A curious title, isn’t it? It’s actually an oblique reference to a Jimmy Buffett song. I’ve never heard it, I’m not a fan of his music, but I always liked of it – the title “A Pirate Looks At Forty.”

But at seventy? Well, that’s coming up fast. Next week. None of the earlier milestones ever bothered me, but this seems to loom very large. A real intimation of mortality.

I’m keeping a tighter focus for my work, concentrating on my novels only, and an occasional album review to remind myself I was once a music journalist, and loved it. Music still moves me, but even in my little corner of it – roots and world music – so much is passing me by. It’s time for younger voices with a different language to brin g it all alive.

But the books…I have plenty to keep me going. The seventh Simon Westow novel, Them Without Pain, is coming out in two months, and I’m moving along with the eighth (eight? I’m not sure how that’s happened). In May next year, you’ll meet Woman Police Sergeant Cathy Marsden and a little down the line I’ll be joining up with her again in Leeds, this time in 1942. Like I say, ample to keep me going.

I do have a definite sense of time passing these days. It doesn’t worry me; I’ve always been a fatalist. Just don’t let me keel over until I’ve finished whatever I’m writing, because I’m the only one with a clue who it ends, and even them, I’m frequently not certain until I’m almost there. Probably a good reason to keep writing. It’s my talisman, my lucky charm.

I was a late bloomer. I’d always written, and published bits and pieces. But I was almost forty before the music journalism became regular and my first non-fiction quickie bio appeared. Quite a number of those followed, but I was 55 when the first novel – The Broken Token – landed in the world. Since then, 36 others have followed, 31 one of them set in Leeds.

I love this place and its history, even if I came to that later, too.

So yes, 70. No banners, no bunting, definitely no party.

Let it come and I’ll make of it what I can.

By the way, before you go, let me tell you a little about this upcoming novel, Them Without Pain.

This one adds an extra layer as it has a real root in local history: in 1696, goldsmith Arthur Mangey created the elaborate ceremonial Leeds Mace. Two years later, he was accused of treason for coin clipping (debasing the coinage), found guilty and hanged. It was a dubious conviction, at best. In testimony, someone claimed he had a secret workshop where he committed his crimes, but nobody searched for it.

In 1825, they knocked down the block where the workshop was supposed to be, and…they found it. Inside were two pairs of metal shears and an Elizabethan coin.

Those are the facts. In the fiction, the room also contains the body of a man Westow has been hunting who stole a set of silver cups made by Mangey. How does the past connect to the death – and who killed him?

It’s Regency noir, as dark as it can get, set in a town polluted by the growing number of factories belching out their smoke. A place where people arrive, hunting for work and pavements covered to gold, to find only scraps. But where the rich have money, and the criminals can be deadly.

If you’re on NetGalley and approved for Severn House, you can read it now (please leave a review!). If not, you can still pre-order it. Independent bookshops would love your business, but all your favourite places will carry it. Speedy Hen has the cheapest British price, plus free UK delivery. Just saying.