Today I’m joining the blog tour for Blood Matters. I’m sharing a guest post written by the author with thanks to Rachel Gilbey at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me on the tour and to Ian McFadyen for writing his guest post.

Blurb:

When the body of Doug Pritchard, an aging music journalist with a history of sensational scoops, is found face down in a dark roadside ditch, DCI Carmichael and his team embark on an investigation that takes them in several directions.
What did Pritchard uncover?
Did that secret bring about his violent demise?
And do the tragic deaths of two local pop idols, twenty years before, have any relevance to his murder?
As DCI Carmichael delves deeper into the case it becomes clear, that despite the outwardly close connections of the residents of the small hamlet of High Maudsey, neither long term friendships nor family ties should be taken at face value.
This the tenth in his series of well-honed detective novels by Ian McFadyen featuring DCI Carmichael, leads the detective and his team down as many twists and turns as the quiet country lane where Doug Pritchard’s body was discovered
As with all McFadyen’s Carmichael novels, this book is packed with a host of intriguing characters and an expertly crafted plot; and once again the author displays his skill as a writer in the great tradition of English crime novels.

Guest Post:

Ian McFadyen’s post is entitled Realising You’re A Writer.

I never set out to write more than one book and the idea that that novel would be published, read by thousands of people and remain out there almost twenty years after it had been completed, never crossed my mind as being remotely possible back in 2006. So, to now have my tenth book from the Carmichael series, ‘ Blood Matters’, out there is far, far beyond any of my wildest dreams from back then.

I didn’t even dare call myself an author until I’d had my second book published, after all I was a marketing executive, very comfortable in sales meetings and talking about corporate stuff, but way out of my depth (or so I thought) when talking to people who inhabited a world of words and stories. And even then, if I’m totally honest, it still felt a little weird calling myself an author. 

I’m not sure why I felt that way as, once I got my head around it, I realised I’d always been a creator of stories, I’d just never thought to write them down and share them with a wider audience.

From the age of eight I would regularly make up stories to tell my younger brother at night to encourage him to go to sleep, so I could go back downstairs to watch my favourite TV programmes; well, that was the deal I had with my mum. It didn’t always work out as planned, as on many occasions I’d be stumped if Neil (my younger brother) asked me to tell him the one I told him three days before, which I’d almost certainly forgotten, but sadly he usually hadn’t. I’m rambling, I know, but the point is that it was always there – being a storyteller. 

Sadly, it took me until I was almost forty to start to write my first novel and, after lots of rejections, it was four years before I got my first publishing deal, when a lovely proprietor of a small publishing company in Brighton took me on – many, many thanks, Carol.

Eleven published books on, ten under my name and one under a pseudonym, I am now relaxed at being referred to as an author and using the title automatically as my occupation on any documents I need to sign – including my childrens’ marriage certificates.  

In many ways my approach to storytelling hasn’t changed from when I was eight, sharing a bedroom with my two-year-old brother.  I do plan my books a bit more and fortunately, nowadays I don’t have to sit in the dark making up my tales to earn the right to watch TV downstairs with the grown-ups. It’s a good job really, as now I’d probably fall asleep before him! But the storytelling is pretty much the same.

And, just as I got a kick out of Neil (then aged two) liking my made-up tales, I still get a warm feeling knowing that there are lots and lots of people out there who, clutching one of my paperbacks or my books on kindle, still enjoy the product of my imagination before they drop off to sleep.

And the good news is the stories are all now written down, so no embarrassment of forgetting what I said three days earlier!       

***

Blood Matters is available from Amazon.

You can follow the rest of the blog tour here: