A long overdue update!

It's over a year since I updated this blog. So much for harnessing social media to help promote my books and win more readers. I ought to pen a blog entry on how best to crawl under a stone and not market yourself. I fear I am something of an expert on how not to do things. I haven't touched my Twitter account in months, nor Facebook.

Anyway, I'll beat myself up over this another time. Here I am, the prodigal blogger returning, repentant, to finally give an update on my progress as an author. In one sense, I have more time than ever to write now, having taken redundancy from my newspaper job in January. Unfortunately that decision - more forced upon me than voluntarily made - played havoc with my need to have an untroubled, calm frame of mind in which to write.

As George Orwell once said, through his character Gordon Comstock (an impoverished wannabe novelist) in Keep The Aspidistra Flying, only a writer can say that that he literally cannot work. It' true - you need to have calm both externally and inside your head in order to be able to write fiction well (apart from all the other requirements to writing good fiction, that is).

In more recent weeks, I think that sense of calm and a desire to write has come back to me. Since I last wrote a blog entry in August 2012, I have penned books two and three in what I now call my Lou Elliott Mystery Adventure Series, namely: The Missing Treasure and Something Strange in the Cellar.

I am now embarking on book four in the series which I hope to have published by Christmas this year (2013). I have just published a short story for Halloween (about 20,500 words) called The Mystery of the Misty Woods, which I have currently got on Amazon for free until this Saturday (October 26th) and thereafter at 77p / $1.24 (approx).

It's getting quite a few downloads in America - nearly 200 in the first 24 hours and has already picked up its first review - a 4-star one from a lady who recommends it for readers in second grade through to fourth grade. I think that's aged about eight to 10 or 11. She herself is 70 and enjoyed it a lot so one might infer that the book is suitable for all ages from eight to 70+!

I hope so, anyway. It is an unusual take on Halloween, I believe - seeking to look into the myths and legends behind the festival and touching on the competing claims of Christianity and paganism to 'ownership'. It's my first foray into the fantasy genre and I enjoyed straying into that category.

I will write more very soon on other aspects of my work and also to give updates on book four in the Lou Elliott mystery adventure series. A number of readers have contacted me to ask when they will next hear from Lou, Jack, David and Emily and are keen to find out how they are getting on.

The answer is they are having a great time and looking forward to sharing their latest escapades with you!

I will blog again very soon . . . (now that I've got back into it!)