Simon Brading

March 2025

Hi Reader!

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Simon Brading's author newsletter!

As always, if you no longer wish to receive it there is a button at the bottom of the email to unsubscribe. I'll be sorry to see you go, but completely understand!

Announcement

I’m not going to go into details as to why, but, over the last few months in particular, more and more people have been turning away from buying from Amazon. In order to have my books in Kindle Unlimited, the eBooks have to be exclusively on Amazon, so this has affected me considerably – my sales have declined and I’m also feeling like I shouldn’t be supporting the platform.

I have decided, therefore, that it is time for me to "go wide", as it is known in the business, which means putting my books on multiple platforms.

What does this mean for readers?

Well, unfortunately and most importantly, this will necessitate removing my books from Kindle Unlimited. I would love to be able to give my readers a chance to still use KU if they chose to, but Amazon will not allow that.
This won't be an immediate thing, I'm going to leave them at least another couple of months in order to give people who are reading any of my series a chance to finish it and it will be a gradual switch over, with the Misfit Squadron books going last.

Rest assured, I will give definite dates when I have them, with as much warning as possible.
I apologize to those of you who rely on Kindle Unlimited, but I hope you will understand.

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A little bit about me... (part 1)

I'm English and was born in Sussex, but moved to London when I was 5. I moved to Spain in 2002 and live in Barcelona with my family in a tiny flat with incredible views.

I have a "day job" as an actor, but most of my time is spent writing.

The Aircraft in the Second Great War (the Misfit Squadron series)

Anyone who knows anything about the airplanes that fought in World War II will find many of the aircraft in the Misfit Squadron books quite familiar. The Spitsteam is of course based on the Spitfire, the Harridan on the Hurricane, the MU9 and 10 on the ME109 and 110, and so on. When I was creating the series back in 2018 I toyed with the idea of coming up with very different aircraft, but then I realised that it wasn't just unnecessary, but also would have been a mistake.

The Misfits exist in a world that is very much like ours except that, at some point, a decision was made that sent it down one technological path instead of another. The same physical rules apply and so do the same laws of aerodynamics, so, as far as aircraft design is concerned, why wouldn’t someone have the same kind of ideas as they did in our world?

Also, from a reader's standpoint it is also a good thing to have familiar aircraft. Imagining something with the beauty of a Spitfire when the Spitsteams fly, or the functional aggression of an ME109 when they fight the MU9s is a lot easier and satisfying than trying to remember what weird and wonderful contraption has been described for what aircraft.

AND FINALLY - THE BIG COVER REVEAL!

I’m currently working on the next Misfit Squadron book, the 11th, which will be titled “The Invasion of Britain”. The first draft is maybe a month away from being completed and then it will need editing. I’m hoping it will be ready to publish by summer.

As with all the Misfit Squadron covers, the colours of foreground and background have meaning. With this cover the (what I call) “squiggles” at the top and sides of the frame have been changed to arrows. Those Brits of a certain age may guess that they're a reference to something…

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