Things I Should Have Said and Done: the new launch from Colette McCormick
The prospect of life after death is not only the central theme of Things I Should Have Said and Done but also something that fascinates me. The way I see it, whoever or whatever made us wouldn’t have invested millions of years of evolution for us to just live out our...
‘The White Rajah’: one week to go
One week to go until the publication of ‘The White Rajah’. So what do you get for your money?
Bonus post: how to persuade someone to dance with you without saying a word.
It's been a while since I have posted anything about tango, but somebody has asked me to re-post something I wrote years ago about dancing in social settings. It's not about the dance itself, but about the social rules, the código as the Argentinians call them....
My take on genre switching
I really enjoyed Karen King’s piece last week. She is a consummate professional writer and I wish I had half her energy to write across so many genres. That said, I am not entirely a stranger to writing in different styles myself. In a long career of writing and...
The Dardanelles Conspiracy: Alan Bardos
This is a sequel to The Assassins and you really ought to read that book first. There is quite a lot happens in The Dardanelles Conspiracy, all of it based on the historical facts that led up to the horror of the Gallipoli landings. If, like me, you are vaguely aware...
Writing in Different Genres
I've never met Karen King, but she's one of those people you meet online and come to see as a friend. She is always amazingly supportive and I would be happy to give her space on my blog to promote her next book, pretty much whatever she was writing about. But she's...
The swords on my latest cover
I do love the new cover for The White Rajah. It's another by Dave Slaney, who consistently produces lovely work. This one features a kris, a traditional weapon of South East Asia. The White Rajah is set in Borneo where the native Dyaks are under the rule of Malays....
More about ‘The White Rajah’ and a free offer.
I hope you all saw last Friday’s blog post with my news of the republication of The White Rajah and the lovely new cover. Now it’s time to tell you more about what you get when you buy the book. The White Rajah is based around the life of James Brooke of Sarawak. An...
‘The White Rajah’: some background and a cover reveal.
It's less than a month since the publication of Burke in Ireland. I had been hoping for the chance to concentrate on writing the next book in the series, but have been rather caught up by events. I had always intended to republish the John Williamson Papers which...
Eleanor of Castile’s Property Portfolio: a guest post by Carol McGrath
Eleanor of Castile (1241-1290) lived during a period of great castle building particularly in Wales. However, what is not so widely known is that a reason she may have been considered a She-Wolf Queen is because her contemporaries often thought her greedy and...