Hard Rain (Sample chapters)

Chapter 8 (just under 19 minutes) is here — from now on, I’ll be releasing one episode per week because of a lighter summer schedule. If you want to experience the story faster, you know what to do.

Please support my work, and this blog, by buying a copy of Codename Hirondelle (or one of my other books) direct from me (see link above), or from Amazon:

Links:
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If you enjoy one of my books, please rate and review etc. Every little helps!

Here we go then. It’s 1938, and 20-year-old Jack Rambler has been recruited by an as-yet unnamed organisation. On secondment from his studies at the Naval College in Greenwich, he finds himself at the front door of a house on Queen’s Gardens…

Please support my work, and this blog, by buying a copy of Codename Hirondelle (or one of my other books) direct from me (see link above), or from Amazon:

Links:
Amazon UK
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Here we go with Chapter 6, which happens to be my sample chapter, should you wish to read along. This one is just over 17 minutes.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’m hoping to do at least four more chapters, but then I will probably take a short break, because of travelling. Unless I manage to bank a few more…

We’re into it now: the first flashback to Jack’s pre-war experience with a rather odd secret society.

Please support my work, and this blog, by buying a copy of Codename Hirondelle (or one of my other books) direct from me (see link above), or from Amazon:

Links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
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Here’s the slightly longer Chapter 5, which leads us into the first flashback to 1938 and Jack Rambler’s recruitment by a mysterious man wearing the incorrect uniform. You can subscribe to this RSS feed through your podcatcher of choice. I’ll see about packaging the whole thing as an audiobook when I’ve finished.

Please support my work, and this blog, by buying a copy of Codename Hirondelle (or one of my other books) direct from me (see link above), or from Amazon:

Links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Amazon CA
Amazon AU

Chapter 4 is a short one (8 minutes), gearing us up for the much longer Chapter 5. It’s a funny thing. 4&5 was originally one chapter, but there was a logical point where it could be split, and this was it, even though it wasn’t anywhere near the middle of the original epic.

We’re still in London, 1949, but we’re edging towards the first flashback…

Links:
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In other news, my previous book, Type Thief (which was published in February) is on offer this week on the UK Kindle store. 99p! Grab it while you can.

Amazon UK

Here’s the latest episode. I’ll be releasing them as regularly as possible, but it’s not always possible to record when I want. For example, this week, one of my neighbours has builders in, and for two days they were running pneumatic drills etc. Episode length will vary, based on chapter length, obvs. When I’ve recorded the whole thing, I’ll see about making a whole audiobook available.

In the meantime, Codename Hirondelle is available in paperback or as an ebook. You can buy direct from me (paypal), or from Amazon.

Links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Amazon CA
Amazon AU

In other news, my previous book, Type Thief (which was published in February) is on offer this week on the UK Kindle store. 99p! Grab it while you can.

Amazon UK

Here’s Chapter 2 of my new book (chapter 1 is here). You can subscribe to this feed with your favourite podcast app.

This audio version is being made available free of charge. To support this blog, and my writing, please buy a copy, either from Rob’s Independent Bookshop, Amazon, or order through your local bookseller (US and UK only for that last option, I think). It’s available for Kindle, or in paperback. Links below are to the paperback. Epub version to follow, which will be available exclusively here.

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Amazon CA

Amazon AU

If you have any difficulty with sound quality on the audio version, do let me know. The idiot who wrote it and narrated it is also the idiot who recorded it.

To celebrate publication day (27 June 2025), here’s chapter 1 of Codename Hirondelle, my latest novel.

And so we come to the end of Season 1 of the Lonely Hearts Clubhouse, and we finish with a fun episode about musician, actor and dancer – and Hollywood legend – Fred Astaire. He’s the ninth personage along in the back row of the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover. It’s hard to say which of the Beatles (or which of the artists involved) picked him, but he’s a very interesting subject. We opted for possibly Lennon in the end, but it could equally have been McCartney. Like Mae West and W C Fields, Astaire was an unconventional movie star. Not gifted with the good looks normally required to be a leading man, he nevertheless headlined movies because of his extraordinary talent for dancing.

More than that, Astaire was a versatile musician. You’ll see him at the piano in Roberta, and you’ll see him playing his drums in one of his TV specials. Macca-like in that respect. There’s even an extraordinary dance/drum sequence in Damsel in Distress in which Astaire plays drums with his hands and his feet, and tap dances, all shot in one continuous take with a single camera.

It’s this extraordinary talent that made him an inspiration for Frank Sinatra, 16 years his junior, but who always loved to sing songs made famous by his hero.

This is the season 1 finale of Clubhouse. Elodie is away in New Mexico for now, so season 2 will wait a while.

Eighth along on the Sgt Pepper cover, and we come to the master of the macabre, the sovereign of spooky, the uncle of the uncanny, Edgar Allan Poe. A writer, poet, and critic who died, like John Lennon, at the age of 40 — and was name-checked by Lennon in the lyrics of “I Am the Walrus”.

An overnight success who laboured in obscurity for most of his working life, Poe can be seen as the originator of the detective genre, but is also the quintessential Southern Gothic author, and a purveyor of horror stories that were frequently focused on people being buried alive.

Join Elodie and me as we sit in the summer garden and discuss Poe’s life and debts. The usual health warning about the night sounds (bats! a Chihuahua with a chainsaw! hosepipes!), although we think the baby sparrows had fledged by this time. Elodie wrote the script and I chip in whenever it’s inappropriate.

This is the penultimate episode of the first season of the Lonely Hearts Clubhouse.