An interview

Here's an interview which has just been posted online:

http://mxpublishing.tumblr.com/post/178408884643/the-mx-book-of-new-sherlock-holmes-stories

Best wishes

Nik

'A must read for all mystery/thriller readers...'

THE BREAD OF TEARS

A 5-star review on Amazon UK from Eileen M. Thornton:
 
Sister Rose runs a hostel for the homeless in London. One day, returning from an engagement, she is horrified to find the body of Angela, someone she had helped in the past, outside the hostel. The girl had been murdered; the sign of the cross carved into her chest. Inside the hostel she finds two other bodies, both brutally murdered. The police are called and an investigation into the deaths begins.
 
As the story unfolds, we learn that Sister Rose had been a policewoman in Newcastle upon Tyne, where she had been attacked while working on a case...  So traumatized by the events, she spent some time in a convent to help her forget the horror she had been through. It was during her stay at the convent that she turned to God.
 
... Sister Rose soon begins to help the DCI investigate the murders. But, she also finds herself being drawn to the man himself.

I really enjoyed this novel. There are several twists and turns as it slowly leads the reader to a nail-biting climax. 

A must read for all mystery/thriller readers.

Thank you, Eileen! 

Available as a paperback and e-book here

International Women's Day - strong females!

It's International Women's Day today. 

Why they have to have a special day for it is beyond me. 

We should be celebrating women every day.

A number of my published novels feature strong female protagonists; all of which are available on Amazon.

Chill of the Shadow

Tagline: In her search for truth she found love – with a vampire!

Paperback and e-book available here

A modern romantic thriller set in present-day Malta, involving black magic, vampirism, Knights of Malta and, perhaps topically, corrupt Maltese politicians. Malta and Gozo are colourful photogenic islands, steeped in history... 

The Bread of Tears

Tagline: When she was a cop, she made their life hell. Now she’s a nun, God help them!

Paperback and e-book available here

The Tana Standish psychic spy series (Cold War faction)

Before Salt. Before Atomic Blonde. Before Red Sparrow. There was Tana Standish, psychic spy! Although ‘historical’, these adventures will still resonate as the Cold War has definitely returned.

Mission: Prague

Czechoslovakia, 1975.

Tagline: Orphaned in the Warsaw ghetto, she became a spy. And she’s psychic, which gives her an edge!

 Paperback and e-book available here

Mission: Tehran

Iran, 1978.

Tagline: She’s an assassin and has no regrets about killing evil men.

 Paperback and e-book available here

Mission: Khyber

Afghanistan, 1979.

Tagline: Psychic against psychic as the Soviets invade Afghanistan!

  Paperback and e-book available here

The Avenging Cat crime series

Tagline: Catherine Vibrissae. Orphan. Chemist. Model. Avenging Cat.

Catalyst – set in England and Spain

Paperback and e-book available here

Catacomb – set in France and Morocco

Paperback and e-book available here

 

Cataclysm – set in Tenerife and China 

Paperback and e-book available here

'A compelling read!'

The Bread of Tears

'I found it refreshingly different and a compelling read!'
Joy Lennick, author of My Gentle War (Memoir of an Essex Girl), Hurricane Halsey, Running Your Own Small Hotel and Jobs in Baking and Confectionery. 

Thank you, Joy.

The Bread of Tears available as a paperback and e-book here

When she was a cop, she made their life hell.

Now she’s a nun, God help them!

Before taking her vows, Sister Rose was Maggie Weaver, a Newcastle policewoman. While uncovering a serial killer, she suffered severe trauma, and after being nursed back to health she becomes a nun. In her new calling she is sent to London to run a hostel for the homeless. Here, she does good works, and also combats prejudice and crime.

            As she attempts to save a homeless woman from a local gang boss, events crystallise, taking her back to Newcastle, the scene of her nightmares, to play out the final confrontation against drug traffickers, murderers and old enemies in the police.

            She finds her spiritual self and a new identity. She is healed through faith and forgiveness. It’s also about her surviving trauma and grief – a triumph of the human spirit, of good over evil.

'Unexpected twists and turns'

5-star review of The Bread of Tears on Goodreads as a result of a 'giveaway' offer:

'I wasn't sure how a gun-slinging nun protagonist was going to work out, but it did. 
'Good character development, unexpected twists and turns. I enjoyed the ride!! 
'I look forward to reading further novels by Morton.'
Linda Donohue, Arizona, USA 

Thank you, Linda!

The Bread of Tears is available as an e-book and a paperback here

A Sister Rose crime thriller When she was a cop, she made their life hell. Now she’s a nun, God help them! 

Before taking her vows, Sister Rose was Maggie Weaver, a Newcastle policewoman. While uncovering a serial killer, she suffered severe trauma, and after being nursed back to health she becomes a nun. In her new calling she is sent to London to run a hostel for the homeless. Here, she does good works, and also combats prejudice and crime. 

As she attempts to save a homeless woman from a local gang boss, events crystallise, taking her back to Newcastle, the scene of her nightmares, to play out the final confrontation against drug traffickers, murderers and old enemies in the police. 

She finds her spiritual self and a new identity. She is healed through faith and forgiveness. It’s also about her surviving trauma and grief – a triumph of the human spirit, of good over evil. 

'All the characters and horrific events in this crime thriller are extremely visual and well-drawn, making this a riveting read. It would make a brilliant TV series!' – Jan Warburton, author of The Secret, A Face to Die For

'One tough nun!'

A 5-star review on Amazon from a US reader of The Bread of Tears, part of which reads:

'There are several stories going on: the new murders in the hostel are connected to her past, the dead girl in the alley belongs to another murderer, and then there is the criminal empire involved in drugs and prostitution of young girls, and they will kill her if she intervenes. And add to these problems, she may be having certain feelings for one of the investigators.

'Wow, I found Maggie Weaver, aka Sister Rose, one tough Nun. The author weaves the three stories together into a neat pattern, dropping Sister Rose into traps that she must escape or suffer a horrible death, yet she holds to her Faith as she struggles against great odds. In the end she isn’t afraid to send evil to Hell a little early. ... Highly recommended.'

Thank you, Virginia!

The Bread of Tears is available as an e-book and a paperback here

A Sister Rose crime thriller When she was a cop, she made their life hell. Now she’s a nun, God help them! 

Before taking her vows, Sister Rose was Maggie Weaver, a Newcastle policewoman. While uncovering a serial killer, she suffered severe trauma, and after being nursed back to health she becomes a nun. In her new calling she is sent to London to run a hostel for the homeless. Here, she does good works, and also combats prejudice and crime. 

As she attempts to save a homeless woman from a local gang boss, events crystallise, taking her back to Newcastle, the scene of her nightmares, to play out the final confrontation against drug traffickers, murderers and old enemies in the police. 

She finds her spiritual self and a new identity. She is healed through faith and forgiveness. It’s also about her surviving trauma and grief – a triumph of the human spirit, of good over evil. 

'All the characters and horrific events in this crime thriller are extremely visual and well-drawn, making this a riveting read. It would make a brilliant TV series!' – Jan Warburton, author of The Secret, A Face to Die For

Book review - Mariette in Ecstasy

Ron Hansen’s Mariette in Ecstasy (1991) is an unusual book in both format and content, which may explain why it took four years or so before it was published in UK (my paperback, 1995).

I bought the book as I thought it might help in my research endeavours for The Bread of Tears (see below), but as it happens I’d amassed enough material to progress my Sister Rose novel so this book stayed on my shelf unread for many years. Finally, I got round to reading it.

Hansen writes in the present tense, and the point of view is omniscient, which seems apt considering the subject matter is the religious life in a convent. It begins as though it was a poem:

Upstate New York.

August 1906.

Half-moon and a wrack of grey clouds…

Wallowing beetles in green pond water.

Toads.

Cattails sway and unsway.

Grape leaves rattle and settle again…

Wooden reaper. Walking plough. Hayrick.

Mother Celine gracefully walking, head down.

Crickets.

Mooncreep and spire.

Ears are flattened to the head of a stone panther water-spout…

… and so on…

Each separated by a scene-change space. Fortunately, these spaces do not contain the usual three asterisks; if they did, the pages would be peppered with them to distraction. Some scene shifts are only three lines of text, others one line. The shifts may be necessary as the point of view moves from one character to another: there are thirty-five nuns listed, their ages from 17 (Mariette) to 75.

Mariette is a postulant nun, the younger sister of the Reverend Mother Céline, 37; their father is the local doctor. Mariette’s beautiful and seems perfect in every way, a good hard-working pupil. And then she begins to bleed from hands, feet and side: genuine stigmata or a hoax? The various inhabitants of the convent are divided, some believing devoutly, others distrustful.

Hansen’s prose is in many ways like a screenplay, especially in the chosen tense, the visual descriptions and the scene shifts. A few critics point to the writing being ‘precious’; though I didn’t find it so: poetic in places, certainly. He masterfully captures the period, the daily life of a convent and its claustrophobic atmosphere. His powers of description put the reader there. Take, for example, two glimpses:

She sees cracked, parched lips and a trace of sour yellow; a forehead as hot, perhaps , as candle wax; frail eyelids that are redly lettered with tiny capillaries; green veins that tree and knot under the skin of her hands. (p91)

Mariette is giving her father the attention she would give a magician. She has imagined him through childhood as the king of a foreign country, but he has changed into a too-heavy man with a glossy moustache and unhealthy white nails and grey cinders of skin blemishes on his winter-reddened face…. (p96)

While not an easy read, with an inconclusive ending, it is a compulsive story. Across the Pond the book has garnered much praise and many favourable reviews over the years.

Ron Hansen is also the author of The Assassination of Jesse James by The Coward Robert Ford (1985), the film being released in 2007. Mariette in Ecstasy was filmed (1996) but was not given a wide release.

***

The Bread of Tears

When she was a cop, she made their life hell.

Now she’s a nun, God help them!

Before taking her vows, Sister Rose was Maggie Weaver, a Newcastle policewoman. While uncovering a serial killer, she suffered severe trauma, and after being nursed back to health she becomes a nun. In her new calling she is sent to London to run a hostel for the homeless. Here, she does good works, and also combats prejudice and crime.

As she attempts to save a homeless woman from a local gang boss, events crystallise, taking her back to Newcastle, the scene of her nightmares, to play out the final confrontation against drug traffickers, murderers and old enemies in the police.

She finds her spiritual self and a new identity. She is healed through faith and forgiveness. It’s also about her surviving trauma and grief – a triumph of the human spirit, of good over evil.

This is a gritty and at times downright gruesome thriller. Written in the first person, Morton has achieved a true sense of feminine appeal in Maggie, the narrator, and despite her religious calling, she comes over as quite a sexy woman… I found myself totally empathising with this full-blooded, gutsy woman... All the characters and horrific events in this crime thriller are extremely visual and well-drawn, making this a riveting read. It would make a brilliant TV series! – Jan Warburton, author of The Secret, A Face to Die For

The Bread of Tears is available as a paperback and an e-book here.

Writing - more background to published short stories (5)

My first published short story is featured in this fifth collection (I Celebrate Myself): ‘Hover-jack’ was based on observation, as I’d travelled on the hovercraft to the Isle of Wight and also spent a week at sea in a conventional diesel submarine. At the time, spy fiction was still in vogue. The periodical, Parade, featured several crime and adventure short stories and I was relatively successful placing seven submissions up to 1973, when their policy altered, abandoning stories. Over the years, the market for adventure stories dried up.The printing history for this collection ranges from 1971 to 2014.

            ‘I celebrate myself’ was originally going to be the start of my novel Pain Wears No Mask, featuring a female New York cop who becomes a nun. I subsequently transposed her to England, and dropped this particular beginning; she can now be found in the republished version, The Bread of Tears. The story is loosely based on an actual event in New York.

            I’ve always enjoyed writing twist stories and ‘Two birds with one stone’ was one of those; ‘Wall of conflict’, ‘Final demand’, ‘The merger’ and ‘The man who had a date with the past’ all fell into this category, too. Usually, the ending is the engine for the story, and often springs from a news item. Coincidentally, the name Torrence in ‘Two birds’ is used by another character in my psychic spy novel Mission: Prague. Some names do persist, invading the subconscious. ‘The man who…’ is the only story of mine whose title was altered by the editor. Yes, I’d reduce the frequency of ‘had’ now, and I should have shown the cat, since it was mentioned. While I think I managed the characterisation in the limited word-count reasonably well, and built up the suspense, I suspect that the ending is probably obvious. In 2011, I reworked this theme in a different setting and created a double twist ending for a longer story (‘Silence’, to be found in volume 3 of the collected stories, Visitors).

            In the 1970s I was a big fan of Alistair MacLean’s adventure novels and always fancied writing a thriller set in the arctic; I didn’t get round to that, but settled for ‘Tooth-walker’, anyway.

            I’d snorkelled in the Red Sea but never managed to take up scuba diving. However, the underwater beauty I encountered prompted the story ‘Wreck hunter’, though again with a twist.

            ‘An interrupted journey’ featured in an unpublished spy novel of mine written in the mid-1960s. Then, Adam Strong worked for an adjunct of MI6, International Enterprises, which appears in the first Tana Standish psychic spy novel, Mission: Prague. Some ideas are so tenacious, they survive.

            I wrote ‘The busker of Torrevieja’ specifically for the international writing competition held in the town. It won a prize.

            ‘The newly-weds’ was a story that gestated for a few years, attempting to create a dramatic situation out of something relatively normal.

            ‘HBT’ was written as a response the vast leaps in anti-aging that are taking place. With a twist!

            ‘Lucky with cars’ was entered in a competition where each 1,200-word story had to be based on 5 photos: a key, the words ‘emergency exit’, a ladder, a park bench and a petrol station. I opted for a humorous crime tale, and it was a runner-up and published.

            I wrote ‘The Geordie Flier’ in response to a competition; it didn’t win, but it did eventually find a home – as did the hero…

            ‘Not so bare, after all’ began as a section in the previously mentioned US-based cop-nun novel. I’m never comfortable writing in vernacular, as I reckon it’ll never be correct. I’ve left this as it appeared in the magazine, for what it’s worth; perhaps the motto should be: avoid vernacular like the plague!

            This is a short story from St Anselm’s Hostel for the Homeless, Charleston, South Carolina, which is run by an order of nuns, presided over by Sister Hannah. Two out-of-print novellas feature Sister Hannah – A Sign of Grace and Silenced in Darkness.

            Sister Hannah was my first incarnation of the nun who used to be a cop. I transposed the stories from New York and Charleston to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and London and renamed the main character Sister Rose.

            From time to time I like to set myself a writing challenge. ‘The museum of iniquity’ was a playful whodunit in 1,000 words, with apologies to Jeffrey Archer for using in the text 36 titles from his novels, short stories and plays. This was my 100^th short story published.

            ‘Sleep well, my darling’ is an ‘adult’ short story due to the treatment of its sexual content. It’s strange how murder and violence are not frowned on as much as sex. In this whole book, there’s only one f-word, and it’s in this story. It found a home, appropriately, in a noir anthology.

            In my stories, invariably the villains get their comeuppance. I wanted to attempt a more conciliatory view with the stories ‘Give me a chance, will you?’ and ‘All my life’, the latter a piece of whimsy and a play on the pronunciation of Don Quixote.

            ‘The catch’ was written for a competition with the subject ‘American private eye’ and it won third place.

            ‘Bank on it’ was another competition entry which had the beginning ‘That morning I could find nowhere to park…’ I didn’t win, but it provided me with a story that found a home.

            ‘“What is suspense?”’ was a writing circle prompt and I had fun playing with this, attempting to explain what suspense in writing is, and including it in a suspense story!

            The moral here is, if you’re a writer, enter competitions, and even if you don’t win, you will have produced a piece of work that could go elsewhere; true, it might need altering to fit a suitable market; but the hard work is done.

            As a bonus, I included ‘Winter’s mourning’ – its title being a play on words. It’s a spy story with betrayal and murder at its root. I suspect it would not find a place in any current periodical, so I was indulgent in including it in this collection; forgive me.

I Celebrate Myself - Collected short stories volume 5

Available as a paperback and e-book from Amazon here

Other books in this series are:

Gifts from a Dead Race – Collected stories vol.1 (science fiction, horror, fantasy, ghost)

Nourish a Blind Life – Collected stories vol.2 (science fiction, horror, fantasy, ghost)

Visitors –  Collected stories vol.3 (westerns)

Codename Gaby – Collected stories vol.4 (historical)