Promoting Mortmain Hall

Mortmain Hall is published by Head of Zeus on Thursday. For me, it's an exciting moment, and a book I really care about enormously. But as you can imagine, plans have changed rather dramatically in recent week, as they have for everyone else in the world. I was scheduled to appear at a variety of events at Southport, Chester, and York, over the past few days, with a festival at the University of Chester next weekend. Of course all these events have cancelled now, as have all my events for several months ahead. I'm so sorry that I won't have the chance to meet those who had booked. Never mind, many of the events are going to be rescheduled when the current turmoil is (one hopes) behind us.

As far as Mortmain Hall is concerned, naturally the focus has now shifted to various forms of online promotion. And like so many other people (and there really are a lot of inspirational folk out there), I'm trying to find ways of doing something positive rather than simply feel overwhelmed by the strangeness of what is happening. I've also been very glad to hear from a number of friends from around the world (including some of the nice people I met in China, who have been living through this experience for longer than those of us in the west). Everyone's adapting in their own way.

One experiment I've tried is making videos about detective fiction topics. The first one, about Cluefinders, has just been inflicted on an unsuspecting world, and I've been gratified by the reaction to it. So gratified, in fact, that I've been working on a couple more videos, which will air in the near future.

I've also set up an Author Page on Facebook as a means of connecting more widely. I'm no expert in these things, but I believe you can access it even if you're not on Facebook yourself. Here is a link - https://www.facebook.com/MartinEdwardsBooks/?modal=admin_todo_tour  Or simply google Martin Edwards, author, Facebook

Midas, the publicists hired by Head of Zeus to help to promote the novel, have kept me busy in a variety of ways. I've been hard at work on articles for Writing Magazine, Crime Time, Shots, and several blogs, and I've guest edited the summer edition of NB Magazine. I've also written a new Golden Age short story for the magazine My Weekly.

And there is an extensive blog tour - no fewer than 27 bloggers have been kind enough to take part - amazing! I'm really grateful. More of that another day, but in the meantime I should say how delighted I am by the reaction of the first two bloggers to have reviewed the novel.

Vincent kicked off the blog tour with this https://vincentsbookcase.blogspot.com/2020/03/martin-edwards-mortmain-hall-blog-tour.html">lovely review
 saying "Mortmain Hall has to be one of the best mystery books I have read". Wow...
And there's also a very nice https://www.draliceviolett.com/mortmain-hall-by-martin-edwards">review
from Dr Alice Prescott.
So I'm in good heart and I'm pleased the reviewers are picking up on the dark humour. This wasn't much of a feature of Gallows Court, but it's much more significant in Mortmain Hall, and was one of the ingredients that gave me a lot of pleasure during the writing.

Gallows Court - the special editions

I'm absolutely thrilled that my publishers Head of Zeus have produced two very special editions of Gallows Court for collectors. These are signed limited editions, 75 in a numbered series, and 26 in a lettered sequence. I've never before had a limited edition produced of any of my novels, and this initiative is particularly gratifying for me, given that I'm a huge fan of beautifully produced limited editions, and have quite a few in my own collection.

The production details are: notched case, quarter bound with Wibalin Buckram on the spine. And each copy, as I say, is signed. (Yes, I know the old joke about unsigned copies having greater scarcity value, but never mind!)

For anyone interested in acquiring a copy, perhaps as a Christmas gift, here are the ordering details:

TO ORDER:

Call 01256 302692 or email your order and phone number to direct@macmillan.co.uk and someone will call you back.
The order line is open 8.30am - 5.30pm (GMT) Monday to Friday.

To process your order you will need the title, author name and ISBN (please select the correct ISBN for the edition you wish to purchase from the below), as well as quantity and your delivery address. Payment details will be taken over the phone but your card will not be charged until your order is despatched.

Quote promo code RC5 to receive free p&p within the UK.

Order details: 

GALLOWS COURT SPECIAL EDITION LETTERED, Martin Edwards, ISBN 9781789541748, £100

GALLOWS COURT SPECIAL EDITION NUMBERED, Martin Edwards, ISBN 9781789541113, £50   

Launching Gallows Court

I've never had a launch party for one of my novels in London before, but Head of Zeus did me proud last week with the launch of Gallows Court at Hatchards in Piccadilly, a lovely venue and London's most historic bookshop. I arrived at the venue on a high, given that the book had just received fantastic reviews in The Times and The Sunday Express, as well as on various blogs and other sites. So I was very much in the mood to celebrate.

And what a fun occasion it was. Many years ago, when I was being published by Transworld, a senior editor gloomily warned me not to get over-excited about launches, and I've never forgotten that. But things are different with Head of Zeus. It really was a wonderful evening and the turnout was terrific.

Barry Forshaw was signed up to conduct a short QandA with me, and he handled it with his customary aplomb. Gary Stratmann kindly took photographs and I'm grateful to him and also to Sven Pehla for the photos accompanying this post.

Among many others, I was delighted to see my former agent, Mandy Little, her successor James Wills, my editor at Harper Collins, David Brawn, and my former editor (from my days with Hodder) Kate Lyall Grant, along with fellow crime writer and music agent Paul Charles. I'd lunched with Paul and chatted to Kate a week earlier in Florida: small world, huh? Simon Brett, my predecessor as President of the Detection Club, came along, and so did Sheila Mitchell, widow of Simon's predecessor, Harry Keating, Bodies from the Library organisers, and the family of CWA founder Roy Vickers. It was great to see Robert Thorogood, creator and writer of the hit TV series Death in Paradise (who kindly gave a lovely quote for the book) and also Gordon Griffin, a terrific actor who has recorded many of my audio books. There were also numerous CWA chums including Mike Stotter, Linda Stratmann, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Ali Karim, Ayo Onatade, and Chrissie Poulson, other fellow writers such as Robert Thorogood, the lovely guy who created and writes Death in Paradise, blogging friends like Moira Redmond, and Golden Age enthusiasts like Sven, Seona Ford from the Dorothy L. Sayers Society, and Geoff Bradley, editor of CADS.

Among a group of guests whom I first got to know at university were two guys I'd last seen when I took my degree - a very long time ago indeed. Wonderful to see them again after all this time. I very much appreciate the efforts of Nic Cheetham, Suzanne Sangster and the rest of the Head of Zeus team to make the event a success. And I was truly grateful that so many nice people took the time to help me celebrate a book that means a good deal to me.

Gallows Court

Today, I'm truly delighted to be able to talk about a book that has meant a great deal to me over the past three years. After many years of striving, I've finally managed to realise an ambition I've long held as a crime novelist - simply, to write a story that a major publisher loved enough to get behind in a significant way.

The book is Gallows Court, publication date is September 2018, and it will be the lead crime fiction title of Head of Zeus (whose other authors range from Ben Okri to Jim Naughtie) this coming autumn. For me, then, a thrilling development.

During the recent past, I've combined the writing of the novel with various other ventures, notably The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, and another non-fiction project which is still ongoing, and will be for some time. But I've always seen myself first and foremost as a novelist, and I've always tried to develop and progress as a writer of fiction. Writing this novel was an attempt to do something very different, in all sorts of ways, from my previous work.

Gallows Court is set in 1930, and it builds on my fascination with that period in our history, and my love of Golden Age detective fiction. But it's not a pastiche whodunit. Rather, it's a novel of psychological suspense, fast-paced, with plenty of plot twists.

In writing the book, I deliberately adopted a different approach from that of my other novels. Rather than planning out "whodunnit", I began with a character, and a scenario, and took things from there. This was a bold move, for me, which often felt as though it might prove foolhardy. But as I kept working on the story, it began to come together, and I found myself increasingly gripped by its potential.

I wrote the book without the comfort blanket of a contract or expression of interest from a publisher, because I wanted to set my agent the task of trying to finding a really good, fresh home for the book. In many ways, this was a real risk, because it's so easy to become typecast as a writer, and publishers do not necessarily want writers to change direction. Thankfully, Nic Cheetham of Head of Zeus "got" exactly what I was trying to do - an incredibly lucky break for me. I've worked with many lovely publishers over the years, and I must say that I'm exceptionally excited by this relationship. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed that readers will love the book as much as Nic did. The book cover image is subject to change, but I think it captures the period setting.

I'll be telling you more about the novel in the run-up to publication. Suffice to say at this stage that it concerns Rachel Savernake, an attractive and fabulously wealthy - but ruthless and mysterious - woman who comes to London and becomes embroiled in a sequence of bizarre murders. A young journalist, Jacob Flint, determines to find out her secret...   

At the British Library the other day, I did a podcast with two splendid bloggers and locked room enthusiasts, Jim and Dan, and towards the end I talked a bit about the new book. Here's a link to the whole podcast - and do check out their blogs, The Invisible Event and The Reader is Warned, both of which are excellent.