June Writing Update

It's summer already???

Where has the time gone? So far, I've only published one book this year, Cordelia Catches A Count, which was well enough received that there will be a book three in that series. Even so, I need to get cracking!

The Case of the Poisoned Papyrus, Book 8 of The Masked Man of Cairo series, will come out later this summer. Watch this space for pre-order info. An Autumn Murder in Berlin, book four of The Berlin Murders, will, appropriately enough, come out in the autumn.

Also, Vinci Books will release the first two volumes in a new series titled Bunker, mysteries set in a network of billionaire bunkers after World War Three. That's right, post-apocalyptic mystery. After eight billion people die, does one murder more really matter? It does if you're stuck in a bunker with the murderer! They haven't given me a set date yet. I'll share it when I get it.

Besides this blog, the best way to follow my progress is by subscribing to my newsletter, Sean's Travels and Tales, which gets your two free ebooks as well as a monthly magazine with coupons, updates, and travel articles. 

My Writing Year: A Look Back and a Look Forward

It's been a busy year for me when it comes to writing and publishing.

It may not seem like it to my readers, because I only released two books in 2026: The Case of the Cackling Crocodile (Masked Man of Cairo Book 7) and A Summertime Murder in Berlin (Berlin Murders Book 3), yet behind the scenes I've been working on much more.

To wit, two new science fiction series! Tech Scavengers is a lighthearted space opera, and Bunker is a grim post-apocalyptic thriller. Both will see the light in 2026. I'm also hard at work on more of the historical mysteries I'm best known for, including another Cordelia book, book 8 of the Masked Man of Cairo, and more!

In other news, Tantor Media is releasing my Masked Man of Cairo books as audiobooks. The Case of the Purloined Pyramid is already available wherever audiobooks are sold, and book two comes out in January.

In other news, I've sold the rights to my Toxic World and Moroccan Mysteries series to Vinci Books, a UK publisher that plans to redo the covers, get them in bookshops, and also as audiobooks and foreign language translations. If these two older series do well, I'll be adding to both of them.

You can see the progress of all these projects on the wordcount sidebar to the right as well as via my newsletter. 

Have a great new year and thanks for joining me on this journey!

 

September Writing Update

Autumn is here and I'm busy writing (because what else would I do?)

The release of The Case of the Cackling Crocodile earlier this month was a huge success. My best launch ever! Thanks to all of you for making this happen.

Right now I'm busy editing A Summertime Murder in Berlin, book 3 of The Berlin Murders. Katherine is back on the trail of her strangest murder yet! That should be out in late October if there is no hitch.

What else is on my plate? I'm writing another Egyptian mystery starring Cordelia, a post-apocalyptic mystery, and some more projects that I will reveal in time. It's been a busy year for me and that's not going to stop!

On the travel front, I just spent three weeks in Tangier, meeting various Moroccan artists and historians and working on the Cordelia book. Yes, Morocco is acting as an inspirational stand-in for Egypt. I don't have time at the moment to go to Cairo but I hope to do so later this year under some rather special circumstances. More on that when I know for sure. 

See you next month! 

June Writing Update

Hello from Italy! Here's a photo of a lovely old house I came across on the Appian Way. I'm here doing some initial research for an upcoming historical mystery series. I won't say more because it will be a while before I publish anything. I have to finish five-book series The Berlin Murders first!

Speaking of, I'm nearly finished writing book three of that series, A Summertime Murder in Berlin. Also, book seven of my Cairo mystery series, The Case of the Cackling Crocodile is about to head off to the beta readers. If you want to be one, hit me up. 

To keep up with my progress, check the word count meters on the sidebar. You can also subscribe to my monthly newsletter via the left-hand sidebar, and also check out my Facebook page and Instagram feed. Plenty of travel photos on there lately!

March Writing Update

As I mentioned in my last post, I quit my ghostwriting job to free up time for my own projects. It's been a month now and I've gotten a huge amount done! It feels very liberating working only for myself. You can track my progress on the sidebar.

Mostly I've been working on book seven of my Cairo mystery series, The Case of the Cackling Crocodile. I've also been editing the prequel for my Moroccan Mysteries series and working on a couple of other projects I'll reveal at a later date.

To keep up with me, you can also subscribe to my monthly newsletter via the left-hand sidebar, and also check out my Facebook page and Instagram feed. 

Enjoy!

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?

My Writing Year: A Look Back And A Look Forward

Happy New Year! I hope your holidays have been fun and relaxing. Now’s the time to look back at the past year and think of ways to improve in the new one.

I had a busy year with a lot of ghostwriting assignments. Luckily, I did get some time to write books under my own name. In May I released The Case of the Dastardly Djinn (A Masked Man of Cairo Prequel).

I also finished the first book in a new series. 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 series is titled The Berlin Murders, and I plan a book for each season (A Springtime Murder in Berlin, etc.), as well as a fifth book following the adventures of one of the younger characters, all grown up and returning to Berlin right after the end of World War Two.

A Winter Murder in Berlin is currently with beta readers. I hope to have it out in February.

I also finished Book One of Tech Scavengers, a new science fiction series set in the far future as humanity and aliens try to pick up the pieces after the collapse of a galactic empire. I plan to write the entire trilogy before releasing them in rapid succession.

So what’s in the cards for 2023? At the moment I’m working on Cordelia Cracks the Case, a short novel featuring a supporting character from The Masked Man of Cairo series solving a mystery on her own. I’ll also come out with one or two of the Berlin series, and go back to Egypt to write the next Cairo book, The Case of the Cackling Crocodile. Sir Augustus, Moustafa, and Faisal investigate a murder in the Fayoum, the vast swampland southwest of Cairo.  Plenty of stuff to read in 2023. Stay tuned by subscribing to my newsletter. 

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

A Coup Interrupted My Writing (and other news)

Well, this hasn't happened before.

I was planning a trip to research my next book, and now I can't go because there's been a coup.

I wantd Book Six in my Masked Man of Cairo series to be The Case of the Disappearing Dervish. This would have seen Moustafa returning to his village in the Sudan to solve a mystery, with Sir Augustus and Faisal coming along to help.

Sadly, last month while I was in Alexandria and planning a trip to Khartoum in December, the military in the Sudan overthrew the transitional council set up after the fall of dictator Omar al-Bashir and have arrested the civilian prime minister. Now the army is shooting peaceful protestors in the streets.

It's a horrible situation and I feel bad for the Sudanese people. When I plan to visit a new country, I often think of the people I will meet there, future friends I don't know yet. Now those friends are in serious danger and their economy is collapsing. I hope Sudan gets through this crisis and gets the democratic government it has so long deserved.

In happier news, the print edition of The Case of the Asphyxiated Alexandrian: The Masked Man of Cairo Book 5 has just been released. You can get it on Amazon, Amazon UK, and all the other Amazon outlets as well as several other online vendors.

I'm working on several projects right now, including a ghostwritten series for a client, a trio of prequel novellas for the Cairo series detailing the adventures of all three protagonists before they met, a science fiction series, and another historical mystery series.

If you want to keep up to date with my travels and writing projects, subscribe to my newsletter. An issue comes out once every other month and contains a travel article, updates on my work, and a coupon for a free or discounted ebook. Issue 17 comes out later this week!

Starting A New Science Fiction Series

Those of you who pay attention to this rather irregular blog might have noticed a new book listed on the Works in Progress sidebar. The Shattered Stars (Tech Scavengers Book One) is the start of a new science fiction series. It will be a mixture of Firefly and Mad Max, set in a far future where the galaxy has plunged into a new Dark Ages.

Three hundred years ago, the Galactic Imperium was riven by civil war. Entire planets were nuked, trade routes crumbled and, worst of all, the jump gates that tied the galaxy together stopped working. These products of an ultra-secret government experiment can be found every fifty light years or so, but all have either been destroyed or have broken.

Now the galaxy is a patchwork of independent planets and petty empires. Many have relapsed into savagery. Others struggle along with only the technology of the twenty-fifth or even the twentieth centuries. The myriad alien races, which once traveled the stars along with their human counterparts, are stuck on their home planets and scattered in tiny numbers across space. Limits on faster than light technology means that even the fastest spaceship can only travel a few light years a day. Everyone from the poorest algae farmer to the most brutal despot dreams of a time when the jump gates will reopen and the galaxy will once again be united.

This is not the only technology that has been lost. Even the most advanced worlds are at least a couple of centuries behind what humanity once achieved. Tech scavengers make good money working as interstellar archaeologists, digging up old machines and figuring out how to make them work again. Some are employed by rulers or rich merchants, while others are freelance.

But whoever your patron is, it’s a dangerous job. Because old technology is the new currency, and people will kill for it.

So when will book one come out? Some time this year. I can't be any more precise than that because I have a heavy load of ghostwriting right now. As I said in a previous post, this year will see new installments in the Masked Man of Cairo series and the Toxic World series as well. You can follow the progress on the sidebar!

My Writing Year: A Look Back And A Look Forward

The year 2020 is gone, and I'm sure none of us are sad to see it go. Hopefully 2021 holds out more promise with vaccines and the chance to live our lives fully once again. Here in Madrid we had worse lockdowns than most, but that didn't affect my writing. In fact it helped, because I had fewer distractions. Nothing like writing to stave off boredom and cabin fever!

This was a good writing year for me. My ghostwriting career has taken off with a great new client, the return of an old one, and the regulars staying with me. Demand for ebooks has gone up massively this year and because of that I'm getting more work than ever before. The sales on my own books rose as well. It's never been a better time to be an indie writer.

While my income has risen, my word count is almost the same as 2019. I set myself an annual goal of a million words. I've never made that goal, but having a tough goal makes me work harder. I got 947,000 words written in 2020. Not bad but still well shy of the million mark. I'll make it some year!

I also reached the milestone of writing my 50th novel. I'm now hard at work on numbers 52 and 53. There's no secret to this. I just keep plugging away every day and the novels pile up. I know a lot of writers who have written far more than I have.

The increased demands of my ghostwriting career has meant that I haven't gotten as many of my own books out in 2020 as I would have liked. At least I added a fourth book to the Masked Man of Cairo series, The Case of the Karnak Killer. I also added a short story collection to the Toxic World series, Tales from the Toxic World.

Both series will see new novels in 2021. I'm also researching a new mystery series set in the Weimar era, and have various other projects in the works. You can check my progress in the right-hand column of this blog and stay in touch via my newsletter.

I hope you all are staying well through this pandemic. I've gotten off easy, not having lost any loved ones or my job. So many others have it worse. Stay safe and get vaccinated as soon as you can!

Thoughts on Writing 50 Novels

 Last week I hit a milestone in my writing career—I handed in my 50^th novel. Novel #51 is in edits.

 

While it’s only a number, it did feel like an achievement. I came to writing late, when I was 30, so I’ve only had two decades of writing so far in my career. While that makes me feel like I’m always playing catch-up, it makes me work pretty hard too. I started out in journalism and moved into nonfiction books and professional blogging back when that was a thing. I dabbled in fiction writing during that time but only seven years ago did I get serious about writing novels and it became my bread and butter.

 

The majority of my novels have been written as a ghostwriter for various publishers and individual clients. While I have more than a dozen novels out under my own name, they do not sell enough to be my sole income. Instead, they act as a CV for my ghostwriting work, which fills out my income nicely.

 

So how do I feel about having written so many novels? Satisfied, I suppose, but putting it in perspective it isn’t all that big of a deal. One of my good friends is a contract attorney. He’s worked on more than 50 cases. The research, writing of briefs, consultation with clients, and court time must surely equal the amount of work that goes into a novel.

 

I also have a friend who is a dedicated long-distance runner. He’s run more than 50 marathons. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather write the novels!

 

These two people have a work ethic. They work continuously at law or running and over the years their achievements pile up. Having come to writing late, I’ve always looked at it as a job, and put in proper work hours. After all this time, the words have added up, and I didn’t even have to ruin my knees or go to law school to do it.

 

Besides satisfaction, I also feel grateful to all of you for reading my stuff. Without readers, a writer isn’t going to have much of a career. So thanks. I really do appreciate it.

 

See you later. I’m busy writing novels #52 and 53!

EP 7: Research

My Latest Historical Mystery Novel is out Now!

The fourth in my Masked Man of Cairo series, The Case of the Karnak Killer, is out now as an ebook. The print edition is coming in July. A blurb is belo.

A scandal in America. A murder in Cairo.
Sir Augustus Wall, antiquities dealer and amateur sleuth, is hired to track down a blackmailer who threatens the reputation of an American millionaire. When blackmail turns to murder, he must travel up the Nile by steamboat to find the killer.
Joining him are Faisal, a street urchin who makes himself equally useful and troublesome; Heinrich Schäfer, a leading Egyptologist; and Jocelyn Montjoy, an adventurous woman who has captured his heart.
But complications set in before the hunt even begins. Unwelcome fellow passengers threaten to derail the investigation, and Augustus has fallen out with his right-hand man, Moustafa Ghani. Can a new team of investigators help him solve his most challenging case yet?

You can get the book here.

#GoalChat Live: Talking about Productivity with Sean McLachlan

Another interview! This one was filmed at 1am Madrid time because Deb is all the way over in California. Hopefully I make sense!

Join Me On Facebook Live Tonight!

Tonight fellow author Debra Eckerling and I will be talking about productivity on Facebook Live. Feel free to join us here. It will be half an hour or so starting at 4pm Pacific Time. That's 1am here in Madrid but it's worth staying up for!

The Productive Writer Episode 6: Self-Editing

EP 5: Pandemic? Recession? It's a Great Time to be an Indie Writer!

EP4: Increasing Your Word Count

EP 3: How to Overcome Writer's Block

Episode three is out! If you're having trouble with writer's block, this should help.