Resolute Books

10/02/2025

Today's Meet the Author features Janet Hancock, author of The West in Her Eyes:

'At last year's Bournemouth Writing Festival, I hosted a breakfast at Crema in the town centre for writers of historical fiction.
Just now, I'm making marmalade and sorting out travel to Cyprus for my grandson's wedding on 4th June. I love continental rail travel and hope to do one, possibly both, journeys by train - down Italy's Adriatic coast - and ferry. It all hinges on the, as yet, unpublished summer ferry timetable between Piraeus and Limassol. People tell me a book will come out of it. I'm not so sure, but never say never.'

Here's Janet at the Bournemouth Writing Festival last year. Photo credit: Solid Imagery.

06/02/2025

Today's Meet the Author features Ruth Leigh Writes, author of A Great Deal of Ingenuity and much more!

"Picture the scene. A six year old child sits behind a large armchair in a sitting room in West Essex. This has been her safe space since she was three, a place where she can sit with her beloved push-along dog, Cheery, and make up stories about the imaginary land of Foxeria. To her right is a long bookcase, filled with the kind of things she will one day refer back to as she sits in her studio writing. All of them are completely unsuitable for such a young child, but in a year or two, desperate for more literature, she will start flicking through them and by eight, she will have read David Copperfield (although she won't have understood most of it).

Fifty six years on, there is no need to hide. Cheery has long since disappeared, probably put out for the rubbish by the child's parents. Foxeria was the beginning of other imaginary worlds and in the years that have gone by, the child and the woman have read frantically, greedily, sometimes desperately and the results are a row of books on a bookshelf in a studio in Suffolk. Do writers have to come from a place of loneliness and fear to succeed? I don't know, but being able to draw on emotion and having a headful of stories, plots, narratives and characters bubbling away day and night certainly helps with writing books. Sometimes I'm asked where my ideas come from and how I was able to create the world of Isabella M Smugge. It's simple, I reply. It's all in my head and it just had to be given the chance to come out."

Here's Ruth reading Banshee by our author Lindsay Rumbold.

03/02/2025

Today's Meet the Author features Paul Trembling - Writing, author of Local Killer.

'Writing Essentials and Follicular Challenges.

There are certain things that it is essential for a writer to have. There is always some debate (mostly among writers, no one else cares) about what these are, but I would suggest that the most important skills are:

Observation.
Imagination.
At least a basic knowledge of their preferred language. (English in my case).

On the other hand, there are certain things that many authors have, but which I would suggest are not essential:

An addiction to strong coffee.
A cat.
Hair.

This last one is something of particular concern to me since I have to admit to being somewhat challenged in this area.

It was not always so. As a child I had a full head of very nice dark brown hair. And, perhaps coincidently, I was already a writer at this time – indeed, I was already moving towards the novel as my preferred form of expression. This got me into trouble at times: teachers who had set the task of writing a short story in one lesson were not altogether thrilled at receiving (a week or two later) half an exercise book of epic adventure in poor handwriting (but with illustrations!).

I continued to write, or at least scribble, through my teens and twenties, without achieving much in the way of literary success. Or indeed, even finishing much of what I started. But during this period, a subtle change began to occur.

I started to develop a bald patch.

It was a while before I noticed. After all, how often do you look at the top of your head? Perhaps I was first alerted by the decreasing resistance to my comb. Or a cold draught where none had been felt before? Whatever, by the time I was into my thirties, the evidence was undeniable – I was getting thin on top.

Yet, coincidently, during this period my writing also began to get some modest success. On the 31st of March, 1990, my first book was published. ‘Conversation Pieces’ was a collection of short sketches for evangelism, written while I was working at a Methodist Bible College (Cliff College) and published by a small Christian publishing company.

(A second hand copy is apparently still available on Amazon – though for some reason, it’s apparently written by K. W. Trembling – my Dad!)

Other successes followed. In October 1993 a new SF short story magazine called ‘Threads’ started, and I had a story in the first issue! It was quite well reviewed, which was a great encouragement.

As time went by, my scalp continued to rise from my hairline like a shiny mountaintop above a fringe of trees. My wedding photos (1995) show me with a very obvious comb-over: eventually the remaining hair turned grey. I gave up the pretence, dispensed with a comb-over and went to a number one all over.

And then I had a breakthrough – I finally completed and published a novel! ‘Can of Worms’ came out in 2011 and I had finally achieved the status of novelist, if not yet quite a bestseller.

Other novels followed. My remaining hair became white.

Now, I’m not saying that baldness is directly tied to literary success. Indeed, such a claim would be hard to prove – some of our best known and most successful writers are well endowed with hair, and it seems unlikely that they could all be wearing wigs. But I can’t help wondering what would happen if I shaved off the remaining sparse growth. Would someone contact me regarding the film rights, perhaps?

No matter. I am enjoying my writing, and I am content with my lack of hair. I even wrote a poem to make the point!

What is this life, so full of care?
We have no time to mess with hair,
To primp and preen and blow it dry,
To fluff it up or make it lie,
Follicular obsession is surely folly,
I’d rather save my time and lolly,
Going bald may seem unfair,
But I’m better off without much hair!

(With apologies to W. H. Davies, for borrowing the first line, then mangling it).

NB. My first published story was ‘Dry Murder’ and it’s on my website if you want to read it. https://yearningblue.weebly.com/dry-murder.html

‘Can of Worms’ is currently being prepared for a second edition, to be published later this year as part of Resolute Books.'

Here's Paul reading And the Grass Has Just Got Longer, by Lesley Cresswell Writes.

30/01/2025

Today's Meet the Author features Sophie Neville. We're so delighted to have Sophie on board at Resolute! Sophie once worked on a 'Doctor Who' production team at the BBC. Come to Riverside Studios in London to ask her on behind-the-scenes secrets on Sunday 9th February!

'A multi-award winning British writer, Sophie became well known for starring as T***y in the EMI movie SWALLOWS & AMAZONS. She has a degree in Anthropology and a background in TV production. After producing an INSET series and writing her own docu-dramas for BBC TV she set up wildlife films in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. Her WWII screenplay set in Africa was optioned by George Marshall and has since won 11 script awards. She is bringing out her illustrated memoirs ‘Funnily Enough’ and ‘Ride the Wings of Morning’ with Resolute Books.

Find Sophie here:
https://sophieneville.net/writers-blog/

28/01/2025

What a fabulous review to find this morning. Always a joy!❤️

28/01/2025

Today's Meet the Author features Nigel Oakley Writes, whose historical fiction novel will be out with Resolute later this year.

'You can’t see much in the background, but this is, I assure you, a photo of me on top of Table Mountain, Cape Town, South Africa. After a long pause, last year I resumed my travels. In the last century (in other words, before I hit my forties) I spent three years teaching in Botswana, so had visited most of the southern African countries – though I did give Angola and Mozambique a miss – including South Africa, before. However, the itch to return never went away, and I am so glad I saved up and went back [you can read further about my trip and my travelling companions on my blog https://www.nigeloakleywrites.com/blog/looking-back-looking-forward ]

I didn’t confine my travels to Africa: I have walked part of the clock-carriers way in Bavaria, and have ridden the Trans-Siberian railway from Beijing to Berlin: nine full days and nights on the train before we stopped off in Moscow and saw the changing of the guard at Lenin’s tomb…

It is true, now I am older, I prefer a bit more comfort to my travels. No longer can ‘safari’ mean a sleeping bag, a mosquito net and camping under the stars, as interesting as the constellations in the southern skies may be – last September, it was bad enough enduring the overnight flight from Heathrow to Cape Town. I am so glad I was able to afford the hotel prices, and the cable car up the mountainside – come on, that photo doesn’t really look like I’ve scrambled up a rockface, does it?'

25/01/2025

Today's Meet the Author spotlight is on Sarah Nicholson, author of In Search of Lost Glitter:

'Sarah Nicholson is an accomplished procrastinator. One day she hopes to write a full novel but until then she is content writing flash fiction, blog posts and an occasional poem. Her memoir In Search of Lost Glitter is about finding a spark of joy when life gets turned upside down.

When not reading or writing she loves searching in charity shops for a bargain, she loves bright clothes which match her everchanging hair colour. She drinks Earl Grey tea and is rather partial to a cheese scone.

You can read her rambling thoughts on her website sarahnicholsonwrites.com

The photo shows Sarah at the Primadonna Festival last year representing the Suffolk Writers Group.'

You can get hold of a copy of Glitter here: https://amzn.to/4b9L77f

22/01/2025

Congratulations to our author E.M. Carter Author for being the bestseller in a popular YA category! Have you checked out the Newland Trilogy yet? If not, if you enjoy books like The Giver, The Hunger Games, Divergent and 1984, you might like to give it a whirl. Find it here: https://mybook.to/RepressionGround

22/01/2025

For the second part of our Meet the Author series, we're featuring John Stevens. Watch out for his novel, due out with Resolute Books later this year!

'In terms of learning how to write at school, I think I was crying out for instruction, but it was largely a sink or swim culture. Essays were marked. Very little feedback. I loved writing essays but it was very ad hoc.

Out of the blue, I was asked to write an account of our fairly riotous Y13 adventure in Snowdonia – long hikes, an unfortunate vomiting incident, death defying falls down scree, a smuggled-in friend-of-a-teacher driving the school van illegally after ‘a night out’, into a wall (I’m still sworn to secrecy half a century later!), and much more. Great material.

Maybe as a result of my piece, the Head wrote the following report: His English is vigorous, graphic, and sophisticated - English reports in previous years were less complimentary!

But a seed was sown. Three years later I take John Steinbeck’s Journal of a Novel on holiday around America - and I’m longing to write. Then marriage, family life, a teaching career in Chemistry – and whatever urges I had to write lay dormant under the busyness of life. However, due to the Arab Spring in 2011, and a Radio 4 interview with three mourning Rabbis in Yemen, my resistance crumbled, and I started writing. A few years later When The Rabbis Cry was published.

Now I’m retired, I’m working hard (!) on an historical spy novel set in 1796, due out later this year. Also, I’m thoroughly enjoying writing poetry, and looking forward to some ‘how to’ instruction at Exeter University as I embark on a Masters course in Creative Writing.

Other than that you can find me, boots on, traipsing around the Welsh hills, on a Parkrun near Bristol, enjoying a cheesecake and flat white in any good coffee shop, or enjoying a pint in a pub with some pals chewing the cud.'

Here's John reading our book Banshee by Lindsay Rumbold.

18/01/2025

Here at Resolute we have a whole bunch of wonderful authors. In a new series, we'd love to introduce you to them, starting today with Andrew Chamberlain, author of The Centauri Survivors:

'Andy Chamberlain is an author and creative writing tutor, he loves Science Fiction and is currently helping one of the UK's foremost Role Playing Companies to create some amazing adventures for their customers. He has just revised and republished "The Centauri Survivors" with Resolute Books and is working on the next book in the series. By day he is a fundraiser for a London based charity and with the author Ruth Leigh he runs the British Christian Writers Conference every autumn in Cambridge. He has also enjoyed taking on the part of Herod in the village nativity play.'

Here's Andy reading a book by another of our authors, Ruth Leigh Writes. You can pick up his latest book here: https://amzn.to/4hh7s4T

15/01/2025

The West in Her Eyes by our author Janet Hancock is a powerful story of courage and heartbreak. Here's what one five-star reviewer has to say:

'This sweeping epic tale spanning decades of one woman's life against the backdrop of the Russian revolution has all the ingredients to make the modern world disappear as you step into the world of Esther, a talented pianist, who escapes with her family from the revolutionaries aided by Turkish solider, Kemal.

The solid historical research shines through via the vivid and detailed writing of both the changing landscape and customs. The author cleverly educates the reader about the historical events and warring parties through snippets of conversation and keen imagination that go unnoticed until you find yourself immersed into the story. This is a brilliant book for history lovers or those who enjoy epic love stories that twist and turn along the way.'

You can pick it up here: https://amzn.to/40fEeg0

11/01/2025

A big happy book birthday to In Search of Lost Glitter by our author Sarah Nicholson today. This day last year Sarah was rocking a book launch with zero books, as they hadn't arrived on time - but what a launch it was! And now there are over 400 out in the wild. Have you read it yet?

09/01/2025

Have you read A Great Deal of Ingenuity by our author Ruth Leigh Writes yet?

If not, you're in for a treat. Readers call it 'captivating', 'masterful', 'impressive', and 'a great delight'. If you like Jane Austen you'll love this book of short stories based on Pride and Prejudice. Go on, treat yourself...
https://amzn.to/40tyCA5

08/01/2025

Not long left to enter this giveaway!

It's a brand new year so I thought I'd give away a signed copy of the first book in my trilogy, Repression Ground, to celebrate! If you haven't read it yet or know someone who might like it then all you need to do is sign up to my mailing list at the link below and I'll pick a name out of the hat in a few days :) Good luck!

Sign up here: https://subscribepage.io/G9eDRR

07/01/2025

Here's what author S.C. Skillman has to say about our Cold War thriller, Banshee by Lindsay Rumbold:

“A gripping tale of espionage and conspiracy”:

“I loved the way in which the complex puzzle is finally unravelled, finding it ingenious and ultimately both poignant and moving. I felt particularly engaged by the theme of long-held secrets coming to light many decades later through the involvement of the next generation, and perfectly integrated with a spur-of-the-moment decision by one individual sixty years before. To me the ending was sad, contained a satisfying element of poetic justice, and gave me so much to reflect upon and to speculate about, especially the subsequent destiny of one particular key character!"

Have you read it yet? If not, head over to Amazon right now and pick up a great read for the new year! https://amzn.to/41N1ELW

04/01/2025

Want to win a signed copy of the first in an acclaimed dystopian trilogy?

It's a brand new year so I thought I'd give away a signed copy of the first book in my trilogy, Repression Ground, to celebrate! If you haven't read it yet or know someone who might like it then all you need to do is sign up to my mailing list at the link below and I'll pick a name out of the hat in a few days :) Good luck!

Sign up here: https://subscribepage.io/G9eDRR