Happy New Year!

As 2018 draws to a close, I'd like to thank my fellow Goodreads authors for all the pleasure their writing has given me over the past twelve months.

As well as devouring the latest offerings of some of my favourite wordsmiths, I've discovered several new authors whose writing has blown me away – some of them established and successful, others less so (skill and talent being no guarantee of success in these market-driven days); and I want to say a special thankyou to those with whom I've made personal contact, and who’ve been kind enough to encourage me in my own writing.

I'm so grateful to Narrelle M. Harris whose The Adventure of the Colonial Boy and A Dream to Build a Kiss on I absolutely loved, and who's been more than generous in her reviews of my books; to Bryn Hammond whose Against Walls took me to a fascinating place and time that I otherwise never would have visited; to Julie Bozza whose The Butterfly Hunter Trilogy I'm currently devouring with great relish; and to Lexi Wolfe whose play 'Mrs Oscar Wilde in Women Of Forgotten Importance: Three Stories inspired me to update my own Constance Wilde story, and whose Vampire novel Better Off Dead is now on my to-read list. Dan Andriacco's blogs have helped keep me up to date with all things Holmesian/Sherlockian, and his Sebastian McCabe/Jeff Cody mysteries are also on my to-read list for 2019; Elinor Gray's editorship of The Watsonian has made it a delight to read this year and has introduced me to the witty, erudite and sometimes irreverent writing of the John H Watson Society. It was lovely to meet Richard Gough-Buijs at the Brighton Book Fayre in November – his The Gluten Free Mediterranean Cookbookwas greeted with cries of delight by my foodie/coeliac daughter on Christmas day - and to share a stall with Jane Traies, whose ground-breaking book Now You See Me: Lesbian Life Stories contains some interviews that I had the privilege of transcribing, and Val Brown whose biography toupie lowther her life filled many gaps in my inventory of early 20th century lesbians. And last but not least, my old partner in crime Charlie Raven not only wrote the Foreword to the 30th Anniversary edition of My Dearest Holmes but also designed the cover and cast an editorial eye over the text, thereby committing herself to having to do the same for the new edition of The Coward Does it with a Kiss, due out in April.

Thanks so much to you all, and to all those other authors, dead and alive, whose books I've enjoyed over the course of 2018! Here's hoping for lashings of inspiration, creativity, great writing and of course success for all of us in the New Year ahead.