I’ve had some wonderful pre-publication reviews on Seeing Red. It’s always good knowing that it’s going to go out into the world with a guarantee that actual readers have loved it.
Eagle eyed viewers may spot that I’ve slightly changed the cover again
I’m also both amused and hugely relieved that the reviews are split down the middle with half of the readers loving Idris and the other half loving Victor. That is perfect and exactly how it ought to be.
I loved them both for very different reasons. I like to see they both have folk who will take their sides 🙂
“Quality writing full of depth and detail. Author doesn’t shy away from difficult subjects or morally dubious characters, and addresses the issue of nature vs nurture in a way that damn near broke my heart. Idris is adorable, if too innocent and trusting, a character that is easy to like and root for. He shines off the page like sunshine, making even the morally dubious Victor glow.”
“Victor’s story is heartbreaking. Page by page, I saw him practically reset all his previous beliefs in order to eventually consider himself a man worthy of being loved and capable of loving in return. … Seeing Red is a beautiful story of two troubled souls finding each other, bringing hope,color and love into the other’s life. I love it so, so much and I highly recommend it.”
“I was lucky to get an advance copy of this super book, the latest in Alex Beecroft’s Trowchester series of standalone tales. She does the characters so well. … All the Trowchester people are like old friends as they appear in this novel. The only problem now is the wait for the next Trowchester tale! I’ve read this twice already – its a keeper”
Seeing Red has a release date! And a cover, and a blurb 🙂
As per usual, while I’ve dropped off the internet I’ve been paddling madly under the surface. I’ve finished edits on Seeing Red. I’ve changed the cover art to make sure both main characters were included. I’ve written the blurb. I’ve formatted the paperback and that is going through Amazon’s checks as we speak. I’m busy attempting to arrange some publicity for it.
I will be releasing it on May 15th 2019 – ie next month
BLURB: Bad boys don’t tame easy.
Victor is a bad man. Is there anything he won’t do for power and money?
Destroy a local business so he can buy it cheap? Kick out its owners and turn it into a cash cow? He relishes the chance.
Idris is a good man in possession of a renowned tea-house. He’s put his heart and soul into the place. It’s everything he has and wants…
Except for Victor.
He wants Victor too.
Can the love of a compassionate man restore a predator’s withered soul? Or is Idris doomed to lose his life’s work, and his heart with it?
~
A contemporary mm romance, Seeing Red is a long-awaited new installment of the critically acclaimed Trowchester Series.
Each book in the series is a standalone, and can be read in any order.
So what have you been doing? And why are you talking to yourself? Have you finally lost your marbles?
Well, I can’t completely rule that out–I may never have known where my marbles were to begin with. However, I have been working on the first draft of the next Trowchester book, and I now have that completed.
It’s been a struggle switching back to romance after having taken so much time off to write mystery and sci-fi, but I made myself cry a couple of times. So I consider that a good sign.
Now I’m going to let it sit for a week while I wrestle with Kindle Unlimited, Amazon Associates, Facebook Ads, setting up a newsletter opt-in bundle and such like. Then I’ll come back and do a second draft. I already know at least three scenes are missing, so they need adding. It’ll be about 75,000 words when it’s done.
Meanwhile I’ve been learning Photoshop and knitting. Not together, though!
Behold my first book cover made entirely in Photoshop (rather than Gimp.) The text options are so much better!
Oh, there’s another thing for me to do – set up a cover art blog. This year is the year I add Cover Artist to my three-different-flavours-of-author portfolio.
If any cover artists are out there reading, can you give me any advice? Yet again I am starting a thing before I know how to do it.
I told you about my steampunk guns, didn’t I? I’ve been getting into steampunk in my Alex Oliver persona (and in real life!) I bought a box containing two ray-guy shaped water pistols in the Age Concern charity shop for £2. The low price was sort of justified because one of them had neither a trigger nor a stopper.
At any rate, I thought “Ooh, I bet with a bit of a paint job these will turn into just what I want for my steampunk persona. I fettled one of them myself – you can see what I made of that a couple of posts back. But I also gave the other one to my daughter’s partner, Shay of Space-and-Serenity-Designs https://www.facebook.com/Space-and-Serenity-Designs-213276859262999/ to see what he would come up with.
I am so pleased with this! Look at it, it’s got a proper compressed gas cannister thingy instead of its missing plug, and it’s so shiny! I like the fact that the rings look like they’ve seen some wear – it’s the pistol of an airship Indiana Jones type professor. It’s seen heavy use 🙂
The gauge measures “Destructo ray intensity” and goes from tingle through light stun to a final setting of ash pile.
I do like the fact that the two guns have turned out quite differently. My explanation is that I found both of them in the ruins of Atlantis, one with its power crystal intact and one without. But both had to be restored to operation via modern steampunk technology, hence the clockwork activator on the black one and the gas power-and-gauge on this one.
I’m very happy with it indeed. I will wear it proudly.
“I
was surprised you accepted our invitation, Lady Artemis,” Jasper said
as he and the lady edged out of the crowd in the ballroom and approached
the punchbowl. “I thought you despised me.”
“Oh,
that little indiscretion?” Lady Artemis gave an affected shrug,
dismissing the thought of the worst time in Jasper’s life as if it was a
tiny peccadillo. She had been the bane of his life in London, where she
had interested herself in the life of his parish, and—he had
thought—influenced his parishioners to ignore and berate him. “Nonsense,
that actually made me fond of you. It is Catholics I can’t stand, my
dear boy. Sodomites are perfectly charming.”
Even now in his own house, Jasper jumped at that. The memory of the pillory was in him at all times; he would never forget that he was vulnerable, that his fellow men were cruel, or that one wrong word to the wrong person could ruin his life. “I pray you, do not say that so loud.” “Hah,” Lady Artemis reached up and toyed with the golden anchor that hung from a chain from the ship that surmounted her piled wig. She was a great benefactor of the poor, and Jasper had wished to be on friendlier terms with her, but now was the first time it had seemed that his ambition might succeed. “I forget sometimes that you are not a great man in yourself—so close are your ties with young Charles. He would not let you come to harm, surely?”
Jasper’ spirits, never terribly robust these days, dipped. It must have shown on his face, for the lady grabbed her cup of punch in one hand, his arm in the other and hauled him into the smaller solar—now abandoned, as it was the middle of the night.
A great desire for council came over him, and there was something about her that had even him wishing to spill his secrets. Which was odd, when he thought about it. Something like a compulsion. Perhaps she had put something in his glass? But no, he hadn’t yet sipped. His eye caught the jewels in her ears and saw the spell carved in the green jade—oh. A fellow dabbler in the arcane, and one who already knew what he was.
“I’m not sure how sturdy my relationship with Charles is,” he said, the words pouring out of him in a tide. “He cheated on me, and I cannot forget or forgive it. I keep trying, and at times I think I’ve succeeded, but it comes back. Every time it comes back.”
“Cheated?” Artemis scoffed. “What, are you two married? Have you made declarations of fidelity? What nonsense! Do you not know that a man of Charles’s stature would never give fidelity to his wife, let alone—if you will pardon the expression—a man of a certain nature. You ask too much!”
Jasper knew it, but it wasn’t pleasant to hear. In his nightly fretting, he had considered that the problem was not Charles at all, but his own unwarranted jealousy. “Yet, because I am not married, what is to prevent any of these flings from becoming more important to him than I am?” That was the crux of the matter. “I want him to be in my life permanently. I want a commitment from him, so that no matter where his affections lead him, I am always his partner and at the very least his friend.”
Jasper had not known this about himself before. He’d supposed that marriage was a noble thing, a melding of two into a single flesh, and had not seen its practical application as a legal contract which could be relied on when human nature failed.
“You must find some other contract,” Lady Artemis said as though she was reading his mind. Her sharp little eyes were embedded in rolls of fat—her figure was ample and her face one of those moon-round visages with high cheeks and heavy brows. But her eyes were extraordinary, a gold that gleamed even in their shadowed recesses. “Buy a house with him. Doubtless it frets him to dwell here in your ancestral manor, as though he was a penniless guest. Having somewhere of his own will tie him down.”
“I had not considered that,” Jasper admitted. He had supposed Charles would enjoy being out from under George’s thumb, but if that meant putting him under Jasper’s perhaps it was no improvement. “Yet anywhere else in the country we would come into too much scrutiny, living together.”
“Not in London,” Lady Artemis pointed out. “London does not pry into people’s business if they are discrete, and if they keep those in the know happy. In London you could find more purchase for your talents—you are ghost hunters I believe, and solvers of murderous crimes?”
Jasper laughed. It was true enough, and their reputation was spreading both among Charles’s friends and among the esoteric underworld that he frequented. But she had a point. Why not go to London—sell the Admiral’s house and pool the money with whatever inheritance Charles was entitled to, then buy somewhere that would truly belong to both of them? The deed of ownership would be more binding than a common man’s marriage. It would make for something—some tangible proof that he was more important to Charles than anyone else.
Speak of the devil. Charles flung open the door of the solar and ran in. His blond hair was dishevelled and his pink coat seemed to be smoking at the hems. When he caught sight of Jasper a kind of impatient gladness flashed across his face, followed at once by irritation. “Your daughter is setting fire to the curtains again.”
Jasper nodded curtly to Lady Artemis and took off running. His ‘daughter’ was having troubles these days. He had supposed it was due to his own troubles with Charles, but the sinister bent of her outbursts continued whether they were speaking or not. He would not like to confess it to anyone, but there were at times moments when he wished he had not told her he would look after her.
He skidded into the library, to find that Lily was standing next to the great drapes. Her face was full of Satanic evil, and flames enveloped her tiny form– now the size of a girl of five. She was sweet and open-faced when she was in her normal mein, as a silvery apparition with bows in her plaited hair. But today her eyes were all black, and a flame seemed to dance in the centre of them even as it did around her ethereal body.
“Lily,” Jasper urged her, fighting his own desire to back away, “Come now, tell me what the difficulty is. What has made you so very angry?”
“I am in hell!” she cried, and pitiably he saw her own expression on the swollen, feverish face. “Help me, daddy. They won’t let me go! Help me! YOU ARE A FAILURE AS A FATHER AND A SINNER WHO DESERVES TO BURN.”
That was not her voice. Jasper staggered back and collided with Lady Artemis who had entered the library behind him and stood wheezing with the effort of having climbed the stairs.
“Oh goodness!” she said, her gaze very clearly fixed on Lily. This was confirmation of the suspicion Jasper had had when he saw the esoteric designs on her earrings. The lady was a witch. She could see Lily, at least, because she went down on one knee and held out a hand to her as a man might try to coax a snarling dog. “Come now, pet. Can you tell the nasty man to go away? Do that for your daddy, can’t you? He is getting very concerned.” “He doesn’t care,” Lily said, turning half away. Her small voice was her own again, and as they watched, her normal pearly lines emerged from the flames as though water had been poured on her. “He’s too busy worrying about my cousin. Because my cousin is a Latham, and the Lathams can’t control their bestial urges.”
“Pshaw!” Charles said, sounding very like his brother. He ran past Lily to beat the flames out of the curtains and prevent them from setting alight to the books. “I never had a bestial urge in my life.”
Jasper shook his head. He did love the young idiot. But he wished he could reach out and wrap Lily in his arms and hold her away from all things that might harm her.
“I’m so sorry, Lily,” he said instead, also going down on his knees. “I thought this was you, being angry. I had no idea something on the other side was working through you. I am going to find a way of making it leave permanently, you’ll see. You shall not endure this alone any more. I am with you.”
Charles shook his head and reached down an imperious hand, which Jasper caught without thinking about it. “We are with you, Lily,” he said. “But we also have a party going on. Do you think you could avoid setting fire to the house or the guests until they’re gone?”
“I suppose.” There were no tear tracks on Lily’s shining face. Jasper had discovered over the last year that her emotional range was narrower than that of a living child. There had been nothing but calm acceptance or rage from her, and sometimes a wisdom that seemed unnatural. “Promise you’ll save me?”
“I promise, Jasper said, watching her disappear with the words. God, it was an evening of vows, wasn’t it?
“How extraordinary,” Lady Artemis said, fingering the scorch marks on the curtains as if to prove they were real. “I didn’t know you had a ghost child, Charles.”
“It’s not something I drop into casual conversation,” Charles scoffed, still rather frazzled. “Nor something I honestly know how to deal with.”
“She called you ‘cousin.’”
“It’s a long story.”
Lady Artemis snorted. “I’ll bet. Well then, what do you propose to do about this?”
Jasper had been wondering that himself. It seemed to him that the ghost child inhabited an afterlife in which other more sinister presences also dwelt. She was like a little conduit through which they could insert themselves into the world. “We should close the conduit,” he said, trusting Charles at least to follow. “I mean, we should deny this other presence a right of access to her—body, for lack of a better word.”
“How exactly do you propose to do that?” Lady Artemis said, “I have never heard of such a case.”
“She was killed in her mother’s womb,” Jasper explained. “This life after death of hers is an extraordinary circumstance in itself. But I think we must start with a baptism. God knows what unholy things might be able to batten themselves onto her, given that she is un-baptised and her mother for so long was interred outside consecrated ground.”
“Well,” Lady Artemis gave her supremely unconcerned shrug again. “I may not like Catholics but I will admit that their rituals are efficacious. Perhaps you will indeed be able to clear it up so simply. But I fear it is far more complicated than that, and I have to say, rather you than me. I don’t think I will visit again until this is finished. One way or another. Good luck! You will need it.”
For my own benefit, mostly, so that on those days like today when I feel that I’ve achieved nothing in my life, I can see at a glance how many books I’ve written, and (perhaps) feel better.
Created with GIMP
Created with GIMP
Have I missed some? I feel as though I might have missed one or two.
One of them has been taken by my son-in-law, who has been making props far longer than me, and while I eagerly await seeing what he’s done with it, this is what I’ve done with mine:
Courtesy of black primer, stone-effect paint, more black primer, rub n buff in silver and gold, a blue crystal from a broken necklace and a bit of watchwork from a broken brooch. Also a bit of copper wire wound around a drinking straw to make a spring.
If exposed wires are good enough for Kylo Ren’s lightsaber, they’re good enough for my ray-gun.
Now onto the more difficult task of figuring out how to make it a holster!
I got a nice email from Coffee Time Romance this morning inviting me to submit the answer to a question, which they would then promote in their newsletter. This seemed like a great thing to me, and I wrote out a long answer for them and hit the submit button. Then everything froze and I don’t know whether it went through or not. If it did, I’m sorry for repeating it here. If it didn’t, at least I had copied what I wrote before I lost it 🙂
~
*QUESTION: How much of your real life bleeds over into your books? And do you worry that someone will be able to tell the fact from the fiction?*
I used to write specifically to get away from my real life. In those early days you would find me imaginatively on the decks of tall ships or the bridges of starships, a very long way away from everything of my current reality. I’d used reading as an escape since I could follow the words of The Hobbit, and writing was a natural escalation from that. I liked the fact that I could control these worlds and they would contain nothing that really hurt me.
But as I’ve grown into myself and begun to accept that I will never be a swashbuckling hero with the world’s fate in my hands, I’ve learned to love the life I’m actually living. When I moved into the English fenlands, I found a place where I could put down roots. I spent my first five years feeling blessed every time I came out of my house and saw the view – I’m surrounded by flowering countryside. And that began to work its way into my books before I was even aware of it. The first sign was the frequency with which my heroes took up morris dancing – first in Under the Hill and then also in Blue Eyed Stranger.
Then it really kicked in, and The Reluctant Berserker https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XVZ46LJ was knitted together out of one thread of my lifetime of Anglo-Saxon re-enactment and study and another of love for the fenland landscape. There is a strong element of me trying to give you the glory of this place – the fact that it’s a balm to the soul to live in this much beauty.
I don’t worry that people may be able to tell the fact from the fiction because I’m not hiding any of this. If you’ve ever tried, you’ll know that in fact it’s much harder to bring a real place to recognizable life in fiction than it is to simply make one up. If I describe a flowering hedgerow in a way that makes a reader picture it intensely enough to almost be there, does it really matter if I drew it from reality or not?
I have only this life, and in this life I have been fortunate enough to receive some beautiful things. I’d like to share them because I hope you enjoy them too.
~
Hey! Answering questions is fun If you would like to ask me anything (within reason, of course) go ahead and either ask here or through my contact form or email. I’ll do my best to give you as comprehensive answer as I can and be grateful for the prompt.
Guess who got a year’s subscription to Photoshop as a Christmas present 🙂 It doesn’t half make moodboards easier to create.
I’m going into the new year cautiously optimistic about the three pen-names thing. I have just finished writing a space opera, and a cozy mystery before that, and now I’m eager to write a mm romance again. I think having the ability to change genres in an organized way will really help me when I’m having my next attack of “I cannot stand to write another [whatever genre] novel ever again!” And it may mean that you’re not subjected to quite so many Frankenstein’s monsters of novels that don’t belong in any category in future.
As you can probably see from the moodboard, I’m itching to start the next Trowchester novel, Seeing Red, but I just have to get the edits on Starship Ragnarok done first. Hopefully Seeing Red will be underway by the end of the month, though.
I have a marvellous new program called Book Report which is telling me all sorts of things I didn’t originally know about my books. One of which things is that Leanne was quite right to suggest that more people liked The Reluctant Berserker than I had previously thought. So that may eventually get the sequel I originally half planned for it after all 🙂 (After I’ve written Seeing Red and the Age of Sail book I promised you, of course!)
It’s nice to have some enthusiasm again, and even better to have accurate information on which to base a plan for what to do with it.
