If you’ve spent even a few minutes looking at the Amazon KDP Writers Forum then you will know how exercised authors can be on the subject of book reviews. If they don’t get any then they are sad but if they get reviews and they are somewhat negative then they’re even sadder. Some old hands have pointed out that amassing loads of good reviews doesn’t always mean increased sales. So why are reviews so important to authors?
I can only speak personally but I read all my reviews and getting a good review cheers me up. Why? Because, after all those days and weeks spent sitting alone banging away at my keyboard, it’s like a reader popping by and saying ‘Well done!’ However, it’s strange, but a somewhat less than positive review can sometimes be even better. Below I’ll show you four reviews and talk about the affect they had on me. Continue reading
I’ll be publishing a new Mac Maguire mystery in October called Two Dogs. In the book Mac tells his new colleague Kate Grimsson how he got his nickname ‘Mac’ (his real first name is Dennis). I’ll not tell you here as that would be a spoiler so you’ll need to read the book to find out. Over the series of books I’ll be letting readers know a little more about his past, however, this isn’t something I’ve had to think up as I already knew his back story long before I wrote the first book in the series The Body in the Boot. 
I’ve only started writing crime novels with any seriousness in the last three years or so and in that time I’ve never attended any sort of literary festival. So when I heard about the line-up for this year’s 
Throughout most of my latest book 23 Cold Cases the main character, retired murder specialist Mac Maguire, spends virtually all of his time in bed. Why did I write a crime book with this in the plot and what were the challenges?
The next Mac Maguire book, the fifth, is nearly there and after some three years or so of seriously struggling to put the right words in the right order this has given me some pause for thought. Looking back I’ve learnt so much from the writing process and I’ve no plans for stopping anytime soon. So what’s changed with me since I started out on my writer’s journey?
My latest book 
So why Hertfordshire and especially why Letchworth Garden City as the backdrop for a series of crime books? As I said in my earlier post when talking about why I made my main character disabled, I was just following some good advice – write about what you know. As I live in Letchworth I know it quite well. There’s a bit more to it than that though.
Patrick C. Walsh Author 