The Ruined Heart

The Ruined Heart cover, created by David Lavelle.

Last year, I wrote that I’d finished a short novella – or, less charitably, a long short story! – called The Ruined Heart. A sort of murder-mystery set in an English village just after the Second World War, I was rather pleased with it, and mentioned how I was considering putting it up online on Amazon as an ebook download.

Well, now I have done it, and those of you of an ebook persuasion can purchase it for 99p by clicking here.

Long-term readers of this blog – should there be any! – may be surprised at this, given my stated dislike of the idea of self-publishing. It’s not that I condemn others for doing whatever they want with their books, it’s just that, for me, it feels like cheating to expect people to want to pay for my books when no publisher has judged them good enough to print.

But 25,000 words is a funny length for a story. Too long for a short story, and much too short for a novel, there isn’t really anything else I could do with The Ruined Heart. So I decided… why not?

A friend of a friend of mine, the talented David Lavelle, kindly took on a commission to create a piece of cover artwork, and the story went online to purchase from Amazon this morning. I’ve decided that if it somehow manages to make 20 sales, I’ll put another one up. I already have a 2000-word treatment written for a second Alice Flack story, and some ideas floating around for others… They’re quite fun to write, and there is something more relaxing about writing without the pressure of thinking you’re ever going to submit it to anybody.

So just the readers to worry about, then!

So far, it’s sold 5 copies, which isn’t bad for one day, and a quarter of the way to my target. No reviews yet, and I doubt it’s sold to anyone I’ve never met, or ever will manage that… But you never know!

Elsewhere, I continued to work on the Scarrowbeck novel in aid of the BBC Children in Need Appeal, and am nearly halfway through that – you can read the chapters so far completed by clicking here. I managed to complete the research and writing for my possible next Doctor Who Magazine piece, and that’s being considered by them for possible publication next year, although it may need cutting down a bit. Fingers crossed it will appear on some form or other! I also submitted Another Life to another agent last week, so we shall see what happens with that.

Anyway, please do take a look at The Ruined Heart – and if you like it, please tell your friends!