Wednesday 6 March 2024

Writing Update!

Hello everyone!

I just got back from southern Egypt, where I was researching Book Six in my Masked Man of Cairo series, called The Case of the Disappearing Dervish. Moustafa has to go back home to the Sudan in order to solve a mystery, and of course Sir Augustus and Faisal come along. It will be out later this year.

I'm also launching a parallel series starring Cordelia, who doesn't get as much page time as she deserves in the main series. Tentatively called Cordelia's Cairo Casebook, it starts with Cordelia Cracks the Case. That's in production and will be out in a couple of months.

I'll soon be diving back into the The Berlin Murders with book three, A Summertime Murder in Berlin. Katherine and friends get tangled up in some pretty nasty business! I'm also (slowly) working on the Tech Scavengers science fiction series.

You can watch the progress of all these projects on the sidebar to the right. You can also follow along by subscribing to my monthly newsletter.

If you want to see more photos of my travels, check out my Instagram!


Thursday 11 January 2024

My Travel Year: A Look Back and a Look Forward

 

My 2023 was a busy one for travel, with lots of trips to familiar and not-so-familiar spots.

I went twice to Tangier, my favorite North African city, to show my nephew around. We did some day trips to Asilah and Tetouan and some short hikes. Now he loves Morocco as much as I do! I also went to Egypt for research and my usual Oxford summer stay.

The big trip, however, was living for almost three months in Victoria, British Columbia. I'm Canadian but moved out of the country when I was eight and this was the first time I'd gone back for a significant period. While the town itself was only OK (little culture, too many junkies) the surrounding nature was fantastic. The temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest has to be seen to be believed. I never knew there were that many shades of green!

 


 

 

So what's on the agenda for 2024? Next week I'm off to Egypt again to write Book Six of The Masked Man of Cairo series. The Case of the Disappearing Dervish sees Moustafa having to go back to his village in Nubia to find a lost relative. Sir Augustus and Faisal come along to help. Much of my trip I'll be studying the Nubian villages along the border. Sadly, I can't get into the Sudan given the current situation. I hope it improves soon. The Sudanese people have endured way too much war in recent decades.

There will also be a return trip to Canada, Morocco, Oxford, and maybe a new country. It's been a while since I've gone to a country I've never visited before. My wife and I are thinking Hungary. I've heard Budapest is beautiful. Have any of you been there?

I'll post occasionally here on the blog, but for travel photos the best place to follow me is on my Instagram account. I also include travel articles in my newsletter. You get two free ebooks just for signing up!

Hope you have a great travel year! What do you have planned?




Saturday 6 January 2024

My Writing Year: A Look Back and a Look Forward

The year 2023 was a busy writing year as usual for me. I got a lot of ghostwriting assignments that kept me at the keyboard from New Year's through Christmas. Because of that, I only got two of my own books out, the first two books of The Berlin Murders. A Winter Murder in Berlin introduces a new series in which a German-American visits Germany in 1929 during the wild Weimar Era and gets caught up in a murder. A Springtime Murder in Berlin sees her on the case again solving a second mystery.

So far the series is doing well. I'm writing a book for each season, with an epilogue that happens in 1945. It's been a lot of fun to write, with lighter moments and a dark thread through it all. You can't really write about that era and avoid the darkness!

What the readers didn't see were the other books I've been working on. Cordelia Cracks the Case is now with the beta readers. It's part of my popular series The Masked Man of Cairo and follows the solo adventures of one of the minor characters who deserves more page time. That should come out in March.

I'm also halfway through a science fiction trilogy called Tech Scavengers, which is about far-future archaeologists trying to restore a galactic civilization after a cataclysmic fall. I'm going to have a rapid release schedule for those so I'm holding off releasing book one until I have the series mostly complete. Look for those late in 2024.

Coming before then will be The Case of the Disappearing Dervish, Book Six of The Masked Man of Cairo, and A Summertime Murder in Berlin, Book Three of The Berlin Murders. Those will come out in the summer.

Looks like I'm going to have a busy year!

Tuesday 2 January 2024

Book Two of The Berlin Murders out now!!!

 

While my blog was locked down, book two of my historical mystery series The Berlin Murders came out. A Springtime Murder in Berlin sees Katherine solving another mystery with the help of her friends. A blurb is below.

A chance at stardom. A murder on the set.

Katherine Schmidt has always dreamed of being an actress. An opportunity arises when her flamboyant cousin Anton gets her a role as an extra in a major German motion picture. But those dreams come crashing down when the leading lady drops dead.

Anton is arrested for her murder. His family disinherited him years before due to his lifestyle and the studio thinks he’s guilty. Katherine knows she’s the only one who can help.

Now she must find out who’s behind the brazen poisoning and clear her cousin’s name—before she becomes the next victim.


Katherine and her friends are on the case again in the second installment of
The Berlin Murders, set in the Weimar era’s decadent Berlin.

Check out A Springtime Murder in Berlin today!

Sunday 31 December 2023

My blog is back up!

You might be wondering what happened to this blog. Well, I've been away from Spain for a while now, passing through the UK and Canada, and Blogger decided I was a hacker and locked me out of my own blog. I couldn't recover it because my initial recovery email is from an account that has since vanished along with the providor, so I was locked out of my blog until I came back to Madrid.

I'm still trying to fix the problem so I can post from Egypt when I go there in a couple of weeks. Just wanted to give you a head's up that I haven't disappeared!

Thursday 4 May 2023

My Latest Historical Mystery is out Now!


A Winter Murder in Berlin, Book One of The Berlin Murders, is now available. This is a slightly darker take on historical mystery than the Masked Man of Cairo series, although there are lighter bits. A blurb is below.

The voyage of a lifetime turns into a nightmare.

When Katherine Schmidt sails for Europe in late 1929, she looks forward to a year of carefree travel thanks to an unexpected inheritance. But when a companion on her steamer is murdered and she becomes a suspect, she needs to find the real killer before the police close in. Now she must delve into Weimar Berlin’s decadent nightlife and radical politics in order to clear her name.

Can an innocent young woman from Missouri outwit fascists, communists, and the denizens of Berlin’s notorious shadow world?

 

A Winter Murder in Berlin is available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and all the other Amazons. If you have Kindle Unlimited, you can read it for free! Book One is a standalone, but the series will continue with Book Two, coming out this summer.


Monday 6 March 2023

My Latest Cairo Mystery Novel Now Available in Print!

 

 

My latest book, The Case of the Dastardly Djinn, prequel to the Masked Man of Cairo historical mystery series, is now available in print. While the bulk of my sales are in ebooks, some readers do prefer print so I try to serve these readers as well. You can get in on Amazon US, Amazon UK, and all the other Amazons.

The first in my Weimar mystery series, A Winter Murder in Berlin, should be out soon. I'm just waiting for the cover artist. Later in the year I'll come out with book two in that series and another Cairo novel. Stay tuned!

Looking for more from Sean McLachlan? He also hangs out on the Civil War Horror blog, where he focuses on Civil War and Wild West history.

You can also find him on his Twitter feed and Facebook page.