Byron. The chicks in this story will dig him.

Okay, time for a quick update.  Who am I?  Where am I going?  What am I doing?  These are all important questions, and I’m glad you asked.

I have just submitted the final (I hope!) draft of the new novel, The Darkening Green, to my editor.  If all goes well, it should be on sale in autumn, 2011.    Here’s a brief description that I wrote for my agent about a year ago.  Surprisingly, it is still accurate:

Linked to real historical events and people – the Luddite uprising, the assassination of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval, the Napoleonic Wars, Lord Byron, William Blake, the Prince Regent – The Darkening Green is the world of Jane Austen turned on its head.  It is the splendor of the Regency as we have come to idealize it, but it is also the Regency as it was lived by millions of British women and men – poverty, recession, famine, food riots, political instability, the beginning of an industrial revolution that will destroy entire communities and ways of living, and the desperate laborers who fought against the inevitable. 

Blake. A brilliant weirdo.

It is the story of Lucy Derrick, once a spoiled child of privilege, now just another powerless woman to be bought and sold on the marriage market.  But Lucy finds herself drawn into a world in transition, where the belief in traditional magic meets the pitiless science of capitalism and where the cold philosophy of Adam Smith meets the boundless hope of romanticism.   As powerful forces wrestle over Lucy’s future, she finds herself at the center of one of the great cultural shifts in European history, pursued by Lord Byron, and in pursuit of a mad visionary named William Blake who holds the key to her future.  The Darkening Green is an adventure, a romance, and a meditation on the idea of magic and the nature of belief.

So, what now, you may wonder.  Well, remember when I told you about the “illustrated novel” I was doing for indie comics publisher Radical, and you then forgot all about it?  Well, it’s time to remember again, because that is now my number one job.  I am also working on two projects for Marvel, neither of which I can tell you about because they have not been announced.  Once they are, I will tell you plenty.  I also have two short stories due before the end of the year. So no worries, I am keeping busy.

Then, this weekend, it’s Thrillerfest.  I hope to update my blog with lots of photos of famous novelists acting drunk and silly.

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