Imminent launch of “Lost in Lockdown”

The second part of the Kenny Hughes Memorial Trilogy launches on 1^st April 2021. These three emotionally-charged books follow the journey of two families bereaved by the actions of a gang of drug-dealers. Gavin and Chrissie mourn the death of their police officer son, crushed while attempting to make an arrest. The only witness who might reveal the identity of the killers is teenager Harry Whittle. His parents struggle to cope after finding him dead in their own home a few days later. But that is only the beginning …

Weed Killers, subtitled Christmas Mourning, is set in December 2020 as both families prepare for Christmas. The police work tirelessly to bring the killers to justice. Eventually they take the gang into custody.

But before they can be tried and convicted, the COVID-19 pandemic intervenes. Crown Courts are closed. Jury trials are suspended. As the months drags on, it seems that the killers are getting away with murder. In Lost in Lockdown, May Mourning, we see how the two families face up to the news that the suspects are to be released on bail, as part of a scheme to prevent the spread of coronavirus in prisons, and how being confined by the national lockdown affects each person differently.

The third part of this trilogy, Victim Statements, Cold and Frosty Mourning, will focus on preparing for the trial when, after many delays and cancellations, it does eventually come. Young police constable Stella Gilbert worries about giving evidence for the first time. The Whittles worry about what to say to the court about the impact of Harry’s death. Chrissie worries that her work as a Special Needs teacher is suffering. Gavin … well Gavin has a mysterious corpse in the woods to worry about, but that’s another story!

The paperback, Large Print and audiobook editions of “Lost in Lockdown” are already available and the e-book editions can be pre-ordered for delivery on 1^st April.

My new microphone

After the failure of my old computer and the subsequent problems over getting my microphone to work satisfactorily with the replacement one, I became increasingly conscious of background noise, interference and low volume. I came to the conclusion that the microphone had reached the end of its useful life (or had never been that good in the first place!) I’d done my homework before buying it, but I think I’d not been careful enough about checking the spec. I was also probably not prepared to pay as much as is necessary in order to get a decent piece of kit.

This time, as well as selecting a condenser microphone, I was fussy about rejecting any that didn’t explicitly state that they were unidirectional (i.e. they only pick up sounds from directly in front of them and not from all around, thus reducing the noise from my computer etc.) and had a USB connector (condenser microphones need a power source and I had a hunch that the low power of my previous one might have been because the jack socket didn’t provide sufficient). None of the cheapest models gave all the necessary information (or else they explicitly claimed to be omnidirectional or to connect via a jack plug).

£32.99 isn’t actually that much, in the grander scheme of things and I was pleased that I could immediately hear the difference. My voice sounded much clearer and there was almost no background noise audible in between sentences. The only processing needed in order to satisfy the ACX recording specifications was adjustment of the maximum volume to below their required threshold. It’s going to save me a lot of time compared with the post-recording cleaning that I’d been having to do latterly with the old mike.

You can listen to an audio sample from the next book, “Weed Killers”, recorded using the new mike, here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BzUsB8_cwJ4eczc8gHWVTCVYF3RkYm8N/view