It’s my last Friday in India. I’ve had an interesting eleven months, filled with enough images, experiences and smells (I’ll never forget those smells) to fill several books. However, this period between jobs was always going to be about the writing and I’m proud that in that time I’ve been able to prove to myself that I have the heart and fortitude to spend all my time writing. If nothing else, it has allowed me to get a lot of the gunk that fills up my brain down on paper and write two novels and edit another. They are:
Juvie.
A YA science fiction novel.
A town stranded in the Green, isolated, ruled by the Laws of the Governors; a community reeling from pain and tragedy, where nothing is taken for granted. Not a great place to grow up, not a great place to be a “juvie.”
Ben Hewitt is missing a brother. He has stopped taking his Inhibitors. He has found the gun. Now he is scared. With only a few days until the Anniversary, the musors are after him and sinister strangers have been seen in town. On the run, unable to trust anyone, Ben must learn the black secret hidden in the heart of Greenville’s residents if he is to survive.
Time is running out.
Stigma
The follow-up to Juvie
Life in the Enclave is hard and brutal, a life lived in squalor, the decrepit block houses cramped and unsanitary, the people slowly starving; each day is nothing less than a fight for survival. Sarah thought she understood. She is Drose, tattooed with the Stigma Servitude, her short life already mapped out and beyond her control. She is destined to finish her days either on the labour battalions or at the hands of the ‘zombie’ Stigmata Guards.
When her Grappa receives a package from the Plush black marketeer Drohodo, Sarah discovers that her life is not as simple as she first thought. Now, with only a few days left before she is made Legitimate, she must discover the truth about her peoples confinement.
What is so important inside the crumpled brown paper package that so many are willing to die for it? Who is the boy from outside the walls, who talks about Governors and life in the Green? Why are her people so despised? And what of the whispers of another city, outside the Enclave, a place where freedom exists.
Waters Deep
A YA Horror novel
Something wakes in the North Sea. Creatures from myth, best forgotten. The storm rages, and the surge bares down on the English East Coast, and in the waters the creatures follow.
Joe doesn’t like Barton, it’s small town and he’s a London boy. Lincolnshire offers him very little, and he blames his family for the disastrous move. When the storm hits, he just wants to flee like everyone else, but chance transpires against him.
The town is swamped by the incoming surge, but something worse than the icy cold sea water inhabits the hidden depths of Barton. As Joe searches for his lost father, other people are spotted in town, but if they’re not part of a rescue - who are they?
A new ongoing series of YA cryptid-horror novels
Now - the first two books are with my agent, but have not been taken up by a publisher, though he assures me there is plenty of interest. I don’t know if they will sell. Today’s market is harsh for new writers and getting anything out in print (I mean as a real paper book) was almost impossible before the upsurge of electronic publishing, now it’s akin to getting a man on the moon by paper aeroplane. If it doesn’t happen with these books, then I’ll shift attention to the new horror series and try them instead (Waters Deep is finished as a first draft, but will require another six months worth of work to be complete). If that doesn’t work then I might look at just going it alone. At least the books will then see the light of day, if only read by those who prowl the self published e-book lists.
