My Writing Year: A Look Back and A Look Forward

Another year is over, and besides my usual trip to North Africa (more on that in my next post) it's time for my annual roundup of writing.

I had a fairly productive year, writing 930,000 words. While this was shy of my goal of one million words, I'm not unhappy because this year 409,000 of those words were published under my own name, more than in many years. I do a lot of ghostwriting, you see, and while I need the income it does cut down on my own work.

Part of the reason my word count under my own name was so high was a collaboration with British Science fiction author David Ryker. We came out with the first two in the Ark Ship series, about a colony ship that leaves a dying Earth only to get into more trouble than it left. It's done very well in sales, thanks in no small part to Ryker's marketing abilities.

I also came out with three books of my own. Three Passports to Trouble is the second in my Interzone Mystery series. This was followed by Emergency Transmission, Book Four of my Toxic World post-apocalyptic series. At the end of the year I came out with The Case of the Golden Greeks, Book Three of my Masked Man of Cairo mystery series.

Hmmm....I sense a trend. Lots of series! I haven't written a standalone novel in a while. Perhaps I'll remedy that in 2020. I have a Western that's been bubbling in the back of my head. I'm also going to write more in each of my series, including Trench Raiders. Yes, I've been letting that one lapse for far too long, and some of you have grumbled about that. Don't worry, you'll be getting more adventures from Company E in the autumn at the latest.

You can keep track of all my work on the right-hand side of my blog, where I'll be regularly updating the progress of each book.

Now I got to get back to work!
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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!