Air and Sea Stories

When We Fall – Carolyn Kirby, No Exit Press 2020

I was excited to receive an advance copy of this WW2 novel, due out on 7 May, as it ticked two boxes that interest me particularly about the period. The Air Transport Auxiliary, with its female pilots flying alongside male counterparts, and the Nazi occupation of Poland, neither of which seem to have had a…

Songbirds and Stray Dogs

Songbirds and Stray Dogs – Meagan Lucas, Mint Hill Books 2019 I was familiar with Meagan through her roles as fiction editor of the excellent Barren Magazine so it was with some anticipation that I received her first novel. My interest was piqued even further by the quotation from which the title is drawn (from…

Frank Barnard – on ghosts and remembrances

I have been a fan of Frank Barnard’s work for years, first becoming aware of his writing back in 2006 with the novel Blue Man Falling, based around a Hawker Hurricane squadron in the Battle of France. Frank has a fascinating background, including a career as a journalist, national service in the RAF and even…

Revolt: The King’s Knight, by J.A. Ironside – review

‘Revolt’ is the perfect nugget of historical fiction. Gregory Maudseley is a knight on his uppers, trying to negotiate the windings of 14th Century bureaucracy to obtain his inheritance, and in so doing stumbles into the midst of a national emergency. What follows takes in brawls and riots, thieves and nobles, knock-kneed nags and Geoffrey…

Fiona Erskine interview – The Chemical Detective

THE CHEMICAL DETECTIVE by Fiona Erskine is published by Point Blank, an imprint of Oneworld, in hardback on 4 April (see review on Goodreads) I’m privileged to be able to interview Fiona Erskine, author of the brilliant new thriller The Chemical Detective. Back in September 2017, OneWorld announced that it had signed up for two…

My Publishing Nightmare – the story of a book deal gone bad (Part 3)

Parts one and two of this blog series covered what happened when I signed a contract with a publisher for my novel and it turned out badly, with a product I was unhappy with, poor sales and a deteriorating relationship with the publisher, and then my initial, unsuccessful attempts to retrieve my rights to the…

My Publishing Nightmare – the story of a book deal gone bad (Part 2)

To start off with, I should say that I gave this blog its title before I heard about the shameful business involving Amélie Wen Zhao. Now that really is a publishing nightmare. Suffice to say that what happened to me was bad enough, and the kind of thing that befalls a lot of aspiring authors,…

My Publishing Nightmare – the story of a book deal gone bad (Part 1)

This is the story of how bad things happened to an author. Me, as it happens. I was naive, disorganised, and arguably lazy with how I sought to get my novel published, but ultimately I don’t think that excuses the bad things. The short version is that I got stuck with a publisher who wasted…

Blog tour for A Black Matter for the King

A virtual blog tour for A Black Matter for the King, the second of the Oath and Crown novels about the events leading to the Norman conquest of England, is currently underway courtesy of Historical Fiction Blog Tours. Please take a look at the blog tour page here to find reviews, features and a giveaway…

Historical fiction – where to draw the line

The issue of factual inaccuracy in historical fiction is a perpetual source of debate, and occasional outbreaks of controversy. Reports in the media today pick up on this issue with aspects of the new film Mary Queen of Scots labelled ‘problematic’ by a historian in a BBC report with the Telegraph going as far as…

Death in Ten Minutes, by Fern Riddell – review

Death in Ten Minutes is an extremely readable book. It’s compelling, engaging and extremely informative. More than that, it’s an important book, and it’s an seriously important one at this moment in time. Fern Riddell’s biography of the music hall performer, suffragette, and birth control campaigner Kitty Marion manages to walk the difficult line between…

Blog Tour for An Argument of Blood

A virtual blog tour for An Argument of Blood, the first of the Oath and Crown novels about the events leading to the Norman conquest of England, is currently underway courtesy of Historical Fiction Blog Tours. Please take a look at the blog tour page here to find reviews, features and a giveaway for a…