Paperback Publication Day!

September 1st 2023 is publication day for the paperback edition of my novel, Instructions For The Working Day from Fairlight Books.

To celebrate, I painted this monochrome watercolour of the marsh featured in the story. It's hard to know how to mark the occasion, but this felt fitting. I set out to captures the bleakness, but also a kind of radiance to represent hope.

Instructions For The Working Day is available in hardback, audio, on Kindle and now the paperback edition -with its new glow on the cover - from all good bookshops.

The story centres on Neil Fischer, who has left England for the former East Germany, where he has inherited a village left to rot after reunification. His desire to renovate it, and possibly even to live there, is met with hostility. But he does make one friend, Silke. They are damaged people, haunted by the torment of their pasts. Their friendship offers an opportunity for both to recover and rebuild their lives, But are they both strong enough to move on?

Whimsical Skating

In January I started writing a new novel and also painted this wintry watercolour with whimsical skaters. Writing in the week and painting at the weekend dovetail well. While I'm painting, inspiration arrives for the next scene. There are no skaters in my novel, no obvious connections at all, but somehow one creative pursuit feeds the other.

Sybilla on Kindle

My novella, set in divided Berlin in the 1960s, is now available on Kindle at £2.99.

Sybilla won the inaugural National Flash Fiction Day Novella-in-Flash competition this year and is also available to buy from their website.