When I stopped working in my day job, I had assumed that I would now write one novel after another. Indeed, my creativity would know no bounds.

Reality tends to catch up with you and life intervenes. I spent the first period of the pandemic prostrate on the sofa. Then I started editing my English manuscripts to market them myself. These are available so far

• Obsidian Secrets (Steam Age Quest, Book 1)
• Dreams of Salt, Vol. 1 (Steam Age Quest, Book 2)
• Dreams of Salt, Vol. 2 (Steam Age Quest, Book 3)
• Call it a Knight (Stories with a Twist, Book 1)

Eventually, I found that I spent more time “marketing” than writing.

I HATE marketing. I have no talent for blowing my own trumpet. Indeed, I’d be glad if I possessed said trumpet. Now, of course, you can say that I need not have chosen to be a self-publisher, I could have a publishing company do this work for me, couldn’t I. Well, no. What can I say? The big publishing houses I have worked with hate marketing as much as I do. At least, that’s what you might think when you look at their rather meagre efforts.

But marketing or no marketing: Finally. I’m writing again. A third of the new novel is already finished, and I have gone “back to the roots” and have relocated to my beloved 19th century. Over twenty years have passed since “Das Obsidanherz”  (Obsidian Secrets) and “Salzträume” (Dreams of Salt). The new book is set in England, but really only because I have a heroine who wants to study at university. Germany wasn’t yet ready for so radical an idea as female higher educaion at that time.

My heroine’s name is Elinnor, and her destination is Cambridge. But then everything turns out quite differently – as things do. Authors can be merciless. Poor Elinnor.

I’ll give you two little teasers:

———-

He entered the room carrying a tea tray.
“There you are,” he said like a benevolent mother. “Time for tea.”
“Biscuits?” asked Brother Iacobeus.
“I shall bring them in presently.”

“Thank you!” said Father Hyacinth who was a polite man and never forgot his manners even when torturing someone.

———-

“You were not quick enough!” he scolded the skeleton. “And perhaps you were not determined enough. Or your era lacked suitable virgins to sacrifice, though I do not truly believe that. Fifty percent of mankind is female, and all of them are born as virgins.”