Good news! My new book, The Painting, is now available to buy over at Amazon for $2.99/£1.99! Just hit here to be transferred to the relevant Kindle Store.

Here’s a bit about the book:

You think you know the story.

When struggling novelist Donny retreats to a derelict old house, he hopes to find the inspiration to overcome his battle with writer’s block. However, things don’t seem to be getting any easier for him inside the creepy house.

Until he finds the painting.

Reinvigorated by the painting’s alluring presence, Donny finally begins to defeat his writer’s block. But something is changing in the painting. Something is changing in the house.

Something is watching…

As events grow more terrifying and surreal, Donny finds himself not only fighting to write, but fighting for his life and his sanity.

What is the painting? You might think you know.

The Painting is a 90 page/27,000 word suspense-horror novella. It is the first instalment in The Watching trilogy.

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The book has already received some nice initial praise, with one reader informing me that they finished it in one sitting, as well as some great beta reader/ARC feedback.
Again, if you want to grab a copy of your own and see what all the fuss is about, then head over to Amazon. If it doesn’t take you directly to your store, just replace the ‘.com/.co.uk’ in the link with your store and that will do the trick.

As I promised, my new release notification subscribers heard about the book way before anybody else. In fact, they got their hands on it two days ago! If you’d like to be in their shoes next time round, then just click here to sign up. I only ever send out emails when I’ve got a new book out, and I never share your details with anybody. Promise.

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The Painting is the result of a craving to write a conceptual horror of some sort as well as editing fatigue. I’ve been editing and rewriting my second novel for quite some time now, and finished the draft of my third back in February. By the end of April, I was eager to get writing again.

I actually started what would become The Painting back in January, but dropped it due to other commitments. It’s an idea I’ve always been fond of, even though I didn’t really know what that idea ‘was’ until I wrote it.

The bulk of the draft was written over an intensely creative period . The more I wrote, the larger the buzz increased. Insert [writing is my drug cliché here]. I wanted to prove to both myself and to my readers that a good story is not necessarily written over a crazy period of time. If you’ve got a tight plan and some solid elements in place, then you can finish a draft in no time.

That said, The Painting totally deviated from the plan. In fact, without wanting to spoil it, some of the key plot moments were completely spontaneous. The three-chapter split of the book pretty much splits in the same way as my mind when writing it. I had an idea where I wanted the thing to go, but I let my creativity run wild.

Big thanks to — Cynthia Shepp, Adrijus Guscia, Leanne Sype, and James Parsons. Your help in each stage really developed and refined my ideas.

I hope you enjoy the book. It’s just the first part of something much, much bigger, the rest of which you’ll be able to check out in the remainder of 2013.

Again, if you want a copy, click here.

Enjoy!
Ryan Casey.