Sunday 30 December 2018

Thanks for the Reads and Happy New Year!


We hope you've enjoyed your year. Thanks for reading our blog, and our fiction and non-fiction. We appreciate your visits and your Shares.

Wherever you are in the world, as we come to the end of 2018 we raise a glass and wish you all

a joyful and contented New Year!

Saturday 22 December 2018

Launching New Georgia Pattison #Christmas #Mystery

It’s that time of year again. Yes, the dreaded C word, and a time when everywhere you look, there are light-bejewelled fir trees, reindeer, more food than anyone needs and wall to wall Christmas music. A time when we try to beg for peace on Earth and charity to our fellow man. And, like Scrooge at the end of A Christmas Carol, we all want to carry that into our lives throughout the year and not just at Christmas. 

It is also the time for authors of serial books to offer a short Christmas story featuring their hero/heroine. And I am no different. Readers of the Georgia Pattison Mysteries will know how easy it is for our early-music soprano to become embroiled in deep trouble, frequently to protect her friends who have become unconsciously involved in a murder. And, of course, Chief Superintendent Michaela Hamilton always needs Georgia’s knowledge of the musical scene or the people who are under suspicion to help her tread through the minefield of suspects and evidence and come up with the real killer.

The 2018 Christmas Georgia story is The Bleak Midwinter and follows in the usual tradition of the Georgia Pattison Mysteries, has a musical title. If you are new to our somewhat acerbic  but insatiably nosy sleuth, she began her exploits in Whistles After Dark. There are two full-length stories, Dearly Ransomed Soul and Laid in Earth. But you can find her other Christmas adventures in The Midnight Clear, where she meets her beloved, Sir Edward Broome, and The Shepherds’ Farewell.

In The Bleak Midwinter Georgia is invited to sing at the carol concert in the small Worcestershire village of Ash Buckingham and stay at Highfield Manor for the festive season. However, on Boxing Day she finds a body draped over the fountain outside her bedroom window. Chief Inspector Hamilton, pulled out of a warm bed and made to drive miles through thick snow without the benefit of coffee, determines that Georgia knows the suspects much better than she does and inveigles her into helping track down the killer. When it becomes clear that the murder may have connections to Georgia and Ned’s holiday in Rhodes, things take on a much more sinister turn. 

You can find The Bleak Midwinter  here:  getbook.at/BleakMW

You can read more about April Taylor here:

Sunday 9 December 2018

Torc Of Moonlight Trilogy - Christmas Special Price

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat... 

Seasonal promotions are hitting all the digital stores, including Linda Acaster's Torc of Moonlight Trilogy boxed set. For a very limited period this 900+ page fantasy romance is a mere £2.99 / €2.99 / $2.99 or equivalent. Grab it while you can.

The over-arcing story follows Nick and Alice through three books and nine years as they grapple with the realisation that Celtic folklore is based very much on living fact. How did she come up with the storyline?

'I tripped over it, or should I say I kept tripping over it, as I undertook various walks along ancient byways in my home county of Yorkshire. History might be buried, but it's not always dead. 

'Clean water plays a huge part in our lives. Today it's chemically scrubbed and piped into our homes; in Victorian times the village pump helped to keep clean water from the local spring; before the mechanical pump the spring itself would be surrounded by a stone well-head to help retain the purity of its water with its run-off allowed to pool in the ubiquitous village pond. It is here The White Lady, protector of the water, is found within "folklore" in the county histories written by country gentlemen. 

'The White Lady was no mere ghostly form in previous centuries, but she was always female. The traditional Well-Dressing festivals of Derbyshire, rich in Christian symbolism, are an attempt to conflate and thus suppress the belief. The same was attempted in the medieval period where stone churches dedicated to All Saints or All Souls were built close to springs venerated at the end of the farming calendar - the Celtic year-end festival of Samhain demonised by Christian teaching into All Hallows. Despite now being a largely secular country, we don't let go. Halloween is now the most commercialised "festival" next to Christmas.'

For readers of Barbara Erskine, Robert Holdstock, and Phil Rickman, the Torc of Moonlight Trilogy is on offer for a limited time only:

Amazon   ¦  Kobo   ¦   iBooks   ¦   Nook   ¦   All formats


Catch up with Linda Acaster via her Website, Facebook, or Twitter where she'd appreciate an RT of her pinned Tweet.

Saturday 1 December 2018

Writing contemporary crime in a fast-changing world


Giving talks is part and parcel of being a writer and is something that all Hornsea Writer members do from time to time, but it isn’t – or certainly shouldn’t be – just a matter of pulling a previously made talk out of the cupboard and taking it along for an airing. 



Read Hornsea Writer, Penny Grubb’s view on this in relation to a recent talk she gave to the Hornsea U3A. See more HERE