Shadows and Pagodas

After six years Shadows is finally about to see the light of day as an ebook. Here's the long version of the blurb: 

Peter Fielding steals a mysterious painting, hits the road and finds himself in the service of the outrageous Baron Parzifal. The biggest fraud this side of Cleopatran Paris? Greatest adventurer since Cortes? Royal bastard loon or failed vampire? No one really seems to know, least of all the Baron. But one thing is for sure – time is fast running out and he’s left with one last desperate throw of the dice to find the treasure that will save him. Chased by the Inquisition, Peter and the Baron undertake a series of extraordinary escapades that take them all the way from Europe to the other side of the world. There they discover that things aren’t always quite what they seem.

Well, sort of.

I'm going to have a pop at using images rather than Word to post information and commentary about aspects of my work. For the One Hand Clapping Novels I'm using lined paper with a few grungy things stuck on e.g. see the indented image. For Shadows and other gothic-type fiction I'm going to use parchment - or is that toooo predictable? Probably.

My first effort was reworking the original statement I posted defining what I meant by "Buddhist Noir". Hopefully, it looks a little more creative than the plain text I had up before. The next thing I did was to show how I reworked the original Zen saying that opens the novel. Again, in a way that it is more creative and combines noir and Zen Buddhist sensibilities. 

I'm using Serif Photo Plus x5. This is about right for my level of (limited) ability. I can see the cover art, image, etc. in my head but I can't quite conflate this with my technical skills to get it out there. I feel a bit like a designer trying to create a Modern Arne Jacobsen-style chair but ending up making a three-legged stool that wouldn't look out of place in a medieval Transylvanian hovel.