From the publisher's desk
Cosy mysteries set in unforgettable landscapes and crafted by a small independent press
The Real Village Behind “Strange Sightings at Fernlea River”
There’s a tiny village on the Midlands Meander, more of a hamlet actually, with the grandiose name of Lions River. Most people drive straight through it without a second glance. There’s a garage. And a leatherwork studio tucked in behind it. There’s a general store and a river that curls quietly past all of it, unremarkable, until you learn to look properly.
That village is where the story of “Strange Sightings at Fernlea River” begins.
Welcome Back To The Lighthouse Inn
If you haven’t yet spent time at the Lighthouse Inn, here’s a quick update.
There’s an old lighthouse, still standing at the edge of a quiet Cornish village, and converted years ago into a small inn. Running it is a woman who spent the first decade of her working years studying marine biology, before a surprise inheritance from her late grandmother pulled her back to the coast, and into a very different kind of life. She didn’t plan on becoming an innkeeper. She certainly didn’t plan on solving murders.
She isn’t alone in this. There’s her Celtic cook, almost eighty years old, sharp as a tack and entirely unbothered by the idea that supper should still be served on time, no matter what chaos is unfolding around her.
A little flattered, I admit, but also quietly thrilled
WELL, I shan’t pretend I wasn’t a little flattered when the good folk at KeyboardInk Publishing came round to try and talk me out of my comfortable retirement with an offer almost nobody could refuse.
It all centred around “The Haunted Highway Series”, one of their cozy family mystery offerings. Original author Jonathan Hartley was finding that his day job had become so demanding that he simply no longer had the time to devote to writing, especially to the demands of writing books to a deadline, which is one of the problems with publishing a series.
Socrates, Shakespeare and Scrabble
If you’re a writer, or a reader, you will know who Socrates was. The Ancient Greek philosopher whose writings have illuminated philosophical discourse for millennia since his untimely death, right?
Except that’s not true.
Nobody’s arguing that Socrates wasn’t a great philosopher, a great debater (possibly the greatest ever) and a highly principled person.
But did you know he was illiterate?
From Cornwall to Africa, our two new mystery writers straddle the globe . . .
When I look out of the window of my new home office, I realize how lucky I am to be able to live in the country. A patch of lawn, the edge of a flowerbed and a couple of mature trees fill the foreground, and, behind the undulating farmland, a patch of woodland, more like forest, really, reaches up to a cloudy sky
It is many miles away from the city where we both used to work, but it feels even further removed than that, as though our years there were from a different lifetime. This feeling is even stronger on our daily walks, when we are more likely to be run over by a tractor (or some other mechanised farm implement) than by a car, more likely in the mornings to be greeted by a burst of birdsong than the shrill demands of a bedside alarm.
The road that inspired “The Haunted Highway” — and the ghost we didn't invent
There is a road through the KZN Midlands that most people never take.
It runs parallel to the N3 as part of the road from Durban to Johannesburg — quieter, slower, less travelled — winding through a landscape that changes mood with the weather. On clear days it is beautiful in the way that only the South African countryside can be: wide skies, rolling farmland, the particular green of the Midlands after rain.
But on the mornings when the mist comes in — and in this part of KwaZulu-Natal, thousands of feet above sea level, it comes in often, low and thick and unhurried — the road becomes something else entirely. The fences disappear. The hills vanish. The farms on either side exist only as suggestions. And if you happen to pass a certain set of stone gates in those early hours, half-hidden in the grey, just on the other side of the railway line, you might find yourself wondering about the school just beyond them.
This AI debate is veering out of control . . .
YOU will not, I hope, be surprised to hear that as an ex-journalist I am a fervent believer in free speech. If you think that what I write is a load of nonsense you should be free to say so. And I should be free to disagree.
The resolution of our dispute can only be provided by one or the other of us providing an argument, based on facts and consisting of conclusions drawn therefrom, that is stronger than the opponents’.