Kath Middleton's Blog, page 6

Blog Tour - The Note by Andrew Barrett

I came across Andy Barrett when I read his book A Long Time Dead and I was impressed. I've since read everything he's ever published and I've also met him several times in real life. Tempting as it is to equate him with his protagonist Eddie Collins, I can tell you that Andy himself has the humour and the sharp, sarcastic wit, but he's not such a self-destructive twerp as Eddie. He's a warm and friendly soul with a ready smile and you can't help but like him. He tends to call himself 'an average arsehole' but I can assure you he's a very superior arsehole indeed. Actually, that sounded so much better in my head! 

But I'm here to tell you about The Note. This is a short book, technically a novelette, but is so packed with story and character that you'll feel you've read something much longer. In fact, it's a novel with the boring bits taken out! Here's the product description - 

I'm Eddie Collins, a CSI.

Ever had that feeling of being watched but when you turn around no one’s there?

I have.

It was raining, and I was working a murder scene around midnight when that prickle ran up my spine. If I’d listened to that feeling, if I’d thought back to my past, maybe I could have prevented the terror that was to come.

Back at the office, I found a death threat on my desk.

I had no idea who sent it or why they wanted to kill me.

But I was about to find out.

And here's my review - 

Eddie Collins, CSI, is at a crime scene and the weather’s vile, the locals as bad, and he’s being hindered by his colleagues. You could say that by then he wasn’t in a good mood. Back at the station, he finds a note left for him. A very personal and threatening note.
 
This story, though short, packs a punch. Eddie’s past comes up to bite him and he’s in a very difficult situation with a volatile person. Even in extremes, he can’t keep his tongue in check and there are some very scary but very funny moments in this. Eddie is a character who has grown on me. The older I get the more angry I get at idiocy – especially my own – so I feel for him in his predicaments. If you know Eddie Collins, you’ll enjoy meeting him again. If you don’t, this is an excellent place to start. I’m very happy to give this five stars. 

You can buy the book here in the UK or here in the US.

​

Long Spoon and after

It's just over a week since I launched Long Spoon and it's already had some reader responses which I've found very heartening. Since then, I've written The End under another book which I began some time ago and shelved to let it mature.

I have one book edited and ready to go and now three more at the 'ready for the editor' stage. Why not publish the one that's ready? Wait up, let's give people chance to read Long Spoon, shall we? 

I've written quite a lot over the last few years and haven't been in too much of a rush to publish. They are in a variety of genres so I probably should have three or four noms de plume to try to gather a readership in each one, but that's not how I work. I just love telling stories!

My friend, fellow writer and unsung genius (though I'm singing it now), Jonathan Hill, recently interviewed me to coincide with last week's publication. In case you've not seen it, I'm linking it here. He thinks I'm mad!

Coming in April - Long Spoon

​If you sup with the devil, take a long spoon.
 
Ed is a gifted chemistry student with attitude. Paul, his housemate, is a French student with legal highs. Rose is a biology student brought up in a hippy-style commune. When Ed analyses and improves one of Paul’s tablets, the world throws money at them, but their activities attract the notice of the local drug dealers, hard men who hate competition. Ed has supped with the devil.

On the run from the dealers, the boys take refuge in Rose’s commune, but Ed’s refusal to stop making and selling his drug puts his and his friends’ lives in danger. He needs to start making some grown-up decisions, and quickly.




The final file is still being tweaked (are we ever satisfied?) but I will have slapped my hand and stopped by April 8th when it will be available on Amazon. 

Blog Tour - An Impossible Dilemma

Netta's book, An Impossible Dilemma, has been taken up and reissued by Bloodhoound Books.

​Netta Newbound, originally from Manchester, England, now lives in New Zealand with her husband Paul and their boxer dog Alfie. She has three grown-up children and three delicious grandchildren. 

As a child, Netta was plagued by a wild imagination, often getting in trouble for making up weird and wonderful stories. Yet she didn't turn her attention to writing until after her children had grown and left home. 

Although she mostly writes psychological thriller novels, all of which consistently rank highly in the best seller categories, she has also written several non-fiction books with a close friend and fellow author under the names of Sandra Rose & Jeanette Simone.


Book Description:
Would you choose to save your child if it meant someone else had to die?
Victoria and Jonathan Lyons seem to have everything—a perfect marriage, a beautiful daughter, Emily, and a successful business. Until they discover Emily, aged five, has a rare and fatal illness.
Medical trials show that a temporary fix would be to transplant a hormone from a living donor. However in the trials the donors die within twenty four hours. Victoria and Jonathan are forced to accept that their daughter is going to die.
In an unfortunate twist of fate Jonathan is suddenly killed in a farming accident and Victoria turns to her sick father-in-law, Frank, for help. Then a series of events present Victoria and Frank with a situation that, although illegal, could save Emily.
Will they take their one chance and should they?
A Sinister and Darkly Compelling Psychological Thriller Novel, this book is intended for mature audiences and contains graphic and disturbing imagery.

​My review -

This book is a really exciting and readable tale of a woman in the most dreadful of circumstance. She faces the deterioration of her five year-old daughter’s health with a condition which is terminal. Another crisis occurs in her life to make this even more poignant – if you can imagine anything worse than losing your only child. Clinical trials on the use of a hormone have been halted and Victoria, a vet, together with her father-in-law Frank, is determined to try this to give her baby the only chance of life. Would you commit a crime to give your child life?

The story is well told and I enjoyed it, but I didn’t find it at all believable. However, as someone who likes sci-fi and fantasy, I can suspend my disbelief to an extent. I didn’t find it likely that Vic and Frank would switch character so suddenly. Having said that, I read it in a day – that’s how the author pulls you into the story. A very good read and a solid four stars from me.

​It's available in the UK here and from the US here. 

Pancake Day

You know the way the first pancake never comes out quite the way you’d hoped? It sets a bit unevenly and maybe even has a hole in it where you didn’t quite swirl the mixture properly? Yet it’s still the first. It’s your first taste of eggy, lemony, sugary loveliness so you eat it and enjoy it but you know the next will be better. The pan will be seasoned and hotter. It’ll just be an improvement all round.
 
I wonder who else feels like that about their first book? It was as good as I could make it at the time but I’ve now got more experience. If I wrote it again from scratch it would be a better pancake! Here it is, if you haven’t read it. Ravenfold. It’s a novella of about forty thousand words in a genre I called at the time Medieval Noir. It still is!


Some reviewer comments - 

'...  a confident first novel'
'Ms. Middleton is a very talented writer,'
'I throughly enjoyed this novel from start to finish'
'the writing is crisp, confident and captivating'

​It's available here in the UK or here in the US.

Ledston Luck Blog Tour

Ledston Luck is the fourth in the Eddie Collins series. If you've not read the others, it works very well as a stand-alone. Here's the book description -

They say you can always trust a copper. They’re lying.
They lied thirty years ago and they’re still lying today.

A booby-trapped body in a long-abandoned chapel. A scene examination that goes horribly wrong. CSI Eddie Collins and DI Benson are injured and one of the team killed. Eddie is heartbroken and guilt-ridden. And angry.

Now let's meet the author - Andrew Barrett and ask him a few questions about the book, starting with the title, which is the name of a village near where he lives.

Place names. I know you set your books in the area where you live. Ledston Luck was a bit of a gift. Lucky you don’t live near Little Peover or Piddletrenthide! Tell us a bit about the place.
 
I also live close to Fanny Pit. But we won’t dwell on that one.
 
Ledston Luck won by a nose when I was selecting where to base this story. I also had my eye on another magical sounding place (to me, anyway). Monk Fryston. It conjures up all kinds of medieval scenes; it’s evocative.
 
But Ledston Luck won because firstly, as a book title, I think it offers its own intrigue, and secondly because it really is unlike any other village I’ve come across. There is one street, and though I don’t describe it in the book, it’s bent in the middle. Before the bend there are a few larger houses and a bit more greenery, after the bend is the bus terminus with an old coal cart parked in the middle that’s now used as a planter.
 
The rest of the street after the bend is just terraced houses on either side, rising up a gentle incline. It ends at the top quite abruptly with a dozen yards of grass and then you hit woodland. The playground I mention here in the book is actually at the foot of the hill. But, true to life, at the top of the road is a lane that threads through a mile of countryside until it hits a secluded farmhouse.
 
Add to this that the mine closed down in ’86, and that you can still see ghostly remnants of it, and I think you’ve got a sparkling setting for a book.

I think a lot of places which used to thrive and have fallen on hard times have a ghostliness about them. I'm thinking of my local fishing industry. Empty docks and abandoned smoke-houses.
 
Do you ever base stories on real cases you've worked on or is all this straight out of your head?
 
Working for the police and writing fiction can prove a little problematic if you’re not careful. I have to abide by the Data Protection Act and the Official Secrets Act, among others. I also have a few extra conditions imposed upon me by the Force if I want to continue to write while working there. And I think that’s fair enough; certainly the conditions themselves are fair enough. I must not write about any real life suspect or witness that I happen to meet during the course of my duty.
 
I’m pretty careful to abide by these not unreasonable rules.
 
So the answer is no. Essentially.

Back in the late ‘90s I heard of the Russian mafia messing about in Leeds, and I heard that one or two other groups were beginning to encroach on our patch too. I genuinely don’t know any details, but details didn’t matter to me back then as I was thinking of a follow on story to A Long Time Dead.
 
In Stealing Elgar we meet elements of the Russian mafia and of the IRA. I simply couldn’t resist making up a story with those two parties involved.
 
All my other stories really are total fiction. I even make sure that I’m not giving out any of our secrets by checking the internet for open source forensic techniques. If they’re on there, I can safely use them.
 
The only real advantage I have over other crime writers is that I can, and do, use the overall flavours of what it’s like to work in a large Force. I know the feelings of walking into a murder scene and seeing lots of blood and gore, I know how it smells, I know to be aware of dried blood flaking away and becoming airborne. And I know how to sample it, the techniques we use, and the language we use. I know, though seldom use, the procedures we use too – these are far too boring to include in a work of fiction.

The secret is balance, isn't it?
 
Eddie's his own worst enemy. Are you like that?
 
I’m much more courteous than Eddie is. I’m also much more tolerant. Other than that, I suppose I am, really. I dislike authority if it messes up my day, and I wasn’t afraid to tell it so. I could often find myself in a rather loud and angry argument across the office with my supervisor and area forensic manager.
 
Sometimes, they just don’t understand! Sometimes they get it plain wrong.
 
But even though they’re wrong and they don’t understand, I don’t argue any more. I pretend life there is bliss. This is because I got into some rather hot water last year for arguing perhaps a little too vehemently one day. Okay, for several days. I got a big telling off. So now I’m quiet; I am bliss to work with.
 
Luckily for me, Eddie’s hot water is totally fictional, so he can say and do as he pleases. He can even throw the punches for me, and tell them what I’d like to tell them with no real fear of consequence. Thank God for Eddie Collins.

Eddie has the time (in your head) to come out with the quips!
 
Quick-fire questions now –
 
Tea or coffee?

What’s tea?

Wazz of the gods, that's what!
 
A day off - the bright lights or the country or coast?
 
Country, coast, and quiet. Every time.
 
Favourite pudding. Don't say tiramisu and then I can have it all for myself.
 
Sherry trifle. Actually, let me amend that. Lots of sherry trifle, with added sherry. And added trifle.
 
Any pets?
 
A cat called Eli, and a daughter called Ellie. Both are up to date with their jabs and have good teeth.
 
Best film you've ever seen. If it's Frozen, I've gone right off you!
 
Frozen makes me want to vomit. And I know the bastard word for word. Thanks Ellie! That’s an unfair question on the ground that there are too many to narrow them down to one. For a start, it depends what mood I’m in. And then it also depends what mood I’m in.
I love The Martian
I love Carry on Screaming
I love The Theory of Everything
I love The King’s Speech
I love Heat
I love Ronin
I love Sideways
I love Saving Ryan’s Privates
I love Fury
I could go on and on…
 
What colour are Eddie's eyes?
 
I have no idea. Really, I don’t; I’m pretty sure I’ve never described them either, or any of his characteristics. I like to leave it up to the reader. It’s not because I’m lazy, honestly; I just never saw the need to draw him for people who are quite capable of filling in those gaps. I think if you draw your main character too thoroughly, then readers have to keep a list of descriptive tags on him as they read about him. I choose not to tag him, let people decide for themselves.
 
But it’s an interesting question. It’s so interesting that I’m going to ask what you think, and what your readers think. So, what colour are Eddie’s eyes? And while we’re here, how tall is he?

He's got hazel eyes and he's 5ft 10. Now how did I know that?
 
And finally, as an upholder of the law, is there any law not currently on the statute books that you’d like to see brought in – and why?
 
I’m sure there are many. And the next time I’m driving around and some taxi cuts me up, I’ll remember this question.
But I think, overall, we’re too lenient on criminals. Even petty criminals. Some of the sentences our colleagues in wigs hand out (sometimes by the command of legislation) are laughable when compared to the suffering they cause.
I realize much of the Sentencing Guidelines Council’s work is to do with rehabilitation, and so prefer shorter sentences; and I suppose we do have a severe overcrowding problem in prisons that also taints their decisions.
But when I see some of the… some of the people who go through the system time and again, when I see the destruction they leave behind them, I could weep for the victims who are left to suffer. And I’m not even talking about serious crime (as in murder) here. The old fella who’s been burgled and now has nothing left. Nothing. Not even his medals I’ll stop there before it becomes a rant.
Of course I also think that Audi drivers should be publicly humiliated :)

You get my drift so

Yes, I do! Thanks, Andy, for the full and frank answers.

Now here's my five star review - 

Eddie Collins is such an annoying man. Sometimes I could slap him. He’s irascible, angry, stubborn, but usually, he’s right. He’s a man driven by a desire for justice. He’s at a scene when a booby-trap kills his colleague and injures him. It’s the scene of an old murder, but a new killing, also booby-trapped makes old and new murders come together. Someone higher in the system is trying to frustrate the case and sideline Eddie. They didn’t reckon with the fact that Eddie won’t let go, especially when he’s angry – and he feels guilty.

The wonderful thing about an Andrew Barrett book is that you often don’t totally like the goodies and you feel strong sympathy for the baddies. As with real life, there are no black and white characters, but many, many shades of grey. Stories like this make you think and there are often no easy answers. This book’s packed with action but there’s room for thoughtful contemplation, too. It works on many levels. A brilliantly good read.

Should you wish to buy the book (and you really should!) you can find it here in the UK or here in the US. 

​

 Senior CSI and author, Andrew Barrett

A Year of Books

​This isn’t an attempt to find my best books of 2016 – they are on my Ignite Books blog. I looked back over the year and sorted out a few which are outstanding to me in that they are different. Here, in no particular order, are some which have stuck with me. They pack a punch.

Echoes by Laura Tisdall. Cyber-hacker-thriller but this stood out a mile, for me.
You can see why here.

A Place called Winter - by Patrick Gale. Literary (but by no means pretentious) fiction which quite bowled me over. Here it is.

Try Not to Breathe by Holly Seddon. A debut novel with something special. You can read about it, and get the buying links, here.

A Boy Made of Blocks by Keith Stuart really got to me. It's about coping with an autistic son and making a connection through a game. It's here.

​Not Just a Boy by Jonathan Hill is a coming of age story which sent shivers down my spine. Not your run-of-the-mill tale of growing up here.

Coffin Maker by Mark L Fowler is (like most of his writing) unlike anything else. It's a great story and you can find it here.

Alien Love Story  by A K Dawson is a YA novella (which now has a sequel) and is charming and funny and, yes, strange. It's here.

These are by no means the only books I rate highly. You can find them all on my book blog. The books mentioned in this post are those which have stayed with me as being unusual. You often find that books in any particular genre are written to a formula and when you read as many as I do, they can merge together in your mind. These most definitely haven't. 

Here's to another year of reading, writing and enjoying myself. I just hope nobody finds out and stops me!

End of the year thoughts

Sunrise looking east (with garage roof) at the tail end of the year. On a personal level, we lost the family matriarch in February (my lovely mother-in-law) and gained a new member, our first grandson. He's nearly nine months old now, sitting up and shouting 'Daddeee!'. She'd have adored him.

Books-wise, I co-authored Is it Her?, a dual control effort of two stories based on one painting. I produced a trio of novellas all under one cover - Souls Disturbed - my first foray into the supernatural, and in November I published my first Christmas story, Stir-up Sunday - again, supernatural. I promise I'm out of my rut, now, as the next book, due for publication in a few months' time, is dark humour. After that - who knows? That's the beauty of indie publishing.

I have fantasy, science fiction and horror in the pipeline, some of those in the same book! There's never a dull moment.

The year 2017 sees my local city as City of Culture. I'm looking forward to the new year. Best wishes to my readers, and thank you for sharing the journey with me.

National Novel Writing Month

Well, as you can see, I did it, with a couple of days to spare. With my usual lack of foresight, I realised half way through the month that the last few days were full of diary notes. Village activities that I couldn't avoid. I was up to my neck in them. I ended up writing on a couple of evenings. I know that's a thing which you young people have to do but for the retired, the evening isn't available for hard thinking. That's when I read.

In between two other jobs, I added the last few words this lunchtime and clocked up 50,339 in total, taking me over the 50k needed to 'win'. I shall now go away and forget this story until the new year, at least. It needs a lot more work before it's ready to frighten my editor with!

It's a Science Fiction novel, a genre I've read and enjoyed since childhood but I'm new to writing it. It's been an enjoyable experience, though the last few days have felt pressured. Silly really, since the things looming are things I enjoy doing. I just like them spread a little more thinly. I must bear this in mind if I'm tempted to bash out a novel next November!

Stir-up Sunday

This is the title of my latest publication. It's a ghost story set at the Christmas season. Stir-up Sunday is the traditional day for making Christmas puddings - always made when I was a child with 'three stirs and a wish' by each member of the family. My little sister, probably three at the time, asked for 'free stirs and a fink' which has gone down in family folklore.

The name comes from a bit of the church service for the day - Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people...

These days I really do have to stir myself to have a big baking session, but this link from the BBC food website shows that there's lots of inspiration for bakers, even if you don't fancy hours of pudding steaming.

www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/stir-sunday