Merry Christmas everyone

I realize it’s been a while since I wrote this blog but I’ve been busy on other writing projects that I’m sure you’ll find more entertaining.

As promised “Hunted” was published this fall and I’ve been getting some great feedback on that, although I could do with a few more reviews on Amazon if anyone feels so inclined.

A follow up to “Hunted”, tentatively called “Missing”, is coming along nicely at the moment and should be ready in the Spring, or, judging from past experience, the summer of 2017.

You won’t have to wait that long for something new to read though because “Tapestry” is nearly ready.

This book is very different to my others, it’s not a crime novel or an historical saga, it’s more a coming-of-age story from the 1930s and 40s. The manuscript is finished and it’s currently undergoing corrections. I think it’ll probably need one more read through by my editor then I just have to decide on the cover picture and hopefully it will be out there early in the new year. I have to admit I’m already kind of impatient to see how it’s received by you guys.

That’s about all of my news for now but, as I said at the beginning of this piece, it’s Christmas and so, as my gift to you, my 600 page blockbuster e-book, “Weoley”, will be free on Amazon from December 23 to December 26.   

'Weoley' is the story of a place. Won by the sword in a bloody battle that changed England's history, it is a place that evolves over nine hundred and fifty turbulent years. 

It is a story full of heroes and villains; the good, the bad, the beautiful, the wicked and the ordinary. Peasants and their lords, nobles, commoners and kings; theirs are stories of war and betrayal, murder, seduction and romance, of adultery, forgiveness and passionate love.

Bloody battles pit brother against brother; fortunes are made, and lost, while unfaithful wives and political intrigue stir the mix, all of it set against the background of a great fortress. If you are into history then give it a try, it’s free so you have nothing to lose. If you do read it I’d love for you to leave a review and, as an incentive this is how it starts:

Weoley

The story of a castle and its people

Prologue

Sussex, England, October 14, 1066

The night was dark, there were few clouds and the comet was clear for all to see. Was it an omen? Perhaps it was, but none knew whether it was for good or evil. Nor could any man say for whom the portents were intended. Then it was gone, its twin tails vanishing over the horizon to leave a world of darkness in their wake. Darkness the dawn seemed reluctant to break.

When it did rise, the watery sun spread its light over a cold, damp terrain shrouded in mist. It was a place of grassy ridges, marshy valleys and tall oak trees. A rich land where a man could live and grow; a land worth having; a land worth fighting for, worth dying for.

And men would die for it; Many men. It was a good day to be alive, but for some it would be their last. It was a day to fight, and there was going to be a mighty one. The army was marching; the enemy was standing on their ridge waiting for them. When they met arrows would fly, blades flash, shields shatter. Men would scream war cries, beg for their wives and mothers, or choke on steel while their life blood enriched the dark earth and they died in agony. It would happen thus because today was a day for killing. War had cast its shadow over England and there was a kingdom to be won.

The long column of men halted just below the summit of the hill. Considering their number they were strangely quiet, each man lost in the thoughts, hopes and fears of what was to come. Some were there because their lord commanded it, some for glory, others came for loot. Some relished the excitement of battle whilst others feared the icy bite of steel. Guy de Layon was there for many of these reasons. His lord had pledged service to Duke William and where Anscoul led, Guy would follow. He was eighteen years old, a younger son with no hope of inheritance. His father’s gift to him had been his horse, his armor, his weapons and arranging for him to serve Anscoul, to whom he was vassal. He would get naught else unless he made it himself by force of his blade.

As he waited, Guy gently rubbed the nose of his horse, Alis. She was his only mount and instead of riding he had led her since they left the camp an hour before. She would have enough to do before this day was over.

Looking past the knights in front of him, he could see a huddle of men talking to several light horsemen off to one side. Duke William himself was there with his half brother, Bishop Odo. Like the rest of the Norman knights, Guy had gone to the bishop to receive his blessing in the night. He had also gone to a smith who had taken a silver coin and sharpened Guy’s sword, dagger and lance. Guy had spent more time with the smith than with the priest. He was pious when needs be but he fancied God would be busy this day and each man would have to look out for himself.

Suddenly the conference on the brow of the hill broke up and Guy’s lord, Anscoul, walked back towards him.

‘They’re over there,’ he grunted with a jerk of his head back the way he had come, ‘on the next hill, thousands of them. Better arm yourself.’

Guy lifted the linen bag containing his hauberk from the saddle and took off his leather jerkin.

‘How’s it look, my lord?’ he asked Anscoul, who was arming himself with the aid of a couple of his men at arms.

‘They’re on a ridge,’ Anscoul replied. ‘There’s a valley between them and us and it’s a nasty slope up to them. The valley bottom is marshy according to the scouts but they’ve found a place to cross in the centre.’

‘Shield wall?’ Guy asked pulling his coif over his head and reaching for his sword sling.

‘Of course,’ Anscoul confirmed. ‘Can’t see much of it but the scouts reckon on six to eight thousand. Harold’s there, his standard’s in the centre.’

Guy had served Anscoul for three years and had yet to see a proper battle. He had fought raiders and had seen twenty or thirty trapped Danes form a small shield wall but that was nothing. This would be his first real fight. He pulled his helmet on, adjusted the nose guard, then unslung his big, kite-shaped shield with its diagonal black diamonds on white insignia

Anscoul was already armed and waited impatiently for him.

‘Don’t bother with the shield yet,’ he said. ‘Sling it on the saddle till we get closer.’

‘My lord,’ Guy acknowledged, doing as he was bid.

They moved forward, Guy leading Alis beside Anscoul’s three mounts. The nobleman did not speak but watched the youngster’s face as they breasted the rise and the scene across the valley unfolded.

Guy stopped and drew in a sharp breath. He felt his stomach tighten and his throat was suddenly dry. The ridge top opposite was full of men. They stood in a line perhaps a thousand paces long, rank after rank of them. In the centre, under a hoar apple tree, the fitful breeze stirred two standards. Anscoul saw him staring at them.

‘The dragon of Wessex,’ he said, ‘and Harold’s fighting man.’ Guy pursed his lips and nodded unconsciously to himself. ‘And what does that look portend, young Layon?’ Anscoul asked. Guy felt himself flushing.

‘If that’s where the Saxon king is then that’s where I must be,’ he replied. ‘A man without fortune must make his own and that’s where the greatest opportunity will be.’

Anscoul laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.

‘Don’t be too anxious or you may not need a fortune,’ he said. He pointed to the Saxon line. ‘You see them?’ he asked. ‘The solid looking fellows standing in the front line?’ Guy nodded. He could see them. Big men clad in hauberks, with helms and big round shields. Their spears stood like thickets of saplings, the heads glinting as they caught the early morning sun. Many of them carried battle axes, fearsome looking weapons with double heads and four foot hafts. Guy nodded.

‘I see them,’ he said.

‘Housecarls,’ Anscoul said. ‘Harold’s bodyguard. Don’t underestimate them. They’re no Viking raiders. They’re warriors. They’ll stand there till hell freezes over before they give ground. You’ll need to go through them before you can get at Harold and if you fight one and come away with all your limbs you’ll be lucky.’ Guy looked at him in surprise. It had sounded almost as if Anscoul was afraid of the Saxons yet Guy had never known him to show fear before.

Anscoul caught the look and understood its meaning. He shook his head.

‘I’m not saying you need fear them but you should respect them. They’re good, but we’re better. Stay close to me. When we meet them keep your shield up and use the lance, don’t let them close with those damned axes.’ Guy nodded, his throat suddenly too dry to let him speak. The excitement was gone leaving in its wake an anxiety about what the day would bring and a determination that whatever happened he would not dishonor his name.

The army filed down the slope, crossed the marshy ground through a narrow gap and began to deploy left and right. Anscoul took his place to the Duke’s left and a little behind him and Guy, now mounted on Alis, sat to his rear and watched as the spearmen and archers filed past him.

Occasionally, he looked up at the enemy and wondered why they did not charge down from their ridge and attack the Normans while their formation was disrupted. Then he looked at the steepness of the slope he would soon have to climb and back to the strength of the Saxon line. He understood. They were in a good position. Why would they leave it? It was going to be a long hard fight and they would be hard to break. Both he and his mount would need all their strength. Unlike most of his companions he only had one horse so, despite his orders, he swung out of the saddle to rest her.

For USA, Canada etc. get Weoley at:

https://www.amazon.com/Weoley-story-castle-its-people/dp/1494803119/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1482370442&sr=8-16&keywords=derek+Coleman

Or for UK at:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Weoley-story-castle-its-people/dp/1494803119/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1482370442&sr=8-16&keywords=derek+Coleman

Broken promises

I guess I’m not really very good at keeping promises.

Several times I’ve said a book would be available by a certain date and almost invariably I’ve been wrong. “Hunted” is no exception. I promised it for Christmas and once again I’m way out. This time though I’ve erred in the right direction, I was a little distracted by an election but, despite this, my latest offering is ready before Thanksgiving.  You can read a taster below and then find the rest on Amazon. Createspace, Goodreads and in any good bookshop.

Enjoy.

CHAPTER ONE

My name is Alex Mitchell. Most of you won’t recognize it but I’m prepared to bet a lot of you have seen it, even though you didn’t take any notice at the time. I’m a single, thirty-two year old male who stands six feet tall, weighs in at around a hundred-seventy-five pounds and has blue eyes and brown hair that usually looks tousled because I have a habit of running my fingers through it when I’m thinking.

I own a house and a few acres in Putnam County, West Virginia but I’m rarely there because of what I do for a living. I’m a freelance journalist and, although I say it myself, I’m a pretty good one. That’s why you’ve probably seen my name without paying attention to it.

I’ve won some of the big prizes, had pieces in all the better magazines and most of the national newspapers. My stories have been used on TV and my pictures can be found on the internet.

Editors like to use me because, if it’s a big story, they know I’ll cover it and give them a piece they can use, usually with an angle no one else has seen. I’ll also go anywhere, no matter what the story, how dangerous it is or where I have to go to get it. In my time I’ve covered drug cartels in Columbia, poverty in India, Argentina and Brazil, wars and epidemics in Africa and riots in Europe. I’ve also been to Russia twice, Iraq five times and Afghanistan three. I’ve been shot at, bombed, threatened and have a few scars to prove it.

Today, I’m covering an easy one for Time Magazine. It’s in London, England and the chances of violence are negligible.

It’s an appeal against extradition by a man with the unlikely name of Kgosi Gebhuza. I seriously doubt it’s his real name – apparently it means something like King Butcher.  I can’t imagine his parents calling him such a thing, but you never know, they may have done so and it is apt.

Gebhuza was a warlord who led an army in Central Africa. For more than five years his men caused mayhem in several countries. They bombed churches and school buses, shot politicians, raided villages, massacring the men and kidnapping the women and children. Male children were inducted into Gebhuza’s army but women and girls were not so lucky.

There are stories that he slept with a different female every night, choosing anyone over the age of twelve, and each morning he personally executed each of them by cutting their throats. There are even rumors he drank their blood but I’ll need to see some hard evidence before I really believe there’s any truth in them.

Anyway, his own people couldn’t stop him and neither could the neighboring countries, but then he made the mistake of raiding a convoy of European aid workers. Eight men were shot in cold blood, including a priest and two doctors. A dozen women, including nurses and nuns, were kidnapped.

The decapitated body of the first nurse was found a few days later. After the body of the third one was discovered the UN stepped in. It took three weeks, several drone strikes and a landing by Special Forces, but Gebhuza’s makeshift army was gone. The man himself was supposed to have been killed in a drone strike. I remember doing a story on the boy soldiers he used and being told he’d been in a house when it was blown apart.

That was five years ago and Gebhuza was virtually forgotten by all except his victims. Forgotten until last year, when a black male was stopped for speeding on London’s orbital motorway. The driving license he produced at the scene was genuine enough but it had been reported stolen by its real owner. The man was arrested and, protesting his innocence, was taken to a West London police station where he was fingerprinted and had his photograph taken. Normally, the authorities would have checked his address, found it to be genuine and let him go with instructions to attend a magistrate’s court later. No doubt if they had done that he would have just vanished again. It took less than an hour for Scotland Yard’s computers to match his details however. They realized who they’d caught, the news leaked out and all hell let loose.

When word Gebhuza was alive and in custody was officially confirmed the world went crazy. Five countries, including France and the United States, both of whom had lost citizens in the raid on the aid convoy, applied for his extradition. The African state of Rwanda got in first. They counted his victims in thousands and a judge ordered him to be returned to them.

The butcher appealed on the grounds that if he were sent there he would not receive a fair trial but would be tortured and executed. He also applied for political asylum in Britain and the rumor was he might actually get it.

Personally I wouldn’t give a plugged nickel for his chances if he were released. He had so many enemies someone was bound to get him eventually but the British like to appear to be doing things fairly. He’d been granted bail, was living in the penthouse of a luxury hotel and was attending the hearing each day surrounded by half a dozen hand-picked bodyguards. As I said, Time Magazine, were paying me to cover the story and I’d been negotiating with Gebhuza’s legal team to get an exclusive interview with the man.

At first they’d demanded a stupid fee for a chance to talk to the General, as he liked to be called, but I can be very persuasive and pointed out telling his side of the story might help his appeal. Time recognized this could be the story of the decade and authorized me to spend up to ten grand on buying ten minutes of his time. They’d wired me the money and I’d managed to get his lawyer to agree to three thousand British pounds for thirty minutes. It was going to cost me another thousand for NKambi Jacobs, Gebhuza’s right hand man but it was worth it.

I’d done my research and knew their strange story. Gebhuza was a giant of a man, standing at six-four with the muscles of a professional wrestler. Jacobs is a little weasel of a guy. He’s a good foot shorter than the warlord and probably weighed around one-thirty but they were born in the same village and grew up together. When Gebhuza went into the bush and began gathering his army Jacobs graduated from mission school where he excelled, was given a church scholarship to high school and from there went to college in Britain. He graduated with honors around the time his old buddy was beginning his reign of terror in Central Africa.

Their lives could not have been any different but it seems they kept in touch and when Gebhuza’s army began looting and pillaging much of the proceeds somehow found their way through devious channels into Jacobs’ hands.

A source at the Solicitor General’s office told me Jacobs was suspected of providing the funds for the warlord’s weapons and also of secreting millions of stolen pounds away in numerous bank accounts. He hadn’t been caught however and nothing connecting him to the rapes and murders in Africa was found and so he was still a free man.

It was he I was going to see now. We’d met twice before, once with Gebhuza’s lawyers and once here at the hotel. The last time was when he told me a small gift of perhaps a thousand pounds would smooth the path to seeing the warlord.

He’d started in by asking for five times the amount but I’d beaten him down and we’d finally agreed on a thousand in cash and today would be the day. Normally on an assignment like this I’d take a photojournalist to handle the pictures but it seems the butcher is shy and would only talk to me if there was no one else there. For this reason I was carrying my trusty Nikon and was hoping to get some pictures of the man’s luxury suite. I already had plenty of archived photos of the devastation he’d left behind in Africa and had the start of an idea for a comparison article.

I entered the hotel lobby and immediately spotted two of Gebhuza’s goons sitting at a table nursing coffee cups and looking bored. They were hardly inconspicuous. Both were black. They wore dark suits, white shirts and ties and, despite being indoors, both had sunglasses on. Presumably they were trying to emulate secret service agents and were there as an advance guard to warn their boss if anyone he didn’t want to see arrived. They looked up when I walked in and one of them raised his wrist to his mouth and said a few words.

I suppressed a smile, they really did think they were secret service and I wondered if I could get a picture of them. I thought they might object so I’d ask Gebhuza, if I finally managed to get in to see him.

I went to the desk and had to stand in line behind an American couple who were checking in. They were having some hassle about their room and I was getting impatient but then one of the elevators dinged, the doors opened and I saw the tiny figure of Jacobs emerge.

He greeted me with a smile and a handshake then put his hand on my arm and gestured to a couch near one of the big front windows of the lobby. ‘Shall we sit down, Mister Mitchell?’ he said.

Immediately I was suspicious. ‘Aren’t we going up to see General Gebhuza?’ I asked.

‘There will be a small delay,’ he replied. ‘If we can just sit here I can perhaps give you a little background while we wait.’

I got a feeling the guy was about to lean on me for more cash before he’d let me see his boss. I had his thousand in an envelope and there was about three grand in British pounds left out of the Times’ bribe money. Knowing how these things worked, I had it in a coat pocket but I wasn’t going to give it to him unless I absolutely had to. We’d agreed a price and if he tried to change it I’d tell him I would write a story which would make General Gebhuza look worse than Hitler and Stalin rolled together. Reluctantly I stepped over to the couch he indicated and sat down.

‘Have you any idea how long the general will be?’

He shrugged and grinned, showing large, startlingly white teeth. ‘He has been entertaining a lady to lunch,’ he replied in perfect Oxford English. ‘One cannot rush these things.’

In other words the Butcher had enticed some floozy up to his suite. Fleetingly I wondered if she’d leave with her head still attached to her body but I dismissed the thought. Even Gebhuza would not be stupid enough to try the same sort of thing in Britain, especially with his extradition appeal pending. I pointedly looked at my watch.

‘I hope he won’t be too long,’ I said. ‘I have an appointment at the Home Office later and I’d really hate to have to just write their side of the story.’

It was a lie but it brought another big smile and Jacobs said, ‘No, no. I’m sure the General will be with us very shortly.’

The man had almost certainly not spoken a truer word in his life. Even as he finished speaking there was a brief, piercing scream from outside followed immediately by a crunching explosion of sound like a car wreck.

Instinctively we both turned to look out of the window. There was a black London taxi cab at the curb. All its windows appeared to be smashed and its roof was caved in. Lying grotesquely upside down, his legs on the roof and the rest of him where the windshield used to be was the naked body of a big black guy. His face was towards us, the eyes wide open and staring and blood flowed freely from his mouth, nostrils and ears.

Jacobs gave a little, almost feminine screech and came to his feet. ‘General…’ he gasped. I was as shocked as he was but I’ve been a reporter a long time. Instinct took over and I found the camera in my hands, lens cap off and finger pressing the power button. I got to my feet and got off a number of shots as I edged toward the main door. There was a crowd gathering around now, standing about a dozen feet back from the horror on the cab’s roof. I turned slightly and got a picture of NKambi still staring disbelievingly out of the window then I looked around for the two bodyguards I’d spotted as I walked in. They were no longer at the table where I’d seen them so I turned to scan the lobby.

The staff and people around reception had all rushed forward to look at the scene outside so the area in front of the elevators was clear. As my eyes swept across the space one of the elevators made a dinging sound, the indicator above it lit up and the doors slid open.

A man and a woman emerged. He was about thirty, big and muscular with cropped dark hair and a closely trimmed beard. Wearing a dark suit and black polo shirt he looked like any other young business man but it wasn’t him who grabbed my attention, it was the girl.

She would be twenty-nine years old on July fourteenth and was tall for a woman, five feet ten in fact. Her hair was shoulder length and dark with a hint of auburn in certain lights, her face was oval, her eyes cornflower blue and she had a wonderfully slim figure with a small, star-shaped mole on the top of her left hip. Not that she was showing her body now; she was wearing a mid-thigh, red dress with a short, black jacket over it. I knew every inch of her perfect form intimately though. I’d kissed every smooth, supple part of it and I’d dreamed about it a thousand times.

Her name was Rachel Darcy, we had been lovers for three hot, passionate nights three years ago and it was absolutely impossible for her to be here because four months after we met she took her own life.

Hunted

When I opened this blog and realized it’s been nearly two months since I last wrote in it I was surprised. I don’t know where the time has gone and this hot, and very wet, summer seems to have flown by. Already it’s dark in the mornings when I leave for work and the leaves are beginning to turn to their fall colors. Winter will soon be on us and Christmas is just around the corner.

Speaking of Christmas and the need to buy gifts, “Hunted” is now at the third proof-reading stage and will be available for the festive season. The cover picture is ready and the first edit with its myriad of red pen marks has been done. I’ve made the corrections and it’s now back with my dedicated proof-reader for its second review. After that it comes back to me for any changes before one final read through and then hopefully will be going to the publishers by mid-October.

That brings up the question of what comes next. I have two or three outlines ready and will certainly be going with one of them but I’m also looking at something I wrote a while ago. The story is finished but it has never been edited and I may well read it through and send it to my proof reader once she has finished with “Hunted”.

If I do, and if she is not too stringent with her red pen, it may well be ready for New Year’s. I’m not promising (I’ve learned not to do that on this blog) and I’m not going to say too much about it now in case it doesn’t come off. All I will say is it is  very different to all my other books and I guess I would have to describe it as a coming of age novel set against the background of World War II.

Enough of that for now though, I have to decide whether Dean and Steph investigate another case, do I go with the search for lost treasure or do I delve in the past and produce another historical novel? Any requests/suggestions would be welcome. 

“Hunted”: coming soon.

A journalist looking for a story sees someone he believes is dead.

He takes her picture and the nightmare begins.

Suddenly he is cut off from the world. He has no phone, no internet, no credit cards and no money. He’s four thousand miles from home, wanted for a crime he didn’t commit and there are three trained killers hunting him to ensure he never files his story.

Follow him across two continents as he tries to reveal the truth while fighting to stay alive in “Hunted

Cheating

I usually start these blogs by shamefacedly apologizing for the time I have taken since I wrote the last one. I could do the same this time because it’s been a while but instead I’ll pass on some good news.

CHEATING is finished!

My new Dean and Steph detective novel is now available on Amazon or Creatspace.com. I apologize to those who wrote asking when it would be done. Unfortunately Brexit and other real world nonsense coupled with a longer than usual editing process got in my way and caused delays but it is now ready for you to read at your leisure.

All I ask is that if you do read it please take a couple of minutes to leave a review. Apart from the obvious fact that good reviews attract more sales, I am also genuinely interested in knowing what you think about my work and it’s only from your feedback I can learn what you like and try to include it.

That said I can tell you that the next book, under the working title “Hunted” is already at thirty thousand words. This one is about a journalist who stumbles on something he shouldn’t see while he’s four thousand miles from home. It begins in Britain, covers two continents and ends in Washington D.C. 

Dean and Steph make cameo appearances and so do one or two characters from previous books. I’m not making rash promises for a publication date this time but hopefully it should be on your bookshelves before the end of the year.

Writing

Those of you who have never tried it may think being a writer is an easy way to make a living. Unfortunately you could not be more wrong.

Let’s start with the basics first, unless you are Stephen King, James Patterson, John Grisham, J.K. Rowling or one of perhaps a couple of dozen others you are not going to make your fortune by writing. In fact you probably won’t make enough to live on and most of the writers I know either have some additional form of income or, like me, do a full time job.

So, nine till five, five days a week you’re working to keep a roof over your family and food on your table but all the time you have this idea for the great American novel going around in your head. You can’t wait to get home, you eat so fast you give yourself heartburn and then you sit down at your laptop, typewriter of word processor ready to begin, but where do you start? You have your idea, you may have your hero, heroine or both pictured in your mind and you may even have an image of the bad guys, if there are any. You know what is going to happen to them but how are you going to get them from the first word to the moment you write “the end”?

Well, if you want to do it properly you close your laptop, pick up a pencil and notepad and start to make notes.

Your notes should be concise, they should cover all aspects of your characters and you should add to them constantly, after all, you may be eighty thousand words into your story and the next chapter could depend on whether Aunt Matilda’s eyes are blue or brown but you can’t remember. Where did you mention it? Chapter four? Maybe chapter sixteen, or did you forget to mention it at all? This is where your notes come in.

Okay, now you’ve written pencil sketches of your major characters and are ready to start – or are you?  Say your hero is a soldier, a historical figure, a spy or maybe an overworked detective. He or she is going to need some place to work from, some equipment, maybe a weapon for disposing of bad guys, some form of transport, even historical transport if your novel is set in the past, something to wear and many other things. If you are lucky and you are following the old adage about writing about what you know, then some of this information will already be available to you but not all of it.

So this is where you start your research and believe me you need to do it. Your potential readers out there are smart people, some of them are already going to know the things you need to look up and, if you get them wrong, they will tell you, perhaps in a review on Amazon and that can be deadly for book sales.

Not so many years ago researching this stuff  meant taking a trip to the local library and browsing through an infinity of books to try to find some obscure fact. You may need to know if Iroquois war axes were double or single headed or, like I did for one of my novels, the height of an F16’s cockpit above the ground. Luckily today we have the internet and details like this are readily available. Google, Bing and Wikipedia are the writer’s friend when it comes to garnering facts but be careful, they can be too friendly and may lure you into spending precious writing time following ever more tangled webs of knowledge.

Speaking of time, you now have your notes, you have as many facts as you think you may need and you are now ready to start writing. You will need many more facts before you are done but you’ve been at this for a while now and you still haven’t written a word so you start.

An average novel is more than 80,000 words and takes a while to complete. I like to aim to write an average of a thousand words a day. Sometimes I do three times that, sometimes only a small portion, but I try to write every day. I also have a system where I start each day’s writing by reading what I wrote the day before, I find it gets me back into the rhythm of the story and it helps with later editing because you can catch errors as you read.

You’re writing 1000 words a day, in a week you will have a first chapter but is it any good? I guess I am lucky, my wife is a talented writer and a dedicated proofreader who wields a mighty red pen. She helps me tremendously with the tedious job of editing. Usually though there is only so much “Is this any good?” that spouses can take and they also tend to be too kind, they want to encourage you so they aren’t as critical as a stranger might be.

What you need is a peer group who will support, encourage and help you while pointing out holes in the plot you may have missed and offering suggestions to aid you in your task.

I’m very lucky, we have two excellent writing support groups near where I live, one for novels and the other for short stories and poems. I have been to both groups and would encourage any one else who feels the urge to write to try similar groups. At the very least you’ll get the encouragement of knowing you are not alone.

News

So much for New Year’s resolutions; So far I’ve kept one and am failing another.

The one I’m failing is obviously writing this blog. I swore I would do it more often and yet I’m reminded it’s thirty-six days since I last wrote anything here. For that I apologize. I do have some good news though, I kept my other promise and my novel “DA” is now available on Amazon, both as a paperback and in electronic format.

I know there are many of you out there who buy my books and for that I am grateful, I would be even more grateful, though, if I heard back  from you.

When you spend 99 cents on a Kindle version of one of my books you hopefully get several hours of entertainment and a story that holds your interest but have you ever thought about what goes into producing that book?

It takes months, or sometimes years, of work, plotting, researching, typing (I’m a well-known one-finger typist), editing, amending, re-editing, re-amending, preparing for publication, finding a cover picture and getting the finished piece onto Amazon.

It’s a lot of work but I love doing it and will continue to do so for as long as I am able. Hopefully, you, the readers, will continue to read what I write too but the only way I have of knowing if you like what I am producing is if you tell me.

When you buy a paperback or download an E-book Amazon gives you an opportunity to rate it and to make comments, can I ask you to please do so, that way I can work on what I’m getting right and stop doing anything you think I’m getting wrong.

Thanks for reading and enjoy.

Being resolute

It’s a new year and I want to start by wishing all who read this a very happy and prosperous new year.

In our house we don’t go in for partying much so, although we all stayed awake to welcome 2016, we were very quiet, reading, watching TV and playing computer games. That is more than can be said for next door’s dog who seemed to think midnight was a great time to run around the neighborhood for half an hour, barking his fool head off. Luckily no one was letting off fireworks to scare him.

Like many of you I guess, I have made several New Year’s resolutions and as usual I will no doubt be breaking some of them before January is out. I want to write this blog more frequently in 2016 but with my other commitments that may be one of the first resolutions to achieve failure. I also really want to lose about ten pounds. I’ve done it before but it always seems to sneak back on. My trouble is I have a great love of good cheese, chocolate and ice cream. Combine the last two and I’m in heaven but I think I’m going to have to try to curb the desire for them this time.

I’m also resolved to spend less time surfing the internet. Don’t get me wrong, I think search engines are the greatest tools and I spend long hours researching for my books. That is something I intend to continue but this year I am determined to try to avoid getting sidetracked into watching stuff that, while interesting, has no real relevance to the subject I’m looking for.

Speaking of my books, last year I promised much and only delivered part of it. This year I’m resolved to only give you one date. “Da”, a sequel to “The Lichfield Conspiracy”, will definitely be out by the end of January. I have the cover ready and am half finished on the final read through. “Cheating”, the latest Steph and Dean book, will also be out this year but I’m not promising when.

After that it’s on to the next project and there I can’t be so resolute. I have notes for another Steph and Dean book but I also have some research material for an historical saga that will be like “Weoley” but based in America. Which is it to be? I have no idea at this stage and would appreciate feed back on what the readers want if any of you care to give it.

That is about it for now. I’m resolved to read through at least another chapter of “Da” before lunch so, to avoid breaking that resolution, I need to get on with it. Have a great New Year and I’ll talk to you soon.

Coming soon: