Hi Reader,

Hi, and welcome to my March newsletter.

If you’re new to my Readers Group, I hope you’ll find it interesting and entertaining. While you probably know I’m the author of the Downland Murder Mystery series, you may not know much about me. To break the ice a little, I’ll reveal 5 details that most people don’t know about me.

If you’ve been with me for some time, you may still find a few surprises in these revelations.

Either way, here goes ...

1. I’m half Italian.​
My surname should tell you which half was English. Being of mixed race set me apart at school. For some, it made me a little more interesting. For others, it was an excuse to call me derogatory names, some of them relating to different races.
If you’re going to insult me, please do it properly.

2. In my teens, I played guitar in a band.
​While my fellow band members preferred the rockier side of music, I wanted to perform my own songs.
My chance came many years later. Dressed in a dinner jacket to look suave like Bryan Ferry, I performed a few of my songs in public. While Michael Bublé has nothing to fear, it was an ambition ticked off the list.
But much more nerve wracking than teaching food hygiene to catering students.

3. I’m deaf in my left ear.
​When I was 14, a lorry driver knocked me off my bicycle while I was on my paper round. The accident was witnessed by an elderly woman, who confirmed that the driver had cut a corner and struck me, sending me over the top of my bike and crashing to the ground.
Though she explained this the police, she refused to give a statement, which meant no further action could be taken against the driver, who claimed I rode into his lorry.
The unfairness of this has never left me. I vowed never to remain silent if I witnessed anyone behaving badly or illegally.
Now, unfairness and injustice have become strong themes in my murder mystery stories.

4. At school, I once organised a petition to have a maths teacher replaced.
​The teacher would come into the class, and toss his tired old briefcase onto the desk at the front. He would clean the board and write out a lengthy mathematical problem.

Once completed, he would turn to the class and speak for the first time. “You can either solve this equation or read Black Beauty.”
After several weeks of this, including a lesson where about ten of us produced copies of Anna Sewell’s classic novel, enough was enough. I produced a petition, which everyone signed. During the next maths’ lesson, three of us went to see the headmaster.
I knocked on the door and was summoned inside by the head’s booming voice. I turned to my partners in crime, only to discover they’d scarpered. When the head summoned me once more, I pushed aside the urge to run and entered.
While I was reprimanded for leaving a lesson, the head listened to what I had to say. He took the petition and stared at it with what looked like disgust, and dismissed me.
The following week, the teacher didn’t write an equation on the board. He began to teach us for the first time.

5, I always wanted to write a sitcom.​
While I often tinkered with ideas and storylines, I never had the courage or skill to write one. The nearest I came was an idea to write a sitcom around my work as an environmental health officer.
In 2007, I started to write Fisher’s Fables, a blog which poked fun at senior management in at my local authority. As a manager myself, I decided not to write the blog in my own name. I let my fictional creation, Kent Fisher, do it for me.
By the end of its run, Fisher’s Fables was more like a sitcom than a blog. Not only was Kent Fisher more sharply drawn, many of the characters from the first Downland Murder Mystery had become more real.
It allowed me to rewrite No Accident with a more irreverent edge, leading to publication by Penmore Press in 2016.

Anyway, that’s enough about me and my exploits.

You’re probably more interested in learning about my progress with the next novel.

My ideas for an eleventh novel in the Downland Murder Mystery series are developing and becoming more complex, which is how I like it. As this story will be another delve into the past and its influence on the present, I need to carry out some research.

My confidence is not as high as it was when I wrote the last novel, No Time for Doubt, so I’m focusing on further revisions to Deadly Inheritance. Hopefully, this will get me back in the saddle to generate some excitement and confidence for a revisit to Kent Fisher.

You can keep up to date with my progress on my Facebook Author Page, using the button below.

You can also check out my blog posts from February.

​What's Your Book About? - a light-heated look at how the simplest of questions can cause all kinds of problems for a new author.

​How a health drive almost destroyed my writing career - how my desire to be healthier had an unexpected side effect.

If you’d like to read more of my exploits, please let me know by replying to this email, and I'll see what I can do.

If you’d like to share any exploits or moments of your own, I’d love to read them.

Best wishes,