January 2026 Newsletter

Happy New Year to you and your families. I hope you have a very successful, healthy and fulfilling 2026.

There are two schools of thought about the cusp of a new year. One involves looking back to review the year just past. The other involves the making of high-flown (probably unrealistic) resolutions for the year ahead. I’m allowing myself a brief review of the past, but I might just skip the good resolutions. I’ve rarely find them survive past January, especially those involving a gym!

Oh, go on then, I’ll make one. I undertake to keep up the output of Geldard books. 

On the book front, 2024 was the year when sales began to take off, trebling between June and July, and Milestones won best crime novel in the PageTurner Book Awards. But 2025 was the year when things really began to change, with sales nearly trebling again, year on year. I added three full length novels to the Greg Geldard canon (Buried in the Past, Spinning into the Dark, and Last Act), and all nine are now available as audiobooks. Then my publishing year was crowned by the approach from Joffe Books and our agreement that they will both republish all the Geldard books under their imprint, plus all future Geldard books. Secret Places is tentatively scheduled for February 2026 with all the others following in sequence every three weeks until Book 10, Final Cut, comes out in September. 

Working with a publisher other than myself brings some new processes I’m just getting used to: the first of which is submitting an outline for their approval in advance of getting down to the writing. Joffe approved my outline for book 11 in November. I set myself a target of reaching 20,000 words by the end of December and passed 31,000 yesterday, so all good. Except I’m not used to working to a previously agreed outline, and may need to keep reminding myself what I said😂😂😂. Generally, I just follow Greg.

I am conscious that I haven’t added to my novellas since Expedition to Death, also published in 2025. I have ideas for a fourth, but it will probably need to follow on after Geldard Book 12.

I think I have spoken before about a possible historical novel. My idea has now morphed into a trilogy set in Great Yarmouth in the 14th century. The knowledgeable amongst you will have already noted that was the century the Black Death reached England. Watch this space…

Finally, our local crime writers collective ‘Dead East’ recently published an article of mine on audiobooks. It’s reproduced below. 

Best Wishes and see you later in 2026

Heather 

I know audiobooks aren’t for everybody, but there is a significant market out there. Some folk like to listen to a story while doing something else — driving and ironing come to mind And then I have some fans who simply struggle with reading on the page, whether because of dyslexia or because English isn’t their first language. Audio is definitely for them. Investing in a good narrator for my DCI Geldard series led me to listen much more critically to audiobooks generally, and I discovered several things.

First, some very big name authors from big publishers use surprisingly bad narrators. I’m not referring to bland or inaccurate AI narration — that’s a whole other can of worms! I’m talking about people who can’t phrase a sentence correctly and wreck its meaning by pausing in bizarre, ungrammatical places. They’d better remain nameless, but if you’ve heard them too, you’ll know what I mean.

Second, a good narrator, by which I mean one who not only reads grammatically but can also act your book, giving different characters distinct and recognisable voices, lifts the story to a whole new level. Scott Fleming, who narrates the Geldard series, is a past master at this. And it’s not just the major characters who get distinctive voices. Listen to his rendition of the Yorkshire WI scene in Secret Places, and I guarantee you’ll think you’ve stumbled into an excerpt from Last of the Summer Wine.

This has led me to the point that I now search for new thriller audiobooks to listen to, not by author but by narrator. I started with JD Kirk’s DCI Logan series. They are, of course, nail-biting thrillers with engaging characters in traditional book form, but as audiobooks narrated by Angus King, they make for spellbinding listening. I would characterise Angus King as a narrator in the Scott Fleming mould, but in a range of mellifluous Scots accents. I enjoyed the JD Kirk books so much, that a search on Angus King led me to JM Dalgleish, whom I’d not read before. Then moving from his books based in Scotland led me to the ones based in York (an old stamping ground of mine) and another good narrator in the shape of Greg Patmore.

So, if you haven’t yet given audiobooks a try, don’t assume they’re just a lazy way of reading a book. With the best narrators, they’re an art form in their own right.

Copyright Heather Peck 2025