The obvious thing that’ll be coming in 2018 is WWIII. This isn’t about that, though. This is about the books I’ve written. Neither as exciting nor interesting, but fewer people will die, so there’s that.

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One of the consequences over the long slow death of Blasted Heath and the implosion at Freight Books, is that I’ve got a bit of a backlog. So, currently I have four completed novels, and as things stand, no reason why they all shouldn’t come out in 2018.

Now, I realise me having four completed, unreleased novels isn’t quite the same as JK having Harry Potter 8 – 11 secretly in the bag, or someone stumbling across a lost four-part sequel to Lord Of The Rings while rummaging through JRR’s attic. Still, as Heroclidius said, all we can do is all we can do, so coming in 2018 we have Thomas Hutton 4, Pereira & Bain 3, Wespthall 2 and a stand alone modernist surreal erotic romance.

There will be extensive meetings of the executive board of Long Midnight Publishing over the Christmas and New Year period, to discuss the order in which the books will be released, but we will begin our quick run-through of the four books with the one that’s not an LMP title.

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DS HUTTON 4: SEE THAT MY GRAVE IS KEPT CLEAN

A young woman is pushed in front of a train. Two people are beheaded in a church in Glasgow. A man is beaten and injected with a fatal dose of narcotic. (Yes, it’s another random series of murders that turn out not to be random story, but these are completely different murders.) In the middle of it all is DS Hutton, in familiar messed-up in the head territory. And all the while, lurking in the shadows, is Michael Clayton, the nefarious villain from Plague Of Crows. 

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DI WESTPHALL 2: THE BOY IN THE WELL

The cancelled Freight title from earlier this year. This one has the official £50,000 blurb already written:

No blood-soaked murder weapon. No serial killer. No suspects. Just a boy, lying at the bottom of a well. Unclaimed. Unloved. Dead.

A well on a farm on the Black Isle in the north of Scotland is opened for the first time in over two hundred years. At the bottom lies the body of a young boy, apparently dead for less than forty-eight hours.

The boy has no name, and no one comes forward to identify him.

DI Ben Westphall discovers the murder is a repeat of one that occurred two centuries previously. Is this latest death an act of vengeance, or could supernatural forces be at play? And if they’re not, why is Westphall being visited by the dead?

The follow-up to Song Of The Dead, The Boy In The Well is a chilling crime thriller, where the past bleeds terrifyingly into the present, and Westphall must unearth the cruel and surprising evil that hides in plain sight.

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THE LEAFBLOWER IN THE JAPANESE AMBASSADOR’S GARDEN

A surreal erotic romantic comedy thing about lost love, jazz, coffee, Audrey Hepburn and movies.

Joel Black is a piano player living in Georgetown, DC. He doesn’t have much in his life. Just his piano, a part-time job at a local restaurant, his Breakfast At Tiffany’s poster, a succession of encounters with beautiful women, and memories of his lesbian aunt. There’s something going on with all those women, though. Something strange, and possibly wonderful.

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