Maloney in the States, shiny teeth and dinner out

Hurrah! Maloney's Law on Amazon.com now has its cover art up and you can even buy it - from a choice of sellers, no less. Well, gosh! That's really made my day. Here's a blurb to whet your appetite:

"Paul Maloney, a small-time private investigator from London, reluctantly accepts a case from his married ex-lover, Dominic Allen. Before he knows it, Paul finds himself embroiled in the dark dealings of big business and the sordid world of international crime. The deeper he pushes, the closer he comes to losing everything he holds dear. Can he solve the mystery and protect those he loves before it's too late?

Maloney's Law was shortlisted for the Harry Bowling Novel Awards (for novels set in London) and the Royal Literary Fund Awards, and longlisted for the Yeovil Novel Prize."

You can read an extract on my website here and I'm also pleased that Sarah Bengry at Writewords has described the extract as "beautiful, clean, evocative prose". Thanks also for that, Sarah! Though I'm not really sure my stuff has ever been clean ... Only accidentally anyway.

This morning, I've played a pretty appalling golf game, and Marian even beat me - oh the shame and the gnashing of teeth! I will never be able to raise my head again here in the shires. Naturally I blamed my stiff back but, even so, I have to admit (even if only on here!) that Marian did play extraordinarily well and would have probably beaten me hands down anyway. Dammit!

From there, I popped into the shops and then screwed my courage to the sticking place (is that Macbeth quote right? Sorry, but I can't be arsed to look it up) for my six-monthly visit to the dentist and (even scarier because she's very efficient and tuts a lot) the hygienist. I think I survived. Rather satisfyingly to my delicate ego, the dental nurse had even read the article about me in the local paper a few weeks back and was keen to ask about the books - double hurrah! She even promised to buy one, though it was hard for me to extract (hah!) a definite commitment to this as I had a mouth full of dental equipment at the time. Ah, they're cunning beasts, these dentists, you know.

For the rest of the day, I've been poring over Chapter 16 of The Bones of Summer. Ye gods, but that was one hell of a struggle. I felt like George tackling the dragon, when George had a hangover and the dragon had been working out. Hey ho. I got there in the end, I think, so am now wearily blinking at the start of Chapter 17, p169. Where I'll leave it for today.

Tonight, Lord H and I are at Robin & Gavin's for dinner, hurrah! Am hugely looking forward to that - though, that said, it is rather worrying that apparently Gavin is very keen to show Lord H the special picture of his Roman drain cover. Hmm, is this code? Do Robin and I have to go into the other room and be subtly sapphic? (Ooh, lovely! I hear Lord H shouting in the background ...). Really, anything could happen here in the heart of Surrey, you know! Oo-err, missus.

Today's nice things:

1. Maloney's Law being available to buy
2. Beating Chapter 16 of Bones but by a short head only
3. Staring womanfully at Gavin's Roman drain ...

Anne Brooke
Anne's website