A Note from Pete – August 2026

August 2026 · Issue No. 1

Hi Everyone

Welcome to the first blog which is a copy of the newsletter I send out to those subscribers to my email list. On the 18th August it's exactly one year since I decided to write a novel and, here we are, one year later, with five written and one on the way. That's why I decided to start a newsletter and drop it now as opposed to the beginning of the month.

There isn't enough space here to explain how much I've learned in that time. I had no idea about structure, show don't tell, em dashes, en dashes (did you know there was such a thing?) and many other things too.

It's certainly been a journey and, when I compare the first book with the fifth, I can see how far I've come. I hope you've read through the series and think the same.

FROM THE CASE FILES

A true story

I have so many real stories about my time in the police but I thought I'd tell you a funny one to start with.

Each of the teams on the drug squad was responsible for liaising with a particular area. Jerry (I won't reveal his last name) came to the team one day with a strange tale. Apparently, a local resident in a town in his area had noticed that, every morning after he'd left for work, the next door neighbour came into his house and reached up to an area at the top of a high shelf in the corner of a store cupboard. This neighbour had serious previous convictions for drug dealing so the conclusion was he was storing drugs there in case his own house was raided.

We set up surveillance cameras and, lo and behold, the neighbour came in just after the guy had gone to work and reached up to the space in the cupboard. After he left, Jerry checked the area... Nothing there.

Day after day, this happened. Jerry checked before and after the intrusion... Nothing.

This couldn't go on forever. This was using seriously expensive resources and a result was needed one way or the other. Therefore, when the neighbour was in the house, Jerry arrested him.

It turned out that the neighbour, as a result of not paying his water bill, had had his water cut off. Being an old row of terraced houses, all the roof spaces were joined together so he'd gone across the roof space and added a T-piece into Jerry's guy's water system to steal the water.

To make it even worse, Jerry's guy was turning off the water at the mains tap every morning before going to work because he was using so much water and thought he had a leak. Obviously he did, but not in the way he thought. The neighbour was going into the house every morning to turn it back on again and back in later, after we'd left the plot, to turn it back off.

A full surveillance team for days sat watching a guy stealing water. If I'd put that in a book, no one would believe it. We didn't take on many of Jerry's operations after that.

AT THE DESK

What I'm working on

My main focus at the moment is marketing. No one tells you how difficult it is to get traction in a flooded market. Amazon are a business and reward books that sell but how do you get sales if you have no visibility? You can write a bestseller standard book but not be seen by anyone if you sit two million places down the Amazon rankings.

One current strategy that's being recommended is the 'Promo Stack' where you hit several email lists on consecutive days. I have a ten day push starting on the 21st of August so we'll see how that goes. I'm also playing with Amazon Ads at the moment to try and get their algo interested.

I'm unsure if you know this, but Audible are now launching an 'All You Can Listen' (AYCL) option. I've enrolled A Detective's Dilemma into it so you can listen to that one narrated by Lee Beddow of Abbey Studios if that's what you prefer. That all kicks off on the 1st September.

All this marketing has kept me away from writing but I have the sixth book firmly in my head. The first chapter is done and in the back of Book 5.

WHAT I'M READING

A recommendation

Authors stick together because we know how hard it is not only to write a novel but to sell it too. One of my favourite authors this side of the pond is my friend Matthew J. Evans. He lives not far from me at Fishbourne which is near Chichester, Sussex.

If you are ever in the UK you can see a magnificent Roman Palace there. I can highly recommend a visit. I can't guarantee Matthew will be around to meet up for a cup of tea but you can still read his books. His website is https://matthewjevans.co.uk, where you will see he's been at it a lot longer than I have. He's also an ex-policeman and has stuck to the police procedural genre. He has nine books available, the most famous being the five Chichester Crime Mysteries.

They are definitely worth a read.

OVER TO YOU

A question for you

This may sound like a strange question to ask but have you seen a noticeable increase in the quality of the writing as you've gone through the series? I genuinely would like to know and I reply to every email. Drop me an email - peter@peterjcharles.co.uk

THE TOM KESSLER SERIES

1. A Detective's Dilemma

2. A Minister's Downfall

3. A Hidden Enemy

4. A Shared Danger

5. A Reluctant Asset

6. A Dangerous Alliance

Start with Book 1 — free on Kindle Unlimited:

https://mybook.to/ADetectivesDilemma

Until next month

Pete