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?

My Latest Morocco Mystery Is Out Now!

My latest book has just come out. Three Passports to Trouble is the second in the Interzone Mystery series that started with Tangier Bank Heist. This time Shorty has to cool a tense political situation while causing a bit of mayhem of his own. A blurb is below.

Back in the days when Tangier was an International Zone, the city was full of refugees. People fleeing Stalin. People fleeing Franco. People fleeing the Nuremburg Trials. Tangier offered a safe haven from the chaos of Europe.
The International Council had to keep a delicate balance, tolerating everything from anti-capitalist agitators to Germans with murky pasts. It was the only way to keep the peace, and it worked.
Until an anarchist was found dead with a fascist dagger in his chest.
And I got stuck with the case just when I had to smuggle a couple of Party operatives out of town.

It's available now on Amazon!

My Writing Year: A Look Back and a Look Forward

Well, it's that time of the year again when everyone starts making resolutions, so here goes.

First off, let's look at what happened with my writing in 2018. I came out with four books under my own name. Right at the beginning of the year, Kindle Press published the first in my Masked Man of Cairo mystery series, The Case of the Purloined Pyramid. This was the book that won the Kindle Scout contest in 2017. Thanks once again to all of you who supported my campaign. Amazon also bought the rights to put that book on Prime, which has really helped sales for that book and the second in the series, The Case of the Shifting Sarcophagus.

I also started a new mystery series, this one set in 1950s Morocco. The first book is called Tangier Bank Heist. I closed out the year with a nonfiction book called Writing Secrets of the World's Most Prolific Authors.

So four books under my own name in a year. Not bad, but I want to ramp it up in 2019. The problem is that I am a ghostwriter as well, working for a few different clients writing novels in several genres. It's fun, it keeps me eating and traveling, but of course it takes up time and energy.

So my main writing focus this year is to carve out more time for my own books. I decided to write 1,000 words a day of my own fiction this year. I quickly revised that resolution to 7,000 words a week. You see, life happens, and there will be days where I won't get to around to writing my own stuff because of illness, travel, family stuff, or looming deadlines for my clients. You can follow my progress on various projects on the right-hand column of this blog.

It also reflects how I write. Since being a ghostwriter means I'm working on two and sometimes even three novels at the same time, I tend to write in clumps. I'll do 3,000 words for Novel A, then set it aside for a couple of days while I work on Novel B and revise Novel C. This helps keep forward momentum. When I need to stop and think what to do next in one novel, I can work on another while my subconscious works it out.

My other resolution is to study more about marketing. This has always been my weak spot and I spent a fair amount of time studying marketing and putting techniques into practice in 2018. In 2019 I'll be doing that even more.

I'll also try to blog at least once a week here, and update my author's Facebook page three times a week. Facebook seems to be the way most readers prefer to contact me, so I'll keep you all entertained with updates on my work and travels, as well as interesting archaeology news. I'll also try to come out with six issues of my newsletter, a free publication that includes a travel piece, a short story, and a coupon for one of my books with every issue.

It's going to be a busy year and that's the way I like it!

Tangier Bank Heist is out now, at an introductory price!

My latest mystery novel, Tangier Bank Heist, is out now, and as a thank you to my readers it's at 99 cents until the end of October!

Right after the war, Tangier was the craziest town in North Africa. Everything was for sale and the price was cheap. The perverts came for the flesh. The addicts came for the drugs. A whole army of hustlers and grifters came for the loose laws and free flow of cash and contraband.
So why was I here? Because it was the only place that would have me. Besides, it was a great place to be a detective. You got cases like in no other place I’d ever been, and I’d been all over. Cases you couldn’t believe ever happened. Like when I had to track down the guy who stole the bank.
No, he didn’t rob the bank, he stole it.
Here’s how it happened . . .

This title is available at Amazon US and all other Amazon stores.

Tangier Bank Heist Cover Reveal

My cover designer has come up for two designs for my upcoming Tangier mystery novel. Which do you prefer and what would you change?

Travel Tuesday: Tetouan, Morocco

As regular readers of this blog know, if I'm posting about Morocco, I must be going there! That's right, I'll be spending the next ten days in Tangier working on the second Tangier mystery novel. The first, Tangier Bank Heist, will be coming out in mid-October.

So here are some shots of the medieval medina of Tetouan, a fine old city a short drive from Tangier. For more on Tetouan, see this article I wrote.

In the middle of the day, the streets are pretty abandoned. . .

. . .except for games of medina football!

Here's a somewhat warped rooftop panoramic view.

Update on my books

I haven't blogged for a while because I was busy up in Oxford researching and seeing friends. Now I'm back in Madrid, hard at work getting you folks some more books. Three titles will be coming to you by the end of the year:

Tangier Bank Heist is a mystery with a dash of humor set in 1950s Tangier. In those days it was the wildest city in Africa, as this book will show. It's all set except for the cover. The artist is working on that now. This is the first book in a new series!

Writing Secrets of the World's Most Prolific Authors is with the beta readers at the moment. This is a book aimed at beginning and early career writers. It looks at a dozen famous writers such as Edith Blyton and Isaac Asimov, and how they managed to write hundreds of books while still maintaining a high standard of quality. It's been inspiring and helpful for me, and hopefully will be to the readers too.

Emergency Transmission is in the copyediting stage. It's the fourth in the Toxic World series of post-apocalyptic books. New City's Chinese population decides to assert its civil rights by celebrating Chinese New Year, and people begin to take sides. Then a mysterious preacher sails into port. . .

All of these books will be out by the end of the year, in the order that I've written them up here. My current project another Tangier mystery to follow up Tangier Bank Heist.

So of course I'll be spending the next couple of weeks in Morocco! Then it's back to Cairo to work on the next Masked Man of Cairo novel.

I'll also try to blog a bit more regularly. I know, I know, famous last words. . .