2024: Round-UP

This year saw me reading at six reading events: please see the News section for details and a few photos. I am always thrilled and grateful for such opportunities to practice my reading skills and share the stage with my New Street Author chums.

2024 also saw There Was A Soldier continue to sell since its publication in 2021. To date it has sold two copies every three days. I am very grateful if any of my blog readers have purchased the book: your support is very much appreciated.

The second book in what I have come to refer to as my Muir project, my mother’s story, has been out for just over a year and has sold a copy every five days. This is a very personal book for me: I am not too concerned that it sells slowly.

If any of you who have read either (or both) of my Muir family stories happen to know of anyone amongst your friends and acquaintances who might like to read There Was A Soldier or Reflections Through The Mist, then I would be hugely grateful if you would pass on your recommendations.

The completion of the Muir project took a great deal of research. My next book, which I am drafting at the moment, is a cozy mystery. I am not deliberately writing to market. However, I have had the book’s plot in my head for several years. The protagonist is a university lecturer in a fictitious university in the West Midlands. I won’t know if my story will work until beta readers give me an honest opinion. The book involves hardly any research and is an opportunity to write my campus novel. (As many of you know, I used to be a university lecturer.)

Given that I write drafts in longhand, it takes me much longer to finish a book. Whether or not the idea works, only time and beta readers’ feedback will tell. In any event, I am already planning the book to follow the campus novel.

Thank you for your support during 2024.