cover ruinBeen a ridiculously long time since the last post, but I have had 2 rounds of edits on both Children of Ruin (May 2019) and Cage of Souls (April 2019)  and frankly am probably about to get slapped with the same for Walking to Aldabaraan (Also May?) — thankfully I have Civilian Reader about to actually tell people what's going on, so please do check out their post here. I am a terrible self-publicist. It's what they should put on my grave, although right at the bottom in tiny print.

cover soulsHaving got the proofs of Ruin and Souls both off, the next time I should see them is when I get my author copies through, so that's a grand relief. I am reasonably cheered by the fact that I did still enjoy reading through them for proof corrections, which isn't always the case once you've had to go through a text that many times. Ruin is of course the sequel to Children of Time and, if you're here, hopefully that needs no more introduction. Cage of Souls is a standalone far-future post-tech piece, about the last city of humans living with a dying Earth and a dying sun, caught between the forces of nature run mad, and a society that is busy tearing itself apart when it isn't throwing all its energy into ridiculous distractions. So, you know, complete fantasy then. cover aldabaraanWalking to Aldabaraan is a new novella from the same house that brought you Ironclads. This one is about Gary Rendell, astronaut, part of a multinational mission to an inexplicable alien object found out around the orbit of Pluto, who ends up cut off from his fellows in the endless twisty workings of the place, trying to find his way back to anywhere he knows. It's something I really had fun writing, unregenerate sadist that I apparently am. No astronauts were harmed in the making of this book.

ironcladsFinally, let's impose an obligation on myself to get the next blog post out in a more timely fashion. Speaking of Ironclads it occurred to me that I never did a spurious casting call (you know, for the film nobody's making), so please message me or post below with your suggestions for the characters therein, specifically the three US servicemen, Regan, Sturgeon and Franken, drone specialist Cormoran, UK infiltrator Lawes, Finnish special forces monster Viina, and maybe some secondary characters like Jerome Speling, Overste Rurisksdottir and Genaddy Osipov. I'll try to get the actual final casting up in the first week of December or thereabouts.