Author
I am thrilled to announce that Sovereign Assassin has been recognised again; this time in this year's Global Book Awards. It won a gold medal https://globalbookawards4.spread.name/?filter=Category-%3ASatire. I can now add a second medal to the cover (see above)! I also have some new interviews on my interview page. One celebrates the imminent release of the... Continue Reading →
I am delighted to announce that a follow up to Colours of Death: Sergeant Thomas' Casebook will be released later this year. The new collection, Colours of Death 2: Sergeant Thomas: Further Casefiles will be released on December 1st, 2022. Here are the details for the nine stories in the anthology:Red: Poison FireA horrific death... Continue Reading →
Helen Demidenko caused a stir in literary circles in the mid 1990s. I remember at the time wondering why there was such a fuss? After all, the crime she was accused of was that she had made up her family history (and surname) in order to promote her novel, The Hand that Signed the Paper;... Continue Reading →
Imagine you love writing and have managed to have a few short stories published and a friend says, "Here's a year's salary, take a year off and go write a novel." While it sounds like a fantasy most authors would have, it really did happen to Nelle Harper Lee. A family she was friends with... Continue Reading →
I'm delighted to share the news that Sovereign Assassin has been voted the Book of the Month for May at Read Free.ly. What makes this particularly pleasing is that it was a public/fan vote. However, this is not the only good news in regards to the novel. The paperback and ebook editions are now available... Continue Reading →
The Nag Hammadi library is a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. It is comparable to the Dead Sea Scrolls in terms of its literary significance, though less well known. Please note that what follows is a discussion of the texts and their... Continue Reading →
Stephen Hawking’s book A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes was a landmark work in popular science books. The book discusses theoretical cosmology and was written expressly for the lay reader. As such, it uses non-technical terms and starts from basics to show the development of theories and their implications.... Continue Reading →
There is a stereotype of authors as solo operators who toil away in isolation, driven to create by the work itself more than dreams of financial reward. Like most stereotypes that isn’t always the case, but there are examples who embody it. For this stereotype, I can’t think of a better example than Henry Joseph... Continue Reading →
Many authors have destroyed the only copies of their works. James Joyce burned his play, A Brilliant Career; Terry Pratchett had his unfinished works destroyed when he died in accordance with his wishes. Sometimes though, a manuscript is lost by accident and found later (such as Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman which will feature... Continue Reading →
A friend of mine recently reposted a FB article celebrating the 130 year anniversary of the publication of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Her post reminded me of the extraordinary story of how the book came to be. An American, Joseph Marshall Stoddart (managing editor of the American publication Lippincott's Monthly Magazine),... Continue Reading →
Robert New 