I rarely re-post other authors’ work, but Chris Schuler’s excellent summary of John Sweeney’s recent talk at the Authors’ Club deserves a wide audience. Why break my own rules? Well, I was there, and I couldn’t have put it better myself.

In Chris’s words;

Last week at the National Liberal Club in London, the veteran investigative  journalist and author John Sweeney addressed a packed audience of Authors’ Club and NLC Ukrainian Circle members about his latest book, Murder in the Gulag: The Life and Death of Alexei Navalny, a frank, unvarnished portrayal of the charismatic but controversial Russian opposition leader who was murdered in an Arctic penal camp last February at the age of 47.

After he was introduced by Lucy Popescu, chair of the Authors’ Club, Sweeney pulled on the trademark orange beanie familiar to viewers of his video dispatches from Ukraine, which invariably begin ‘Day XXX of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine,’ and sign off with ‘Vladimir Putin, do f— off.’ The four-letter expletive can rarely have resounded through the hallowed vaults of the National Liberal Club quite as often as it did in the course of his talk.

Early this year, Sweeney slipped on ice in Kyiv – where he still lives part time – and heard of Navalny’s death from his hospital bed. He knew the man personally, having met and interviewed him, and was deeply affected by the news. ‘He was a hero to me,’ Sweeney said, ‘tall, blond, blue-eyed, humorous and intensely charismatic,’ but also, he added, ‘an arrogant prick – but then you have to be to go against Putin.

‘I’ve met four Russians who challenged Putin: Anna Politkovskaya, Natalya Estemirova, Boris Nemtsov, and Navalny. In order, poisoned then shot, shot, shot, poisoned, now murdered’ – a reign of terror chronicled in Sweeney’s previous book, Killer in the Kremlin (Bantam Press, 2022).

‘Putin uses money and sex and terror to shut people up and stay in power. It didn’t work with Navalny – he wasn’t tempted by money, he had an amazing marriage to Yulia, and he was unafraid.’ People often wondered why Navalny returned to Russia from Germany after being poisoned with Novichok in August 2020. ‘In politics you have to be a risk-taker,’ Sweeney explained, ‘and he was a devout Christian, whose belief in the afterlife sustained him.’

Navalny’s opposition to Putin’s regime, Sweeney explained, sprang from his childhood. Although he was born in the Moscow region, his father was Ukrainian, and his grandparents still lived there, not far from Chernobyl, where the young Navalny spent many summers. After the nuclear disaster in 1987, his grandparents were evacuated, never to return. His childhood idyll had been taken from him by Soviet corruption and stupidity, and he soon detected the same mindset in Putin’s United Russia Party – ‘a party of crooks and thieves’, he called it.

Despite his admiration for Navalny, Sweeney did not shy away from the man’s flaws. Having joined Grigory Yavlinsky’s liberal party Yabloko, Navalny became disillusioned after they were intimidated into ‘managed opposition’, and was drawn instead to the energy of the far-right Russian nationalists. Although he later dissociated himself from them, it was, Sweeney remarked, ‘a tactical and moral mistake for which he never apologised’.

Taking questions at the end, in the week that President Biden authorised Ukraine to use US-supplied ATACMs against military targets inside Russia, and Putin threatened reprisals, Sweeney was asked if he was worried about escalation.

‘When Putin first threatened nuclear retaliation in September 2022, I was worried,’ Sweeney said. ‘But the following week, at the summit in Samarkand, Xi Jinping said there must be no nuclear adventurism. China’s economy is in a mess, and they need the West to keep buying their goods. If Putin disobeys, Xi will kill him.’

Murder in the Gulag: The Life and Death of Alexei Navalny, by John Sweeney (Headline Press, 2024). Amazon link here.

You’ll find this and other articles by Chris Schuler on Substack here.

I am excited to announce the imminent release of Blood of Wolves, which completes the Rune Song historical fantasy trilogy. What’s more, the publishers (Second Sky, an imprint of Bookouture/Hachette) have redesigned the covers for the whole series. Personally, I think they look great together:

Several book reviewers and bloggers have helped to promote the ‘cover reveal’, including The Plain-Spoken Pen. She, bless her, commented “I love this series… I wouldn’t care if the third book came covered in a brown paper bag, I’d be champing at the bit to read it. But this is a very cool cover!”

The Plain-Spoken pen will publish her review on 27th October. Other reviews have already appeared on the review site NetGalley. You can see them here and I’m delighted to say that so far they are all 5*.

There’s a synopsis of Blood of Wolves here, and you can pre-order the ebook on Amazon here. Release day is Friday, 27th October and it is coming out in ebook, paperback, and audiobook formats.

For more about Hammer of Fate, the first of the Rune Song series, you’ll find the synopsis here and the Amazon page here. For Runes of Battle, the second book, click synopsis or Amazon.

Enjoy! And if you need a little encouragement, let me share snippets from those early reviews:

“The last book in this epic and omg what a read. Another real page turner, action packed bloody battles. Great storytelling and great characters who I feel I really know… Highly, highly recommended.”

“This has been an amazing trilogy. I have been captivated and completely absorbed the whole way through…”

Late last year I was invited to join the shortlisting panel for the 2022 Best First Novel Award, the UK’s longest-running prize for debut fiction. It has been a delight as well as a significant burden of reading. Over the next few weeks I’m going to highlight some BFNA gems by authors that are, by definition, little known. This won’t be the long-list (pictured below) since in the nature of panel discussions not all the books I thought worthy made the cut. However they resonated with me enough to want to share them.

The Best First Novel Award for debut fiction

I hadn’t expected to like this one so much; the context made me nervous. It’s a 25 year drama through the eyes of one woman in an intensely Republican, Catholic family near Omagh. It shows I should read outside my comfort zone more.

We follow the woman from her childhood with an emotionally abusive mother through to empty-nester, and it takes place almost entirely within the scattered farming community of one remote valley. It’s a story of love; parental, sibling, and amorous, and it hinges on communication and mis-communication, with heavy doses of Catholic morality, guilt, and hypocrisy.

I truly engaged with this story. The language is straightforward, unflowery, and only lightly sprinkled with Irish vernacular. The mother’s abuse sets the context for much that happens later, including a disastrous adolescence. By then I wanted to stand in the girl’s way shouting ‘don’t do that’. Before she is long into her marriage I was just as keen to slap some sense into her, but then we would not have a story. For a while it is a sharp portrait of a woman so wrapped around her own wounds that she does not realise that silence can cut deeper than words.

There’s a rich cast of characters, all well drawn, and enough humour to lift what could be a depressing tale. The reader ends up laughing, loving, and shouting with them all as if we were part of the ‘craic’. Brilliant.

One that also deserved to win: Lucy Jago, A Net for Small Fishes

More to come

It’s great to discover Draca is being well received by lovers of nautical fiction. It has been reviewed in the December 2020 issue of Yachting Monthly. Rather nicely, I think.

For more information about Draca, including other reviews and extracts, click here.

Draca is available via all good bookshops, or via Amazon here.

The guys at the books podcast We’d Like A Word are making quite a name for themselves. Previous guests have included Graham Norton and Anthony Horowitz. I’m honoured to follow in their footsteps. In their mid June broadcast I shared the spotlight with General Sir Peter Wall, the President of Combat Stress. Combat Stress is the premier charity for veterans with complex mental health issues such as PTSD.

Paul Waters and Stevyn Colgan, the show’s producers, had chosen a theme of ‘should trauma influence stories’. Sounds heavy, doesn’t it? Just follow the links below and listen; we laughed. A lot.

We started by talking about Draca, my novel about broken relationships and misunderstandings where one character is a veteran with PTSD. General Wall has read the book and had some wonderfully enthusiastic words to say about it. Paul asked how much trauma can, or should, shape a story. That’s a serious question which prompted serious discussion, but which morphed into reminiscences of Armed Forces life and became just a little explosive. Best line of the broadcast came from Paul Waters, after one anecdote from General Wall: “Just think how far your career might have gone if you hadn’t been caught!”

Where to listen

The podcast is in three parts. Choose any of these links to listen:  Apple Podcasts  Google Podcasts  Spotify  Anchor FM

Sir Peter Wall and Combat Stress

Sir Peter Wall was Chief of the General Staff, the professional head of the British Army, until 2014. If you’d like to know more about Combat Stress and their outstanding work with veterans, their web site is here.

Draca

There’s more information about Draca, including extracts, on this site here. For Draca’s Amazon pages, go here for paperback and here for Kindle. At the time of writing, one month from launch, it is scoring a very gratifying 4.6 ex 5 with 20 five star reviews. Draca is also available via Waterstones, Foyles, and all good bookshops.

Draca’s launch was supposed to happen today. Tonight I expected to be sipping a celebratory champagne, basking in the glory of the first reviews. After all, all Draca’s wonderful supporters were going to have their copies early, weren’t they?

Enter Corona-chaos. I.E: Publishers, printers, distributors, and logistics companies all working with reduced staff on socially-distanced shifts. Massive dependency on Amazon, since bookshops and libraries are shut. Amazon working to priorities as arcane as their algorithms. End result:

1. Initial print run reaches publisher. Stacks of paperbacks. Yay! But too late for early copies to reach supporters before release day.
2. Publisher can’t get stock to Amazon. Decides to postpone launch.
3. Delaying Draca’s launch on release day proves to be technically impossible.
4. Publisher releases Draca anyway. Amazon will sell Kindle copies but are ‘Out of Stock’ on paperback. They probably won’t receive/accept stock into their system until early-mid June. [Don’t ask. I have. I still don’t understand.]

The way around Corona-chaos:

So here, lovely people, is how to acquire a print copy of Draca during Corona-chaos:

Go to the publisher, Unbound, here. For £9.99 they will ship you a copy, just like Amazon. They will even cover the cost of UK postage. For £4.99 they will also sell you an ebook or Kindle version if that’s what you want.

OR

Message me. Contact me via the web site. Email me, whatever is easiest. I am assured that a stack of copies is on its way, so when that arrives I will send you a signed copy, with a dedication if you wish, for £10 via PayPal. Just add your desired dedication to the PayPal message. And yes, I too will cover UK postage. While stacks last, as they say.

Simples.

For more information about Draca, including extracts, click here. No less an authority than General Sir Peter Wall calls it ‘a really cracking read’. Remember half the royalties go to the veteran’s charity Combat Stress.

The wait is nearly over. Draca, which a former Chief of the General Staff describes as a ‘really cracking read’, will be released on 14th May, and can now be ordered online. Details below.

About the book

Draca pivots around the tensions between three characters; 

• a war-damaged veteran who tries to rebuild his life by restoring a vintage sailing boat, but seems to be on a mission to self-destruct, 
• his overbearing father, who pushes him ever closer to the edge,
• and a yachtswoman who gives everything she has to pull him back. 

And between them all, there’s an old boat, Draca, with a very dark history. So is the veteran haunted by his past, or just haunted? There are more details about the book here, and extracts here. 

Charitable Link

All author royalties are shared equally with the veterans’ mental health charity Combat Stress.

Early praise

‘A really cracking read about a soldier who attacks his battlefield demons through his passion for sailing – and sadly still needs help’. (General Sir Peter Wall)

‘Tension release, fear, laughter, fear, lust, so you don’t notice the tightening of the noose … the story sucks you in and won’t let go.’ (Susie Wilde, Author of Sea Paths and Obsidian)

‘A terrific and compelling story which highlights mental and physical challenges that many who have served will recognise.’  (General Sir Nick Parker)

‘A cracking, believable yarn made even more authentic by the wonderfully descriptive sailing scenes – and by falling in love with the true heroine, the Bristol Channel pilot cutter Draca.’ (Ewen Southby-Tailyour OBE, former Yachtsman of the Year)

Ordering details

Draca is available in the UK via all good bookshops with an online ordering facility, incuding Waterstones, Foyles, Apple Books, Kobo, Hive, and, of course, Amazon; click here for a paperback and here for a Kindle edition.

For those who like to support independent bookshops, there are two fine examples near my home:

The Little Bookshop in Cookham will take email orders via this link and Marlow Bookshop will fulfil orders via their parent group Daunt Books.

Outside the UK Draca is only currently available as an ebook through retailers including amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

Previews coming

Over the next few days I shall be posting excerpts from Draca and introducing you to each of the key characters.

Meanwhile, stay safe in these troubled times. Escape to a different world; read a book.

Draca is going to print. A book that has been seven years in the creation is about to be reality, with a release date of 14th May. Many of the conventional aspects of a book launch have necessarily been cancelled during the pandemic, but I could send out review copies. I’ve been stunned by the reactions.

From Combat Stress:

Combat stress is the veterans’ mental health charity. They will receive half the royalties. Their President, General Sir Peter Wall, describes Draca as ‘A really cracking read about a soldier who attacks his battlefield demons through his passion for sailing – and sadly still needs help.’ 

From a fellow author:

Suzie Wilde,  the author of Sea Paths and Obsidian, enthused ‘tension, release, fear, laughter, fear, lust, so you don’t notice the tightening of the noose … the story sucks you in and won’t let go.’

From the Armed Forces:

I served for nearly eleven years in the armed forces, but never saw action, yet the protagonist is a war-damaged veteran of Afghanistan. So it was with some diffidence that I approached General Sir Nick Parker to take a look. Sir Nick was Commander British Forces Afghanistan in 2010, and he says it’s ‘a terrific and compelling story which highlights mental and physical challenges that many who have served will recognise.’

And from a distinguished sailor:

Those who know me also know I am an occasional and inexperienced sailor. I have sailed very enjoyably with a hugely more competent friend, but I was a little nervous about the authenticity of some sailing scenes. The book, after all, pivots around a very idiosyncratic, vintage pilot cutter. It was an area, like combat, where I had to rely on research and imagination rather than personal experience. Then Ewen Southby-Tailyour OBE, a former Yachtsman of the Year, told me he’d lived on a Bristol Channel pilot cutter. He reassured me that Draca is ‘a cracking, believable yarn made even more authentic by the wonderfully descriptive sailing scenes – and by falling in love with the true heroine, the Bristol Channel pilot cutter Draca.’

A ‘book launch’ with no bookshops

Draca is sailing out into a strange world where no physical bookshops are open, and no libraries, so the book launch I was planning can’t happen. All authors with books coming out during these stressful times have had their wings clipped, but with a little help, I think Draca is reaching flying speed.

Draca will be released by Unbound on 14th May 2020, ISBN: 978-1-78965-105-8, and will be available to pre-order shortly. Further details to follow on this site and on my Amazon author page. You’ll find a synopsis of the book, including extracts, here.

Cover reveal! Unbound’s wonderful production team have created stunning artwork for Draca, which will be released on 14th May. I think it captures the mood of the book perfectly. They’ve also created a very accurate picture of a Bristol Channel pilot cutter, which plays such an important part in the book that the boat becomes a character.

And the all-important back-cover description? Read on…

DRACA WAS A VINTAGE SAILING CUTTER, OLD EDDIE’S PRIDE AND JOY. BUT NOW SHE’S BEACHED, HER VARNISH PEELING. SHE’S DYING, JUST LIKE EDDIE.

Eddie leaves Draca to his grandson Jack, a legacy that’s the final wedge between Jack and his father. Yet for Jack, the old boat is a lifeline. Medically discharged from the Marines, with his marriage on the rocks, the damaged veteran finds new purpose; Draca will sail again. Wonderful therapy for a wounded hero, people say.

Young Georgia ‘George’ Fenton, who runs the boatyard, has doubts. She saw changes in Old Eddie that were more sinister even than cancer. And by the time Draca tastes the sea again, the man she dares to love is going the same way. To George, Jack’s ‘purpose’ has become ‘possession’; the boat owns the man and her flawed hero is on a mission to self-destruct. As his controlling and disinherited father pushes him closer to the edge, she gives all she has to hold him back.

And between them all, there’s an old boat with dark secrets, and perhaps a mind of its own.

Intrigued? If you’d like a longer synopsis, you’ll find it here. There are extracts here and here, and lots more about the book at Unbound. And I’d love to point you towards a url where you can place pre-orders, but for now, let me simply share the joy of a brief well executed by the publisher.

Thanks to the support of around 250 enthusiasts, Draca has achieved crowdfunding success. We’ve reached the threshold of pre-orders when Unbound starts the publishing cycle. Each of those 250 believed in the project enough to pledge money towards a book that didn’t exist, and which would never have existed without them.

Draca will now enter the long cycle of editing, copy editing, cover design, and typesetting. The current forecast is for general release in June 2020.

However I have been invited to speak at the Chalfont St Giles Literary Festival on 21 May 2020. It’s too good an opportunity not to factor into launch plans, so Unbound will try to ensure that pre-release copies are available ready for that date.

Meanwhile the supporters’ list will remain open during the initial editing phases. Anyone wishing to pre-order a copy can do so here. As from now, the royalties will be mounting up for the veterans’ mental health charity Combat Stress.

Huge thanks to all those who’ve carried Draca to this crucial stage. You have truly earned your place inside the covers.

[For a synopsis of Draca, click here. For extracts, go here or here.]

Geoff