“You’re seriously saying he did that just to get at you?”
“It looks that way. He knew Rob Openshaw had a good track record, and I think he even recommended him to Graham. But then he heard that I’d booked a promotion with these people, and decided to put a stop to it.”
“Would the promotion really have worked wonders for your book?”
“No way! I just can’t see it. Realistically, a minor blip in sales is the best I could possibly have expected, even if Rob Openshaw’s business had been operating at full strength. Obviously Nick didn’t know much about how the self-publishing market works, or else he wouldn’t have been so worried.”
She drew to a halt and stared at me. “So what he did was all for nothing?”
“In a way, yes.”
“Jesus.”
We walked on. I said, “At least my appeal against the suspension of my Endpaper account has been upheld. My book is on sale again.”
“That’s great.” But I could see that my mention of the subject had made her uneasy. She stopped and turned. “About that ban … ”
“What?”
“I think I know how it came about. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think Nick was involved in that too.”
“Seriously? How?”
“One evening he was sitting at his computer for ages in front of the Endpaper web site, typing something. I wondered what he was doing at the time, and thinking back, I reckon he found a way to get your account suspended.”
My mind raced back to the day I’d discovered I was banned. The message from the company had told me that my supposed transgressions “had been brought to their attention”. Who was more likely than Nick to have done that?
Sam was saying, “He probably clicked one of those ‘Report Abuse’ buttons – you know the kind of thing. It would have been just his style.”
“Just another blow in his endless campaign against me.”
And not the only one. I was now reflecting that Nick might well also have been responsible for those one-star reviews of my book. I might never be able to prove it, but I certainly couldn’t discount it. If so, it had been the opening blow in what became a relentless onslaught.
I said, “If you and I hadn’t got back in touch, a lot of this would have never happened.”
“But we don’t have to blame ourselves.” She put her hands on her hips. “We can’t be held accountable for someone else’s obsession. I’m certainly not planning to, and you shouldn’t either.”
I gave her a chagrined smile. “I suppose not.”
“All right then.”
* * *
We walked on in silence. Presently Sam said, “Dare I ask what’s happening about your flat in Truro?”
“I think I’ll let it go. Truro is a magic place, but I only moved there because of Ashley.” I gestured towards the sweep of the river. “This is my spiritual home.”
“Will you be allowed to stay on at your place in Camden Town?”
“I need to talk to the owners and find out what they’re planning. They told me they might want to live there themselves one of these days, but with luck, maybe they’ve changed their minds.”
“Would you like to stay there if you could?”
“I think so, yes.”
She said reflectively, “The quality of daylight in your main room is wonderful. I could easily imagine myself doing design work there.”
I looked round at her, but she merely smiled enigmatically to herself. She said, “So you’re carrying on with your work on that news web site?”
“For now, anyway – but I don’t know how long the job will last.” I told her about Guy Dereham’s elusive nephew Piers, who had finally started work on the site. “He’s already handling some of the routine jobs I used to do.”
“Is he any good?”
“He’s literate enough, but he doesn’t know how to evaluate the material, and he doesn’t have any sense of history.” I gave an ironic laugh. “I’m supposed to give him guidance, but in a way I’m just helping him to take my job away from me.”
“You ought to give him a load of bad advice.”
“Ha!” I grinned at her. “What about you? How’s your business shaping up now?”
“Rather well, as a matter of fact. Nick’s sister has agreed to sell his stake back to us at a token price. She’s embarrassed over what he did – she doesn’t want to profit from it.”
“Did you see her much when you were living in Banbury?”
“Yes, quite a lot. She and Nick seemed very close.” Was there a note of unease in her voice?
I said, “She reminded me slightly of you.”
“Did she now?” Her look of acknowledgement spoke volumes. “I don’t think I want to go there.”
“Fair enough.”
She brightened. “The police have released the stuff Nick stole from us. He had nearly all our finished product from the old range, so we’re ahead of the game for once. I’m looking forward to getting stuck into it all again.”
“So you’ll be spending more time in London?”
“You never know.” She gave me another enigmatic smile. “What about your book? Now that it’s available again, have you had a flood of new sales?”
“Huh! I wish.”
We leaned over the railing, gazing across the water at the expanse of central London stretching away into the distance in both directions. I said, “Selling self-published books is hard. Graham reckoned he was being held down by an invisible barrier that was stopping him from getting the recognition he deserved.” I thought back. “Actually, according to him the barrier wasn’t invisible – it was like a concrete ceiling. He couldn’t break through it.”
Sam gave an uneasy laugh. “Don’t talk to me about concrete ceilings. I know all about those.”
“But we broke through ours. We escaped.”
“I’m still having nightmares about it.”
We continued to stare out at the view. Sam said, “My friends keep asking me when you and I are going to get together.”
I attempted an indignant laugh. “Crazy. Don’t they realise we have minds of our own?”
“You probably think I’m a raving lunatic. Why else would I have got together with Nick in the first place?”
“I did wonder sometimes.”
“Ha!” She gave me a scolding glance.
Another silence, then I said, “I wish I’d broken up with Ashley a year ago. She and I never really got back on track after that shooting, but I somehow felt – ” I cast around for the right words – “I felt I owed her for turning my life round.”
She nodded. “Then along came Nick. And d’you know what? If people hadn’t been so determined to split us up, I probably would have broken it off with him a lot sooner than I did. Talk about being obstinate. I must qualify for some sort of prize.” She turned to me. “Nick got one thing right – you were always there. I tried to ignore it, but he saw through me.”
“I don’t know what to say to that.”
“What is it about you, Stanhope?” She was smiling faintly.
“My incredible, magnetic personality?”
She rapped me on the arm. “Get over yourself.”
The wind threw a scattering of dead leaves at us. I tightened my collar.
Sam said, “How would you feel about skipping lunch and forgetting work? We could just head back to your flat. Tea in the gloaming, a Chinese take-away and a bottle of wine, then we turn the lights down and veg out in front of a mindless film.”
“Sounds like a pretty fine plan to me.”
“I hope your bed’s comfortable.”
A full-body smile was spreading through me. I said, “You’ll have to see what you think.”
The light was fading when we emerged from Camden Town Tube station. I can’t remember the walk back to my flat; I think I probably floated most of the way. When we closed the door behind us I put my hand on Sam’s shoulder and wheeled her round to me. We kissed, then clung together fo
r a long time.
She insisted on making the tea. While she was busy I opened my laptop and glanced at my book’s statistics. As often, there was no sign of any recent sales. If I wanted more, I would have to do more promotion. Tomorrow was soon enough to think about that.
On a whim I called up Graham Bulwell’s book. It was still on sale, and the publicity surrounding him had clearly worked its magic.
His book had been climbing steadily up the rankings.
end
Even though The Concrete Ceiling is part of a series, PLEASE review it – and tell a friend!
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“Have you ever read a book you hoped would never end? This was it!”
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Alternative Outcome MIKE STANHOPE MYSTERIES, Book 1
Mike Stanhope, divorced and disillusioned with his job in journalism, hopes to switch his life to a new tack by self-publishing a mystery novel based on a true story. But someone is after him, and the pressure is mounting.
Could his pursuer be the subject of an investigative article Mike once wrote? Could there be a link to Mike’s attempts to track down a girl he knew as a child – the memory of whom he hijacked for his novel? Or might there be some deeper connection to his book?
As Mike struggles to keep his life on an even keel and tries to grasp at the chance of a new relationship, fact and fiction start to intertwine.
Alternative Outcome book page on Amazon
Deficit of Diligence MIKE STANHOPE MYSTERIES, Book 2
Who was the girl in that ancient film? How does she relate to writer Mike Stanhope? Could she provide a clue to unravelling the increasingly frightening mystery that surrounds him?
Things started so well. Mike is living in a beautiful part of the world, he’s in a new relationship, and it seems he’s inherited a valuable house. Yet it takes only a few ill-judged decisions and everything starts to fall apart. Despatched north on what looks a simple mission, he soon finds his work and life under threat, and to cap it all, the police seem to view him as a murder suspect.
This taut, pacey roller-coaster of a story works as a stand-alone mystery, but also forms an engrossing sequel to its predecessor, Alternative Outcome.
Deficit of Diligence book page on Amazon
Denial of Credit MIKE STANHOPE MYSTERIES, Book 3
The opportunity to ghost-write an autobiography for a top executive appeals to journalist Mike Stanhope, but his subject, Alan Treadwell, is a tough taskmaster, and soon Mike is wondering if he’s bitten off more than he can chew. It doesn’t help when he learns things about the great man that he’d rather not know – things, moreover, that someone else also seems determined to keep quiet.
Meanwhile, Mike’s personal life reaches a crossroads as the prospect of a new relationship makes him question everything. His life lunges towards a crisis on all fronts as the story approaches its explosive climax.
Denial of Credit book page on Amazon
Never Going to Happen STAND-ALONE MYSTERY
By Peter Rowlands, writing as Anders Teller
What caused one-time journalist Tom Anthony’s mysterious car crash? What is his girlfriend not telling him? Why is his former neighbour so hostile? It’s all lost in a blur. Struggling to unravel what happened, Tom finds himself commissioned to write an article about … Brexit. What does he know about that trouble-fraught topic? Almost nothing; yet he’s soon reminded painfully of the strong feelings the issue has unleashed on all sides.
Enter Emily: quirky, assured, hard to read. Can he trust her? Should he rebuild his life with his girlfriend, or follow his instinct?
This clever and engrossing topical drama offers a trenchant sideways look at the worldwide rise of populism, yet never compromises on its mystery thriller credentials, or falters in its ability to entertain, surprise and shock.
Never Going to Happen book page on Amazon
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Author’s note and acknowledgements
The Concrete Ceiling is a work of fiction. There are plenty of real book promotion services that attempt to achieve some of the same results as those in this story, but as far as I know they’re all completely honest and conscientious, and a great asset to the self-publishing community. The firms in the book are emphatically not modelled on any that I have encountered in real life.
I should also emphasise that Endpaper, my fictional online publisher, is imaginary, and is not directly modelled on any real-life eBook publisher. It has similar objectives to those in the real world, but its rules and procedures are purely my invention.
What is not fiction in this book is the fact that it really is immensely hard for authors to make headway in the competitive free-for-all of self-publishing. The work has barely started when you type the last word on the last page of your book. That’s when the fun and games begin: shouting about it, tweeting about it, blogging about it – in short, galvanising social media in any way you can. And paying book promotion companies to help you, of course.
Long live self-publishing! Without it, you wouldn’t be reading this book. But as my leading character concludes, it’s no easy ride. The internet is a great leveller, but it only delivers your starting point. From then on it’s up to you how far you get – and the challenge is not for the faint-hearted.
Incidentally, if you haven’t read earlier books in the Mike Stanhope series and you’d like to know more about his novel, you’ll find more details and some of the content in the first in the series, Alternative Outcome.
As ever, my warmest thanks go to my loyal band of beta readers – especially Helen, Mel, Stewart and Sue, whose advice and feedback unfailingly help me to trim off the sharp edges and avoid the worst mistakes. But any that I’ve missed, of course, are always down to me.
About the author
Peter Rowlands was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, but has lived almost all his adult life in London. He edited and contributed to transport and logistics magazines for many years. The Concrete Ceiling is the fourth of his published novels in the Mike Stanhope Mysteries series, and follows three earlier books – Alternative Outcome, Deficit of Diligence and Denial of Credit, all of which are available in paperback and eBook form on Amazon. He is also the author of the stand-alone thriller Never Going to Happen, published under the pseudonym Anders Teller and available on Amazon.
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