After Christmas, I noticed that my eBooks were now selling for £1.61 instead of £1.79. Turns out that Luxembourg have reduced the VAT rate on eBooks to 3% from 15% and that is where Amazon is based. A little tweak later and you can now get ‘No Regrets’ as well as my two pop quiz books for just £1.59. Great value!

One of the main disadvantages of self-publishing is that you have to do your own publicity. I have no problems at all with setting up web sites, copywriting, tweeting and sending out press releases and, usually, they do very nicely thank you. Except they are all for other people. When it comes to publicising myself, I am hiding at the back of the room behind the...

Love him or hate him, Keith Chegwin is a TV legend. From the Swaporama roadshows that he used to host on Multi-Coloured Swap Shop (I didn’t need to look that up, by the way…), to Cheggers Plays Pop, there will be many people of my generation who grew up with him. And then there was the Big Breakfast too. When I discovered Twitter, I somehow ended up...

When I set out to create my detective hero Pieter van Es, I wanted to try something different. Instead of flat, two-dimensional characters, I wanted a way for my readers to interact with them – a way that would involve them with their day-to-day lives. I’m not a massive fan of social networking (as my wife will tell you), but there is something about the...

I’ve done it! Back in September, I set myself a deadline of November 5 to publish ‘No Regrets’, the first book in the Pieter van Es Thriller series. So the book is finished. The formatting checked. The cover selected. The content uploded to Amazon. Millions of people around the world are preparing to download it to their Kindle. Will it be a...

It’s getting there. This week I have completed, well almost, nothing on the new novel. Better stop messing around with this site and start writing! Not all doom and gloom though. I have spent some time in Falmouth visualising a couple of important scenes from the book and planning my detective hero’s next move. Tomorrow is, after all, another day. And if...

It looks like Summer. It smells like Summer. It says June 24th on my Mac. But it isn’t Summer… We all like to complain about the weather. If “discussing the climate” was an Olympic sport then we would be taking a clean sweep at the London Olympics (when it will be raining, by the way, you heard it here first). Normally, down here in...