Hello my little chickadees how have you all been doing during this enforced lockdown? Just for a change I'm really interested, but mostly because I'm just bored.
I've been shielding for 12 months in my virtual, author victim's cave. Remember that imaginary place many of you visited in the heady days of freedom, with all those lovely smells of blood and gore? I haven't had a decent victim in here for at least two years. The only company I've got, are the remains of authors who are still hanging around in chains from the side of the cave. They only have themselves to blame. All I ask is for information on their latest books etc. If I have to do some harsh persuading to get it then so be it.
At the back of the cave where it was quieter, I found a few tasty morsels; mostly bits of limbs from previous occupants. They were going a bit rancid, but when you're hungry you can't be too fussy. To fill my time, I started to reminisce about all the other author blogs I'd done over time. They seemed to be really popular and the stats were very pleasing.
Now that I've resurrected it again, I thought I'd have a slight change. I'm going to tell you about an anthology that the members of the UK Crime Book Club put together. Will Templeton and Kath Middleton did most of the leg work, while I sat and watched. It was decided that all the proceeds would go to the Red Kite Academy Corby Northants, a ‘richly diverse community in which children with many special needs, languages, cultures and religions learn together in harmony’.
All of the authors, have donated their work free of charge. You may find a favourite author here, or discover a new favourite. Their stories cover crime in all its aspects. You'll find stories to terrify you, mystify you, or maybe even raise a smile. The anthology is called Criminal Shorts and well worth the money, whether you buy paperback or kindle. I read it in one sitting, but then I love crime. I think we'll leave that hanging there! I'm just so giving all the time. Here is the link (Click on the cover)
I wanted to thank the authors that contributed, so I thought what could be better than invite them to my virtual cave. They have no idea what goes on here and most of them were eager to comply. I think word got out to some of the others though, as they are being backward in coming forward. Well they will miss out on all my virtual, adaptable, torturous implements I keep here. It's their loss - or gain depending on your point of view.
Having finished chewing on a few old bones that had a juicy bit of gristle left to suck (don't judge me, I'm not fussy about the smell) it occurred to me that you may like to meet the authors who contributed to the anthology so here is a selection of them ready to introduce themselves. In each case, they will tell you a little bit about themselves and add a synopsis of their work. They are even brave enough to add a photo. You have been warned!
WILL TEMPLETON
I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember, focussing on playwriting for many years, with a number of successful productions under my belt. Despite my fondness for stagecraft, the lure of prose tempted me away from dialogue, eventually resulting in the release of my first crime novel, “Births, Marriages and Death”. The strong positive response has been overwhelming, ensuring I’ll be having to think of the stuff between the talkie-bits for the foreseeable future.
Synopsis: When the proceeds of a robbery are “lost” in the forest, the police enlist the assistance of the Wild Man of the Woods, Jack Green, in finding the whereabouts of the loot. Mingling elements of fantasy and folklore with a strong crime theme, betrayal and deception follow as it becomes clear that someone is not who they appear to be.
Links:
Visit Will's Link
BEN BRUCE
I’ve been writing all my life; telling stories is something I’ve always adored doing, but my first foray into novels came in 2018 with the release of The Regulators. I’m currently putting the finishing touches to the third part in the opening trilogy of that book series, which will be out this year. I’m really looking forward to working on some new standalone stories over the next couple of years, before I return to The Regulators.
Synopsis: In life we face moments where our fate is determined by a simple choice and that’s what Six Minutes is. It’s a tale about a boy, not yet a man, but trying to make a man’s choice. We follow him as he works his way through his options, trying to decide what’s right or wrong, but with time slipping away from him, propelling him towards making a decision one way or another.
Links:
Visit my page, where you can sign up to my newsletter and stay abreast of all my forthcoming projects.
JAN EDWARDS
I love writing short fiction and have had a great many published over the years. Most are in the folk horror and fantasy field. It was writing Sherlock Holmes stories, in various anthologies edited by people such as Maxim Jakubowski and David Marcum, which lured me into a life of crime.
Synopsis: It’s always hard to give a synopsis for any short story because they are – well – short, but I shall give it a go. ‘Down to the Sea’ came about as a side shoot from one of me WW2 crime series In Her Defence : Bunch Courtney Investigation #3. This short story began as one of those blind alleys that a plot occasionally rushes into. I could never get it to fit in, no matter how hard I tried. It does have a fleeting mention – by which I mean half a sentence that is probably never to be identified as the link by anybody but me.
What is it about? Its 1940 in England and DCI William Wright finds himself on the blitz-torn London docks in search of a missing witness. What he finds in the process is trouble in the guise of an old adversary and showdown shenanigans ensue!
Links:
Visit my Blog which includes my work as an editor of fantasy and horror anthologies for The Alchemy Press.
BARBARA NORREY
My literary background is that I’m simply a scribbler, have always been one, and have been blessed (or cursed) with an overactive imagination. I enjoy writing, and I was the ghastly geek who had her essays read out in English class most weeks. I desperately wanted to be a journalist when I was younger, but that was a tough road, a different time and I lacked confidence. Mind you, I wanted to be a missionary at one point because I had a crush on the vicar – I’m not sure what that says about me!
For the anthology, the wonderfully supportive virtual atmosphere of the UKCBC Facebook group, and the good cause they were supporting, gave me the courage to try my hand at submitting my story. I was blown away to be included in this wonderful book filled by talented writers.
Synopsis: I set off to write about the invidious effect of emotional and verbal bullying, and the idea of the victim fighting back, instead of turning the other cheek. But the story took on a life of its own and flip flopped into the latter being the thing that brought results, with no ‘fight’ as such being necessary! But can a lack of action truly be labelled as murderous, however cold blooded it may seem? That is for the reader to discover.
Links: None to show at the moment.
KATH MIDDLETON
I’ve been writing all my life but only began publishing in 2013. I began with a collaboration of drabbles – 100 word stories, but since my first solo book saw the light in 2014 I’ve been constantly scribbling. The pandemic has caused a bit of a glitch but I’m hoping to get back in the saddle before long.
Synopsis: Dark Fires
I began my story with a young woman in a police cell, having spent the night there, accused of starting fires. Only at that point did I wonder whether or not she had. As I continued to write I found the focus of the story changed for me. I love it when the story tells you where it wants to go!
BILL TODD
I've worked as a journalist on local and national newspapers and as a travel writer, visiting more than 40 countries. After many years of 'Who? What? When? Where? Why?' it was wonderful to put down the reporter's notebook and set my imagination free. Now I have written seven Danny Lancaster crime thrillers. The first ebook is free on Amazon Kindle, the rest are 99p each. All can be read as standalones. In addition, I've authored three military histories based on family diaries. I have a number of writing projects on the go but newborn grandson Jack and his two-year-old brother Theo are proving to be a distraction.
Synopsis: Writing a novel is big fun but it's also a marathon. I thought I would take my main character, wounded soldier turned investigator Danny Lancaster, for a short sprint. So he finds himself in a small corner store. All he wants is a bit of shopping but Danny gets more than he bargained for.
Links:
http://www.billtodd.co.uk
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5804102.Bill_Todd
Twitter: https://twitter.com/williamjtodd - @williamjtodd
Twitter: https://twitter.com/@DannyLancaster3 - @DannyLancaster3
Facebook: www.facebook.com/DannyLancasterInvestigates/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/billtodd_writer/ - @billtodd_writer
http://mybook.to/WreckOfTheMargherita
http://mybook.to/DeathSquad
http://mybook.to/roughdiamond
http://mybook.to/rockhard
http://mybook.to/GargoylePixieDog
http://mybook.to/GodlefesCuckoo
http://mybook.to/LastOrders
JACK PROBYN
Like many authors, I started writing when I was young. As a child I grew up with the Harry Potter series, which was my first proper venture into reading that I remember, followed by the Alex Rider spy series. Since then, I've enjoyed both the pleasures of reading and writing. It wasn't until I went to university and studied English Literature with Creative Writing that I realised I wanted to develop it further. The first novel I wrote was spawned from a writing assessment. It was terrible and is currently sitting on my hard drive somewhere. Perhaps one day I'll dust it off the virtual shelves and turn it into something cohesive. For now, I'll continue the Jake Tanner crime series - with a few more series planned. After entering into the world of work at a toy and games company, I've since decided to take the independent route, sustain a living with my books and work for myself for the rest of my life. One day soon it'll happen. Thanks to all the wonderful people at the UKCBC Facebook Group, I'm getting closer!
Synopsis: Death's Embrace:
The body of a successful club and casino owner is found face-down in the farmlands of Croydon. His
head crushed, split in two. Jake Tanner, Temporary Detective Constable with Croydon Police, soon learns that, in this town, a lot of people hold their cards close to their chest.
Links:
SUE McGONIGAL
For years I squeezed my writing time in wherever possible, fitting it in around long days working in the public sector. After having penned a number of short stories and two novels (A Confusion of Crows and Feather and Claw) I jumped at the chance to leave the corporate world and spend more time of the things I love: writing, overseeing a house renovation project and creating a self-sufficient garden for myself and my husband. In the intervening years, I have since published the third in the DC Cat McKenzie series, The Body Politic and have written a further two novels, due to be published in 2021, including the first in a new series, Paid for in Blood, featuring blind detective, DI Matt Fisher.
Synopsis: (written under my pen name, Susan Handley) Robbed:
Robbie Gilham is back on the street after serving eight long years for armed robbery. Now it’s time to collect his dues and win back his family. Unfortunate for Robbie, he’s not the only one who’s been waiting. In the race to
get to the spot where he left the spoils of his crime, Robbie soon learns that, whilst in prison so little changes, the same can’t be said for the world outside and time stands still for no man.
Links:
https://susanhandley.co.uk
Facebook: @SusanHandleyAuthor
Twitter: @shandleyauthor
ANDY BARRETT
Andrew Barrett has enjoyed variety in his professional life, from engine-builder to farmer, from Oilfield Service Technician in Kuwait, to his current role of Senior CSI in Yorkshire.
He’s been a CSI since 1996, and has worked on all scene types from terrorism to murder, suicide to rape, drugs manufacture to bomb scenes. One way or another, Andrew’s life revolves around crime.
In 1997 he finished his first crime thriller, A Long Time Dead, and it’s still a readers’ favourite today, some 150,000 copies later, topping the Amazon charts several times. Two more books featuring SOCO Roger Conniston completed the trilogy.
Today, Andrew is still producing high-quality, authentic crime thrillers with a forensic flavour that attract attention from readers worldwide. He’s also attracted attention from the Yorkshire media, having been featured in the Yorkshire Post, and twice interviewed on BBC Radio Leeds.
He’s best known for his lead character, CSI Eddie Collins, and the acerbic way in which he roots out criminals and administers justice. Eddie’s series is six books and four novellas in length, and there’s still more to come.
Andrew is a proud Yorkshireman and sets all of his novels there, using his home city of Leeds as another major, and complementary, character in each of the stories.
Synopsis Eye Contact:
Eddie Collins is a Crime Scene Investigator who is exceptionally good at collecting the evidence that helps solve the crimes. He’s also a grumpy bastard.
Ask him who he’d love to spend an evening with, and he’d say he was busy grinding his toenails.
He doesn’t get along with people very well, so you have to feel sorry then for his father, Charles, who lives with him.
Determined to make an effort for Charles’s 70th birthday, Eddie leaves work early and promises his father a day to remember – shopping at Eric’s Bargain Basement, where there was a special on athlete’s foot powder. Not once were the words ‘jewellery shop heist’ mentioned in the afternoon’s itinerary, but that’s precisely where Eddie ends up, his head against the barrel of a nervous man’s gun, a man who said, “Go ahead, punk, make my day.”
Will Eddie get out alive? Will he make it to Eric’s Bargain Basement before they close? Most importantly, will Eddie ever make his father proud?
Links:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Andrew-Barrett/e/B0055888Q0?
https://www.andrewbarrett.co.uk
T G CAMPBELL
T.G. Campbell writes the Bow Street Society Mystery series of books and the Bow Street Society Casebook series of short story collections. She has previously worked for a non-profit organisation assisting witnesses and victims through the process of giving evidence at court. Unsurprisingly, then,
she’s fascinated by the formative years of the Metropolitan Police and the history of the famous Bow Street Law Court and Police Station. With a love of all things Victorian she throws herself into in-depth research of the era to inform her writing. Therefore, she has a large collection of original books from the nineteenth century, a plethora of maps, and innumerable photographs and notes from various museums and exhibits she’s visited.
Synopsis Devils Dare:
London, 1896 and Dr Charles McWilliams is distraught as he relates the details of his bizarre case to Miss Rebecca Trent, the clerk of the Bow Street Society. He alleges his friend Dr Westley Devereux vanished before his eyes after challenging Satan to steal him away from the infamous Devil’s Arch. Accepting Dr McWilliams’s commission, Miss Trent assigns illusionist Mr Percy Locke and Spiritualist Mr Virgil Verity to investigate. Drawing upon the knowledge and expertise of their respective occupations, the two Bow Streeters soon uncover the surprising truth behind Dr Devereux’s disappearance in this cautionary tale of what happens when science and the paranormal collide.
About the Bow Street Society/website: The Case of the Devil’s Dare is the first time the Bow Street Society has appeared in an anthology outside the Bow Street Society Casebook series. The Bow Street Society is a fictional group of amateur detectives. Each of its civilian members has been enlisted for their unique skill or exceptional knowledge in a particular field derived from their usual occupation. Members are assigned to cases, by the Society's clerk, Miss Trent, based upon these skills and fields of knowledge.
Links:
www.bowstreetsociety.com
LEXIE CONYNGHAM
Lexie Conyngham is a historian living in the shadow of the Highlands. Her historical crime novels are born of a life amidst Scotland’s old cities, ancient universities and hidden-away aristocratic estates, but she has written since the day she found out that people were allowed to do such a thing. Beyond teaching and research, her days are spent with wool, wild allotments and a wee bit of whisky.
Synopsis: Special Delivery.
About a courier who arrives with a parcel only to find that the man it's intended for is dead, and he's quickly helping the police with their enquiries. I was intrigued by the idea of starting a book with someone walking into a busy situation he didn't understand, and that seemed a good place to start for a short story, too. Apart from that the story was one of those ones that just seems to happen - though I can say that the room in the story that contains only a cistern handle and nothing else was something we found when viewing a house, once!
Links:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lexie-Conyngham/e/B008XH0YQ2
TONY FORDER
I achieved some success many years ago with short stories, but since being made redundant in 2016 I’ve had the pleasure of publishing or having had published 11 novels and 1 novella, many in my DI Bliss crime series.
Synopsis: Mission Accomplished
Taking time out from major crimes back in England, DI Jimmy Bliss and his partner, DS Penny Chandler travel to Ireland to visit Jimmy’s mother. During the drive from the airport they almost collide with a speeding vehicle, and shortly afterwards encounter the owner of a petrol station who has just been the victim of an assault. Unsatisfied with the man’s explanation, Bliss and Chandler do some unauthorised digging, and in the process tread on the toes of some influential people.
Links: https://www.tonyjforder.com/
Fantastic Fiction: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/f/tony-j-forder/
Amazon Author: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tony-J-Forder/e/B01N4BPT65
SAMANTHA BROWNLEY
At the end of 2019, I took a year off work to write a book. That didn't happen, thanks to a pesky pandemic, but something else that's rather wonderful did. I got to spend a lot of time at home with my husband and children and I offered to become an admin in a book club. Since then, I have gained a partner in crime, made some fantastic friends and further cemented my addiction to crime fiction with some amazing books and authors. I’m now published in a charity anthology and get away with 'professionally stalking' our talented members and I couldn't be happier!
Synopsis:Six Pieces Each. (writing as Sam Thomas)
Josie is trying to balance work and her relationship, not easy when you test the up and comers in a criminal gang for a living. The story details a day in her life with some violence that was really fun to write! The story didn't turn out anything like I had originally planned, all that remained was Josie. I like her a lot!
Links:
https://www.facebook.com/SamThomasAuthor/
https://www.instagram.comsamthomasauthor/
https://twitter.comSamBrownley
A selection of the Authors favourite Reviews:
**It’s great to see the motivations behind our readers and to know that the UKCBC Group has impacted people to where they’re motivated to buy books, and to help good causes, speaks volumes to the work that has been put in by so many people to make it such a great community.
**Of the many reviews on Amazon for Criminal Shorts the comment that recurs in one form or another in so many is that the readers loved it even though they don’t usually read short fiction, and how it has introduced them to so many writers they had never come across before.
Anthologies have sadly been missing from main stream publishing over the past few decades and yet there was a time when short crime fiction was favoured by the greats. Most of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes oeuvre, for example, as well as a vast amount of Agatha Christie’s back catalogue.
**This was the perfect book for when I was suffering from Covid. I'd lost interest in reading novels, so dipping into these short stories was just the cure.
This was certainly a diverse selection of stories, even though the theme was crime. We met up with a few
familiar faces and for me some new ones that I will start investigating more of.
A cracking read, scored 5 stars because there was not a bad story in this bunch.
**This anthology of short stories by some of the very best UK crime writers was really very good. When authors can make you attached to characters in a short story, what is there not to like.
There is a very good mixture of stories and it is a lot of quick journeys for the mind to in switching of characters and settings.
That does not make any of the stories any less 'wholesome' in any way. If anything it makes you want the characters that could be expanded on made into novels and most definitely another collection of stories.
**Brian Caves's review really sums up the spirit and content of the anthology: '22 superb crime stories, all different and appealing to all tastes. Dark, light, funny, bloody. Cracking crime reads.'
**Great little book for dipping into for a short read. Very diverse range of stories, but all enjoyable. I discovered this book via an author I love - Jon Mayhew, but it's also a great way to find a new author. I found myself searching for more books by some of the authors. This book is sold to raise money for an amazing school called Red Kite Special Academy. The forward written by the Headteacher and a letter from a parent touched my heart and soul. Thank you to all who contributed to this book, for giving us a great collection of short stories but also for helping such a worthy school and making us aware of Red Kite Special Academy.
Author Note: I like this review for several reasons. It highlights the reason behind the anthology more than any other review - supporting the Red Kite Special Academy and raising awareness about what they do there. It also shines some lovely light on the short stories included.
**I'm not normally a fan of short stories, but this collection might have just converted me. One of the reasons for me buying this collection was because it was put together by one of my favourite Facebook book groups, the other was because it was created to raise funds for a very special school. Each of the stories showcases the talents of the authors involved, who are exceptional in their own right but together they've managed to create something so much more than the sum of the parts.
**An excellent collection of short crime stories with everything from a Victorian investigators group, ghosts, blackmail and an elephant's backside. The reader also commits a murder! Really good reading, serious, funny, gory and disturbing.
**The Criminal Shorts Anthology is a perfect way of discovering new authors. Because the stories are short, it gives the reader the perfect opportunity to dip in randomly when you take a break from life chores. There are many diverse plot lines covered by each of the authors and I highly recommend it.
So there you have it folks. There are some really amazing authors here and I advise you to check them all out and see if their work is to your taste. I've read most of them and gone on to read the complete collections. Remember that all the author's have contributed their work free, yes FREE!
Pop in to see me when I post my next blog. They are going to be random and diverse.
Laters Potaters
