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.

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 .

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.

OH NO! OH MY GAAAD! I'VE TURNED INTO A PUBLISHER!

I've been dealing with publishers since 1987, when my first novel -- the Bram Stoker shortlisted The Harvest Bride -- originally appeared from Tor Books in the States and then from Headline in the UK (my editor was the famed Jo Fletcher in the latter case). I've sat in their offices discussing my work. I've gone out on drinking sessions with them, occasionally to the severe detriment of my health. And they've been nice enough to buy me lunch or dinner on a number of occasions. I've always found them to be pleasant enough people. They've done their very best to present my novels well and to promote them. Which is not to say that my relationships with these guys haven't had their ups and downs. But in nearly thirty years, I would never, ever once have believed I might become a publisher myself one day (I'm talking proper, solid books, not e-ones).

Except that now it's happened. Blow me down. Above is the cover of the premiere novel from Raine Manor Publications, Raine Manor being the ancestral home of the craziest magician in my Raine's Landing series of fantasy novels.

Dark Rain -- the first of them -- originally appeared in 2008 from Eos/HarperCollins, introducing readers to a spellbound Massachusetts town inhabited by powerful wizards like Judge Samuel Levin, Woodard Raine, and Doctor Lehman Willets, but also by ordinary people armed with no magical powers but with boundless courage and resolve instead, like Ross Devries and Cassie Mallory, the heroes of the piece. The book garnered a lot of rave reviews and got me more fan emails than I've had in quite a while. But it only ever came out as a mass market paperback and, after 8 years, the only hard copy that you're likely to be able to get hold of is a battered secondhand one.

Only that now, there is this fine-looking trade paperback version , courtesy of RMP. And now that I have got the look and layout absolutely right, I will be releasing copies of the other novels in the series in the next couple of weeks,

You can find out more about this new edition of Dark Rain here.

WHAT'S THE VERY LAST THING THE INHABITANTS OF RAINE'S LANDING WANT TO SEE ... A WITCH HUNTER!

It's been 2 whole years since my last Raine's Landing novel was out, and it occurs to me that some people might have thought that I was finished with the series. But no, very far from it. Ross Devries, Cassie Mallory, and all the other host of characters remain close to my heart, as does the whole idea of an ordinary-looking Massachusetts town that's actually full of magic and is bound under a hex cast by a real witch who escaped from Salem.

But I've been working on my first couple of straight crime novels down the last 2 years -- the second one, 'The Tribe,' is due out from Cemetery Dance Publications in the next few months. A new and very adult horror novel is now with my agent. And my old pal at Dark Renaissance, Joe Morey, asked me to write a ghost novella for his series of them, Mr. Jakes (more news about that later, since the DR list is currently being moved to Dark Regions Press). And so I've been kept extremely busy.

But I was finally able to get my breath back in the Fall of last year, and immediately knew where I wanted to go as soon as I had some time on my hands. Back to Raine's Landing, obviously. I just love this series. And, from the responses I've had, people seem to love reading it too. I already know how it finishes up, and am determined to bring it to a proper conclusion. I'm not there yet, though. There are going to be several more episodes before the Grand Finale. But I think this sixth and latest book has to be one of the most gripping of them.

WITCH HUNTER is available exclusively on Amazon Kindle for the next few months. And I'll be starting work on the seventh novel very soon.

“But I am innocent, I tell you! I am not a witch!” 


“Well, we shall soon find out the truth of that. Prepare yourself for your ordeal.” 


Back in 1687, Verena Oakemont was put to death by the notorious witchfinder Thaddeus Firman. And – despite her protestations – she really was a witch, and a powerful one too, the daughter of a demon. 

Three centuries later, she’s escaped from Hell and returned to Raine’s Landing. Death has made her magic powers far stronger than ever, and it’s not merely the town that she wants to subdue. Her gaze is fixed upon the world beyond it. 

But that’s not the biggest problem Ross and Cassie have to face. Something even worse is coming in Verena’s wake, the servant of an ancient force that would destroy the Universe itself. And the only person who has any chance of standing in its way … is Cassie’s brand-new daughter, May. 

A vengeful witch. A brutal hunter. And a magically-empowered child. These are the ingredients for the most climactic Raine’s Landing adventure yet. 

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.

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.

AT LONG LAST BLOOD!

Let me transport you back in time to the late 1990s. Remember those days? (And I really don't want to hear that you weren't even born then, smartarse!)

Pan Macmillan had a couple of years earlier published my second full-length novel, Night Feast, a great thick blockbuster of a horror tale involving some of the nastier gods of Ancient Egypt transmuted into human form, the plot spanning the decades from the Great Depression to the -- back then -- present day.

And they were within a couple of months of publishing my third one, again big and thick, but spanning continents rather than decades this time. It was called Hot Blood, and featured two different types of vampire, one good and the other extremely evil.

I'd checked all the edits. I'd read the final proofs. The cover was done, and I felt all ready to go ...

When Pan decided to cut their horror list almost altogether and the book got dropped (I kept the advance, you'll be glad to hear).

This was the start of the massive slump in horror publishing that happened around  that time. In fact, pretty well none of the major publishers were interested in even looking at that type of fiction for a good seven or eight years thereafter -- and believe me, my long suffering agent Leslie Gardner of Artellus really tried.

And when vampires did finally make a huge comeback -- well -- they weren't the types of vampires featured in my novel, not by an awfully long shot.

But now I'm very proud to say that, after 15 years or so, Hot Blood is finally to see print. Samhain Publishing -- the same guys who brought out my chiller Under the Ice last year -- are producing it as an e-book first, and hopefully as a paperback later on. I took the opportunity, naturally, to revise the book and bring it up to date before I even showed them the manuscript. And they have run with it since then, with the end result that I sent the final  proofs back just two days ago, and the novel will be available in September.

I hope my readers feel that it's been worth the wait.

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.

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.

NON-SPARKLY, NON-ROMANTIC, NASTY, EVIL, BLOODTHIRSTY VAMPIRES

Late last year, Samhain Publishing took my short novel Under the Ice -- which had previously been a self-published Amazon e-book -- and brought out their own version of it. And this year they're doing the same again, with a much longer novel this time.

Hot Blood runs to over 120,000 words and is a vampire epic, starting in New York, taking in Central America, and finally moving on to Eastern Europe ... Prague, then Budapest, then finally the Carpathians. And these aren't any Twilight kinds of vampires I'm describing. No, these bloodsuckers are very definitely not nice ones.

After all the swooning and white weddings, I get the feeling some readers will be extremely glad to see some non-sparkly vampires back. But for those who prefer a little romance mixed in with their dark fantasy, the heroine of the novel is a supernatural being herself, although of a very different kind. She ...

No, I cannot tell you too much in advance, now can I? Hot Blood will be out as a Samhain e-book in September 2014.

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.

FIND ME ON FACEBOOK

As well as the Raine's Landing Novels Page on Facebook, there's now a Page about my new novels from Schusters/Pocket and Samhain Publishing, my latest (seventh) short fiction collection from Dark Renaissance Books, and my most recent self-published enovels. Check it out 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.