We’re partway into December so I feel it’s a fine enough time to wish you a happy holiday season, and essentially offer my end-of-year updates, as well as a little treat.

And we might as well start with that treat.

Free/Three Books

Off the back of releasing Drown Deep (which has, I can report, received some absolutely lovely reviews, including this one from the very prestigious Fantasy Faction!), I’ve been itching to write another shorter story in the world of the Blood Scouts. Which got me thinking that I’ve not done enough to get my other shorter pieces out there.

This was consolidated by receiving this glowing FanFiAddict review for Oksy, Come Home (from current SPFBO finalist Bill Adams, no less) as part of the SFINCs contest, where I realised very few people have read this little book. After all it has, until now, only been available via a link at the back of However Many Must Die.

So, I decided it was time to review some of my past shorter pieces of fiction to make them more readily available, and I can now merrily report that I’ve created a page to share three of my novellas absolutely free – that is, Oksy, Come Home, Balfair’s Confinement and (appropriate for the time of year) A Most Apocalyptic Christmas.

Have a look on this link. And enjoy this trio of really rather dark tales.

Wixon’s Day Rides Again

Another thing that encouraged me to do this was that last month I was delighted to have Wixon’s Day included in Your Paper Quest, a subscription service for monthly indie books. If you don’t know, Wixon’s Day was my debut novel release, first published 12 years ago now (right around the time I met my wife!). It’s a gritty dystopian adventure, a little rough and raw but in some ways the better for it!

Closing the YPQ month, I did a Q&A with the delightful guys who run YPQ, which you can watch on YouTube here! They’re doing great work promoting indie books so I’d really recommend checking them out if you want some new reads.

This was one of a flurry of talks I’ve done in these closing months of the year: I also did a couple of panels at BristolCon and one on Writer’s Block for the British Fantasy Society. Hoping to dive into some more next year!

Plans for 2024

Now we’ve had a bit of past and present, what’s for the future? Well, there’s that short Blood Scouts adjacent story I mentioned above: it’s a contained action story in which a manor house becomes the scene of a very tight battle.

I’m hoping to put that out early 2025.

My intentions for the Blood Scouts after that are essentially to have two shorter (we’ll see!) novels that both pick up after Drown Deep, but go in completely different directions. If you’ve read Drown Deep you might have some idea why. But probably not… I did a short impromptu interview for Grimdark Magazine along with author Luke Scull at BristolCon revealing this, FYI, which you can watch here.)

If I can squeeze them in, I’d like to release both around the same time, but it’ll likely be late in 2025.

On the Ordshaw front, I am really hoping to get back to this series in 2025 because there’s still stories that need telling. My intention has always been to continue the The City Screams arc with the next book, but I also feel like it’s time we saw more of the Cutjaw Kids.

Writing aside, I’ve been engaging in lots of practice in 3D modelling, animation and even game design. The results of this could go in a lot of directions, but for now maybe you’d like to see this rough animation of Wild Wish I did (I want to make all new clothes for this…I’ve already made a better scope for the gun)

I’ve got some sneaky ideas for some ridiculous things related to both the Blood Scouts and Ordshaw. But that’s fancy thinking for now. It all needs a lot of time. I’ve also got some other novels I want to revisit, and possibly serialise, to fit in too.

That’s all for now, and probably all from me for this year at this point! I’ve been keeping on updating my reviews for 2024 if you haven’t seen that, so you can expect some ‘Best Of’ lists to come too, but maybe we’ll save all that for January.

All that remains is to wish you happy holidays, or at least just a solid December!

And happy reading!

Phil