Publication and Other Nice Things

2019 has already been my busiest year as a writer so far in terms of actually getting words down and cracking on with projects. I’ve made a real effort to up my game and sneak in as much writing as possible in spare time, so far, it’s paid off.

Let’s start with the great news. On 19th April, Demain Publishing (run by the fantastic Dean Drinkel) are publishing my story Dulce Et Decorum Est as part of their Short Sharp Shocks! range of chapbooks and novellas. I’m absolutely thrilled that this story has found a home and working with Dean has been a great experience. As I’m sure you’ll agree, the cover art looks brilliant.

To give a little flavour of the story, I’ve pinched the Amazon blurb.

A young history student on a school trip finds a picture of his long dead doppelganger on the wall of a Belgian war museum. As his homesickness and social awkwardness kick in, his experience of the Somme comes to replicate the horror of those that fought there more than one hundred years earlier…

Grab your copy on Kindle now for 99p at Amazon UK & Amazon US. Plans are afoot for a paperback release but I’ll post more details on that as and when I have them.

In other news, I’ve also completed the first draft of a novel in the last week. I started working on it on New Year’s Day and completed the first draft on 3rd April. Not a bad turnaround.

Unlike when I wrote Round Here, this latest novel just fell out of me. I had very few days where I didn’t come to keyboard armed with what I wanted/needed to say. The new novel is a big departure from my usual stuff, as in, it isn’t horror. Shock horror! The new one is a story of a painful father/son relationship set against a background of professional sports. I’ll say more when I get the thing knocked into shape.

I’m going to let it sit for a while, write something else and then come back to it later in the year. I also owe myself a lot of edits on Round Here so it’s already shaping up to be a big year of editing and rewriting. Next up, I need to shop my novella Territory and see if I can keep the momentum going while I tidy up the novels I’ve finished.

Also, for those readers of the anthologies I have co-edited with James Everington, our third book is progressing nicely and will hopefully be out in the summer. Again, more news on that when I have it.

Dan