HUGE EBOOK ... REALLY HUGE SPECIAL OFFER!

I've collected the first 5 full-length novels in my Raine's Landing fantasy series into one enormous Kindle eBook. And it's now available from Amazon at a Very Special Price.

BACK TO PAPERBACK

I've been self-publishing my own eBooks -- both on Kindle and from other outlets -- for a good few years. But now that Amazon have made the whole process considerably easier, I've started bringing out a few more novels and short story collections as paperbacks as well.

Some of my novels were already in that form ... the 6 books in my Raine's Landing supernatural series, for instance, two of which are pictured above. The same was true of my Californian detective thriller The Tribe.

And of my non-fiction handbook How To Improve Your Writing: The Art of Creating Professional Fiction.

But it used to take a fair amount of effort  to bring these books out. Now that Amazon have speeded up and simplified the work involved, I've started producing p/b editions of some of my other work, with plenty more to follow. Already out is Under The Ice, my Scandinavian-based chiller.

And there is also my collection Classic Pan and Fontana Horror, which has been so popular as an eBook in the UK.

Soon to come in paperback will be my first detective thriller, The Desert Keeps Its Dead, my near-future mystery novel The Electric Shaman, and my modern-day ghost novel Postcards From Terri.

And that's just for starters. As they say -- whoever they are -- watch this space.

FREE CHILLER, SCANDI-STYLE

My short novel Under The Ice -- a supernatural chiller set in Scandinavia -- has been through a good number of incarnations in the 14 years it's been around. It first appeared as part of my 2005 collection Ghost Dance from small publisher Sarob Press. A few years after that, I published it on Kindle, where it started doing rather well.

Then US-based Samhain Publishing picked it up, bringing out both an eBook and a paperback version. It got some serious critical praise that way, with the Horror Novel Reviews website praising it hugely and voting it one of the Top 10 novels of 2013. But Samhain dropped their horror list after a couple of years.

And so now Under the Ice is back on Kindle, and is as good a piece of fiction as it ever was. And as a special bonus to my readers, I am offering it free this week.

There's a paperback version of the book as well, in case Kindles are not your thing. I might even sign it for you when we meet .

THE TRIBE -- A CALIFORNIAN CRIME THRILLER

It's been a long while coming, but my second full-blown crime novel (no supernatural events, no magic) is now out.

My detective Matt Barrett first appeared in 2014 in the short novel The Desert Keeps Its Dead. And he's one of the favorite characters that I've invented, a former FBI agent who quit the Bureau after a dispute and now works as a private operative ... sometimes operating right outside the law when he can see no other choice.

And now he's back in this much longer thriller, courtesy of CD Publications and my new editor Norman Prentiss. The location this time is the central Californian town of Los Acantilados, an apparently pleasant coastal town (los acantilados means 'the cliffs') with a good number of wealthy residents. But -- as with Desert -- all is not precisely as it seems. There is a lot of ugliness and criminality hovering beneath the surface. Including murder, yes, and some crimes even worse.

Here is the back-cover blurb:

It couldn’t sound like a simpler job. Young Lacey Morganstern has fallen in with a bad crowd of spoiled, unruly rich kids and her mother wants her back.

But as Matt Barrett finds out more about the teenagers who call themselves “the Tribe,” the whole case starts to take on darker layers. Why the secret rendezvous at night? What are privileged kids doing hanging out with violent gangs? And then there is the matter of the Orange Grove Ranch, just outside the wealthy town of Los Acantilados.

A deadly game is being played where human lives don’t count for very much. And it isn’t too much longer before Matt is fighting for his own.

THE TRIBE is available on Amazon Kindle.

Also on B&N Nook.

And if you'd rather read the paperback, then here's the link to use.

MY FANTASY SERIES IS ON SPECIAL OFFER

There were REAL WITCHES in Salem back three hundred years ago. They fled from there before the Witchcraft Trials of 1692, moving to a lesser-known community … Raine’s Landing, Massachusetts. And that town has been filled with magic – both the good kind and the bad kind – ever since.

That's the premise for my Raine's Landing series of fantasy thrillers. And now 5 of the 6 novels (DARK RAIN, MIDNIGHT'S ANGELS, DEADLY VIOLET, SPEAK OF THE DEVIL and WITCH HUNTER) are on special offer at minimum price on Kindle ... that's 99p in the UK, about $1.28 in the States.

You can also pick 3 of the novels up on Nook, Kobo etc. for around the same price, with the other 2 due in those formats in the next couple of weeks.

You can view the Raine's Landing series on Kindle HERE.  

On B&N Nook HERE. 

On Kobo HERE.

And on Smashwords HERE.

WHERE DO I GET MY IDEAS FROM? PLACES LIKE JAPAN, ACTUALLY.

I'm mostly known for writing scary supernatural stuff and -- these days -- tough, hard-bitten crime novels as well. But, as Jack Bristow said in the TV show Alias, 'no person is just one thing.' Which means that I'll occasionally come out with a much gentler supernatural tale than is my norm. One of them is free on Amazon this weekend, and it's a story that has its own story behind it.

I'd already visited Japan once before, the main island of Honshu, starting at Yokohama, and then taking in Tokyo, Kyoto, and a lot of points in between, Mount Fuji included. And I'd already written stories set in those locations.

But back in 2005, the opportunity arose to visit Kyushu, Japan's southernmost island. And it turned out to be a completely different deal from its far bigger sister. Tropical, quite like Hawaii, with palm trees and golden beaches. Extremely volcanic too, with geysers and fantastical pumice sculptures along some shorelines where flowing lava had hit the ocean and had formed weird outlines as the water cooled it. But Kyushu is also the historic and spiritual home of the Shinto religion, the place where the Japanese gods are supposed to have settled when they came down to our world, and so the place is full of the most fascinating shrines and temples too, some of them in striking locations. On beaches, next to waterfalls, even in a cave beside the sea. What inspiration for a writer of imaginative fiction! By the time my ten day trip was over, I already had a story set there burning a big hole inside me.

It was a grueling journey back, 22 hours, involving three planes and a long connecting coach trip. Once home -- naturally -- I collapsed into bed. But I only stayed there for about three hours. Hauled myself up, fixed myself a cup of coffee, went straight to my laptop and started work on 'HANAKO FROM MIYAZAKI.' I completed it in just two days. It first appeared in CD magazine the following year, but now it is available as an eBook, along with several other of my gentler and more wistful tales. So ... where do I get my ideas from? Now you know.

ALL THE RAINE'S LANDING NOVELS ARE NOW AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK

E-books are wonderful things, and I've been publishing my own -- both new fiction and reprints -- for a good few years now. But a lot of people still prefer a paperback, the feel of it, the solidity of it. And the sad fact is that when it comes to my Raine's Landing supernatural thrillers, there've been no hard copy versions of the last three novels. They have only been available to readers digitally.

Until now.

I'm very pleased to be able to announce that I have finally put that right, and there is now a fine-looking trade paperback of every last Raine's Landing novel save the second one. Let's deal firstly with the three books that are having their first outing in this style.

DEADLY VIOLET sees a beggar girl getting hold of an extremely powerful magic jewel. When she begins using it, the boundaries of reality begin to crumble and break down. Ross and Cassie and the rest are suddenly confronted with bizarre monsters roaming the streets ... and that's just for starters. As the fabric of existence continues to come apart, everything becomes considerably more frightening . And the only way to stop it is for Ross and Cass to set off on the strangest journey of their lives.

In SPEAK OF THE DEVIL, the town's major adepts start being attacked  by mysterious cloaked, hooded men. And when Ross and Cass investigate, they begin to uncover the horrifying truth. It's people from inside the town who are responsible for this ... some of Raine's Landing's own citizens have turned  to Devil-worship. They plan to deliver the whole of the Landing over to the forces of Hell. And to ensure this happens, demons have already arrived in the town, disguised as human beings.

And in WITCH HUNTER, the sixth and latest in the series, an old-time witch from back before the time the Salem witches came returns to life and re-visits Raine's Landing, bringing her own lethal brand of magic with her. But that's not the biggest problem Ross and Cassie have to face. The man who killed that witch is also back, and he's considerably more powerful than her, since he is in the service of a very ancient being whose one desire is to destroy the Universe itself.

As for the first Raine's Landing novel -- DARK RAIN -- and the third -- MIDNIGHT'S ANGELS -- there have been paperback versions of both titles  in the past, but they are now also available in this  smart new format.

There's a link to the page for all five novels here.

NEW ON KINDLE -- TWO EXTREMELY DIFFERENT TYPES OF GHOST

If there's one thing I love to write, it's stories with a sting in the tail, Roald Dahl-type stories where the last line knocks the reader sideways. I've written quite a number of them down the years, but honestly believe The Woman in Brown to be my very best, so far at least. It's a ghostly mystery tale that starts in London in the late 1950's and then moves on to the present day. I'm not going to tell you any more than that. But Linda Landrigan, the editor of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, snapped it up the moment that she read it. And now, a year on from its publication in that magazine, it's available on Kindle.









Postcards from Terri goes back much further than that. A short novel of slightly over 32,000 words, it was first published in 2004 by the respected indie publisher Sarob Press. It resurfaced in 2007 in my Pendragon Press collection 'No-Man and Other Tales,' and appeared in the States in 2010 in my Dark Regions Press collection 'Our Lady of the Shadows.' It's a tale about two friends who have led very different lives since leaving college. Steve Corlingsten's existence hasn't turned out well ... he is divorced, has a job he hates, and life has generally proved to be a massive disappointment. Whereas Terri Campion has traveled the world, lived in various countries, had affairs with rich and famous men, and lived out her existence to the fullest. And the novel starts with these two very different people being reunited. There is just one problem. Terri's dead. She was killed in a car crash a few days back, and is appearing to Steve as a ghost.

Now Postcards from Terri is available on Kindle too.

WELCOME TO BIRCHIAM-ON-SEA

I haven't done much in the way of blogging -- or anything else on social media -- for a good long while. Why? Because the work of writing novels has been eating me alive of late. I honestly believed that I would finish the sixth in my Raine's Landing series -- Witch Hunter (see below) -- by Xmas 2015. It had already been through seven or eight drafts, after all. But I started reading what I'd done a few days before the holiday break, and realized that I still wasn't satisfied with it. Christmas and New Year passed, and I started work again. And it took me three more very intensive drafts to get the story reading just the way it should. It was mentally fatiguing work, but well worth it to get Ross and Cassie's latest, greatest, and most heart-gripping adventure right.

And I was planning to take a long break after that, but ... what is it they say about no rest for the wicked? My second full-blown crime novel -- The Tribe, a follow up to 2014's The Desert Keeps Its Dead --  is due out later this year from Cemetery Dance Publications. And since there is a third installment in the story of my fictional detective, I realized I'd better get cracking and start writing it. Which is what I'm doing right now (I am on a break this afternoon), only stopping every so often to do some research on stuff like assault weaponry and helicopters (yes, you read that last word right).

But however much you try to hide behind your laptop, the world moves on regardless. The world of publishing especially. And so much has been going on the last few months, it is going to take me three whole postings to describe it all.

The first matter to deal with is the book above.  I've been writing short horror and dark fantasy stories set in the fictional south-coast English town of Birchiam-on-Sea for the past ten years. The first -- The Waiters -- appeared in Weird Tales. And since then, Birchiam stories have shown up in Black Static magazine, the Black Book of Horror, and top anthologies like The British Invasion. And now all of them have been collected together by Trevor Denyer, editor of the esteemed Midnight Street magazine. It's a truly wonderful-looking book, and there's even an introduction -- explaining the whole concept behind Birchaim -- by a certain T. Richards. Moon on Dark Water: The Birchiam Chronicles is available both as a Kindle and as a good old-fashioned paperback book.

SALE ON - CHAPTER ONE, DARK RAIN

Dark Rain was the first of my supernatural adventure novels set in the fictional town of Raine's Landing, Massachusetts (there are currently five, with a sixth on the way). It was first published in 2008 by Eos/HarperCollins and edited by renowned editor Diana Gill. A couple of years ago, I got the rights to this novel back, made a few small changes, put on a new cover by the terrific Steve Upham, and reissued it in all formats as an eBook.

And now it's on sale for 99c (plus any fees). Here's what the story is about:

There’s something very strange about Raine’s Landing, Massachusetts. In the first place, there’s a problem getting in there … voices start up in your head, warning you to stay away. And then there’s that creepy looking mansion at the summit of the biggest hill, weird creatures roaming through its grounds. Not to mention the fact that the town’s buses operate without a sign of any driver. And that’s when you begin suspecting there might be some otherworldly force at work … like witchcraft, perhaps. 

Now Raine’s Landing has a brand-new visitor who’s not intimidated by that kind of power. He’s an ancient demon who has adopted human form. He loves to control people’s lives, and feeds on their fear. And when he starts his deadly games, not even the town’s adepts – magicians descended from the genuine witches of Salem – can stop him. So the job is left to ex-cop Ross Devries and his Harley-riding sidekick Cassie Mallory. They don’t have any magical skills, just their guns and fists and their sharp wits. But will those be enough? 

"An innovative, compelling novel of dark fantasy. I recommend it" – News from the Crypt. 

"It will keep you on the edge of your seat. A definite must read for those into dark fantasy, paranormal fiction, or just a good book" – SF Revu. 

"The narrative is never less than compelling as it hurtles towards a resolution. All that remains is to wait patiently for the sequel and find out what else Richards has in store for us" – Black Static Magazine. 

You can find out more about Dark Rain and all my other eBooks on 99c sale at the moment RIGHT HERE.

NEAR-FUTURE DETECTIVE FICTION

Short stories don't always sell immediately. Far from it.

Many years ago -- for instance -- back when it was still safe to do so, Louise and I visited Zimbabwe. She was in a conference for most of the first week. I spent my first few days wandering the streets of the capital, Harare, and having a good but slightly edgy time ... I narrowly avoided getting robbed by a street gang on one occasion. Then I hired a Land Rover one-ton pickup truck, and drove about a lot, visiting nearby nature reserves and the amazing Chinhoyi Caves, or simply stopping in the middle of plain nowhere for a while to drink in the near limitless views. Once Louise's conference was over we moved on, first to the ancient walled city of Great Zimbabwe, then to the Victoria Falls, and finally to the vast Hwange National Park on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. It was a spectacular trip, one I'll never forget.

Arriving home, I wanted to write something about the place, and wound up finishing a novelette set in the near-future and featuring an African homicide lieutenant. I spent the next couple of years sending it around to all the science fiction magazines and regular anthologies, with absolutely no result. And so I put the MS away in a drawer and forgot about it for a good long while.

Until one day I thought, It's a mystery story too, isn't it? So why not at least try it on a couple of mystery magazines?

I was slightly dubious that this would work, but got the story out again, polished it up, and submitted it to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, which I had sold a couple of much shorter stories to about a decade back. And blow me down ... editor Linda Landrigan snatched that novelette up straight away. And so I wrote three more, each with the same central character and each story interlinked and following on from the next to form a continuous narrative. 'The Very Edge of New Harare' first appeared in AHMM in January 2012, 'The Hunting Party' in October 2013, and 'The Clan' and 'The Danua Boy' in March and April of 2014. And then I wrote a final long tale featuring not only my detective and his new family, but also bringing back a very devious criminal from one of the earlier tales. And now the whole sequence of stories is out as one book on Amazon Kindle.

In the not too distant future, the Dark Continent has changed. It’s become Federal Africa, with all of the old countries now united into one great nation. The separate tribes are gone, technology has boomed … it is a very modern place. 

 But if you think that it’s completely changed, meet Lieutenant Abel Enetame of the Zimbabwe State Police Force, a single father with a great deal on his plate. He doesn’t only have the usual crimes to deal with, murders, assassinations, kidnappings. There are violent Black Supremacists. There are fanatics like the Tribalists, who want to take the whole place back to the old days. And there are egotistic billionaires and power-crazy politicians.  

 And when those kinds of people start getting their hands on brand-new devices that can do startling things, like change the past, for instance … well, that’s when the sparks really start to fly. Because the future of the whole of modern Africa might well rely on one police detective. 

 You can find out more about THE ELECTRIC SHAMAN here.

INTRODUCING RAYVEN BLACK

I don't sit down and write a story as soon as I get a new idea. I mean, not usually. There are exceptions to this rule, of course. For instance, coming back from Kyushu -- the southern island of Japan -- I grabbed a couple of hours sleep and then went staggering to my laptop to write a tale about the place, 'Hanako from Miyazaki,' which got snapped up by the first editor I sent it to (a little tip to other writers here: Western editors just cannot resist tales with Eastern settings).

More normally though, it takes a while, and that's very definitely the case with this one. I got the idea for my first ever superhero story years ago. I had the character, the setting and the circumstances, even the full title. But I didn't sit down and write it for one very simple reason ... who on Earth would buy it?

But then, two Decembers back, I dropped in on the British Fantasy Society's Xmas gathering, as I almost always do. And among the indie publishers showing off their wares was Pete Coleburn of The Alchemy Press. He took me over to his table, saying: "Maybe you'd like to write something for us?"

And there, right in front of my nose, were the first two editions of The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes, and Peter informed me that antho #3 was looking for submissions at that very moment. What happened next? I think you might have already guessed. The very next morning, I sat myself down at my beaten-up old desk and started writing my first Rayven Black tale. Editor Mike Chinn bought it straight away, it appeared in print back in September, and now it is in eBook form at Amazon, with other outlets hopefully to follow.

I'll be working on more tales about this hero in the near future. Meanwhile, you can find out more about her first adventure HERE.

FREE FICTION FOR THE YOUNG (and YOUNG AT HEART)

When I first started writing professionally, I produced a good number of stories -- mostly supernatural and spooky science fiction ones -- aimed at younger readers, mostly for the likes of Mary Danby's Armada anthologies and Richard Davis' sf collections. I've not penned many of them since those early days, but I have since written a few more tales that -- although aimed at adults -- are perfectly suitable for younger readers too. And I've recently collected my personal selection of the very best of them into this little book on Kindle. About half the fiction in it can be found in other places, but four of the stories -- my Armada Ghosts chiller 'The Girl in the Cellar,' for instance, and my dystopian future fantasy 'Summertime' -- are available to the general public for the first time in several decades.

And the book is absolutely free on Amazon from today until Wednesday 11th, inclusive. But why wait until Wednesday? Pick up a copy straight away, and take a look at some early stories that I'm still extremely pleased with. You can take a look at the book's Amazon page HERE.

THE BIG AUGUST SALE!

How about this for a special offer?

For the rest of this month, all of my self-published e-books in all formats will be available for 99c plus delivery fee (totaling around 77 pence in the UK). That takes in books normally priced at $2.99, including 3 full length novels in my Raine's Landing dark fantasy adventure series, the huge short story collection pictured above, and The Complete Sherlock Holmes in the 21st Century.

Which means that all of my e-books on Amazon Kindle are now the same low price. And the same applies to Kobo, Smashwords, and B&N Nook.

Happy reading. And in some cases, scary reading too -- though not everything is write is scary by a long chalk. There's something for most tastes here.

IMPORTANT P.S.: EVEN MORE GOOD NEWS ... I'VE DECIDED TO CONTINUE THIS SALE INTO SEPTEMBER. DON'T MISS THIS CHANCE TO PICK UP SOME GOOD-SIZED BOOKS AT THE MINIMUM PRICE.

IT'S RAIN(E)ING AGAIN

As I promised a couple of postings back, Dark Rain - the first novel in my Raine's Landing fantasy adventure series - is now available on Amazon Kindle, and for a fraction of its original price. There are five books in total in the series so far, with a sixth on its way this year. So here's your chance to start finding out about this strangest of Massachusetts towns and its peculiar inhabitants, grouchy hermit Lehman Willets, tough former criminal Cassie Mallory, the bizarre entity simply know as The Little Girl, and all the rest, not least the skillful but demented master magician Woodard Raine. Want to know what other people think of these books? Well, here are some Amazon reviews.

MEET MATT BARRETT

For most of my thirty-six years as a professionally published author, I have written fantastical stuff. I started off with science fiction, and then moved very quickly on to supernatural and horror. And both those genres have colored the majority of my output over more than three and a half decades. Even my Sherlock Holmes stories have had a good strong touch of fantasy to guide their plots. And my Future Africa mysteries have been partly science fiction.

True, I've written one straight mystery short, 'Hamadryad' for Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, which can be found in my Books of Shadow on Kindle. And one wholly mainstream story, Balancing Act. But those two have been very much the exceptions to the general rule.

Only now, all that is changing. Because Telos Publishing have just bought my very first straightforward detective novel, The Desert Keeps its Dead. NO sci-fi. Not even a HINT of otherworldly spookiness. Just a murder, followed by more, and a tough detective who is tasked to solve them.

The Desert Keeps its Dead is a noirish, hard boiled thriller set in -- as the title suggests -- Arizona. The central character is Matt Barrett, a former FBI agent who quit the agency for personal reasons, now works for himself, and dispenses his own very rough brand of justice. You'll be learning more about him in the coming years, because I have plenty more novels to write in which he plays a very active part. And I'll be letting you know about the whens and wheres of Desert as soon as I hear myself.

But in the meantime, I just thought that you would like to have your very first meeting with Matt Barrett.

IT'S A DARK RAIN THAT'S GONNA FALL

Dark Rain, the first in my Raine's Landing series of dark fantasy/supernatural thrillers, was first published by the Eos imprint of HarperCollins in 2008. It immediately got a following and some pretty good reviews, and I have written four more novels set in that strange Massachusetts town since then, with a sixth - Witchhunter - planned this year. But now that first novel is finally out of print at Eos/HC and no longer available digitally, and the rights in it have reverted to yours truly.

Which means not straight away - I'm working on the final draft of something new at the moment, and don't want to disturb that process - but sometime in April I will be bringing out my own version of Dark Rain on Amazon, where it will join the likes of Deadly Violet and Speak of the Devil as a $2.99 e-book.

It's gonna fall, in other words. In price. Watch this space.

THE COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Down the past few years, I’ve been writing small batches of 3 or 4 Sherlock Holmes stories and publishing them as little 99c ebooks on Kindle. But now I’ve pulled them all into one big collection, 13 tales in all. Here's a rundown of the stories:

In ‘The House of Blood,’ someone is draining lucky Vegas gamblers of their vital essence. In ‘The Desert King,’ a self-styled shaman holds unnatural sway over his followers, and more. In ‘The Hidden Shore,’ vacationers are inexplicably taking their own lives on a Caribbean island. In ‘The Terror in the Park,’ something monstrous is killing financial workers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In ‘The Vanished,’ a San Francisco newspaper owner has gone missing without any warning, and he’s not the only one. In ‘Shiny Trinkets,’ very valuable jewels are disappearing from heavily secured vaults in New York. In ‘A Shadow in the Harbour,’ cargo-workers in Hong Kong are dying in a most mysterious fashion. In ‘The Hunters and the Hunted,’ a swarm of bees in Africa appears to have developed a mind of its own, with deadly intention. In ‘Vermillion Moon,’ something is robbing the customers of an Amsterdam bordello of their minds. In ‘A Ghost in Tokyo,’ Holmes confronts an extremely modern apparition, and meets his match in the form of a female Japanese detective. In ‘Flight of Fantasy,’ he finds himself trapped aboard a doomed jetliner bound for Europe. In ‘Above the Boulevards,’ a bizarre vigilante is at work in Paris. And in ‘The Crimewave,’ Holmes is summoned back to London to confront his most puzzling and lethal case of all.

And here’s my Introduction to the book:

FINALLY FINDING SHERLOCK

It was at the World Fantasy Convention of 2008, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. World Fantasy traditionally takes place around Halloween, and goes on for four or five days. And some of the people who attend seem capable of spending almost all their time in the hotel, hanging round the bar and showing up for the various panels. But I’m afraid I’m not one of those types. After the first day or so, I begin contracting a powerful dose of cabin fever. I start getting stir crazy. I just need to get out.

It was a brisk day, but a sunny one, and so I headed out through the pleasant streets of what is essentially a fairly prosperous oil town, albeit that it has as many panhandlers as downtown San Francisco. I was gone a couple of hours, dropped in on a couple of bookshops along the way. And I was finally making my way back to the Hyatt when I noticed a small knot of conventioners grouped outside the entrance, including one person I’d met several times before and really, honestly liked.

There were a small handful of things that I already knew about Charles Prepolec. One, he is not only a very pleasant feller but a genuine, well-mannered gentleman, which is a rarity these days. Two, he happens to be a resident of the same city I was visiting, and owns a bookstore there. And three, he is a total Sherlock Holmes fanatic.

So we exchanged pleasantries and swapped news for the first few minutes. But then Charles sprang a question on me that left me genuinely stunned. Namely:

“I’m editing a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories at the moment – supernatural ones. Would you like to try submitting one?”

And some thought processes can be terribly complex ones, for sure. But not my reaction to this particular request. I can sum it up for you extremely neatly. I thought:

WHAT?????!!!

Because – don’t get me wrong, I love the great detective just as much as the next reader – but it had never occurred to me, not in all my wildest dreams, to personally sit down and write a Holmes tale.

But hold it just a second. I make my living as a freelance writer. Which means that when an editor asks me for a contribution, the very last thing that I do is immediately turn him, or her, down. I don’t go burning bridges or slamming doors behind me, however unexpected the subject matter that is being asked for. And so … after a few seconds of stunned silence … I managed to force out the words:

“I’ll certainly give it some thought.”

And we nodded at each other and left it at that.

On and off over the next couple of months, I thought about it quite a lot, and with no small degree of anxiety. There was a huge problem attached to writing such a piece of fiction, so far as I was concerned. And the huge problem was this.

I generally don’t write period fiction. I’m just not that kind of author. The stories that I write are based on places I have been, things that I’ve encountered, people that I’ve met. All reflected and distorted into fantasy in the dark mirror of my warped imagination, for sure. But I almost never write stuff that I’ve had no kind of direct experience of.

So what to do? How to get across that hurdle? It was a dilemma that I worried at intermittently for the better part of eight weeks, until I finally saw a possible solution.

And it went like this.

Back in 1893, Arthur Conan Doyle finally tired of writing about Sherlock Holmes and killed him off in a story called ‘The Final Problem,’ sending him on that famous plunge down the Reichenbach Falls. But he misjudged the fervour of his audience. The great detective’s fans were having none of it and pestered Doyle constantly, begging him to bring their hero back.

And so eight years later, in 1901, Sir ACD put into print perhaps the best of all his Holmes stories, The Hound of the Baskervilles. He revived the character, in other words. Dragged him back out of the grave, not as any zombie or revenant, but as the brilliant man that he always had been.

And I thought: Okay so, in a way, Sherlock has simply popped back into existence, rather like Captain Scarlet in those old Gerry Anderson shows. Which means he is effectively immortal. Which also means that he could still be around in the present day.

This was a good couple of years before either the Cumberbatch or the Johnny Lee Miller TV incarnations … I feel I should point that out. But I sat down at my laptop and began writing ‘The House of Blood,’ setting Sherlock Holmes in modern-day Las Vegas, a city that I’d long wanted to set a piece of fiction in. I finished it relatively quickly, emailed it to Charles and his co-editor J.R. Campbell, and it finally appeared in 2011 in Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes from Edge Publishing.

But that was hardly the end of my encounter with Holmes.

Because I absolutely loved writing ‘House of Blood.’ I had more fun behind my laptop than I’d had in years, and not simply because it is an exciting adventure. My version of Holmes might still be living in the present day, but his heart belongs to the Victorian Age. He’s frequently critical of our society. Some of our attitudes and habits surprise and appal him. Which is not to say there are not modern things he isn’t rather fond of. Mr. Spock in Star Trek, to give one example. Why exactly? Well, that’s a no-brainer. And he’s swapped his cocaine habit for a partial addiction to pina coladas into the bargain… pineapples were very rare and a genuine delicacy back in the London that he came from, and so that makes sense.

I saw more possibilities, and didn’t want to stop. So I began writing some more fiction about the great detective trapped here in our era. And – since he now has an entire eternity to go on fighting crime – I couldn’t see any genuine reason to confine him to just one location. I had him travelling and solving cases all over the globe instead. The whole way across the United States. In the Caribbean. Africa. Paris, Amsterdam, Japan and Hong Kong, and even Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. I’d write three or four of these tales over the course of a few months, then publish them as little 99c collections on Kindle Direct.

But here they all are now, pulled into one big collection and topped off by a final story in which Holmes is called back to his native London. He’s finally found his way home, much the same that I finally found a way to write Holmes. I hope that my enjoyment in penning these thirteen tales rubs off on you in some way. Let’s find out. Read on.

Tony Richards,

London, 2014.

You can find out more here. And here's the UK link.

FREE MAGIC

My collection TOUCHED BY MAGIC is free on Amazon Kindle today and tomorrow. It's one of my best-liked collections, comprising 4 supernatural and modern fantasy stories of a far happier nature than the type I'm better known for. I write those occasionally, when I'm in the mood. No person is just one thing, and I include myself in that.

Here's a little more about the background to these humane tales.

I sometimes write supernatural and modern fantasy fiction with a gentle touch, and these are 4 of my favorites. 'Hanako' came from an absolutely fascinating trip to the southern Japanese island of Kyushu (I'd already been to Tokyo a couple of years earlier). I knew I had to write something about the place, and started work on the story just as soon as I'd got home and recovered from my jet-lag. 'Seeing' comes from my long-time love affair with London -- I once lived by a square exactly as described, not far from Hyde Park. 'After the Storm' comes from another trip, to Penang, Malaysia this time. I actually stayed at the famous and historic Eastern & Oriental Hotel, which features heavily in the story. And 'Angel' comes simply from my love of wild, atmospheric  places like the moors of southwest England. It's a cliche, I know, but if you enjoy reading these tales half as much as I enjoyed writing them, you'll like them a lot.

You can find out more right HERE.

AN XMAS GIFT FOR ALL MY READERS

The 4th Sherlock Holmes in the 21st Century is free on Kindle for today, Xmas Day, and Dec 26th (Boxing Day in the UK). It contains 3 stories. In 'Vermilion Moon,' Holmes finds himself mired among the fleshpots of Amsterdam. In 'A Ghost in Tokyo,' Holmes not only visits Japan but meets his intellectual match in the diminutive female form of Inspector Haruko Minoshi. And in 'Flight of Fantasy,' heading back from the Orient, Holmes is trapped aboard a stricken jetliner with no obvious way off.

You can find out more and get your free ebook here.