Having a SEAL in a wolf title probably doesn’t sound like that big a deal, right? Hot and sexy SEALs are the rage right now. I almost feel sorry for the Rangers and Special Forces men, or others that go through so much rigorous training, but aren’t getting all the rave publicity. My son is in going through some now for the AF even. When you combine SEALs with wolves, sounds like the perfect combination, right? But there’s a problem. Mentioning the title means the listener can’t see the capitalized SEAL, as in Navy SEAL, and that’s a whole ‘nother story. Ohmigod, she’s flipped out. That’s the look I get. She’s now writing about seal shifters? With wolves? Really? No one is ready for that. And I have to smile before I go on and explain. SEALs as in US Navy SEALs. Oh. I can see the relief on their faces. I’m going to be all right. I haven’t gone off the deep end. Yet. Titles are so important in marketing a book. It can catch your attention and make you read the blurb, then want to go further and read the book. So I can just envision the images…

Jack Taylor #9 October 2011 On Sale: October 4, 2011 Featuring: Jack Taylor 256 pages ISBN: 0802126006 EAN: 9780802126009 Hardcover $24.00  Add to Wish List Mystery Buy at Amazon.com One of the top Irish crime fiction authors Headstone by Ken Bruen Acclaimed Irish crime writer Ken Bruen has won numerous awards for his hard-charging, dark thrillers, which have been translated into ten languages. In Headstone, an elderly priest is nearly beaten to death and a special-needs boy is brutally attacked. Evil has many guises and Jack Taylor has encountered most of them. But nothing before has ever truly terrified him until he confronts an evil coterie named Headstone, who have committed a series of random, insane, violent crimes in Galway, Ireland. Most would see a headstone as a marker of the dead, but this organization seems like it will act as a death knell to every aspect of Jack’s life. Jack’s usual allies, Ridge and Stewart, are also in the line of terror. An act of appalling violence alerts them to the sleeping horror, but this realization may be too late, as Headstone barrels along its deadly path right to the center of Jack’s life and the heart of Galway….

Thanks for inviting me on to your blog to talk about my new novel, THE NEEDLE IN THE BLOOD. The novel is a love story set against the backdrop of the Bayeux Tapestry which – for readers who aren’t familiar with it – is a strip of embroidered linen over 230 feet long which tells the story of the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066. Its survival for nearly a thousand years is little short of miraculous (and it has had some hair-raising adventures during the various wars that have been fought in Northern France over the centuries, not least at the hands of the Nazis!), and what it tells us about military and social life in the eleventh century is invaluable. Despite all this, in England, we take it very much for granted. 1066 is the one historical date everybody knows, and the Tapestry’s images are almost the wallpaper to our history. They crop up everywhere, from mugs to mouse mats, and have been lampooned in all kinds of ways from political cartoons to one image I found recently of Batman stitched into the narrative! (You can see this on THE NEEDLE IN THE BLOOD‘s Facebook page.) What made…