Category Archives: The Girl in the Ivory Dress

What I’m writing now… plus a Halloween Sale!

Now that we’re properly into the spooky season, read on for an update on my latest ghost story as well as for details of my Halloween sale.

The Girl in the Ivory Dress Halloween sale

What I’m writing now

I’ve started writing the third Ghosts of Alice story, with a working title of Alice and the Devil. What’s interesting about this story is that I normally start with an outline plot but this time I’m writing as a pantser, as it’s informally known in the trade. Most writers are plotters, but there are a few (including some pretty significant ones) who just start off with a premise and see where it takes them. Stephen King is possibly the most famous of these.

Normally, I work out a clear path from start to finish involving some major ‘set’ scenes. My plot it usually fairly skeletal and I do regularly change things as I progress – but I always have that overarching sense of direction. But this time I’ve got the premise and the scenes but couldn’t fully grasp the ending, so I’ve started writing and am seeing where it leads me. The worry is that I end up in a dead end that takes a huge amount of rewriting. But I have to say it’s going well so far and I’m almost halfway through (I think!). Let’s see what happens…

Ghost of Alice Halloween sale

Both The Boy in the Burgundy Hood and The Girl in the Ivory Dress are reduced from £3.99 / $4.99 to 99p / 99c on Kindle from now until Halloween – over a 75% reduction! Scroll to the end of this post for the link straight to the Amazon page.

The Boy in the Burgundy Hood Halloween sale

Plus… advance warning of The Secret of the Tirthas promo campaign

And another heads up – I’m running a major Kindle promotion of The Secret of the Tirthas around November 11th. The first book in the series, The City of Light, will be free and there will be discounts on one or two of the next books!

I wish you a suitably creepy Halloween – and as ever, thank you for reading!

Vote for The Girl in the Ivory Dress #CoveroftheMonth

They say not to judge a book by its cover but I need you to do just that. If you like the cover of my book, The Girl in the Ivory Dress, please vote for it for the Cover of the Month contest on AllAuthor.com!

I’ve just been nominated for this contest and need as much support as I can get.

Please take a short moment to vote by clicking the image – thank you!

Click to Vote!

The Real Fire that Inspired The Girl in the Ivory Dress

The fire that Alice finds herself having to deal with at the start of my new ghost novel, The Girl in the Ivory Dress, was inspired by a real life tragedy, the near-destruction of a heritage gem just a few miles away from where I live – and where I had at one stage been planning to get married.

The Girl in the Ivory Dress fire damage



Clandon Park House is an eighteenth century Palladian mansion near Guildford, run by the National Trust. On April 29th 2015 a fault in a distribution board led to an inferno that shot flames high into the night sky and gutted every room bar one. The house was swiftly evacuated and fortunately no one was hurt. An emergency plan to salvage the precious artefacts of the house was enacted, and 80 firefighters, Trust staff and volunteers did their best, sliding paintings down ladders and passing items out through windows. Much of the collection was lost however, including such iconic items as a football kicked into the enemy trenches to start the charge at the Battle of the Somme.

A couple of years after the fire the public was allowed to visit again, enabling me to take these photos. It was one of the main places that we used to visit as a family, and my wife and I had shortlisted it for our wedding. It was a real loss to the nation. But there is hope, with the Trust restoring the main rooms on the ground floor and planning to open the upper floors for exhibitions and events in the near future…

The Girl in the Ivory Dress fire damage house

The Girl in the Ivory Dress is out now!

Big news – my latest novel, The Girl in the Ivory Dress, is out now!

The Girl in the Ivory Dress is out now

I’m so excited about this book. It’s a ghost story for adults and continues the story of Alice Deaton, who we last saw damaged but not destroyed at the end of The Boy in the Burgundy Hood.

Here’s what it’s about:

After a fire tears through the country house where she works, Alice Deaton accepts a desperate invitation from an old friend whose guest house on the Welsh coast is being haunted by a horrifying apparition.

But Alice, with her mysterious ability to connect with ghosts, senses something even stranger going on at the isolated Peacehaven. Who is the spectral man roaming the house? Why is he terrifying the guests? And why does Alice keep dreaming about the ghosts of her past, the burning man and girl in the ivory dress?

As she digs deeper Alice will uncover an insidious evil that might just overwhelm her…

How the book came about:

When I wrote The Boy in the Burgundy Hood I wasn’t planning on any kind of sequel. However, almost as soon as I published it some savvy readers were querying the ending, and dropping hints about how it leant itself to another book. Within days of publication, I was planning a follow on story. The girl in the ivory dress began to play with my head. A few months later, when The Boy in the Burgundy Hood became a bestseller on Amazon, I was sure I was doing the right thing.

However, whilst I wanted the books to be connected, I didn’t want to write another series that you had to read in order. Hence The Ghosts of Alice was born – stand alone ghost stories, linked by our feisty heroine with her mysterious ability to connect with ghosts.

So if you’re interested in a spooky mystery please get yourself (or a friend / family member / ghost story enthusiast you know) a copy from Amazon. And please please if you enjoy it, leave a rating or a review – it really does help the book get noticed.

Thank you and happy reading!

The Girl in the Ivory Dress – cover reveal!

The Girl in the Ivory Dress

I’m very excited to share for the first time the cover of my forthcoming ghost story, The Girl in the Ivory Dress!

It’s the second story featuring Alice Deaton, in a series of standalone novels called The Ghosts of Alice. The book will be released in the next 2-3 weeks.

What do you think?