Well, here’s a nice thing.
To mark the release of the new Robin Hood film this week – featuring Taron Egerton in the title role – Hypable.com are running a piece listing their “must read Robin Hood retellings and unique reimaginings”.
Happy to say that Gisburne features prominently (massive cover image featuring THAT pic of hooded, tooled-up Rebellion CEO Jason Kingsley) and gets this pithy write-up:
Netflix series? Now, there’s an idea…
Sometimes, you need to hit something with a sword. And occasionally, you want to do so without maiming or killing it. That’s where a pell comes in.
A mainstay of a knight’s training, the pell was essentially a post of approximately human height upon which an individual could practise sword strokes without restraint, building strength and accuracy in a manner that was – in terms of physical commitment, at least – as close to real combat as possible. Often the pell would simply be a rough pole, but later in the medieval period might be fashioned to resemble the enemy of the day.
I wanted a pell I could seriously twat with a variety of weapons. So I made one.
Anyone who has read Hood will recall that Gisburne has an elaborate training device which he calls ‘Sir Pell’, featuring free swinging arms with gimbals and counterweights so it actually responds to attacks with its own counterblows. On one occasion, it knocks Gisburne senseless. I decided to start more simply.
The post is plain timber with a crosspiece at the top, the whole length tightly padded and tied around with hessian sacking. Dimensions are about those of an average man, so mail or other armour can be hung on it if desired. The head is not really designed to withstand heavy blows unprotected (what head is?) but is properly proportioned so a helm will fit it, and is made it so it can take strikes from arrows. An archery target can also be hung over the chest.
I have now given it a good few whacks and can confirm it works well (though the base needs some widening to make it more stable). It’s also immensely therapeutic. You think a punch bag is satisfying? Well, this is the next level.
Even better, though, will be when I dress it up over Halloween to scare the crap out of trick-or-treaters. Time to dig out the old fake wolf’s head, I reckon…
Where have I been…? Well, writing another bloody book, as it turns out.
The Hunter of Sherwood trilogy – AKA the Guy of Gisburne trilogy – comes to an end in February, when the final book, Hood, is published by Abaddon (9 Feb for Kindle, 28 Feb for the paperback). Publicity for this is now in full swing, so expect some interviews and guest blogs over the coming weeks.
You can pre-order the Kindle version on Amazon here, or the paperback version here.
It’s grim. It’s bloody. And Gisburne’s pyromaniac tendencies are once again to the fore.
Here’s the blurb:
The vendetta with Robin Hood has cost too much: blood shed, lives lost, friendships severed. Guy of Gisburne, knight and agent of Prince John, has had enough, and wishes to enjoy a little quiet on his own land. But Hood grows ever more troublesome, and if the barons of the North will not convince Guy to resume the hunt – nor even the rightful King, Richard the Lionheart, returned from long imprisonment – then perhaps the simple plea of a missing daughter’s father, and a promise to restore a good man’s name, will.
Hood has gathered an army – among them the insidious Took, the giant John Lyttel, the cutthroat Will the Scarlet, the brilliant but bitter Alan O’Doyle. Guy must now recruit an army of his own, calling upon some familiar old friends – and one all-too-familiar old enemy…
The stage is set: Sherwood, long a home to both men. The final confrontation begins…
I’ll just leave this here…
“… a petition to the parliament of 1439 related some of the misdeeds of Piers Venables of Derbyshire, a criminal who had helped to rescue a prisoner being taken to Tutbury castle: it was alleged that he had gathered around him a large number of misdoers, ‘beyng of his clothinge, and in manere of insurrection wente into the wodes in that county like it hadde be Robyn Hode and his meynee’. This appears to be the first of many recorded occasions when real criminals, rebels and outlaws were given the names of the legendary outlaws of the greenwood, perhaps the most famous example being Sir Robert Cecil’s later condemnation of Guy Fawkes and his associates as ‘Robin Hoods’.”
From:
Dobson, R. B. and Taylor, J. (1997) Rymes of Robin Hood: An Introduction to the English Outlaw, United Kingdom: Sutton Publishing, pp. 3-4
I don’t usually respond to reviews. To be honest, I don’t really feel it’s any of my business. I’ve done my bit. The book is living its own life out there for good or ill. If there are any stupid slip-ups in it, chances are I know about them already and will nod my head in sheepish agreement with anyone who points them out. If they just don’t like it, well that’s fine too. You can’t please everyone. And you shouldn’t try. If you do, you end up ironing out the wrinkles. Wrinkles are character, and character is what those select few who really, really like it are really, really liking.
It’s also a slippery slope for a writer. Getting into discussions about the ideas, themes or characters in your book? That’s fine. But trying to argue why people should think it’s good? It’s just wrong. And futile. And not at all pretty.
An occasion involving Jeffrey Archer springs to mind. I vividly recall the sense of cringing horror that accompanied it – it makes me shudder even now. There’s the writer, puffed up with indignation and entitlement, angrily listing on his fingers all the reasons why he should be better appreciated. And all around, people falling silent in growing embarrassment, like the ever-widening circle of onlookers about the stamping, red-faced kid who just threw an epic tantrum in the supermarket.
So, of course, responding to a review is exactly what I am about to do. But there’s method in this madness. I hope.
The piece in question is Katie Richards’ assessment of The Red Hand in the Portland Book Review. It’s a short review, and in many ways pretty even-handed. It has both positive and negative points, and while the reviewer clearly wasn’t enamoured of it, it ends with an acknowledgment that some people may be. Can’t really argue with that.
But then, in the closing paragraph, there’s the bit that made me wince:
“Venables also seems to be tripped up by his modern urge to be accepting and multi-cultural, opening the book with Guy’s friendship with an Islamic knight, which breaks with the continuity of the time in which the story takes place.”
What’s different about this is not that it’s saying the prose is dull or the characters thin. It’s saying that in this period Christians and Muslims could not, would not, be friends, and that therefore the facts are wrong. As you may imagine, such things matter to me – but fortunately, they can also be put to the test.
First things first. It’s certainly true that some elements of the story and characters are “modern”. I would argue – and have argued elsewhere – that this is not only desirable, but inevitable. I’m not medieval and nor are my readers. Whilst one of the primary aims is to evoke the period – to paint a picture of those times that seems tangible and convincing, and perhaps even reveals some surprising truths about them – as participants in a story we also want something that we can relate to. To that end, many things undergo some translation into modern terms.
The most significant of these is so big that it affects almost every word in the book, yet we are so blind to it it passes without comment. The language. Virtually none of the words spoken by these characters are true to the times – an issue I have already discussed at length in a blog for Abaddon on historical fiction. For the most part, they would have spoken in one of two languages (or both): Anglo-Norman, or early Middle English. While we have words in common with each, they are modes of speech that are substantially different from our own, to the point of incomprehensibility.
In the book, all action, descriptions and dialogue are naturally rendered in modern English, and we are mostly unaware that there may even different languages operating. Think of a film set during World War II in which both the British and German sides speak English amongst themselves. We understand the Germans are meant to be speaking German, but readily accept the compromise. It’s what makes the work accessible, and the drama possible.
A good translation doesn’t just substitute one set of words for another, however. Sometimes the idiom needs to be translated into modern terms too. So, we have characters using phrases, puns and metaphors that would not have been in use at the time, but whose sense is exactly right for conveying the desired meaning to a modern audience. In the Abaddon blog, I use the example of Hood, trying to tempt Gisburne into a collaboration by saying: “We’d be the talk of the town!”. The words and the idiom are all wrong for a 12th century man, but the sense it conveys to modern readers is absolutely right. And there is nothing to offend, in terms of serious anachronism (one of my rules, such as they are); they had talk, they had towns, and they certainly had the notion of someone becoming notorious and the subject of gossip.
Other forces come into play here. Many of my influences are modern – the majority of them from cinema, as some readers may have spotted. I hope they do. There’s fun in that. Some may not want that from their historical fiction, but that’s OK too. I just don’t want to pretend to be what I’m not. And, while I would hope that the Gisburne novels present the period with all its ugliness, bigotry and cruelty intact – not because we should like them, but because it would be wrong to leave them out – I make no apology for gravitating towards characters of a more fair-minded and liberal bent. These are the characters I prefer to identify with. The idea that no such characters existed in those times is entirely false, although it is certainly the case that being such a character in the medieval world was a far harder struggle than it would be now. Such tensions also make for a good story.
This brings me to the key point: the friendship between an English knight and an Arab which, we are told, is a product of modern multiculturalism and out of kilter with the medieval reality.
The episode in question takes place in Jerusalem, now under Saladin’s control following the failure of the Third Crusade. Gisburne – who had briefly lived in the Christian-held city in the 1180s – encounters an old friend from those days: an Arab named Asif al-Din ibn Salah. Asif is not actually a knight, but a skilled fighter who knows the city inside out and who helped keep the peace in the Muslim quarter during Christian rule. Now, he finds himself working as an agent of Saladin – in effect, Gisburne’s opposite number. They are bound not only by friendship, but by mutual respect, and an understanding of what the other does. On this occasion, it transpires they also have a common enemy.
Such a friendship may well sound unlikely, given the general historical backdrop. But it shouldn’t.
If we know only one thing about the period in which the Robin Hood stories are traditionally set, it is that Richard the Lionheart was on Crusade – battling his way across the Holy Land at the head of a Christian army, intent in liberating Jerusalem. The fall of that city to Saladin’s forces in 1187, following the disastrous battle of Hattin – the 9/11 of its age – had come as a shattering blow to Christendom. For most of the century prior this, Jerusalem had been in Christian hands, and it had been a hard-won prize. When the First Crusade had taken it in the name of Christ in 1099, the religious zeal of the captors had been such that it ended in the wholesale slaughter of every Muslim they found – man, woman and child. The streets, it was said, literally ran with blood.
All this paints a picture of bitter conflict, in which Christians and Muslims seem to be bent on each other’s annihilation – a scenario that has curious resonance with the modern world.
But, as with the modern world, the reality is far more complex. For the Crusaders coming from Europe, many of whom may never have left their own countries before, it would have been easy to hate this unseen enemy in a faraway land. But other Christians were already there. They had been living in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the Holy Land for a hundred years, and calling it home.
Following the bloody conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, Muslims had been banned from living the Holy City. As time went by, however, tensions dissipated, and by the 1140s, under the more enlightened rule of King Fulk and his queen, Melisende (whose name I borrowed for a key female character), the ban was lifted altogether.
Simon Sebag Montefiore, in his epic biography of Jerusalem, relates how in 1140, Unur, the Atabeg of Damascus visited Jerusalem, accompanied by the Muslim writer Usamah bin Munqidh, who recorded all he saw (2012, p.267).
It is far from the picture of antagonism and hatred we might expect to find. On a visit to the Dome of the Rock, Usamah himself “walked over to pray in the Temple of Solomon, formerly al-Aqsa, [and was] welcomed by his Templar friends, even though he was openly reciting ‘Allahu Akhbar’…” (2012, p.274). In the moments that followed, Usamah was accosted by an angry Christian, who told him he was praying wrong. The Templars dragged the man off, apologised to Usamah for the intrusion, and informed him the man was a newcomer from the Frankish lands, ignorant of their ways. Clearly, those ways included a perhaps surprising level of tolerance and respect for Muslims.
This is not an isolated incident, nor was such tolerance reserved for nobility. Muslim peasants came into town daily to sell fruit in the city. The Hospitallers – an order of Christian knights second only to their more famous brothers the Templars – nursed Muslims and Jews alongside Christians in their hospital “and even had a kosher/halal kitchen so they could eat meat” (2012, p.271). Of the Crusader inhabitants themselves, some now spoke Arabic, lived in Arab-style houses that they had built for themselves and even ate Arab food. Many had also adopted Arab styles of dress, which were better suited to the climate. When, in 1174, Baldwin IV – the famous “leper king” – became ruler of Jerusalem, it was an Arab doctor who oversaw his treatment (2012, p.290).
By the time of Gisburne’s stay in Jerusalem, then, it had indeed become a multicultural city – the meeting place of three great religions, a centre of trade, a melting pot of cultures and a focal point for pilgrims from around the world. It was not without its tensions, of course. But even as these were mounting during the 1180s, with the rise of Saladin, life went on. One of the world’s leading historians of the Crusades, Thomas Asbridge, tells us that “a pulsing current of commerce continued unabated throughout these years, connecting the two worlds of Christendom and Islam” (2012, p.331).
Given this reality, friendships between Christians and Muslims were not only possible, but inevitable. They were a fact of life in the city where cross-cultural interactions – over food, over trade, over almost anything – happened on a daily basis, and one that made the looming conflict all the more tragic.
Often, the research that goes into a novel is not obvious. To some extent, it shouldn’t be – it should just tell a cracking story that evokes a real sense of time and place. And it varies. Some authors research down to the finest detail. Others make a lot of it up. Most, like me, are somewhere in between. The history we learned at school is so often about generalities – the big achievements, the big changes, the big battles. A novel, however, is about specifics, and sometimes those specifics may seem at odds with what is “supposed” to be happening. But that’s life. Overall, my experience is that if there is something surprising or seemingly anomalous in a historical novel – one that challenges our assumptions – it has probably been put there for a good reason.
A historical novel is a window onto a lost world – at its best, a means of bringing it vividly to life. Sometimes, it is not what we expected or assumed. While we may sometimes fall into the trap of considering the past an alien world, such novels have the potential to remind us that our ancestors were every bit as complex, creative, intelligent, loving, eccentric and flawed as we are.
This, to me, is what good historical fiction can do – get the reader to look beneath the surface of places and periods, and find out the specifics of what really made them tick. But for that to happen, you do have to entertain the possibility – however remote – that the author may actually be right.
Sources cited
Asbridge, T. (2012) The Crusades : the War for the Holy Land. London: Simon & Schuster
Montefiore, S. S. (2012) Jerusalem: The Biography. London: Phoenix
“Don’t look at your arrow point,” says Nev. “Just look at what you want the arrow to hit. If you do it right, it’ll go there.”
That is almost the entirety of Nev’s advice on how to aim. This is not to say it’s simple. This is instinctive aiming – in effect, you aim by not aiming at all. Mostly this is about what you do not do. You don’t use a sight. You don’t position your arrow point over your target. And you definitely do not “barrel” your arrow – drawing to your eye and squinting the length of the shaft like a rifle barrel.
It’s my first archery session – not on a target range, but stalking around the woods not far from where I live on a bright, cold, sunny day in April. This is field archery, which replicates hunting with a bow (no animals are harmed – we just use 3D targets dotted about the forest, which here include deer, several zombies and a velociraptor). For my purposes, it also evokes the medieval archery experience, which is a huge bonus. Getting the feel of medieval longbow archery was my main reason for doing this. The woods near us may not quite be Sherwood, but when I went looking for an archery club and found one five minutes cycle from my house, which had several members who shot longbow and also met in woodland, I could hardly believe my luck.
Nev is a 77-year-old northerner whose advice is as blunt as you’d expect. But for all that, he is a true Obi Wan. “It’s like when you’re a kid, and you throw a stone at something,’ he says. ‘You don’t aim the stone. You don’t measure the distance. You just feel the weight, look at your target, and throw.’ His approach is all about acquiring such a level of familiarity with it that you can forget the thinking part altogether. Very zen.
But back to the matter in hand, and the (artificial) boar in my (nonexistent) sights…
Being instinctive sounds easy enough. But becoming instinctive – making the unfamiliar action of drawing a bow natural enough that you don’t have to think about it, whilst unlearning the lifetime of habits that your brain puts in the way – that’s hard.
With the 20lb recurve that I have been using – a low-power bow for beginners, and the first bow I have shot in maybe 30 years – I occasionally get it right. And you know when you have. With the 40lb bow that he has just let me try, it’s something else again. A 40lb bow is easily powerful enough for hunting game, and is lethal. Drawing it puts a strain on all manner of undiscovered muscles, and with this kind of resistance, technique goes out of the window. I rush it, and am barely aware of the release. The arrow is noticeably faster and hits the target with a satisfying “thunk”, but I know it’s as much by luck as judgement. I know Nev knows it too. There’s no pretending here. The top three fingers of my right hand throb from the poor release. We go back to the 20lb-er after that, which now seems a breeze by comparison – though we’ll return to the 40lb-er later. I try to remind myself that medieval longbowmen regularly drew bows of around 90lbs.
He gets me shooting, moving, and shooting again, twigs and pine cones crunching underfoot. This is how field archery works – no standing stock still at a set distance from a round target. The angle, the distance, the light conditions and the terrain are all constantly changing.
I first shot an arrow from a real bow when I was about 12. A week or so before, I’d managed to snap its predecessor – really no more than a toy – clean in half. Even though this had obviously been done in a fit of pique, the result of my childish frustration with what I obviously felt was an inadequate weapon, I didn’t get a finger-wagging speech from my parents. Instead, my dad went out and bought a five foot flatbow, half a dozen arrows and a straw bale. It had no frills – nothing in the way of sights, counterweights or – God forbid – pulleys. It was just a stick and a string.
I was thrilled. This wasn’t childish play any more. It was the real thing. I could barely draw it, but nonetheless spent hours loosing arrows into the straw bale, happily oblivious to the fact that beyond it was nothing more than a hedge, and beyond that, a main road.
Nev didn’t seem too impressed when I first divulged this. This is one environment where you don’t snigger about health and safety issues. What you have in your hand is a lethal weapon, after all. Later, he admits that somewhere on YouTube is video of him accidentally walking in front of a target during a shoot.
After a while, he hands me the 40lb bow again. At the start he swore he’d only let me shoot one arrow with it on my first try – “I don’t want to confuse you,” he said – but I can see he can’t resist giving me another go. I hope it’s because he can see I have potential. Natural, raw talent. That I’m the new Robin Hood, ready to split my opponent’s arrow. Or at least that I’m not actually an idiot who might get skewer some innocent bystander.
I go through the list in my head. Get the posture right. Relax. Raise the bow. Keep the arm straight. Focus on where I want the arrow to go. Grip the string – without knocking the arrow off the rest. Draw – without moving my head, or my arm, or anything but the drawing arm. Anchor at the corner of the mouth… Then release. And don’t forget the follow through with the right hand.
There’s so much to think about, and to try to not think about. Sometimes I take too long and things go awry. Sometimes I’m too hasty –“snap shooting” as Nev calls it. Then it’s mostly luck if it flies true. But one or two shots go right. I find can actually hit what I’m aiming at. And it feels good. All the more satisfying is the knowledge that this bow is about the same draw weight as the longbow I’ll eventually buy. But I need to learn basics before I move on to that. Nev says so, and despite a natural impatience I now understand why. That longbow has to be earned.
At the end of the session, as I lift my bike over the gate and cycle away, my mind feels wonderfully clear. It feels like it’s actually working differently – as if someone has pushed the reset button, and cleared out all the accumulated mental crap.
And I know I’m hooked.
Recently, the nice people at Abaddon posted some deleted scenes for my novel The Red Hand (see links on these blogs). Today, for World Book Day I’m posting another that is exclusive to my own blog. It’s short, it’s sweet (I think so, anyway) and it is comedy gold. OK, maybe bronze… (Pragmatic note: as with the previous deleted scenes, if you have the novel and wish to know where this bit fits, the date will tell you exactly where to stick it.) Enjoy.
The road to Berughby – 15 May, 1193
Gisburne felt guilty. He hated feeling guilty. Maybe he should’ve let Galfrid in on the plan from the start. It had been a simple omission at first; then it became a joke. His squire always knew everything – it amused Gisburne to make him guess. But now, it had stopped being funny.
Gisburne decided it might be a good thing to at least try to make conversation. He turned and looked Galfrid’s palfrey up and down – a fine chestnut mare with a white flash upon her head. She could amble as smoothly as any horse he had ever seen.
“So,” he said, “how’s this new nag of yours working out?”
“Good,” said Galfrid, matter-of-factly.
“Good,” Gisburne nodded. “And her temperament?”
“Fine,” said Galfrid.
“Fine?”
“Very fine.”
Gisburne nodded slowly. Clearly Galfrid was not going to make it easy for him. Gisburne wasn’t exactly an adept at small talk, either – usually, they travelled hard, and conversation was sparse, except when it was urgent, and to the point. Or when Galfrid was honing his sarcasm. “Well then…” continued Gisburne. “Given her a name yet?”
“I have.”
Gisburne waited patiently for the rest of the answer. It never came. He sighed. “And may we know what it is?” A note of irritation was entering his voice now. They had been travelling less than half an hour, and already the road to London looked to be getting longer. “Fauvel?” he ventured. Galfrid shook his head. “Sorel? Star, perhaps?”
Galfrid cocked his head and raised his eyebrows as if to say: Good guess – but no…
“Something more elaborate then?” Gisburne tried to think of the least appropriate name for this docile plodder. “Thunder?” He would provoke Galfrid into an answer, one way or another. “No, I know – Warlord! I beg your pardon – Warlady…”
“Mare,” said Galfrid, bringing the speculation to an end.
Gisburne turned and looked him squarely in the eye. The squire stared straight ahead with an impenetrably inscrutable expression. “Mare?” said Gisburne.
“Yes.”
“So, she’s a mare, and you’ve called her ‘Mare’…”
“Yes,” said Galfrid.
Gisburne sighed. “Well, it’s accurate. And a fine temperament, you say?”
“Very fine,” said Galfrid. “Steady.”
“Steady.” Gisburne turned and looked ahead. “Hm. Fine if you like that sort of thing, I suppose.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Gisburne shrugged. “You know. Steady. A bit dull…”
“Dull?” There was a note of outrage in Galfrid’s voice. He had taken the bait.
“You know my preference. A decent stallion.” He slapped Nyght affectionately on his sleek, black neck. “Bolder. Braver…”
“Dafter.”
“Dafter?” It was Gisburne’s turn to sound outraged now. Nobody insulted Nyght. Nobody.
“More impulsive. More bloody-minded…”
“Nyght is perfectly even-tempered,” insisted Gisburne.
“Was he being even-tempered when he kicked the Earl of Norfolk?” said Galfrid.
Gisburne cursed inwardly. Trust him to have heard about that. It had happened last time Gisburne was in York – but the plain fact was the Earl had deserved it. “If Nyght hadn’t taken the initiative,” Gisburne said, “I’d have done it myself.”
Galfrid thought about that for a moment. Then he nodded, and said: “A mount should always be sensitive to its master’s needs.” Gisburne grunted in agreement at Galfrid’s wise words.
And so, having reached an accord, they rode on in contented silence.
In case you missed them (like I’d give you a chance…) there are two more ‘director’s cut’ deleted scenes from Gisburne opus The Red Hand on the Abaddon blog:
Eleanor of Aquitaine – in which Gisburne and Galfrid meet the most powerful woman in Christendom, and lose the heir to the throne.
and
An Unexpected Visit – in which a dejected and directionless Gisburne plays host to an old friend, who just happens to be dead.
There’s one more to come, which will be exclusive to this blog. You lucky people.
The plan was for The Red Hand to be a short, sweet second volume of the trilogy. That was the plan. Somehow, though, it grew and grew. It grew so much that I had to hack off some bits to make room for other bits.
Never one to discard a fresh body part, I kept them on ice – and now the nice people at Abaddon are presenting these deleted scenes on their blog for your delectation. The first – in which Gisburne, Galfrid and John tell ghost stories around a fire – is up today, here.
There will be two more, posted on Wednesday and Thursday morning this week, in which we lose the heir to the throne and meet the formidable Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Gisburne has an unexpected guest – who just happens to be dead. Enjoy!
2014 was not the easiest of years, and I can’t say I’m entirely sorry to see it go. At times, in terms of workload, it felt like it had been sent to test me – to make me find out what my limits really were. I did. It wasn’t fun. But it was instructive, at least. I now know not to have another year like that.
Its last hurrah came in the form of a flu-like virus – the one that has you coughing day and night for weeks, which seemingly everyone suffered from – which then led to the early stages of pneumonia. Terrific. Only now am I feeling normal again (well, as normal as I ever did). 2014 just didn’t want to relinquish its grip without a fight.
Well, it didn’t have everything its own way, and all that work wasn’t without issue. As a result of it, I have three books out in three consecutive months.
December saw the publication of The Zombie Renaissance in Popular Culture – an academic tome that grew out of the Zombosium at Winchester University in 2011, where I gave a paper. The book is a collection of chapters by a variety of authors and academics on all aspects of zombies in our culture, the very last being my own contribution. Snappily titled Zombies, a lost literary heritage and the return of the repressed, it offers a brief overview of recent zombie literature, and then deals with one of the great fallacies of zombie lore: that it has no literary heritage. It does – and it’s Viking. Viking zombies. They’re just my thing.
Read about them here.
In January, Hunter of Sherwood: The Red Hand, the second volume of the Gisburne trilogy, was published by Abaddon (one of the imprints of Rebellion, who publish 2000AD). It was meant to be a short and snappy second book. It wasn’t. It was huge. A monster. Some of this had to be trimmed back for the sake of everyone’s sanity, but this means there will be some ‘deleted scenes’ available, featuring events and encounters not included in the final novel All of these will be posted on the Abaddon blog as well as here. Anyway, at the time of writing, the eBook has got 25% off in the Rebellion online store January sale (to which the above link will take you) but you can also find it on Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats. Reviews are starting to come through on Goodreads, and they’re very pleasing – all 4 and 5 star reviews. Thank you to all who have taken time to review it (and read it, of course).
February will see the return of an old friend. My first novel, The Viking Dead, is to be published in a German version by Voodoo Press. It’ll also be available on Amazon. OK, so this one’s cheating a bit – I mean, I didn’t have to write it all over again, and it wasn’t me translating it – but hey. Three books is three books.
In your face, 2014…
Toby Venables 