Best wishes from the Isle of Wight in the new cold lockdown. At least I´ll have plenty of time for writing. I am disappointed to have had so little success with sales of the above novel. You will see from the attached photo that the cover is at least as striking as the covers of the much more successful Languedoc trilogy novels or “The Eighth Child”. The story is set in Spain, which I am told is a country that interests a lot of readers. The only reason I think the book is a flop is that nobody is interested any longer in Franco.

General Francisco France was the longest lasting of the mid twentieth century dictators. He did not invade other countries and kill millions of foreigners as Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin did. But he caused huge suffering and loss of life in his own poor country. Everyone seems to have forgotten the evil his regime caused among the population of Spain.

After Franco´s death, there was a national policy of forgetting the terrible behaviour practiced by both sides, but especially by the Nationalists. It was an attempt to try to re-unite the fractured relations of the different sections of the country with the national bodies of the Catholic Church and upper class Falange. But recently the Spanish have been waking up to the fact that what happened in the Civil War and the following years of repression has to be faced as part of their history before they can move on.

I choose the titles of my novels carefully. I want them to give the reader an indication of what they will find when they delve into the book. However I think I may have chosen the wrong accent for this one. I have now carried out a careful re-edit and will soon be publishing a new edition. I think I may change the title to something like “Encounters in Spain”.

What do you think? – Mike.

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