"Bloodhound Books signs debut author..."

Bloodhound Books - a crime and thriller publisher based in Cambridge, United Kingdom - announced this morning that they have recently signed a new author: C.S. Barnes (that's me).

I've been excitedly sitting on this information for a couple of weeks while details of contracts - across different publishers - were ironed out, and now the news is finally out there. My debut novel, which will arrive in early 2019, is a psychological thriller with splashes of domestic noir, titled Never Forget Your First - and let me tell you, as first novels go, I certainly won't be forgetting this one. 

This news comes after a few months of sending out sample chapters and pages, carefully crafted cover letters, and polite rejections. More importantly though, this also comes after three years of working on this book as part of my Doctoral thesis. Gillian - the protagonist of the book - is not an easy woman to love, I must admit, and working with her for the last three years has been a wild and unpredictable ride to say the least, but I cannot express my sheer delight at having placed her, and myself, with a publisher who understands the point of Gillian's story (unconventional at it may sometimes seem). 

There are no spoilers here and I'm not about to dish the dirt in a synopsis either. I just wanted to write a little something to mark the occasion, and let readers/website-visitors/friends know that something is coming next year - and it's worth keeping an eye out for (well, I like to think so at least)!

- Charley