Since my last message, my life has changed both dramatically and tragically. On April 27, 2011, my adored wife Wiescka died from complications following a bad fall. She had not been well for some time, but all the same her death came as a terrible shock.
There were moving tributes to her in The Bookseller, Polish Express, and many websites, including the Masterton family website and Jeani Rector's Horror Zine.
One of the ways in which I have coped with losing her is to write even more productively. There is probably no better way to keep your mind off the grim realities of life than to immerse yourself in a world that is purely imaginary - even if that world is full of horrors, too.
Since her passing I have written Broken Angels, a second outing for my Irish detective Katie Maguire. The first novel in which Katie featured was originally titled A Terrible Beauty (after a quote by the Irish poet W.B. Yeats) and it was published in 2002 by Pocket Star Books, but only in the United States, France and Poland.
A Terrible Beauty is to be published in the UK in February of 2013 by the brand new publishing company Head of Zeus, which has been started up by Anthony Cheetham, who has one of the most impressive track records in British publishing. A Terrible Beauty will be retitled White Bones since my editors at Head of Zeus thought the original title would not have the same resonance for UK readers as it did in Ireland and America.
Wiescka acted for many years as my agent but now all of my literary business is handled by Camilla Shestopal at Peters Fraser & Dunlop agency (c.shestopal@pfd.co.uk).
I have also written The Red Hotel, a new outing for Sissy Sawyer, my sixtyish unrepentant hippie who can tell the future from the DeVane cards, which are a superior and very much scarier version of the Tarot. This time Sissy has to investigate some frightening and inexplicable happenings in a hotel in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Jim Rook has also made another appearance in Garden of Lies in which he unwillingly has to accept as one of his remedial English students the creepy son of a Los Angeles evangelist. Tibbles the cat also makes a reappearance, as does the lovely pole-dancing Summer who lives downstairs.
After Garden of Lies I have finished Community, in which a young couple are involved in a disastrous traffic accident ... only to come out of their ensuing comas to find themselves in somewhere very unnerving indeed...
I am now working on a very scary novel indeed which has a flavour of M.R. James about it ... inexplicable and spooky. I am very much hoping that White Bones and Broken Angels will appeal to an even wider audience than usual, because I have a very strong idea for a third Katie Maguire story. I happen to have a soft spot for Katie, and for Cork, in Ireland, where Wiescka and I lived for several years before returning to England.
Things continue to go amazingly well in Poland. At last count I had thirteen books scheduled to be published in Poland in 2012, both new titles and reprints. My main publisher there is Albatros, run by Andrzej Kurylowicz, and he has been doing a fantastic job keeping up the pace of publication and putting exciting new jackets on some of my backlist books.
I visited Poland again for the Krakow Book Fair in November, 2011. It was a very moving experience since I was greeted so warmly by all of my Polish friends and hundreds of readers, and I felt as if I was bringing Wiescka's spirit back to her homeland. It was cold, but the sun shone the whole time I was there, and to ride the train from Warsaw to Krakow with the autumn leaves whirling past the windows was deeply emotional.
Very sadly, Wiescka passed before my grand-daughter Felicity Alyson Wiescka was born in July, 2011, but little Flic continues to be a joy. I have a new grandson expected in June ... don't know his name yet! I doubt if it will be Harry Erskine Masterton.
All kinds of new and exciting things seem to happen every week. I have an extraordinary group of really amusing and enthusiastic friends on Facebook, as well as Twitter. I am STILL working hard and using my contacts in Hollywood to try and get some of my novels turned into movies or TV specials, but it is always an uphill struggle.
I was disappointed that a fantasy/horror convention scheduled for May 19, 2012, in Leicestershire was cancelled, but I am hoping to arrange some more signings in the UK sometime later this year and early next year. I am visiting Poland again in September ... Warsaw again and also a fantasy convention in Bielsko-Biala, which is about halfway between Krakow and Katowice.
My thanks to everybody who has been so supportive and encouraging over the past year. Special thanks to M, who must remain nameless, but who has taken over Wiescka's arduous duty of reading my books chapter by chapter as I write them, which keeps my nose relentlessly pressed to the grindstone!
Graham Masterton
April, 2012
Earlier letters:
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
