August 2018 Update

I haven’t posted much here for a while but I think it’s time to let everyone know what’s happening right now with regards to my new projects.

The Druid, book 1 in my forthcoming brand new series set in 5th century Britain, is finished and with my agent. Unfortunately for us, historical fiction of this sort isn’t particularly fashionable right now but we are still hopeful a publisher will like it and decide to put it out. I have to say I’m really excited about it, I think it’s a good story and an exciting way to follow The Forest Lord tales. I even commisioned a professional artist to draw some of the characters from the novel and I can’t wait to start showing them off – they look amazing and will be useful for Facebook ads, flyers, signed postcards, posters and so on. I really want to take things up a level with these warrior-druid tales, in every way!

Below is one of the songs from The Druid, although, unlike me in the recording, they didn’t play Gibson SG electric guitars much in those days….

Book 2 in that series, Song of the Centurion, is a third finished. I’ve put it aside for now until we know what’s happening with the first book but this is just the beginning. The main character, Bellicus, is so much fun to write about that I think I can get quite a few novels out of him.

In the meantime, I’ve been writing my Roman slave novel which is a standalone tale set in 2nd-century Britain. It’s a very different book to anything I’ve written before but I’ve been enjoying it so much I’ve completed 73,000 words (about 3/4 of the planned first draft total) in just about 6 months! I have no idea if it will appeal to my regular readers, or a completely different group of people, or no-one at all, but I HAD to write it. I’d been chatting on Facebook one Sunday to another author friend of mine and he mentioned his publisher wanted a standalone novel from him, outwith the series they’d been doing already. We talked a little about that and it was really something I’d never thought about until that moment.

Anyway, I was at my day-job the next morning, wandering about the streets of Glasgow, when, in a flash, the idea for a standalone novel about a slave in Roman Britain came to me, almost fully formed. It was amazing, as if something (my muse?) had zapped the lot into my head without me having to do anything! I ran back to my car and jotted it all down in my notepad then, from there, more ideas came to me and when I started to research background details, settings etc, things really fell into place.

Like I say, it’s been easy and fast to write, but will take a little more editing than I usually do, just to make sure it all works and is interesting enough to hold a reader’s attention. But I’m really proud of it – I don’t think there’s anything else like it out there!

So that’s where I am in August 2018 – one new novel completed and seeking a major publisher, the next a third done, and another 3/4 done. I don’t know when any of them will be available to buy, but I am NOT standing still just waiting on a publisher to take a chance. They will or they won’t, but I’m working harder than ever while the ideas are still coming and I hope you’ll be patient and stick with me until these stories are all out there one way or another.

Keep the reviews coming on Amazon/Goodreads/Audible etc for Wolf’s Head and the rest of the Forest Lord stories please, and join my mailing list using the link at the top of this page to keep up to date with news and get a free short story too!

Cheers!

Steven