I’ve been writing full-time now for nearly two years and I’m loving it. I especially love those moments of pure creation when new characters, situations and even worlds spring into life.
However, there is always a bit of grit in every pearl, and the grit for me is editing and especially the dastardly and eel-like typo. I published my first book four and a half years ago and I’m just realising how steep the slope of the editing learning curve actually is. This has been recently highlighted by the fact that I’ve once again re-edited my first four books and guess what? I found them littered by tortured English and infested with typos. I have come to terms with the fact that these books will still have some instances of tortured English and typos but, hopefully, a lot less than there was before. So what’s the problem? Continue reading
My latest book The Eight Bench Walk should be ready for publication next month. This is the first Mac Maguire mystery that is more or less completely set abroad and so it presents its own set of problems. (Only part of 
I attended a local reader’s group a few weeks back. It was one that specialised in crime and murder mysteries. I was interested in what they did and it turned out that they were interested in what I did too. The first question, as always, was ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’
This is the original cover and it was one I quite liked. It’s the first book in the series and therefore I’m anxious to advertise it as much as possible on the grounds that if a reader likes it then they might read the other eight.
In the tenth Mac Maguire mystery Mac goes to Cyprus. It’s been a hard winter and Mac’s back has been playing him up so his daughter Bridget has little problem in persuading him that he should go somewhere warm on holiday. Of course as soon as he arrives on the island something happens and the story kicks off!
It’s said that a review can sometimes make or break a writer’s day and in that I’m no different to any other author. Publishing a book is like sending a child out in the world by itself for the first time and a review is like getting your child’s first exam results. A bad review can really hurt and a good review can be like a shot of literary adrenalin making you want to write even more. I’m lucky, the first book I published, The Body in the Boot, has racked up quiet a lot of reviews in both the USA and the UK and almost all of them are positive (it has an average of 4.4 out of 5 in the USA and 4.3 in the UK).
Ever since Mac Maguire came into my life I’ve been aware that, while he was brought up in Birmingham in the English Midlands, his Irish background is important to him too. So, I’ve been thinking about how I could explore this facet of his life and reveal a little more about his past. In this latest book Mac gets the chance to help with a murder when he is in Donegal, Ireland for a funeral. He hasn’t been back ‘home’ for a while and, as he visits familiar places, he is reminded of a past he’d thought he’d all but forgotten. Besides the murder a family mystery is also resolved. 
I recently posted about 
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?
Patrick C. Walsh Author 