Wednesday 23 February 2011

I'm on Kindle and I have a new book

As many of you will know, I'm currently on a break from the internet. After 18 months on the go with Year Zero and eight cuts gallery, I finally burned myself out pretty much completely, as well as losing all sense of my own worth as a writer. Add to that mix not one but two particularly nasty bugs (no doubt caused by an immune system dramatically lowered by stress). I hope to be back and in the swing of things mid March.



But I haven't been totally inactive, and as I claw my way back into things I wanted to share two pieces about my own writing, because as I've had a chance to look through it away from the relentless melting pot of the internet I've realised there is some merit to it. In fact, Songs from the Other Side of the Wall is a book I'm rather proud of.


I just wanted to let people know that it's now available for Kindle at just 70p
the link to Songs on Kindle is here!
and of course I would dearly dearly love it if people who thought they would like it bought it. I'd also really really love it if those of you who have enjoyed it were to leave a review - I've had some lovely reviews over the past 18 months, but all of them before it has been available for Kindle. I've decided it's time to relaunch my own writing career as well as the other things I do, so this is sort of an official relaunch for Songs. So if anyone has any space on their blogs for a gentle literary read...


For those of you who don't know anything about it, here's a little something blurbwise:


After her mother walks out and returns to England when she’s just a week old, Szandi grows up on the vineyard in Hungary that has been in her family for 300 years. Now 18, Szandi is part of Budapest’s cosmopolitan art scene, sharing a flat and a bohemian lifestyle with her lover and fellow sculptress, Yang. She has finally found her place in the world. When she discovers that her father has only weeks to live, Szandi must choose once and for all: between the past and the present; between East and West; between her family and her lover.
Songs from the Other Side of the Wall is a coming of age story for all who love Murakami's Norwegian Wood that inhabits anti-capitalist chatrooms and ancient wine cellars, seedy bars and dreaming spires; and takes us on a remarkable journey across Europe and cyberspace in the company of rock stars and dropouts, diaries that appear from nowhere, a telepathic fashion mogul, and the talking statue of a bull.


And here are some reviews:
“captures the rhythms and nuances of how we live now in a way that has rarely been done better” LA Books Examiner (read full review)
“Holloway’s accomplishment is in rendering a world in exquisite detail and still conveying the universal via the personal.” Emprise Review (read full review)
“a lovely book written in that rare thing: beautiful, lyrical prose.” Jane Smith, The Self-Publishing Review (read full review)
“Songs From the Other Side of the Wall is a *very* good book” Erica Friedman, Yurikon publishing (read full review)
“genuine promise”, Scott Pack, Harper Collins Fifth Estate/The Friday Project (read full review)
“In threads that shimmer like the novel’s central image of petrol-colored silk, what could have been weaves itself into every situation.” Pank (read full review)



Which brings me to the other news. The reason my blog has the name it does has to do with a book I began writing 2 years ago. And now, finally, The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes is complete. It will be available on Kindle from March 10th. For those who don't already know, here is the blurb:


When mysterious Polish woman Agnieszka Iwanowa's tragi-comic death in a gym accident is uploaded to YouTube, the film's final image of her upturned trainers is rehashed by everyone from right wing extremists to a reclusive installation artist who only speaks through his dominatrix PA.


Now Dan Griffiths has to make the image fresh.Dan's search for the reasons behind the picture's magnetic pull suck him into the worlds of political extremism; BDSM; a haiku-composing graffiti artist; an online community devoted to the dead girl, and its reclusive Japanese schoolboy moderator who has just paid half a million dollars for the diary of a scientist whose work he believes will enable him to bring Agnieszka back from the dead.


And as the search for Agnieszka's secret slowly overtakes the search for his own daughter, missing for ten years, ignored by the media, and now sending him - and the reader - glimpses of messages from what seems like another world, he is confronted by the question - why are some images impossible to look away from, whilst others fade without ever being seen?

A story about a world gone numb, in which pain is the only thing that's real

8 comments:

  1. Oh please, please, put them on Smashwords or somewhere too, so there's an option for non-Kindle e-reader people.

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  2. "Songs from the Other Side of the Wall is a book I'm rather proud of." as you should be and as I've always nudged you in the ribs hard when you have expressed doubts about it. Let me know if you want a link to my blog review of it.
    Marc x

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  3. Cannot wait to read The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes, Dan. Loved Songs.

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  4. Dan, great to see you about again. And on Kindle!

    Frankie and any other non-Kindlers: Dan does have "Songs" on Smashwords. Link: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3308

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  5. Frankie :), like Shayne says all my books are on Smashwords too, as weill aggies be - I just wouldn't recommend it for formats other than pdf because their conversion isn't always 100% clean

    Marc - thank you. As you probably know, i've had a pretty miserable time over the last year with my own work, and then when I started eight cuts I figured I owed it to everyone to give up on my own writing because I thought I couldn't do my best by other writers if I was trying to sell my own work too, but that just ended in a slow asphyxiation of myself that was one of the contributing factors to having a minor breakdown that was in danger of becoming a major one without some time out. So I'm taking a couple of weeks of very gently (without doing any eight cuts duties) reintroducing bits of my own work, getting other bits published for the first time, trying to sell some, and then coming back to eight cuts with a more balanced approach that I hope will make it long-term sustainable.
    If you were able to put the Kindle link on your review that would be fantastic, thank you

    Thanks, robert

    And thank you, Shayne - it's lovely to see you :)

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  6. Yay!!! :)

    And I sympathise with the web burnout - I'm currently on a bit of a blog break because of RSI and other related pains - which have put any writing ideas I had on the back burner for a good while :(

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  7. Dang. Lost the neat comment I had just written...

    I'll just sum up with a huge CONGRATS on your re-launching of "Songs" (nice reviews, btw!) and the finishing of the Agnieszka. You have accomplished so much these last months!

    Also, if you ever get close to a breakdown again, remember your virtual friends (like me? :). Whenever I needed support, I got an overwhelmingly positive response. It helped, and is still helping!

    Cheers for a new success of yours! :D

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  8. Tony - can you DM me your current e-mail address so I send it to the right place, please? I want you to be first to have the finished Aggie

    Mari - thank you :) I'm very bad at asking for help but that means a lot :)

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