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When I get an unexpected success, it’s all the more satisfying. As many of you know, I closed the door on Larcombe Manor and the Phoenix Series in 2018, and spent a year polishing the twelve books I’d believed would get me noticed. A Featured Deal in March 2019 started the ball rolling, and a follow-up at the end of December that same year rewarded my persistence.  Without Gus Freeman and his cold case investigations, perhaps the ball wouldn’t have rolled very far into 2020. However, from Gus’s first murder mystery, until the twenty-fourth and final case, there have been a number of successful promotions for both my series which

Music is one of my passions, and at the end of February a DJ from a club we played at regularly reminded me it was 50 years to the day since we supported Genesis at the Granary Club, in Bristol. Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, and the others were on the brink of stardom and they had already arrived at the venue when we pitched up in our Ford Transit and our roadies unloaded the gear. I watched from the centre of the hall as Peter Gabriel set up a bass drum, plus a microphone to use during their performance. Phil Collins came to join me and said hello. I asked

Five weeks ago, I was heading to Ibiza for a holiday in the sun. I took plenty of reading material, plus paper and pens to start Sowing The Seeds for the new series. I had a great time… and apart from a few random thoughts I scribbled on the homeward flight, I admit to achieving very little. Almost as soon as I arrived home a horde of window fitters, swiftly followed by a team of painters/decorators invaded my quiet retirement. Have you ever tried writing under those conditions? It’s not easy. However, I’ve somehow completed the research for six titles in The Freeman Files and I can share my progress.

THE PHOENIX: A NECESSARY EVIL? One book grabbed my attention a few weeks ago. It was ‘Closure’ written by Randall Wood. ‘Closure’ was #1 in his Jack Randall novels and published in December 2009. Even though my review would be lost among the hundreds that the story has received in the intervening period, I needed to record my thoughts and the impression that the book made on me. There was a lot to like in the way the story was written; the descriptive passages were superbly handled for sure, but it was a little ‘quirk’ at the start of each chapter that encouraged me to write this piece for my

WHAT MOULDED THE CHARACTER OF THE PHOENIX? Colin Bailey was the main protagonist in my first two action thrillers; his story began in ‘The Final Straw’ where the events took place which led him on a seemingly endless campaign of revenge and his quest for justice. His character was set in stone the moment I wrote the first four words of that first novel.   “Colin Bailey was invisible.” I had no idea when I wrote that sentence, that it would change my life completely.   In the book we learn of his early family life; the lack of love, the neglect, the bullying he suffered at school from the

THE OLYMPUS PROJECT This is the first book in a brand new series featuring ‘The Phoenix’ and is ON SALE on Amazon. I know it’s the best book I’ve written so far, and I have high hopes that as the series progresses, Colin Bailey will become a much more widely known character. I hope you will agree with me when you read the book. After I had completed ‘Unfinished Business’ last March, I took a few weeks away from writing as I needed time to reflect. Perhaps it was because for a little while I felt as if I was drifting aimlessly without that daily target of fifteen hundred words