I’m absolutely delighted to tell you that Painting the Blues in Gretna Green, book two in the Midlife Recorder series will be published on Bonfire Night. 🎆🧨🎇 Join Niki during her second exciting week in the Gretna Green Gateway. There’s coffee, chocolate, chaos, and the blue gate to the Pictish kingdom, where Queen Breanna has a problem…
“My powers are growing, and my tolerance is low. My second week in my new role as the Gretna Green Recorder is making the first week look relaxing.
I have quite the to-do list.
✅ Fix a thousand-year-old injustice that threatens the future of the Pictish royal family and their realm? Check.
✅ Test my new Knight Adjutant candidates? Check.
✅ Discover one of those candidates is the guy I had a huge crush on when I was twelve? Oh yeah. Check.
❌ Feed the cat? No, she’s not hungry—which is worrying, very worrying.
❓ Prevent a bloodbath? Let’s freaking hope so.“
Niki McKnight is settling in as the new Recorder in the Gretna Gateway in Scotland. She’s joined by the usual colourful cast of magical beings. Celtic, Fae and Viking royalty all have their own agendas, but none more so than the Pictish royal family.
Magic, psychic powers, a stroppy, condescending cat goddess, and lots of coffee smooth the way.
Niki plans to make her gran proud by reminding everyone that kings and queens are ten-a-penny in the seven realms, but there is ONLY one Recorder, and now she has more power than anyone expected.
Painting the Blues in Gretna Green is perfect for readers who’d enjoy an uplifting story with cosy paranormal fantasy elements. Set in a sentient Scottish house with a woman who needs to learn to wield her increased powers before lives are lost.
Buy or Borrow at Amazon
Available in Paperback or ebook. The ebook is part of the Kindle Unlimited program, so if you’re a subscriber, you can read it for free. If you’re not, it’s very reasonably priced.
Click to see the Amazon UK page
Click to visit the Amazon USA page
Nothing really changes …
Does it?
A friend just pointed out to me that book one was published on the 4th of July, a traditional day for our 🇺🇸 American friends to have fireworks, and book two comes out on the anniversary of the day when Guy Fawkes tried to blow up our 🇬🇧 Houses of Parliament … After Liz (Truss) and the lettuce I’m convinced very little changes even 400 years later.
Niki finds exactly the same in Painting the Blues with a realm that has been stuck in its ways since 1000AD
I wish you all a very happy and safe Bonfire Night and some well-deserved me-time. Perhaps in the afternoon or the next day to read Painting the Blues.
And to my American readers very happy early Thanksgiving wishes.
This year I am thankful for the immense kindness of my readers 💓
Truly I am–check the dedication in the book – you guys blew me away into tears of gratitude!
I really hope you enjoy it.
It’s in KU and Paperback
I should probably mention it’s available on Amazon as you would expect. I plan for the entire series to be in KU mostly because I use it so much as a reader myself. You can find it on my Amazon author page here
I know some of you are interested in the economics of indie publishing. So here’s a little extra info for those of you who are curious.
Painting the Blues is almost 130,000 words compared to Midlife in Gretna Green’s 91,000.
That does mean that the ebook and paperback prices for this book are a little higher simply because it’s almost 40% longer than book one.
The increased size only affects digital pixels a small amount, just increased delivery costs (to the author, not the readers) from Amazon. So it’s a £1 more than book one for the ebook. But book 3 Ties that Bond in Gretna Green which is also on pre-order for release on February 9th 2023 will be the same price as book one because it is only a little longer.
The paperback of PTB is a whopping 580 pages, and I only got it to that by reducing the font size and the spacing very slightly. Otherwise it would have been over 700 pages (compared to book one’s 480 pages).
Breanna, Caitlin and Finn – the Pictish Royal family just had a big story to tell 😀
Hopefully, it will keep even those of you who, like me, binge read for fun, busy for a day or two. Please leave a review when you’ve read it if you wouldn’t mind. That page is awfully empty at the moment.
Until next time – have fun and stay safe around the fireworks.
How do I access the Bonus epilogs?
HI Hope – I can see you’re already subscribed to the newsletter – just check the last edition which came out on November 6th – the link is in it. (it may have landed in your spam folder?)