Inspiration from the frozen wilderness of Greenland
In April 2025 I was fortunate enough to go to Japan with the brass band I play for – Tongwynlais Temperance, which turned out to be a trip of a lifetime experiencing a fantastic tour with series of concerts with Japanese brass bands in sold out concert halls.
On the way home the plane crossed into the arctic circle above Canada, then over Greenland from north-west diagonally to south-east and onward to Iceland. The journey over Greenland on a cloudless day in brilliant sunshine was simply mesmerising and gave me the inspiration for Thaw – book 6 in my Moreton Scientific Investigation series, which I have just finished writing. Looking out of the plane at over 30,000 feet, endless snow ice and glaciers all the way to the horizon, had me spellbound – a beautiful frozen wilderness.
I was so taken by the amazing views that when I began to write Thaw it absolutely flowed, as I kept thinking back to the view out of the Airbus window and from start to finish took only seven weeks, which is a record for me. Book 1, ‘Beneath’, took 3 years!. Thaw isn’t set totally in Greenland but it certainly makes up a big chunk of the ‘meaty’ bits in the story.
I had some excellent reviews, comments and messages from readers of book 5 Legend and at this moment it has an Amazon review on the kindle version of 4.8/ 5.0 which I am so pleased with.
I am really grateful to everyone who has read the books in the series, and those who have taken time out to post reviews and review rating, and I’m hoping Thaw will also be appreciated as much as Legend – fingers crossed! I think its a great story… but then I would wouldn’t I. Seriously it’s very difficult to gauge how your story is received as you have immersed yourself in it for such a long time that you develop a weird attachment to the characters and the plot that can sometimes blind you of reality.
After finishing the first book in the series I was on edge for weeks, plagued with imposter syndrome, full of self doubt but now, two and a half years later, I have exactly the same doubts but to a much lesser degree thanks to you the kind readers who continue to buy my books and read through Kindle Unlimited pages (currently just over 1.5 million KU pages for the series).
The main gain I have made through the great feedback received, experience drawn from constant writing, editing and doing a hell of a lot of listening to books on audio (over 300 books since 2023) is that my writing has improved – that’s not my opinion but reader’s opinions through comments, and yes I do feel it is getting easier to set the scenes, bring them to life, increase tension, atmosphere, description and ferret out all the little quirks and foibles of the characters, to bring them even more to life.
Once Thaw has been edited by myself to the nth degree and passed through the hands of my fantastic editor Melanie Underwood, up in sunny Yorkshire I will start all over again with Book 7 Clairevoyant, which was inspired by my mother, who was a clairvoyant until she unfortunately passed away a year ago. Clairevoyant will have an element of clairvoyance in it but as you have probably guessed it will go off in an unexpected ‘out of this world’ direction! and I can’t wait to start.
