My latest Sherlock Holmes short story Miss Violet Dixon (deceased)

My latest Sherlock Holmes short story Miss Violet Dixon (deceased)
The front cover created with Gimp with help from Aubrey Watt on You Tube.

Sunday 12 January 2014

The book is well and truly launched and is now on sale at Smashwords that feeds Kobo which in turn feeds iTunes, Barnes & Noble Collins etc. etc. and at Amazon, worldwide. Took me a while to format it for both platforms but it's done. I do like it and if you are into an 'action' Sherlock Holmes story, this is the one for you!  I like it and I hope you will too.

After a few beautiful days of sunshine with the temperature up to 15ÂșC, we are back to grey skies, wind and temperatures in single figures.We had some horrendous storms and some of our beaches here are sand backed by very large, rounded pebbles which can be up to the size of a flattened rugby ball. These had been tossed up onto the road by the beach and all over the car park. Didn't bother my 4x4 but other folk were a bit wary! I have heard lots of folk out with chain saws, the upside of a storms that blow over trees. Plenty of wood to be stacked away to dry out for their wood burners, still a major source of heating in rural Brittany and sustainable too!

Christmas saw our daughter here and me and my future son-in-law sailing my R/C yacht. I'm not sure what I will be doing this winter as a hobby, last winter saw me down the cellar building the yacht and jolly cold down there it was too! I think his winter I may be writing more Sherlock in the lounge with my laptop on my beanbag tray, sitting with my feet up in front of a blazing log fire. Seems much more attractive! Large glass of Scotch is not required but a very welcome accessory!

'Bable', our weekly Monday evening trip out to a gathering of French and English folk has started again. I really enjoy chatting in English and my poor French to different folk, sharing conversations and culture. It's fun, the folk are very nice and as 'the English' we seem in great demand as there are always more French than English and we have to ration ourselves out a bit. We sit around in groups of four and take i in turns to produce some written text to discuss and translate...usually with much hilarity! I have to say that my accent is improving as is my pronunciation.

At Christmas we had an end of year Bable get together and we introduced the French to Christmas cake, mince pies, Stilton and Cheddar cheese. Cheddar is something that is difficult to find in France (Stilton is impossible to find) and if you do manage to find a tiny pack of it, it costs an arm and leg! French folk who have tried Cheddar have loved it and whenever we go back to the UK we come back with loads and pass the odd pack on to both English and French friends.

Have a great week, read some Sherlock...especially MY Sherlock! ; )

Dick xx

Thursday 2 January 2014

Great news, my next book is almost ready to be published! On Monday this week I finished it and have been madly editing since then, reading it through, moving bits around and updating(?) the language to fit the Victorian period. Then...I watched the first of the new Sherlock series last night and spookily, my book has some of the main elements of last nights premiere...bizarre! The BBC had kept the plot a tightly guarded secret and I was on a parallel course! I find that both weird and mind blowing!

The book SHOULD be published by this weekend, I like it. For the folk who like a bit of action then this is the Holmes book for you! I will try and publish the book on both Amazon and Smashwords by the weekend...more work!

We have had storms and flooding just like in the UK for the last couple of weeks although the power has stayed on. Christmas eve was a bit worrying when the water was turned off and we had our daughter and her fiance staying with us for Christmas! Fortunately, it was back on by the morning. Phew! The town is upgrading its water supply so we have had a lot of digging of trenches and stacks of large bore pipes gracing the footpaths of the town. I think one must have sprung a leak for them to have switched off the water on Christmas eve as this is the time when the French have their big Christmas meal. I would imagine that the emergency switchboard for the water company was red hot with irate french folk who were trying to cook their Christmas meal with no water!

Our biggest town of Morlaix did not escape the floods and on Christmas eve there was a storm surge and the centre of Morlaix was flooded to a depth of 1.5 metres ( about 5 feet). There is a yacht basin in town and I am surprised that there were no yachts to be seen in the central car park! The weekend before Christmas was the 150th anniversary of the building of the huge brick viaduct that crosses the valley in which Morlaix sits. There were laser shows projected onto the viaduct and a load of fireworks, it was quite a show! Fortunately, the rain held off for the most part.

More wind and rain at the moment as a storm travels past Brittany towards the UK, the shipping forecast for the crossing between the UK and France was really bad with winds up to severe gale force 9. Not the time to be crossing as it takes up to 9 hours, depending on the ports and the time of day.

Anyway, look out for Sherlock Holmes - The Shadow of James Moriarty, it will be available VERY soon!

Have a great week,

Dick xx