Jackie Fraser's Blog

Exciting news from Fraser Towers. The novel formerly known as Book Two has a) a title b) a publication date (in the UK – US date to be announced) and c) A COVER.


It’s LIVE on Goodreads and also on Amazon if you want to pre-order – which you can also do elsewhere, as listed on the S&S website.
https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/.....

https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/......

Or of course from your local bookshop.

I wrote this (or most of it) during Lockdown in 2020 and it went off to S&S in September 2021, so it feels like it’s taken a long time to get to this point, which is more about scheduling than anything editorial, although I did have to cut (gasp!) 30k words.

2020 was a strange old year (wasn't it though) and there seemed to be literally no reason to stop writing it. (After all, I write mostly to entertain myself, and I had a lot of free time while we were confined to the house.) Thirty thousand words is a lot to cut but I went at it with my best red pen muttering to myself about authors who can't control themselves.

Anyway, I'm delighted to be able to invite you to buy yourself a copy, even if it won’t arrive until the autumn.

I will have further announcements for my lovely US readers shortly. 🥰

Everyone likes to write a list, don’t they, and maybe show off, I don’t know. Every year I think I should write about the books I’ve read, and then I never do. Luckily Goodreads keeps track for me.

This year I’ve done some re-reading – I re-read a number of Bond novels while my partner had Covid, although not all of them, you can probably only read three at a time.

My favourite thing about the Bond novels is incidental social detail. Things like Bond eating pasta with pesto for the first time, or complaining that you really can’t get a nice bottle of Taittinger in London in the 1950s. This is also something I love about Agatha Christie novels. I’ve been re-reading these (slowly) since 2020, and I read four or five this year. Some of them are very definitely better than others but the social detail is always fascinating. She was writing over such a long and dramatically-changing period. There’s loads of great stuff about class in Christie, and I always find that very interesting.

I read the first four Jack Reacher novels and three of Anne Cleeves’ Shetland novels, both because everyone always goes on about them. Solid and well-written examples of their genres. Hurrah for the library app, which is the ideal place to get them from. I don’t need Jack Reacher novels filling up my already overly full shelf space. I can’t imagine I’ll re-read them; but I thought that about Christie when I was twenty or whatever.

I read Dune for the first time. It was quite good actually. And I read and enjoyed the first two Richard Osman books, which are very amusing.

What have I enjoyed most? I’ve read 107 published books this year and this is my top 15 of things that were new to me.

Index, a History of by Dennis Duncan
Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller
Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James
Mad About You by Mhairi Mcfarlane
How to Build Stonehenge by Mike Pitts
Incy Wincy by RJ Darker
The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley
The Foghorn’s Lament by Jennifer Lucy Allan
People Person by Candice Carty-Williams
Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Sutanto
The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel
Otherlands by Thomas Halliday
Murder Most Cornish by Kate Johnson
Playing the Bass with Three Left Hands by Will Carruthers
My (Extra) Ordinary Life by Rebecca Ryan

The worst book? I read a really dull biography of Mary Pickford. Considering how interesting her life was that was quite an achievement.

I got lots of great books for Christmas (as always!) so am already looking forward to starting my 2023 list.

I like to keep an eye on my Goodreads reviews (despite my belief that GR is for readers not writers).

I generally read the five star reviews and sometimes the four star reviews. I don't read the others because those are the ones that stick in your head, and I don't need that. (I'm fine with people not liking the book - or not liking it much - the world would be very dull if we all liked the same thing. But I don't need to know about it.)

Anyway, this morning I reached 1000 five star reviews and I felt I should acknowledge this. It's amazing! I still find it tricky to imagine that people I don't know have read a book that I wrote, let alone thousands of people. And that a thousand of them liked it enough to give it five stars. I'm very grateful!

I feel quite strongly that Goodreads is for readers, not writers, and I put my own reviews (I try to review everything I read - but don't always manage it) on my 'personal' account.

There are various reasons for this, mostly that I feel like I'd be more cautious about what I say if I put them on here. If I was organised I'd share some of them over here but social media admin is the sort of thing I do instead of writing so maybe I shouldn't...