The Theatre of Shadows

The Theatre of Shadows – Almost there

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Only three days to go until The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II is released on 15 July.

I may be getting a little over excited.

You can pre-order your copy on Kindle here:

UK

US

Canada

Australia

France

Germany

Netherlands

If you’re on Goodreads you can find details and add it to your To Read list here.

The Theatre of Shadows
Book Two of
The Vasini Chronicles

The adventures of Drs. Marcus Fox &
Elizabeth Reid continue…

In the two centuries since the fall of the deities, only a score of city-states have risen from the ashes of their destruction. Foremost amongst them is Vasini — a city divided by politics, class, and philosophies. A city with a threat in every shadow.

Six months have passed since the events of The Silver Mask. Over the winter months, Vasini was plagued by Gareth Miller, the Winter Fayre Killer, who murdered 17 people before he was captured by Lieutenant David Locke. The city now waits for Miller to be hanged. But when Miller escapes gaol, ready to terrorise Vasini’s streets once more, Locke must hunt the murderer again to stop him from claiming more lives.

As Miller flees into Vasini’s streets, Joseph Bastin, ambassador to Vasini for the city-state of Laège, is assassinated in a brothel. With the threat of political repercussions for the death, it is up to Dr. Marcus Fox, newly appointed Commandant of Police, to find the ambassador’s killer.

Fox’s investigation soon leads to a suspect, someone who has been investigating links between the Laège embassy and the worship of the dead deities – his ally, Dr. Elizabeth Reid.

Now, Elizabeth and her friend, Catherine, must act quickly to clear her name before she is found by someone who doesn’t believe her claims of innocence and she’s forced to dance the hangman’s jig.

But these events are only a prelude for what is to come.

The stage is set. The actors are in position. The play can begin.

The Theatre of Shadows is the second part of The Vasini Chronicles, a series of flintlock-and-alchemy fantasy novels set in the city-state of Vasini.

Inside Vasini – Laège

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There’s now a little over a week until the The Theatre of Shadows is out on 15 July. Therefore, it’s time for another insight into the world of Vasini. Or in this case, the world beyond Vasini.

Vasini is one of no more than a score of city-states that have arisen in the 200 hundred years since the devastation wrought by the fall of the deities and the rebellions against the old order of the priests that followed.

Vasini’s closest neighbour of note is Laège, a much smaller city-state located a couple of hundred miles north through the Wildlands. Its current ambassador is Monsieur Joseph Bastin.

Below is an aide memoire on Laège prepared for Philippe Reno, the current Comte de Vasini, by one of his staff.

You can pre-order The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II on Kindle here (or try your local Amazon store if you’re outside of the UK).

Inside Vasini – Crytha, Goddess of Air, Whispers and Rumours

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With the release of The Theatre of Shadows on 15 July, it’s time for another insight into the world of Vasini.

Before the fall of the deities, Crytha was the goddess associated with air, whispers and rumours. As Dr. Ambrose Richards explains in his A Study of the Old Deities to Inform and Protect the Good Citizenship — a book written by the University of Vasini lecturer as a way to make fast money and considered to be mostly a sensationalist midden heap — Crytha was as changeable as the air and rumours of which she was patron.

As well as being the goddess of air, whispers and rumours, legend claims that she created a race of flying people known as the fles. Since the fall, nearly 200 years ago, there has been no evidence that the fles ever existed, other than a few wild claims by a handful of traders who have passed near mountains. Such claims amount to little more than tales of seeing humanoids with bat-like wings spread between their arms and legs, circling the distant mountain peaks.

Inside Vasini – The Winter Fayre killer

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As The Theatre of Shadows’s release on 15 July draws closer, I thought it might be worth giving a little more insight into the world of Vasini and what’s been happening since The Silver Mask.

First up, The Winter Fayre killer.

At the end of The Winter Fayre in 195AL, there was the first of a series of murders that would later be attributed to Gareth Miller, labelled by the newssheets due to the location of the first murder, as The Winter Fayre Killer.

Initially thought to be the last of a series of political assassinations that had been sparked by the events in The Silver Mask, it became clear as further, similar murders occurred across that the city that a new, non-politicaly motivated killer, was active in the city.

Below is a report from The Herald, one of Vasini’s daily newssheets, on the first murder.

The Theatre of Shadows – Goodreads giveaway

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Hello US people,

I’m running a giveaway of my new flintlock fantasy novel, The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II, over at Goodreads.

You have a chance to win one of 100 copies of the Kindle edition and be amongst the first to read it.

You can enter here.

You have until 1 July to enter.

Good luck.

Coming soon

The Theatre of Shadows – pre-order

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The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II is now available for pre-order on Kindle.

It will be out on Kindle and in paperback from 15 July.

You can pre-order for Kindle it here:

UK

US

Canada

Australia

France

Germany

Netherlands

If you’re on Goodreads you can find details and add it to your To Read list here.

If you have yet to step into the world of Vasini there’s plenty of time for you can catch up on things with The Silver Mask: The Vasini Chronicles I and A Divided River: Tales From Vasini I.

The Theatre of Shadows
Book Two of
The Vasini Chronicles

The adventures of Drs. Marcus Fox &
Elizabeth Reid continue…

In the two centuries since the fall of the deities, only a score of city-states have risen from the ashes of their destruction. Foremost amongst them is Vasini — a city divided by politics, class, and philosophies. A city with a threat in every shadow.

Six months have passed since the events of The Silver Mask. Over the winter months, Vasini was plagued by Gareth Miller, the Winter Fayre Killer, who murdered 17 people before he was captured by Lieutenant David Locke. The city now waits for Miller to be hanged. But when Miller escapes gaol, ready to terrorise Vasini’s streets once more, Locke must hunt the murderer again to stop him from claiming more lives.

As Miller flees into Vasini’s streets, Joseph Bastin, ambassador to Vasini for the city-state of Laège, is assassinated in a brothel. With the threat of political repercussions for the death, it is up to Dr. Marcus Fox, newly appointed Commandant of Police, to find the ambassador’s killer.

Fox’s investigation soon leads to a suspect, someone who has been investigating links between the Laège embassy and the worship of the dead deities – his ally, Dr. Elizabeth Reid.

Now, Elizabeth and her friend, Catherine, must act quickly to clear her name before she is found by someone who doesn’t believe her claims of innocence and she’s forced to dance the hangman’s jig.

But these events are only a prelude for what is to come.

The stage is set. The actors are in position. The play can begin.

The Theatre of Shadows is the second part of The Vasini Chronicles, a series of flintlock-and-alchemy fantasy novels set in the city-state of Vasini.

Out now and coming soon(ish – hopefully)

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The Cities Beyond the Signal is out now on Apple Books

My portal fantasy novella, The Cities Beyond the Signal, is now available on Apple Books. You can find it here if you’re in the UK or on your local Apple Books store.

Have a read and, maybe, if the urge takes you, leave a review on Apple Books or Goodreads (or both).

And coming soon

…ish – hopefully.

The proofreading of The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II is underway. It will take a little time and, until its complete, I’m not going to risk saying when ToS will actually be out in the world, but we’re in the final stretch. Finally.

And coming later…I finished writing the first draft of the third novella for Tales From Vasini III. There’s a lot of work to do on it, which will have to wait until The Theatre of Shadows is wrapped up and I’ve done some editing on the stories for Tales From Vasini II. Next on the list of things to write is The Vasini Chronicles III. And then, after that, maybe something non-Vasini related.

Theatres, beasts and city treats

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Work on The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II is going well. I finished the most recent draft last week, getting it that much closer to being out in the world.

With the latest draft on The Theatre of Shadows done and The Cities Beyond the Signal now out in the world (more on that below), I’ve finally had the chance to start editing Tales From Vasini II, currently with a working title of Beasts of the Wildlands. This is an odd one for the Vasini books as the two novellas that it will contain are completely set outside of the city’s walls, dealing in part (as the name suggests) with the twisted beasts found in the Wildlands between the city-states. This will be their first edit after sitting on my laptop since I completed the first draft nearly two years ago (on 21 December 2018 to be precise). This has mainly been down to me concentrating on editing The Theatre of Shadows,

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As an aside, I’m currently making good headway on the first draft of the second novella for Tales From Vasini III. Fingers crossed I can keep up this pace.

For those looking for a deal, my novella The Cities Beyond the Signal is currently 99p on Kindle in the UK and $1.99 on Kindle in the US. Both deals end at 12am (GMT/PST) on 30 November, so go get them now before the deals end.

You can find The Cities Beyond the Signal here in the UK and here in the US.

How long has it been?

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Hello, all. I hope you’re keeping well.

I started writing a post back in April, but for several reasons never got to post it. I tried again in July, but it still didn’t happen. So now, in September, I’ve salvaged some of what I originally wrote and put together a short update on where I’m at with a couple of things.

When I was writing the original post back in April, it was our seventh(?) week of being housebound. In many ways, not much changed. My day job means that I work from home on a regular basis. Tackling childcare while working proved a challenge, but rather than deal with the stress and put my daughter through the nonsense of her parents working while she wanted our attention, thankfully we were in a position where I could take some parental leave which made things easier.

Of course, tackling all of this, living in a situation so disrupted from the norm did mean that other aspects of life were getting disrupted. There was less time to read. At times, less inclination to write as my mind was full of processing what was (and still is) going on and working out how best to get our next load of shopping. But things moved along, just more slowly. Sometimes very slowly. Yet, with any situation you acclimatise to the new norm. Things started to speed up. I found the gaps in my day that allowed me to read a bit more and, as you’ll see later, I’ve even managed to write and, more importantly, edit.

It’s been great to be able to have my family around me more though. So much time can be lost not just to work, but to getting to and from work. And there are a couple of things that the disruption has let me do thanks to my daughter settling down earlier at night and not having to get everyone up at 5am in the morning so they can get out of the house in time to head to work and nursery. The main one was getting the chance to play Dungeons and Dragons for the first time in a decade.

Yes, I could probably have written more, but, truth be told, my mind, for the first few months, wasn’t in a place where it could concentrate for that long, too many distractions in the real world. One shot D&D games though were just plain fun. Limited thinking required, just focused on enjoying some time with friends and acquaintances with no pressure. To be honest with you, the release from what was going on probably allowed me to go on and do the writing I did do.

The Cities Beyond the Signal

I’m getting close to putting the finishing touches to the novella I’ve been working on under the title of The Signal (now called The Cities Beyond the Signal), the sequel to the novelette The City Between the Books.

That means I should, fingers crossed, have some news soonish about when it will actually appear in the world.

The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II

Although The Cities Beyond the Signal will be released before the next Vasini Chronicles book, much of what time I’ve managed to get to write over the past few months has actually been spent on The Theatre of Shadows. Things are progressing well, there’s still work to be done, but it’s getting closer and closer to being ready.

Tales From Vasini III

I’ve actually managed to finish the first draft of one of the novellas that will make up Tales From Vasini III.

It needs work, and I still have the two other novellas that I need to write to go with it, but it’s a start.

Reading

I’ve already hit my Goodreads goal for the year of reading 48 books. It was mainly thanks to having bought the entire main series of The Walking Dead graphic novels via Humble Bundle. I managed to get through the two-thirds of the series I had yet to read thanks to not being able to concentrate on anything too text heavy.

Blogging

With the release The Cities Beyond the Signal on the horizon, expect me to start blogging a little more frequently over the coming weeks. Whether it will turn into a more frequent think in the longer term remains to be seen.

Anyway, keep safe and well. Wash your hands (do you remember when the advice was just wash your hands properly?), wear a mask, keep two meters apart and stay inside as much as you can.