There have been stories of vampires – or something very like vampires – for thousands of years. Modern ideas about vampires can be traced back to mediaeval times, with vampire myths being particularly popular in Eastern Europe. Vampires entered English fiction in the early 19th century, but really took off with the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1897.
Given the long history of vampires and the different cultures that produced vampire stories, it’s hardly surprising that there are many different versions of the vampire myth. Since Dracula, though, there have been some recurring tropes. Vampires burn in daylight, they can be killed by fire, holy water, or a stake through the heart. They are driven off by garlic. They can take the form of bats or wolves. Not all the stories include all the attributes and, lately, writers have had fun in twisting and experimenting with the attributes of their vampires. My own vampire creation, Chief Inspector Pole, enjoys cooking with garlic and certainly can’t turn into a bat, but he is, if not immortal, very long lived and he needs to drink blood to stay healthy. These two attributes seem to be the bare minimum and almost all vampire stories stick with them.
Kirsten McKenzie’s vampires are very much in this modern tradition. They have lived hundreds of years and they have to feed on blood, but beyond that she has chosen to concentrate on some mythic elements of vampire existence and twist or ignore others. Garlic, for example, does not feature at all, and her vampires have no links to bats, but (perhaps in the wake of Game of Thrones) they do seem tied to ravens, which feature ominously throughout her story.
The Vampires of York Tower starts with a prologue set in 1793. I found it a bit confusing, but stick with it. All will be revealed over 200 years later.
We move to today (and there are some neat contemporary references scattered through the book). We’re in York Tower, an upmarket apartment block in New York City. There’s no strong feel of the city as most of the action takes place in the building. York Tower is its own little world. Bronzed windows filter the light. (Picking up any clues yet?) Round-the-clock security keeps residents safe, insulated from the outside world.
We see much of the story through the eyes of the two guards manning the front desk on the day shift. Will and Rufus are ex-cops, happy to be off the beat but taking their responsibilities for security at York Tower very seriously. They care about the tenants and they are sad when several of them die suddenly. But these are elderly people and there is no reason to be suspicious.
There are some strange things going on, though. A mysterious messenger, always making deliveries to the same room – a room that should be empty. There are unexplained power outages and inexplicable smells.
Something bites Will’s neck. Nothing so 19th century as the twin puncture marks of a traditional vampire. In fact, we never really find out how the bite was administered, but this doesn’t get in the way of a pacey story that carries you along with it. Will thinks it’s just an insect bite but soon he finds he loses his appetite, becoming thinner and almost literally wasting away. He thinks it’s cancer, but his sudden sensitivity to light and increasing desire for red meat might give the rest of us a clue as to the real problem.
We begin to meet more of the residents. There are a lot of them, but they are well-drawn and quite easy to keep track of. This becomes even easier as the story moves on and there are fewer and fewer of them. We also meet the Tower’s owner, Richard Blackwood. (I told you to pay attention to the prologue.)
The New York skyline glittered beyond the tinted windows of the York Tower penthouse, a view that had captivated Richard Blackwood for decades. But tonight, his attention was fixed on his wife, Elizabeth, as she stood on the terrace, her silk robe billowing in the evening breeze.
“My dear,” Richard called softly, “you shouldn’t be out there. The sun has barely set.”
I’ll say no more about the plot. At this point you could reasonably assume that you can work the rest of it out, but you’d be wrong. McKenzie’s tale is full of unexpected twists. The finale, a battle royal conducted, naturally, in darkness, brings the book to a thrilling and satisfying conclusion.
Since I started my own Galbraith & Pole vampire series, I’m naturally interested to see how other writers approach the subject. The Vampires of York Tower moves at the breakneck pace that you might associate with New York, while Galbraith & Pole is more attuned to the rhythm of London. The New York vampires also, predictably, have a much higher body count. The dramatic action allows little time for the quiet humour of Galbraith & Pole, but readers are unlikely to miss this as they hurry through the pages. I loved it. The ending does leave the door very slightly ajar for the possibility of a sequel. I’ll definitely read it if there is one.
Galbraith & Pole
If you enjoy vampire stories, do please give Galbraith & Pole a look. One of the characters in York Tower is a dancer “who had spent Sunday afternoons dancing the tango in the park”. I’d love to think this is a nod from McKenzie towards Chief Inspector Pole, who is a great tango enthusiast. It’s a wonderful hobby for a vampire as tango clubs famously operate mainly in the hours of darkness. When a girl is found stabbed through the neck with the stiletto heel of a tango shoe, Pole gets quite upset about it.
The first, tango inspired, Galbraith & Pole book, Something Wicked is just £2.99 on Kindle. (£6.99 in paperback). And look out for a FREE Valentine’s short story on this blog on 14 February.
(AI image of ravens from Microsoft Bing Image Creator)
Jacqueline Reiter fans (and there are many) will know that she has been working on her biography of Sir Home Popham for so long that I’m not sure that her subject (died 1820) wasn’t still alive when she started writing. Late last year, the book was finally published by Helion (in their ‘From Reason to Revolution’ series) and it has been well worth the wait.
Popham was an unlikely naval officer. He had intended to pursue a career in law but financial problems in his family meant that he had to abandon his studies and find paying employment in a hurry. Aged just under 16, he joined the crew of HMS Hyaena as a first-class volunteer under Captain Edward Thompson, who became a surrogate father to him.
Under Thompson, Popham flourished, but when Thompson died, in 1786, Popham lost a valuable patron and learned a vital lesson about the reality of naval life at the time: promotion depended as much (or more) on who you knew than on your professional skill. Popham’s life from then on was as much about gaining political backing for his professional progression as about his naval skill and knowledge. Fortunately he had family connections in the East India Company and, for a while, he abandoned the navy to trade on his own behalf in the Far East.
From then on, his life was a confusion of political manoeuvring, naval work and making money, either alongside his official position or in independent ventures. Reiter’s biography is therefore a tale of ducking and weaving that would leave Del Boy speechless in admiration. Some of Popham’s activities resulted in official praise for his contributions to Britain’s naval victories, some went horribly, horribly wrong. Some were dubiously legal and some, Reiter suggests, were straightforwardly criminal. Popham seems to have spent a disproportionate amount of his time at courts martial, where his early interest in law was deployed in defences of breathtaking audacity, sometimes allowing him to talk his way out of trouble and sometimes digging himself deeper into it. As his career progressed, he spent time ingratiating himself with politicians and served as an MP himself, occasionally making lengthy speeches to defend his actions when they had become so outrageous that they drew the attention of Parliament.
It can be a difficult story to follow. Popham was not always entirely honest and some of his more controversial actions were concealed in a storm of verbiage that has clearly kept Reiter trapped in the National Archives for weeks.
In a career filled with stand-out moments, Popham is probably best remembered for two things. He developed the navy’s flag codes, most famously used when Nelson told the fleet that he expected every man to do his duty, and he took it upon himself to invade Buenos Aires, on the grounds that he was supposed to be in Cape Town and BsAs was so nearby that it would have been rude not to.
I admit an interest here. Popham features in my first book about James Burke, Burke in the Land of Silver, when he is on that infamous South American escapade. Whether he was just being Popham and mounting an invasion off his own bat or whether he had secret orders either encouraging him or directly telling him to do it, is one of history’s mysteries. Reiter is pretty sure he was on his own. I have my doubts, and I think that there is evidence to support his claim. But I’m biased. In Burke in the Land of Silver, I blame the army for the expedition’s ultimate failure and I back Popham.
Blaming the army when anything went wrong was a favourite Popham tactic.
Popham was an expert in combined operations at a time when they were even more chaotic than they are now – and inter-service tensions mean that combined ops are often a nightmare. Walcheren (in the Netherlands), which Napoleonic War enthusiasts can get very excited about, was a historic debacle on a grand scale. Popham was heavily involved. When it was going well, he claimed to be the mastermind behind the entire thing. When it failed (with around 4,000 dead of disease any many others desperately ill), it was all the army’s fault. Fortunately for him, the army was headed by John Pitt, Earl of Chatham, the subject of a previous Reiter biography, The Late Lord. Chatham was everything that Popham was not: solid, dull, not gifted with a great imagination, prone to idleness and a man of honour and probity. He was horribly ill-prepared to cope with the opprobrium directed at him by Popham and the naval commander who blamed poor Chatham for everything. The Earl took the fall, but Popham’s career never really recovered.
John Pitt, Earl of Chatham
Sidelined by the navy, Popham was sent to Spain to harass French forces in coastal areas and provide secure supply lines to Wellington. He proved really good at this but, as so often, over-reached himself, interfering in areas where his assistance was neither required nor appreciated and often alienating the people he worked alongside. (His repeated insistence in referring to the guerillas fighting alongside the British as “brigands” did not go down well.)
Having annoyed almost everyone who mattered, Popham ended up carrying senior diplomats out to India (feeding them at his own expense and, according to Lord Moira, feeding them badly). His irritation was taken out on the crew, who were flogged unmercifully, even by the standards of the day, and came close to mutiny. It was not a happy voyage.
Finally made a Rear Admiral, Popham would have been well-advised to count himself lucky and keep a low profile but that was hardly his nature. Shuffled off to a receiving ship in the Thames, his job was to reduce naval stations to a peacetime establishment. Essentially he was ushering in an era of naval austerity, so spending £5,000 fitting up his state cabin was probably not a good move.
His next job was a posting to Jamaica, ostensibly a respectable post but Jamaica was, literally, where the War Office sent irritating commanders to die. Sadly, his son was the first to go, dead at 17, followed by his daughter who succumbed to yellow fever. Ill himself (he had a stroke while in Jamaica), he returned to England in 1820, dying two months after his arrival back at Spithead.
This breakneck overview of Popham’s career comes far from doing him justice. There’s no mention of his various diplomatic efforts, some straightforward, some strictly unofficial, and some verging on espionage. He was busy on the diplomatic front in the West Indies, Russia, the Red Sea, and India. Sometimes he was very successful – the Tsar made him a Knight of Malta – sometimes less so – his unilateral attempts to negotiate with the Pasha of Egypt caused serious political embarrassment.
His hydrographic surveys resulted in charts that gave the British navy an edge over less well-informed enemies that lasted for decades. His involvement with submarines and torpedoes might have done the same with naval technology but his ideas were, perhaps, a little too far ahead of his time.
Nor does this summary cover his actual war-fighting. He was seldom on board a vessel involved in battle but, when he was, he often performed well. His efforts at Copenhagen were also, according to Rieter, “a complete success”, although the controversy surrounding the campaign meant that he did not, perhaps, get the credit he deserved.
Destruction of Danish vessels at Copenhagen
Popham was, indeed, a “quicksilver captain”: mercurial, hard to pin down, potentially valuable, but very toxic. The British do not like people who can be described as ‘too clever by half’, particularly when they are not shy of advertising their notion of their own genius. Popham was almost a caricature of the arrogant little swot who gets on everybody’s nerves. The sheer breadth of his achievements, far from working in his favour, simply annoyed people and, because he was always active, for every great success there was a highly visible failure.
Reiter’s biography tries to do justice to a man whose remarkable life can hardly be summed up in 350-odd pages but she has done us all a great service by giving us a solidly researched and highly readable account of a figure who deserves the attention he has not really been given over the past couple of centuries.
Popham features in the first James Burke book, Burke in the Land of Silver. The story is closely based on the adventures of the real-life James Burke, whose espionage activities laid the groundwork for the British capture of Buenos Aires in 1806. (The fact that the British had a spy in Buenos Aires is one of the reasons I suspect that Popham’s adventure had official backing.) Popham does feature in the story where he is presented in a generally favourable light. Like Popham, I’m inclined to blame the army for the debacle that followed the successful invasion. Whoever you believe, it’s a rollicking good tale. Buckles are swashed, women — including a princess and a queen — are wooed (almost certainly historically accurately) and villains are defeated. Burke in the Land of Silver is available in paperback or on Kindle.
Picture credits:
Popham portrait by unknown artist. Public domain
‘The Glorious Conquest of Buenos Ayres by the British Forces, 27th June 1806’ Coloured woodcut, published by G Thompson, 1806. Copyright National Army Museum and reproduced with permission.
Search ‘1812’ on your favourite social media platform and you’ll get a surprising number of hits for a war from 213 years ago. Until a few weeks back, I doubt one person in a thousand could tell you anything about the war if they lived in either Britain or America. Rather more knew about it in Canada.
Why the sudden interest?
In a recent speech at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump threatened military force to take control of Greenland and the Panama canal. He also expressed enthusiasm for the idea of making Canada the 51st state. When asked if he might consider military force against the Canadians, he replied that he would not use troops but, rather, “economic force”. Doubtless the reassurance that Canada would not face American tanks rolling across the border will have come as a relief to the folks living north of the 45th parallel but the threat of economic force is still a belligerent threat. Many Canadians view Trump’s speech as a preparation for a hostile annexation of their country. This has reminded people that the USA has history in this regard. In 1812, American troops invaded Canada with the intention of seizing the territory from the control of the British and allowing the growing United States to expand northwards.
What AI imagines Trump might have looked like leading his forces in 1812
The War of 1812 was a real war but, in world affairs, rather overshadowed by events in Europe, where the continent was engaged in a brutal conflict with Napoleon. In fact, if you ask any European to tell you about military conflict in 1812, their most likely response (after ‘I don’t know anything about history’) will mention Napoleon’s march on Moscow, if only because Tchaikovsky wrote his famous 1812 Overture about it.
With the British army and navy having other things to do, there were few British troops available to fight in North America. The war was therefore fought between US troops and state militias on one side and a small British force, reinforced by Canadian militia. Both sides also made tactical alliances with Native American tribes, although the native forces were generally more sympathetic to the British, who some of them considered might offer protection against US expansion into their territories. The Americans and British also fought on the high seas with ships of both nations duelling it out in what was effectively a separate conflict.
The result was, perhaps inevitably, a scrappy little war which dragged on for almost two years. With such a long border and few settlements within striking distance, the war degenerated into little more than a series of raids. The Americans would burn a village in Canada; the Canadians would burn a slightly bigger village in the United States; the Americans would burn a town in Canada and so it went on until, in 1814, the British eventually burned down the White House.
For Canadians, the war was a serious affair. Thousands were killed in battle or died of disease during the war. Canadians saw it as, in the literal sense of the word, an existentialist contest. Defeat would have meant the end of their country. At the time, Canada was British colony. Although the Canadians relied on the British Army for defence in 1812, many historians consider that driving the Americans out of their country was a significant point in their development as a nation.
For Americans, the War of 1812 became part of their country’s foundation myth. It was when the young country came of age, taking on the mighty British Empire and fighting them to a standstill. As with most myths, the historical facts of the war are often subverted to serve the interests of the myth makers. In reality, the war was an inconclusive affair. When Napoleon was exiled to Elba in 1814, the Americans realised that Britain would soon turn its full naval might against them. British reinforcements were already on their way to Canada and America was anxious to end the war before they faced almost certain defeat.
The resulting peace settlement restored the situation that had existed before the war started. The pre-war borders were reinstated. The lives lost had been sacrificed for nothing. In the end, the only real losers were the native Americans. Britain made a token effort to protect its tribal allies in the peace treaty that ended the conflict, but both sides knew that the British would not go to war to protect the indigenous people. Deprived of the opportunity to expand northwards, the United States pursued its movement west with renewed vigour and acted ruthlessly against any native tribes that got in the way. In 1800 the Native American population of what was to become the United States was estimated at 600,000. By the decade 1890-1900 it was down to around 237,000.
Until now, most people seemed happy to let the events of 1812 be forgotten. In the last few weeks, they suddenly seem relevant again. Canadians, at least, are remembering the war. They’re not very happy about what happened. Perhaps the rest of us might try to recall it and avoid another messy (but hopefully bloodless) unnecessary conflict.
Burke and the War of 1812
It’s not often that my books about the adventures of the British spy, James Burke, are suddenly caught up in the affairs of the modern world. Burke was a real person who spied for the British during the Napoleonic Wars. Although my first Burke adventure, Burke in the Land of Silver, is closely based on truth, his subsequent adventures are largely fictional. There is no evidence that he ever operated in North America, but he moved around a lot and may well have been involved in events there. At the urging of fans who enjoy reading about the War of 1812, I have written a story featuring native Americans, the Washington of the time, the Ohio militia, the siege of Detroit, and the betrayals and double-dealings that are part of Burke’s stock in trade. It’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye, as my mother used to say, or, in this case until a farcical series of political misjudgements creates a bloody conflict that brought no good to anyone. As I said, “Suddenly caught up in the affairs of the modern world.”
Burke in the Land of Silver, is currently out with beta readers. (Let me know if that’s something you would be interested in.) Assuming they don’t find too many mistakes, it should be published early this Spring.
Picture Credits
Featured image shows the British burning Washington from Paul M. Rapin de Thoyras’ book, The History of England, from the Earliest Periods, Volume 1 (1816). Source: Library of Congress
Other pictures:
Pencil drawing depicting soldiers starting the fire in the White House is from the New York Public Library
The Battle of Queenston Heights, 13 October 1812. Library and Archives Canada, 2895485
It has a very French look to it, doesn’t it? I’d guessed it was built in the 19th century and much of its appearance now dates back to the second half of the 19th century when it was remodelled by the Duc d’Orleans after his family lost the throne of France and lived for a while in Twickenham. The house, though, is much older than that.
This stretch of the Thames, often referred to as the Arcadian Thames, used to have many great houses built looking out over the river. The Thames was a significant highway connecting the royal palaces of Westminster (and later St James) and Hampton Court. Kings and queens found it a convenient way to travel between their official residences and people who aspired to high social status wanted to live along their route. Today, the most obvious survivors are Marble Hill House (built in 1724) and Ham House (1610). Alexander Pope had a smaller, but still substantial, house built after he moved to Twickenham in 1719 and that was where he installed his famous grotto. His house was demolished (though the grotto survives) and that seems to be that as far as the riverside houses go.
Appearances can be deceptive. Hiding away behind the 19th century façade of York House is a Jacobean building, dating back to the 17th century. We cannot be sure when it was built, although there is some evidence that it may have been around 1635. The house had the H shaped floor plan typical of grand houses of the period and this can still be glimpsed in the centre block of the modern building. (The wings are much later additions.)
The Jacobean house would have looked very different. The original entrance was in the left hand bay as you look from the front. The entrance was moved when the house was remodelled and the original entrance hall is now rather a scrappy bit of office space. You can see that the windows do not match those on the right because originally there were no windows there.
The inside of the house has been dramatically changed about several times and it’s difficult to get an idea of what it would originally have looked like. The Jacobean entrance led directly into a hall with a rather splendid wooden staircase which has survived. Unfortunately it’s almost impossible to get a decent photograph of it, in part because a lift was installed up through the middle which is not a thing of beauty. The ceiling at the top of the staircase is not original but it has outlasted several renovations and is worth noticing.
The newel post at the foot of the stairs shows some fine Jacobean workmanship.
The hall led directly into the dining room. When the entrance was moved to the centre of the frontage, the dining room became the main entrance hall but the original Jacobean fire surround remains, the most striking feature of the old building.
One of the ceilings may date back to when the house was built. The plaster decoration shows various water birds, presumably reflecting the fact that the room faces towards the nearby river.
Although so little of the original house remains, its history is fascinating. The house went through many notable owners. The second Earl of Manchester was a friend of Charles I who went on to become a general for the Parliamentarians before becoming Lord Chamberlain to Charles II. This flexible courtier lived at York House in the mid 17th century. Later, it seems to have come into the hands of the Earl of Clarendon, although it’s not sure if he was ever the legal owner. Later owners included several British aristocrats but its most celebrated tenants were French. In 1864 the Comte de Paris moved in. He was the heir to the French throne but had to leave the country when revolution broke out in 1848. He added substantially to the house which by then had already sprouted various new wings and servants’ quarters. When political changes in France made it possible for him to move back there, he abandoned York House in 1871. The French returned in 1897 when the Pretender to the French throne the Duc d’Orleans (King Philippe VIII to his followers) moved in. The distinctively French look of the house nowadays is largely down to him. He made major alterations to the building. Local sources suggested that he spent £40,000 on the work. This is probably an exaggeration but he definitely made changes on a grand scale. A new wing was added which included a swimming pool and his own museum for his hunting trophies. Electricity was installed and a mile of new drainage pipes. Much of the decoration was in the style of the reigns of Louis XIV-XVI and fleur de lys popped up everywhere including rainwater pipes.
His personal cipher also appeared around the house, for example on these rather splendid finger plates on the interior doors.
The Duc d’Orleans made himself unpopular with the locals, partly by cutting off access to what had been open land and partly by his support of the Boers during the Boer War. The result was that he spent less and less time in Twickenham, eventually selling the house to the Indian industrialist, Sir Ratan Tata, the owner of Tata Steel. The interior of the house was once again redesigned but the most striking addition was the construction of an elaborate fountain in the grounds, featuring sea nymphs and horses.
These are known locally as “the naked ladies” and have given their name to a craft beer brewed in the area.
The additions to the house are more obvious at the rear where the range of different architectural styles is more obvious.
York House is now owned by the local authority and used for ceremonial occasions and for council meetings. It’s a popular wedding venue. It’s unlikely that many of those posing for wedding photographs there realise that they are standing in front of a house that was built around 400 years ago and is one of the last survivors of the grand houses that used to line the Thames.
On New Year’s Eve I wrote about the year gone by, but now, with Twelfth Night almost on us, it’s time to look to the future.
I’ve been talking a bit lately about the latest Burke book, Burke and the War of 1812. It’s set, as you’d expect, in the war with the USA, which ran as a bit of a sideshow while Britain was more occupied with the war against Napoleon. It’s not often talked about on this side of the Atlantic. If it’s remembered at all, it’s probably because that’s the war where we burned down the White House. It was a strange and rather scrappy little conflict but it cast a long shadow. It defined the relationship between the USA and Canada for a long time. (No-one likes being invaded.) In fact, with Trump expressing his somewhat idiosyncratic notions on the USA’s relationships with its neighbours, memories of 1812 seem to be stirring for the first time in a while.
Last week, the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, was asked on Fox News about Trump’s reported joke about Canada’s joining the U.S.
Ford complimented Trump’s sense of humor. “It’s a funny comment. I guess he’s still upset that, you know, in 1812, we burnt down your White House, and he’s holding a grudge after 212 years,” he said.
NBC News: Dec 10 2024
In a recent interview on Fox Business, Canadian businessman and “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary expressed support for President-elect Donald Trump’s suggestion that Canada could become the 51st US state … Rooted partly in the 19th-century notion of “Manifest Destiny,” this concept has been fueled by historical events like the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and brief 19th-century annexation sentiments in Canada…
Pakistan Today: Jan 3 2025
If I were President Trump, I’d think twice before invading Canada. The last time the U.S. tried something like that— back in the War of 1812 —it didn’t exactly end well.
Jean Charest (former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada) on X: Dec 3 2024
For me, writing about that war has meant learning about a whole new theatre of war and the political background to the conflict. The book sees Burke spying in Washington and fighting alongside both Native Americans and British troops. I’ve done a lot of reading in my efforts to get things right and I’m still not sure I have. A couple of beta readers think the plot holds together but I’ll be sending it to more people who know enough about the time and the place to pick up some of the errors I’m sure remain. Let me know if you’re interested in helping with that.
It’s been harder work than most of my Burke series. I’m a lazy writer and I find the mechanics of writing hard work. If I manage a thousand words a day, I feel I’ve done well. I started writing sometime around April, having already done a fair bit of reading, and I’m pretty much written out. I suspect I may always feel this way at this stage but, right now, I’m tempted to walk away from James Burke. This will be the eighth book in the series and writing them just doesn’t seem to be as easy as it was.
Of course, a few good reviews and some sales may make me feel differently. I know writers are always asking people to leave reviews, and it’s true that they do sell books, but it’s also true that good reviews can keep us writing. As do sales. All the Burke books are available on Kindle at £3.99 or less. If you want me (or any of your other favourite authors) to write more (or faster) buying their books is a great motivator.
It’s been a long time since the last Burke book, partly because in 2023 I published the third of the Galbraith & Pole vampire fantasies. I’ve missed Galbraith & Pole while I’ve been writing Burke. Urban Fantasy is much easier to write than historical fiction, though the only time I’ve ever had to read 16th century French for my research was while I was writing the second in the series, Eat the Poor. With only three written, I’m still enjoying them. I saw a review somewhere that said it looked as if I was just having fun and taking the reader along for the ride, which is pretty much how I feel. If 2025 sees me writing something new, it will probably be the next Galbraith & Pole.
It’s about 15 years since my first novel, The White Rajah. Burke and the War of 1812 will be the 15th book. Perhaps it’s not surprising that I am drawing breath and wondering what comes next.
I’ve been traditionally published by a small press, but nowadays I self-publish. I’ve enjoyed the freedom and, unexpectedly, the improved sales that come with self-publishing. Still, it can be hard work and I don’t enjoy the marketing side of it – which is, perhaps, why I don’t give that nearly the attention that I should. It’s probably a bit late in the day to start the whole business of trying to find an agent and a publisher again but if anyone has an interest in buying the rights to an existing series, by now I’d probably be open to them. It won’t happen though.
So at the start of the New Year, like so many other people, I’m looking uncertainly at the paths ahead and wondering which one to take. There are a lot of alternatives to writing more fiction. There are tangos to dance, new places to see, even perhaps a return to non-fiction. We’ll see. In the meantime, I have a book to tidy up.
Burke and the War of 1812 should be published this Spring.
