Steampunk – Page 2

So, welcome to 2024. Happy New Year, everyone.

Things have gone a bit blurry this last month or so for a number of reasons. I should probably have been spending the time marketing like crazy, but somehow, author life has slipped away from me between one thing and another.

In any case, thank you to everyone who gave the gift of a Holly Trinity book this Christmas, because I suspect most of you did it without any prompting from me.

So, it’s 2024, and we’re entering year three of life as a person who writes novels you can actually buy whether he remembers to encourage you to do so or not. Monsters at the Gate is being read by actual people, and Holly Trinity is officially a series. A series! There’s an Amazon page and everything! Now seems the time to thank literally everyone who got this one over the line once again.

My books are also moving beyond York’s city limits, with White Rose Books in Thirsk and Book Corner in Saltburn stocking copies. Many thanks to both establishments. There are also copies of Ghosts of York gracing the shelves of Bradford’s libraries.

So what happens next? Well, while last year was a big publishing year, it wasn’t much of a writing year. It’s been a very long time since I’ve actually written anything new, so its vitally important I get back into action. With Harvey Duckman Presents shifting gears to a more themed approach this year (more on this as things develop), I’m looking forward to stretching into some new genres for them. However, a more pressing task sits alongside them, which is Holly Trinity 3.

As you may recall, I completed a first draft of the third Holly novel last November, roughly a year before the second came out. But since first drafts of everything are infamously terrible, it’d better stop being one pretty bloody sharpish. Writing a first draft is often an exercise in realising what you got wrong while writing it, so now the time has come to put things right.

Is there anything I can reveal now? Well, it’s got my favourite monsters of the series so far, who at times have been an absolute bastard to write for. A shoe I casually dropped in book one gets picked up and taken for a hop. And a few things have come to light that I didn’t expect so soon, if at all. Oh, and there might just be a cursed play…

But that’s not coming out for a good long while. What about right now? Well, the usual run of Sci-fi Conventions await. Right now, I’m preparing to once again man the Harvey Duckman stand at Sci-fi Scarborough in April. As ever, I will be standing shoulder to shoulder with the regular Team Harvey faces, namely steampunk gunslinger Mark Hayes and cutting edge cyber-pirate Kate Baucherel. Watch this space for news of further events.

And along the way, I hope to update this site a bit more regularly than it has been lately, and keep other social media ticking over as well. Although my patience with what we must now wearily call X has long since perished. Still, the grass is greener, and sometimes the sky is bluer as well…

But for now, a happy new year once again. See you on the other side.