When is my next mystery coming out?

A bunch of people have asked me when my next mystery is coming out. I haven't come out with anything since May when I released The Case of the Dastardly Djinn (A Masked Man of Cairo Prequel).

So what's going on? Have I gotten lazy? Is my ghostwriting career taking up all my time?

Fear not! I have two mysteries in the works. First off, I'm working on Book One of The Berlin Murders. Titled A Winter Murder in Berlin, it follows the adventures of Katherine Schmidt, a young German-American woman who decides to visit her parents' homeland for the first time in 1929, and gets caught up in a murder investigation in which she is the prime suspect! There's lots of intrigue set in Berlin's decadent nightlife and increasingly brutal politics. It's a bit more serious than The Masked Man of Cairo books, but does have its lighter moments.

The next Masked Man of Cairo book will actually be a novella titled Cordelia Cracks the Case. A character who did not make a very good first impression, Cordelia has been coming more and more into her own in recent books and it's time she got the spotlight. After that, it will be back to another adventure focusing on our three regular heroes. They might be going to Sudan for that one, and so will I!

I hope to have both A Winter Murder in Berlin and Cordelia Cracks the Case out by the end of February. I'm nearly done with Katherine's adventures, and will wrap it up with a research trip to Berlin later this month. Then I'll set to work on Cordelia when I'm in Cairo in December.

You can keep track of the progress of all my books by checking out the word count meters on the right-hand column of this blog. You can also sign up for my newsletter and get two free ebooks to tide you over!

A New Website and other News

I've got a new website! It's been a while since I had one, so I hired designer Stuart Grant to design a website for author Sean McLachlan. I think it looks pretty good. It's still being tweaked, though, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to add them in the comments section.

In other news, I'm back in Oxford for my usual summer research in the Bodleian Library. This year I'm doing research for my upcoming Weimar historical mystery series, as well as some reading on the Sudan in anticipation of a trip there in the winter. Fingers crossed on that one.

On the 16th of this month I'll be releasing the next issue of Sean's Travels and Tales, my monthly newsletter that comes out on the 16th of every month. If you sign up via my website, you also get two of my books, Radio Hope and Tangier Bank Heist, for free! Not a bad deal, eh?

I'm on Tiktok!

If you follow my Facebook page (you do, don't you?) you'll know I recently attended the 20booksto50k conference for indie writers here in Madrid. It was heaps of fun and I learned a ton. One of the things I picked up was that Tiktok is getting hot for writers right now.

"Tiktok?" I said. "Isn't that for thirteen-year-old girls?"

Not anymore! Writers have invaded under the hashtag Booktok and are staking a claim to the platform. So now I've started my own Tiktok account, where I'm posting short videos of my writing retreats in North Africa and samples of some of the vintage paperbacks and magazines in my collection. Feel free to follow me over there!

(Unless you're a thirteen-year-old girl. That would be weird)

The Masked Man of Cairo Gets a Sequel!

 

The next book of my Masked Man of Cairo historic mystery/adventure series is out, and it's a prequel! The Case of the Dastardly Djinn is set in 1917, two years before The Case of the Purloined Pyramid. Faisal has to solve a mystery without the help of Sir Augustus and Moustafa, but he doesn't have to face danger alone. A blurb is below.

 

A homeless boy. A hunted girl.

Cairo, 1917. In a city plagued by poverty and war, ten-year-old Faisal begs and steals to survive, hiding at night from the things that prowl after dark. The nimblest and most clever of the street boys, he’s terrified of the unseen spirits he’s convinced haunt the ancient city.

But when he discovers a girl his age left homeless by a terrible tragedy, Faisal decides to do what no one ever did for him—help. With no shelter and facing the many dangers of Cairo’s darkened streets, Faisal’s loyalties are tested when together they uncover a criminal ring more sinister than his worst superstitions. 

This prequel to the Masked Man of Cairo mystery adventure series will thrill new readers and long-time fans alike!

A portion of the proceeds from this book will go to help Egyptian street children.    

Available now in ebook. Print edition coming soon!

Radio Hope is now Free!

Radio Hope, the first volume in my Toxic World post-apocalyptic series, is now free on all platforms. That's right. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and all other vendors have it listed as free. So if you like gritty, realistic science fiction, give it a try! A blurb is below.

In a world shattered by war, pollution and disease. . .

A gunslinging mother longs to find a safe refuge for her son.

A frustrated revolutionary delivers water to villagers living on a toxic waste dump.

The assistant mayor of humanity's last city hopes he will never have to take command.

One thing gives them the promise of a better future--Radio Hope, a mysterious station that broadcasts vital information about surviving in a blighted world. But when a mad prophet and his army of fanatics march out of the wildlands on a crusade to purify the land with blood and fire, all three will find their lives intertwining, and changing forever.

My Travel Year: A Look Back and a Look Forward

Cat and cat, Cairo

 

This past year wasn't the best for travel, as you all know. Despite all the restrictions, I did manage to make it to Egypt twice. I have a private flat where I can safely stay in the center of Cairo, and the travel restrictions are light to get into the country. You just need to show a negative PCR test and proof of vaccination.

The main destinations for these trips have been the northern parts of the country, taking in the early medieval monasteries at Wadi Natrun, the famous port of Alexandria, and the battlefield at El Alamein. I also briefly went south to Asyut to arrange a donation for someone to the Lilian Trasher orphanage, which briefly appeared in The Case of the Karnak Killer.

I also went to Oxford for my usual summer working vacation. English beer, country walks, and work in a medieval library. Not a bad life!

The South African variant put the spanner in the works of a couple of planned trips. I wanted to go to Berlin to research my Weimar mystery series, but they were going into partial shutdown so I cancelled those plans. I also had to cancel a trip to Essaouira in Morocco. The country decided to close its borders again to avoid the latest wave. I haven't been back to Morocco since this whole thing began and I'm missing it!

Tomb of a Mamluk ruler, Cairo

 

As I write this I'm recovering from a mild case of covid. Did I get it on one of my trips? Nope, I got it while supposedly staying safe at home in Madrid. Oh well!

Here's hoping 2022 will be better than 2021. If the latest variant subsides, and isn't replaced with another one, then I will go to Berlin and Essaouira this year. I also will be returning to Egypt sometime in the first half of the year. No set plans yet. I'm adopting a wait and see attitude.

If you want to hear more about my travels, you might enjoy my newsletter.

Commonwealth cemetery, El Alamein

Fancy turn-of-the-century buildings like this are a common sight in Alexandria

My Writing Year: A Look Back And A Look Forward

This past year has been an interesting one for me, being both productive and unproductive.

How so? Well, I wrote the least amount I ever have under my own name in a long time, coming out with just two books in 2021. This is due to getting a lot of ghostwriting work. While remunerative, it kept me from doing as much as I would have liked under my own byline.

I still wrote a lot. Although I once again missed my goal of writing a million words in a year, I did get well past 900,000 and made the most money I ever have in this career or my previous one, so that was nice.

I did come out with two books under my own name. The first was Flight to Fez, the third book in my Interzone Mystery series. The second was The Case of the Asphyxiated Alexandrian, book five in my The Masked Man of Cairo historical mystery series. So a good year for mysteries!

What's coming up in 2022? My ghostwriting work is still going strong, and I have managed to get on a saner publishing schedule that will allow me to build up my own career a bit more. My new year's resolution is to write 1,000 words a day of my own stuff. A trio of short prequel novels for The Masked Man of Cairo series are in the works, as are two new series. These are Tech Scavengers, a space opera series, and an as-yet-untitled mystery series set in Weimar Berlin. I'd also like to squeeze in book 5 of Toxic World, titled Election Day. If you have any preferences about what you'd like to read next, tell me in the comments section!

You can follow my progress with the word count bars to the right and also by signing up to my newsletter.

It's going to be a fun year!