This crime novel dates back to 2014, but given the subject, it's timeless. Many people have attempted to continue Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes canon with mixed success. I think it's fair to say that Anthony Horowitz has been one of the most successful, by taking a distinctly tangential approach to the Holmes universe. That's not to say that there isn't some pastiche here. As well as the main novel, the book contains two short stories. One is Conan Doyle's own The Final Problem - the one where Conan Doyle, fed up with his creation, killed Holmes off at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland - this is accompanied by an insightful introduction by Horowitz. The other is a 'new' Sherlock Holmes short story featuring the Scotland Yard detective who will play a major part in the novel, Athelney Jones (who also appeared in one of the original Holmes stories). In the main novel, which is set shortly after Holmes and Moriarty apparently perish by plunging off the ...

Up to this point, this series (outline at the bottom of the post) has been about having a book published by a publisher, but self-publishing is now a much easer option in some ways than it used to be. The Tl;dr summary is 'It's easy to do, but it's really difficult to do well.' I've done it myself for most of my fiction, but what I describe below applies equally well to non-fiction. Personally I prefer to go through a publisher if I can, because they take away a lot of the hassle - but I'd rather have a book self-published than not at all. Others love the whole business - how you will find it will certainly depend on how much time and effort you can put into it. There are many routes to self-publishing. I'm going to describe using KDP, Amazon's route, which for me is the most likely to result in good sales and is relatively easy to use. What I'm describing here is different from vanity publishing or hybrid publishing. Here, a publishing company does ...

A novel by a celebrity is almost always one I would avoid at all costs, as we all know why the publisher wants their name on the cover. It's all about marketing opportunity and nothing to do with writing skills. However, because Richard Coles' other profession as an Anglican clergyman made him ideally suited to writing a church-set murder mystery, I overcame my natural avoidance, and on the whole I'm glad that I did. After reading eight chapters without a hint of murder, I thought Coles was doing an inspiring job of portraying life in a village parish from the 1980s, when an archaic location, that still had local church politics dominated by the lord of the manor, was struggling to come to terms with the (then) present. (There's even a knowing reference to the hit TV show of the period, To the Manor Born .) And, of course, Coles has the church life (and the vicar's outlook on life) perfectly illustrated. It's far more realistic than the portrayal of a vicar in a...

In the next in my series on writing a non-fiction book (see outline at the end), I've skipped a rather big part: actually writing the book. The reason is it's such a big part, I think it's worth a series of posts in its own right. But our assumption here is you've written the book and it has been published. Between finishing your manuscript and this key moment will have been a lengthy period - typically 6 to 18 months - when the book will have been edited, proof read, typeset (obviously, not literally involving type setting anymore) and produced. You might hope that the publisher would deal with the hands-dirty business of marketing your book. You're a writer (or a professional doing a bit of writing on the side). It's not your job. But the reality is that most publishers will only pull out the stops for a handful of books each year. You aren't going to get posters on the Tube or adverts in the newspapers. In fact these days, it's quite hard even to get ...

There has been quite a fuss from us writers about AI-based writing software in the form of chatbots such as Chat-GPT and Bard. However, equally impressive and insidious are the AI-created visuals from DALL-E and Bing Image Creator. The image at the top of this piece was created by DALL-E in response to the request from a friend for a picture of people picnicking in the churchyard of a medieval church in the style of Van Gogh. Now, admittedly the style is more a generic impressionist, but it's hard to argue this isn't an attractive image. I don't think there is much threat to 'true' art. I asked my daughter, Rebecca Clegg, who is an artist - she commented: I think AI provides both opportunities and challenges to artists.  On one hand, AI could help generate an artwork that an artist would find difficult to create by hand, but it brings into question who owns the right to the artwork.  Is it the artist who inputs the information or the AI? Or even the person who crea...

Join bestselling author Tim Marshall, in conversation with Brian to celebrate the publication of Tim's new book The Future of Geography: How Power and Politics in Space Will Change our World . The ‘stream and book’ package includes a unique ticket for the stream, and a copy of The Future of Geography (RRP £20) deliverable to any UK or international address. This event is free to watch. Tickets are available here . The event will initially be broadcast on Friday 12 May at 6.30pm UK time. It will be available to view up to two weeks after the event has ended and can be accessed Worldwide. If you live in a time zone that does not suit the initial broadcast time you can watch it at any point after the initial showing for two weeks. Spy satellites orbiting the moon. Space metals worth billions. People on Mars within our lifetime. This isn’t science fiction. It’s astropolitics. Space: the new frontier, a wild and lawless place. It is already central to communication, military strategy a...

There seems to be increasing support for the idea that the SARS-Cov-2 virus (Covid for short) pandemic started as a result of a (probably accidental) leak from the Wuhan laboratory. While the authorities are expressing low confidence in whether or not it's true, there is an acceptance from the likes of the FBI that it is the most likely cause. What's worrying about this is not that the scientific viewpoint has changed. Changing your theories to reflect new data is a fundamental of science. In fact one of the two biggest problems science has in general with switching to a new theory is not that views alter, but rather that many scientists who build their careers on a particular theory are reluctant to change their minds, even when the evidence becomes strong that an alternative theory is now the best supported by the evidence. (The other problem is that those who don't understand science, particularly in the media, see a change of mind as weakness rather than the strength th...

This is surely one of the most exciting points of the writing journey. Your book proposal has been accepted by a publisher and they send you a contract. Woo-hoo! You might be tempted to immediately sign on the dotted line but you do need to check it out carefully. Publishers' contracts can be littered with 'interesting' clauses that you need to query - and just because they have made you an offer doesn't mean you have to go for it in its initial form. A starting point is the kind of book deal they are offering. Broadly, they tend to be either flat fee or advance-and-royalty based. In the case of a flat fee, the publisher offers you a fixed amount, often divided into two parts (usually one on signing the contract, and on acceptance of the manuscript). The more traditional publishing approach is advance and royalty. Here you get offered a smaller amount up front - the advance. You will then get extra payments (the royalty), but only once your part of the earnings from the...

A straightforward and workmanlike murder mystery, set on a 1920s transatlantic liner. After a passenger dies in suspicious circumstances, an uncomfortable combination of a mentally tortured ship's officer and a semi-disgraced Scotland Yard detective set out to uncover a rapidly evolving situation with missing paintings and more deaths. The setting makes for a classic situation of being isolated - so the culprit(s) have to still be there - and claustrophobic, despite the size of the luxury liner. Tom Hindle does a solid job of bringing in the various characters, and the culprit is not obvious until close to the end, involving some clever misdirection. I was slightly surprised by the cover claim that 'the action unfolds at a rip-roaring pace', as I found the pacing distinctly glacial, held up in part by the way the two detectives kept irritating each other, and by the ship's officer Birch's personal problems. There is a dramatic twist at the end, though it was reasona...