I was made very welcome at the Southern region of the Society of Women Writers and Journalists on 22 October where I gave a talk on how I write, research and market my Inspector Andy Horton marine mystery crime novels and thrillers.

What a lovely group of people and I was delighted to see popular saga author…

I'm now over half way through writing the first draft of the next Inspector Andy Horton marine mystery police procedural crime novel, the seventh in the series, as yet untitled, but that doesn't mean I'll have finished the novel by Christmas, although Christmas is my deadline for completing the first draft. Why a deadline? Is this imposed by my publisher? The answer is 'no.' I find setting…

Yesterday I gave a talk to a packed audience of the U3A group in Waterloovile, Hampshire about my crime novels and how I write my police procedural marine mystery crime novels featuring Inspector Andy Horton and my thrillers . They were a great crowd and I was delighted to answer their questions and sign so many books.

Next week I'm off to the West Midlands and will be speaking at Perry Common Library in Birmingham and…

A bright and early start on 22 September when I'll be talking to Steve Harris on the BBC Radio Solent Breakfast Show. This is scheduled for 6.45a.m.(British time) give or take a few minutes. It's always great to chat with Julian Clegg or Steve Harris and give listeners a quick up date on what is happening in the life of this crime author and my marine mystery police procedural crime and thriller novels, which are set…

I'm starting to get so techno-savvy, it's frightening! I've just uploaded my very first video on this site (and youtube, blogger, twitter and facebook). I'm now the proud owner of a blog and will soon have Down Among the Dead Men out as an ebook. This is the second novel in my humorous Rafferty & Llewellyn crime series and was first published by Macmillan/St Martin's Press and Worldwide in 93/94 and is long out of print. Now it's going to get a whole new life as an…

Isis Publishing, the World’s leading publisher of unabridged audio books, has bought the rights to the fourth in my marine mystery crime series featuring Inspector Andy Horton called Dead Man’s Wharf.

Dead Man’s Wharf will be released in CD, cassette and as a download early 2011. It follows the earlier release of…

I did this Q & A session recently for the Chichester Book Club web site and thought Id' post it here. It's based on the third novel in the Andy Horton marine mystery crime series, The Suffocating Sea, which is available in paperback and as an unabridged audio book and e book.

How would you describe your crime novel, The Suffocating…

Having used up tons of scraps of paper (re-cycled from having to print off reams of previous manuscripts) and having almost worn my pencil down to a stub, not to mention making my office look like a waste paper tip, I am now a great deal happier with the plot of the next Andy Horton police procedural marine mystery crime novel, which will be number seven in the series set on the south coast of England around the…

One thing about writing a series (Inspector Andy Horton crime novels) is that some of the character names are already set, i.e. Inspector Horton, Sergeant Cantelli, Superintendent Uckfield. Then there is DI Dennings, DCI Lorraine Bliss and others, so no need to think up new names for them. But every novel has a new crime and a new set of characters and coming up with names for them can often be quite tricky as can be…

Authors differ on their approach to writing first drafts, some love it, some hate it and many are somewhere in between. Me? Well, I find writing first drafts exciting, tense and very often frustrating. Exciting because it is fresh unchartered waters and although I have a basic plot outline and character sketches I'm still not sure where the tide will take me and which shore my novel will wash up on. Tense because I am in a hurry to write it as fast as I can while my head is…

I had to re-record my interview with Rob Richardson of Express FM last week because a technical hitch unfortunately meant the original interview could not be transmitted. I didn't mind though. It's always good fun talking to Rob Richardson who also runs a very lively writing group and web site called Write Invite, which has some very exciting and rather unusual short story writing…