Good morning! Nearly the end of June already, it’s hard to believe, but there it is. I have three things for you today. Firstly…
Honestly
The serialisation continues, and there are now four short chapters up on the list. Check the page from the menu, and you will see a drop-down list of the chapter links. (You may need to refresh the page to see all four.) Each chapter has a link to the next, and there are another seven chapters still to be posted, which I will do in time.
Delamere Nine
So, what’s happening in the Jack Merrit world? Well, without giving too much away, Jack, Baxter and Simeon are currently in Suffolk investigating a case in the countryside. We’re getting rural for this one, which is a challenge for me, who has read mostly about Victorian city life. I’m doing my research, though, and delving into the world of the dairy farmer and village pub. Luckily, where I was brought up was still pretty 19th century in terms of farming, remoteness, villages and pubs, so I can draw on some of that.
I am up to 32,000 words already, the mystery is growing but now the investigation has started. Simeon is coming of age, kind of, there’s a these of father’s and sons which is giving Jack some pause for thought, and Baxter is, of course, being inappropriate as often as possible.
Promos
I will soon have another collection of promos to share with you. These are free-to-view collections of books on specific topics and from indie authors selling on Amazon and elsewhere. As from next month, though, I will add them not only to the newsletter, but also to their own page on the site here, so you never lose out.
Newsletter
You can subscribe to the newsletter from the top of this page, or from the newsletter page itself, where the privacy policy is also set out. I’ll be back on Wednesday with a proper update about Delamere Nine (still untitled), and any other news I have for you. Have a great weekend!
The news from the desk today is that I have just received the full cover for ‘Holywell Street’, and the files are with the guys who do the formatting for me. I used to do it myself using Adobe InDesign, but a) I am not a designer, and b) it was a nightmare, and now, c) Other Worlds Ink do a fantastic job for a reasonable fee, which includes as many later edits as necessary. For example, while I was setting out the audiobook version of ‘1892’, I noticed two typos had snuck through. So, I emailed the guys, and they made the changes within minutes. If you need to have your internal files set out (MS, front and back matter, etc.), then you need to check OWI’s author services.
Holywell Street should be available to you in the next few days. You’ll know when it’s there either by a message from Amazon, or here on my blog, or on my Facebook pages. Meanwhile, I have started on book number nine in the series, and I have an idea for the start and the end, the crime and the climax, but, as usual, not much else. So, I shall do what I do best and what I enjoy doing the most, and sit down to tell myself a story. How that story will unfold is yet to be seen… yet to be written.
In the meantime, I have also been working on publicity (because I don’t have anyone to do it for me), and so, I have set myself up in some more shared promos for July and must share the news of those that are running in June. These were also in my newsletter, and the usual plead applies: please click on them and take a gander. It doesn’t cost anything, but it gets me points that allow me to take part in more and bigger promos. The old income’s taken a bit of a hit this month, so the more publicity we can generate for old Jack Merrit and Co., the better. Thanks.
Here are a couple of promos specifically for MM Romance and Pride month.
Pride Romance 2025
General Fiction / LGBT and Romance / LGBT
As June is generally Pride Month around the world, we’re kicking off with a Pride Romance promo that features over 150 titles. There are loads of cute cover models, werewolves, fantasies, topless hunks, and the four Mentor books by yours truly are also listed.
Queer Romance Is Resistance – June 2025
Romance / LGBT
Back in the 80s and 90s, when I went on Pride marches, they were demonstrations. These days, it’s more of a celebration, but we still need to fight for equality and acceptance. Hence, June is also Resistance month. In this promo there are 70+ titles including work from our old friends Elle Keaton and KC Carmine, and Jackson Marsh (me) with The Mentor of Lonemarsh House.
I have gone all out with Book Mojo this month. Not only am I in their fantastic mayhem & motives monthly promo as Jackson Marsh, but also as James Collins. Added to that, they are doing a cover of me in their newsletter at some point during the month.
Finding a Way, A Fall from Grace, Follow the Van, Where There’s a Will, A Case of Make Believe
That’s the working title of the next Delamere Files mystery. Actually, it’s Eight, Holywell Street, because the file I have started is titled 08 Holywell Street, but I am not sure if there was a number eight in that street in 1893. There was a number 10, and it was inhabited by a bicycle shop, but I’ve not been able to find number eight on the 1891 census. I have the rest of the street and will be using some of the occupier’s names when I start to write the first draft, and that will be in about 30 minutes from now.
What’s it to be about? Well, that’s an interesting question. I know the subject, the background, if you like, but not yet the detailed story, except that I want it to present my team of mainly gay detectives with a moral dilemma. They are already solving cases and fighting crime while being inherently criminal themselves (as it was illegal for men to have sex with men), but now, I want them to pick up on another side of that subject. I can’t say more than that or else I will either give the story away or let you down by changing my mind later.
So far in my research, I have been trawling newspapers and publications of the time, looking through the census to get an idea of what businesses were in the street and the kind of people who lived there, and I have been reading some history sites about the area, the churches of St Clement Danes and St Mary le Strand which stood at either end of Holywell Street, and (here’s a hint) I have been reading some papers on male prostitution and the early days of pornography in London.
If you are interested in the former subject, I can recommend this well-written and easy-to-understand thesis on the subject:
So, that’s where I am with ‘Holywell Street’, and I shall shortly be typing the first words of chapter one. While that’s going on, I have seven different promos to tell you about this month, so bear with me. They will all be in Saturday’s newsletter, but let’s get the ball rolling by telling you about this one:
A slight change in tack today. I have an update for you and news about the cover reveal, but first, I wanted to draw your attention, and your click, to a collection of varied titles by authors such as Mary Crawford, and RD Kardon. These titles fall under the categories of women’s literary fiction and biographies.
Judging from the covers, many appear to be love stories, but there is also an element of time travel or adventure about them. (I love the tag line for ‘Head Lion’ by Neil Peter Christy, ‘Fasten your deceit belts.’) I can’t vouch for the quality of every single one, but those I have dipped into read well. The proof of the pudding is in the reading, so take a look, and if anything takes your fancy, you will find books are available on various platforms, including B&N and Kobo, depending on each title.
‘Acts of Faith’
Now, to return to my usual Wednesday update… The full MS of the next Delamere book is going off to my proofreader this weekend. All being well, it will be back by the following weekend, and out before the 26th March. Depending on how fast you read, you could start the story on, say, the 24th (as long as it’s ready), and finish on the 26th (Clearwater’s birthday) which happens to be the date of the climax of the story.
Is it a thrilling climax? Is it in the usual Jackson Marsh style of build to the unlocking of the mystery only to discover someone’s in trouble like, right now? You will have to read it and see. So far, it’s got a thumbs up from my husband in its Beta stage, but he may be biased.
As for the cover reveal, I will do this on Saturday. If you are on my newsletter mailing list, you should have already had the monthly newsletter and seen the full cover. The link is on the bottom of the newsletter. If you are not on the mailing list, sign up via the simple box at the top of the right-hand column here. You will ned to verify it’s you and you’re okay to join as it’s not an automatic sign-up thing.
So, why not read some of the titles from the above fiction list while you wait for ‘Acts of Faith’ and why not call back on Saturday to see Andjela’s cover which shows Benny Baxter doing something dramatic, but where…?
Four book promos, 235 new titles for you, many on KU.
Hello everyone, and welcome to November.
This month, while I continue to work on the Delamere Files Book Six, now titled, ‘Grave Developments’, I have four promos for you to investigate.
These are something of a mixed bunch, as you will see. As usual, all you have to do to support me is to click the links. Then, if you like a title or cover, click a book cover for the blurb, and if you like it, order it. It doesn’t cost anything, and you don’t need to purchase anything to give me the support that keeps me in the promos; a simple click on the promo banner below will do.
These have been keeping me afloat all year, so the more clicks the better, but I don’t want you to feel that’s all I’m about! In other news, Neil (the husband) is off to visit his children and grandchildren in Scotland later in the month, leaving me here in Greece for 12 days to get on with writing. We’re then taking three days in Rhodes with a friend to go slightly mad and have a break. The weather is stunning, but will surely change soon, and we have just secured our rented house for another year, so we are happy about that.
Okay, so, I am going back to ‘Grave Developments’, and here is the basic info on the four promos.
Giving Thanks
LGBTQIA Romance Sale. This promo has 57 titles including ‘The Mentor of Barrenmoor Ridge.’
LitRing’s Fog & Free Thrills
A smaller collection this one, with titles in the genres of Mystery & Suspense, Crime, and Mystery & Suspense, Mystery. 18 titles.
Non Fiction Literature Sales
I join in with this one because of the biography I wrote, ‘Bobby, a Life Worth Living.’ The genres here include Christian, General Non-Fiction, Self-Help & Instructional, Non-Fiction, and Biography & Memoirs. There are 29 titles
This is my favourite to join in with and the one that drives most new readers to my novels. I use the organisers, Book Mojo for publicity work now and then, and receive a great service. There are 131 titles this month.
I hope you can join in with a few clicks, or as many as you want, and I hope you stay tuned for news of ‘Grave Developments.’
Here’s an update on where I am with my current work in progress, Delamere Six. That might well end up being its title as nothing has yet sprung to mind. I am nearly at the halfway mark, well, nearly at 50,000 words and coming up to a nice twist, but things are going slowly. This is because of my arm injury, or ‘tennis elbow’ as the doctor called it. It’s a repetitive strain injury caused by typing and holding my tablet to play ‘Sherlock.’ So, I am trying to do less of both, and am doing more with my left hand, like lifting things and opening bottles. It’s amazing how weak the left hand/arm is compared to the right, but being right-handed, I guess that’s how it is.
Trouble is, it means I am doing less wringing too. Where I would normally aim for three to four thousand words a day, I am now only able to do two. That’s on top of the blogs, this one and my day-to-day life on a Greek island one, Symi Dream. This is why you might find my blog posts shorter than usual. At least until after I’ve had another treatment on the elbow thing, which should be in the next week or two.
Meanwhile, this week I am promoting a series of books that are all available on KU (Kindle Unlimited). You can click on any of these, and if you fancy their blurbs, you can find them in KU and add them to your reading list. Deviant Desire is in there along with some other intriguing-sounding titles and blurbs. ‘The Case of the Four Fingers’ looks interesting with two detectives one hundred years apart working together. I don’t have KU but I might buy it in Kindle format and download it to the tablet that way. Here’s the banner, just click it to find some new mystery, thriller and suspense reading.
One of the things I love about writing is the research that goes into it. how often have we heard people say, ‘Write about what you know?’ The other day, I heard someone admit that she couldn’t write a book about XYZ because she knew nothing about XYZ and had never experienced it. Well, I’ve never walked through a London sewer in 1893, but I managed to get a few pages down about the experience. How? By researching.
Researching Matters
Of course, you can write about what you don’t know. You just have to do one of two things:
Research it until you do know
Imagine it
The end result should be a mixture of the two, with the researched information truthfully reimagined.
As an example, this week, I sat down to write chapter 11 of ‘Snapshot’ (working title). In this sequence, two of my detectives meet Doctor Markland in a laboratory at the London Hospital, now the Royal London Hospital. (That was my first fact check/research. What was the hospital called in 1893?) The detectives were there to test some soil and other samples with the madcap but brilliant doctor, and I wanted things to be as authentic as possible. So, how would a chemist or pathologist test soil samples and flesh samples to discover if the soil could have decomposed a body rapidly, and how would they have done it in 1893?
And away we go…
Here’s an edited down sample from the chapter to whet your appetite:
‘Beneath the sink, you will find a small box with a Mackie’s label and a bottle of Hills and Underwood’s. Bring them forth…’
‘That be Mackie’s baking soda, be that.’
‘I know. Not to be confused with arsenic, as so often happens. There was a case last year when a man mistook one for the other with not very pleasant results.’
‘Oh? Would it make him sick, Sir?’
‘Made him dead, Mr Maddiver. This was in Lanark, so it wasn’t a great sensation, but the man was a baker which rather worried the town. I don’t suppose they bought bread from him after that.’
‘Not if he were dead, Doctor.’
‘A very good point…’
‘Your education continues,’ Markland said, waving Ned to his side, and showing him a white powder. ‘What we have here is a mixture of sodium, oxygen and hydrogen otherwise known as sodium hydroxide. Do not touch, and certainly do not do as an unfortunate boy of eleven did recently, and drink it. Poor lad. Mind you, he lived in Liverpool, so… Worse, was the man who, last October, fell into a boiling vat of the stuff.’
‘You be saying the man was two weeks dead when someone then poured caustic soda over his face?’
‘I be saying just that, me hearty,’ the doctor joked in a bad West Country accent.
Ned stared at him, for a second and said, ‘That’s not funny.’
And so on. The point is, I had no idea you could test for alkali and acid by using baking soda and vinegar, but then, unlike my brother, I am not a chemist. As for the chemical makeup of caustic soda and whether you could use it to disfigure a dead body so no-one could see the face… Apparently yes, you can.
Btw., the tragic cases Markland mentioned were cases from 1892 that I found in the national newspapers.
Other, less gruesome things I have been investigating this week include the Zoka Detective Camera Will Merrit could have bought for 12/6.
Then, there was the Nurenburg Pocket Timepiece that could be bought for 2S 6D. (Two shillings and sixpence, or half a crown, or 30 pennies, roughly £10.26 in today’s money according to a converter site.)
Just a few of the things I have been looking at as I prepare the first draft of Delamere Six. It’s all in the research!
This month’s Promo
As usual, I have a few promo pages to share with you this month, and today, I’m featuring Mayhem & Motives, Mystery, Thriller and Suspense reads available on Kindle, Unlimited, Kobo and other platforms depending on the book. There are loads of titles to browse including three of my own, and the novels are varied in time and place.
While we eagerly await the next Delamere novel (more news very soon), and while I work on audio clips of the Bobby interviews (see this page), let’s do our bit for other authors of MM romance, and mystery writers, and have a browse of three new promo lists. As you know, these cost nothing to click to, and the more clicks they get the more kudos the Jackson Marsh family receive, because we’re seen to be helping out other authors.
There’s quite a list this month. First, there are two new collections of MM and LGBTQ + romance stories set in various eras and settings. I have ‘Banyak & Fecks’ in this first promo, and it sits there alongside sapphic and gay novels, there are plenty of bear chests and handsome men on the covers and some intriguing titles.
Then, we have a whole set of new and older titles in the LGBTQIA + Romance collection, where I have my ‘The Mentor of Barrenmoor Ridge’ alongside many other similar novels, plus my ‘Mentor of Lonemarsh House,’ probably my most romantic offering.
Thirdly, my usual monthly helping of Mayhem and Motives, to which we can add Murder, no doubt, as these are all thrillers, action and mystery novels, again set in various eras and written by many different and new authors. There are over 90 titles this month, so plenty of ideas for your TBR list.
Anything you can do to assist these promos is great; a quick click to check the covers is all it takes, and you never know, you might find a new author or two to read and support. Don’t get too engrossed, though, because ‘A Case of Make Believe’ is nearly ready for you and believe me, you’re going to want to read this one with the lights on.
Here’s an update on my current work in progress, ‘A Case of Make Believe’, which is still a working title and not yet finalised. I am up to chapter 17, around 65,000 words and it’s strange…
Usually, a story will flow in order of events, and after I’ve done the first draft, I might go back and move things around. However, I usually start writing at chapter one and wander forwards from there. With this one, I wanted to get the finale down on paper so much I have already written it, and that’s very unusual for me. I needed what was the opening chapter to tie up exactly with the finale/climax, so maybe that was why I did it that way around. Now, though, that opening chapter has become the ‘smoking gun’ and won’t appear at the beginning, it will have to slip in later on, otherwise, I will have given away too much at the start…
It’s still interesting, though, how things can be chopped and changed, and how as a writer you come to instinctively know when something is or isn’t right. At first, the opening (a piece by Larkin Chase published in a newspaper in 1893) seemed to be exactly right for how I wanted things to start. Now, though, 65,000 words in, I can see that it needs to come later. The important thing, though, is that it’s written, and as I always say, ‘Don’t get it right, get it written.’ Then later, you can get it right.
What’s also interesting about this one is that I feel like I want to get to the denouement already. I aim for around 90K to 100K words per novel these days, so the reader has plenty to get their teeth into. This one, at 65K feels like I could be done with it by 70K, and that sets off alarm bells for me. It means there’s something missing, and I know what it is. So, that will have to be written in when I get to draft two.
Still, it’s fun, there are a couple of new characters, a lot of darkness and villainy, and some not very nice things going on in the criminal underworld of London in 1893, making this one probably my darkest to date.
It will also be thrilling, I hope, and talking of thrilling… Here’s another list of over 100 titles for you that will interest you if you’re into thrillers and adventure novels. Click the banner, head to the page and have a free browse to see if there’s anything there you’d like to read while you wait for ‘A Case of Make Believe.’
