Mike Robbins's Blog - Posts Tagged "fiction"

I've made Three Seasons available for review on NetGalley. It's my first time working with them and I'll be interested to see how much interest there is. I'll approve most genuine requests. The page for the book is here: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/sho...

Have just reviewed two books that are full of atmosphere, with a real sense of place. More on my blog here: http://mikerobbinsnyc.blogspot.com/20...

The Snow Deer and Other Stories



anemogram.

I'm running a giveaway for my own favourite amongst my books, The Lost Baggage of Silvia Guzmán - a dark satire around the story of a refugee in fashionable liberal London. Do enter for a chance to win a copy. The giveaway is here:

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...

Also available as an ebook of course, for $2.99/£2.16/EUR 3,09.
If you'd like to read more about this book and how it came to be written, the story's here:

http://mikerobbinsnyc.blogspot.com/20...

I'm offering The Lost Baggage of Silvia Guzmán as a free download for a limited period. Choice of formats available. Please go to the web page I have about the book at http://mikerobbinsnyc.blogspot.com/20... and scroll down for the link.



Here is the blurb:

When Silvia’s country falls apart after a coup, she flees to London. Picked up by the police, she is dumped for weeks in a bed-and-breakfast with a crazy landlady, then rescued by cold intellectuals. She finds she is a nuisance to one side and a cause to the other, with no dreams, family or opinions of her own. Until she meets another, earlier, refugee; and then she has a surprise for everyone.

The Lost Baggage of Silvia Guzmán is a story of flight, loss and the pain of exile. But it is also a sideways look at liberal London – perceptive, caustic and sometimes very funny.

Have Fleet Street and its feral tabloids changed in 80 years? Not much, according to three remarkable satires - one new, the other two from the 1930s. Read all about it.

http://mikerobbinsnyc.blogspot.com/20...

I am offering free downloads of one my books - link at the bottom of this post.

Three Seasons: Three Stories of England in the Eighties



Blurb:

A washed-up trawler captain. A sleek young businessman. And the Master of an Oxford college. Through these three characters, all beautifully drawn, Mike Robbins has created a vivid picture of the 1980s, a divisive era of great change.

Three Seasons is a book of three novellas, unconnected with each other, but all set in the south of England in the 1980s.

In Spring, a middle-aged Hull trawler skipper, his great days gone, has one last throw of the dice in a South Coast port.
In Summer, an ambitious young man makes his way in the booming Thames Valley property market, unconcerned with the damage he does to others.

In Autumn, the Master of an Oxford college welcomes his two sons home, but they awake difficult memories from half a century before.

Three Seasons is about the Thatcher era in Britain, but it is not about politics. These three stories are portraits of a country and its people on the verge of change.

You can download a free e-copy (choice of formats) from here: https://www.instafreebie.com/free/VWcPr

You will be asked to give your name and email for Instafreebie's email list, but it is not sent to me; and while reviews are welcome, first and foremost I just hope you enjoy the book.

I never contact people offering books for review. To do so is at best bad manners; at worst it is spamming. In any case, I interact with people on this site as a fellow-reader at least as much as a writer, and I'd like to keep it that way.

But as I writer, I do need readers' reviews. I will be pleased to send e-copies to anyone genuinely interested in doing an honest review of one or more of these books. If you get one and then decide not to review it, that's also fine. If you do upload a review to Amazon, Goodreads or any other site or retailer, that will be great. Three are fiction, two travel and one is a polemic.

Send me a message via Goodreads, or my Facebook author page at https://www.facebook.com/mikerobbinsNYC. State which file format you'd like (PDF, EPUB or MOBI).

These are the titles:

The Lost Baggage of Silvia Guzmán






Dog!: You'll Never Look At Your Dog the Same Way Again. Also available in Spanish as ¡Perro!






The Nine Horizons: Travels in Sundry Places






Three Seasons: Three Stories of England in the Eighties






Even the Dead Are Coming






Such Little Accident: British Democracy and Its Enemies





Thank you, everyone; and whatever you are reading right now, I hope that you are enjoying it.

Best
Mike

I've descided to make The Lost Baggage of Silvia Guzmán a free download for a week or so. There's a choice of e-formats.

https://claims.prolificworks.com/free...

I do not get to see who downloads it, but if you do so, and enjoy the book, please consider posting a review to Goodreads or Amazon.

Fiction writers are engaging with climate change and the way it's changing our view of the world. I've just read two excellent examples, Kevin Brennan's Eternity Began Tomorrow and Alison Layland's mystery Riverflow - the latter suddenly more relevant than ever after the Severn floods. Here are my reviews. Please do support these two interesting writers. http://mikerobbinsnyc.blogspot.com/20...

I'm now writing and posting a lot of flash fiction - generally stories of between 900 and 2,400 words. They've been a hit with readers - in fact they've really boosted the blog. I think busy people like to have something short they can read on their phone on the subway/tube, in the bank queue, waiting for their takeout order etc.

Here's the latest one. Meet Ben the Whovian detectorist... and Louise.

https://mikerobbinsnyc.blogspot.com/2...