Category Archives: News

What’s going on, book schedules, that kind of thing.

The new V8… And Other Silliness

So… I got up this morning and checked my mail, and discovered that DAZ had released V8 and that it going for free just for today. Given I’d just converted Cygnus over to G3F/V7, I figured she would be best to illustrate the features of the new model. So here she is in all her glory, beside her converted version…

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Division of Labour

Okay, so most of today was lost to Tom Clancy’s The Division. It arrived around midday and I held myself back until after lunch, but I was playing it pretty much non-stop (aside from a break for dinner and Lucifer) until midnight when my controller batteries died on me in the middle of a firefight. At least I now know how long the batteries last…

I figured tomorrow was going to be lost to it, but no. Tomorrow I need to get back into the right rhythm, which means writing until at least mid-afternoon (when I usually start noticeably slowing down and have trouble maintaining concentration: yes, just like a day job). Already The Collective has fallen to not being able to figure out how to get the protagonists where they need to be, so I’ve moved on. Frostburn, the next Ultrahumans book, has been more or less plotted out and started. Looks like there’ll be two Ultrahumans books in a row. Oh, and book 3 now has a name: Hunting Mink.

So… Do I like my new game? Well, obviously, though it’s not a real certainty until it keeps me entertained for several months. However, it also has the most ludicrous concept of any game I’ve ever played (with the possible exception of the Riddler’s parts in the Batman: Arkham… series). It sounds clever and kind of realistic, but it’s totally comic book. There’s an apparently airborne virus which is spread through infected bank notes… Um… We have a vast army of ‘sleeper agents’ embedded in the populace who are basically special ops soldiers living as normal people and no one has noticed. Real special ops soldiers train constantly. No one has noticed that the girl who works in the coffee shop down the road shoots 2000 rounds a day at the firing range and runs 10 miles before going to work? Mind you, it is set in New York, so… maybe.

Anyway, tomorrow, back to superheroes who aren’t trying to be normal…

In case you’re wondering, I don’t have super-willpower…

Criminal Minds Are Everywhere

Well, they’re on Amazon and Smashwords. Criminal Minds, the 4th Fox Meridian book has now been released.

book4-cover1-amazon.jpg

You can find it:

(Very slow from Amazon this time. Links above, but some regions may not be live yet.)

Elsa, Where Are You?

Let it Sn(G)o(w)! (My little niece is really into Frozen. Truth be told, I rather like it to.)

Anyway, here in Manchester, UK, it’s snowing. Big, thick, sticky flakes have been falling all morning and show no sign of stopping. We’re not that high up here and it’s a little too warm and wet for anything to build up. We are not talking winter wonderland here. But we’ve got snow. Real, proper, wintery snow, in March. Not very British.

It’s a perfect day to go through proofs of a novel! Okay, so it’s never a perfect day to go through proofs, but I have no desire to go outside so… Criminal Minds is back from Kate, my wonderful proofreader, and I’m working through the edits. It takes a while. Never let it be said that writing is all fun and inspiration. Also, sometime in the next day or two I need to come up with a cover and I have no ideas for that right now. However, expect to be seeing Criminal Minds at Amazon and Smashwords before the weekend is out.

I’ve booked the next Ultrahumans book (still no name…) for proofreading in mid-April, so that is going to be the next book out after Criminal Minds. This will deal with the aftermath of the demise of the Tonaldo crime-family, finally reveal what’s going on with that mysterious find in the Southern Ocean, and take us to San Francisco.

And then… Well, next Wednesday is probably going to be a break day as I spend most of it running around a disease-ravaged New York (I’ve got Tom Clancy’s The Division coming on Tuesday, but Amazon never seem to deliver games to me in a timely manner, so Wednesday…). I’ve started writing something called The Collective, but I’m saying nothing more about that one right now because I’m not entirely convinced about it. On March 18th, Daredevil season 2 is out, and on the 28th I’ve got tickets to see Batman vs. Superman in glorious IMAX 3D (never done IMAX 3D before, which is why I’m bothering with the gimmick). This kind of sudden influx of superhero imagery could easily result in me throwing my hands up and leaping into Ultrahumans 4 which is called Frostburn (you note I know that, but I still haven’t figured out a title for book 3…). I know what’s in it, so it’s just a matter of writing it down and I’ll probably be in the mood… We’ll see.

What I’m Working On… or Not

I’ve updated the What I’m Working On page.

This now reflects my state of mind through most of January, which was not exactly conducive to great writing. (I’d argue that it never is, but I’m self-deprecating.)

Basically, I started several projects and could not quite seem to get my act together. Binge watching season 1 of Gotham got me hooked on writing a new Ultrahumans book, and that seems to be working. I’m hoping that January was my typical fall into Winter depression and it’s all uphill from here. At least until next year.

When I Say Soon…

Enjoy!

Coming soon: Hunter’s Kiss

book1-cover2-amazon

Above is the cover for my new novel, Hunter’s Kiss, which is going to be out real soon now ™. I’m working on the final edits now.

This is a new world, with vampires, but don’t expect teenage angst and forbidden romance, or particularly normal vampires: this is me after all. Hunter’s Kiss is little more police procedural than YA fantasy as young detective Mike Williams finds himself part of the NYPD’s special unit charged with enforcing vampire law in New York, and making sure the general populace remains blissfully unaware that vampires really exist. Oh, and his partner is one of the oldest vampires still un-alive.

DeathWeb Is Out There

Amazon decided to be faster about this than I thought…

Enjoy!

DeathWeb Cover Reveal

Yes, it’s time for that new book to show it’s colours. Lots of colours in this one too.

deathweb-cover2-amazon

And there you have it. Some of you may be able to recognise Fox’s VT avatar trapped in the web. The concept is sort of taken from the murder rooms Kit builds for Fox, twisted into a web-like trap. Hope it works.

Six hours of rendering, and more than the usual time creating the set since each of the ‘strands’ had to be created and positioned and then tweaked so it didn’t look like they were running through Fox’s head. About 12 hours work, probably, though I admit to sleeping through a lot of the rendering process.

I know, you’re thinking “oh, he said it wouldn’t be out until after Christmas and here he is taunting us with cover art.” Well, it’s coming out early. The manuscript is ready, I have a cover, I need to come up with the blurb and do the file preparations… I’m not going to tell you exactly when it’s coming out, but it’s “in the next few days.” (Honestly? My ability to sleep when normal people do seems to have broken and if I said I’d have it ready tomorrow I’d probably nod off and discover it was Sunday. So “next few days” is the best promise I can make.)

Of course, you don’t have to buy it until after Christmas if you’d prefer to wait until I said it would be out…

No Escape from Fox

iFox

Fox Meridian is back in Inescapable. Can she cope with a new job and a rather unusual serial killer?