My own personal writing journey began from an incident that happened while I was on holiday in St. Ives in Cornwall, England. Returning from a restaurant, late-ish, we spied a large man carrying a woman who was worse for drinking, over his shoulder. Obviously, others were concerned so we stopped to listen to the conversations. The man assured the gathering crowd that she was a friend, he was carrying her to her bed up many stairs, he would sleep in an armchair in her lounge in case she became ill, and then a female friend said she would also accompany the couple to ensure the lady was okay. My imagination whirled. Was the man (Kitto) in love with the woman (Rebecca) but the woman saw him only as a friend? Had she been celebrating the accomplishment of something, maybe the solving of a case she’d been working on? Did she work for a police department, as a paid civilian, in a department that couldn’t officially exist? Who had she caught? What would be her reward? A trip to Greece to recu

When it comes to my writing, book sales, and clicks for each book from which countries, maybe I’m a bit over the top, but I am retired and, grandchildren taxi driver apart, do have time on my hands. I use Bitly to shorten my website links and anyone who follows me on Twitter, Bluesky, or Facebook will know that I use a separate link for each country for each book, to make it easier for readers from abroad to go to their own particular Amazon site. One of the incredible uses of Bitly is that it gives you statistics for each link and because I have time, I log these at the end of each month. I also get statistics regarding clicks to those links and also the links to my website at www.StephensonHolt.com and where those links have come from. (Google, X, Bluesky, Amazon etc.) Is this interesting, or overkill? Here are two things that my statistics have thrown up recently that I have found interesting. Canada. I was selling books in Canada, links were being said to be from Canada, mainly thr

I hate my name. Makes me sound like a fish. Sand under my feet, nice and flat, allows a quick splurge of preening oil excreted from the back of my neck to cover my wings. We're off. Don't know why. Like a flock but we don't flock. Ah. I can see now that I'm up here, a dog running towards our drinking area. Humans have befriended and then trained dogs to chase us, they are not allowed on the beach in the summer, but the humans ignore this and laugh at the sport. Gliding now, on a thermal, looking for food with no effort involved. A few scouts have returned to our patch and I intend to join them for a drink. Drinking water comes down into our harbour and mingles between seaweed covered rocks. Not as much water this year but enough for us. Lower beak into the water to fill it and, hup, I throw my head back to let the water go down my throat. Good to have a drink before the tide is fully in, and the drinking water disappears. A hundred eggs ago, this harbour had boats that caught herring i

When I got to the end of "There Must Be Daffodils" with the obligatory happy ending, the epilogue from some years later explained that most of the girls were by then married, except for Ashley's bestie, Camlyn. That was not done intentionally, and wasn't meant to set up a follow-on novel for Cam which fifty percent now exists, with a working title of "Tulips Die Out Of Water." Time has moved on again, the girls still meet up each Friday, but they have moved from their thirties to their forties, and Cam hates her life and her job. The opening paragraph sets the scene, please let me know what you think of it as an opener. "Left behind, still on the shelf, passed my sell-by date, this bloody steam-iron is far too heavy for my skinny arms, and the steam in my face makes me feel even sweatier than the pigging office did today. At least the steam is good for my skin and about the nearest I’ll get to affording a sauna or a spa day. Windows are steaming up though. Excuse the mess. I’d say it’s

I have just discovered iMovie which has been sat on my Mcbook since day one. I import all the books of a series into a file along with the pic of all the books together. Then comes the opening of a new project and entering all photos. As each is put on a time line they occupy ten seconds each. I add a place holder at the front and rear to explain that the books are all on Kindle Unlimited and on Audible, then add a piece of meaningless music from the iMovie files. Each video is going onto X, Bluesky and Facebook and I'm having fun with it all. All of these videos can be seen on my home page under the individual books.

Reader's Magnet approached me recently for them to conduct an interview for their Authors' Lounge section with regard to my latest novel, 'There Must Be Daffodils.' That interview is reproduced here. ‘There Must Be Daffodils,’ billed as a cosy, clean novel, was a departure from the norm for Stephenson Holt. After twenty-three novels and two books of poetry and short stories, his attempt at cosy and clean was a challenge for this author. It’s a boy-meets-girl in her thirties novel and follows a will-they-won’t-they scenario, laced together with what one reviewer called “love at first sight intermingled with clandestine wealth, fishing, domestic counter-intelligence, terminal illness, and fugitive spies, with a happily-ever-after ending to boot.” Authors’ Lounge asked Stephenson why he had diverted from his norm. “I love writing about the unusual,” Stephenson told us. “For instance, my vampire trilogy is different from the norm in that any human only turns when made love to by three diff