My blogs

  • Sgt Dan Nightingale

    Serving SAS sergeant Danny Nightingale has just pleaded guilty, so we are led to believe, to a charge of possessing a Glock 9mm pistol at his home, it having been found when police raided the house looking for evidence of a similar offence by another resident of the house. Today, his wife, Sally, has been Read more

  • An amusing observation on EU influence

    The European Commission has announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.  As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known Read more

  • Radio Interview – On the BBC!

    I have a lot to thank twitter for. As a new author I have explored several marketing routes. Facebook was almost useless. It seems more useful for maintaining established contacts rather than making new ones. My attempts to be ‘friends’ with people who also write, who read books and who are ‘in the trade’ sometimes Read more

  • Research trip

    Tomorrow I am off to Bucharest to do some preparation work on the sequel to Wicked Game. Romania is a key source of people who by one means or another are forced into the slave trade, often referred to as human trafficking. I am visiting the British Embassy, Institute of Migration and some other NGOs Read more

  • Agent or no?

    A long chat over the weekend has had me trawling the websites of literary agents this morning. A friend of mine has some interesting opinions on them… http://www.stephenleather.com/index.php?page=getting-published It doesn’t make for the most encouraging of reads.  The weekend chat was with a bookshop owner about achieving the balance between creative writing and promotion. I Read more

  • Buying positive reviews

    Extracts from a blog I recently found when researching this practice. Is there anything than cannot be bought? Authors Behaving Badly: The Seedy Underbelly of Reviewing Up until a few months ago, I didn’t realise there was a seedy underbelly to publishing. But all of a sudden, I can’t seem to look anywhere without turning up Read more