A brief writing update, and a look at some new art. If you're following along on social media, you'll probably be aware that I have put a pause on writing Legacy of the Gods for the time being while I work some things out. To put it simply: I burned myself out doing NaNoWriMo in 2023, writing over 30,000 words in just 30 days (yes, I fell short of the 50k goal). Then I had to re-plot the book...

Announcing the first annual Indie Orbital Science Fiction Sale! You really thought Indie August would be the last of the big group sales for the year? Well not this time. Here we have a brand new group sale dedicated to independent and self published science fiction books kicking off Sci-Fi September! This sale is being hosted by sci-fi author and graphic designer, Conrad Altmann...

Celebrate independent speculative fiction authors by buying their books in not one, but two, huge sales for an extended period of time. From Friday 23 to Tuesday 27 August you can get awesome discounts on nearly 400 SFF books.

It’s been a long old journey, but I am please to announce that The Shadow of Arcadia: The Augment Saga Book Two is out now and available to purchase in ebook from Amazon, and in paperback from all retailers. Signed paperbacks and book swag are available to UK residents from my store. It is also available to read for FREE via a Kindle Unlimited subscription.

Fresh from a live chat conversation with KDP support about the status of print pre-orders on Amazon for The Shadow of Arcadia, I thought I should update you on the situation. I know many of you were probably waiting for the print version to be available to pre-order through Amazon before ordering, but it is with great regret and profound disappointment that I announce this will no longer be possible.

Meet the characters of the upcoming second novel in the Augment Saga, The Shadow of Arcadia. Captain James Fowler: James has been a test pilot for the International Space Administration for the last two decades under the command of Captain Austin Queen, flying the IXS-17 Aurora: an experimental spaceplane containing the first faster-than-light engine known as the Austinium Drive...

On Thursday 18 July from 6:30pm to 7:30pm, I will be at Rainham Library celebrating the launch of my new book, The Shadow of Arcadia. During the event I’ll be giving a talk all about the book, my writing process, as well as reading an excerpt. There will be space for a Q&A session and signed paperbacks of all four of my books, and Augment Saga swag packs, will be available to purchase.

It’s time to announce my next book launch! It’s been a long time coming. At least, it feels like it to me after so many delays. But I am pleased to announce that the fourth entry in The Augment Saga, and its second full-length novel, The Shadow of Arcadia, will be releasing into the world on Monday 15th July 2024. What’s more, you can pre-order it now!

That’s right, for the first time I’m putting out a call for ARC readers for The Shadow of Arcadia, the second full-length novel in the Augment Saga! With three books already under my belt, you’d think I’d have gotten this publishing stuff figured out by now. But the one thing I’ve always missed out on during the run-up to release is sending out ARCs. And the main reason for that is timing…

This coming weekend, 13—15 April, From the Grave of the Gods will once again be discounted for the mega sale hosted by Tessa Hastjarjanto of Narratess. Even though there will just be the one of my books on the sale page, rest assured that you’ll be able to get all three of my currently published works, including my SFINCS finalist novella, The Re-Emergence, for 0.99 in both the UK and US as part of a Kindle Countdown Deal.

I’m thrilled to announce I now have some extra goodies available in my online shop. It all started because I wanted to do something else with the art I had been making to go along with my books. I already had the bookmarks, and someone said that the mission patch would make a great sticker. Plus, I’d spent so much time painting the art for my book covers and then slapping typography over the top that I really wanted to have something where the art itself could shine through…

I am excited to say that I have now completed all the beta reader edits for The Shadow of Arcadia and it is now at the point in the book creation process where it needs to be sent off for a professional edit. The word count currently sits at around 126,400 words, which is a little bit longer than From the Grave of the Gods was. All major rewrite and scene additions are done; I’ve tidied up the prose and typos as much as I possibly can. So now it’s time to turn it over to the professionals…

It’s official: The Re-Emergence has been announced as one of ten finalists in the first annual Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championship. Let’s celebrate! As you can imagine from this news, I am absolutely blown away. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that one of my books would get this far in a contest, but Seventeen is absolutely knocking it out of the park. This is the first year for SFINCS and it has been an absolute honour to be part of this new writing contest. There’s been so many great novellas in the running, and we’ve all been cheering one another on. It’s honestly been a fantastic experience…

I love doing these big indie group sales. It’s a great opportunity to get more eyes on my work as an indie author, and I also love going through them and adding loads of others to my ever-growing TBR list. And this Black Friday, we’ve got an impressive list of some amazing indie books for you, all at a fantastic discount.

First of all, I need to update you all on the progress of The Shadow of Arcadia. I’ve made no secret that I’ve struggled writing this book. It has absolutely been the hardest book I’ve ever written, and things have taken a lot longer than I wanted. The good news, however, is that the book is now away with beta readers! I’ve asked for around 3 months of turnaround time, so it’ll likely be January before I get their feedback to incorporate. As you can probably tell, this means the bad news is that the book won’t be coming out this year, something for which I feel I must apologise profusely.

The day has finally arrived. Here is the cover reveal for The Shadow of Arcadia. What a week it’s been! If you’ve been following my social media, you’ll have seen the daily teasers I’ve been putting up for this cover reveal, and it’s been really amusing seeing your reactions, and overall great fun. I worked hard on this cover, and I don’t mind telling you it was a nightmare putting together. It went through several iterations before I decided on this one, and the painting of it was some of the hardest I’ve ever had to do. The process has really stretched me as an artist and designer, and I feel like my powers have doubled since the last time we met, Count I’ve grown tremendously in both of those areas.

I am beyond thrilled to announce that I’ve finally reached the end of my second full-length Augment Saga novel, The Shadow of Arcadia, and it feels amazing! So mark your calendars! I’ve got something special for you all. I promised on my social media that I would do a cover reveal once the draft is done, and true to that promise, the cover art and blurb reveal for The Shadow of Arcadia will happen on FRIDAY 26 MAY - that’s 7 days from now. Keep watching my socials, as I’ll be posting a new graphic each day revealing just that little bit more of the cover. I’m very happy with the artwork I’ve produced for the book, and I hope you’ll join me in giving both it and the book the celebration they deserve.

In this longer blog post, I hope to take you through a journey of thinking about alternative applications for the speculative technologies in your sci-fi worldbuilding. There are already a lot of articles out there on the internet about the different types of faster-than-light (FTL) drive tech that have been used throughout science fiction. It’s a deep well you can draw from. There’s your warp drives, wormholes, hyperdrives, jump drives, even infinite improbability drives! And all of these have different flavours—such as the Federation’s dilithium-based matter/antimatter engine vs the Romulan singularity-based one… or others such as jump-gates, stargates, slipstream, and frame-shift drives—the list goes on and on.

From 1st to 3rd April, I’ll be partnering once again with Narratess for the #IndieApril mega sale, celebrating independent speculative fiction authors. You’ll be able to get yourself some lovely discounts on a huge range of books from indie sci-fi, fantasy and horror authors. And that’s kind of downplaying it. The sales in April and August were fantastic last year, but this year? Oh boy. 170+ books! So much bigger. It’s a great way to share the love for indie authors while also grabbing yourself some screaming deals. Find your next favourite author!

Progress on The Shadow of Arcadia is still slow. I’m finding this to be the hardest book I’ve yet written, but I am still making progress. It is now past novella-length, and past the length at which I extracted it from the original draft of From the Grave of the Gods, but there’s a lot still to add, and I’m just shy of half the way through. As I write Part Two of the novel, I have a very clear picture in my mind of where it’s heading, and there’s a sequence which I am absolutely dying to write.