Arthur’s back – the triumphant return of the Once and Future King
Those of you who read my blogs will know that I have been experimenting with a new way of producing my novels. I have been writing a King Arthur story in between my other work and releasing it as eBook episodes, a new chunk coming out every few months. So, I am pleased to say that, this week, I finished the whole book. The Broken Kingdom is done – and the complete story is now available as an eBook or paperback, if that is your preference. I am in talks about an audio book – but no news yet on that front.
So what is the book about? The hero is, obviously, Arthur – pictured above is the marvellous sculpture of the Once and Future King at Tintagel Castle, which I adore – who, in my story, is the illegitimate son of the High King Uthur the Pendragon, and an inexperienced cavalry officer at the beginning of the first book. Over the course of the novel, and the Wormkind series (probably a trilogy), Arthur grows into a competent leader of men, and his self-imposed mission, in which he is aided by Merlin the Sorcerer and a loyal band of followers called “Warriors of the Round Table”, is to unify the whole of fractured Britain, defeat a great supernatural evil and bring peace to the land. This is the blurb from the back of the book:
A new hero. An ancient enemy. A timeless story . . .
The Roman legions are gone and, driven by feuds and greed, the petty kingdoms of Britain are constantly at war with each other. Meanwhile Saxon refugees are flooding in daily, driven from their homes by rising sea levels. And worse, the dragon Cythraul, the epitome of evil, has been awoken from his slumbers in the frozen North and threatens to extinguish human life. The only hope for Britain, and perhaps the world, rests on the shoulders of a young Dumnonian warrior, the illegitimate son of Uthur the Pendragon.
His name is Arthur.
The Broken Kingdom is an epic fantasy novel, the first of the Wormkind Chronicles, set in an alternate 5th-century Britain. The story was originally released as five short eBook episodes, which have been brought together to make up this complete novel.
The first book is available as an eBook and paperback at the moment, and the cover looks like this:
So King Arthur is back and I hope you will buy the book, enjoy it and give me some feedback either on this website or in the form of an Amazon review. (NB, the five episodes are all still available for 99p each, if you prefer to read that way, or if you just want a taster. Start with Episode One: Arthur’s Bane.)
Any other business?
Well, yes, since you ask. Apart from The Broken Kingdom, which came out this week, I have (possibly) three other novels being published in the next ten months. In October, the final outing for Bjarki and Tor. Blood of the Bear (Fire Born 5) will wrap up my epic Viking series – and I have mixed feelings about that. I really liked the characters, and I felt that Bjarki and Tor had become real people – which is always a good sign – but with Bjarki constantly struggling with his murderous Bear spirts and nearly dying in the battle at the end of almost every book, I felt I was pushing credulity too far. So I decided to end the series. Better, I thought, to leave the people wanting more. And I have, in fact, left myself a window to write more books with some of the main characters from the Fire Born “universe”. Blood of the Bear ends, quite deliberately, just a handful years before the recognised beginning of the Viking Age in AD 793.
I’m also planning to write another Robin Hood book between now and Christmas. And I am a little nervous about this project – not only because I don’t have much time in which to do it, but also because I want to try something a bit new with my characters. I thought that I would write this book – set in the Albigensian Crusade in southern France about 1210 – from Robin’s point of view. I thought it might be fun to see what Robin really thinks of his old friend Alan Dale. But I am worried that my readers may not like the change in format and style. If you have an opinion on this, I would dearly love to hear it before I start.
The Englishman who fought for Genghis Khan
Finally, I have a brand new series kicking off in May next year. The title of the first book is Templar Traitor, subtitled “The Englishman who fought for Genghis Khan”. And the series (a trilogy) will be called The Mongol Knight. Without telling you anything about the story, those titles really do give a lot of information – which is the sign of a good title/subtitle/series title combo. It is going to be a war story, a love story, a spy story, and it is actually based on a true story. This is the provisional blurb for the back of the book:
July 1241. Christendom cowers in terror before the threat of a Mongol invasion. The swift-moving, invincible cavalry of Genghis Khan have smashed the proud, steel-wrapped knights of Russia, Poland and Hungary – and now Austria lies directly in their path.
At a skirmish outside the walls of Vienna, German knights capture a squad of Mongol scouts, and are astonished to discover one of their number is an Englishman – a Templar knight – who has been riding with these Devil’s horsemen for more than twenty years.
Interrogator Father Ivo of Narbonne is summoned to Vienna Castle to get the truth from the imprisoned Englishman before his impending trial. To find out why he abandoned his Faith, his Brethren and his homeland to become… a traitor to Christendom.
So that’s all for now, folks. You can buy The Broken Kingdom as a paperback or eBook from Amazon. Blood of the Bear (Fire Born 5) can be pre-ordered here. And I had better get back to work!
I’m just popping off to order the broken kingdom, bjarki and tors new adventure is already pre-ordered, so a Robin Hood one to tide us over would be great thanks in advance