It’s that time of year when I (like an awful lot of other authors) remind you what excellent Christmas gifts books make. At a time when people are complaining that it’s become quite difficult to buy stocking filler gifts for under £10, it’s still the case that most paperback books by independent authors (and many by well-known conventionally published authors) will fall well within this budget.
if you are looking for a really economical Christmas gift Tales of Empire is just £2.99. It’s true that is quite short – just four stories by four different authors – but it’s been well reviewed and it will last longer than a 150 gm Dark Chocolate With Hazelnut Bar (£3.00 at Tesco).
Alternatively, you could buy my fantasy novella featuring black magic and stage conjurors (Dark Magic) for just £4.99. (It’s very funny.)
A lot of people who have bought one or two of my books and enjoyed them (and such people definitely exist) are blissfully unaware of how many books I’ve written. As of the end of 2022, there are twelve (not including my part in Tales of Empire).
There are six stories so far in my series about James Burke, a spy for Britain in the wars with France. 2022’s offering was Burke and the Pimpernel Affair, which makes a nod towards Baroness Orczy’s hero as Burke breaks Royalist sympathisers out of a castle in the centre of Paris.
Burke is my most popular creation, but I have a soft spot for John Williamson, the narrator of the Williamson Papers, which give eye-witness accounts of life in Borneo, India and London at the height of the British Empire.
Besides my historical novels, I’ve written three fantasy stories – Dark Magic, which I mentioned above, and two stories featuring a vampire who works for the Metropolitan police. I was particularly pleased to get Eat the Poor finished in 2022. This story about a werewolf who is an MP by day seems very much in line with the zeitgeist, though hopefully things will change. The story is gently satirical and does keep its tongue very firmly in its cheek.
So there you are: a dozen books, all available in paperback and none costing more than £8.99. All ideal Christmas presents or treat yourself if you haven’t read them yet.
During lockdown I home recorded Dark Magic as an audiobook. (You can buy it on Audible, Google Play and other outlets.) It was fun to do and, though sales could be counted on the fingers of one hand, it cost me nothing and during lockdown I had lots of time to experiment with new things.
After lockdown I arranged a better setup and wondered about recording Something Wicked. Something Wicked is quite a lot longer than Dark Magic and there were more demands on my time, so I never finished it. I wasn’t that happy with my first efforts anyway.
Something Wicked has been brought to the front of my mind this week because I’m going to Brompton Cemetery (where a lot of the story is set) to sell copies at their Christmas Fair on Saturday (3 December). That made me get out some of my first attempts at recording the story. If you click on the audio below, you should be able to hear the first 20 minutes. What do you think? Should I try again?
This weekend is Historical Writers’ Day. (Yes, I know that there are two days in a weekend, but we are historical writers, not mathematicians.) The event is being run through Twitter and you can follow what is going on using the hashtag #HistoricalWritersDay22.
I’m marking the weekend by selling Cawnpore for just 99p for two days.
Cawnpore is the second of the three books making up the John Williamson papers but you can read it even if you haven’t read the first and it is complete of itself, so you don’t have to read the sequel. I think that, of all my books, it is the one I am most proud of, but its sales are miniscule compared to the relatively successful Burke series. Be warned, though, it’s a very different sort of book.
The story is set around the siege of the British forces in Cawnpore (now Kanpur) during the war usually referred to in Britain as the Indian Mutiny. John Williamson, as a gay working class man, finds it difficult to identify with the British he is working alongside. On the other hand, he is very sympathetic towards the local population. When war breaks out, he is torn between loyalty to his friends and to his countrymen.
The siege at Cawnpore and the massacre that followed is not a pretty story. Cawnpore shows the events from both sides, sticking very closely to the historical record. It has its moments of drama and excitement, but mostly it describes events that are desperately sad. It is almost guaranteed to make you cry.
I will also be checking #HistoricalWritersDay22 looking for any questions people might have posted about my books and trying to respond to them. Please ask any questions you might have, otherwise that element of the “day” isn’t really going to work.
I’ve had a few suggestions that I should post my photographs of Buenos Aires. I didn’t take that many this trip because I have so many from previous visits, but I think it would be a good idea to put together some sort of photo album. Not today, though. I’m still catching up on life after our holiday and I just don’t have time for this. What I have done is taking some photographs of the trees around here as autumn begins. So many people I know are publishing tree photos on their blogs, I thought I’d join in. Enjoy!
This week marks the culmination of the spooky season with Halloween on Monday.
When I was a child Halloween was not a big deal but nowadays, of course, it is huge. Every year, I read people complaining that it’s an American import although, of course, it isn’t. All Hallows Eve was a significant date even before the Pilgrims set sail to America. Over the centuries it was marked less in the UK than the USA (perhaps because, in the UK, Bonfire Night on 5 November became the main celebration of the season). In my lifetime the celebration of Halloween has grown more significant with a definite American element but still basically a celebration of the night when all the ghosties and ghoulies make their last great showing before being driven back to the dark places of the earth with the celebration of All Hallows.
While my local church campaigns against any celebration of Halloween because they associate it with devil worship, for most people it’s just a bit of fun and an opportunity to dress up and be silly. I’ll miss the skater Halloween party this year (I’m out of town) but I do enjoy it when I can get along. The costumes are amazing!
I’m marking Halloween by giving away my novella, Dark Magic, from today (Friday 28th) until 1 November. If you missed what I wrote about it at the beginning of the month, here’s what matters:
I had the idea for Something Wicked years ago wandering around the cemeteries of Buenos Aires. It was intended as a single short book but I had people asking me to write another about the vampire detective, Chief Inspector Pole, and his human colleague, Chief Inspector Galbraith. I wanted to oblige but I had no ideas for a plot. Then the world of British politics provided inspiration. If there was a werewolf sitting in Parliament, would they be any worse than the humans there? Would we even notice?
The result was Eat the Poor, which sees Galbraith and Pole work together to solve a series of grisly murders across London. At its best, Urban Fantasy has a strong sense of place and I enjoyed exploring areas where I might leave a body or where a werewolf might prowl unseen in the city.
As in Something Wicked, the book combines traditional horror-story themes with sardonic glimpses of the practicalities of life (or non-life) for supernatural beings in 21st century Britain. The humour, given the subject matter and the political background it is set against, inevitably has satirical elements, but this is not an angry political novel. It is, first and foremost, a fun read with, as one reviewer said, “Just the right amount of black in its comedy.”
