Just published: Syren

The third of my fantasy detective ebooks has just rolled off the virtual production line. Like The Wooden Baby and Dead Wolf in a Hat before it, Syren is that most handy of things – a novelette. It’s the perfect length for the writer (so much quicker to produce than those pesky novels) and just as convenient for the reader who needs something to read on the train, or in the park, or in the bath (just don’t drop your ereader in the water or you’ll die a horrible death … wait, do those things run on mains electricity or not?)

Talking of electricity, in this latest story, my wise-cracking gumshoe comes up the business tycoon who runs String City’s power plants. You don’t want to know what he uses for fuel. There’s also a beautiful woman who happens to be half-bird. When she sings, for the sake of your everlasting soul you’d better hope you’ve got your earplugs in. It’s a tricky case, mostly because it hinges on that most mysterious of things.

Love.

Syren is published by 40k Books.

• Download Syren for Kindle
• Download Syren for Apple devices

 

Revisiting Cinefex (13): Return of the Jedi

I reckon the front cover of Cinefex issue #13 must have shot off the press like a rocket, featuring as it does a dynamic still of the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy (AKA that most famous of pirate ships, the Millennium Falcon) speeding through the innards of the second Death Star. Open the cover and there’s a rather more sedate black and white shot of Jedi master Yoda, looking as inscrutable as ever. As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, this issue’s 72 pages are devoted entirely to the closing chapter of George Lucas’s Star Wars saga: Return of the Jedi.

• Jedi Journal (edited by Don Shay)

When I first set out on this retrospective odyssey through my back-issues of Cinefex, I remarked on the journal’s clutter-free format: no editorial, no advertising (not in the early days at least), just the facts, ma’am. It’s a simple concept, and a versatile one too. In the issues I’ve reviewed so far there’s been a creditable mix of articles ranging from coverage of then-current blockbusters, to retrospectives on prominent practitioners, to reports on the growing impact of computer technology on Hollywood. The single extensive article in issue #13 rings the changes yet again in that, although edited by publisher Don Shay, it hands over the actual writing reins to the VFX artists themselves.

 

Take a Tour of String City

All I wanted to do was write a light-hearted detective story in the hard-boiled tradition, with a little squeeze of fantasy just to juice things up. What I never planned to do was invent a whole other world.

It happened like this. After a delightful weekend reading Dashiell Hammett stories, I got the urge to pull up my collar and go sleuthing myself. The result was a story called The Wooden Baby, in which a down-at-heel private investigator takes on a curious case involving a fairy changeling.

The Wooden Baby was my attempt at mashing together the two genres of crime and fantasy into a squirming hybrid. I also wanted to find a way to distil the classic gumshoe archetype down to his essence. This interest in the archetype, by the way, is one of the reasons I haven’t yet told you the fellow’s name. I certainly never intended for that one story to develop into a series. But, shortly after I’d written The Wooden Baby, something peculiar happened … read the rest of this article on the 40kBooks blog.

 

Now available: Dead Wolf in a Hat

The second instalment of my fantasy detective series The String City Mysteries is published today. It’s called Dead Wolf in a Hat, and once again it features that down-at-heel gumshoe who can twist dimensions round his little finger. If you’ve read The Wooden Baby, you’ll already be familiar with his antics. If not, this is the perfect time to catch up.

In this latest novelette, my paranormal private investigator gets tangled up with a rain-soaked femme fatale keen to cloud his judgement, not to mention a bunch of angry Titans who just want their casino to turn a profit. Trouble is, it’s not just blackjack they’re playing. As for the werewolf in the hat … even he’s not everything he seems.

• Download Dead Wolf in a Hat for iTunes
• Download Dead Wolf in a Hat for Kindle

 

50 Words For Snow

You may be wondering why a fantasy author is posting a review of a Kate Bush album. The reason’s simple: I happen to believe that, as well as being an enduring and popular singer/songwriter, Kate is also – you guessed it – a fantasy author. Sounds crazy? Let me explain.

Kate Bush sprang to the attention of both the public and yours truly with her first single, Wuthering Heights, in 1978. In many ways, this iconic song defined Kate’s manifesto: personal, experimental, haunting, literary. She’s been all these things consistently throughout her career. But the one thing she remains above all else is a storyteller.

Wuthering Heights tells the story of a ghost roaming the Yorkshire Moors in search of her lost love. It’s Emily Bronte’s tale rather than Kate’s own, but it’s a tale nonetheless. There are echoes of it conceptually in several of Kate’s later songs, including Watching You Without Me (Hounds of Love) and, from this new album, Lake Tahoe, in which the ghost of a Victorian woman emerges from the water to seek her pet dog.

Okay, so Kate can do gothic and ghostly. That alone doesn’t make her a fantasy author, but we don’t have to look too much deeper to find the rest of the proof we need.

 

What I’ve been up to in 2011

It’s time for a round-up of my writing year … plus a quick look forward to what I’ve got cooking for 2012. I may as well kick off with dragons, since it’s almost twelve months to the day since I started work on a novel called The Dragons of Bloodrock, a prequel to my earlier Dragoncharm books. I blogged regularly about my writing process as I went along, starting with this first post announcing the project in January (when it still had the working title The Spiral Skull). Nine months, many blog posts and 105,000 manuscript words later I posted this to tell you I’d finished. Certain parties have shown interest in the manuscript but, as yet, there’s no offer on the table. As soon as I’ve got further news on the fate of project, you’ll be the first to know.

After wrapping the dragons, I found myself circling back to an idea I’ve had knocking around for years: a fantasy/horror novel called The House on Memory Street. I revealed a little about it in this blog post from October, and made a decent start on the manuscript.

 

Alien, Prometheus and Santa Claus

I have an obsessive streak. When I like something, I really like it. That includes things like medium-rare steak and those songs I just have to listen to over and over again (perhaps by Kate Bush or the Electric Light Orchestra or Elbow or any number of tracks from popular film scores) but mostly I’m talking about books and films. In the case of the latter, the obsession that runs deepest is probably that classic science fiction horror movie from 1979 – Ridley Scott’s seminal Alien.

Alien is on my mind right now because I’ve recently seen the trailer for Prometheus, which is being touted as the prequel to what I usually cite as my favourite movie of all time. Prometheus is looking pretty exciting – not least because Ridley’s back at the helm. And yes, I’ll be the first to admit I’m an easy mark. I’m as susceptible as the next man to such fan-pleasing teaser shots as the Space Jockey rising out of the floor of the alien derelict, and the derelict itself appearing to topple from an unexpectedly upright position into the prone state we all recognise from the original movie. At the same time, I know there’s no guarantee the movie itself – by which I really mean the story – will be any good.

 

Happy Christmas!

 

The Wooden Baby

Dang, but things move fast these days. No sooner do I update the blog to trail The Wooden Baby than I have to write another post to announce its publication. With that in mind, I’ll keep this short and simply direct you to the page that tells you all about my new ebook, a short story available now at a bargain price from the gorgeous 40k Books. If you want to skip the info and just buy the damn thing, here are some links:

• Buy The Wooden Baby for Kindle
• Buy The Wooden Baby for iPad/iPod/iPhone

 

More on The String City Mysteries

No sooner have I finished revamping the blog than this image pops up on the Twitter feed of 40k Books. It’s the finished front cover artwork for The Wooden Baby, the first in a series of weird detective stories due to be published as ebooks throughout 2012.

Just to remind you, the series is called The String City Mysteries. It’s a collection of novelettes about a private detective rooted firmly in the hard-boiled noir tradition. The difference is, our hero is plying his trade in a peculiar city where all the dimensions are kind of crushed together and almost anything can – and frequently does – happen. If you like weird detectives, he’s your man.

In honour of the forthcoming launch of The String City Mysteries, I’ve devoted a whole section to it on this blog. Click here to check out the stories, or use the menu at the top of the page.