I’m not going to bang on about it in this post, but the basic idea is that it contains a series of puzzles. Each puzzle — text with a lavish accompanying illustration — contains clues to one specific concept, quality, object or other meme-like notion. The answer is linked with (embodied by, found at, associated to) a physical place on Earth. Looking at the solution’s physical place using Google Earth will reveal patterns that can be found in the illustration, confirming you’re on the right track. Then, taken together, the answers to all the puzzles form the clues for one last puzzle that will lead you to the final treasure spot. The winner will get a 50k euro prize.

Although I’m still on my normal twitter account, @ghostwoods, I’ve also got a Treasure Hunt-specific twitter account, @Dedopulos. I’ll be answering questions there, mentioning interesting stuff, and giving occasional hints. When I have longer pieces of information to reveal, I’ll probably do it here and put links up there, assuming that Carlton, the publishers, agree.

In other news, the novels I’m publishing via Ghostwoods Books are doing nicely. If you haven’t had a look at them, and you like genre or speculative fiction, you should definitely have a peek. They’re very reasonably priced, fully up to professional grade of course, and getting good reviews on Amazon. You can click on the links to the right to read full details and a decently-sized free sample of each one.

Of course, there are no clues to the Great Global Treasure Hunt hidden in any of the novels. It would be unthinkable of me to do anything like that and I know you’d be shocked — shocked, I say — at any suggestion otherwise. So, whatever you do, don’t go reading the Ghostwoods novels because you’re hoping for a clue on how to win 50k. No. Definitely don’t do that. Go read them because they’re really good.

A dark, sexy subculture romp, All Lies and Jest is a novel about belief, delusion, were-mosquitoes, and the dangers of being so open-minded that your brain falls out

Sezin Koehler’s American Monsters is a disturbing horror story about super-powered female trauma survivors taking the rave scene back from the predators.

Ghost Patrol, by P.D. Jordan, is a taut science fiction thriller about perception, mind control, and what it actually means to be a human being.

Finally, long-time author and game designer Greg Stolze’s SwitchFlipped is a fast-paced, gritty urban fantasy novel set in the cracks behind what we think of as reality.

Remember! No sneaky looking inside any of those books for clues regarding the hiding place of the Treasure! I utterly forbid it.

But what does Fair Trade publishing mean? Well, I drink a lot of coffee. I’ve been impressed with the Fair Trade initiative, given how badly screwed coffee growers tend to be. Growing coffee takes years. So can writing and publishing a book. In practice, this translates to a 50/50 income share with authors. If I can’t make my wages and expenses out of my half of the income, I don’t deserve to be publishing. I’ve been writing for 20 years, and have more than 100 books out there. I’m determined to be the publisher I always longed to find.

But Fair Trade has to extend to readers, too. Traditional publishing is falling apart under the weight of its own greed. Far too many companies have been unfairly avaricious for too long, complacent in their power as Gatekeepers of what gets published. The digital revolution has changed all of that. Readers are sick of being treated like stupid, naughty children. For the reader, Fair Trade means a great book, well written and fairly priced, prepared to full professional standard, free of crippling DRM. Every Ghostwoods book has been painstakingly laid out, proof-read, and then proof-read again.

The Ghostwoods launch novels represent the best in modern fiction. You can see the covers just to the right of this post. Click on one, and you’ll be taken to that book.

‘All Lies and Jest’, by Kate Harrad, is a counter-culture thriller with a delicious vein of dark humour. In it, you’ll meet crazed cultists, psychopaths, lettuce-eating vampires, and a chilling conspiracy to bring about the end of the world.

‘American Monsters’, by Sezin Koehler, is a post-modern feminist horror, and a savage indictment of rave culture. Its heroines are traumatised, quirkily super-powered, and absolutely not putting up with any more shit.

‘Ghost Patrol’, by P.D. Jordan, is a tense science fiction story. When a brilliant young space captain is captured by the enemy, he finds himself thrown into a lethal game of psychological cat and mouse with his would-be reprogrammers.

‘SwitchFlipped’ by Greg Stolze is an exciting urban fantasy about a normal guy who gets drawn into a lunatic reality where people can turn into electricity, where ghosts live suburban lives, and where nothing is impossible, if you’re prepared to pay the price.

The digital revolution is a very exciting time to be a reader. It’s exciting for writers, too. I’m determined to bring the two together, as pleasantly and generously as I possibly can.

book by flyzipper

It’s time to do something about it. I drink a lot of coffee (surprise, huh?) and have been impressed with the Fair Trade initiative, given how badly screwed coffee growers tend to be. Growing coffee takes years. So can writing and publishing a book.

So Ghostwoods Books is a brand new deal — a Fair Trade initiative for writers. The principle is simple. Readers get damn fine books to read at a great price; writers get a friendly publisher who’s on their side, and is prepared to hand over a full 50% of the profits. Thats what partnerships are all about.

If you like reading, Ghostwoods Books are fully professional, top-quality books at least as good as any you’d buy in a store. Better, hopefully, because it’s not a committee of marketing and PR types selecting lowest-common-denominator content, but a small team of dedicated, passionate editors with decades of experience in all areas of publishing.

If you like writing, Ghostwoods Books offers a friendly, supportive, route to publication. Whilst we’re in the initial phases, publication will be electronic. If you want us to, we’ll also represent your book to print publishers. Later, we’ll be able to offer full print contracts ourselves. We’re currently open to submissions, so if you’re interested, read on!

The Case for eBooks

Despite what you may think, author’s royalties on printed books are generally pretty bad. They’re can be as low as $0.15 a copy, and even with horrible advances at just $3000 or below, books not on the A* list often don’t earn out their advance. It’s a complicated issue, but the sad truth is that everyone wants a big chunk of the sales price, and the author is right at the bottom of the pile. Unless they’re celebs, of course. But we’re not, and we assume you’re not, either.

Publishing eBooks gives a chance to cut out several stages of the feeding frenzy. Publication costs are also minimal, which helps reduce overheads. There are no print or shipping costs. Despite this, mainstream publishers have a tendency to grossly overprice electronic copies of their books, and it is really annoying readers.

Electronic publishers take between 15% and 50% of the cover price. This is pretty huge, but even in the worst cases — like Kobo — it still leaves a reasonable amount of money per sale, and that money is profit. That profit deserves to be split equally, because despite publishers’ opinions, writing a book is hard work that deserves a fair reward.

The Ghostwoods Books Approach

We’re looking for top-quality novels and non-fiction works to publish, initially electronically, at a reader-friendly price, somewhere between $5.00 and $5.99. All books will be thoroughly developed and edited before publication, as you’d expect. They’ll be properly laid out, ISBN’ed, and given attractive covers. Then they’ll be listed with every useful eBook publisher out there. We may record them as audiobooks, too. We’ll back all this up with promotion and marketing, review copies, press releases, submission to all relevant major awards and competitions, and lots of info as to how you can also help promote your work effectively.

Ghostwoods Books will only publish genuinely good books. No ifs, no buts, no back-handers. Particularly in eBook publishing, it’s vital to build a reliable reputation. The Ghostwoods Books seal will guarantee a top-quality publication. That’s worth more than a whole pallette of bus-stop posters and corny marketing stunts.

As well as electronically publishing and promoting your work, we’ll also represent your book as literary agents to the mainstream publishing industry if you want us to — and yes, that includes handing over electronic rights. The time will come when we’re able to offer print contracts ourselves, but it won’t be for a while. In the mean time, we’ll help you get there with other people, in return for standard agents’ fees. Selling just 5000 copies of an eBook is enough to get publishers to take you very seriously indeed, so we’re in the unique place of being able to bolster our agenting efforts with meaningful hard numbers.

Because our business model relies on very low up-front costs to get started, the one down-side is that we’re only able to offer a nominal advance against royalties. I know that sucks. Sorry. Normal agents wouldn’t pay any advance of course, nor publish electronically. To make up for it, we’re giving you a get-out clause.

How to Submit a Manuscript to us

If you’re interested, please email your manuscript — in a format MS Word can deal with — to ghostwoodsbooks@gmail.com. All genres / styles are welcome; ditto self-published works. We’re interested in non-fiction, too. We’ll get back to you as swiftly as possible regarding your work — very quickly, to start with, but it’s likely to slow down when things get really busy.

Things to include: A one-sentence strap-line that says who and what the book is about; a short synopsis of the book; some thoughts on things you could do to help market the book; a little info about yourself that people might find interesting, if appropriate; any other info you think is relevant; and the finished book.

Things not to include: PDFs; file formats MS Word can’t open; ZIPs, RARs, Executables, image files or viruses; ludicrous bravado; unfinished books; Public Domain works you’ve copied; manuscripts you don’t own all the rights to; books substantially shorter than 70,000 words or longer than 150,000 words; and poetry — simply because I know nothing about it.

Things that don’t matter: Page size, double-spacing, and other bits of over-anal formatting nonsense.

I’m sorry! I suck!

Unfortunately, I’ve been overloaded with work on a critical, Top Secret project for most of February. I know that’s dull of me, so as a little bit of a consolation, I thought I’d tell you the things that I’m (more or less) allowed to reveal about it. Hopefully, my publishers won’t put a price on my head.

Put simply, it’s a treasure hunt.

The book (which will be available globally) takes the form of a series of images, accompanied by passages of text. Each image/text combination contains a series of clues, which taken together will point to a specific solution. As a theoretical f’rinstance, a large bear on its hind legs in a picture could suggest a Russian link.

Each of the solutions, taken together, will then point to the final answer.

The first person to solve the answer, and submit it after a specific date, will win money. A _lot_ of money.

The answer exists in only two places: my head, and a highly-encrypted DVD locked in a secure bank vault. Obviously if anything dodgy happens to me — I vanish, get kidnapped, die suspiciously, etc etc — then the whole deal is off. Finding the answer won’t require any specific skill or cultural background; literally anyone could do it, if they try. Fortunately there’ll be no question of going out into the countryside with a shovel and metal detector :)

Pot of Gold by Tao Zhyn

So it’s a really exciting project. I’m not allowed to reveal the title yet, but I can tell you that I’ve been thinking of it as The Labyrinth.

The one piece of advice I’d give to anyone hoping to win is to get to know the way I think. It’s good advice for any puzzle; the better you understand the mind that created it, the easier it is to solve it. There may — just may — be clues hidden here in the blog, and other places where I can be found online. Later on, I’ll probably have a specific Twitter feed and blog too, but I’ll still drop little nuggets here for just you :)

Oh, and no, I’m afraid I’m not open to bribes!

Monkey King by anc (c) Ivan Ricci

Monkey had strength, fearlessness and curiosity beyond all other monkeys, and was recognised as their king. He soon realised the inevitability of death, and became determined to conquer it. He badgered a sage into teaching him the secrets of Taoism, gained his familiar name as Sun Wukong. The sage taught him a huge range of magical tricks, including changing his shape, cloud-somersaulting to travel more than 30,000 miles in a single bound, and making copies of himself. When he could learn no more, he went and caused chaos for the Eastern Sea-Dragon King until the dragon gave him a range of magic weapons. The most important was Ruyi Jingu Bang, the Gold-Banded Cudgel, which weighed more than 7 tons, and had previously held the sea in place.

The Dragon-King’s gifts made Monkey utterly uncontrollable, and in the end the forces of Heaven decided to give him a divine title and job, to help control him. This gambit failed too, and their efforts to control the irrepressible Monkey managed only to give him eternal life, and to increase his strength, resilience and magical power. Eventually, with the courts of Heaven themselves in Chaos, Buddha stepped in. After a period of time buried under a mountain, Monkey was given a chance to redeem himself by helping the monk Sanzang in his epic journey to India to fetch a trove of Buddhist sutras. To keep him in line, an unshakeable golden band was placed on his head; when Sanzang magically activated it, the band tightened agonisingly.

Monkey by Isle of Troggs

The Journey to the West and back took seventeen years. Monkey and his equally ambivalent fellow transgressors against heaven, Pig (Zu Bajie, or ‘Eight Commandments Pig’, after his eight horrible transgressions) and Sand (Sha Wuching, ‘Sand awakened to purity’) defended Sanzang faithfully all manner of horrible dangers, getting into many terrible scrapes. Eventually, the party arrived back in China, and were lauded as heroes. Monkey was eventually granted Buddhahood in recognition for his service, his growth in wisdom, and his immense power.

An abridged version of “Journey to the West” was translated into English by Arthur Waley as “Monkey” (1942), and the story was made into a Japanese TV series titled “Saiyuki” (1978). This was also titled “Monkey”, after Waley’s work, when the BBC dubbed it into English. Both book and series have proved highly influential in the west.

“That is not dead which can eternal lie; and with strange aeons, even death may die.”
– the Necronomicon

A tome of the very darkest wisdom, invented for the Cthulhu mythos cycle by HP Lovecraft, the Necronomicon first appeared in “The Hound” (1922). The Necronomicon is a detailed treasury of information on the true nature of the universe, and mankind’s horribly precarious and brief place within it. The book goes into significant detail about the Great Old Ones – particularly Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth – and their minions, and the black arts required to summon and control these beings. It also has unpleasant spells for a variety of other purposes. The Necronomicon is extremely disturbing to read, and has driven lesser men stark raving mad. The wisdom it contains reveals things that mankind really wasn’t meant to know. Only the most evil can gain anything other than shattered peace of mind from perusing its horrible contents.

One of the more prominent passages reproduced from the book reads, in part:

“Nor is it to be thought that man is either the oldest or the last of earth’s masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen … As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They rule again.” (From “The Dunwich Horror” by HP Lovecraft, 1928)

The Necronomicon was written early in the 8th century AD by a crazed, decadent Arabic cultist, Abdual Alhazred. He titled the book “Al Azif” (with a supposed literal meaning close to ‘the nocturnal howling of the demons of the desert’). He died a short time later, ripped apart in a crowded Damascus bazaar by invisible demons, but the book was quietly copied and studied by Arab scholars. It was translated into Greek as the Necronomicon (possibly ‘The Book of Dead Names’) by the scholar Theodorus Philetas in 950AD. It was suppressed in 1050AD, but survived to be translated into Latin in 1228 by Olaus Wormius, and then into English around 1590AD by Queen Elizabeth’s magus, Dr. John Dee. Only five copies are known to remain for certain, in libraries and universities in Harvard, Buenos Airies, London, Paris and Arkham. Others crop up in private collections of the most horrible, decadent sort.

In the real world, there remain persistent rumours that Lovecraft did not actually invent the book, but instead was inspired by some real tome of horrors. He always flatly rejected those claims as flattering credulity and nonsense. Several hoaxers have worked the Necronomicon into library catalogues over the years, and librarians world-wide still get queries about it, although it’s difficult to imagine why anyone would actually want to risk read the thing.

There have been several real books produced that attempted to cash in on this interest, but none of them even begin to come close to capturing the spirit of the work.

The Necronomicake, also baked and (c) Milliput Mog

I’m always amazed that Powers isn’t more famous than he actually is. It seems extremely unjust, given that he’s quietly out there writing some of the best fiction on the market. Powers specialises in true Urban Fantasy — thrilling yet haunting stories where reality and true historical events are overlaid with magic, and the two become blended together in strange and unpredictable ways. No vampires, fairies or P.I. wizards here; instead, in Powers’ books, Albert Einstein’s time machine, poets who never were, and Russian double-agents chasing the secret of eternal life.

Last Call by Tim Powers

Last Call is set in the American west. The hero is a poker player, a man who spent his childhood being steeped in the curious superstitions of professional card-players, riding high by following the rules. Twenty years on, he’s still paying for having broken them when things long-dormant start to wake up and he finds himself the subject of some very unwelcome attention. It’s the end of a cycle, and his old debt is being called in.

The resulting journey weaves Fisher King legends, the Tarot, poker, and the glittering dream of Vegas into a dazzling mystic swirl, as dark and seedy as it is beautiful and engaging. It’s a very modern haunting of the American dream-scape, exciting, absorbing and wildly imaginative. Urban fantasy really doesn’t get much better.

Lovecraft was a troubled, reclusive man, and his long-standing personal demons and his alienation from everyday life provided a foundation for everything he wrote. In the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’, as his mythology is now know, human life and civilisation is a tiny speck of light floating on unimaginable depths of darkness and horror. We are an aberration, suffered to survive only because the true masters of the cosmos have been locked out of existence for a short time. They are all-powerful, amoral forces of pure corruption and devastation. When the stars are right, they will return, and that day will see the world scoured clean of the careless infection that is life. Even now, banished from reality, their influence and agents sew chaos and misery amongst us, seeking ever to guide humanity to its destruction.

The Necronomicon by and (c) Marc Simonetti

In Lovecraft’s stories, the traces of evil can be seen and felt in wrongness — geometry that doesn’t work, places that have an inappropriate feel, people who have degenerated back towards primitive forms. Encountering this evil is incredibly dangerous; there are no ‘the hero whips out a gun and saves the day’ stories in his work. The usual results are madness and death.

Lovecraft’s stories have a cumulative power. The more of them you read, the more his world seeps into your bones, the more disturbing and unpleasant it becomes. Despite the broadly contemporary setting (for the time, anyway), they really aren’t quite set in our world. Lovecraft conjures vivid places, histories, institutions, artifacts and pieces of lore, then weaves them into reality so that the lines start blurring. It is this sense of hidden decay that really represents the mythos, rather than any primal god — and also why a book, the Necronomicon, is the aspect of the mythos that is most widely known.

There are plenty of problems with Lovecraft’s work, of course. His xenophobia and racism are almost comical to the modern eye. Ditto some of his more obscure vocabulary. He hated writing dialogue too, so almost all of his stories are presented through a narrator who tells you what is going on. Despite this, the sheer force of his vision makes him absolutely worth reading.

If you want to have a go, and haven’t read any Lovecraft before, I’d recommend:

The Shadow Over Innsmouth

The Dunwich Horror

The Whisperer in the Darkness

The Rats in the Walls

The Colour out of Space

Dreams in the Witch-House

At the Mountains of Madness (which is long),

and, once you’ve read at least one other story and got to grips with the style a bit, The Call of Cthulhu, which is probably his ‘signature’ piece.

As is often the case, all delight aside, I’m a little surprised by this book. For only the second time ever, the surprise is pleasant. The book is a hard-back, which I didn’t expect, with an unusual padded cover. The cover illustration is a bit random, but that’s par for the course. The text has made it through editing without any significant mangling. The illustrations have been nicely coloured, and the page textures are reasonably sympathetic, both of which are pleasant bonuses. The only real negative is that the publisher took my name off the cover for the UK version, which is a bit offensive. Still, all in all, I’m very pleased.

The Greatest Puzzles Ever Solved, by Tim Dedopulos

The book is a selection of the most historically significant, scientifically important and/or culturally interesting puzzles ever produced. This includes deliberate recreational puzzles like Crosswords and Sudoku to philosophical dilemmas, riddles, and mathematical problems. They range from very easy to insanely hard, although obviously the vast majority are, I hope, entertainingly challenging. I’ve done my best to give proper context for all the puzzles, so that their importance is clear, and to explain how the answers are found. I always get annoyed by complicated puzzles where the answer just says “23″ or whatever. In other words, I’ve done my best to do a good job, and it’s nice that the book itself is a decent physical thing.

In the interests of full disclosure, it is important that I point out that I’m not getting any royalties for this book *sigh*. So if you go and buy a copy, I’ll never even hear about it, let alone get any money from it. So, please, only buy this book if it actually sounds like you might enjoy it…!

(Yes, that is one of my infamous table runners in the picture.)

At first introduction, the heroine of the title seems like an impossibly tedious chiché. She’s a tragic orphaned heiress, young, lovely and fey, forced into semi-squalor by the machinations of her callous half-brother. She is studying at university when she meets a tall, dark, handsome prince who promptly begins sweeping her off her feet. Even here though, there are clues that Marianne is more than she appears. She is unusually bloody-minded and fierce beneath her gentle appearance, and wages an intriguing daily war against the forces of random chaos.

A genuine aura of menace surrounds Marianne right from the start, conjured expertly via her seemingly innocuous surroundings. This builds swiftly until Marianne suddenly finds herself flung, amnesiac, into a series of twisted nightmarish alternate realities. These border worlds are everything you’d expect from Sheri Tepper — dark, peculiar, engaging and stunningly creative. Marianne herself approaches them as a grown-up Alice might, with fiery resolve and pragmatic ruthlessness. Her dashing Prince Charming attempts to rush to the rescue, but frankly he’s barely needed.

Tepper’s gender politics are well-known, and have weakened a lot of her later work, but here they’re a delicious under-note rather than an overwhelming spice disaster. The result is simultaneously gripping, charming and strange. The Marianne books aren’t easy to find any more, but if you do spot them around, do yourself a favour and give them a go.