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As of 1st April 2024 (no fooling) Harry Fisher has moved on (amicably) from Hobeck Books and is now flying solo.

You can read all about it in the May edition of Keeping You in the Loop: https://bit.ly/44nmDnM

When Yes, I Killed Her was about to launch, I approached James Oswald (Scottish crime writer and Kindle Best Seller with the Inspector Tony McLean mysteries) to ask if he’d be willing to read my book and, if he liked it, endorse it. I was delighted when he said he would, with the caveat along the lines of “as long as it’s good” – I’m paraphrasing, naturally. You can imagine how chuffed I was when he did read it and, along with other complimentary remarks, said, “I’d recommend this to anyone”. But for me the most important thing about all this is that I didn’t know James at all, we’d never met, and we had no mutual friends – so his recommendation is entirely impartial. I’ve met him now, and he’s an absolute topper of a bloke. Read his books here … https://amzn.to/3PetLwv

Yes, I Killed Her DI Mel Cooper #3 published in May ‘22. We had two launch events – one in Aberdeen and one in Edinburgh. About 150 lovely people came along and I met lots of friends, old and new.

Thank you in particular to my cousin David Ferguson and his wife, Yvonne for arranging the use of the Waverley Lawn Tennis, Squash & Sports Club for the Edinburgh event.

On 3rd January 2023, I was deeee-lighted to hear that book 3 in the DI Mel Cooper series Yes, I Killed Her had been awarded Crime Book of the Year 2022 by the indie website www.chillwithabook.com

These awards were the brainchild of the wonderful Pauline Barclay who launched and ran her awards programme in support of indie publishers and authors. Regrettably, and for perfectly valid reasons, during 2023 Pauline took the decision to close the programme after seven years of fantastic effort in support of many different people in the writing community. I’m incredibly grateful and humbled to have won the final Crime Book of the Year – good luck and all the best for the future, Pauline.

In October 2022, my first book Way Beyond A Lie, was entered into a free ebook promotion through Bookbub and Amazon. Incredibly, it was downloaded over 38,000 times in a five day period. Yes, you read that correctly – over 38,000 times! As a result, for one full day, it reached #1 in the Kindle Free Chart – Worldwide. It was also #1 in the Crime Fiction category for three days. Now, despite it being the Free Chart, this is still a HUGE thing because all the big authors will put their books up for free from time to time, usually to help promote later books in their series.

So, Way Beyond A Lie was up against best-selling authors, and still came out on top. As you can imagine, I was chuffed to little mintballs.

Exciting Stuff

Out and About

I appeared at Granite Noir 2024 - Aberdeen’s crime festival – as part of the “Locals in the Limelight” initiative. A selection of local authors were given five minutes at the start of author panels to talk about our writing. The authors on my panel were Catherine Kirwan and Ruth Mancini, both are lawyers who write crime thrillers. I read an extract from my forthcoming book – 48 Hours, Then She Dies – and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. My next step would be to appear as a panellist in my own right at next year’s event. Fingers crossed.

So, what is Noir at the Bar? Stemming from four original events in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and New York, these events have sprung up all over the UK. The concept is simple: a bunch of writers come together at night, in a bar, stand in front of an audience full of crime buffs and read an excerpt of their work. Organised by the wonderful Jacky Collins (aka Dr Noir) this event was set in The Canon’s Gait – on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, and I was in company with 10 other authors. I read an extract from my forthcoming book – 48 Hours, Then She Dies – and had a great time. One of the other readings was about a man who goes into his local Council offices to complain about a letter he’d received – it said he was dead. Sadly, the Council employee refused to believe him …

My bio says “he is a confident and engaging public speaker who loves chatting about crime writing, especially meeting people face to face”. During 2023, I organised a mini-tour of some of Edinburgh’s libraries (see tee-shirt), met lots of lovely people, sold a few books (always a bonus) and reconnected with a few relatives, and a couple of friends I hadn’t seen for 30-odd years. Wonderful.

Hopefully there will be more of these to come in 2024 and beyond.

This is definitely one of best fun events I’ve ever taken part in. In March 2023, I was invited to take part in World of Work Week at Loirston Primary School in Cove, Aberdeen, where a selection of people spoke to groups of 11 and 12 year-olds about our work. Suffice to say, the event was a tad nerve-wracking, utterly satisfying, and at times absolutely hilarious. The kids were top class as I explained basic criminal forensics and “caught” the teacher who’d “stolen” my phone. Then there were the questions … As an experience it was a hoot, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Out and About

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