

And most of the time, the things that engine chooses to give me to write are very pulpy.

I think you have to have grown up with pulp to -get- it. A lot of writers have been told that pulp=bad plotting and that you have to have deep psychological insight in your work for it to be valid. They've also been told that pulp=bad writing, and they believe it. Whereas I remember the joy I got from early Moorcock, from Mickey Spillane and further back, A E Merritt and H Rider Haggard. I'd love to have a chance to write a Tarzan, John Carter, Allan Quartermain, Mike Hammer or Conan novel, whereas a lot of writers I know would sniff and turn their noses up at the very thought of it.

I write to escape.

I haven't managed it yet, but I'm working on it.

[williammeikle]

Read a sample here: http://www.kindleboards.com/sample2/?asin=B0044KMNYI

[williammeikle]

I'm running a wee monthly competition over at my Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/williammeikle

It is for fans of the FB page only, but you can join just by "liking" the page.

To enter all you have to do is leave a comment on my wall at the above page. Anything goes except spam. At the end of every month I'll draw a winner from the names of everyone who has commented that month and they'll get a free ebook.


This month's book is THE MIDNIGHT EYE FILES: THE AMULET

[williammeikle]

The 3rd Midnight Eye file is due soon. Don't miss out. Start catching up with Derek Adams 1st adventure here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0044KMNYI

Meikle's short novel is a loving romp in and out of both the Lovecraft Mythos and the noir detective novel, predictable in its own way but unapologetically so, and ultimately fulfilling --Bill Gagliani for Chizine

Mr. Meikle's ability to tell a story that intertwines different traditions and yet does not seem derivative at all is very impressive . 4 out of 5 and a hearty "Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!" for a job well done. --Floyd Brigdon for She Never Slept

[williammeikle]

Great new 5 star review of The Amulet

"With a mixture of intense action scenes, smart and witty dialogue, good looking femme fatales, and horrendous monsters with one too many tentacles growing out of their head...this book is a rip-roaring good time. I can't wait to read the rest of the series!"

http://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Eye-Files-Amulet-ebook/product-reviews/B0044KMNYI

[williammeikle]

Time for a swift shandy with my mate Stuart Neild, where I expound on the Origins of the Midnight Eye, Derek Adams
http://stuartneild.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/guest-blog-from-william-meikle/

[williammeikle]

Go here

http://www.darkwindowmedia.com/Development.html

Scroll down... and have a drink with me as I celebrate the fact that THE MIDNIGHT EYE is coming to film, from my script.

:-)

[williammeikle]

If anyone would like to review THE MIDNIGHT EYE FILES: THE AMULET, drop me a PM - I have it in mobi, kindle or pdf

[williammeikle]

Great review of THE AMULET at the Lovecraft ezine

http://lovecraftzine.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/a-lovecraftian-detective-novel/

[williammeikle]

Join my FB page and get a free Kindle download file of THE MIDNIGHT EYE FILES: THE AMULET on the landing page
http://www.facebook.com/williammeikle?sk=app_169836446397977

[williammeikle]

Offer still open:

Join my FB page and get a free Kindle download file of THE MIDNIGHT EYE FILES: THE AMULET on the landing page
http://www.facebook.com/williammeikle?sk=app_169836446397977

[williammeikle]

A freebie today. Subscribe to my newsletter and get a download of THE MIDNIGHT EYE FILES: THE AMULET
http://williammeikle.com/mailman/listinfo/williemeiklenews_williammeikle.com

[williammeikle]

Derek Adams was voted Best Occult Detective character by Bob Freeman in his end of year round up of Occult Detection... I also was voted in for two other awards, including Best Occult Detective Author

http://authorbobfreeman.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/the-2nd-annual-occult-detective-awards-part-iv/

[williammeikle]

Just signed contracts for the audio rights for all three of my MIDNIGHT EYE books.
To be produced by Seven Realms Publishing

[williammeikle]

I've got a free promotion running for February.

Get a free download here

http://www.williammeikle.com/amulet.mobi

___________________________________________________

[williammeikle]

The Amulet gets a mention on the Lovecraft ezine list of recommended novels
http://lovecraftzine.com/2012/02/28/lovecraft-influenced-novels-i-recommend/