Darling Brenda is finished at last!

I have just uploaded Darling Brenda to Amazon. After much thought, I decided to enrol it in KDP Select to see what happens, so it will be available only at the Kindle Store for the next 90 days.

The book is dedicated to Ben Duffy, whom I have never met in person. He is one of my staunchest supporters, for which I am most grateful, and understands exactly what my work is about – as evidenced by the extraordinary reviews he posts of my books.

Two other highly perceptive and supportive readers, Mike Julien and Russell Tayler, also helped me with the nitpicking business of line-editing. Mike has championed me for years, whereas Russell and I have been corresponding only for a few months. This is yet another advantage of the modern publishing ecosystem: the chance for reader and author to correspond and even collaborate. It's great!

The cover image was shot and edited by my friend, the artist and ceramicist Althea Wilson. She generously gave me permission to use it some while ago; I was able to tweak the text accordingly, so the design could not be more apt.

My thanks, then, to all these kind people for helping me to launch Brenda on the world!

Darling Brenda

This is a very black comedy indeed.

The setting is England in 1955. Nigel Dodd is 23. Still living at his parents’ home, he is heir to the family business, a thriving estate agency. Unknown to Nigel, his father is embroiled in an ambitious and crooked land deal involving corrupt politicians at the County Council.

Brenda Vale is 26, a nurse, highly intelligent and extremely pretty, with a newly acquired German girlfriend named Grete. One of Brenda’s unrealized ambitions is to “find and marry some pliable man with money”. Circumstances bring her into the Dodd household; Grete’s permission to stay in the UK unexpectedly runs out, and suddenly Brenda is in need of hard cash and plenty of it.

Nigel could hardly be more pliable. Nor could he be more infatuated. The future looks bright for Brenda and Grete: but looks can be deceptive, and when the land deal goes horribly wrong Brenda must use all her wiles to keep her scheme on track.

See first chapter