A Dog's Life (The Romney and Marsh Files Book 4) by Oliver Tidy Page A

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    Sales of her ebooks numbered in the millions. She churned them out quickly and priced them cheaply. She would often Tweet reminders to her followers that her books could be had for less than the price of a cup of decent tea. Her fan base was huge – cross-gender, cross-generational, cross-culture and across continents.
    By all forms of media she had been singled out as one of the great success stories of the ebook boom and the traditional-publishing industry had been forced to sit up and take notice. Then, when they’d realised that there might be money to be made from a complementary series of ‘real’ books and audio books, they’d fist-fought each other in the streets to offer her the kind of publishing deal that all writers, traditional or self-published, fantasise about.
    Stephanie Lather had made it big. Very big. And by her own admission she wasn’t finished, not by a long way.
    There was talk that although she no longer lived in Dover and felt no great affinity for the place, which she had once described in her blog as, ‘...the dour town on the Dour river...’ , she had chosen the place for the launch of hard copies of her books for one reason and one reason only. It was not because she felt she owed anything to the community in which she was raised. It was not because she felt a debt to any one from there. It was because this is where her ex-husband still lived and worked. At the docks. Which could be seen clearly – even on an inclement winter’s day when the English Channel was throwing itself through thick sea mist at Neptune’s whim and Dover’s beach – from the Dover Marina Hotel. The husband that had betrayed her, cheated on her with her sister before, during and after her pregnancy with their second child. The husband that had abandoned his paternal obligations to both of his daughters and left a penniless Stephanie to struggle like a blind three-legged mule climbing Everest with a shed on its back – her words. There was talk that Stephanie Lather was back in Dover to rub his nose in her success as much as to launch her traditional publishing career.
    Stephanie Lather was to give a talk about her journey from a self-publishing nobody to a traditionally-published success story. And then she was going to do a book signing. Joy had tickets.
    Joy was a big fan of the JR Lleroy series – undemanding, pure escapist reads. She had all twelve novels on her ebook reader. Each time a new book came out she would quickly download and devour it. Sometimes even reading it twice.
    After some hanging around in the lobby with free coffee and biscuits to the gentle background murmur of polite and expectant conversation, Joy went in to take her seat in the Chartwell conference room along with everyone else. As people waited and chatted she looked around and took in the opulence of the venue: the fine and expensive wallpaper, the deep and luxurious carpet, the picture windows with superb harbour views. It was all far removed from the daily life of the humble detective constable – the drab grubby surroundings, the scumbags they had to deal with, the constant cycle of unpleasantness – and Joy felt that, given the chance, she could get used to it.
    As Joy sat and waited, her thoughts strayed to the state of her own life. Despite her gripes and a very big career wobble caused by her near-death experience at the hands of ex-DS Wilkie, she still largely enjoyed her job and her confidence was growing. She didn’t hate where she lived. She was involved with a man whom she understood she felt something significant for. So why did she feel so... unfulfilled?
    Joy recognised that, of course, news of her mother’s ailing health and the emotional trauma of seeing her the previous evening had contributed to her feelings of discontent, but Joy also understood that it went deeper than that. She had been feeling... unfulfilled – there was no better word for it – for a good while. She wanted more from life. She