I've just changed the original price (6.99) for THE SWORD MASTER  to 99 cents on Kindle and Nook.  I'll leave it there through Monday, July 9.

The purpose is to see if I can get more of a response on my latest, a swash-buckling, violent, sexy story of a twelfth century shwordfighter, than I have so far.

It's all experimentation.  When this trial is over, I'll take the book down on B&N and do a Kindle exclusive with Prime.

I hope to learn…

Simon Toyne is a newcomer to the community of authors who write mysteries centered around ancient secrets, symbols and underground societies. Simon has worked in British television for twenty years. As a writer, director, and producer, he has worked on several award-winning shows, one of which won a BAFTA. He lives in England with his wife and family.…

David Dickinson, the Irish author of Lord Francis Powerscourt series. With a first-class degree in Classics from Cambridge, he worked in British television (BBC) for many years and was the editor of Newsnight and Panorama as well as Monarchy. He now divides his time between Somerset and France writing his…

Stephen Gallagher is the English writer of several novels and television scripts, including for the BBC television series Doctor Who for which he wrote two serials, Warriors' Gate (1981) and Terminus (1983).  He is also very active in crime fiction area and…

For those of you who have been following the Churchill Thriller series you know that, although the stories are fiction, the research, the background and the details of the time period and even the historical characters are very well done. For those of you who are new, if you like historical thrillers set against a backdrop of pre-WW2 drama you have hit gold!

The Gemini Agenda is the third book in the series and although I enjoyed both The DeValera Deception and…

Yesterday a man said to me, "My wife really likes your new book." He couldn't recall the title, but she'd said it was totally different from everything else she'd read of mine. I formed a theory from that and was just about to say the title when he said, "It's the one that takes place in Grand Rapids." Oh, THE DEAD DETECTIVE AGENCY.

Not the one I was thinking of at all. That book came out last April, and there have been so many on my mind in the time between that it seems really…

If you follow Joe Konrath's blog, you may have noticed increased discussion about proper pricing of e-books and e-stories.  Lately, opinion has swung away from $ 0.99, because buyer reaction seems to be that the price denotes crappy writing.  That makes pricing short stories difficult.  I decided that I'd see what would happen if I asked $ 2.99 for this one.  At 0.99, the…

My blogguest (Oooh, I invented a word!) on Monday, October 10, is Donna Fletcher Crow, and she tells you why the Victorians are fascinating folks. Of course, the Tudors are the best, really, (IMHO, of course!) but she does make a good case for "The Valiant Victorians." Stop by and take a look.

http://itsamysterytomepegherring.blogspot.com/

Peg Herring

Coming in November from Five Star: POISON, YOUR GRACE, the second…

When Peter Cook admitted to Dudley Moore that he was “turned on by dead Popes,” it was a satire on those among us who’re so bored by their lives as to be infinitely suggestible. Thus a dead pope lying on a catafalque in white robes looks “at peace, at rest, and ****ing fanciable.”

The joke, of course, is that no one could imagine the Pope as a sexual object, whether alive…

At last. It took 220 years, but finally someone has told my story. I always said I was poisoned.

MOZART’S LAST ARIA came out this week in the UK. It’s a historical thriller by the British writer Matt Rees. I don’t mind that the Mozart of the title is my sister Nannerl – I always thought she deserved more…

The best reason I have for writing a novel about Mozart must surely be that I love his music. Other elements contribute, including my fascination with his neglected sister and the growing historical research which I believe points toward his murder. But the music must be at the center of the novel itself.

I’ve played music all my life. But after my initial music lessons I…

Historical novelists recreate the emotions and events of distant times. It helps if they can use real places that still exist. In the case of MOZART’S LAST ARIA, I was able to set much of the action in streets and buildings where Mozart lived and worked – and where you can still visit.

In my historical…

The long wait for a successor to Amadeus is over. In fact, my new novel MOZART’S LAST ARIA answers questions about the great composer’s death that are far more deeply rooted in historical research than Peter Shaffer’s nonetheless terrific play.

Shaffer, whose play was first performed in 1979 and filmed by Milos Forman in 1984, proposed court composer Salieri as the man who…

If there had never been a Palestinian intifada, I might never have written my novel about the death of Mozart, MOZART’S LAST ARIA, which is published today in the UK by Corvus.

Of course, 4,000 people would also be alive who are now dead. In the course of writing about that destruction between 2000 and 2006, I saw some terrible things, experienced some frightful emotions, and internalized shocking facts about the world around me. It would’ve been easy to become depressed or to descend…

I don't know how many here will be interested in this, but anyway:

I started an online literary journal dedicated to wuxia and other Chinese historical fiction. I'm currently accepting submissions for the first issue. Submission guidelines are here. Although Chinese fiction is the focus of the journal, I'll also accept stories set in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc. Aside…