Please continue with these wonderful characters… I really was sad to say goodbye to them.” John Feierabend. Toby is right up there with Rowling’s Cormoran Strike, and Clancy’s Jack Ryan. These are great characters, so well fleshed out I knew, and cared for, each of them.

“I finished the book in two days… the delay was because I had to eat. I’m ready and waiting to build this new part of my work with a publisher. I’m a professional writer, who knows how the industry works, with a follow up story ready to go. I wrote this new thriller to have broad, commercial appeal, and it seems clear that Hit & Split deserves to have the weight of a real publishing company behind it, as was the case with my previous eight books. When combined with the similar words from a former writer for The Times newspaper in London, and from the publishing industry’s own Kirkus Reviews -this is becoming a pattern. The hardest part is sharing these encouraging signs, as I must do, without looking like an ‘I, I, me, me’ as I do it -so do please forgive me!Īnother prolific writer just compared my newest book Hit & Split, to a couple of major household names. So here we have a landmark, that for me, indicates I’m once more going in the right direction. Moving to fiction has meant starting again, and currently I’m an ‘Indie’ author, which is quite a contrast -but I’m working my way up, again. I’ve worked as a professional writer for two decades, and have been published by Alpha/Penguin in the non-fiction world, which meant that I had the best marketing and promotional people in the entire industry scheduling radio interviews, and remote Q&A sessions etc. I’m not a newcomer to publishing, this is my industry. Currently there are millions of books out there, so my placing of #972 amongst all of those books in my category is encouraging, but still nowhere near where I aim to be. Some context is necessary regarding numbers. As a result, the book steadily climbs the rankings. Last week saw the sales of Hit & Split increasing nicely, and the reviews continued to roll in too, still holding that high star-rating.

Hit & Split by Simon Green