Well it's been something of a long time between posts, but my excuse is that I've been writing, which is obviously the point of the thing. Specifically I've been hacking bits of book 7 into shape, so there.

I meant to post before this, if only to extoll the virtues of Thought Bubble, the comics convention held recently in Leeds, at which I had a fine old time, including gatecrashing (1) the grand party, which led by twists and turns to my sharing a drink with Liam Sharp, author of God Killers and artist on Gears of War, and Brian Talbot, author/artist of a number of phenomenal works including The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and Alice in Sunderland, but most recently his tour de force Grandville, which is done no real justice by the simplistic description of an alternate history steampunk detective thriller peopled by anthropomorphic animals. I cannot recommend Grandville too highly, both for the forcefully driving plot and the undercurrent of very sly humour. Check out the preview video here.

Recent time has also been spent wrangling over the title for book 5 (August 2010), the manuscript of which is currently with the esteemed Mr Lavery, master-editor. The working title was Sacred Servants but I, Simon of Mic Cheetham, Julie of Pan and various others went through about a hundred different possibilities for something with a little more mystique and punch. The final result, which I'm particularly happy with, is The Scarab Path and we have a gorgeous Jon Sullivan cover to go with it, which I will hopefully be able to preview shortly in its own entry.

Now, on to business:

A number of people have commented that they could do with more of a cast list within the books. The brief glossaries at the start of books 2 onwards are only really intended to list the major characters from previous books that appear in that one, and we decided against full cast lists including characters that the reader, when opening the pages, wouldn't have met, as this might well give various games away.

However, obedient to the whims of my readership, I have put together a full dramatis personae for this site, which seems an ideal place for it. It can be found here. Beware though — in anticipation of February, It is complete to the end of Salute the Dark. In actual fact there are relatively few new introductions, and the spoiler level is limited, but you have been warned.

(1) In the sense of scrounging an unearned invitation to