Writeaholic Inspiration: I Forgot to Tell You About This Mackarb Story

Usually, when I write a book, I’m good at marketing it because marketing can often be more important than writing the book in the first place.

But for some reason, and I can’t for the life of me remember why, I didn’t market my latest book at all. I did have it listed on the home page of my website as being available in 2024, but that was the only mention of it online until it went live on the publishing site at the end of March.

So when I received the sales report a few weeks later, I was surprised at how well it was selling. I thought that maybe it was just the sort of horror novel that people are eager to read.

It’s called Mackarb, “A story so frightening that it cannot be told around a campfire near the woods, or worse, in the woods.”

So in an effort to actually start marketing this new novel, here are 3 things you might find interesting about it:

It’s the first in a series of 3 horror novels that are collectively called, Campfire Stories. Although it’s a set of 3, each novel is completely independent from the other books.

The cover image of scary eyes in the woods (see below), is a photo that I took from my balcony. I looked up at the trees one afternoon, and saw that the orange sunset was shining through like two evil eyes, so I quickly snapped a photo. Photoshop was used to highlight the ‘eyes’ and darken the sky and remove a couple of unwanted things in the foreground (like a telegraph pole), but the photo is mostly as the original. As I was writing Mackarb, I remembered the photo and used it for the cover.

Mackarb is the name of the town where the story is set, hence the different spelling of the word, macabre. It took me a while to come up with the name because it’s an important element of the story. It wouldn’t have seemed as sinister if I’d given it a happy name.

My next book in the series is called Jackolantern, and as you can probably guess, will be available for Halloween.

The third book is called Magenta and is about a woman who is engrossed in a novel she’d reading, then realises she’s trapped in it and can’t get out. I used a lot of imagination and creativity to write this one.

Anyway, if you’re interested in this series, Mackarb is available to buy or download from any book store.

Or you can borrow a copy from a library. If your library doesn’t have a copy, fill out a request form for them to purchase a copy.

And then relax and have a good read.