I hope you have had a great Christmas, although I know those affected by the flooding in the UK have had a tough time.  Hopefully the weather will settle and they can get some normality back quickly as we all move into 2016.

I have been very busy over the last few weeks working on my latest book, a new venture into the experiences of five people on the same day – D Day.  It is a fictional story but based on the real events of the day. I have just finished the story and am now onto the editing phase – so there will be the inevitable re-drafting of a few more versions before it is finished!

This is a departure from the world of the Riders of the North – I am continuing with that series – but I have always wanted to do a book on the Normandy landings, which my grandfather was part of, so his experiences form part of the story.  I have been immersed in this project, so have been rather off the radar in the run up to Christmas. I hope those of you who have enjoyed my work in the Riders of the North books will be interested in my new work on D Day.  I hope to have it available by Spring or early summer of 2016.  Here is a little flavour;

War is hell. There is nothing glorious or heroic about killing, or being killed, for the ideology of other men. No greatness in that, none at all.

That was my thinking after I came home and the memory of fighting had subsided. It was the reason I could never return to Normandy, although my daughter often asked me too. A part of me had always wanted to, but a bigger part of me had not wanted to see it again – the beaches and the blood. I had always found it difficult to understand the other veterans who marched so proudly passed the cenotaph each year, with their medals, so proudly – men and women who surely had seen what I had seen?  I didn’t want to remember the chaos, the smell, the blood. I did want to forget, not remember, or glorify it – but that was just my view, my way of coping. I was just a quiet, well-intentioned, and well- mannered young man from North Wales, working for the Russian oil company and looking after my widowed mother before Hitler forced me to travel across Europe-.

Enjoy what is left of the Christmas holiday and best wishes for a Happy New Year!