Drum roll…

I’ve finished writing my next novel. And here are the very first lines.

“Bloody Danes.”

I looked away from my horrified regard of what was happening to the man beside me.

“Bloody, bloody Danes,” Brother Odo muttered again, staring fixedly through the slats of the sty.

“Yes, they are,” I hissed. “And it’ll be our blood they’ll be covered with if you don’t shut up.”

Brother Odo turned terror struck eyes towards me. “Where did they come from?”

“The Danes? Where do you think?” I squinted back out through the slats. “Idiot.”

There you go. Does it make you want to read more? As you can tell, this story is again set in Anglo-Saxon England, but two centuries later than the Northumbrian Thrones, during the invasion of the Great Heathen Army. But if that is par for my normal writing course, the ‘hero’ isn’t, for he is a liar, a cheat and a coward; a man whose only virtue is the fact that he knows he is completely without any redeeming virtue. The story begins with the Great Army laying waste the kingdom of East Anglia and reaches a climax at the Battle of Ashdown, taking in martyrdoms, mysteries and a very unusual place to find a bishop’s ring along the way.

The book will be published by Endeavour Ink, the paper imprint of Endeavour Press, probably in the spring of 2018. (I can’t give you a title yet, as we haven’t decided on one.)