In the early 2000s, I was reading more crime than horror – horror had fallen decidedly out of favour at that time, at least in the UK – and started thinking about writing a crime series. I was a huge fan of the strong female protagonists in the books written by Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton, and these characters were my inspiration.

But I didn’t feel confident in my research ability, so didn’t want to write a police procedural. I decided to write about an amateur sleuth. But I wanted her to be contemporary. I decided to make her an actress, so that she could use her acting ability to take on roles as she investigated murders. I liked the idea of drawing on my own experience of living in two countries, so I made her half-Canadian, half-British.

And so Shara Summers came into being. And the name ‘Shara’ came from an alter ego I created for myself when I wrote Star Wars fan fiction as a teenager, and created a version of myself to insert into that universe.

The first Shara Summers book, DEATH SCENE was published in e-book only format by Lyrical Press in 2011. It was re-published by MuseItUp, along with the second book, DEAD COOL, in 2014.

With MIU closing its doors and returning rights to the authors, Shara became homeless. I’ve looked at other publishers, but most don’t want previously published books.

So I decided to self-publish the first books. This was fairly straightforward, as they’d both been previously edited and I had permission to use the MIU covers. The first two books are now available again, in Kindle format, on Amazon. I hope to make them available in other ebook formats eventually, and maybe even in paperback, once I can get my head around KDP’s POD formatting requirements.

However, what of the rest of the series? Books 3 and 4 are written, but not published. Mid-series manuscripts are hard sells. If the first two do well, then I might have a chance of someone being interested in picking up the series, but the previous version didn’t sell well at all. The few reviews the first book got were very positive, but there weren’t enough of them to make any difference, and they all disappeared when the earlier published versions were taken down.

I’ve always enjoyed writing the Shara books, and I’ve got plans for book 5 and 6 and maybe even more. But it’s hard to stay motivated when no one seems to be interested in reading what you’re writing.

So this post is to announce that Shara Summers is back in the world, and it’s also a plea. If you enjoy crime, then perhaps give these ones a go. And to all those people in my life who say they support my writing, but they can’t read horror, then here’s something of mine that you can read.

Here are links to Book 1, DEATH SCENE (UK, US and Canada) and Book 2, DEAD COOL (UK, US and Canada). Please buy them, review them, and share links with friends. I would very much like to carry on writing the Shara series, but she will only find her place in the world if she finds a fan base.

Thank you for reading my blatant book pimping post. We now return to our regular scheduled programme.