It felt like I spent the back end of last year sitting on more news than I was sharing, but finally I get to announce one of those big secrets that it's been driving me crazy to keep quiet about, and that's that my novel To End All Wars will be coming out this year from publisher Aethon Books. Indeed, it's actually quite far on in the process, as I'll come to in a minute, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's out sooner rather than later.
To End All Wars was one of three novels that materialised out of the reckless burst of creativity that was my first year of writing full time - the other two being The Bad Neighbour and what ended up as A Savage Generation, both of which have since come out via Flame Tree Press. But of those projects, To End All Wars was by far the most personal, the most ambitious, and probably in many ways the most difficult, both from the point of view of writing it and the point of view of subsequently convincing anyone that it was a valid commercial prospect. For To End All Wars belongs to what, so far as I can tell, is an extremely small sub-genre, maybe even a sub-genre of one: it's a serious science-fiction story set during the First World War. Or, thinking about it, maybe it's a novel about the First World War that happens to contain some elements of science-fiction, but either way, there are surprisingly few books out there that bring the two together.
But Aethon, thank goodness, were willing to look past that hard-to-categorise awkwardness to the equally hard to categorise book underneath. They're a new publisher for me, and their approach is excitingly different to what I'm used to: To End All Wars will be out in all the usual formats, but there's an added focus on the audio edition, which they're putting a good deal more care into than usual. And for that reason and others, while I've been unusually lucky on that front, I suspect this one's going to be in a whole 'nother league. The book's currently in the hands of actor Macleod Andrews and, based on the brief sample I've heard, I've got absolute confidence that he'll bring infinitely more to it than a mere reading, because that sample was as faithful to the tone of To End All Wars as I could have hoped for. Oh, and the same, by the way, goes for the cover art; isn't that stunning? I'm still amazed every time I see it, it's so precisely what I had in mind and so full of the sort of period-specific detail that only a seriously dedicated artist would bother to get right.
The upshot is, the book of mine that I'm perhaps proudest of, and certainly poured most of myself into, is finally close to seeing the light of the day, Aethon are knocking it out of the park on the presentation front, and I can't wait to have it out there and in people's hands - and, perhaps even more so, their ears. As ever, I'm bound to be talking a lot more about this one now that the cat's out of the bag, and hopefully that'll include a release date in the not-too-distant future. But for the moment, I guess I'll just go back to gaping at that cover art in slack-jawed delight and listening to Macleod's sample recording over and over again.
To End All Wars was one of three novels that materialised out of the reckless burst of creativity that was my first year of writing full time - the other two being The Bad Neighbour and what ended up as A Savage Generation, both of which have since come out via Flame Tree Press. But of those projects, To End All Wars was by far the most personal, the most ambitious, and probably in many ways the most difficult, both from the point of view of writing it and the point of view of subsequently convincing anyone that it was a valid commercial prospect. For To End All Wars belongs to what, so far as I can tell, is an extremely small sub-genre, maybe even a sub-genre of one: it's a serious science-fiction story set during the First World War. Or, thinking about it, maybe it's a novel about the First World War that happens to contain some elements of science-fiction, but either way, there are surprisingly few books out there that bring the two together.But Aethon, thank goodness, were willing to look past that hard-to-categorise awkwardness to the equally hard to categorise book underneath. They're a new publisher for me, and their approach is excitingly different to what I'm used to: To End All Wars will be out in all the usual formats, but there's an added focus on the audio edition, which they're putting a good deal more care into than usual. And for that reason and others, while I've been unusually lucky on that front, I suspect this one's going to be in a whole 'nother league. The book's currently in the hands of actor Macleod Andrews and, based on the brief sample I've heard, I've got absolute confidence that he'll bring infinitely more to it than a mere reading, because that sample was as faithful to the tone of To End All Wars as I could have hoped for. Oh, and the same, by the way, goes for the cover art; isn't that stunning? I'm still amazed every time I see it, it's so precisely what I had in mind and so full of the sort of period-specific detail that only a seriously dedicated artist would bother to get right.
The upshot is, the book of mine that I'm perhaps proudest of, and certainly poured most of myself into, is finally close to seeing the light of the day, Aethon are knocking it out of the park on the presentation front, and I can't wait to have it out there and in people's hands - and, perhaps even more so, their ears. As ever, I'm bound to be talking a lot more about this one now that the cat's out of the bag, and hopefully that'll include a release date in the not-too-distant future. But for the moment, I guess I'll just go back to gaping at that cover art in slack-jawed delight and listening to Macleod's sample recording over and over again.
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