@meta, the company that controls Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has stolen my work, and the work of countless other writers, to train its AI. It has done so without asking and without paying anything to do so. This is theft. If you would like to register your voice against this, and help to ensure that human writers have a future, please sign this petition: https://chng.it/z2mFLV8HMY
Dear Friends and Gentle Readers, may I wish you all a very happy New Year!
This coming year, the jubilee year of 2025, should be interesting. My new, non-fiction book about the Venerable Bede will be published this year, probably in the late summer or early autumn, by Birlinn. It will be called Bede: the Invention of England and I am very excited about it: it tells the story of the man who, basically, invented a country that did not yet exist. Not only that, Bede established the BC/AD calendar that has become universal, wrote the key history of his time and became the model for the life of the scholar. So there’s lots to tell about a man who, basically, moved to a monastery when he was seven and stayed there for the rest of his life.
I am also writing a biography of the great 16th Italian military engineer, Gabriele Tadino, to be published by Osprey. Tadino’s was a life so ridiculously full of adventure that you wouldn’t believe it if you read it in a novel. I’m also excited to write about another key period in history, when the old world of the Middle Ages broke and a new age began. Also, being half Italian, it’s great to write about an Italian!
This biography will be a great sequel to my historical fiction novel, The War for the Heart of the World, which tells the story of Gabriele Tadino and the siege of Rhodes in 1522, when Suleiman the Magnificent and an army of 100,000 Ottomans attempted to batter down the walls of Rhodes, manned by the Knights Hospitaller, the last crusading order of military monks. It’s knights in armour versus cannons and guns – and it really happened!
The War for the Heart of the World will be published in the summer, so keep an eye open for it.
I have also written some short stories set in Anglo-Saxon Britain, looking at different aspects of the changes that took place during those centuries. I am just looking to see how best to publish these stories.
And, time permitting, I also hope to finish a new historical fiction novel telling the story of Benedict Biscop, The First Pilgrim.
So, a lot to look forward to this year! I hope 2025 brings you all every joy and blessing.
A Wish, a story about the perils of wishmaking and genies, is the featured tale on 28 December from Daily Science Fiction.
“A wish? I thought there were supposed to be three?”
Read it here.
Just how much more literary is it possible to get? I’ve written a feature for the Granta website. About the only things I can think of with more literary kudos would be writing something for the Granta magazine or winning the Booker Prize! The artice is called ‘Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones’ and you can read it here.
For all you Warhammer 40k fans out there, I’m delighted to announce my first novella set in the grim dark of the far future (it’s actually moved on to the 41st millennium now). Lords of the Storm tells of a Reiver squad of the Fulminators Space Marines given the mission to retrieve the relics of an Imperial saint from a penitential shrine world overrun by the forces of Chaos following the Great Rift. I’m very pleased with how the story has turned out and I hope you will be too. The novella should be available for pre-order in the summer. There’s a bit more about Lords of the Storm, and lots more about other forthcoming titles from the Black Library, here.
What’s the difference between an amateur writer and a professional writer?
The professional didn’t give up.
How cool is this – I’m in a book with Ray Bradbury! The book is Ex Libris: Stories of Librarians, Libraries & Lore, and my contribution is called ‘The Last Librarian: Or A Short Account of the End of the World. Ray – we’re on first-name terms now we’ve shared a book – Ray’s contribution is called ‘Exchange’ and there, he’s already shown why he’s a better writer than me: economy. A one-word title as opposed to 12 words. If you want to read the stories, the book is available on Amazon and through all good book sellers.
One of the unexpected perks of my occasional editing work is finding unintended explosions of double meaning in a piece of work. The one I found this afternoon is, however, probably the finest example of an unintentional double entendre I’ve ever read (and I know it was unintentional as this is meant to be a book for children). Enjoy!
He stretched his hand down toward that terrifying snake! The moment he touched it, his staff was in his hand, straight, and hard, and long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R5gHF0vzew
Second, sustained drum roll….
Here it is, big announcement number 2: my next non-fiction book will be called Warrior: the Biography of a Man with No Name, and it will be published by Granta.
Now this really is pretty big: Granta is about the most prestigious publisher in Britain and having them publish my next book will ensure it gets noticed in all sorts of places that have previously ignored my work, including the national press (although that also opens the possibility of scathing reviews from reviewers working on the principle that a good kicking is always more fun to write and read in review than any amount of glowing praise).
As to the book itself, it is the story of one of the people excavated at the Bowl Hole Cemetery near Bamburgh Castle. While human remains provide all sort of useful archaeological evidence, their great drawback is that skeletons are mute: they tell no story. But for a variety of reasons, we can say much more about one particular man, buried within sight of castle and sea, than is normally the case, and it is his story that we will tell in this book. When I say we, it really will be a book written in the first person plural, as I will be collaborating on it with Paul Gething, one of the directors of the Bamburgh Research Project and the man who excavated the body of this Dark-Age warrior.
Warrior will be published in 2019.
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.)