I apologise for the lack of posts here in recent weeks – this is because, having had lots of spare time earlier in the year, I found October and November had turned into a great big traffic jam of things to do. Of course National Novel Writing Month has come along as it usually does about now, which is one thing. I’ve managed to get halfway to the target of 50,000 words despite running out of plot after a few thousand. When this happens the only thing to do is to keep the characters occupied until there’s another murder. Incidentally I’ve decided to work on a second Pamela Prendergast book – see below. There were other options, but I’ve postponed them until the New Year.
As well as this I wanted to publish my book of 13 short stories in time to try and sell them at a local Christmas Fair. I do now have a version on Amazon but have just done some updates to it today. For one thing, I don’t like the cover I chose (from a shortlist of 2!) so I am going to upload the alternative one to see if it looks any better. This is mostly because I don’t like the way it’s come out on the paperback version.
The other thing is that I’ve realised (also from reading it in the paperback version) that the café I’ve described in the first story in the collection is extremely easy to recognise as one of our local cafés, and while it’s ok to sell on Amazon in the hope that nobody will recognise it, when trying to sell to people who live near me, which I hope to do at a Christmas Fair early in December, I’d better be a bit more careful! I’ve only just made the updates mentioned here so they’ll probably take a day or two to go live. If anyone reading this has already (i.e. before 15th November 2023) purchased this book of short stories and wants to see the updated version, please let me know via my Facebook page and I will arrange that.
There’s one final thing I should say about the book of short stories, and that is that some of the stories have previously appeared online somewhere – one or two on my own blogs and some on the UK Crime Book Club Facebook page (which I very much recommend to all readers of crime, mystery etc).
Cecilia Peartree - woman of mystery 