160 books on sale for 3 days!

What have you nabbed in this year's world-famous Great Big Crooked Cat Not Christmas Sale?

All 160 of my publisher's Kindle Books are 99p/99¢ across the Amazon network, for three days only (beginning 28 December).

Start your journey with Crooked Cat and support indie publishing, here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=crooked+cat+publishing

Among these bargains are my books:

SPANISH EYE
BLOOD OF THE DRAGON TREES

CATALYST
CATACOMB
CATACLYSM

THE PRAGUE PAPERS
THE TEHRAN TEXT

SUDDEN VENGEANCE

'Atmospheric descriptions of life under the yoke of Soviet rule'

Latest Amazon review of The Prague Papers (e-book) from reader 'Sandbagger'.

Set during the Cold War behind the Iron Curtain in the mid- 1970s the storyline follows the young, intriguing Tana Standish, a British secret agent, who was orphaned and yet managed to survive the brutality and the horrors of the Warsaw ghetto in WWII. She possesses a psychic ability that gives her an advantage but occasionally appears to be something of a double-edged sword.

Tana is called in to help repair the beleaguered underground network in Czechoslovakia, who had been stymied after the so-called Prague Spring, when the reformist First Secretary, Alexander Dubček, well meaning attempts of reform were brought to heel seven years earlier by the arrival of Soviet tanks.

This is a well-researched novel with atmospheric descriptions of life under the yoke of Soviet rule.

A real page turner. Highly recommended.

 ***

Many thanks, Sandbagger! 

The follow-up is The Tehran Text, set in Iran in 1978.

My apologies for not posting here regularly of late, but I'm moving towards the end of the third Tana Standish mission, set in Afghanistan in 1979: The Khyber Chronicle.

Sleuths, Spies and Sorcerers

This alliterative title covers three episodes concerning Andrew Marr’s Paperback Heroes on BBC4. Last week we had Sleuths, this week we had Sorcerers (which is repeated tonight on the same channel), and next week it will be Spies.

Within the limited time of an hour, Andrew Marr attempts to deconstruct these popular genres; you know those books that never seem to win prizes, that the literary snobs decry and dismiss, those books that sell in their millions.

Sleuths was patchy, giving over many minutes to the genius of Agatha Christie, leaving less time for other practitioners. We had the John Dickson Carr’s locked room mysteries, Ian Rankins’ Rebus, Chandler’s Marlowe, Dashiell Hammett’s The Continental Op and Sam Spade to name a few. Interviewees comprised Val McDermid, Ian Rankin, and Anthony Horowitz, among others.

The psychology of the sleuths was examined, and the times they lived in obviously affected them. A long time ago, a reviewer of John D. McDonald said the author didn’t need to write The Great American Novel (a holy grail for American authors at one time), since he was doing that in his installments of Travis McGee and his other crime novels. That’s more or less the conclusion Marr makes concerning the crime writers, whether of the past or the present: they reflect the society from which they sprang, a rich trove to delve into for future archaeologists and historians.

Logically, Spies should have been next but for some reason Sorcerers followed. Here we entered the realms of fantasy.  While fantasy has been around throughout the ages, in many cultures, Marr suggests that its modern popularity probably stemmed from the publication of The Lord of the Rings books. One of the prime attractions of fantasy is the world-building that is required; that means multifarious aspects of life in the fictional world, all logically fitting.

Besides Tolkien, Marr touched upon George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire sequence of  novels, now filmed as Game of Thrones. Apparently, Martin was inspired to write the series when visiting Hadrian’s Wall and studying medieval English history and also the Wars of the Roses. The books contain ambivalent characters, people who are not wholly good or completely bad, as in life, perhaps, with conflict caused by ideology, greed, lust and a thirst for power. Other fantasists mentioned include Ursula K. Le Guin (Earthsea series), C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia), J.K. Rowling (the Harry Potter phenomenon) Alan Garner (The Weirdstone of Brisingamen), Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials trilogy), Neil Gaiman (American Gods), and of course Terry Pratchett (Discworld novels et al).

This episode seemed more coherent and covered a wide range within the genre.

As with Sleuths, however, there are bound to be many favourite authors omitted from this genre. It is now impossible to read all books within any single genre (nor would that be a good literary diet anyway), because there is so much choice.

Next, Spies. I can guess that certain names will crop up, among them Deighton, Le Carré, and Fleming, but who else? I’ll be tuning in to find out.

Besides being about books and authors, this series touches upon several genres I enjoy to read and write: Spanish Eye (Sleuths), Wings of the Overlord (Sorcerers), and ThePrague Papers (Spies).

Writing - be patient, the story will come

'The End' might not be, after all.  Stories have a habit of refusing to go away, insisting that there's still life smouldering between the lines, no matter how many times it's been discarded or rejected.

For years, I've advocated, 'never throw away your failed tales'. I've resurrected several and they've been sold subsequently. Certain stories - or their theme or idea - are just not ready; whether that's the treatment, the characters, or the lack of writing experience; for some reason the story needs time to gestate.

A writer friend, Ray Foster, can certainly endorse this viewpoint. A story that evolved in 2000, changed and morphed in the intervening time until finally being accepted for an anthology this year, the third in an ongoing annual series, Spectacular Tales. Let him tell you about it here.

Of the many instances where I too have found that time was necessary to let the story grow, perhaps the first adventure of Tana Standish is apt. It began as a short story in the early 1970s, transformed into a 50,000-word novel in 1975, and was rejected by Robert Hale due to its paranormal elements (a psychic spy), though their rejection did say 'it's better than many books that are published'. Years later, I returned to the manuscript, piled up a great deal more research, and it was finally published in 2007 as The Prague Manuscript (84,000 words). Then the publisher ceased publishing and the manuscript languished until I revised it yet again and it was published by Crooked Cat in 2014 as The Prague Papers (75,000 words). Since then, another novel in the series has resulted, The Tehran Text (85,000 words) and a work-in-progress is 60,000-words and counting, The Khyber Chronicle.

So, take heed of Ray's closing comments, and never give up.

Weird numbers

I haven't been posting for a few days. My apologies. What is puzzling is that the daily views have been going stratospheric as compared to the times when I'm inactive. Yesterday and today they've been hitting the 300s and 400s. It seems that the big audience is Russia with 508 views yesterday and 979 today already!  Maybe they're reading the adventures of Tana Standish and trying to find out what is fact and what is fiction, even if it all 'happened' in the 1970s...!

Normal service will be resumed shortly.  In the meantime, I'm reading a non-fiction book entitled Life in Russia (1983) by Michael Binyon. Yes, more (never-ending) research.

Hot summer sale!

Crooked Cat Publishing's annual summer sale of about 150 e-book titles - from today until 10 July.  Get your bargains from Amazon here

These include my books:

The Prague Papers

The Tehran Text

Catalyst

Catacomb

Cataclysm

Sudden Vengeance

Blood of the Dragon Trees

Spanish Eye

Writing – research – Nazis – psychic-04

For the final glimpse into the book PSYCHIC DISCOVERIES BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN by Sheila Ostrander & Lynn Schroeder (1970) this copy 1976, we’ll look at the Nazis and Hitler.

It’s already been mentioned (in psychic-01 here that Hitler was a believer in the occult. A good number of authors have mined this subject, among them Dennis Wheatley, Daniel Easterman, James Twining, Graham Masterton and James Herbert.

According to this book, Czechs said the Nazi movement was deeply involved with the black arts. Hitler was born in Braunau Inn in Austria, a town long famous for the large number of mediums it produced (including Willy Schneider, who had the same wet nurse as Hitler!)

Apparently, Hitler was trained in mediumship by Prof Haushofer of the University of Munich. (See The Morning of the Magicians).

One man who fought Nazism was Stefan Ossowiecki (1877-1944). He was a telepathist, clairvoyant, and could resort to astral projection. He helped the underground during the war, giving information on lost and imprisoned people. Holding a scrap of clothing, he was able to reveal where victims had been executed, and where they were buried.

Documented accounts speak of him locating specific bodies in mass graves layered with the dead.

On the day of Warsaw Uprising, he was killed by the Nazis; his body was never found, as he predicted.

***

From time to time, Tana Standish crossed paths with Nazis – bearing in mind that she was active in the 1970s and 1980s.

One nasty Nazi was Dr Wolf Schneider, who was born in 1920. He was responsible for torturing Tana in Czechoslovakia in 1975 (The Prague Papers). He didn’t employ black magic, just plain evil shock electric shock treatment. He was later recruited by Spetsnaz officer Aksakov in The Tehran Text mission.

Tana was not versed in astral projection, though she was learning to harness remote viewing - which is another subject worthy of comment in a later blog. Aided by recourse to bio-feedback, she used this in a haunting and poignant scene in The Tehran Text.

Tana Standish can be found in The Prague Papers and TheTehran Text.

Writing – research – psychic-02

More psychic tales gleaned from the book Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, some of which may prove useful when writing about Tana in Afghanistan (The Khyber Chronicle).

Nelya Mikhailova was fourteen when the Germans invaded Russia. She was then caught up in the siege of Leningrad from September 1941 until Jan 1944]. (p82)

She became a soldier, with her brother, father, and sister in the Red Army. The conditions were very severe in the city: the bread ration per day was about four ounces; hunger in Leningrad lasted almost 900 days; the winter temperature sometimes -40; and the water and electricity were cut off frequently. As time passed the city was razed by bombs and artillery fire.

Nelya served in Tank T-34 as a radio operator. Still in her early teens, she became a Red Army sergeant of the 226^th tank regiment. Later Nelya and some of her family served in an armoured train which helped bring desperately needed provisions to the stricken city.

She was seriously injured by artillery fire, but survived to marry an engineer, have a son in the army and become a grandmother. She also discovered she had PK (psychokinesis) ability. [In the late 19^th century Alexander Aksakov, a councillor to the Tsar became the first psychic researcher in Russia. He later became a spiritualist and studied mediums. He is believed to have coined the term ‘telekinesis’. He died 1903, aged 70.]

During her PK experiments, strain etched the dimples deep in Nelya’s cheeks, and her pulse beat up to 250 per minute. Apparently, her powers diminished in stormy weather, this being later attributed to the magnetic field around her body being affected (this attested by the Leningrad Institute of Metrology). Afterwards, she looked drained, and had lost over three lbs in weight. [To date, in the real world we inhabit, controlled experiments have found no proof of telekinesis.]

She died in 1990.

***

I’ve used Aksakov’s name for my Spetsnaz assassin, Lidiya, who first appears in The Tehran Text. She reappears in The Khyber Chronicle.

Tana Standish, my psychic spy, cannot move objects with her mental faculties. This, I felt, was a step too far. She can detect danger (bad vibes, if you will), being a sensitive, and when in close proximity can snatch the thoughts of others – if those people are in a heightened emotional state, for example. Again, it is not a parlour trick she can invoke at will every time. Some of her tests at headquarters have proved failures. But Dr James Fisk, the psychologist at Fenner House is encouraging, for he’s seen how she can exceed expectations at other times of high stress.

Tana Standish can be found in The Prague Papers and TheTehran Text.

Writing – research – Psychic-01

Research for my third Tana Standish novel (The Khyber Chronicle) has re-introduced me to one of my old books, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain by Sheila Ostrander & Lynn Schroeder (1970) my copy 1976.

As a writer of fiction, one doesn’t have to believe everything, particularly where the so-called pseudo-sciences are concerned. A significant proportion of the population (US, UK, elsewhere) believe in the existence of some form of supernatural or psychic phenomena, though it does seem difficult to prove under strict laboratory conditions.  The writer’s mission is to suspend disbelief, and in this case that requires a certain amount of research in the literature on the psychic subject.

When creating my psychic spy, Tana Standish, I realised that she couldn’t attempt to utilise too many abilities, only a few, otherwise she'd be 'superwoman', and these 'talents' could not always be called upon at will. Emotions and environment play a part in receptiveness, as we know.

In the 1970s I had amassed a fairly large collection of books on the supernatural; this decade seemed to be the heyday of paranormal phenomena, and it was the ideal period to set my psychic spy series. 

One interesting example from the Ostrander-Schroeder book was Wolf Messing, a Jew. 

In a Warsaw theatre in 1937 in front of a thousand people he predicted, ‘Hitler will die if he turns toward the East’. 

At least one psychic had been murdered by the Nazis for ‘knowing too much about their plans’.

Hitler, apparently a believer of the occult, heard of the prophecy and put a price of 200,000 marks on Messing’s head.

The German Army invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 and Messing hid but he was captured and identified. He was beaten up, losing six teeth, and then taken to a police station. Here, he used all his powers of mind to compel all the police to go to one room where he locked them in, and he escaped to the Russian border. His father, brothers and his entire family were slaughtered in the Warsaw Ghetto.

At Brest Litovsk he was among many refugees fleeing the Nazis. His telepathy convinced the manager of the Ministry of Culture to give him a job.

People’s thoughts came to him as pictures, he explained, visual images of a specific action or place. If he touched the person, the thoughts were clearer, stronger, but touch wasn’t essential.

Later, Wolf Messing trained NKVD officers and had a number of encounters with Stalin.

He seemed able to telepathically project his thoughts into another person’s mind, to control or cloud them… In one test, he penetrated Stalin’s dacha, got past the many guards and servants by mentally suggesting to them he was Beria (Lavrenti Beria was the feared head of the Soviet secret police). He didn’t look like Beria, either!

Messing died in 1974, aged 75. 

***

Some aspects of Messing's ability would be employed by Tana. She was a child of five when she escaped the Warsaw Ghetto with her brother. Her psychic powers were slight at this time, but growing, despite the hunger and fear - or perhaps because of those life-threatening stimuli. She would have a psychic link with anyone she'd touched. As an adult and a spy, she would not balk at shaking hands with the devil; all the better to slay him...

Tana Standish can be found in The Prague Papers and TheTehran Text.

A woman with a mission

Tana Standish, a child-survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, was adopted by a British naval lieutenant and in 1965 joined the British Secret Intelligence Service. She is a psychic with a photographic memory. Each adventure begins with the passing of a collection of papers and manuscripts to the author (Nik Morton) by one of her secret service associates. He then writes down her experiences.

The Tana Standish psychic spy series

The first is The Prague Papers (Czechoslovakia, 1975), followed by The Tehran Text (Iran, 1978), [both of which were previously published (2008 & 2009 respectively), though the latter received minimal exposure as the collapse of the publisher occurred almost at the same time as its release. Both available as Crooked Cat e-books.

At least two more adventures are planned: The Khyber Chronicle – (Afghanistan, 1979/80), a work-in-progress, and The Caldera Cryptogram (Argentina, Falklands, 1982).  

Snippets from 12 reviews of The Prague Papers follow, with sections excised to avoid too much repetition.

Reviews of The Prague Papers

By means of a first person Foreword and Afterword, author Nik Morton employs a nifty ruse to create the impression that his fast-paced spy novel is his rewritten version of a factual story passed to him in the bar of a hotel in Portsmouth, Hampshire, by British ex-agent Alan Swann. The ploy certainly gets matters off to a good start and sets the scene for this novel and a major spy mission into the Soviet controlled Czechoslovakia of 1975.

Enter Tana Standish, a wiry, attractive, all-action female version of James Bond. Once a five-year-old orphaned Polish Jewess adopted by a Royal Navy Lieutenant and his wife, she is not only very fit and lightning fast with her feet and hands—not to mention guns and the other tools of her trade—but she has psychic powers which enable her to see into the minds of her enemies (and friends), virtually regardless of where they are. This has to be the most useful tool a spy could have in her armoury and Tana puts hers to very good use.

… she is invited by her former lover and comrade, Laco Valchik, to return to Czechoslovakia to ‘repair and rebuild’ a spy cell they created in 1968. She’s also about to face some old enemies... Unbeknown to Tana, somewhere in Kazakhstan there are other ‘Psychics’ at work. Indeed, there is a secret psychic listening station there and one of the psychic operatives is inconveniently picking up some of the thoughts and emotions passing through Tana’s mind hundreds of miles away...

Reading this excellent novel is a bit like an extreme sport. The pages fly by at a pace… becoming engrossed in this relentless flow of exciting action and carefully researched information which lasts right up to the climactic denouement—in itself, both satisfying and rewarding—because Morton’s writing is very smooth and totally believable. All-in-all, The Prague Papers gave me that feeling of ‘being there myself’, rubbing shoulders with his characters, and for quite a while after finishing it, I found myself thinking about them and all they had been through. – William Daysh, author of Over by Christmas

… As well as creating memorable characters (Tana Standish will stay with me for a long time), Morton captures the essence of Prague and the Czech soul, educates us into the world of Eastern Bloc politics, and tells an intricate tale of espionage. As if this weren’t enough, he explores the fields of psychics and telepathy, adding intriguing depth to his story.

Far more than a ‘spy thriller’, this book will astound both lovers of that genre and those looking for a truly satisfying read. – Maureen Moss, editor and travel writer

I found myself in a world of double-dealing and intrigue at a level which made James Bond and Modesty Blaise look like rank amateurs... This Cold War espionage tale was fast moving and had more than one sting in it… This tale is a lively, well written espionage adventure with plenty of twists. – The New Coastal Press

… that’s the plot in a nutshell, but the skilful Mr. Morton does some entrancing work within that results in a gripping read that will enthral the reader to the last page. Interestingly, Morton sells it as a true story passed to him by an agent and published as fiction, a literary ploy often used by master thriller writer Jack Higgins. Let’s just say that it works better than Higgins…. – Costa Blanca News, Danny Collins, author of The Bloodiest Battles

Welcome back to the Cold War…. Snatches of John le Carré, Len Deighton and Adam Hall are in effect sewn into the secret weave that runs like a latent thread through the pages of Nik Morton's spy adventure set in Eastern Europe… Morton's heroine, Tana is made of stern stuff and possesses a savant like ability to move out of her consciousness and into an ethereal plane... – Michael Parker, author of The Devil’s Trinity

… an exciting and well-constructed espionage thriller. I do not usually like these sort of books (I prefer horror stories) but I thought that this was an intelligent and nicely-paced story. Morton pays great attention to detail and he has created a memorable heroine with Tana Standish… The year is 1975 and Tana is sent on a special mission to Czechoslovakia … and this sets off an intriguing chain of events and some nail-biting set-pieces as Tana encounters Russian soldiers, ruthless assassins and sadistic torturers… There is plenty of (literally) thought-provoking material thrown in along the way making this an extremely entertaining read. Even if you do not normally like spy thrillers, The Prague Papers is well worth checking out. - Amazon UK, 2010

…Tana Standish… is a brilliant character, being a spy with amazing ability and deadly expertise to easily rival any top spy from previous literary works… the book is spell-binding with great depth and wonderful characters which is on par with any top spy novel, (or any thriller novel for that matter). Nik Morton (has) the ability to make you believe that you are in the story yourself, which is a rare thing. I can honestly say only a handful of novelists have that kind of skill…. – Amazon UK, 2011

… Tana Standish, a female ‘Bond’ is a wonderful, stylish character who carries the story through a roller coaster of chases, shootouts, and devious undercover operations. Highly trained and fearless, she also possesses a psychic ability that gives her an advantage but also places her in the crosshairs of enemies who track her from a secret base in Kazakhstan. The locations are detailed, as are the workings of the intelligence agencies, evidence surely of an in-depth knowledge and extensive research. The pace is full speed ahead and often the subject matter is brutal but I couldn’t look away and I certainly didn’t want to stop reading. If you enjoy Bond or Bourne then you will enjoy this, it just begs to be a movie.
            Well plotted and executed this is a story that held me enthralled and intrigued from the first page to the last...and then I read the epilogue, and I realised just how eye-opening this novel is... – Amazon UK, January 2015

… You are immediately immersed into the action. Ingenious switches of time and place present the back-story without disturbing the flow, and an exciting thriller with psychic undertones takes off. I could not put it down. – Amazon UK, March 2015

Thoroughly enjoyed this. The very opening chapter is a promise of intrigue and suspense. I wasn't disappointed. Good fast pace. Characters that are so vividly and craft-fully developed that I very much felt a part of their lives. I am now in the second of the series for another rollercoaster ride. – Amazon UK, August 2015

… Tana Standish has one more thing going for her: psychic talents. There’s nothing outlandish in the psi-spy’s capabilities – they’re neatly underplayed, a talent which isn’t understood or entirely controllable but which frequently tips the odds in her favour.
            This mild shift into the land of ‘maybe’ is carefully contrasted with the grim, grey reality of life in Czechoslovakia in the Seventies, brought to heel seven years earlier by Soviet tanks, its citizens stifled by the relentless brutal mechanisms of an efficient totalitarian regime. An underground resistance cell has been compromised. Tana is assigned to put the network back together and use her special talents to ascertain if communications have been compromised, or worse.
            The result is a running chase through the back streets and sewers of Prague, where the protagonists barely taste their black bread and spicy sausage between violent and amorous encounters. This isn’t a slow-burn spy story a la Alan Furst where the tension builds over quiet encounters and long railway rides. Instead it’s more of a headlong hurtle through rapid liaisons and botched ops; there’s every opportunity for Tana to show off not just her psi skills but also her street savvy and close-quarters combat.
            For me, the best scenes are the one-on-one confrontations, claustrophobic closed room battles of expert second-guessing. There’s a superb fight sequence which takes place in a pitch-dark living room, where weaponless Tana must defend herself against an armed opponent using her memory, wits, senses and what falls to hand. It’s beautifully choreographed and delivered.
            The finale (is) preceded by a simply chilling chapter, the best in the book, where Tana must marshal all of her mental strength to resist the worst that her opponents employ against her. I also thoroughly enjoyed the scenes in the Soviet psychic investigations unit. Likewise, the author’s attention to detail in his descriptions of Prague, and Tana’s cracking back-story, were superb… In the main, The Prague Papers made for a rollicking read, an intriguing mix of action-adventure, actual events and augmented espionage. There are further Tana Standish novels in the pipeline, which takes place at other pivotal points in political history. I very much enjoyed the overlap in this one between ‘real’ and ‘fiction’... – Amazon UK, October 2015

This was a brilliant read from the exciting beginning right through to the end, the pace constant and the story of the young Tana Standish engrossing…. The story has many dark moments but the writing is sharp and crisp making the more gory bits not too awful for the reader who isn’t into serious pain and bloodshed. The locations are very well described – something I’ve noted with other novels that I’ve read by Nik Morton. His research seems faultless to me as an occasional reader of politically based spy thrillers. Tana is a woman with a mission; in part her drive having been moulded by her background which we glean just sufficiently to make it all believable... – Amazon UK, November 2015

My sincere thanks to all of the above reviewers!

Amazon UK here

Amazon Com here 

The Blurb:

Czechoslovakia, 1975. Tana is a spy - and she’s psychic. Orphaned in the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, she was adopted by a naval officer and his wife. Now she works for the British Secret Intelligence Service. Czechoslovakia’s people are still kicking against the Soviet invasion. Tana is called in to restore morale and repair the underground network. But there’s a traitor at work.

And she learns about a secret Soviet complex in the Sumava Mountains. Unknown to her there’s a top secret establishment in Kazakhstan, where Yakunin, one of their gifted psychics, has detected her presence in Czechoslovakia.

When Tana infiltrates the Sumava complex, she’s captured! A desperate mission is mounted to either get her out or to silence her - before she breaks under interrogation.