A Sip of Claret News
- Claret Press
- May 1
- 10 min read
1st May 2025
Why Pre-orders Matter
All books by Claret Press are now up on Amazon and/or available to be bought through your local bookstores.
Wait. There's a sting in the tail. The 2025 titles don't come out until the autumn.
Doesn't matter. Order them now. Please.
You could buy them through the Claret Press website, either as an ebook or a paperback. If you buy a paperback copy, I then pop the book into an envelope and seal it with a kiss (I don't really, because that's disgusting).Both the author and I make more money per copy sold because I don't have to share the revenue with the distributor or wholesaler. Whoo-hoo!
But don't do that. More money is much appreciated but for the first month or so of publication, please consider buying the title through your local bookstore or through the evil empire that is Amazon.
This is because of algorithms. Somehow something charts how many copies of a title are bought, collates that information and then sends it out to bookstores. Bookstore managers, trying to figure out what to put on their shelves to entice buyers into their stores to thumb through a copy, see this information. Bookstore managers note that squillions of you are buying Claret Press titles, order a few copies on spec and put them in bookstore windows, where indeed, someone is enticed by our brilliant covers to wander inside and thumb through a copy - and then buy it. Claret Press and its authors then get a few extra pennies from A TOTAL STRANGER. This would be an odd experience for us. More to the point, this is how authors grow their readership.
Or at least that's the theory.
I can't help but think that bookstore managers must know that publishers are gaming the system, queering the pitch, putting our thumb on the scales. Mustn't they?
On and the off chance that they don't, please pre-order one or more of the forthcoming Claret Press titles out in the autumn NOW! RIGHT NOW!
Check out our website for great reviews of our forthcoming titles: Claret Press
Also, if you are interested in any of the fabulous titles on the Claret Press backlist, please consider buying from our website where we sell cheaper bundles, have sales of individual titles and will also kiss the air near an envelope before sealing it: Claret Press - Home - Payhip
Many thanks for your continued support.
Excerpt from White Road
To convince you that one of our upcoming releases is worth the pre-order, here's an excerpt from White Road by Harry Whitehead, an eco-thriller set in the High Arctic.
Carrie Essler
The Hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk
Southern shore of the Beaufort Sea, Canada
October – Tomorrow
Carrie Essler sprinted along the concrete jetty. She halted at the end beside a mooring cleat as big as an anvil, squatted on her haunches, tried to catch her breath. The freezing air had scoured her windpipe, the hairs in her nostrils frozen, prickly and tickling. She made a fist, soft-punched the cleat. Something in its pig-iron obstinacy calmed her more than the eight miles she’d run.
She pulled herself up, sat on the cleat. A breeze blew in from the southwest, lifting the ice-dust from the frozen sea-surface into spectral eddies. She was shivering already, the sweat on her face beginning to frost. Never sweat in the Arctic, it’ll suck the life right out of you when it freezes.
A Chinook helicopter dropped from the clouds in the northeast. It banked out across the sea and then straightened on final approach. She sighed, checked her watch.
‘Typical,’ she said.
Carrie jogged back along the empty jetty that thrust out into the Beaufort Sea like some engineer’s hard-on. She ran past the offshore supply boat moored there for the winter. The deep thwock of the chopper’s twin rotors cut through the wind’s low hiss.
‘Be nice…be nice…be nice…’ she muttered over and over as she ran past warehouses and portacabin offices, then along by the corporate and dormitory buildings that lined the airport runway. She swung in through a gap by the charter helicopter hangar. Skidded to a halt on the slippery tarmac beside an Inuvialuit man in a Canadian Coast Guard parka.
‘Ma’am,’ he said.
She nodded, put her hands on her knees, panting.
‘You been out where polar bears’ll get you again.’ He wore a conciliatory smile, but his quiet voice was serious.
‘Here’s hoping, Mike,’ she replied.
He wasn’t to be put off so easily. ‘They come in off the sea. More now the pack ice stays away in the north.’ He shook his head, as if weary with the entire world and everyone in it, then stepped forwards to wave the Chinook down.
Huge whorls of dust enveloped Carrie as it landed. Red and white with the livery of the Canadian Coast Guard, its deafening engines made her duck away. ‘Be nice…’ As the rotors slowed, she saw the pilot through the cockpit window.
‘Oh, marvellous,’ she said aloud.
The Chinook’s rear ramp dropped. She walked over to stand beside it. A short, round man bumbled down the incline, way too much gold braid on the jacket beneath his overcoat. Above her head, the twin rotors came to a stop.
Carrie made a show of saluting.
‘I see you dressed for the occasion,’ Assistant Commissioner Grady said, looking her up and down, his lips thin. Carrie wore Lycra skin-tights in hippy-trippy colours that, she conceded, looked a little curious with her Arctic boots, Coast Guard fleece and ancient yellow bobble hat.
‘You showed up early, sir.’
‘Jogger now, are you?’
She breathed in hard through her nostrils, tried to quell the hatred, the anger. ‘Swimming’s out, this time of year,’ she managed.
Grady made a visible effort to smile. ‘It’s good to see you, Carrie.’ She didn’t return his smile.
‘So we’re part of your whistle-stop tour of the provinces then?’ she said.
‘I’m here to see PentOil off its drill site. That’s it.’
‘I heard. Flying out to the rig with the corporate vampires tomorrow. Very cosy, if I might say so, sir.’
‘I’m hoping you’ll join us.’
‘Not a chance, sir!’ She was thinking about the Chinook’s pilot.
Grady closed his eyes, raised his face to the heavens. His breath came steaming from his nostrils. He took a moment to look around. Carrie followed his gaze. The runway contained just a lonely Twin Otter, heavily sheeted against the weather. A few lights glinted from Tuktoyaktuk village, half a mile away. The odd window shone in the two-storey airport block beside them. Light bloomed from the control tower above the modest original airport building that predated the arrival of corporate money.
‘If the Arctic did tumbleweeds…’
‘Things closing down for the winter,’ said Grady.
‘Been a thrill a minute all summer, though, sir.’
He exhaled heavily. ‘I gave you a promotion.’
‘You gave me punishment detail. I’m a rescue swimmer, not some gormless border guard.’
‘You never liked Canada,’ he said, ‘even when you and Don were still together.’
‘Well, I surely am loving it now. Yes, siree. What a blast.’
‘That’s not how it was.’
‘How it was, is you packed me off to the arse-end of nowhere for screwing around on your wee Coast Guard poster boy.’
For a second he looked like he was actually going to punch her. Here we go, she thought, just try it, boss! Me lamping a senior officer’s one way out of this coal hole. But Grady only squeezed his hands tightly together.
‘Lord Almighty,’ he said, ‘then just go home!’
‘That’s it? Ship me back to Bonny Scotland where I come from? Immigrants out, rah, rah, rah?’
Grady looked at her with a kind of patronising comprehension that really did make her want to clock him one. ‘But you’re coming with us tomorrow,’ he said.
And now Carrie saw Don himself, standing at the top of the ramp, six foot three of, yes, poster-boy military zeal. As he strode down to stand beside her, his co-pilot and loadmaster following, she ran her fingers through her hair. Felt it crunch where the sweat had turned to frost. A dog’s hackles rising.
‘Donny,’ she said.
‘How are you, Carrie?’ He didn’t smile.
‘I’ll show you to your rooms.’ She marched away across the tarmac, not waiting for them to follow.
―
Pressed up against the outer wall of an airport building, Tuktoyaktuk’s only bar had once been a steel goods container. One side had been cut away and a prefab lean-to with a corrugated tin roof added. There was no sign. The owner hadn’t bothered; everyone knew what it was.
Carrie shouldered open the weather-beaten door and ducked inside, snowflakes billowing in after her. She pulled off her parka, hung it on a peg. A twin-bar electric heater glowed hopelessly on the ceiling. Caribou antlers drooped above the bar beneath dismal strip-lights. A rowdy group of rig workers waiting for a flight home drowned out the portable stereo on the counter. One of them wolf-whistled and the rest sniggered like the arse-wipe schoolboys they were. Everyone knew about her. Everyone was male. No one was going to shut up, ever. That, Assistant Commissioner Grady, was how it was.
‘Carrie Essler,’ a voice called from a nearby table in a mock Humphrey Bogart accent, ‘Arctic counter terror squad. She’s got it licked.’ He waggled his tongue to more laughter.
Carrie glared at Donny’s co-pilot. ‘Yeah, fek off, Lightsy,’ she told him quietly, her Scottish accent coming through as it tended to at such moments. ‘I’ll drive that bottle through yer face.’
Voices said, ‘Ooh,’ but Lightsy didn’t reply. He knew better.
She nodded to Jeannie, the old woman tending bar. A tall Inuvialuit man perched on a stool at the counter. He was grinning nastily at Carrie, obviously enjoying the spectacle.
‘Oh not you too, fuck’s sake,’ she said.
‘Oh yeah,’ he replied.
She sat opposite a chubby little guy with a ratty, entirely Arctic-inappropriate trilby perched on the back of his head. A half-empty bottle of bourbon and two tumblers awaited, one of them empty. She poured herself a slug and tipped it in gratitude.
Jim Ross was reading a thick, technical document. He peered over the top. ‘Who’s the wise guy?’ he said, tilting his head towards Lightsy’s table, his trilby remaining on his head as if glued there.
‘My ex-husband’s co-pilot. They came in with Grady. Flying you and your company morons out to the rig tomorrow.’
Ross mouthed a silent O. When she didn’t speak, he said, ‘Your jilted ex, plus Grady, the man who banished you up here for it. Gotta hurt.’
Carrie poured another slug, glared at the glistening rime frost in the ceiling corners.
‘Guess you don’t want to talk about it,’ said Ross.
‘Quit the oil business. Get into mind reading.’
‘Quit the Coast Guard. Get your sense of humour back.’
She raised her glass. Touché.
AVAILABLE NOW FOR PRE-ORDER:
Meet Steve Powell
Steve Powell is Claret Press’s bestselling author for his thriller Term Limits. With his brand new thriller, Stupid, coming out this autumn, we thought it was about time we (re)introduced him.
Like many fiction writers, Steve draws inspiration from his own relationships, work experiences, travels, and adventures, and Stupid is not exempt from this. A semi-autobiographical thriller, it comes as no surprise that Stupid’s protagonist, Phil Osgood, has founded and run his own small hedge fund, for which he had to do things like install his own satellite dish, a true story from our author.
During Powell’s time managing a money center bank in New York and London, and founding his own hedge fund, he was able to travel the world, participate in the excitement of Wall Street Trading Floors, witness great integrity and minor scandals, sit with and question famous economists, senators, and cabinet secretaries. He even had a chance to spend three days with a former US President, asking about things like the pros and cons of term limits.
Steve has a life-long love of sports and the outdoors. He’s done several Ironmans, including the World Championship in Hawaii, and has run over 30 marathons. He’s also participated in a seven day race by the Grand Canyon, gotten lost in a race in the jungles of Brunei and hurried by a well fed, sleeping male lion during a run in South Africa.
In his free time, Steve likes to read murder mysteries and thrillers, the influences of which can be seen in his new novel, Stupid. His favourite authors include Michael Connelly, John Grisham, John Irving, Herman Wouk and Robert Ludlum.
We are delighted to announce that we have a brand new thriller, Stupid, coming this autumn by our bestselling author, Steve Powell!
Phil Osgood has it all. The wonderful wife, the fabulous kids, the lucrative career. He really only has one problem. He’s bored.
Quietly, Phil steps out of his lane and moonlights with a local detective. It’s a good compromise.
What starts as a diversion turns into a hunt for missing friends. When the hunt leads to bodies and Phil is implicated, the diversion gets personal – and deadly.
For the first time, Phil isn’t sure he’s going to win. And if he loses, he loses everything.
AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW:
Follow-Up from Last Month's
Building a Library in Africa
Remember the library that's not a library in Africa? I wrote about it in last month's newsletter when I went to see it being built. In case you missed it or want to refresh your memory, here's a link to read it: Building a Library in Africa - Claret Press
Thank you so very much to all of you who contributed generously to the project. It was gratefully received and hugely appreciated. If you click the link (https://open.substack.com/pub/claretpress/p/follow-up-on-bui...) you'll see a video of the children from the local high school shouting, "Thank you, Katie!" for my donation of balls, which is wholly unrelated to libraries, and yes the library is still short a few bob.
For those of you who still wish to donate a few pennies, I can assure you that it's for a superior cause. Click the button below for more information on The Nasio Trust and how to support it.
Thank you again!
We are delighted to announce that Corinna Edwards-Colledge, author of The Door That Shouldn't Have Been There, will be joining us for our next livestream of Ask the Author.
This book was an unusual publication for Claret Press, as it focuses on grief. An artistically presented fable for adults, The Door That Shouldn't Have Been There, is an attempt to better approach and discuss this difficult subject.
Join the free conversation on Tuesday 6th May 2025, 7pm-8pm, on the Claret Press YouTube Live channel.
The link to watch the livestream on YouTube is below:
Adaptations and Conversations
Unfortunately, there won't be an Adaptations and Conversations livestream until September. We're taking a break to read more books!
It's been great fun doing this season of discussions. Michelle and I have gone to the West End theatre together to see a matinee performance of Wicked and abandoned its book at about the same spot in the story, fell in love with the same BBC TV adaptation (Mr Loverman), grappled with the issue of portraying the primacy of prayer and the gift of faith in Conclave (the book does it better), and shrugged with disinterest at Bridget Jones 2 and 3, but found the final instalment in the romcom franchise to be pleasingly about grief.
We loved it when you asked us tough questions which yielded no easy answers, or just typed in to say hello! We hope you enjoyed our communal discussions as much as we did.
Please join Michelle and myself on October 14th, 7:30pm, for our next YouTube Adaptations and Conversations livestream.
*Book and movie to be announced closer to the date.
If you're looking for an early summer same... Look no further!
Claret Press's bundles offer three of our books at a reduced price. There currently five bundles available, each carefully tailored to our readers' tastes.
If, however, you want to create your own bundle, or discuss which books might be best for you and for your interests, then please email us at contact@claretpress.com
*Bundles can only be purchased from our store, not from other retailers.
For more information, follow the link to our shop:
"I spend quite a lot of time thinking about how curated our information is. What we watch, what we read, what we buy, often who we talk to, is all shaped and influenced by some kind of mathematical algorithm."
- Hannah Fry, British mathematician, best-selling author and broadcaster.
