As mentioned in my previous post the world of Ice Age in Scarlet has been germinating for a while now. That’s left me with a set of six WIPs which are in various stages of completion.
The basic structure is a series of stories told across 35 years. This could change a little but 35 gives time for a couple of the characters to age and for societies to get to roughly where I’d expect them to be.
Series starts with a story about a man wrecking ships on the coast of England and ends with a Vampire Master waking up after two hundred or so years and working out what he wants to do about the world as it stands at that point.
One thing to note is that the Vampires in this series are borderline different. They’re effectively a larval form for something else, and get gradually less classical vampire in behaviour over time, but more so in appearance.
None of them have lived long enough yet to work out exactly they turn into!
So, current WIPs as follows, set out in in-universe chronological order with placeholder titles:
- Guardian at the Gates: Novella introducing world in which a man with a clear and singular purpose encounters something that makes him doubt that purpose and who exactly he is. Needs a bit of editing but everything’s there. Links into…
- Witch in the Woods (1) and (2). A couple of full length novels dealing with a chase from North to South of a witch and her apprentice and the politics of one of the survivor states where there is a dispute over how much of the old world to keep and how far one should go to protect what’s been saved. At 80k and aim is for two at 50k with a decent split in the middle.
- Agent in the Clouds. A wrong genre-savvy Agent gets into a variety of escapades which would be amusing if he was having the sort of adventure he thinks he’s in; but are less amusing given what’s really at stake. Set well after the first three books showing how the society that survived developed and its faults in the eyes of someone who remembers the old days. (Novella, 10k, 25% complete, roughly 20 years after the disaster).
- Halfway to Halifax. Two Agents investigate a mystery in a survivor state base which has fallen silent although the pretext for investigation isn’t necessarily why they are there. Draws together the threads from the previous four books and gives a lot more background on the land of a thousand suns and the wider world. (45k words, in editing.)
- Master in his Tomb. One of the last Vampire Masters awakes after an enforced timeout of about two hundred years following a disagreement with his colleagues, and starts to dig into who or what caused the catastrophe that has left the world as it is. A study in power without omniscience. Finished!
There’s going to be a final book in the series to round off the journey which will take place in the ruins of a great shining city in the ruins of Old Russia where the various characters will face a choice and a reckoning in respect of that choice.
Looking forward to writing that.
There’s also a series of shorter stories, a girl who loves books in the protected fortress towns around ghoul-haunted Paris, a Russian Baron dealing with a Fae attacks, vampires and troubles with his witches in splintered Eastern Europe, an American patrol boat dealing with piracy in the Californian coastal islands.
Those are all around the five or six thousand word count but on a back-burner till I’ve got the main series ready.
Ice Age in Scarlet 