The Green Man’s Challenge has made the shortlist for the BSFA ‘best novel’ award, alongside an array of splendid writing and artwork across the various categories. This is tremendously gratifying, as you can imagine.

I’m also delighted to see Worlds Apart: Worldbuilding in Fantasy and Science Fiction from Academia Lunare is on the ‘best non-fiction’ shortlist, since Cheryl Morgan of Wizard’s Tower Press is one of the contributors to that.

The BSFA website now has the full Awards shortlists posted, along with voting instructions for members.

In a wholly fortuitous bit of timing, Amazon have decided to put The Green Man’s Heir on 99p sale this month. As before, Wizard’s Tower Press will be price-matching this across all platforms so readers can use their preferred retailer. So this is an excellent time to recommend your friends give it a try – click the link under the cover art to your left for links to buy.

So November came and went without any professional news, but with family matters taking up a fair amount of time and focus.

December sees another Kindle UK ebook offer. This month, both The Green Man’s Heir and The Green Man’s Silence are on offer for 99p! So this is an ideal time to recommend the first story to friends, and if book-budget considerations or whatever else have seen you waiting for a bargain, now’s your chance to catch up with the series.

(And if you’re fully up to date with these books, and fancy some historical murder mysteries by way of a change of pace, the ebooks of my crime novels set classical Greece are good value at the moment – take a look at Shadows of Athens by JM Alvey)

The Green Man’s Silence will be published on 2nd September 2020 by Wizard’s Tower Press.

UK readers can preorder the ebook from Amazon here.
US readers can preorder the ebook from Amazon here.
Here’s the link for preorders from Barnes & Noble
Here’s the link for preorders from Kobo

Other formats will be available, and in other territories. We’ll update everyone with news and links in due course.

So what’s this new story about? Here’s what the cover will tell you…

“Daniel Mackmain has always been a loner. As a dryad’s son, he can see the supernatural alongside everyday reality, and that’s not something he can easily share. Perhaps visiting East Anglia to stay with Finele Wicken and her family will be different. They have their own ties to the uncanny.

But something is amiss in the depths of the Fens. Creatures Dan has never encountered outside folk tales are growing uneasy, even hostile. He soon learns they have good reason. Can he help them before they retaliate and disaster strikes the unsuspecting locals? Can the Green Man help Dan in a landscape dominated by water for centuries, where the oaks were cut down aeons ago?”

In related news, The Green Man’s Foe is now available for 99p in ebook, as part of Kindle’s August promotion. But what if you haven’t read The Green Mans’s Heir just yet? Well, that’s why we have reduced the first ebook in this series to £1.77 for the duration of this promotion.

If you haven’t read these books yet, this is the ideal time. If you have, what better opportunity will you have to recommend them to friends?

Good morning, and here’s some good news. The Green Man’s Heir is a Kindle Daily Deal in the UK (and depending where you are based, it may show up cheap on the US store). To celebrate the offer, Wizard’s Tower Press and I have also temporarily dropped the price of The Green Man’s Foe worldwide. So that’s both ebooks for around the price of a fancy cup of coffee today – which you won’t be buying anyway just at the moment.

This means everyone can get nicely caught up with Dan’s adventures, before reading The Green Man’s Silence, coming this summer from Wizard’s Tower Press. Dan’s in the Fens, in the east of England. It’s a part of the country he’s never visited before, so everything’s unfamiliar, from the roads and rivers raised up above the black peaty fields that surround them, to the supernatural creatures that live there. One thing he soon notices is the lack of oak trees. He’s going to need help from elsewhere to solve the complex challenge he faces.

So boost the signal, spread the word and tell your friends! And if you’ve already read both books and enjoyed them, remember that leaving a review or rating however brief on your preferred website will help the team bringing you these stories long after this offer’s done. Thank you kindly.

Purchase links – ebook edition
Amazon UK
Amazon US

The Green Man’s Heir has just hit 125 reviews on Amazon UK, with a 4.5 average rating. That’s quite the milestone. Over on Goodreads, we have 60 reviews, 532 ratings, and 3.92 average. Sincere appreciation to everyone who has been boosting the signal 😀

We’re also seeing a flurry of sales, presumably to readers keen to get up to speed before The Green Man’s Foe is published this time next week. We have three enthusiastic early reviews for the new book on Goodreads if you’re curious.

And to whet your appetite, here’s this week’s taster…

I am naturally delighted to see The Green Man’s Heir shortlisted for the British Fantasy Society’s ‘Best Fantasy Novel’ award, alongside a selection of extremely fine writing. Thank you to everyone who has enjoyed the book and boosted the signal to help make it such a success.

Also, as far as I am concerned, this nomination is for the whole team – publisher Cheryl Morgan of Wizard’s Tower Press, editor Toby Selwyn and artist Ben Baldwin.

You can find the full list of nominees here on the British Fantasy Society website. As you can see I’m shortlisted alongside a selection of very fine writing from extremely talented authors. I’d also encourage you to read down through all the categories and shortlists, to see the excellent work being done in all sorts of ways. The UK fantasy reading and writing community is so very served these days.

One last thing. I’m not sure which agents represent every author on this best novel lists, but I reckon it’s definitely worth noting that Max Edwards of Apple Tree Literary is working with two of us.

Better sort out going to Fantasycon.

One thing about writing a book set in the modern world is the challenge of finding character names. The business of naming epic fantasy characters is straightforward by comparison. Make sure they’re easily pronounced, and coherent for the society where they belong, and you’re pretty much good to go.

But when you’re dealing with the current day, the first thing you must do is stick whatever combination of name and surname you’re using into a search engine. Believe me, you will find pages of people called exactly that – and you need to take a look at the results to make sure you’re not inadvertently libelling anyone. This is particularly important when it comes to villains.

The cautionary tale for authors is what happened to Jake Arnott, in his crime novel, Johnny Come Home, published in April 2006, pulped in August 2006. It turned out that unknown to Arnott, there was someone with the same name as his appalling bad guy, working in the same industry, at the time when the novel was set. You can read the details here.

I’ve been thinking about this as I’ve been finishing up The Green Man’s Foe. In particular, I’ve noticed how much things have changed since I wrote the very different novel that’s given me the setting and a few other things that are now the basis for Dan’s new challenge. Those other things include some minor characters. When I first wrote that other novel, I made sure even the most passing named characters had no presence online. Double-checking as we did the edits, I found a whole lot of instances where that’s no longer the case. So many more people are online these days that you can lose hours trying to find a no-results combination.

Well, I’ve changed a few names, and left ones where there really is no chance of a non-villain being mistaken for someone who lives in a different country and works in an entirely different industry. But even so, I will be careful to make sure that the standard disclaimer is in the book’s front matter, making it clear this is a work of fiction and no resemblance to any real people, living or dead, is intended.

Well, apart from one cameo appearance – but that would be telling…

Moving on, this week’s Book Quote Wednesday word is ‘luck’, and Dan’s got a new job, but will this turn out to be a stroke of good fortune? You’ll find out in due course, and meantime, here’s this week’s taster.

We walked along the corridor that ran in a U shape around this floor, with windows overlooking the mossy courtyard at the heart of the house. As Franklin opened successive doors, I saw that all the bedrooms had views looking outwards to the gardens and the woods beyond.

Something occurred to me. ‘This must be a listed building?’

‘Grade two.’ Franklin was unconcerned. ‘We’ve been through everything with the planning people. The Suttons did extensive alterations before there were any regulations to stop them, putting in dressing rooms which will be ideal for bathrooms. They had all the panelling to work with, so you can’t even see the joins. Old Aunt Constance’s father, John, had political ambitions, and plans for hosting house parties with the rich and powerful. Luckily he lost all his money before he could ruin the place.

He continued walking. I followed him around the next corner and came face to face with a display case of stuffed birds, where a mangy ferret glared at me with baleful glass eyes. Those could go straight in the skip.

A brief post to share a few things. Firstly, I will be a guest of the Super Relaxed Fantasy Club on Tuesday 14th May, alongside Jen Williams and Stewart Hotson. We’ll be meeting upstairs at The Star of Kings (just north of King’s Cross) from 7pm. The event promises ‘a reading, some Q&A, a chat, a lemonade’, and the evening is open to all.

In writing news, The Green Man’s Foe is well on its way to a final text, with thanks to Editor Toby. The cover art is really coming together, thanks to Artist Ben. As soon as we have a definite publication date, and information on how to pre-order from Wizard’s Tower Press , I’ll post all the details.

Meantime, I’ll be posting weekly snippets as part of the Book Quote Wednesday hashtag #bookqw on Twitter and Facebook. It’s a fun bit of promo run by Mindy Klasky and taken up by an eclectic range of authors – if you do Twitter and/or Facebook. Obviously not everyone does, so I’ll cross-post here.

This week’s word is ‘friend’, so here’s a taste, just to whet your appetite…

‘Daniel, good to see you.’

‘Ben.’ I offered him my hand and we shook, by way of a greeting somewhere between friends and business acquaintances. ‘What brings you here?’

Benjamin Beauchene – pronounced ‘Beechen’ – is an architect who lives in London, even if Blithehurst Manor is his ancestral family home, and he has shares in the trust that now preserves the property for future generations. Not that the dryads were convinced that the humans who couldn’t see them could be trusted to look after their domain.

‘I’m looking for a favour,’ he said with a frank grin. ‘Shall we head up to the restaurant for a coffee?’ He gestured towards the repurposed stable buildings that stood at the top of the shallow slope by the main road.

I checked my watch. It wasn’t even nine in the morning. I wondered what this favour might be, to get him here so early.

In other news, we can now share the cover art for the anthology Alternate Peace, and Justin Adams of Varia Studios is the artist. This is coming soon from ZNB, and my story’s set in 1939, twenty-five years after a very different outcome to a tragedy in Sarajevo…

As the year turns, Cheryl and I have decided to offer The Green Man’s Heir for sale at £0.99, US$0.99 and €0.99 until 31st December, and this is not just limited to Kindle UK like the summer offer, but via Kobo, Google, B&N and Amazon US as well. So if you’ve been thinking about reading it – or recommending it – now’s an excellent time.

There’s a full roster of purchase links here or head for your preferred ebook retailer.

In other exciting news, there will be an audiobook version available from 24th January 2019. To preorder from Amazon UK click here.

I’m really thrilled about this as it’ll be my first ever audiobook! Yes, really. Twenty years ago, when I started out and audiobooks were still tied to physical media like cassettes and later CDs, the sales thresholds for a title to qualify were sky-high. Now that we have digital downloads however, it’s a whole different ball game.

Advising on what I was looking for in a narrator’s voice was a completely new challenge for me, as was listening to sample readings and seeing which voice and narrative style was the best fit. I don’t listen to audiobooks myself, so I enlisted my partially-sighted Dad (for whom audiobooks are invaluable) and my musician son, who deals with all sorts of audio material and listens to things in a very different way to me, if that makes any sense at all.

It’s going to be fascinating to see what audiobook fans make of it.