Nearly a week on from publication of Return to the Lakeside Hotel, and life is settling down again in N.E. Switzerland. Huge thanks here to everyone who has tweeted, shared, commented on posts, or bought, borrowed and read books. I’m really pleased to see the ‘Switzerland’ books going out in the world as full length fiction. The series continues with Problems at the Lakeside Hotel, which will be out in the second half of May, most probably the 22nd. By this time (hopefully), spring will be here, temperatures will be rising and so will Lake Constance, because it’s around the end of May that the snow melt comes down from the mountains to fill our lovely lake. We didn’t get much snow melt last year, and we could use it now. It’s the snow melt and the rising lake that makes for the biggest problem in Problems at the Lakeside Hotel, but Stacy and Rico have various mini-problems to cope with too, running round in circles after new receptionists, warring guests and lost rodents… I’ll be sharing the cover image in a couple of weeks.

I actually wanted to release Problems… nearer the start of the month, but Amazon promotion schedules dictate otherwise and I do want to start the new book’s life with all three at a nice bargain price. If any other indie/hybrid author is interested, I’ve followed the release strategy/pricing advice (tailored to my own budget) David Gaughran gives in his Starting from Scratch course. So far, so good.

In other book news, Stolen Sister is on a UK Kindle Monthly Deal, just 99p all April. This book, along with Daria’s Daughter, is the least ‘crime-ish’ of my crime fiction books – in fact, no crime at all is committed in Daria’s Daughter. There is a crime in Stolen Sister, but it happened for the best of reasons and Erin, the girl on the cover there, had a normal, happy childhood. Her sister Vicky grew up equally unaware that she’d once had a sister; Erin had been lost for twenty-two years before Vicky learned of her existence and started to search. But how do you find someone when there’s no official record of her, and when she has no idea she’s missing?
This book – like Daria’s Daughter – is set in Glasgow, where I grew up.

The blog will be on holiday for Easter next week, and the week after, Rebecca Collins, publishing director at Hobeck Books will be here with two of her favourite book covers. One of them involves – in a way – a cat. 🙂

I’ll leave you with another Switzerland pic. This is one of the tourist boats approaching Arbon harbour. Stacy and Emily take a trip on on one of these in Saving the Lakeside Hotel, but it doesn’t turn out quite how they expected…

…their boat was waiting, a big white passenger ferry that could have been on a tourist poster. In fact, it probably was on a tourist poster somewhere.