Welcome to my regular newsletter and I hope you're well. Feedback from my last note was mainly about Mack, our 15-month-old Wire Fox Terrier. He's the first dog we've ever owned and we got him when he was 12 weeks old. Little did we know what we were letting ourselves in for... despite having had three children (they're 19, 14 & 11 now so the baby stuff is a dim memory) the need to get up in the middle of the night for him to go to the toilet was a shock.
Terriers are quite intelligent, which basically we now know means they get their noses into everything. He's a chaser, throw anything and Mack will go after it. However, that doesn't necessarily mean he'll bring it back! And if there's a distraction nearby when he's off the lead then he does tend to chase the shiny, interesting stuff rather than come back...
This is Mack the day we brought him home with my youngest.
More on Mack in the next newsletter!
Books
Unsurprisingly, books are quite important (I think!). There's a few I've been lucky enough to read in advance of publication. First and foremost is MW Craven's second Washington Poe novel titled Black Summer. It's out 20th June - read the blurb HERE.
And there's newcomer Noelle Holten with her debut Dead Inside an interesting police procedural. It's out 31st May and is just 99p at the moment.
Finally is Howard Linskey who writes noir and police procedurals but has recently shifted into WW2 thrillers with Ungentlemanly Warfare. Well worth a read...
Is there anything you'd recommend to me right now?
Writing
I write in my spare time, I have to with a family and a busy job (I'm a Sales Director for a US business). Usually first thing in the morning before anyone is up. In the evening I do the admin and marketing stuff (like this letter).
As a self publisher all of the non-writing stuff sits with me, so it's a balancing act. I tend to enjoy talking to people, so sometimes writing suffers (stupidly). The sixth Gray novel is in process and definitely a bit back seat.
The 5th Gray, Pity The Dead, is published 20th May. But enough of that for now...
To finish, here's another Mack pic...
And if you want to see more of him he has an account on Instagram called Mack and the Humans (that's us).
