The Awkward Squad
A Readers' Group by Michael Campling
Hello
It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.
-Maurice Switzer
Today's quote is often attributed to Mark Twain or Abraham Lincoln, but the Quote Investigator website says otherwise. At any rate, it's a good quote and I'm grateful to squad member Pegge for drawing my attention to it.
Today I'm letting you know exactly what a fool I've been, and how I plan to put this right. More on that in the Book News section.
I'm also letting you know about some new developments that I hope will please fans of science fiction and suspense, including some free books. Learn more in the section headed Something Different? In the meantime, here are some photos:
Featured Photos
As I mentioned in a recent podcast, we recently visited Bigbury-on-Sea, a lovely Devon beach with acres of warm sand running down to the sparkling sea (on the day we visited anyway).
For me, one of the beach’s best features is the fact that it faces Burgh Island, a small island that’s only cut off from the shore at high tide. The island and its Art Deco hotel were used as settings by Agatha Christie in And Then There Were None and Evil Under the Sun, so I could sit on the beach and imagine amateur sleuths were stalking the slopes while a gaggle of suspects, ne’er do wells and potential victims sipped gin and tonic on the hotel’s sunlit terraces. And a murderer or two, of course, but we won’t dwell on that.
A couple of days earlier we’d visited a very different beach at Shaldon, a seaside village on the Teign estuary, directly opposite the town of Teignmouth. At Shaldon, there are houses right next to the beach, and there are lots of boats bobbing on the water. There’s also a rocky outcrop called the Ness, and if you don’t mind a bit of a walk up its slopes, you can take a stroll down the narrow and echoing tunnel that leads down to a small and secluded beach at Ness Cove. The tunnel is called Smugglers Tunnel, but I’m not sure if that’s why it was dug. There’s an old lime kiln at its mouth, so the tunnel may have been built for a more prosaic purpose, but you can certainly imagine smugglers creeping through the tunnel in the dead of night.
As always, there are more photos on the site, and there's a link in the big, blue button just above my signature.
Book News
When Accomplice to Murder launched at the beginning of August, it had been checked by a professional editor and I thought it was as error-free as possible.
Sadly, that turned out not to be the case. I was appalled that a number of typos and errors had slipped through, and these mistakes were only caught by the kind and generous readers who’d requested an advanced reader copy (often called an ARC). Some of these mistakes were minor typos but others were more annoying and that’s completely unacceptable and I’m very sorry if those errors spoiled anyone’s enjoyment.
I’ll do whatever I can to make this right.
First, I corrected all those errors as quickly as I possibly could, both in the ebook and the paperback edition and on all retailers. If you bought a copy of Accomplice to Murder from 10 August onwards, it should be all right.
If you bought an ebook before then, I would really like the chance to send you a new copy.
If You Bought an ebook From My Store
If you bought it direct from my store, this is easily fixed. When you bought the ebook you provided an email address, and when Bookfunnel delivered your ebook they also created a Bookfunnel library for you. You can login to that library at any time by using the same email address you used to buy the book. All you need to do is provide a password (if you haven’t used the library feature before).
In your Bookfunnel library the ebooks are always the latest version, so the corrected ebooks are there and waiting for you.
Here’s a link to the info you need: bookfunnel.com/my-bookfunnel-library/
If You Bought an ebook From a Retailer
Different retailers work in different ways and I can’t force Amazon or other major retailers to send you a new copy. If you find errors and you’d like a new copy of the ebook, please contact me. It would really help if you could send me a proof of purchase, e.g. you could forward me the email containing your receipt. I will then make sure you get a new copy via Bookfunnel. You can reply to this newsletter or email [email protected]
I'm sorry for this inconvenience, and I hope to put it right as soon as I can.
Something Different?
Some of you found me through my science fiction or suspense titles, and for a while now, I've felt as though I was leaving you out in the cold. For that reason, I've started a new newsletter for fans of SF and suspense. I've called it Something Different, and I'll use those newsletters to highlight any new developments in my SF and suspense fiction.
Free Books
When you sign up, you'll receive some free science fiction and suspense books, including several short science fiction pieces that I've complied into a new, not-for-sale collection with the snappy title Short Science Fiction.
The Something Different emails will probably be less frequent and not as 'newsy' as the Awkward Squad newsletters, and you're welcome to sign up for both newsletters if you wish.
What's Next?
Putting together the Something Different emails has made me realise that it's about time I refreshed my older books, so I've been commissioning new covers and I'll be reformatting some of my older books and checking the editing. If I can revive interest in my science fiction and suspense, I'll be encouraged to write some more, so if you're a fan and you know someone who'd enjoy my SF, you could do worse than to send them along to the Something Different newsletter, and they'll get some freebies.
I'll still be providing new content on the main website, including lots of photos as well as my podcast, and I certainly haven't abandoned the Devonshire Mysteries. The new Dan and Alan story is coming along, and I'm still playing around with some plot ideas. I'm also brushing up on my police procedure, so that I can keep my police characters roughly within the bounds of possibility.
Busy times ahead, and though I'm cross with myself about allowing errors to slip through the net, I've dusted myself off and I'm prepared to do better next time. I may be a fool, but that just makes me want to try harder, and I'm determined to keep on working hard and improving.
Happy reading and take care.
All the best,
Mikey C
PS: Want More?
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