Sunday, 29 November 2015

**GUEST POST** Daniel Pembrey - Author of The Lion Hunter

Today I am VERY excited to be hosting Daniel Pembury, author of the wonderful short story The Lion Hunter. After meeting Daniel at a party earlier on this week I read The Lion Hunter over the weekend. This is an absolutely cracking read, one that evokes the sights and sounds of Africa transporting the reader to an exciting, exotic location. If you're looking for something a little bit different, then I highly recommend this short story! You can snatch up your copy here:


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Thank you for having me on Reading Room with a View, Lisa!

I love the name of your blog. It’s very outward looking, and makes me think of my favourite types of writing. I’m a big fan of crime fiction but I also love travel writing. Indeed, I like nothing more that to read (and write) stories with a strong sense of location.

I’ve just released a new adventure short story called The Lion Hunter, which I hope might make a good Xmas read! It was inspired by a combination of Cecil the lion and a recent trip I made to Tanzania. It’s about British newlyweds who meet a Texan trophy hunter at a remote game lodge; the lion hunting turns out to be less morally straightforward than the husband expects. I loved writing it, and I love the creature it’s based around (I’m a Leo!).



You can buy The Lion Hunter: A Short Adventure Story here if you live in the UK and here if you’re in the US …

Most of my published stories are set in Holland (one is set in Luxembourg). I started visiting Amsterdam eight years ago when my sister moved there with her husband, and was struck by the dearth of crime fiction set in the Dutch capital (in English translation). This surprised me, given that it’s one of northern Europe’s great port cities, lending itself so well to the genre. Then my sister and her husband had a baby daughter, and I ended up visiting more!


Working through a few plot points with my niece Saffron

I’ve also enjoyed the maverick cop stories of Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin and the Scandinavian masters such as the late Henning Mankell … So I set about creating a stoical Dutch police detective, Henk van der Pol, whose beat is in the atmospheric docklands area of Amsterdam. Indeed, I ended up moving there in 2014, to deepen my understanding of the story world (and consume Dubbelbock beer and jenever gin in De Druif!).



De Druif, or The Grape – my police detective’s local

I began writing the Harbour Master series in novella-length instalments – again, a story type I love to read – and was fortunate to have the first two books accepted as Kindle Singles (Amazon’s curated, short e-book programme). They sold well, the first one becoming the number one short story on Amazon UK, and this in turn got me picked up by a good agent – Kirsty McLachlan at David Godwin Associates. The book series just sold to No Exit Press and will be re-launched by them in 2016, which I’m very excited about.

Much as I feel at home in Amsterdam, I’m restless at heart and always looking for different places to write about (Berlin has been high on my list for a long while). And I always like to ask readers and writers: Which are the places that you are drawn towards? And of the books set there, which would you recommend?

Thank you for having me on Reading Room with a View!

Daniel is on Twitter https://twitter.com/DPemb and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/DPembrey. His website is www.danielpembrey.com


Amazon US product page: www.amazon.com/dp/B0186DYH2Y/
Amazon UK product page: www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0186DYH2Y/




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