New release!

HARDWAY (I) SEA OF SOULS is now available on Kindle!

"Man was born of nature, and carries deep within him the will to survive…" 

Hardway stands on a lonely rock in the middle of raging seas. Once a prison colony, where the worst criminals were sent to live out their days, it is now a thriving city-state. The people of Hardway are survivors, and have carved out their own society in the grey waste of the ocean. This is a place of exile, a natural home for wanderers and outcasts.

One such is a blind old man, a great soldier in his youth, now condemned to live out his days on the island as a despised cripple. There are few alive who can remember General Dusek in his prime, and his own memories are fading. Another lost soul is Maximilian, an artist in thrall to the criminal gangs that run Hardway. Maximilian believes in fate, his own glorious destiny, but first he must find a way to keep body and soul together.

Yet Hardway is not totally forgotten. To the east lies the realm of the Dragon, King Vazul, whose ancestors once ruled over the vast continent of the Old Kingdom. Those days are far in the past now, and Vazul rules over a shrunken remnant of the once-mighty empire. He dreams of matching the deeds of his ancient forebears. His eyes turn east, to Hardway, a refuge for every outlaw and fugitive from his kingdom. The first step to rebuilding his empire is the conquest of Hardway.

Vazul has a rival. To the west, beyond the shores of the Girdle Sea, lies the realm of Calisse. This is a place of mystery and dark magic, founded on the blood of sacrificial victims. For centuries the witch-queens of Calisse have ruled from the Necropolis, city of tombs, and fought to extend their control over the mountains and plains. The latest Grey Queen has finally crushed her enemies, and the whole of Calisse fallen under her sway. She now turns west to face the growing threat of the Dragon.

Caught in the middle of these great powers, the people of Hardway must do what they have always done; find a way to survive. They have no army, no fleet, and no friends. Who will step forward to defend the helpless?

HARDWAY on Amazon US

...and on Amazon UK

Sea of Souls!

Hardway (I) Sea of Souls is now available on pre-order, released on 17 April. This is a departure from my usual historical fiction - it's a fantasy novella, co-written with my friend Martin Bolton. Some years ago, fuelled by beer and more beer, we created a fictional setting called The World Apparent, and to date have written three stories set in that world. More will follow, hopefully...

"Man was born of nature, and carries deep within him the will to survive…

Hardway stands on a lonely rock in the middle of raging seas. Once a prison colony, where the worst criminals were sent to live out their days, it is now a thriving city-state. The people of Hardway are survivors, and have carved out their own society in the grey waste of the ocean. This is a place of exile, a natural home for wanderers and outcasts.

One such is a blind old man, a great soldier in his youth, now condemned to live out his days on the island as a despised cripple. There are few alive who can remember General Dusek in his prime, and his own memories are fading. Another lost soul is Maximilian, an artist in thrall to the criminal gangs that run Hardway. Maximilian believes in fate, his own glorious destiny, but first he must find a way to keep body and soul together.

Yet Hardway is not totally forgotten. To the east lies the realm of the Dragon, King Vazul, whose ancestors once ruled over the vast continent of the Old Kingdom. Those days are far in the past now, and Vazul rules over a shrunken remnant of the once-mighty empire. He dreams of matching the deeds of his ancient forebears. His eyes turn east, to Hardway, a refuge for every outlaw and fugitive from his kingdom. The first step to rebuilding his empire is the conquest of Hardway.

Vazul has a rival. To the west, beyond the shores of the Girdle Sea, lies the realm of Calisse. This is a place of mystery and dark magic, founded on the blood of sacrificial victims. For centuries the witch-queens of Calisse have ruled from the Necropolis, city of tombs, and fought to extend their control over the mountains and plains. The latest Grey Queen has finally crushed her enemies, and the whole of Calisse fallen under her sway. She now turns west to face the growing threat of the Dragon.

Caught in the middle of these great powers, the people of Hardway must do what they have always done; find a way to survive. They have no army, no fleet, and no friends. Who will step forward to defend the helpless?"

Pre-order Hardway on Amazon US

...and Amazon UK!

 

The World Apparent, Part One...

Following the release of The Path of Sorrow, the second full-length novel in our fantasy series co-written with Martin Bolton, I want to post a series of articles about the universe we have created, and the characters that populate it.

World-building is a fascinating process, as well as a challenge: unlike historical fiction, where everything is set up and ready to go, you have to create the backdrop before writing the story. To that end we spent many evenings - usually in various central London pubs - ranting at each other about the geography of our fantasy planet, the names of the countries, oceans and cities etc, and whose turn it was to stagger to the bar.

Thus The World Apparent was born on a series of damp beermats and notepads, first as a barely decipherable squiggle (drawing is not my strong point) and then as something rather more impressive and easy on the eye, courtesy of Martin Bolton, who is a talented artist as well as an insufferable clown. Below is the world map we eventually agreed on.

To avoid arguments spilling over into bloodshed, we decided to carve up the world between us: I chose the northern half of the map, developing the history and layout of the Winter Realm and the Old Kingdom, while Martin took the lands south of the Girdle Sea. Temeria, the big continent to the west, was more or less a blank space until we fleshed it out for The Path of Sorrow. Other parts of the map will be explored as and when we invent them.

I had great fun shaping The Winter Realm, the teardrop-shaped northern island at the top of the map. Since this was fantasy, I was able to slap together lots of different elements to create a land of snow and ice, ringed on all sides by impassable mountains, and with only one entrance/exit. This is the Iron Gate, an enormous man-made barrier on the southern tip of the island, raised and lowered by a complex mechanism of chains and winches. The sentries on the rampart have absolute control over who can sail in or out, making the Iron Gate the most important fortress on the island. 

The Winter Realm is populated by the descendants of refugees from The Old Kingdom, the continent immediately to the south, who fled when that ancient realm was devastated by civil war and a series of earthquakes. Harsh conditions - the land is covered by snow for all but three months of the year - mean that the population remains low, no more than half a million souls thinly spread over the rocky, inhospitable plains and mountains. 

Cardinal Flambard, by Zennor Matthews

The culture of the Winter Realm is (naturally) medieval, vaguely 11th-12th century Western Europe, and with few refinements. There is only one real city, founded by the first refugees on one of the few patches of fertile land, and home to a few thousand people. The city is named Hope, and from here the Winter Realm is ruled by a series of kings who claim direct descent from the leader of the refugees. By the time of The Best Weapon, the last king has died, leaving only an infant daughter to succeed him. Until she comes of age, the land is governed by a regent, Cardinal Flambard. Flambard is a grotesque, corrupt, cynical, hugely intelligent and politically able man, a mixture of Baron Vladmir Harkoonen (from the Dune series by Frank Herbert) Cardinal Wolsey, Narses and various other svengali figures culled from fantasy, history and my imagination. 

The rest of the Winter Realm is bare and desolate. Much of it is howling wasteland, with lots of scattered baronies and strongholds. One of the larger of the ugly stone bastions dotted about the land is Clifford's Mount, an imposing pile of grey rock on a mound, known as Evil Hold by the local peasants due to the brutal nature of the lords who reside there. 

Fulk, by Zennor Matthews

The only major settlement in the western part of the island is Mount Silverback. This enormous spire of rock rises from the windswept flatlands that surround it, like a great finger pointing at the sky, and is home to the Temple of Occido. Occido is the War God, the most bellicose of the pantheon of gods that dwell in the Celestial Sphere. His worshippers on the mountain are a reclusive cadre of Templar Knights, the best fighters in the Winter Realm - possibly in the whole world - and semi-independent from the Kings at Hope. 

One of the two main characters of The Best Weapon, Fulk the No-Man's Son, begins the story as a young recruit at the Temple. Orphaned while still a baby (hence his name) he was adopted by the Templars and raised amid the strict martial temple-fortress of Mount Silverback. Fulk, however, is destined to become much more than just another priest-knight of Occido...

More on the Winter Realm, and The World Apparent in general, to follow!

Q&A

Today I'm hosting an interview with Martin Bolton, co-author of our epic fantasy novel, The Best Weapon, which is released today. 

I gave Martin a series of questions to answers on one of the characters he invented for the novel, Husan al Din, the fearsome Caliph of the Fifth Army of the Seven Sands. Below the interview is a link to my answers to Martin's interview questions.

Husan enjoys beating underlings with a belt, smoking, eating and planning his next conquest. Find out more about the rotund desert lion below!

Husan, or someone like him...

1) What was your inspiration for the character of Husan al Din, Caliph of the Fifth Army of the Seven Sands?

I wanted Husan to be a reluctant hero. He would rather be left alone to smoke and drink and live an easy, debauched life. He'll do enough to keep his army content and The Southern Sands a peaceful, uneventful place, and he'd rather not be interrupted by any life-threatening or arduous endeavours. Unfortunately for him, he is not given that choice.

He's not a bad person per se, but he would rather do nothing at all than go out of his way to do a good deed. Most of what he does he is either given no choice, or he sees some gain in it for himself.

I think humour is important in fantasy, even dark fantasy, as it balances out the inevitable scenes of death and destruction. My intention was that Husan provided a bit of that as he was forced from his hammock and made to raise an army against his will, despite his terrible constipation.

2) How much of your own personality is reflected in his character?

The desire for a quiet life and the love of boozing and smoking, not to mention his stomach troubles and persistent flatulence, all come from me – these are my best points.

3) Husan has a very blunt way of dealing with subordinates - usually with the aid of a belt. Do you envy him his ability to do this?

In a manner of speaking. That's to say that a certain amount of my own pent up rage is exorcised by Husan giving someone a good whipping with the buckle-end. Have some of that, you mangy dog!

4) Will we be seeing more of Husan in future instalments of The World Apparent Tales?

We will meet Husan again, I enjoy disturbing his much needed rest far too much to let him sit in his palace and get fatter and drunker. Like many of the characters in The Best Weapon, Husan al Din's story is not yet finished. 

Not only that but I spent too much time dreaming up his people, the Sharib, and their glorious but distant past, to leave it there. Husan's true destiny awaits him, and if he knew about it, he'd be bloody annoyed.

5) How did The World Apparent develop?

The World Apparent developed during a beer-soaked ranting session with David Pilling in a pub in St James' Park in London. This culminated in his scruffy drawing of a map on the back of a beer mat with a pen borrowed from a kindly barmaid who looked at us with a mixture of pity and revulsion. I took that beer mat home and drew a neater version. I've drawn it about twenty times since then.

The main characteristic of that early scribble was The Girdle Sea, an idea of Pilling's that split the world roughly in two. We then built the world around it.

6) How do you see the series developing in general - do you think there is scope for exploring new characters and story lines in the same world?

The World Apparent is a vast world and we have only explored a small part of it so far. There are many more races and cultures to discover yet, and more diverse and varied characters than you can shake a stick at.

The Best Weapon is just the beginning of a chain of events, spanning a further two books, that will bring The World Apparent to the brink of annihilation. And that is just one of the many stories yet to be told.

We are also working on a separate story with a whole new host of heroes and villains, and some characters who don't fall into either category. There are many more World Apparent Tales to come.

7) Do you feel it is important for writers to try and progress with each book?

Personally, I would like to think each time I write a book or short story, my writing improves.  Not only that but hopefully I grow and learn as a person and get to know myself better, and thereby try to become a better person.

8) What are your writing plans for the immediate future?

I am currently working on another World Apparent Tale (with Pilling), which is about half way to completion (or maybe a third) and I will be concentrating on getting that finished in 2015. Although we've written a fair chunk it, the actual title of the thing is still in the beer-soaked ranting stage. Where's that barmaid when you need her?

I also write a short story every month for The 900 Club: a group of four writers (including Pilling's dad) who each post a 900 word short story on the 900 Club blog on a monthly basis. 

Those two things take up most of my time, but at some point I will write a more substantial piece of work of my own.

Link to my interview on Martin's blog

Goodreads giveaway

I haven't done one of these Goodreads giveaways in a while, so I clubbed together with my friend and co-author Martin to set up a giveaway competition for three free paperback copies of THE BEST WEAPON, currently on pre-order and due for release on February 19th.

If interested, just click the 'Enter to Win' button on the page below, and a free copy could soon be winging (or posting) its way to you after the competition closes on the 19th!

Giveaway link on Goodreads

The Best Weapon

A few years ago I co-wrote a novel with my good friend (and then work colleague) Martin Bolton. In a change of gear from my usual historical meanderings, it was a fantasy tale roughly in the traditional style of Tolkien/George RR Martin etc, but with a few twists. It was called THE BEST WEAPON and published by Musa Publishing, garnering a few nice reviews and spawning a series of mini-sequels.

Our contract with Musa has now expired, so we are re-releasing the book under our own steam via Amazon, and have plans to compile and release the sequel (provisionally titled SORROW) as a single volume. The story takes place in a made-up universe named The World Apparent, a physical dimension much like our own world, but one that may or may not exist entirely inside the heads of gods and demons. Below is a map of the world as Martin, a skilled artist, recently drew it.

The Best Weapon focuses on the trials of two young men, Fulk the No Man's Son, and Naiyar, a teenager raised in the steamy jungles of the distant Southlands. While the world threatens to collapse around them, they are drawn together by forces beyond their control or understanding...

THE BEST WEAPON is now available in paperback and for pre-order on Kindle, with a release date for the latter of 19th February. Below is the link, with the shiny new book cover, to the Kindle edition on Amazon, along with some reviews of the previous edition kept for reference.

The Best Weapon - Pre-Order on Amazon.com