I’ve decided to do a few general posts about my books. Obviously every time you speak or post about something it’s promotion, but these are not going to be the usual my book is great please buy it sort of thing.

I want to give a feel for things that I think are interesting about each book, maybe why I wrote it, what I was hoping to achieve, how I tried to promote it, or just something leftfield about it.

I’m going to start with my ‘Marmite’ book.

I’ve got two novellas out, the second of which is The Man in the Woods. This is my ‘Love it or Hate it’ book, because it’s the only one that’s had a wide range of responses. In terms of reviews, most are 4 and 5 star – but it’s also got the highest number of 3, 2 and 1 star reviews of any of my books.

Some people love it:

Some people don’t get it:

And some people… well, check out possibly my most succinct review ever:

No one says it’s badly written, or unsuspenseful, or the characters are bad (thankfully).

I think things that might cause some readers not to like it include:

• It’s a novella. People generally prefer longer stories, IMHO.
• Whilst it’s dark like all my books, it has an unreliable first person narrator, which is different to the others.
• It’s a ‘high concept’ story with a distinctive twist that turns the whole story on its head. Not many people guess it (only one person I know worked it out before the ending). Some people do not like the twist because of the way it changes everything (and just to add, no, it’s not one of those ‘it was all a dream’ stories, which I don’t like either).
• I think some people might be expecting it to remain within the mainstream psychological thriller genre – and when the twist pushes it into a subcategory of that genre they’re not always happy (and no, it’s not mucking around with time slip / time travel – I don’t like those much either!)
• After the twist it ends on a note where some have said they would like it to continue

Addressing the last point, I have to admit, I can see why. I had always conceived of this as a standalone long short story / novella. For me, it was a piece hinged on its short sharp shock, which would always end where it ended. Although now I do have the start of an idea for a sequel – whether I will ever write it, I’m unsure!

Have I wondered about The Man in the Woods getting lower reviews than my other books and whether I should have published it? Yes.

Would I consider unpublishing it? No.

Some books we write just for ourselves knowing that, within those readers whose interests and passions cross over with ours, there will always be a few who like the twisted path you sometimes choose to take.

Next up, The Boy in the Burgundy Hood – a book I was very unsure about when I published it…