AMAZON UK REVIEW

After Goya has received a first review on Amazon UK. Four stars no less. 

"... original in its theme, coherent in its writing, with good descriptions of place and character and delivers appealingly cinematic action scenes."

You can read the full, and fairly lengthy review HERE.

I'm very pleased, and feeling a little humbled, that the reader took the time and trouble to post a review. 

If you're still dithering about whether to splash out £2.06/€2,32 or $2.99 on the Kindle version go check out the review. 

Or, if you don't have a Kindle, go to Barnes & Noble and buy the Nook version HERE. 

Or, if you have an i-Pad, (yes, I mean you, Sumner) go to the Apple Store HERE, download the FREE i-book app and go to the i-bookstore.

Or, you could venture over to Smashwords HERE.

And, if you don't have any of these gadgets you'll have to wait for the print version priced at £7.99 in the UK.

Barça v. United: Poetry, Philosophy and Ethics: 3 - Drama: 1

OK, let's get two things straight before we discuss the details.

The difference in this match was not Messi versus Rooney - the difference was Ferdinand versus Piqué.

Old Trafford sells itself as The Theatre of Dreams. I'm aware Guardiola encourages his players to read poetry.

The difference in this match was the difference between POETRY and DRAMA.

Poetry won.

Poetry is more closely associated to Ethics - Drama associated to Entertainment. Poetry won AND provided more entertainment than Drama.

Piqué played a quiet, effective blinder - blocking, intercepting United's thrusts and then, via both carefully aimed clearances, and luckily timed back passes, but with constant awareness, consistently delivered the ball upfront. By contrast Ferdinand clumbered around like a club-footed donkey - outpaced, wrong-footed and out-thought. The difference can clearly be seen when Messi hits his goal scoring shot - Ferdinand instinctively shies from the ball's flight to protect himself - Piqué would, by instinct, have put himself between the ball and the goal.

Rooney's goal was offside - look at it again - and again and again,  and you will clearly see one, then another, Man U player clearly offside and in position to influence play just before the ball goes in.

Valencia should at least have copped a  yellow in the first half - and, by rights, should have been sent off. I counted his niggly, little trips, pokes, shoves and deliberately badly timed tangles (not tackles, not tangos - but somewhere in-between) - 11 altogether. I counted them off, and after four, I said, "Next time it's got to be a yellow card." But no. We were well into the second half before the ref finally reached for a card - minutes after too quickly grabbing a yellow for Alvés.

Barcelona took United for a little spin on the carousel - and won.

Then, after winning, Barça formed a pasillo - or guard of honour - to clap their opponents from the field. Ethics - not Drama.

Then Carles Puyol, the team's current true captain, handed Abidal the captain's armband so that he could legitimately receive the cup - knowing, as all Barça fans know, Abidal had recently recovered from liver surgery. Ethics - not Drama.

Nothing more to say - or be said - Poetry, Philosophy and Ethics won tonight - Drama lost.

AFTER GOYA EBOOK

I'm pleased and proud to announce that my novel, After Goya , is now available as an ebook in several formats. The global price is $2.99 and at Euro and Pound equivalents, but with VAT added.

If you have a Kindle, or a Kindle app for PC or i-Pad, etc you can sample a few free chapters and buy a copy at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de. I've already sold a few copies at both the U.S. and U.K. Amazon sites.

If you have any other type of reader, or want to read a sample on your laptop or desktop before buying a copy then I suggest you go to Smashwords. ISBN: 978-1-4581-2596-5.

The book has already shipped to Barnes & Noble and the Apple i-Tunes store - and will be appearing in their catalogues next week.

In a few weeks readers in Australia and New Zealand will also be able to purchase and download the ebook at Borders, Australia; Angus & Robertson and at Whitcoulls in New Zealand.

And, again all being well, you will soon be able to buy a very special EPUB edition from this blog. I say very special because Ester, indefatigable formatter-in-chief at ebookation, has done an outstanding job of not only converting the text but also the ornaments which separate sections and chapters, replaced missing and mis-placed accents, and included a table of contents and additional material in the end papers. The result is very impressive for an ebook.

Converting a word processor document into an ebook format, though not difficult, is not straightforward. The conversion process often strips out  common punctuation marks and accents and replaces them with less common marks and symbols; line spacing, justification and section breaks can go walkabout all over the page.

Smashwords' conversion engine, known to writers and publishers as the Meatgrinder, converts basic Word docs into eleven different ebook formats. And, it does a pretty good job of it. However, because, by default, it is designed to produce texts that can be read in all formats the result is a compromise.

And so, after successfully formatting the Smashwords version -- and ensuring it was good enough to get into what they call their Premium Catalog --  Ester, at ebookation, spent more time refining and embellishing the text as an EPub file. In effect, Ester has produced a limited edition of an ebook.