by David | Aug 12, 2017
… Saturday 19 August!
At last, after a rather longer period of editing etc. than I anticipated, Remorseless, the second novel in the Cotton & Silk Thriller series is ready. For a limited time, it will be priced at just £1.99, $2.99, €1.99, or equivalent, after which it will go up to £2.99 or equivalent.
So don’t delay! In fact you can take action right now by pre-ordering the book. Follow this link for Amazon UK, or this one for Amazon US. For other Amazon sites, simply block and copy ‘Remorseless A Cotton & Silk Thriller’ and paste it into the search bar. Once you have pre-ordered it, it will automatically hit your Kindle on 19 August.
Pre-ordering will help me too in that the book will get a spike of sales on its first day of publication, pushing it up the Amazon ratings and therefore making it more noticeable to others.
You have a Nook or a Kobo or one of the other brands of e-reader? Remorseless will be available for download on those too very soon.
What’s Remorseless all about? Here’s the backblurb from the paperback version, which I hope will also be available from 19 August:
Detective Constable Jennifer Cotton is convalescing at her stepfather’s villa on Sardinia, slowly recovering from the vicious assault in Nottinghamshire’s Harlow Wood that almost claimed her life. Initially convinced that her assailant will not risk being caught by attacking her again, she is forced to face reality when a killing spree commences in England targeting individuals from that fateful night.
However, when the search for the serial killer goes cold and Jennifer is back to full health, she puts all her energy into her new role with the London Metropolitan Police’s Art Fraud Squad who are investigating a multi-million-pound art-forgery racket based in Italy.
But has Jennifer’s nemesis gone to ground permanently or is she closer than Jennifer thinks, biding her time?
REMORSELESS is the gripping sequel to Irrefutable Evidence in which Jennifer once again finds herself in the cross hairs of a merciless serial killer who will stop at nothing until she has achieved her revenge, a killer without scruples, a killer bent on retribution.
Yes, it’s the sequel to Irrefutable Evidence. But will there be more in the series? Of course there will, in a year or so, after I’ve finished the novel I’m currently working on: La Villa D’Illuzioni, a stand-alone suspense thriller set in the heart of Tuscany.
What? You haven’t read Irrefutable Evidence yet! Here’s another good deal. For five days starting on 19 August, Irrefutable Evidence will be FREE on Amazon instead of the normal £2.99.
by David | Apr 9, 2017
It’s all systems go for CrimeFest in Bristol next month. Arrangements are still on-going, but one exciting bit of news is that I’ve been longlisted for this year’s FlashBang flash fiction competition. In case that means nothing to you, flash fiction is very short stories, typically 99-150 words. For CrimeFest, the challenge was to write a crime novel in ≤150 words!
Longlisted means that my flash fiction story has been included among 12 stories chosen by the judges from a total entry of 70. For obvious reasons, the judges are not given the names of the authors; they just see the stories. The longlist is currently being reduced to a shortlist of 5 stories from which the winner is selected during the CrimeFest meeting . Authors on the shortlist will be informed later this month.
Again, for obvious reasons I can’t give details of my story at this stage, but I shall be posting it later on regardless of whether I get any further. I’ve written a couple of others too, which I’ll post very soon. To give you an idea of what 150 words looks like, this post is 183!
by David | Mar 2, 2017
I am pleased to tell you that I have been invited to sit on an Indie Author panel at this year’s CrimeFest meeting in Bristol, UK, in May. The panel is moderated by best-selling crime author Zoë Sharp and my three fellow panelists are AA Abbott, Barbara Fagan Speake and Ian Sutherland, all of whom are great crime writers – check them out on Amazon!
This is CrimeFest’s ninth annual meeting, and it gets bigger and more popular every year. What’s it all about? Here’s an extract from the CrimeFest website explaining the concept:
CRIMEFEST is a convention for people who like to read an occasional crime novel as well as for die-hard fanatics. Drawing top crime novelists, readers, editors, publishers and reviewers from around the world, it gives all delegates the opportunity to celebrate the genre in a friendly, informal and inclusive atmosphere.
The CRIMEFEST programme consists of interviews with its featured and highlighted guest authors; over forty panels with more than a hundred participating authors; a gala awards dinner; and one or two surprises.
CRIMEFEST was created following the hugely successful one-off visit to Bristol in 2006 of the American Left Coast Crime convention. The British hosts were encouraged to continue with a similar annual event and, as a result, the first CRIMEFEST was organised in June 2008. The convention has grown to become not only one of the biggest crime fiction events in Europe, but also one of the most popular dates in the international crime fiction calendar.
Included in the programme is a Flash Fiction competition in which authors have been invited to submit a crime novel comprising ≤150 words! I’ve written two (flash-fiction novels, not words) in the last couple of days — what else are morning beach walks for except contriving extremely concise murder and mayhem — and I’m still deciding which to submit. I’ll post the one I’m not submitting here in a few days’ time.
From the programme, the meeting should be a packed four days with great opportunities to meet with like-minded authors along with many others in the industry. I shall be featuring ‘Irrefutable Evidence’ as my book, with of course mention of ‘Remorseless’ which, fingers crossed, should have been released by then.
More details and updated news on CrimeFest as and when they are available.
by David | Feb 5, 2017
Since we live in a world of alternative facts, another change to the title of my latest book should seem nothing out of the ordinary.
Alternative fact one was the working title of Unfinished Business, but as I pointed out in my previous post, this title has been over-used. Hence the move to alternative fact two: Murderous Motives. However, after cogitating on that for a while, mainly on my bike while charging around both the Lincolnshire countryside in semi-freezing conditions, and more recently the Kamala, Phuket countryside in tropical hothouse conditions, the niggling feeling that this wasn’t the best title grew.
So now it’s changed again to Remorseless, which I think is a stronger title and as you will see once you read it, has a wider meaning than its predecessor.
That’s it; no more alternatives. It will be Remorseless. That’s a fact. No more changes. All that remains is to finish up the editing and then get it out there since I’m sure you are itching to read it.
My other two missions for the month of February are firstly to continue with the plot outline of book six, provisionally called Ca’ Abandonata. Set entirely in Italy, this novel has a supernatural twist that is very different from all my previous books. The characters are all new too. So far it’s just at the drafting stage. If that goes well — it’s looking good so far — then writing will begin soon.
Mission two is to continue writing to as many literary agents as I can in the hope that Irrefutable Evidence and Remorseless might appeal to one of them. It’s an uphill battle that makes climbing Everest a breeze by comparison, but I’ll keep trying. If you happen to be best buddy with a literary agent who’s yearning for the next blockbuster, please let me know …
In the meantime, feedback on Remorseless is good and the hunt for toopies,tie-bows typos etc continues.
by David | Jan 4, 2017
Finally a title for my latest book! and a cover.
Throughout the writing of the book, which started back in the spring of 2016, the working title was always Unfinished Business. It was a good title since it reflected what the book is all about – a sequel to Irrefutable Evidence in which Olivia Freneton’s outstanding account, as she sees it, is settled. However, on searching Amazon, I discovered that there are more than twenty books with the same title — I stopped counting after twenty! And that was the problem with all the other titles I came up with: someone else had used them. Not that it’s an absolute requirement to invent an original title, but on the whole, it’s to be preferred.
So, Murderous Motives it is, along with a tagline that leads into the title. Once the editing is over, I’ll be announcing a release date. In the meantime, I may soon be releasing at least a part of it to subscribers to my newsletter, probably later this month once I’ve had a bit of feedback from beta readers.
