The third book in the series, The Dog Sitter Detective Plays Dead, has a cover!
Once again it’s by the amazing David Wardle and features Lily, the Jack Russell terrier who accompanies Gwinny in this book.
Gwinny is at a stately home in the Yorkshire Dales, filming a small part in a gender-swapped remake of Dracula while looking after the dog of an elderly friend who lives nearby.
But during filming, an actor is found dead inside a locked trailer – with a stake through their heart! The film’s star, an obnoxious big-shot Hollywood actress who once played a detective on the silver screen, decides she will solve the crime. But Gwinny isn’t impressed, and the women clash as they mount rival investigations…
This week I’ve also been proofreading the galleys of the book, doing a final check for errors and making last-minute minor amends to the text before it goes to print:
The Dog Sitter Detective Plays Dead will be published in January, and you can pre-order it now from all good booksellers. As always I encourage you to get it from your local bookstore if you’re able to, but there are also links to online stores at the DSD website:
Meanwhile The Dog Sitter Detective Takes the Lead, the second book, will be available in paperback later this month with a slightly modified cover (incorporating the new ‘series flash’, which I love 😊)
Last month I finished the rough draft of Can You Solve the Murder, my interactive crime novel, and sent it to my beta readers to get their notes and feedback. Following that I amended and polished the manuscript, and have turned it in to my agent and editor at Transworld.
So now I have a nail-biting wait while everyone reads it, which for me is without doubt the worst part of publishing – whether it’s book, graphic novels, games, whatever, that agonising period where all I can do is wait to find out what my editor thinks always makes me anxious.
You might imagine that after 25+ years of being an author this feeling would eventually go away, but it really doesn’t 😅
Last newsletter I mentioned I was writing a story for a new cross-genre anthology edited by Jendia Gammon and Gareth L Powell, which will be the launch title for their new publishing imprint.
Short stories don’t come naturally to me; I’ve had some success with the form, but I find them much more difficult to write than a full-length novel! Nevertheless, I’m very happy with this one. I’m calling it a “weirdpunk” story, because it’s not really traditional cyberpunk, but not really traditional SF either. It’s a (weird) story of loss, hope, and livestreaming, titled Outrider:
And the anthology, as well as Jendia & Gareth’s imprint, has now been announced. It’s called Of Shadows, Stars, and Sabers, which is appropriate given the imprint itself is called Stars and Sabers.
You can read more about both the anthology and the imprint at their website:
Bark! Fest is an online mini-festival organised by Zazie Todd, PhD to celebrate the launch of her book Bark! The Science of Helping Your Anxious, Fearful, or Reactive Dog, with 23 authors taking part in online events on 19 September. I’m appearing on the Canine Crime and Mystery panel, alongside Louisa Scarr and Philipp Schott – we write quite different styles of crime fiction, but they all involve dogs 😁🐶
The panel is free to attend, but you will have to register (and if you do, a recording of the panel will also be made available in case you can’t make it on the day). Visit Zazie’s site for more information and the registration link:
• https://www.companionanimalpsychology.com/2024/08/bark-fest-canine-crime-and-mystery.html
(As the former owner of a reactive dog, I’m also looking forward to reading Bark! myself)
I’m appearing at Death in the Dales, a crime festival in Sedbergh (which is England’s “book town”, similar to Hay-on-Wye in Wales and Wigtown in Scotland) in October. This is a save-the-date announcement; more details, including how to purchase tickets, will be available soon. For the time being you can bookmark the page on visit Sedbergh:
• https://www.sedbergh.org.uk/festivals/death-in-the-dales/
Which social media platform will eventually win the ongoing battle for supremacy? Who knows? For the moment, you can find me on most of them – simply search for my username @antonyjohnston, or check the Contact & Follow page of my site for links to the most popular networks: https://antonyjohnston.com/contact/
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