Light-Hearted Greetings!

Once we get past the Winter Solstice, I find things begin to look up again with the gradually extending hours of daylight. Although I often indulge my tendency to hibernate during the festive season – and indeed this year I’ve stocked up up with an unfeasibly huge quantity of food that might last until Doomsday or Brexit, whichever comes first (sorry to stray into politics) – I still can’t help noticing that not long after New Year the cat usually begins to wake up a little earlier in the mornings. When we had a dog as well, I always dreaded the dark mornings when I had to take her out along the deserted old railway line before the sun came up, and looked forward to the longer days when it wasn’t so hard to get up early.
Anyway, I have a few treats that I hope might help to lighten up these dark, dim times.

First of all, in case anyone has missed it up to now, there’s the recently released 17th novel in the Pitkirtly Mystery series, Secrets of the Ice Palace, with its sparkling cover, the usual improbable plot and typically odd assortment of characters. This is available in all the usual places.

Then, in case you need to catch up on any of the earlier novels in the series, there is the chance to get hold of the first ten novels for free in a special seasonal sale exclusively on the Smashwords site. Just go to my profile page at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/peartree and you’ll find a list of the novels in question. There is also an interview with me (not live) on the page that you might find interesting. The sale lasts from 25th December 2018 (Pacific time) to 1st January 2019. You can also get a free download of ‘A Quest for Clemency’ which is a mystery/thriller set in the 1950s (one of my ‘Quest’ series). Please be careful as not all my books are free just now.

If you prefer to shop for ebooks on Amazon, they have a free download of something completely different, ‘The Heir to Marshingdean’, a historical novel set in Sussex at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. This is available from 26th to 30th December inclusive. On other dates it is available either to read via the Kindle Unlimited system or to purchase from Amazon. I am hoping a sequel might be around within months, and at some point I will probably take this one out of Kindle Unlimited and release it to Kobo etc. That means it will be easier to find but I won’t be able to offer random free days like this any more.

Finally, I have a Christmas short story that can be read here on this blog if you are pushed for time.  I wrote this a while ago and I don’t think it’s been widely published so it may be new to some people.

And finally finally, best wishes for the 2018 Christmas and New Year festivities to anyone who reads down to the end of the page. I’m writing this on Boxing Day so I’ve already had all the fun of spending time with my 3 month old grandson and playing with some of his presents, and cooking a meal for a few family members for the first time since about 1983. I think everyone has survived!