It's insane how quickly time goes by when you're writing novels to a deadline! The huge success of my Irish detective novels featuring Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire has meant that my publishers Head of Zeus have commissioned three more even before I have started the seventh in the series, and I have to have these all completed by the end of 2017!!!
I completed the sixth Katie Maguire novel Buried at the end of October. Before I was even two-thirds of the way through it my publishers had already designed the cover and readers could place advance orders for it on Amazon Kindle. Now that's pressure!
You can check out Katie's world on her own website katiemaguire.co.uk. As well as news about the books, it includes photographs and Katie's favourite recipes and a dictionary of Cork slang. There will soon be maps on it showing where all the action in the novels actually happened.
I am finding the pressure is even greater because HoZ have also decided (at last) to publish the 18th-century historical crime novel which I wrote in the spring of 2013, Scarlet Widow. This will be published as ebook before Christmas and as a hardback early in 2016.
They also want a follow-up to Scarlet Widow. The novels tell the story of Beatrice Scarlet, who was brought up as the daughter of an apothecary in London in the 1730s, and learned a great deal from her father about chemicals and drugs. She uses that knowledge to solve some crimes that are so spooky that they appear to be supernatural. She is a kind of 18th-century CSI.
Plague of the Manitou in which Harry Erskine is confronted by the vengeful sons of Misquamacus has been selling well as a hardback and will shortly be published as a paperback.
Although I first conceived the idea fifteen years ago, the events in Drought, my recent disaster novel about a drought in Southern California, have almost been overtaken by the real dry spell which has been afflicting Los Angeles.
In spite of the pressure of all the crime novels that I have been writing, I have a concept for a new horror novel which I am dying to write, and I have just completed a grisly short story about a boy who is mercilessly bullied at school, but eventually wreaks his revenge on his tormentors. I am hoping that 'Cheeseboy' will be published as a chapbook on its own.
I have undergone some complex but very successful eye surgery this year, and so I haven't been travelling so much. However I went to Dublin at the end of October to promote Katie Maguire, and had a great time there. I had a radio interview with Pat Kenny, a long interview with the Irish Examiner, and a great lunch of oysters and Guinness at Davey Byrne's Bar, which James Joyce mentioned in Ulysses.
As far as charity work is concerned, I did a signing session for Cancer Research UK at their shop in Purley, Surrey, and I have been auctioning print-outs of my new books which has raised several hundreds of pounds for the Gorzec Orphanage in Poland as well as a campaign to help young girls in Wroclaw threatened with child prostitution.
As well as the Message Board on this website, Facebook and Twitter have enabled me to make scores of new friends with my readers, and all of your messages and support are very much appreciated. I am hoping to set out on some signing tours in the UK next year, as well as visits to the United States, Poland and the Czech Republic (and any other country that wants me!) so that I can talk to you face to face.
If I sound a bit breathless, believe me, I am. I welcomed two brilliant new grandchildren into the world this year, Lucy and Lewis, to join the nine I had already. I am also working very hard with Dawn Harris on her first novel Diviner, and she is making great progress.
Special thanks to Matt Williams for maintaining this site so well, and very best wishes to all of you for your enthusiasm, your kindness and your loyalty. I often say that I don't have fans, I have friends.
Graham Masterton
November, 2015
Earlier letters:
Letters from Ireland, February 2014
Letters from Ireland, April 2012
Letters from Ireland, July 2007
Letters from Ireland, December 2003
Letters from Ireland, January 2002
Letters from Ireland, July 2000
Letters from Ireland, February 2000
AGENT: My agent is Camilla Shestopal at Peters Fraser & Dunlop agency, email c.shestopal@pfd.co.uk
Fan mail to Graham Masterton: manitouman1@yahoo.com
