Shards, Safety and Cascos

Rather than spit out snippets of news via Twitter (and thus flounder in the effluent of sound bites that Twitter can be guilty of – myself included) I’ve decided to post a couple of summaries on “what’s going on”, and perhaps explain as to why I've been so quiet and why "slacking off" is necessary.
(And if you want to jump to a news item just click on the link:
News on the Traitor of Light
World Horror Convention 2010
Warriors of God...
The Black Hours - just cast your peepers below and you'll find it!)


The Black Hours

On Monday I completed the 4th draft of The Black Hours. Essentially a re-write of the 3rd draft (there were some problems around pacing and the last quarter of the book), I'm very happy with how the 4th draft has turned out. It has a suitably bleak coda yet is reasonably optimistic at a character level. As a genre piece, again this is going to be difficult to categorise. It is alternative history with a hint of steam-punk thrown in, a little bit of horror, plenty of action and adventure with a dash of "crime". What there aren't, are any supernatural creations and in that the Black Hours is a big departure from the Secret War books. Nor is it episodic like the Secret War books, as the narrative flits from several points of view like an episode of 24.
In fact, this is perhaps how I would best describe the Black Hours: a Victorian 24, with plenty of characters whose lives are invariably changed by those events in late November 1892 with more twists and turns than a van full of… (well you get the picture…)

Still to come is a quick draft - what I call a “reader's draft” - that will remove any embarrassing inconsistencies that can arise when writing a multi-plotted, 150,000 word novel. This should take a couple of weeks during which I’ll be commencing the next project (see below) whilst making The Black Hours changes via my trusty iphone (and Stanza) when I get the opportunity.

After the readers' comments come in, there will be one more draft - the red-pen draft - and then it will be completed, finito, end of… some time at the end of the year.

So there you go. I'm on track and pleased with what I've got so far. All I need now is someone who will publish it in English!