Thank you so much for inviting me onto your blog today, Emma. I am delighted to have a chance to tell you and your readers about Hunter’s Rules, the new novel in my series of The Edinburgh Crime Thrillers.

I have been writing and telling stories all my life. When I was a child, I was inspired to make up stories for my little sister after our mum put the light out and told us to go to sleep. Later, I wrote documents, contracts, and courses as part of my job, but my time was well accounted for, so I did not create any fiction.

However, I took early retirement when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and there were times when I suffered severe side effects from my treatment. I could not go out, spend time with friends or indulge in many of my favourite hobbies, but watching daytime television got very old very fast, so I turned to reading. It was the only thing I had the energy to do and could do safely.

I read voraciously, as I always have. I particularly enjoy reading crime fiction and thrillers. I indulged this interest with many novels including those by Peter Robinson, Ian Rankin, Linwood Barclay and Kathy Reichs.

After a while, I began to feel a little better and decided to start reviewing the books I read in a blog www.bookreviewstoday.info I enjoyed doing that. Then, as I began to feel better still, I got restless, but was not still well enough to do very much and I complained to my long-suffering husband about getting bored. It was then he challenged me: ‘If you know so much about what makes a good book, why don’t you write one?’ I did laugh. However, with the challenge set, the inspiration given, and I have been writing police procedural crime thrillers set in Scotland ever since.

In fact, I have just move publishers to the stable of Spellbound Books and signed a multi book deal with them. I am very excited to have made the move.

In Hunter’s Rules, I did two things with this novel that I have never done before: Firstly, I don’t kill anybody in the book! Also, this novel, has a prequel in my short story Cats and Dogs which was published in a charity anthology of short stories, Dark Scotland which was published in January 2021. Of course, both the novel and the short story can be read completely independently, but those who have read both may enjoy the conceit and the short story provided the inspiration for the novel.

I particularly enjoyed writing Hunter’s Rules and hope that my readers will enjoy reading it. I plan that the next novel in this series will appear in 2023. It will be entitled Hunter’s Festival and is inspired by the arts festivals that take place in Edinburgh every summer during the Edinburgh International Festival. The city is very crowded then and there are lots of stars and visitors around. I can’t tell you yet who will be victim or villain – I’ll let you know more about that in due course!

Thank you again for hosting me, Emma.