At the end of this month I will indeed be at Fantasycon in Peterborough, doing the following hijinks:

Friday 7.30 Writing fighting panel

Friday 8.30 Dungeons and Disorderly (er… some kind of crowd-run D&D tomfoolery run by that rogue Dave Moore from Rebellion and I have no idea)

Saturday 12.30 Worldbuilding panel

Saturday 7.30 The New Epics panel

Saturday 10pm reading slot! Yes, this is a bit of a late one, but for anyone (1) at the con (2) still awake (3) able to wrest themselves from the bar/disco/gutter I will be reading a piece from Dogs of War, the SF novel coming out in November. It's a good bit, I promise. I will be acting the part of an  800lb cyborg dog's internal monologue. Expect lots of Churchill-style "Oh yuss"

In November, after a bit of a break, I am then Guest of Honour-ing at Novacon, my first time at that convention, in Nottingham.

Now, on with the music. Dogs of War is one of three upcoming releases to delight the eyes and the mind in the next few months, and as the various people responsible for blurbs have in general blurbed them better than I, I thought I would just let you have the skinny on them:

coverironcladsIronclads (released November 2017)

Scions have no limits. Scions do not die. And Scions do not disappear. Sergeant Ted Regan has a problem. A son of one of the great corporate families, a Scion, has gone missing at the front. He should have been protected by his Ironclad — the lethal battle suits that make the Scions masters of war — but something has gone catastrophically wrong. Now Regan and his men, ill equipped and demoralised, must go behind enemy lines, find the missing Scion, and uncover how his suit failed. Is there a new Ironclad-killer out there? And how are common soldiers lacking the protection afforded the rich supposed to survive the battlefield of tomorrow?

coverdogsofwarDogs of War (released November 2017)

Rex is a Good Dog. He loves humans. He hates enemies. He's utterly obedient to Master.

He's also seven foot tall at the shoulder, bulletproof, bristling with heavy calibre weaponry and his voice resonates with subsonics especially designed to instil fear. With Dragon, Honey and Bees, he's part of a Multi-form Assault Pack operating in the lawless anarchy of Campeche, Southeastern Mexico.

Rex is a genetically engineered bioform, a deadly weapon in a dirty war. He has the intelligence to carry out his orders and feedback implants to reward him when he does. All he wants to be is a Good Dog. And to do that he must do exactly what Master says and Master says he's got to kill a lot of enemies. But who, exactly, are the enemies? What happens when Master is tried as a war criminal? What rights does the Geneva Convention grant weapons? Do Rex and his fellow bioforms even have a right to exist? And what happens when Rex slips his leash?

coverhawkhyenaThe Hyena and the Hawk (released February 2018)

(This is book 3 of Echoes of the Fall, of course, so some minor spoilers below (such as "Ah, so X obviously doesn't die in book 2") for those who for some inconceivable reason aren't slavishly up to date)

From the depths of the darkest myths, the soulless Plague People have returned. Their pale-walled camps obliterate villages, just as the terror they bring with them destroys minds. In their wake, nothing is left of the true people: not their places, not their ways. The Plague People will remake the world as though they had never been.

The heroes and leaders of the true people — Maniye, Loud Thunder, Hesprec and Asman — will each fight the Plague People in their own ways. They will seek allies, gather armies and lead the charge. But a thousand swords or ten thousand spears will not suffice to turn back this enemy. The end is at hand for everything the true people know.

 

 

*: not actually that.