Author Archives: Phillip Fitzsimmons

PJ フィッツシモンズ

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A plain paper parcel arrived this week with the reveal to two long-held secrets: 1) for a year a talented team has been adapting the first Anty Boisjoly, The Case of the Canterfell Codicil, to the Japanese market and 2) my name looks like a party in Kanji.

The project was first championed and then translated by the brilliant Yu Nakayama and represented by the caring and capable Mami Nakajima and Yuna Okunishi of the Japan Uni agency to the professional and proficient Tokyo Sogensha, publisher of a vast catalogue of popular fiction including Agatha Christie, Tetsuya Ayukawa, and now me. I’m extremely flattered, honoured, and grateful.

Tokyo Sogensha
Japan Uni

And yet this reveal is only one solid gold below the fold of a new blockbuster newsletter going out this week, which also means two things 1) the July edition is now in the newsletter archive and 2) if you haven’t signed up for the newsletter you’re missing out on all this, including a free book.

Pound-Store Anty

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It can finally be announced that we’ve begun the process of forgetting that it took three months to offer the bookstore in sterling.

If it’s any sort of defence at all, I did the entire store using the default settings — everything; audiobooks, paperbacks, images, witty asides, the lot — before realising that it supported only the one currency. Then it took me this long to accept the reality that I was going to have create entirely separate stores for…

Quids & Bucks
(Loonies, Eupies, and Dolleridoos pending)

The next Anty Boisjoly is FREE

Posted on by Standard 5

There’s a new old newsletter in the archives that I think you’ll want to have a look at. The buried lede is that there’ll shortly be a new Anty Boisjoly and it’s free to subscribers to the newsletter.

If you were a subscriber you’d know that already and you’d also know that The Case of the Accomplished Accomplice is out now and all you have to do to get your copy is click the link and fork over one email address.

GET YOUR FREE COPY

In The Case of the Accomplished Accomplice, golden-age gadabout, amateur sleuth, and canny counsellor to his kin and kind, Anty Boisjoly, makes an accessory of himself when his simple solution for being in two places at once leads to an impossible, locked-room murder.

This out-of-series conspiracy query is a post-haste short case featuring a full complement of singular suspects, mysterious motives, the returning repertory of the weary Inspector Wittersham and Anty’s vague valet Vickers, and a pointer-setter named Pointsetter.

The Results are In(disputable)

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The results are in, and the stonking majority view is that pre-production pre-orders are the way to address the new royalty reality imposed by the audiobook platforms.
So that’s what we’re doing. The next title will be offered as a pre-production pre-order, meaning that production will start when we’ve raised the funds and, in the laughingly unlikely case that we fail to do so, everyone gets their money back.
Early backers will get the finished book months before everyone else for less than a month of Audible, along with bonus bits and baubles for those who’d like to help reach the goal early.

Pre-product store

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Ancillary to the poll was the strongly expressed view that, not only should I be selling audiobooks directly, but I’m a bit of a thimblewit for not doing so already. So in addition to direct pre-orders for pending projects, there’s now a bookstore from which you can directly order existing Anty Boisjoly audiobooks.
Keen mathematicians among you will note that the first four books of the Anty Boisjoly series are missing. This is because, in my capacity as aforementioned thimblewit, I sold the audiobook rights to the first four titles to a nice man in a trench coat. When this arrangement expires I will a) fix the date error in the narration of The Case of the Canterfell Codicil that’s been keeping me up nights and b) make all titles available. In the meantime, I hope you’ll join me in a hand of Skip the Middleman for the audiobooks current and pending.

Audiobook Store!

Anty Boisjoly Number 11: Massacre at Market Middling

Posted on by Standard 5

No sooner has the over-trusting Anty been wiled into judging a flower show in the biscuit-tin village of Market Middling than the chief suspect in a serial nobbling of the competition is found murdered in a room locked from the inside.

And no sooner than that is Inspector Wittersham on the scene investigating an altogether different murder on board a train in, by one of those coincidences that happen every six months or so, a compartment that was locked from the inside.

Massacre at Market Middling 

Massacre at Market Middling is available now and already recording records for redness and ripeness of herring hosting, as it does, two completely separate investigations, two victims, two impossible sets of circumstances, and two full galleries of Anty’s most eccentric suspects ever.

 

The Anty Boisjoly/Teddy Quillfeather Newsletter is back, and it’s ‘bout the same as ever!

Posted on by Standard 4

A positively bursting new newsletter just went out to informed insiders, which means there’s also a new old newsletter in the archive.

Rich and rewarding as it is, it’s not fresh news, so why not sign up to get the newsletters as soon as they hatch?

Anty Boisjoly No. 10!

Posted on by Standard 7

The subtly-titled mottle of misdirection and missed detection returns to where it all started ten mysteries ago when none other than Anty’s friendly rival Inspector Wittersham is the only suspect in a locked-room murder in the ancient earldom of Fray.

The False Clue of the Twisted Red Herring’s Footprint is available for pre-order now.

Of course Anty doesn’t believe for a second that Inspector Wittersham murdered a prisoner locked in a cell to which only he had the key, but the more twists and secrets and hidden treasure he digs up, the more evidence he finds that proves Wittersham guilty.

To save his friend, Anty must draw on his judgemental mum, woolly valet, a constable named Constable, a goat of dubious loyalties, endless eccentrics, and his own depths of wit and anecdote as he delves deeply into the history of medieval England and the dark mysteries of his own family.

Safe Harbour

Posted on by Standard 6

There’s another new newsletter in the archive.

I say new, but it’s new rather in the way a washing up liquid is new and improved, which is to say not at all. This number dates back to April and even then it was meant to be the February edition, delayed and then delayed again while powers greater than I struggled and ultimately succeeded in keeping the audiobook of Mystery and Malice aboard RMS Ballast from appearing on Audible.

But the little vessel fought bravely back with a fearless strategy of wandering blindly and wondering idly, waiting for something to happen. Eventually, we abandoned the distributor and signed up with another and, three weeks later, the audiobook of Mystery and Malice aboard RMS Ballast is available on all platforms.

To find your favourite among them, have a click…

RMS Ballast on Audio

Oo ‘arr

Posted on by Standard Reply

There’s a new newsletter, finally, in the archives, which means that the latest number has been sent out to subscribers after an unprecedented but unsurprising delay while we meditated and sacrificed a perfectly good bottle of Merlot and a night’s sleep in supplication to the sacred, secret rites by which an audiobook somehow makes it onto Audible.

Which is not to say that Mystery and Malice aboard RMS Ballast has been anointed after fully eight weeks, we just got tired of waiting, and also recalled that last time we whinged in print about Audible looking at the horizon and pretending not to see us Foreboding Foretelling at Ficklehouse Felling was made available the next day. Maybe it’ll work again.

The good news is that the eighth Anty Boisjoly audiobook, the one in which Tim Bruce finally gets to do his pirate voice, parrot and all, is available everywhere that isn’t Audible.