For any author it’s always a great feeling when people buy one’s books, but it’s positively elating, when a book gets to be #1! Today “Remember Me?” hit the #1 in both Australia and Canada on Amazon! A big thank you to those who bought it! I do hope you enjoy it! Thank you!
Writing books can be fun, challenging, hair pulling hard, and I’m-never-going-to-do-this again, and all that in a one day. When you’re just about prepared to bang the laptop to submission, you find a website which tells you just about what you had spent past two hours looking for, or you talk to someone who says, oh, check that site, and you’ll find out!
My biggest problem is research – as in I love doing it. Which means I tend to get lost among all those wonderful websites which have gruesome or funky stories about crime. Or I go to the library, browse shelves there and stumble on a book about poisons, or I check out Amazon for a book and then that one has that wonderful also-bought section which means that I end up checking out those too. I mean I have to, right? I have to be sure, what a particular building part is called and what it connects to and how much a sheet of metal which can fall on someone weighs, and obviously search all medical sites on what happens when X happens. But while the research is fun, often rewarding, my goal is always to ensure that whatever ultimately ends up in my books, the details are within reason.
Don’t know about you, but I’d like to see white Christmas, with plenty of snow, red berries on hollies, and jingle bells on the radio, sleighs rides and presents under the tree. I guess we all need to feel the excitement of waiting, seeing all the lights, smelling all the good things cooking, and then opening those presents.
And while it would be great to have a real Santa Claus to pick great presents to each and every one, Santa may need a bit of help. For your help, I have put together a list of authors, from all over the world, from Australia to Bulgaria, from Canada to Britain from US to South Africa. Books from mysteries to romance to sci-fi to non-fiction, from fantasy to fiction to thrillers.
Click on the picture to get to the list. And at the end of the list, there’s a treat for you too!
The intriguing story we have previously reported concerning a body, without any identification, which was found on Saddleworth Moor, in December 2015, and identified after a worldwide hunt, continues. (See our previous story here)
It took police more than a year to find out who he was. The inquest in the case was held March 14. The pathologist said the most likely cause of death was strychnine poisoning. Police ruled out any suspicious circumstances, which would indicate that the man now identified as Mr. Lytton, had travelled all the way from Lahore, Pakistan, via London to Manchester, walked up the hill to the Moor to commit suicide.
The coroner said he could not be sure of Mr. Lytton’s “intention”. “Whilst accepting he died of his own hand, the only appropriate conclusion I can reach is an open conclusion,” the coroner said. He added that a series of “fundamental questions remain unanswered”. For example, why did Mr Lytton travel all the way to Saddleworth Moor to commit suicide. He had no known links to the area. He had paid cash for a five-night stay in a hotel in London, and yet he travelled north after one night, during which he went out for dinner with an old friend. The morning after meeting his friend, he takes a train to Manchester, vanishes for an hour when he gets there, takes a taxi to a pub and gets directions to Saddleworth Moor where he’s found dead morning after.
Find out more about this true life (murder???) mystery – The BBC has reported it here and here. The Guardian reports more about it here and here.
It was a dark and stormy night – and I set out to write a chapter or two for the third Faukon Abbey mystery, except, it didn’t turn out that way. The result is “The Good Riddance Project” A Project Management Mystery. It’s a novella, and if you ever have done a project, then this one is for you. It’s a tongue-in-cheek mystery about a project manager who has issues with his wife…. 
🙂 It’s now available on amazon for 99cents. 
Woohoo! Missing Alibi is now available as a paperback on Amazon! WooHoo!
Still working on getting it out in other online shops worldwide.
Third book in the series is in the works!
Getting philosophical here…
It is said that good books are like wine, more you enjoy them better you appreciate them, the classics be it wine or books are good. The thing I’m concerned about now has to do with both wine and books and I do enjoy both.
When I was growing up, I went to the library, couldn’t afford to buy books. The smaller libraries I went to, their main distinction was fiction – non-fiction. So I browsed through the fiction shelves, pulled out a book here and there. I wasn’t concerned what genre it was. I read it, liked it more often than not, and returned it.
When I got older, and it came to wine, I didn’t really have any particular idea about it. I liked red wine with food, white wine too, especially with fish, and rose well, that was good with just about anything in the summer. But that was it. I wasn’t very knowledgeable about the grapes involved, and frankly I didn’t care. If the Chateau X wine tasted good, that’s what I bought the next time. But if the wine I liked had more Cabernet than Merlot, or if the rose was made with Grenache or Syrah, it didn’t really matter to me. I cared about the taste, and if the wine went well with the purpose, food or just being a nice “chatty” wine to enjoy in a mellow summer evening.
Now, thanks to Amazon and books, we have this micromanagement of genres. I understand it’s impossible to browse among the shelves like I used to but I’m not sure if pigeonholing a book in a every kind of a genre is good for the reader or the author. Take mysteries, a genre I thought I knew something about. I’ve read thousands of mysteries over the years. I like the puzzle, the use of my “little gray cells” to try to solve the murder. But it’s a bit annoying to find, that in the top 20 category Mystery/British Detectives, the number one book is “Murder Out of Turn” which is set entirely in New York. Louise Penny’s books (number 4 and 15) are set in Quebec in Canada and Lee Childs’ two books (16 and 20) set mostly in the USA. Mind you, I’m not saying anything about these books. Personally, I really like Louise Penny’s books, the way she writes about Quebec city in the middle of the winter makes me want to move there. And Lee Child’s books are good too. But, these books do NOT have British Detectives.
Same thing with wine. Nowadays, if I want to find a wine which would be a nice chatty wine to go with some shrimp, aioli, and bread, I have to first figure out which grape I want in order to find the right shelf in the store! I know I like cabernet, don’t like Syrah, I like Chardonnay, if it’s not oaked. BUT the same thing that has been going on with books is happening with wines too, pigeonholing. Why do I have to, in order to find a wine or a book I like, figure out IF I like a particular grape more than another one, why do I even need to know the grapes used? If I like Louise Penny, who is very much Canadian and her books are set there, why would I look for her books among British Detectives? And why do I want to figure out that in order to find Agatha Christie’s “And then there was none” I have to check out category called Historical British & Irish Literature only to find it next to Ken Follet’s “Fall of Giants”! Does this make sense to you? It doesn’t make sense to me. How am I supposed to find a good puzzling mystery if I don’t know the name of the author?
The trouble is, I don’t really have a good alternative to offer, but I’m sure there must be a few literature loving engineers around who can figure this one out. When it comes to wine, I just stick with a good Rioja with steak, Sancerre with fish, and a dry rose from just about anywhere to sit and drink while munching on shrimp and aioli in the summer. And I really do not care which grapes are involved in any one of those!
The intriguing story about a body found on Saddleworth Moor, in December 2015, made worldwide news, including in here Faukon Abbey. There were similarities with Eric Warner’s case as we reported here.
The man found dead on Saddleworth Moor was found fully clothed, lying prone on the ground. The post-mortem examination showed that he had died of strychnine poisoning. The BBC and other news organizations reported about him in June 2016 after the police had run out of leads. The only thing the police had was the small medicine bottle which contained strychnine, and the fact that the man had had a titanium plate in his leg which was manufactured in Pakistan.
Finally someone reported that a man with striking likeness, had travelled from Lahore, Pakistan to Heathrow in London. The DNA analysis confirmed that the dead man was David Lytton, who had been living in Pakistan for 10 years before returning to the UK. He was apparently a bit of a loner.
The mystery however remains; why did he fly from Lahore to London and day later take a train from London to Manchester, then an hour after arriving to Manchester, he walks into a pub in Greenfield near the Dovestone Peak National Park, and asks for directions how to get to the top of the mountain. He walks about two miles.
The police now believe he took his own life. But the biggest question remains, why did he chose to travel nearly 200 miles across England, to Saddleworth? He has no obvious connection with the area. Why go to all that trouble, if you want to kill yourself?
The inquest will take place on 14th of March.
For more about this intriguing story – check out BBC story in June here and the follow-up here
An author moves to Faukon Abbey, and is soon found dead after a party. Was it something she wrote? Messy marriages, panned authors and Swedish meatballs keep you guessing to the end!
Missing Alibi is now available as ebook on Amazon. Get your copy now!
Woohoo! Missing Alibi has been edited, beta read, and proofed, and it’s now ready to be launched on Amazon as an ebook January 18th. Paperback and even hardcover to follow in February. WOOHOO!!
