Welcome 2013

An interesting start to the New Year. Lily Savage as Widow Twankey was brilliant, best pantomime I've seen in years - camp as a row of tents, the lot of them - next Thursday, with thanks to ex son-in-law who is in the band, we are going to see the panto at The Marlowe in Canterbury, and on the 2nd February a group of us will go and see some mates in Mother Goose at The Playhouse, Whitstable. I shall be comparing notes.

Following on from that, to my surprise and my publishers', My How To Write A Pantomime sold 30 e-copies this month, and - wait for it - 3 print copies in the US. Whaa---?

On to work: the Maidstone gig got cancelled (thankfully), but to our continuing astonishment, Murder In The Monastery is hopping up and down between number one and number two in Amazon's British Detectives and Women Sleuths top ten. Very gratified.

I am also gratified that I have been cast in a production of Alan Bennett's Enjoy to start in April. I didn't go for the lead, however tempting it would have been, but for a beauty of a cameo part, which I won, I may say (buffs fingernails against jacket) against tough competition. Looking forward to it immensley, although not learning the words, which gets harder every year.

Murder In The Dark grows slowly, and as soon as I have a cover, I will post it on here.

A comforting telephone conversation with the boss, publisher Hazel Cushion, yesterday has reassured me that I needn't worry about all this self promotion and social media (that everyone else seems to do much better than I do), just concentrate on writing the books. After all, Murder In The Monastery managed to climb up the Amazon Chart all on its little own. So, I shall try and remember to do a blog post every now and then, which, as the last one, will also be posted as my newsletter, but I won't worry quite so much about keeping up with Twitter and Facebook.

Finally, thanks to David Robinson (can't do the link, sorry, David) whose STAC mysteries are a tonic (and fast produced). He was the one who spotted and promoted the fact that I'd made number one. Bless 'im.