Monthly Review: February 2018

On 1 February, I went in for surgery.

Since then I've been at home recovering, so February is pretty much a write-off. However, it's been very cold while I've been off, so it's not been a bad time to be stuck indoors. And by the time I go back to work, which I hope will be next week (pending doctor approval) it will be daylight when I leave the house.

That said, there are a few things to report this month.

OUT NOW/COMING SOON

I'm pleased to announce that my story 'Morgan's Father' is included in the Women in Horror edition of the SIREN'S CALL e-zine. This issue is completely free to download as a PDF and is chock full of horror stories by women, so download your copy now.

In other news, we don't yet have a release date for OUTPOST H311, but the onus is on me at the moment since I've had the edits back and I'm working through them. And it's taking rather longer than I was expecting. Partly that's due to being on sick leave. For the first two weeks following surgery I couldn't really do much except lie about reading or watching TV. No concentration for anything else. However, this week I've been making progress with the edits, so hopefully there'll be more news on this next month.

PUBLICITY

I contributed to Mark West's Stephen King mixtape, which appeared on his blog on 26 February. This was a post including a long list of writers talking briefly about their favourite King story. I chose 'The Breathing Method'.

WORK IN PROGRESS

I haven't worked on any WIPs for a while, what with surgery getting in the way and all. So the current status is unchanged. There are two current works in progress:

A WHITER SHADE OF PAIN: a crime thriller set in 1967 which is a collaboration with my husband. We plotted the book together, then I wrote Draft 1 and he started on Draft 2. The latter isn't finished yet, but I've taken it back to make further changes to the amended chapters. So I suppose it's currently on Draft 2.5.

DEADLY SUMMER is the fourth Shara Summers novel, which takes my intrepid sleuth to New York City when she gets a job in a US soap opera. I am about a third of the way through the first draft. I halted work on this when I started writing OUTPOST H311, and I haven't got back to it yet.

That's all to report this month. I anticipate that by the end of next month, spring will have sprung. But you can never tell, with British weather.

Best Books of 2017

This post is a bit late coming, given that we're already halfway through February.

Every year I set up a 'Goodreads' challenge to read so many books in a year. On average it takes me about a week to read one average-length novel. Most of this is down to my long commute - I spend the best part of 3 hours a day every working day on public transport, travelling to and from work, and I use most of that time to read. I am also quite a fast reader, especially if the book is exciting, and I find myself turning pages faster to find out what happens next.

In 2017 I set myself a goal of reading 68. Happily I exceeded that goal and a read a total of 70 books last year. Six of those books I gave a five-star rating to, and this my criteria for the 'best books of the year' list.

In no particular order, they are:

Pet Sematary: Stephen King
Heart-Shaped Box: Joe Hill
Behind Her Eyes: Sarah Pinborough
X: Sue Grafton
Bones Never Lie: Kathy Reichs
Soul Music: Terry Pratchett

No real surprises here - these are all authors whose books I enjoy, and three of my four all-time favourite authors - Stephen King, Sue Grafton and Kathy Reichs - are in this list. The only one who isn't is Sara Paretsky, and that was only because I did not read her 2017 release (though I bought it, at Bouchercon in Toronto) last year.

More details about these books and why I enjoyed them can be found below.

Pet Sematary:
 The first time I read this book was over 25 years ago. I had to re-read it last year for my horror book club, and I had forgotten just how good it is. This is an almost-perfect horror story that contains all of the characteristics of King that made him my inspiration.
Louis Creed, doctor and Ordinary Guy moves his family to rural Maine when he takes up a job as resident physician on a university campus. The road outside the house claims the lives of many pets, so many that a pet cemetery has been set up by local children. But there's something much darker lying beyond the cemetery, and Louis' descent into madness is creepy and downright disturbing.

Heart-Shaped Box:
I got to meet Joe Hill at Fantasycon in Scarborough a couple of years ago, and end up buying a few books of his which he signed. This was one of them. It involves a fading, self-absorbed rock star with a fascination for collecting macabre items who ends up buying from the internet a suit that allegedly has a ghost attached to it. The suit turns up in a heart-shaped box and the promised ghost does indeed come with the suit, but as always the story is far more complex and it soon takes a sinister turn.
Though not in the same league as his famous father, Stephen King, Joe Hill is still an accomplished horror writer in his own right, and this is a creepy and rather disturbing tale.

Behind Her Eyes:
 I know Sarah Pinborough personally through both the crime and horror convention circuits, and I am always impressed with both her versatility and her writing style. The author of 20-plus published novels, this is the one that seems to have moved her up into the big leagues, and well deserved that move is to.

'Behind Her Eyes' starts out as effectively a love triange between David, Adele and Louise. David is a doctor, Adele his apparently fragile wife, and single mother Louise his secretary. But she meets him in a bar and shares a kiss with him before she starts her new job and realise that he's her boss. Meanwhile Adele offers a hand of friendship to Louise and she finds herself getting closer to Adele, whilst feeling guilty about carrying on a relationship with David. Alternating between Adele and Louise's point of view, it soon becomes apparent that this is not a typical psychological thriller, and it has an ending that will blow you away.

X:
I was not to know, at the time I read this book, that it would be Sue Grafton's penultimate novel and she would tragically leave us before getting to the end of her 'alphabet' books. I have been with Grafton's couragious female PI since 'A is for Alibi'. Kinsey Millhone isn't married and doesn't seem to be able to commit to relationships, has no kids and no desire to have any, doesn't cook and doesn't play particularly well with others. I think she's wonderful. In 'X' Kinsey ends up crossing paths with a particularly vicious villain, and the encounter will have long-term repercussions for her.

I am aware that Grafton's writing style, and her character, has influenced my own crime series. Sue Grafton is the only one of my favourite crime writers I never got to meet, and I wish I could have
.
Bones Never Lie:
Kathy Reichs is another one of my favourite crime writer, and one I've had the privilege to meet. Forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan shuttles between Montreal and North Caroline, uncovering murders in her examination of bones, and with a long-standing on-again off-again relationship with Montreal cop Andrew Ryan. She also has a daughter, Katy, whose chronological age marks the passage of time in the series, though by now Katy is grown up and off doing her own thing.

This one was very typical of Kathy Reichs' style. But I freely admit I love the formula, and I found this one a proper page-turner.

Soul Music:
 I've been re-reading Terry Pratchett's Discworld series for a while, and I expect it to take me quite some time yet, since there are over 40 books in the series and this is #16. And eventually I will get to books I haven't read before, since I didn't get through them all the first time around.

My favourite books are the ones about the witches, but Death comes a close second and this one features the latter. In this chronicle of the fantasy world, the inhabitants discover Rock Music, and the spirit of teenage rebellion it inspires. Pratchett's books are always entertaining, and are always a good thing to read when I need my spirits lifting.

So there we have it for the best books of 2017. For 2018 I've decided to play it safe and set a goal to read 70 books. Nearly 7 weeks in I have read 7, which puts me a bit behind schedule. But I am sure I shall catch up!

And if anyone is on Goodreads and wants to link up there, this is my profile page.Best

Monthly Review: January 2018

I really hate January. It has no redeeming features. It's dark, cold and wet, everyone is broke after Christmas, there is nothing to look forward to and as I never see daylight during the working week it's the month my SAD seems to hit the hardest so I spend most of it feeling depressed.

Hence, I am always glad to see the back of it. Happily, we are now out of January and there are a few things to look forward to in the coming months as there is news to report.

COMING SOON:

I am pleased to announce that my previously-published story "Morgan's Father" (most recently available in the collection SOUL SCREAMS) is to be published in the forthcoming 'Women in Horror' edition of the ezine SIREN'S CALL.

My new horror novel OUTPOST H311 is currently with the editor, and will be released later this year from KGHH publishing. I will let you know when I have more news regarding release date.

PUBLICITY:

I've been a bit quiet on this front of late, and there's nothing to report at the moment, but there are a couple of things I've been working on and I hope to have something to report soon.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

With the horror novel finished I've been trying to figure out what to work on next. I'm back at work on the collaboration with Hubby, which has been a somewhat long-running project. It's a crime thriller set in 1967, about a young woman with a dream to play bass in a band, who gets caught up in the heady world of London gangs and the rising music scene when she searches for a friend who's disappeared.

The fourth Shara Summers novel is about a third of the way through draft 1, but I have not done any work on it for 12 months. I am still in two minds as to whether to carry on with this series. I enjoy writing it, but it's not selling, and is there any point in carrying on with a series people don't want to read?

As we move into February and the days start to get lighter, things start to look brighter. Join me again at the end of this month to see what it had in store!