Lockdown Tales II and War Bodies

Things have been getting busy on the writing/publication front. Last year, upon finishing up with War Bodies I was a bit undecided about where to go next. I put together a few collections, one being Lockdown Tales II which has now been published by Ian Whates over at Newcon Press. Here’s the cover of that along with links above to Amazon and the new page I’ve just made on my website.

Meanwhile, Macmillan has released the cover for War Bodies. I love this piece from Steve Stone. Oddly, the intended aim was for a different ‘war body’, but smacked right on target with this one. Readers familiar with my stuff will need no explanations.

While selecting the novellas and short stories I included in Lockdown Tales II I also rejected a few. One of these was a novella concerning parallel worlds – one of which is the Committee Earth of the Owner books (The Departure, Zero Point & Jupiter War). ‘Fly Pills’ (working title) was another of those that started with a weird dream and though I enjoyed where I went with it, it just did not feel right nor did it tie up neatly. I started playing with it, steadily expanding it, and realized a number of things. Firstly it did not have a suitable antagonist. The antagonist of the novella was essentially a dystopian earth the characters were escaping from. Secondly it was something I needed to explore on a larger scale. I have since finished the first draft of that exploration with a book of 195,000 words, which is 25,000 larger than my largest The Line of Polity.

Now, while editing backwards through that book I’m thinking about what next. It could be I’ll do some more stand alones or it could be that I’ll launch into a new trilogy. Damned if I know at the moment.