Audiobooks with new covers now available wide!

I have some very exciting news…all three of the 1920s London books are now available wide in audio with new covers!

You can find most of my audiobooks at my Authors Direct page—all three 1920s London books can be bought for $20!—but they are also available wide at Apple, Hoopla, Scribd, LibroFM, Kobo, Chirp etc. and I think Audible have them on Whispersync—I am perpetually confused by how they work. I know some audio-library services are carrying them too. I hope you enjoy listening to them as much as I’ve enjoyed hearing Callum bring the characters to life!

You can listen to the first half hour of Lost in Time here at Bookfunnel.

Lost in Time

Gruesome murders taking place across 1920s London draw Lew and Alec together through the desolation of the East End and the smoky music clubs of Soho. They both have secrets that could get them arrested or killed. In the middle of a murder investigation that involves wild magic, mysterious creatures and illegal sexual desire, who is safe to trust?

Not Lew, who is struggling to get to grips with life a century before he was born. Or Alec, who wants Lew in his bed, despite liking him for murder.

You can listen to the first half hour of Lost in Time here at Bookfunnel!

Buy Lost in Time from Authors Direct – Buy Elsewhere

#1 in the Lost in Time series. m/m paranormal, historical, romantic suspense of 53,000 words, set in 1920’s London.

Shadows on the Border

In 1920s London Lew and his lover Detective Alec Carter are working out the parameters of their new relationship. Lew is torn between staying in the past and trying to get back to 2016. Alec is wrestling with the idea of being in love with a magician. Meanwhile Alec’s sergeant, Will Grant, is drawn to the mysterious Fenn, a hunter from the Outlands.

Moving through the contrasting rich and poor areas of post-First World War London from West End hotels to the London docklands, the team need to work together to prevent more killings and choose what — and who — they may need to give up to find any kind of peace.

Buy Shadows on the Border from Authors Direct – Buy Elsewhere

#2 in the Lost in Time series. m/m and m/enby paranormal, historical, romantic suspense of 58,000 words set in 1920s London. Sequel to Lost in Time, which should be read first.

The Hunted and the Hind

Inadvertently tumbling through the border into the Outlands after Fenn, Sergeant Will Grant of the Metropolitan Police has spent three months imprisoned by the Frem. When Fenn frees him, they step through the border to the Egyptian desert. It’s a two week ocean-liner journey back to England, with the possibility of magical pursuit. Will the journey give Fenn and Will time to resolve the feelings they have been dancing around since the day they met?

Buy The Hunted and the Hind from Authors Direct – Buy Elsewhere

#3 in the Lost in Time series. m/enby paranormal, historical, romantic suspense of 40,400 words set in 1920s London. Sequel to Lost in Time and Shadows on the Border, which should be read first.

Three audiobook covers, Lost in Time, Shadows on the Border, The Hunted and the Hind.

The Hunted & the Hind: Knitting a universe versus snappy dialogue

Cover, audiobook, The Hunted and the Hind

I thought I’d talk a bit today about the differences between writing historical stories and paranormal stories, with particular reference to The Hunted and the Hind, which is coming soon to audio. Most of my stories have magic and the paranormal in them, but I see myself as being more a historical writer than a fantasy writer—I try and get my history right and then throw in the extra ‘what if’ of the magic.

One of the things I like a great deal about my paranormal universe is that no-one, not even me, knows exactly how everything fits together. This is great as a writer because you can basically darn up plot-holes as you go along, but it is also a bit nerve-wracking, because you can write yourself into those same plot holes and it’s excruciating trying to dig out of them. Someone on twitter asked how I kept track of my magic system a while back and my answer was that I didn’t really, but in my head it looks like a room full of balls of wool and excited kittens. This is still true, although since that conversation I’ve started keeping detailed notes because it was all getting a bit out of hand.

Writing the historical parts of the stories is completely different. I like to have a clear idea of the period I’m writing in—for the 1920s now, I think I’ve got quite a grip on it. I started off with family stories about the period and then did lots of reading around, about specific areas of London, specific things that happened that I wanted to touch my characters in some way. It’s a much more measured approach. I sometimes get sidetracked by research into things that seem to blow up in my mind as immensely important and might only have a sentence in the finished book. In The Flowers of Time, for example, I became obsessed with how to make light in the Himalayas in the 1700s and ended up making not only my own butter-lamps, but my own butter.

For The Hunted and the Hind I got sucked down a sea-travel rabbit-hole that seemed to be endless. The characters take a liner home from Egypt to England and I needed to satisfy myself that I’d got the detail right before I started shoving magical happenings into the story. That seems to be the way it works for me—I get the historical period straight in my mind, I have my characters and then I say ‘what if this happened?’. It’s my own particular version of the writer habit of killing your darlings.

As the writer though, one of the most fun things about the 1920s books is the snippy dialogue between the main characters. It was really nice to get back into that when I began to write again. However, I didn’t want Hunted to be another Alec and Lew book, they’d had their turn and I wanted to focus on Fenn and Will. I ended up cutting quite a bit of Alec and Lew scenes because they were just there so I could write snarky dialogue that ending in shagging. Which is what I have as a deleted scene for you today!

The Hunted and the Hind is coming to audio in the next few weeks, narrated by the inestimable Callum Hale–catch up with the audios of Lost in Time and Shadows on the Border here.

The Hunted and the Hind

#3 in the Lost in Time 1920s series.

Listen to Angel Martinez reading an excerpt for Friday Reading Day.

Deleted Scene from The Hunted and the Hind

“No,” said Alec, very firmly.
“I think you should,” said Lew, mildly. “It would be very helpful.”
“No,” said Alec, again.
“Please?” Lew tried.
Alec sighed. He was going to lose this battle. “Honestly, I have no idea what I’m going to do about it,” he said. “We can’t go on much longer…his mother…,” he trailed off.
“Well, yes,” Lew said. “You’ll have to speak to her. But…,”
“What?”
“She must know about the border, mustn’t she? Grant had training from his father.”
There was a thoughtful pause.
“Yes…,” Alec said, finally.
“So, and forgive me if this seems in any way less simple than it seems…we could just tell her the truth.”
That honestly hadn’t occurred to Alec. He stared at Lew.
“The truth?”
“Yes. The truth.” He paused. “Horrific thought that seems?”
There was a relatively long silence.
“Well…,” Alec was just making noises with his mouth whilst his brain processed.
Lew turned his head on the pillow and looked at him enquiringly. “Yes…?”
“The truth? I suppose…,”
“Yes…,” Lew’s tone was one of exquisite patience. Alec realised he was taking the mickey.
“Oh, do be quiet,” Alec conceded. “Fine. We’ll tell her the truth.”
“Will said she was away,” Lew said. “Can you find out when she’s back?”
“I’ll telephone her house,” Alec conceded. “And make some inquiries.”
“Good plan,” Lew said. “Well done for coming up with it!”
Alec punched him in a friendly fashion on his naked shoulder and things quickly deteriorated in to activities that meant words weren’t very necessary.

The Flowers of Time: Jones and Gender

Let’s talk about gender with regard to Jones in The Flowers of Time today, just because, including a deleted scene.

It got to the point as I was writing where I felt there was altogether too much pondering and self-examination by Jones in the early part of the book. Although she’s doing a lot of self-examination, there’s another part of her that just wants to get on with things. And I began to feel as if I was making her an info-dump type of character and the book was becoming a bit more of an examination of how she felt about herself than a road-trip with botany and monsters who melt people.

So… generally speaking, Jones is pretty grumpy at having to make any sort of choice about gender. She never really had to think about it before she went to London. She was extremely reluctant to carry out the death-bed promise to her father to travel to England and try out being a lady of good family. Coming home to the mountains was a huge relief and she now has mixed feelings about her budding friendship with the Mertons if it means she has to behave in a particular way to meet their social expectations.

She’s a bit confused all round, really, and she resents having to put thought in to these messy, human relationships rather than concentrate on her work. She’s definitely a person who sees her mind as important rather than her body. I love her dearly and it hurt a lot to have to delete this scene about her deliberations–it had to go because it was slowing down the pace of the story. It was part of her growth as a person and it still definitely happened in my Jones-head-cannon!

Deleted Scene: Jones’ Preparations

So by the time the Mertons arrived, she was ready. They took a week to make their own preparations for the mountain trails, but Carruthers and Merton seemed to be competent and she left them to it, mostly spending her time with Miss Merton. Initially she felt that it might be a chore, but her initial impression of Edith as a correct English Miss had become modified as the days progressed and she showed her around the lakes and rivers of the city. Jones had always liked Srinagar. It was one of the places she and her father crossed through fairly regularly, both to send communications south to Bombay and several times to take a house there for a few months. Miss Merton’s excitement and pleasure in the scenery and her interest in talking to the residents and attempting to learn their language as she spoke with them meant the time went much more quickly than Jones had anticipated.

Likewise, the party seemed perfectly content with her natural choice to dress as she pleased. Carruthers’ young assistants simply accepted her as a male. She didn’t have much to do with them regardless, but it was pleasant not to be looked at with askance as she had feared when she had seen Miss Merton’s face on the road outside Srinagar. Edith had quickly schooled her expression, and her treatment of Jones had not changed. She had invited her to call her by her first name that evening and that seemed a mark of confidence in their budding friendship. Neither had Carruthers and Merton spoken to her with any caution or disapproval and their example had led to the rest of their party treating her as she wished, which was to essentially ignore her sex and rather pay attention to her thoughts and wishes.

It was very nice to feel that she might have made a friend in Miss Merton. They had been few and far between in her travels with her father, particularly with women, simply because they had been almost constantly in motion and when not in motion, absorbed in the work. She had never had the opportunity before simply to have a friendship that was not also complicated with the bonds of family- as with Dechen, Sonam, Amit and Kishor- or overshadowed by her discomfort at being forced in to female apparel as she had been on her long round trip to England.

Thinking about it now, she had a led a lonely sort of existence based entirely around her father’s obsession with the cause of her mother’s death. And it seemed that Jones might be taking up his mantle. Did she want that? She wasn’t sure. But she was sure that she needed to know what had been driving his obsession. He had been such a rational man. It seemed ridiculous that he had died believing in magic. That he had believed in it all this time and not said a word to her.

Her whole life has changed. Not only did she lose her father; but when he sent her to England ‘to find her roots’ he actually cut her off from her life in the mountains…her source of independence and strength.

She had to re-evaluate her sense of self and the way other people saw her whilst she was in England. And now she’s home, but because the Mertons are following her she may not be able to settle back in to her comfortable old way of doing things where she just toddles along thinking about history and people and plants. She’s gaining friends and a social network. But she may have to give up some of her independence of thought and self-definition as part of that social contract.

I do want to revisit this part of the universe at some point in the future because I do love the characters; but in the meantime there’s also a short story called A Small, Secret Smile that is almost stand-alone if you’re feeling brave, but probably makes more sense if you’ve already read the book.

The Flowers of Time is available in ebook, audio and paperback

"Jones was written perfectly. As a non-binary person I felt seen, and may have shed a tear once or twice"

"I loved Flowers. It's sweet and sexy, but also fascinating and creepy!"

Now in audible.

A determined lady botanist and a non-binary explorer make the long journey over the high Himalayan mountain passes from Kashmir to Little Tibet, collecting flowers and exploring ruins on the way. Will Jones discover the root of the mysterious deaths of her parents? Will she confide in Edie and allow her to help in the quest?

It’s a trip fraught with perils for both of them, not least those of the heart.

A stand-alone f/enby romance set in the Lost in Time universe, in the Himalayas in 1780. About 50,000 words.

Buy here

#AmReading

This week, two gay mystery romances (one in audio) and an absorbing fictionalisation of the story of the first Black women officers in the US army in WW2.

Prodigal by T. A. Moore

A satisfying story about a boy who disappeared fifteen years ago. Morgan can’t remember anything before he was eight and his memories of being passed from pillar to post in foster care are really messed up. Is he Sammy Calloway? Boyd was Sammy’s best friend and he doesn’t know either.

There’s angst, vulnerability and pushing people you’re falling in love with away before they can hurt you. There’s a rich backstory and cast of secondary characters and I like how some of the sub plots are left to spin themselves out in your head…you’ve got enough clues to work out what’s going on, but it’s not spoon fed to you. I recommend.

Sisters in Arms by Kaia Alderson

The story of the first Black women officers in the US army in WW2 through a fictionalised lens. An utterly absorbing story from the creation of the first Black unit in the WAAC, through recruitment, training and deployment to serving in France.

The women faced racism and sexism at every stage and came out triumphant. This book left me smiling– the two main characters are skilfully woven in among the historical figures of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion and are sympathetic, flawed and very real. Just up my historical street and a joy to read–the writing is beautiful. Plus there’s a list of source material at the back which delighted my inner historical nerd.

P. S. I Spook You by S. E. Harmon (audio)

This is already a comfort re-read for me and the audio lived up to my expectations. If you like your detectives with a side-order of sass and talking to dead people, this is definitely worthwhile, however you read it.

The narrator, Noah Michael Levine, hit the same note for the characters that I had given them in my head and I was able to go along for the ride. I often find I pick up details in the audio that I miss reading on the page and this was the case here…description of surroundings and what people are wearing that add depth and colour to the plot that I sometimes don’t absorb, as I read fast. I’m looking forward to listening to the other two in the trilogy.

That’s the lot for this time!

Release Party Roundup!

No party is complete without a dissection of who was there, what they were wearing, who did what, and with whom. All these lovely authors dropped in to Lester Towers at the weekend and they are all very cool, nice people who write fantastic books. Here’s a round-up of their latest releases so you can check them out easily.

Thank you so much to everyone, readers and authors, who came along. It was my first facebook party and I had terrible nerves…you all made it good fun and I actually enjoyed myself, so I can see myself doing it again at some point!

The Best Corpse for the Job, Charlie Cochrane

Comes a Horseman by Ann Barwell — Comes a Horseman,
Ann Barwell

Soul Eater, Ofelia Grand — Soul Eater,
Ofelia Grand

There Will be Aliens, Holly Day — There Will be Aliens,
Holly Day

The Meet Cute Chronicles Box Set, Nell Iris — The Meet-Cute Chronicles, Nell Iris

When Are You? by Addison Albright — When Are You?
Addison Albright

More Than This, Alexa Milne — More Than This,
Alexa Milne

Stage Struck, Ellie Thomas — Stage Struck,
Ellie Thomas

Trench Warfare, Fiona Glass — Trench Warfare,
Fiona Glass

Magician, K. L. Noone — Magician,
K. L. Noone

A Poison Apple, C. L. Cleppit — A Poison Apple,
C. H. Cleppit

The Vampire Guard, Elizabeth Noble — Codename Jackrabbit,
Elizabeth Noble

Trapped by Greed, Kaje Harper — Trapped by Greed,
Kaje Harper

Club 669, Amy Spector — Club 669,
Amy Spector