A little bit of Heaven for just $2.99!

Hi there. If you came looking for information about A Little Book About Believing then please CLICK HERE, and you’ll find all the information you need to know about the book and the absolutely life-changing experience I and many others had at the healing center in Brazil.

If on the other hand you’re interested in what I’ve been doing more recently, then here it is: I’ve written a piece of fiction.

Let me introduce you to a locomotive of a thriller called Force of Habit: Sister Madeleine Investigates. It’s available from Amazon in the U.S. and Britain, and worldwide from Amazon.  It’s also downloadable from iTunes (in the iBooks section obviously), so you can read it on your iPad or iPhone.

Yesterday it swept majestically up to 5,000th on Amazon in the UK. Out of one million books that’s not half bad. Personally, I’d like to see it go a lot higher. But I can only do that with your help.

That’s why, for a limited time only, it is retailing at just $2.99.

Much to my delight, it’s already garnered a couple of sterling 5–star reviews. See those HERE.

From a satisfied reader: “Just finished devouring Force of Habit…when does the next book come out?  I am not the world’s biggest mystery reader – very particular about my reading – but this was really addictive. Great writing.”

And another:  “Refreshingly different. A brilliant mix of fast moving action packed mystery/thriller and humour…A brilliantly conceived plot with twists and turns that kept me guessing right up to the end. Highly recommended.”

MysteryNet, the site for lovers of mystery books, called it: “Action- packed to the very end.”  

A reader in the UK wrote: “I want Sister Madeleine to turn into a cherished literary character with more adventures to come.”

You’ll feel the same way, I’m sure.

A childhood dream becomes a reality

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to write fiction. Specifically, a thriller. Detective stories and vintage murder stories were my fascination when I was a kid. I gobbled them up by the dozen, and long believed I was capable of creating one of my own.

But you know how it is. Life intervened. Things happened. I never got around to it.

The adult Peters struck it lucky. He was on TV and radio and traveled the world, writing non-fiction books about foreign cultures and spiritual matters. Which was wonderful and a dream come true. The younger Peters, meanwhile, who was still trapped inside the older one, nurtured another dream. He longed to pen a cracking good thriller, but in his own style.

Then one day, the older Peters – which is me, by the way, in case you were puzzled – turned a certain age and noticed that people he’d worked with back in his 20s and 30s were getting sick and dying well before their time.  Improbably, guys I thought would last forever were suddenly gone. There are no guarantees, as we all know. The call could come at any time.  Therefore I figure it’s vital to live out your dreams to the fullest whenever you can. Don’t die, as they say, with your music still in you.

So with that in mind – “It’s now or never,” I told myself – I shelved most of my workload for the next eighteen months and wrote Force of Habit. I did it for me, mind. To prove that I could. To validate the kid inside of me and make him proud.

It didn’t even matter if nobody else liked it, as long as I liked it.

But here’s the thing:  to my delight, the reaction from those who’ve read it has been incredibly warm and amazing. Beyond anything I could have hoped for.

“Dazzling,” wrote one.

“Compelling and brilliant. Relentless and frightening.”

“It’s so COOL,” someone else said. “I love it.”

Well, yes, me too. I’m as happy with this as anything I’ve ever done, and hope you love it as well.

Published by Penner Press, it’s lots of fun. A gripping wild ride filled with action, intrigue, humor, satire, and strange, unexpected twists.

My Life as a Nun’s Mentor

I had the idea way back in 1983. I was living in Golders Green, North London at the time, renting a small bedsit.

One day, a new tenant moved in next door to me. A nun. I remember her name: Sister Margaret Sherwood. Wonderful woman. Very toothy, quite oversized and shuffling, and absolutely  clueless about everything. She was on an apostolate, she said, which, as far as I could tell, meant she’d been thrown out of the abbey, a bit like Maria, and left to fend for herself.

Though Sister Margaret was in her 70s at the time, she’d led a cloistered life for decades and knew nothing – and I mean nothing – about the modern world. She had no clue how to use a can opener, for example. She’d never watched TV, made a Panini sandwich – in fact, she couldn’t cook a thing – and she absolutely marveled at the way my electric kettle boiled water all by itself.

“That’s fan-tastic!” she’d shriek. “How does it do that?”

It was quite bizarre. Like having Catweazel come to visit. Or the apes from 2001.

For the next three years we lived together in that house. During that time, I introduced her to the concept of convenience, leading her through the basics step by step, as you would a toddler, or someone who’s just arisen from a hundred-year coma, giving her simple instructions on how to cope with life outside the convent wall, such as how to make mushrooms on toast, how a water heater works, how to vacuum a rug without sucking half of it up into the Hoover, and generally demonstrating what’s what.

It was a life-saver for her, I realize that now, and also an intensely interesting character study for me. “Somewhere in this,” I recall thinking even then, “are the seeds of a really good sitcom, or book, or movie, not sure what – but something.”

And that’s where it began. The novel stems from that situation, though with a much darker, sinister edge, and a lot more car chases.

But there’s more. Somewhere back in the UK I have a reel of Kodak Standard 8 film showing a couple of friends and me on a bleak, blustery hill near Stockport, called Werneth Low. We were fifteen years old, so this was 1971. For reasons I would probably have been hard-pressed to explain even then, I spent all my pocket money that week renting an oversized nun costume, which John O, the tubbiest of us, put on, then ran around in like a maniac for the camera, doing karate chops and other faux martial arts he had absolutely no knowledge of at all. Beyond the fun of the indulgence, it was a complete waste of time and money. But funny. Very, very funny to watch.

However, it sowed another seed, one that’s stayed with me ever since, and which would turn, many years later, when combined with snippets of the Sister Margaret episode, into something good and cohesive and really worthwhile: my first novel, Force of Habit.

 A Christmas Gift Suggestion

Now, I’m aware this means I’m releasing two big, and very different pieces of work in the same year. My faith-healing adventure in Brazil - a little book about believing - continues to do well (last week it reached #6 on Amazon’s bestseller list in health and healing!). For that reason it was tempting to hold back and wait with the novel, so as not to confuse people.

I even had a consultation with a branding agent. I told him I have two books coming out – each radically different from the other. One’s a spiritual odyssey to Brazil, the second’s a mystery novel. What should I do?

He was adamant:  it’s too much. I’d be ruining my brand.  I must publish the novel under a pseudonym.

But why? Steven Spielberg made War Horse and Tintin this year. Very different. And look at Woody Allen. Over the years, he’s directed comedies, tragedies, a mystery, a musical, and several romances, some light, some dark – he doesn’t change his name each time, does he? And did he ruin his brand? Nope.

So, December 19th 2011, Force of Habit: Sister Madeleine Investigates will go on sale as an ebook, written by me, as me, in the hope that it will find an appreciative audience.

If you were given a Kindle or iPad for Christmas, check it out here on Amazon. (Also available on Amazon UK). Remember, it’s only $2.99. So come on, why not let the kid inside of you read the novel that the kid inside of me waited a lifetime to write? You might be pleasantly surprised.

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