Dear Friends –
I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. It’s been a tough year for almost everyone, and it’s easy to overlook the good things with which we’re graced.
That said . . . I never thought I’d be someone promoting a Black Friday sale, but as it lasts well beyond Friday, I guess it’s okay.
As a promotion for the release of my novel, “To Live and Die in the Floating World,” e-book versions (only) of my other novels are on sale on all platforms for 99 cents each through Christmas day.
I’m very grateful for the support so many of you have shown me over the last several years. It might be hard to imagine how much a few kind words can persuade me I’m on the right track with my writing, and motivate me to continue.
Many of you are already familiar with my titles and a gratifying number of have bought them all. Though placed in distant and exotic locales, they are all set in countries in which I lived during my Foreign Service career. For those of you not familiar with them, I’ll set out a quick rundown of the three titles offered in the sale.
(Winner of the Silver Medal for Fiction from the Independent Publishers Association) TANGIER tells two interwoven stories: one, a mystery, and the other a spy story set fifty years apart. In the first, we follow Christopher Chafee, a disgraced Washington power broker whose father, a French diplomat, died in a Vichy prison in 1944—or so he had always believed until a letter, received decades after it was posted, upends his life. Soon he is searching the narrow lanes and twisted souls of Tangier’s ancient medina in search of the father he never knew.
MADAGASCAR
The second is a tale of espionage and betrayal set in Morocco during WWII. Rene Laurent, Christopher’s father, struggles to maintain his integrity, and his life, in the snake pit of wartime Tangier. The stories slowly come together as Christopher unravels the mystery of his father’s fate, and Laurent becomes trapped in a web of lies and corruption.
“Stephen Holgate weaves an exciting tapestry of wartime espionage, intrigue and mystery in his astounding debut novel.” – L. Dean Murphy, “BookReporter”
“Gripping and persuasive, with shades of Graham Greene and Alan Furst . . . A really terrific read.” – Rosalind Brackenbury, author of “The House in Morocco”
“Madagascar” – (Received a coveted starred review from Publishers Weekly) Robert Knox, an American diplomat, reformed alcoholic, unreformed gambler, and inveterate smart-ass, finds himself under threat of disgrace and murder even as he seeks love and redemption on the strange and spirit-ridden island of Madagascar.
“Holgate has created a memorable lead character and made Madagascar -- where the ‘implausible is not only possible, it is mandatory’ -- palpable. Le Carré fans won’t want to miss this one.” — Publisher's Weekly, starred review
“Author Stephen Holgate brings the mystery and mysticism of Madagascar to life in his haunting and exciting second novel.” — Goodreads
A chance meeting at a dinner party in Paris turns the life of Philip Reid, an aging and cynical American diplomat, upside down, sending him back more than twenty years to when he had been a younger and better man working in the American Embassy in Sri Lanka. In a tale marked by terrorist bombings, political assassination, romance, and intrigue, we follow the tragedies that lead Bandula, his closest friend and scion of the island’s most powerful family, to a life in exile and Philip to the attainment of dreams that lose their meaning even in the moment of their fulfillment. In their serendipitous meeting, both men gain a chance at redeeming the past.
This last one was released in the time of COVID and didn’t gain the attention of the other two. However, I was deeply gratified to receive this message from two readers: “My husband and I just finished reading aloud your third novel, Sri Lanka. It is a treasure. We read your books aloud. Many of your sentences are so beautiful silent reading would be a shame. I just wanted to write you a note to tell you how much we enjoy your work. My husband is a retired Middle School teacher (Social Studies, English and Drama) and I am a retired Clinical Psychologist. Your books make meaningful connections to all these fields. Well done. Thank you. We read quite a lot, especially during this pandemic, but I have never written to any other author to thank them for writing. I really do love and appreciate your work.”
I hope that “To Live and Die in the Floating World” will receive similar support.
That’s it for now. Again, my best wishes – and thanks – to all of you,
Steve Holgate