I’m delighted to announce that I have sold my steampunk trilogy Conjuror Girl to Keith Brooke at Infinity Plus. The books will be published under the Infinite Press imprint on Thursday 4 Nov, 18 November and 2 December. The three novels – Monique Orphan, Monica Orvan and Monica Hatherley – follow the story of Monique, later Monica, a young woman residing in a particularly grim orphanage in the Shrobbesbury of 1899. Shrobbesbury is a twisted, gothic version of my home town of Shrewsbury. Monique however is no ordinary girl. She seems to have a power, Reification, that only men should have. Should she deny this gift and stay safe, or should she risk being noticed and captured by the Reifiers’ Guild, whose devious and callous deeds include sinking Paris in the Inundation? Alongside her best friend Lily, also an orphan, Monique has to walk an impossible tightrope, as the net closes around her and she struggles to find out who and what she is…
I’m pleased to announce that I’ve sold my near future SF novel Cybergone to Rick Moore at White Cat Publications. Special thanks to Rick and to Jude Matulich-Hall. Cybergone is a novel of later this century in which an enigmatic illness called Empathy Negation Disorder, found only in China, is laying waste to the Chinese people. This illness has been denied and concealed by the Chinese Communist Party. The novel takes two strands, one of which follows the story of Zhou Qi, whose seven-year-old son has END, but who has insight into the possible causes of the illness because of his tech background. The other strand follows three Anglo-Chinese musicians undertaking a tour of China, dates which, as they progress, reveal far more sinister motives than just entertaining fans. This novel was inspired by my increasing unease at how the online world and social media in particular is altering the brains, and therefore the minds, of children…
The anthology No More Heroes is now available to pre-order from PS Publishing. Edited by Ian Whates, the collection celebrates musical heroes who we have lost too soon, and includes my story ‘The Birth Of Liquid Plejades’ about Edgar Froese. The collection features stories by other authors, many familiar to genre fans: Keith Brooke, Tim Lebbon, Storm Constantine, Neil Williamson and many others. Not to be missed! This will sell out soon, so don’t delay…
The FCCs ongoing promotion of their Fictions: Health & Care Re-imagined series continues with an interview with Keith Brooke, who manages the project and is one of the four authors. Link here.
After Memory Seed and Glass were published, I, like a lot of midlist authors, was dropped by Orbit. However, interest continued in my debut during the years that followed, leading me to write three short stories beginning at or set in the Spired Inn, a location I used throughout the novel.
The first was written for Keith Brooke’s Infinity Plus, then a site online for British authors in particular. Called The Green Realm Below, it told of events over a vast time scale, allowing the reader to experience the future of Kray away from Zinina and the Clocktower. The second was written for an anthology and was called Dr Vanchovy’s Final Case. This was fun to write – a detective story, set almost entirely in the Spired Inn. I brought in two male characters, the titular detective and Barakystys, a youth employed by Dhow-lin. The third story was called Granny, and detailed the harsh life-or-death rituals and customs of the Cemetery revellers, not least Granny herself.
These three stories received little coverage, and after the third one I moved on to other projects. Fast forward to 2018 and I received an email from my friend Ian Whates at Newcon Press. We had for some years discussed an anthology of my stories, but never managed to make it happen, so Ian suggested we extract the three Krayan tales from what we already had and that I write two new stories to make a new work. I was absolutely thrilled to receive this request, not least because it gave me a bona fide excuse to make a final return to Kray. In addition, the work was guaranteed publication with Newcon, making it an attractive proposition for me.
Writing Funeral For A Pyuter and First Temple (which featured the return of Barakystys) was a delight. I was amazed how easy it was for me to immerse myself once again in Kray. I think that city and the scenario as a whole must represent me in some deep way, because I’d forgotten none of it and felt all the old fascinations. Ian’s offer also allowed me to write a piece set in the Galactic Quarter, which I had not properly visited in the original novel.
The new cover for the 25th anniversary edition of Memory Seed echoes the Art Nouveau-styled cover I designed for Tales From The Spired Inn. The two books are definitely of a piece.
All in all, writing the Newcon anthology was a wonderful experience for a lucky author.
