Tag: The Cold Cold Sea

  • Snow… and a #freebook

    Winter has arrived in N.E. Switzerland. By the middle of last week, a sugar-coating of snow was covering our local Alpstein mountains, and I went for a tramp above St Gallen with a friend. Then yesterday (Saturday), we had the serious snow. 30cm plus fell on St Gallen, so the path we walked along will…

  • The week the snow came…

    At 430m above sea, my home here in the north-east is in one of the lowest areas in Switzerland. In winter, it regularly happens that while everywhere else is being sprinkled with scenic whiteness from above, we get rain. And to tell you the truth, that suits me just fine. Snow is fun for a…

  • The Writing Life…

    Lots of people say it, and it’s true – writing is one third actual writing, and two thirds all the other ‘stuff’ – editing, arranging promotions, thinking and plotting, editing, organising cover images, learning how to do things with your computer that you’d never hear of ten years ago, editing… you get the picture. This…

  • Cornwall…

    …is the setting for my second novel. Which, as of today, is also my seventh novel… The Cold Cold Sea was re-released today with a fab new cover by The Cover Collection – I love it! I have lovely memories of Cornwall, especially the north coast around Newquay, so here are a few pics of…

  • The Cold Cold Sea – a book with many covers…

    During the writing process, I’m not sure what I was expecting to see on the cover of my second book. It had various working titles along the way, until The Cold Cold Sea came to mind while I was looking at photos of Cornwall one day. I suppose I thought my book would look something…

  • Doctor! Doctor!

    Like most people who have ever taught English as a foreign language, I have a large collection of jokes. If you give your students a page of text to read as homework, they may or may not do it. If, however, you give them a page of jokes on the same subject, it’s a different…

  • Cold Sophie… and new book

    It’s that time of year again. The Ice Saints, or Eisheiligen as they’re known in German. Each day of the year has its own saint, and the ice ones start on May 11th with Mamertus, and continue with Pancras, Servatius, and Boniface on the 12th, 13th and 14th, finishing off with Sophie on the 15th.…

  • Numbers, and £££, and an auction…

    Writers work with words. That’s a fact, but numbers play a part too. Not only do we have sales figures and the dreaded Amazon rankings to contend with, we have to think about price and profit and tax returns and accounts and all the other etceteras. And I’ve always been terrible at maths. Sales figures…

  • 2015 – The best of times and the worst of times… (a mimimalist’s version)

    This time tomorrow, 2015 will be a thing of the past and we’ll all be watching the New Year’s Concert from Vienna. It’s been a year of ups and downs… Best moment: Holding The Attic Room for the first time. Second and third best moments: Holding the audio version of The Cold Cold Sea and…

  • Close Encounters of the Malware Kind, or: How to Kill your Computer…

    Tuesday morning started off like any other Tuesday morning here in N.E. Switzerland. By eight o’clock I was at my desk overlooking the woods, sorting through the new emails, deleting the junk ones, saving those that had to be answered. First on my main email account, then on gmail. Then I turned my attention to…