1 February 2024

Good morning everybody, from a somewhat miserable looking Sheffield. It was a glorious sunrise, but now it is a very grey Thursday lunchtime.

So, where am I as regards my career, and how are my books doing? The truth is my books are doing remarkably well and my career is trundling along in the way that I want it to trundle, especially now I have made changes within my working life.

Since 2015 I have been writing a minimum of three books a year, and loving the time spent at my computer. However, in January I had my 78th birthday, and although I don’t feel 78 I have decided to cut back a little so I can do other things I enjoy doing.

In addition our hospital visits with Dave have increased so I made the decision to produce two books a year until I say enough is enough. My contract with Boldwood now stipulates a book to be with them by 30 April and 31 October every year, and I feel a huge sense of relief for doing this.

My twenty books that are with Bloodhound are still selling well despite them all being quite old now, and when I see the likes of Beautiful, 34 Days, Malignant and Gamble regularly climbing the charts, my heart beats a little faster. It beats especially fast when Winterscroft, my favourite of them all, climbs even one place higher!

My Boldwood books now number six, with the sixth one about to launch in April 2024 and entitled The Girls Next Door. It is the story of four women, not linked genetically but linked by being born on the same street within a six month period, and who have lived almost as sisters from birth.

The Family at No.12, which was my second book with them, rose to #2 in the UK Kindle charts, and #49 in the US Kindle charts, and has so far sold 121,000 copies. I have a certificate and a bottle of champagne to prove it! The Couple Across the Street is catching up fast with 76,000 copies sold.

My third and fifth books with Boldwood form the first two parts of a trilogy series, and I am currently working on part three. The first two are Fatal Secrets and Fatal Lies, and although this new one doesn’t have a title yet I think I can feel confident it will be Fatal something or other. The series comes under the general umbrella of the Forrester Detective Agency, set in the Gleadless/Ridgeway area of Sheffield, and I’m definitely going to miss these characters when this book is finished.

My eighth book will be standalone, will be with Boldwood by 31 October this year, and I currently don’t have any thoughts in my head about this book at all. This is nothing new – I don’t plan, I rarely know the ending of a book until I reach it, and even then it usually takes me by surprise. But does that really matter when they reach #2 in the charts?

So, I hope that’s filled everybody in – my website has changed slightly in that all my books now have both UK and US links to buy the books, because to my surprise it seems my sales are split 50% in the UK, 40% in the US, and the other 10% is the rest of the world.

Thank you for reading my waffle, happy 2024 to all of you, and enjoy the summer when it finally arrives. I’m so ready for it.

Much love

Anita

It’s time to let everybody know just what’s happening in my writing life! Things are moving along nicely, and in eight weeks my twenty-fifth book will launch, Fatal Lies. This book is the second book in the Sheffield based Forrester Detective Agency series – book three in this series is already running around my head. I’m trying to squash it because I have a psychological thriller to complete before we get back to the delicious Matt Forrester.

Last night I signed my second contract with Boldwood Books, a three book deal which will see my current WIP, a psychological thriller, launch in May 2024, followed by the third in the Forrester series in October 2024, and finally a psychological thriller which will launch in May 2025.

By this time I will have turned seventy-nine, and will be considering what happens next. I may be hanging up my pen, but the drawback to that is that characters and situations live inside my head and their outlet is a new file on my computer.

In signing this new contract I have reduced my workload by dropping from three books per year to two books per year, significantly reducing time spent every day at my computer, and I feel much happier for doing that. I do have other interests, and they always take a back seat. I’m hoping by reducing my written output that I can enjoy more of what I love to do on the crafting side of my life.

Since my last blog post I have acquired two beautiful great-granddaughters, Mia and Amber. Mia is around six weeks older than Amber, and I’m sure they’re going to grow together as they get older.

So, let me tell you about Cain Jacobs. Back in 2016 I released Winterscroft into the world. It is my only supernatural, and despite my publisher’s somewhat gloomy predictions it has always sold well. I have many fans who say this book is their favourite, and it has always been my special favourite, partly because I set it in lovely Castleton in the Peak District, a favourite place of ours. Since then I have ached to write a second supernatural, and so to please me, and only me, I began to write Cain Jacobs. At the end of this blog I’ll add a short section of it for you to read. I don’t expect it to be published by a publisher, but once I hang up my pen Cain Jacobs could be my foray into self-publishing. It doesn’t matter if it never sells a copy, it will have given me immeasurable pleasure to write it!

So, I think that’s caught everybody up on what is happening – massive thanks to my grandson, Dominic, for creating this website for me, and swapping my titles around when they actually launch! I haven’t mastered that bit.

Enjoy this little section of Cain… all thoughts gratefully received.

Anita xxx

Cain Jacobs is an author struggling to find his lost mojo, and has rented a cottage in Cornwall for solitude. This section is the last part I have written to date. Ginny is his researcher.

____________________

‘You can sleep in my bed. Oh shit, I don’t mean that as it sounds. I meant you can sleep in my bed, and I can sleep on this very comfortable sofa. Is that okay?’

‘It is. Send me the address, and I’ll be there tomorrow morning. So, how’s the writing going?’

‘It’s going well, kind of. I was rattling along with it, but I’ve got to a difficult bit, that’s not making  a deal of sense. I know it will eventually, but it’s one of those moments when I need to keep walking away from it, then going back to it when the way seems a bit clearer. I’ll get there though, because I know the end!’

‘Well that’s good,’ she said with a degree of sarcasm in her tone. ‘It’s always best when an author knows how his book ends.’

He laughed and they said goodbye. He felt relieved that she had agreed to visit, and already was looking forward to taking her to the pub for a Cornish Pasty, maybe introducing her to Jack Pengelley. And maybe to Tamsin Harpur…

And suddenly he knew the next phase of his book. He opened up his laptop, wiped out the words he had spent most of the afternoon producing, and started afresh. It began to make sense. He led his lead character down a different avenue, an avenue that as yet Cain didn’t know where it would go to, but he did know it was a better place than his insipid words of earlier in the day.

He wrote for an hour, then made himself a huge sandwich and returned to write for a further hour. And he felt good. The story was good. The writing was good. Suddenly life was good.

He closed the laptop down, and sat back with a sigh of contentment. He needed a little bit of research doing about one of the less salubrious areas of Sheffield, as a way of explaining why his character was behaving as he was, and he knew it would be a quick job for Ginny to do, leaving him free to continue the storyline without him being distracted by the Internet. But he wouldn’t mention it until she was back in work mode, and could take the job back with her.

He made himself a hot chocolate, tidied the cottage in case Ginny arrived early, and headed upstairs. He left his laptop downstairs so that he wouldn’t be tempted to write a few more words, and settled down to read.

He struggled to concentrate on the book, and placed it on his bedside table, finished the dregs of his hot chocolate, and closed his eyes.

And opened his eyes.

He knew she was near. His brain seemed to be echoing help me over and over again. He pushed back the covers, walked over to the window and pulled on of the curtains to one side.

She was standing at the small gate in the front garden. He sensed it was a waste of time rushing out to her.

He saw her mouth move, and heard a very clear, ‘Help me.’

The shiver began somewhere deep in his toes and rode up his body. He didn’t feel scared, it wasn’t that sort of fear, but it was a fear nevertheless. It was fear that he didn’t know what was happening to him. He couldn’t blame alcohol for this, this was something way beyond normality.

‘How?’ Cain knew he hadn’t verbalised the word, and yet it was out there.

‘Find me.’ She held up her arms almost in supplication. ‘Find me,’ she repeated.

He blinked, wondering what the hell was going on, but she had disappeared. Find me? What was that about? She didn’t need finding, she seemed to have taken up permanent residence near his cottage. Near her cottage. The place she had lived if she was indeed the twin of Tamsin. But the twin of Tamsin was supposedly dead, and the dead can’t return. He hoped.

‘Ginny, for fuck’s sake, I need you here,’ he said quietly, knowing he was so far out of his depth it was becoming scary. He didn’t believe in a supernatural world. He’d never even read a supernatural novel – although he guessed that was maybe a classification of many of the Stephen King novels he devoured. But he didn’t believe in ghosts, therefore the child in the floaty dress in the coldest of weathers was real. But who was she? And why did she know about Evelyn Harpur? Was Evelyn Harpur still a subject for discussion amongst the Cornish people in this locality? It had been mooted she had been washed out to sea, but did locals believe something else?

He had to go and see if she was still hanging around the front garden, had to speak to her properly instead of this help me rubbish all the time. It was becoming stressful not being able to help her, and he needed to tell her that, find out what she wanted. And did she need a jumper or a coat, for fuck’s sake!

He slipped on his dressing gown, clattered down the stairs and unlocked the front door. The moon was glorious in its luminescence, lighting up the beach, the cliffs in the distance, and his white painted fence around the small shingle patch of garden. It reached into the tips of the waves, making them shimmer and sparkle as they forced their way onto the beach; but there was no girl.

‘Evelyn Harpur,’ he whispered, but the silence was the only thing he heard. Total silence. The air was still, almost as if it was in suspense. No sound came from the crashing waves, no noise of any sort from the shingle as his feet took him towards the gate; and almost deathly quiet surrounded his body. He stood, his skin absorbing the strange effect it was feeling.

He tightened the belt of his dressing gown, reached out a hand to touch the gate in the place that the child had touched it, and felt himself being thrown backwards. He staggered, trying to remain upright, and grasped onto the bench to save himself.

And then he heard her without having any sight of her.

‘Find me. Find me. Find me.’

Hi everybody- long time no communicate! I have, however, been writing – on 29th November 2022 Boldwood launched my second book with them, The Family at No.12.

This awesome book is currently sitting at #5 in the overall Kindle rankings, something that seemed so far out of reach… but it wasn’t. It has garnered a massive 1,212 reviews, and has been at #5 for about eight days now. It has had an amazing knock on effect with all my books, and One Hot Summer, my first book with Boldwood, is also riding high in the charts at #238.

My Bloodhound books are clambering up the charts, and Beautiful, my debut novel from 2015, is currently around the 9,500 ranking. I couldn’t be more pleased about this, and one day I will do a major edit on it, and re-release it, but for now if it’s purchased, you get it warts and all.

A new book will be launched in six days time, on 8th February 2023, called Fatal Secrets. It is book one in a trilogy. If it sells well it could be more than a trilogy, who knows? It is set in Sheffield, in an area called Gleadless, and the overarching banner for the trilogy is The Forrester Detective Agency Mysteries.

After that first book there will be a standalone, currently called Actions and Consequences, but it’s anybody’s guess what it will be called when it’s released lol. That is currently with Boldwood, going through a structural edit.

So what am I doing now? I’m writing two books at the same time is what I’m doing. Book number one, and my main priority, is the second book in the Forrester series. It begins with a burglary that escalates into something much worse. It has a fascinating title – Book Five. That’s simply because it’s the fifth book in my five book deal I signed a contract for, I’ll wait and see what it appears as on the front cover.

The second book I am working on is one that is really close to my heart. It’s no secret amongst my readers that my personal favourite of all my books is Winterscroft. It’s by no means my biggest seller, although since it’s launch in 2016 it has done quite well. It is my only supernatural book, was first written in 1992, and then I lost the print out of the manuscript. I rewrote it from memory in 2015, and although Bloodhound were dubious about it they published it because 34 Days had been a top seller, reaching #22 in the rankings. I think they saw it as a reward for me, and it was.

But I want to write another, and I chatted with Trish Dixon (my co-author of Liars) about it several times, until in the end she shouted at me, said a girl on a beach, now write the bloody story! So I am. The book is called Cain Jacobs, I have written 12k words in it after about two years of working on it in dribs and drabs, but it’s nibbling away at my brain, so I do 2k words on Book Five, and Ik words on Cain every day. I don’t know what I’ll do with it when it’s finished, maybe self-publishing might be an answer, but finish it I will because it won’t let me go.

So that’s my life as it is at the moment. On a personal level I am well, but Dave isn’t; we keep plodding on. We have three great grandchildren, Lily, Elle and William, and this year two more will be added, two little girls. One is due in April, and one in June.

Thank you for all your support over the years, long may it continue.

Anita xxx

Today I have thoroughly enjoyed myself. I took over someone else’s group for the day (with their permission, I might add) and talked about my writing, my recent release of One Hot Summer, my next release in November of The Family at No.12, and my current WIP, the first in a new series with a working title of Revenge. During the course of the day I actually typed THE END in this book, so it was a really good day all round.

I ran a couple of competitions – one a giveaway of three signed copies of One Hot Summer, and the other a competition to have their name used in a book. Brilliant day, and a welcome break from my usual day.

I go on holiday very soon, to a little village called Mundesley in Norfolk. Our back bedroom looks… messy. The bed is covered with clothes, and I keep putting things in the holdall, then taking them out again. I’ll be glad when we’re on our way. Our house sitters thankfully won’t see their bed looking like that.

So, I am now looking forward to the November launch of The Family at No.12 – 29th November to be exact. This book wrote itself, and I loved writing it. What sparked the idea? I saw something in a newspaper and the phrase a house with no books was used. My book was born. As usual I had no idea of any sort of plot, but I put down my first sentence, and off I went. It was a joy to write, and I managed three murders during the course of it. Loved it, loved it, loved it. In addition the cover is something special, so all’s right in my world at the moment.

Anita xxx

My last blog post was dated September 2021, and I was living with the knowledge that my publishers, Bloodhound Books, had recently sold out to an American company, Open Road Media.

I was heartbroken. Seven years of being published by Bloodhound seemed for nothing, and then suddenly, out of the blue, I began to have talks with Boldwood Books. Sales had decreased dramatically with Bloodhound following the takeover, possibly because Open Road aren’t publishers, and I knew I had to move on, to leave the company I could never envisage leaving.

Boldwood offered me a five book deal. The first of those books, One Hot Summer, will be released on 25th August 2022, followed at the end of November by the second of the books, The Family at No. 12. These two books are standalones and couldn’t be more different! The first is a police procedural (not erotica as the title might suggest lol), set in Sheffield and is a tale of arson. The second book is a story of a child, born under appalling conditions and hidden away. It is much darker than my normal offerings, and it came about because I saw an article about a house with no books.

These two books are well on their way to launch, and I have now started the third book, which is book one in a series. The lead character, Matt Foster, is a DI in the police, but when he isn’t allowed to investigate the murder of his own father, he walks away. I am now halfway through the writing of it, have no idea yet where it’s going, but I do like my characters, so that’s a good start. This book will arrive on kindles, in paperback, in hardback, in audible, and large print, in March 2023. There will be two further books in the trilogy, and then I will go back to standalones for a while.

In my personal life I have managed to acquire a great-grandson by the name of William, born 19th December 2021. A proper cutie, love him to bits.

I continue to make journals, make all my own diaries (partly because I need dates setting in stone a long way in front of the current year) and generally love paper crafting. I do lots of thinking about where my stories go next when I have a tube of glue in my hand.

So that’s where I am – twenty books with Bloodhound Books, and now the beginning of the next leg of my career with Boldwood Books. I am indeed blessed.

Anita

Sheffield 2022

I rarely find time to write a new blog, or update this website, but the time has come to be a real author and knuckle down to something other than writing books.

I am very close to finishing my latest novel, Mortal Green, and it is the final one in the Connection Trilogy, which is in itself a spin off from the six book Kat and Mouse series. This will be my twentieth book with Bloodhound Books, something I could never have dreamed of back in 2015 when they took on my debut Novel, Beautiful. The three books in the trilogy are Blood Red (published 25 August 2021, Code Blue (launch date 24 November 2021), and Mortal Green (launch date 14 March 2022).

I am putting series work behind me for a time, because I have several different ideas running round my overworked brain for standalone stories. I am looking forward to this next writing period in my life, to meeting new characters, and new killers. It’s a strange world I inhabit.

On a personal note, Dave and I have so far managed to evade Coronavirus, are about to be triple jabbed, but I think we’ve accepted, reluctantly, that there will be no further Greek Island holidays for us. We kind of enjoyed a lovely week in Wales at Milford Haven in June, but unfortunately within ten minutes of our arrival at our holiday cottage Dave was in an ambulance heading for Withy Bush Hospital. He didn’t come back to us until the Tuesday, so only had Wednesday and Thursday, then back home Friday.

All my books are shown on this site, and all are available as signed copies. Just message me. I also have a page with short stories – help yourself to a little read! I’ve added a new one today, hope you enjoy it.

Thank you for joining me, your support over the last six years has been amazing.

Anita xxx

Time to let everyone know what is happening in my writing life – we are twelve days away from the launch of my seventeenth book with Bloodhound, Nine Lives.

Nine Lives is set in Sheffield, specifically using the River Porter almost as a character. I had to do loads of research because I knew nothing of this very pretty river – I do now, thanks to a man called Patrick Dickinson who videos Sheffield’s rivers. I contacted him, discovered all about the Pocket Park, asked him for information on where the best places would be to throw a body in, that sort of stuff I expected him to know, and he obliged.

So that’s what I’ve been doing and it will all come to fruition in less than two weeks.

I am just about to type THE END on my next book, and its long journey to publication starts at that point. This one is the first in a spin off series that began with Kat and Mouse. The new series is called the Connection Casefiles, and this first book in a planned trilogy is called We All Bleed Red. It features most of the team from Connection in the Kat and Mouse series, with a couple of additions and a couple of departures. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing this first book, and it’s due for launch on 25th August 2021.

I have made the decision that when the trilogy is written, I will then only write standalones. I am dabbling and playing around with writing a second supernatural one (Winterscroft is my only supernatural and my favourite) which may or may not see the light of day, but that is a slow burner which is being written alongside my Bloodhound books.

Bloodhound Books are an amazing company to work with. They took a huge gamble with me, an almost seventy-year-old wanting to publish her first book, and in 2015 accepted my manuscript. By the end of 2021 I will have nineteen books with them, and I owe them everything. I hope I have repaid their faith.

Wednesday 27 January 2021

I thought maybe it was time to fill everyone in on what is happening/has happened with my writing – I have been a published author for just over five years now, and it has been a whirlwind of a time. 

All of my books are published by Bloodhound Books and the first one, Beautiful, was launched 31 August 2015. My seventeenth will launch on 7 April 2021, and is called Nine Lives.

In between those two books there have been another fifteen, a mixture of standalone novels and a collection called the Kat and Mouse series. I was approached by Bloodhound with a suggestion that I might like to try my hand at a trilogy, a cosy mystery series.

This floored me a bit because I had no idea what a cosy mystery was, but I immediately said yes, figuring I could do research. The boss said a rural setting, a female lead, and don’t kill any kids or animals.

The rural setting became the beautiful plague village of Eyam, very near where I live for research probabilities, the female lead became three female leads, and in the first book I only killed two children. Murder Undeniable was born, and it sold extremely well. 

In November 2020 Bloodhound launched the final book in that series, Murder Unjoyful, which joined Murder Undeniable, Murder Unexpected, Murder Unearthed and Murder Untimely on bookshelves and eBooks around the world. In addition to these five, a spin-off was released which featured one of the much-loved characters in Kat and Mouse, Doris. That book is called Epitaph, and is best read after Murder Untimely and before Murder Unjoyful.

Much to the dismay of fans everywhere, the fifth was the final one, but after discussions with Bloodhound it was agreed I would do a three part series called the Connection Casefiles, but with a slight change of characters, and forgetting the cosy mystery side of it. I could kill who I wanted to kill! 

This is what I am currently writing. It doesn’t have a title yet, although it does have a working title of Redhead. I have introduced two important characters to the Connection Investigation Agency, and removed a couple, and it has been interesting creating different relationships. I hope you take these new people to your hearts as much as you did in the Kat and Mouse series, and yes, Luke is still there!

However, before that, Nine Lives will launch. This is a standalone novel, and the River Porter in Sheffield plays an important part, as does the rain. You’ll need an umbrella and a raincoat when you read this one. I have toyed with the idea of writing a serial killer story for some time, and this is it.

This is my brand new website, and I hope to be able to do a weekly blog, keeping you informed of my writing life. Thank you for reading this, have a look around the site and stay safe.