-
Join 417 other subscribers
-
Recent Posts
Visit Peter May’s websites
follow @authorpetermay on Twitter
Tweets by authorpetermayPeter May – author
Author Archives: Author Peter May
A Winter Grave – new book and UK tour 2023
The biggest surprise this year is that I wrote a book. I know that doesn’t seem like big news, but I had refused a new contract from the publishers, in order to take some time out. I wasn’t prepared for … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
16 Comments
A Strange Year
2021 – a strange year I wrote no new book in 2021. Instead, I took time out to write music and make use of a new studio I created above my garage. Here we are in the studio listening to … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
21 Comments
Dagger in the Library
I attended the strangest of award ceremonies last week. From the isolation of my study in my home in France, I was part of a Zoom conference for the UK Crime Writers’ Association’s Dagger Awards. Several hundred people from around … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
32 Comments
Enzo is Back in my latest thriller, “The Night Gate”
In a sleepy French village, the body of a man shot through the head is disinterred by the roots of a fallen tree.A week later a famous art critic is viciously murdered in a nearby house.The deaths occurred more than … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
9 Comments
LOCKDOWN – fighting crime in a world in quarantine
After a successful career creating and writing top-rated drama for British television, and with 8 novels published in the UK and USA, I hit a period around fifteen years ago when I could not find a publisher for anything I … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
20 Comments
A Silent Death: the making of
click here to order now from Amazon.co.uk BEHIND THE SCENES A Silent Death will be published in January 2020, and before its publication, I thought I would share some of the research and development that went into the writing of … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
13 Comments
A Silent Death – UK Tour
Click here to pre-order A Silent Death from Amazon.co.uk My latest book, A Silent Death, a brand new thriller set in the South of Spain near Gibraltar will be coming out in January in the UK and March in the … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
20 Comments
The Man With No Face
Happy New Year! And I’m happy to announce the publication of The Man With No Face. This book was originally written and published in 1981, it’s a fast-moving political thriller is set in 1979 but is contemporary in its themes, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
19 Comments
Spring 2018 news
I’ll Keep You Safe reached #2 in the UK hardback charts and has just been published in the USA and Canada. The good news is that publication dates are bringing North America closer with the UK, Australia and New Zealand. … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
12 Comments
Nae Pasaran
A few months ago I came across a Kickstarter project called Nae Pasaran. I was intrigued to read that a Chilean documentary-maker working in Scotland had completed filming the story of Rolls Royce workers at East Kilbride, near Glasgow, who … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
7 Comments
Farewell Joe
It is with great sadness that I write, belatedly, in tribute to my friend and adviser on all things scientific, Professor Joe Cummins, who died just over two years ago after a lengthy battle with cancer. I didn’t know of … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
9 Comments
I’ll Keep You Safe – new book coming January 2018
Peter May’s explosive return to the Hebrides with his brand new thriller – I”ll Keep You Safe Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
7 Comments
Events and Book News for Summer and Autumn 2017
Festival Events I will be speaking at festival events this summer across the UK… HARROGATE Crime Writing Festival: Saturday 22nd July 8.30pm (click here for details and tickets) EDINBURGH International Book Festival: Tuesday 15 August (tickets go on sale Tuesday … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
13 Comments
Flannan Isles Mystery Fundraiser
Those of you who have read my thriller, “Coffin Road”, will know that some of the action takes place on one of a group of tiny islands twenty miles off the west coast of Lewis and Harris in the Outer … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
8 Comments
2016 – a year of travel and change
After almost twenty years of writing a book every year, 2016 was going to be a year where I wasn’t writing a book – a year off. I wrote Cast Iron, the final book in the Enzo Macleod series at … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
8 Comments
The China Thrillers – new editions
I’m delighted that Quercus’ new imprint riverrun is bringing my series of six China thrillers back into print. The books were first published between 1999 and 2004 and the background to the books charts the extraordinary changes that took place … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
69 Comments
Reflections on Oz
Now that the dust has settled on my three week trip to the Antipodes to promote my latest book, “Coffin Road”, I find myself looking back on my time in Oz with a certain wistful fondness. I suppose most Brits … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
10 Comments
Australia and New Zealand Tour
Dates and venues have just been confirmed for my tour of Australia and New Zealand… Perth, Australia Friday 19th February 11.30am – 12.30pm Perth Writers’ Festival Murdoch Theatre CRIMINALLY MINDED Three masters of the crime genre, Peter May, Alan Carter … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
6 Comments
Returning to the Hebrides in 2016
First, I’d like to wish you all a very happy, healthy, and prosperous year in 2016! And I’d like to thank my readers around the world for their continued – and growing – support. I met many hundreds of you … Continue reading
In Memoriam
It is with great sadness today that I have to record the passing of my friend and mentor Dr. Richard Ward. Dick was one of the most remarkable men I ever met. After serving as a US Marine, he began … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
35 Comments
2014 – What a Year!
As I look back on the year, it’s been quite a ride. 57,000 kilometres, 61 hotels, 35 flights, 9 countries and 2 major writing awards. January to June It began with a tour of the UK for the launch of … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
22 Comments
Runaway
Forty-five years ago my best friend, Stephen, and I ran away to London. We had just turned 17. I had been expelled from school and taken an awful job at the DNS calculating interest in bank books. One early spring … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
29 Comments
In Defence of Curling
I am not often moved to blog about things I read in the tabloid press, but I was incensed by this ignorant, poorly researched piece of trash “journalism” perpetrated by a pompous columnist called Richard Godwin in a rag called the … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Season’s Greetings!
I’d like to wish you all a wonderful festive season, and a very happy, healthy and prosperous 2014! My sincere thanks to all of you who have supported my books over the years and who have contributed to the recent … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
4 Comments
Entry Island – Behind the Scenes
With my new novel, Entry Island, due out on Kindle tomorrow, I thought I would share the story behind it with my readers. My decision to write Entry Island stemmed from my interest in the Highland Clearances. Like many of … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
39 Comments
Priceless Words
When I was 18 years old I made my first serious attempt to write a novel. I had written stories throughout most of my teenage years, including a teenage fantasy about the group I played in called “The Aristokrats”. The … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
9 Comments
A Look Back… and Forward
The end of another year. Another book published. Another book written, well, almost. I expect to finish it within the next ten days before I travel to the UK for the launch of The Chessmen, but more of that later. … Continue reading
The Mystery of the Disappearing Bookstores
During my 2005 US book tour to promote “The Firemaker”, I visited 15 independent mystery bookstores. This year just 6 of them are still in business. The latest to fall by the wayside is Partners & Crime in New York … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
4 Comments
Nae Rest Fur the Wicked!
Well, while awaiting the release of The Chess Men, the final book in The Lewis Trilogy – in September in France and next January in the UK, I was keeping my head down and getting to work on a new … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
15 Comments
That Was The Year That Was
It’s been a helluva year! Most of you who follow my blogs will know something of the publication history of “The Blackhouse” – how it was rejected by all the major publishing houses in the UK before being snapped up … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
6 Comments
French Award
The Blackhouse is the book that British publishers rejected en masse 6 years ago. Today it is at No.7 in the bestselling UK paperback chart – its 7th week in the Top Twenty. And yesterday it won one of the … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged bestseller, Cezam, crime books, France, Inter-CE, Le Rouergue, literary award, Peter May, Quercus, The Blackhouse, The Lewis Man, thriller, writer
3 Comments
Jet2 Strike Back!
Following yesterday’s blog about our nightmare journey on Jet2 from Toulouse to Edinburgh via Nice, I made an amazing discovery… Jet2, it seems, employ internet spies. People who trawl the net looking for critical comments about their precious company and … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged cheap airlines, customer care, delayed flights, Jet 2
Leave a comment
WTF
Yesterday I set off to research the third book in my Lewis trilogy. This entailed a two-leg flight. Toulouse to Edinburgh on Saturday. Overnight at an airport hotel in Edinburgh. Then Edinburgh to Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides today. So … Continue reading
Prix Cézam
I leave tomorrow morning on a seven-day trip to the north-west of France, which may determine the future of my career. My book “The Blackhouse”, published in French as “L’île des chasseurs d’oiseaux” (The Island of the Bird Hunters), has … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
A Right Royal $&*@-Up
I make my living by licensing publishers to print and make available to the public my coyrighted material. In return, I get a percentage of the retail price of the book – eight or ten percent. It’s called a royalty … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
1 Comment
First Feedback
I thought it might be interesting to publish a selection of excerpts from the emails that have come flooding into my website since the publication of “The Blackhouse”. So here goes… My partner has just read The Blackhouse – she … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
2 Comments
On The Road Again
Life for a writer living in France is very different from the UK or the US. Here, every small, medium and large town has its own annual book festival. Writers from all over the country are invited to come and … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
5 Comments
Full Circle
How often is it that everything in life comes full circle? Just three weeks ago, I returned for the first time to the city which was home to my first serious love. Her name was Maria Nurita, and I was … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
1 Comment
Beginnings and Ends
Most writers will be able to look back over their lives and remember the moment when they realised that writing was what they wanted to do. That moment for me came, perhaps, earlier than most. I wrote my first book … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
2 Comments
D-Day Approaches
I have to confess to a certain nervous anticipation about the forthcoming publication of my book, “The Blackhouse”. This is the first of my books in several years to get a proper launch. While seven of them have been published … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
3 Comments
Tales Within Tales
The world of writing and publishing is full of horror stories about books turned down by major publishers which then went on to become bestsellers – J. K. Rowling and the first of the Harry Potter books being one of … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
Fame in a Bottle
I live in a country where streets and squares are named after famous writers, inventors, soldiers and politicians. But I think I have found a new slant on this – and one which has a very personal connection to me … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
5 Comments
La fille de la ferme
Ce n’est pas le blog que je projetais d’écrire. Mais j’ai besoin de partager cette histoire – pour en atténuer la tristesse. Je n’avais que quatre ans quand je suis entré à l’école. C’était en 1956. Je me souviens parfaitement … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
2 Comments
The Girl from the Farm
This isn’t the blog I planned to write. But it’s a story I need to share, a kind of spreading of the pain. I was just four years old when I started school in 1956. I remember that first day … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
64 Comments