Update time!

So MALICE is all done bar a quick copy edit (for the uninitiated, that's when someone who knows everything there is to know about English grammar points out all the mistakes I've made because I barely know what a verb is... thanks for that, British educational system!) MALICE will be followed by HAVOC, the next in the series. It will be Young Adult for those who are wondering, and it will scare you to bits. Coming Feb '09, HAVOC slated for Feb 2010.

Meantime, I'm writing away on the first of the new Gollancz adult books, which hasn't yet found a title even though I'm nearly a quarter way through it. It's rocking fun to write though, which is a good sign! It's the first of a sequence of standalones: that is, books that can be read out of sequence (though it's better if you read them in order) starring the same characters and world. Think the Dresden Files, the Sharpe series, or anything by Ian Rankin if you don't know what I mean.

I'll reveal more details as we get closer to the time, but suffice to say it will be SF-but-not-SF, fantasy-but-not-fantasy, and you will get to soak it up with your greedy little eyes in April/May 09, with the second in the sequence coming same time 2010 (roughly).

I'm moving back to London in a couple of weeks. Having funned myself to near-death in Madrid, I decided that my bank account had been having it easy for far too long and it was time to return to the city of astronomical rent and appalling transport charges. But for all that, I kinda missed the place in the end! Good or bad, there's nowhere quite like it...

One more plug for the forum... Hopefully I can perma-link to it next time the site gets updated.

Hey all,

Good news/bad news time. So the bad news is that MALICE has been pushed back to Feb 2009 due to recently introduced bookshop regulations and various other factors. That means there'll now be no new books from me released in 2008. Ack.

Good news is that I'm in talks with Gollancz to do a new SF/fantasy book for them, which is slated tentatively for Spring 2009, meaning that after that long, wintry and bleak 2008 you'll get TWO new books coming out within a few months of each other, one YA and one adult. Yay!

I'm currently buried in a movie but I plan to get started on the Gollancz title in the New Year, after which I will have to go straight on to writing HAVOC to hit the deadline for the end of December 2008. And somehow I'll still manage to fit in a bunch of scripts in there. Fear not: I am a writing machine.

Site has been updated to include The Fade by my lovely webmonster, as you'll notice.

Right, I'm off back to England for Christmas now, if I can tear myself away from Mass Effect long enough to get on the plane. Have a good one, everybody!

This must be a record...

Right, okay. the big news is THE FADE is published this Friday in the UK. The Guardian has already reviewed it, calling it "nothing short of brilliant." Cool. Anyway, everyone outside of the UK, no need to wait for it to be published in your own respective countries, for a mere few dollars/yen/groats/sestertii/shiny pebbles you can have it posted to your door from Lovereading.co.uk or Amazon.co.uk or one of a bazillion others.

MALICE is still being tweaked here and there but my editors are very happy with it and so am I. That's coming October 2008. I'm busy working on all the preliminary planning for the sequel, HAVOC, slated for Oct 2009 (aieee, that's so far away). And in the meantime I'm doing about twenty other projects that may or may not ever see the surface, you know how it goes by now. Various other things grind towards completion at a geological pace, including the graphic novel PANDEMONIUM - as to what's happening with that, your guess is as good as mine right now.

BROKEN SKY ACT 1: THE TWILIGHT WAR is in the shops now in the UK. ACT 2: COMMUNION comes in January and ACT 3: THE CITADEL in April.

Ok, for those of you who think that my long absence on this site is because I'm now a flyblown corpse lying by the side of a desolate highway in Texas with bits of rib sticking out and vultures eating my face (just, say, for example)... I'm not! I have been posting around on The Crooked Lanes, however, which is doing very nicely now. If you haven't checked it out yet, go do so! You'll find it at http://orokos.proboards55.com/index.cgi

K, what's new? Well, THE FADE is done and has a very, very pretty cover with some incredible artwork. It's coming out in October. Can't wait for that one... it was a long and veeeeery difficult journey but I love that story...

The BROKEN SKY re-release begins in August with Act 1: THE TWILIGHT WAR, and the other two following with gaps of a few months in between. They needed new subtitles because it was generally felt that BROKEN SKY ACT 1 wasn't snappy enough, but just so we're clear, they aren't new episodes of BSky, but lovely repackaged together-at-last versions of the series that ran from 1999-2001.

I'm done on BEHIND YOU for the moment, and have very nearly finished the first draft of MALICE, about which I am very excited. It's been great fun to write so far, and there's lots more to come...

And that's pretty much it for now. After I'm done on MALICE I'll have a think about what's next, but for now I'm just happy to be working on only one project as opposed to three simultaneously.

Later!

Sooo, what's up? Ok, well I'll tell you. The forum mentioned in the post below is now thriving nicely, so if you haven't joined already, go do it!

In other news, well, I'm waiting for THE FADE to come back for one last edit before it goes to the copy-editors who will point out all my bad grammar for me and then beat me with a stick. I'm caning along through MALICE which is lots of fun and am enjoying it immensely. I delivered the first draft of BEHIND YOU and am rolling up my sleeves for the second attack after a quick round of note-giving and discussion and all that jazz. And am squirrelling away on my customary hoard of secret film/TV projects, you know the drill by now!

So really, despite the long wait between posts, there ain't a lot to tell ya! I've been working a lot on the aforementioned projects and trying to squeeze other stuff in when I can. It's a dry news day, folks.

Anyhow, happy St Patrick's Day! *heads off to hunt leprechauns*

Let me spin thee a tale. A tale of a group of fierce web-warriors with names like Anna and Vik who, long ago, ran a small forum dedicated to BROKEN SKY. Yea, long did it survive against mighty odds, in the wintry cold of cyberspace, but eventually they ran out of questions about the Dominions to which even I didn't know the answer, and what became of that forum, I know not.

Yet now a new seed hath been sown. A new generation hath gathered. There is now a place where thou mayest slag me the hell off to thy heart's content. At present, 'tis small, likely because thou can'tst find it unless thou knowest where to look. So hearken thee, and hie to The Crooked Lanes! *waves at Maliris*

((end cod-medieval accent))

Right, seriously, there's a forum over there. I have lurked and observed with Cthulu-like interest for a while now, but the time has come to try and direct a bit of traffic their way. Anything you wanna say, or if you just want to meet a bunch of people with a common interest in faintly nihilistic books about things that keep trying to eat your face, head over. I can't promise I'll be posting on it much, since I'm never on the Net (well, I am, but then I'm working, and I am IMMUNE TO TEH DISTRAKSHUNS), but I'll do what I can.

There was a time in the past when I was quite active on the net. Then lots of psychos started mailing me. So please, if you're a psycho, don't bother, ok?

In other news, I've started writing MALICE, about which I am tres excited. And I'm also writing a movie called BEHIND YOU, which is the project I hinted at last post (but now I've, like, got the job and stuff, so I can talk about it a bit). It's a horror movie, with a raaather unusual twist which I of course shan't tell you. Heheh. I also still want to do another pass over THE FADE before I'm done, but it's really getting into shape now. All this over the next six months, and that's not mentioning various other film/tv type projects that are slinking about. I'm not gonna be short of work this Spring, THAT'S for sure.

Quick release schedule update for the curious: (all UK)

2007

April - POISON reissue with shiny new cover.
June - BROKEN SKY ACT 1 (comprising 1-3 of the old editions)
Sept - BROKEN SKY ACT 2 (4-6)
Oct - THE FADE

2008

March - BROKEN SKY ACT 3 (7-9)
Sometime in 2008 - PANDEMONIUM VOL 1
Autumn - MALICE

When you put it that way it looks pretty busy, actually.

Also, STORM THIEF has been longlisted for the Carnegie Award and the Leicester Young People's Book Of The Year Award, and shortlisted for the Berkshire Book Award. I believe a w00t is in order.