What I’m currently working on…
I’ve been keeping busy recently, not least because my new novel, The Missing Monsieur Max, is now out in both paperback and ebook, and that is always an exciting moment. A homage to the Maigret novels of Georges Simenon and set in St Rémy de Provence in around 2006, it concerns the disappearance of an expat Englishman in intriguing circumstances.
You can read an interview about the inspiration behind my book here:
I’ve also been writing the opening chapters of a new novel, to be called The Bermuda Bond, set on … you guessed it, Bermuda, but with London and New York also featuring. It’s a financial mystery, with a murder or two, but it also enables me to give vent to my fascination for naval history on the way, and the naval dockyard in Bermuda might prove to be an interesting location for some of the action!
I’ve also decided to do a new edition of my Playing Popular Piano book, which has been successful over the years in the UK and in the USA. Recently reading Craig Brown’s marvellous new style of biography called, One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time, got me thinking about my early days of playing in groups, as it was the Beatles that inspired me to get involved in music.
It is rather fitting that, once again, The Beatles have spurred me into action, this time to republish my book, in which I try to give a method and approach that I wished I’d known when I started, rather than going through the tedious formal piano lessons of Grade this and that, and trying to work out for myself how to use the piano to play the music I loved.
I’m looking forward in the next month to seeing how Max does – hoping people like it – and to continuing with the other projects.