Loxley post Previous news

March 2006 - July 2007: Robin began the task of sifting through his notes into an organised manner. In early 2007 he began to write HTTK Book one 'The Bowman Of Loxley,' on completion he began the long journey of seeking a publisher, it would take almost two years to find a company that fitted the needs of the book.

March 16th 2009: Robin made an enquiry to the new publishing company UKUnpublished. The site had been found by his partner, and looked promising after several self publishing deals that had fallen through due to hidden expenses. Emails exchanged and the company allowed Robin to talk to other authors published by the firm, the references given were excellent. After some thought the decision to publish with the company was taken.

March 24th 2009: Having made the decision to publish with UKU, Work began to seriously build the HTTK website. Having never built one before and after a year of sketching his thoughts on how it should look, Robin and his partner began the job of design and build of heirs to the kingdom.com. The domain names belonged to Robin having been registered over a year previous.

April 1st 2009: Book One, The Bowman of Loxley goes into production. With the ISBN numbers filed and the cover and book approved by Robin it was time to consider a release date, It was also a time of huge excitement. The release date was set for just four weeks later on May 1st 2009. Work began to prepare the publicity and plan how the book would be marketed.

April 2nd 2009: www.heirstothekingdom.com, went live for the first time. As with all new sites there are a few bugs, which we are working out. By the time the book is released in four weeks we hope to have everything running perfectly. Although Robin has been very deeply involved with the layout and design of a lot of the site, the credit should go to his partner Corinne who has worked night and day ensuring everything runs smoothly for you all.

May 20th 2009 THE BOWMAN AT THE MAN AND SYTHE. Robin John Morgan has been invited to host an evening at the Man and Sythe, Churchgate, Bolton, Lancs UK. He will read and discuss some of his favorite passages from the first in the HTTK series and also provide a small insight into the next book, which is currently being planned for release in the near future. This is a wonderful opportunity to meet the author and get your book signed, as well as hear the Bowman read as it was written. The event will begin at 7.30 pm. There is a possibility that he will be accompanied by several of the HTTK team including illustrator Louis M Slater. For information on the event email Info@heirstothekingdom.com.

This event has been kindly organised and will be hosted by Wenches and Trinkets, of Churhgate Bolton, Who have requested that the evening be used for the official launch of the book and Robin has been delighted to accept. An account of how the book came about will be told, and some of the passages of the book will be available to view. See Events Page for photos.

June 20th and 21st CHURCHGATE MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL 10AM-5PM Robin and his partner will be joining the festival for a second year promoting the HTTK book one. They have agreed to set up a stand which will focus on the first book and the HTTK project as well as display a range of the jewellery from his partner. Jaded Opals will be selling a range of handmade items that focus around the woodland theme of the book. The event is open all day and Robin will be on site to talk about the books. Louis M Slater is also to date booked to attend.
Want to talk HTTK, this will be the time and place, so come on down to Churchgate, Bolton, Lancashire, UK.. More info can be requested from Info@heirstothekingdom.com....See you there.

May 9th 2009 Robin made an appearance at the St Mary's Church Hall in Horwich Lancashire at an event to support the Local Mountain Rescue Group. He was mainly there in support of his partner with her Jaded Opals woodland themed Jewellery, but he did put out a few copies of the book and signed a few for the customers. It was a relaxed pleasant affair that helped to add more to the Mountain Rescue Groups funds.

June 1st 2009 THE OFFICIAL LAUNCH OF THE HTTK FORUM. Its has taken a little longer than planned, and at the moment there are still some tests going on to ensure all of those who will police the site as characters from the book are up to date, but on June first the forum will go live to add yet another aspect of interaction with the HTTK stories. This will be your chance as a fan of the books to log on and be a part of the adventure. We hope to have some lively debates and also a lot of enjoyment on the site. We hope everyone will enter into the spirit of things and adopt a role playing attitude and keep it fun and friendly for all users. The admin's have taken a little time to get use to their roles, and all of them have day to day interaction with the HTTK author Robin John Morgan, so they have had a good briefing and should play their roles 100%.

Rumour has it that one of the characters has been reserved for the Author himself and so this will be your chance to talk directly to him live online..

May 28th HTTK set up its RJM Blog site. Robin will be running the site where he will posting on a regular basis an ongoing series of things related to HTTK. At the moment its still a new site and he is getting used to how to functions, but overtime he will be sharing his thoughts and giving insights to how the whole series of books came together. The site at the moment is focused on three topic pages. ABOUT, which has a few facts about the author. HTTK which obviously will have involved pieces on his the series, and WRITER this page will feature his experiences as a new writer in the publishing world. You can look at the page via his author page on this site and click the button, which will take you straight to it via a pop up window.Check it out and post a comment on what you think.

June 5th 2009 WEB SITE UPGRADES It has taken some time to build the website and get it running smoothly, as you know this site is built by Robin and his partner, and its the first site they have ever built, so its took some time getting to know how everything works. Now the site is up and running they have both been very busy upgrading the site. You will notice now on the Home page there are a lot of new buttons, The forum is now live, and also there is a wonderful new feature designed by Robin called the Visual Site Map. This is designed with users who do not use the net a lot in mind, as you can see there is a small picture of each page on the map, and all you do is click it to go to that page, we hope you like it and it helps. There is a new contacts page with all the relevant contacts on it, and the guest book has now been moved to its own button. Most of the small pictures on the home page left violet column are now links to take you into a new page on the site pictured. We hope all of the new improvements make for a better experience of HTTK, if you like them let us know by emailing us...

June 6th 2009 Amazon Charts. We have just had word from Robin and we are delighted to say, that the Bowman of Loxley has risen again this week in the Amazon UK charts to a really wonderful 56,008 place. Yes it seems like it still very far down the list, but take into account its early days and the book did enter at 1,092,024, so its well over a million places up. The really great news is that the book has also entered the Top 100 Fantasy/contemporary chart at number 29. We never expected that, and to be honest we just hoped to get it in the top 90, so we are all thrilled. Robin did ask us to say a really huge thanks to everyone who has bought the book, or recomended it to a friend...

June 14th 2009. Web site update. We are delighted to say that today the web site recorded 100 thousand hits since it first went online. We know not all of those are converted to book sales but it does give the whole team a little hope to know that there is some very real interest in the books. At this moment in time we have no idea as to how well the book is selling, it really will be around September when we have any real idea, but for now it has lifted our spirits at a time when we are all exhausted from the long hours of working on HTTK. Thankyou to everyone who has visited the site.

July 10th 2009. Web Site upgrades Today has been a busy days for the guys in the office. As you can see the blog of Robin's is connected and running, and can be accessed from the Author page. We have also been able to now get the Loxley map uploaded and you can see it on the office page, although the thumbnail does give you a better look at the map when you click on it, we have set it a little out of focus, so that it can not be bootlegged, sorry if it causes an inconvenience, but the official map is not ready yet and we don't want copies appearing before it is.

July 10th 2009 WEB SITE SPAMMERS (A personal statement from Robin John Morgan)

To all of you who have logged into this site and shown me a large amount of support I would like to say a huge thank you. I am however very sorry to say that some individuals have not been as supportive and have shown utter disrespect to the people of this site. Since My Partner Corinne and Myself fist set up the HTTK.com site we have been plagued with spammers who have posted what we consider to be offensive materials via links on the Guest Book and on the Forum. As a result of this I have had to act to combat an influx of posted links to child Porn sites, and I have taken the decision to remove the guest book from this site permanently. I am sorry to those of you who posted letters of support, but this site is about safe clean enjoyment of the HTTK realm and in a bid to keep it safe for all those with a genuine reason to visit I have now made it impossible to use the Guest Book. Today I blocked all out going web site links on the forum and I have reset the Forum now so that any links posted with not be connected from this site, so if this sort of vile posting does continue the links will be useless. Again I am sorry I have had to do this, but the spammers have left me no choice if I want to keep this site safe. For those of you who wish to ask questions or send messages to us please use the info email as listed on the new contact page. Once again thanks for visiting the site Robin J Morgan...

July 13th 2009 Feybound.com HTTK feature. Here at the Loxley post we can confirm that Robin has been talking to Feybound.com. For those of you who do not know the site, (see link on home page) this is a website that features loads of news and articles on what is going on in the world of Sci Fi and Fantasy. We can report exclusively that Robin will have a feature on their site with a book write up on the Bowman of Loxley and a few details about the author himself at some point in August. Go and check the site out, it really is worth a good long look, they also have a forum so you can join and chat other realms all night, just remember to come back here as this is the most accurate site for HTTK info on the net... We have placed a link on the home page so give it a click

August 5th 2009 BOOK TWO UPDATE Its looking like its that time soon!!! Robin has informed the team that the final edit and proof read has been completed and the book is ready to roll as soon as the artwork is complete. We have had one set back in the form of artist Louis M Slater who has a broken finger and has had to rest his pencils for a while, although Robin is still hopeful the book will still hit its September deadline for the publisher. We will have to wait and see as the art work usually does take a little time to convert on to JPEG for use on the computer to format the book cover, we are all waiting with our breath held for that moment when it arrives at the office. We will update you as soon as we have concrete news.

August 20th Summer records for HTTK We are delighted that today The Bowman of Loxley rose to number 50 in the contemporary fantasy top 100 books on Amazon UK. Its not as high as last time where it charted at number 29, but summer is a time when a lot of books sell, so getting placed in its self is an achievement. The good news is that the book rose to 29000 out of 2 million in their overall chart which does give the signal that people are indeed starting to pick up on the book. Robin said "Rin and Myself have worked round the clock for four months trying to get the word out, and we are really delighted. Its still a very long way off being in the mainstream, to do that we have to get it into the top two thousand on Amazon, and that is quite a tough task, we are however celebrating our highest rise to date, and we shall continue to keep pushing" So you heard the man guys, lets give em a hand and tell everyone we know, you all know what a fantastic book this is, lets get everyone else in the know.....

Another small achievement for all of us is that in the first 15 days of August, hits on this site increased to a point where they were more than April,May,June and July put together, OK there are still a lot of spammers trying to get on the site even though we have took off the page, but looking at the stats we are getting hits from all over the world and the majority are people with a genuine interest in the book, so we have taken a deep breath and we are now trying to get even more for September, Keep telling your friends.....

September 13th 2009 Book Two is in the works. Its a very busy but immensely exciting time in the HTTK camp at the moment as the final touches are put to the manuscript for Book Two. Robin has been hidden away for over a month as he finely tunes the book, and the word is that the manuscript will be on its way to the publisher this week as we race to hit the deadline to get the book out for its planned releases date October 13th. There have been a few problems that have slowed the process, one of them being Louy the illustrator, who broke a finger. The book missed its first deadline to be at UKU for September 1st, but Robin has pushed onwards and it now looks like we may just hit the release date target. Its going to be a close shave, but at least the book will be on the shelves for Christmas, so add it to your presie list, you will not be disappointed, if you enjoyed the first book, this one will blow you away. Watch the home page as we approach the end of the month and you will be the first to see the new title and look of the book....