After teasing the new book for a few months, about time I gave you a little taste. From the opening chapter…

I don’t know if I mentioned it, but the book I published last year — The Berylford Scandals: Lust & Liberty — is actually the prequel to a novel I wrote two years previously. That story is Sin & Secrecy, which I’m currently revising with a mind to publish sooner rather than later. That way, I can get back to writing my wartime thriller You Can Hear Chopin from the Attic.

Unlike Lust & Liberty, from which I removed massive chunks of plot and sub-plot from the final product in order to make it more concise, Sin & Secrecy will begin as it always has since the first draft written back in 2008. With an incident in the school classroom involving a dictionary and four mischief-makers collectively referred to as The Four Scallywags. Their real names are Andrew Tresswood, Mark Walldrowe and the twins Rosa and Rita Serjeant — in a sense, they are among the newest major characters to come into play in this book. The point of this chapter, other than to open the novel, is to introduce the main anti-hero — Abel Stirkwhistle — as a sadistic and cruel disciplinarian, overruling even his own sister, Rebecca.

Hopefully, you can get a sense of this from the below excerpt, taken from the first chapter. It takes place immediately after The Four Scallywags have been sent to Abel’s office, awaiting their punishment…

Excerpt from The Berylford Scandals: Sin & Secrecy — Chapter I: The Mistake with the Dictionary

Sorry about the gapping, by the way. Just a technical thing I can’t avoid…

Anyway, what did you think? Hopefully, you want to know what Abel does next! And more besides! Subscribe to this page and/or follow the social media accounts. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are currently most active. We’ll be doing more of these previews, along with character profiles. If you have any ideas, please feel free to comment etc.