In The Works
Added on 18 April 2015
Once more back in the world of the diplomatic spouse, I’ve been doing the usual rounds of cocktail parties, British Embassy events and drinking vodka at ten o’clock in the morning in a melancholic depressive haze of misery. I’ve also been writing some books. Here’s what’s coming. There’s a bit of a crime novel, death theme going on:
Song Of The Dead
The first book in an all-new series, featuring DI Ben Westphall. Set in Ross-shire, although the narrative also takes in Estonia, London, and various travels around the rest of Scotland. First person narrative again, but Westphall is kind of the anti-Hutton. A much more balanced character, it’s everyone else in the book that’s messed up. Going for a bleak, melancholic, Scandinavian feel.
Song Of The Dead has been signed for publication by Freight Books – who will also be publishing a print movie tie-in edition of The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson – and will be published in print and digitally some time in 2016.
We Are Death
The long-awaited follow-up to We Are The Hanged Man, featuring DCI Jericho. And when I say long-awaited, I think the number of people who are actually waiting is probably pretty small. Nevertheless, first draft completed, hoping to have it wrapped up by the summer.
It progresses the story of the mysterious organisation behind the events of Hanged Man, and as such is less police procedural, and more Dan Brown-esque international thriller. I don’t use the word chuckle though.
We Are Death will be published as an ebook by Blasted Heath, hopefully in 2015.
In My Time Of Dying
This is the fourth book in the DS Hutton series, and while it is set naturally and inevitably after Book 3, it’s also a follow-up to Book 2. More misery, gloom, unhappiness, brutal murder and sex.
I’ve been working on it while We Are Death proves in the drawer, but have been getting on very well – DS Hutton is fairly straightforward and fun to write – so hopefully this should be ready to see the light of day as a Blasted Heath ebook in 2015 too.