This little lovely finally arrived today after a brief stint of being held to ransom by the UK customs🙂
Cheers to the good people at GCLS, and to Nell Stark for doing such a sterling job with my acceptance speech. For the record, if I’d had to pick between the first two Dark Peak books, I’d have picked this one🙂
A couple of weeks back, I had a lovely chat with fellow author, Alexandra Amor, for her It’s a Mystery podcast. We talked about the Dark Peak books, genre, the (in)visibility of queer characters in mainstream crime, and, um…frogs 🙂
The interview has now been posted here at her blog, where you can listen to it or download it, and there’s also a video of the recording over on YouTube.
Yes, UK-based LesFic loving types, it’s just two weeks now till the annual UK BSB event in Nottingham. The weekend bash will be held 4th-5th June at the Waterstones store in the centre of the city. Loads of the UK BSB crowd will be there chatting on panels, reading from their latest releases, and generally getting up to mischief. The event is completely free, the books are usually good and cheap (and can be signed by the author of your choice!), and there’s the opportunity to chat about the publishing process if you’re a budding author.
As a countdown to the weekend, each of the attending authors will be blogging on the UK event site. I’m first up, with a blog dedicated to you lot – all of the mates I’ve made through my books over the past five years. It truly has been a pleasure, and if you are around Nottingham on that weekend, please do come and say hello.
Choosing between your books is a bit like asking a mum to pick her favourite kid, so when it came to this year’s Goldie awards, I thought “to hell with it” and submitted the first two Dark Peak books – No Good Reason and Cold to the Touch – into the Mystery category. I had hoped that one might sneak through to the finals, but found out early this week that both had made their way onto the shortlist :-)
The winners will be announced during the Golden Crown Literary Society conference, which will be held July 6th-10th in Washington, DC. Sadly, I won’t be able to trot on over there to fly the flag for the Brits, but a certain author who shall remain unnamed** has promised to don a tiara and deliver an acceptance speech in a delightful English accent should I be lucky enough to actually win a gong. Should be worth the price of admission alone…
** Okay, it was Nell Stark.
The brand, spanking new audio book of Snowbound is now available to buy at Amazon UK , Amazon US, and Audible, with the perfectly named Lesley Parkin narrating. Thanks to my day job, I’ve only had the chance to listen to the online preview, so all I can tell you is that Mac sounds like a cross between my dad, Peter Kay, and some bloke from dahn t’pit, and that Sam sounds rather sweet. You can pick up a copy free with an Audible trial, and it’s probably worth a listen just to see how many different accents can be crammed into one book :-)
Given that the release date for A Quiet Death, the third book in the Dark Peak series, isn’t till January, 2017, I’ve been sitting on its cover and its blurb for a little while now. However, Amazon and GoodReads have both bloody scooped me this week, so it seemed daft not to share.
The blurb contains very mild spoilers for folks who’ve not read Cold to the Touch (book 2!)
That’s the front! The back will read a little (well, exactly) like this:
In book three in the Dark Peak series, things are looking up for Detective Sanne Jensen and Dr. Meg Fielding. Dating each other seems to be working, their families are behaving themselves, and the worst of the post-Christmas crime wave is over.
The discovery of a Pakistani girl’s body out on the moors changes all that. No one knows who she is, who hurt her, or how she came to be there. As pressure mounts on East Derbyshire Special Ops for a quick resolution, it becomes ever more apparent that the case won’t provide one.
With the Pakistani community closing ranks, and threads of suspicion reaching farther than anyone could have predicted, the investigation leaves Sanne facing an ordeal she may not survive.
~ ~ ~
Dun dun dun!
January, 2017. Not too long to wait now, is there?😉
The finalists for the 28th Annual Lambda Literary Awards were announced on 8th March. I was merrily sneaking a chicken butty in the ambulance cab when I spotted rather a lot of excitement on my Facebook news feed. I hadn’t done anything particularly thrilling that week – posted a snow picture, and one of my cat sat on my notepad – so it was all a little befuddling till I opened a PM and realised what was going on.
No Good Reason was named as a finalist in the Lesbian Mystery category. And yes, I am quite delighted about it🙂
The winner’s gongs will be awarded on June 6th. I’m on a night shift, so no doubt I’ll be knee-deep in vomit, snot, or someone else’s misery at the time. But I wish all the finalists well, and I envy those who have the chance to tuxedo up, walk the red carpet, and be a celebrity for the night at the New York ceremony.
For a full list of those finalists, head here.
