And so we approach publication, through Draft 2 Digital as I can’t risk using Amazon due to some issues we’ve had with the Company’s KDP account caused by a false link generated by the algorithm which took a week or so and a twitterstorm to sort out.
Not going through that again. I’ll blog on that ‘situation’ in the near future after I’ve finished my bar exams…
Given the existence of the cover (which I love) I’ve also changed the pinned tweet on my Twitter account. That means I need to set out here the various WIPs that I have – though most are now complete – and a suggested reading order to get the most out of the links between books. That’s not to say they’re difficult to read out of order, they’re all self contained stories bar the two-part witch story, (oh, and the Tower is tough to read even at the best of times. I may keep that one back until it stops melting my brain), but the threads that run through the series make more sense in a certain order.
And that order is:
- Master in His Tomb.
This makes sense as the first book to read even though it’s chronologically the last but one book of the main series. It sets up a lot of the world through the eyes of Albie, a slightly unreliable narrator who’s as new to the late 21st Century as the reader, though they will recognise more of the world around them than he will, given he was buried alive by his own family in the 1850s (he’s forgotten exactly when.)
It also explains the Union, the main surviving human government and its politics, the witches and their politics, and the issue around the main antagonist, which can be summed up as, if you know about him, then he knows about you.
There’s also a little explanation of the broader world, the war that knocked the Vampires out of the running for world inheritors, and the existence of a cult who seem to have embraced the world-as-is and strongly oppose the return of the world-as-was. That doesn’t mean they approve of the main antagonist though which makes it an ‘evil against oblivion’ sort of set up from that side of things.
2. The Countdown novellas.
I added these over the last few months. It occurred to me that the reader needed to understand what the world before the Catastrophe wasn’t the same place that they live in today, which makes it a little more dubious as to whether it is obviously correct to bring it back.
The countdown novellas (start at 5, countdown to 1…) follow a series of events starting at the beginning of the 21st Century and following through to minutes after the first shocks of the Catastrophe hit and show a world in slow decline towards a longer term catastrophe that would likely have been almost as bad as the one that eventually occurred.
Five – Strange Allegiances
A retrospective of a doomed attempt by the UK Government to make an alliance with the Fae Courts and introduces a number of key Union players who turn up later in the main series.
The attempt fails due to misunderstanding of the nature of the Fae – they view agreements as entirely irrelevant, it’s what’s entertaining that matters, and the person who’s arranged the meeting is used to dealing with the punctiliously correct Vampires.
It’s not all one sided though. On the Fae side there is a complete misunderstanding that humans aren’t quite the simple playthings they were used to in the centuries past and that they take things very seriously indeed.
This novella introduces the Fae Courts, showing what they were like, as they are missing in the main series having left when they realised how little fun there would be post Catastrophe and made a few half hearted attempts to stop it.
It also introduces some of the deeper history of the series. In the world-that-was the Fae the Vamps and the Witches had been in a carousel of influence and hidden warfare each trying to push their own agenda.
Whilst the Humans have been moving more to the centre of events due to their technological advances and growing understanding of how powerful magic can be, if you can just power it… and the Vampires have noticed this, so have started to get interested in technology, which has led to the humans getting more interested in magic… and so on.
Four – Repent, Humanity.
This one is set when things in the World have been going to pieces for a little longer. Climate Change and Societal Collapse caused by the machinations of the various parties have set in with a vengeance and if you don’t live in the first world life is increasingly unpleasant.
There’s also been some leakage of magic into the world. The Middle East has been the subject of the first magical war -although that’s not obvious to most onlookers as the main ‘magic’ involved is a spoofing hex that allowed hundreds of missiles to evade defensive system and wreck the whole place. The survivors are holed up in heavily protected fortress cities and looking for someone to blame and sending out snatch squads for some speedy justice.
The story itself follows an arms dealer, amoral and simply getting by in a world that’s on the brink of collapse, who’s introduced to a new client by a ‘friend’. There’s some travel through some of the better off areas of the world, and he gets to meet the Vampire Masters who are in the market for a lot of weapons.
Why? Well they’ve finally been persuaded that humanity is a potential threat given its interest in magic as demonstrated by the war in the Middle East, and of course, the attempts by the UK to ally with the Fae.
It also introduces the main antagonist of the series who is moving behind the scenes as a ‘human’ assistant to the Vampires, pushing everything along to where he wants it.
Three – Crosswords in the World Woods.
This is a short story explaining what the witches are doing as everything is falling to pieces. It felt wrong that the most ‘moral’ of the power brokers would be standing back and doing nothing as the world fell to pieces. The Witches don’t much like humans (though it’s entirely possible for a human to become a witch) but they are definitely happy to step in and try to help if no one else is doing the right thing.
The leader of the Witches (who is deceased in the main series) has therefore set up an investigation using the sharpest of her sisters, as decided upon by their aptitude for cryptic crosswords, into whether there is a force causing the collapse in the outside world.
The chief witch suspects the answer is yes and has been doing some digging, particularly since the Fae seem to be packing up and the Vampires are arming up. That digging has pointed her in the direction of the Antagonist as a sort of spider in a series of webs that are cocooning the world and deadening the sound of the upcoming disaster from the other authorities.
She’s also worked out in general terms that anyone who gets too close to the main antagonist tends to die and has her suspicions about that being linked to knowing too much about him providing a way into the viewer’s head.
So she’s using the cryptic crosswords to co-opt and weed out any of her coven who would be likely to stumble upon the antagonist by themselves. The ones who don’t pass the tests get to go on living their normal lives, thereby providing a back up plan and continuity for the witches if her own plan to deal with the antagonist fails.
Those who pass join the investigation which is turning into a race against time as it is becoming obvious that the Antagonist has been working on his plan for a very long time indeed.
Two – Sorting Hat
This is getting close to the Catastrophe, around six months before, and follows a couple of agents of the predecessor to the Agency in the main series in their day to day lives.
Those aren’t great. The agents basically firefight various horrors with very limited resources at the same time as the nation state system is crumbling at the edges and the various wars at its edges are getting nastier and more obviously magically linked.
And then there’s the Vamps who have a literal army (and air force and navy) in waiting, ready for something…
The proto-Agency is running a similar exercise to the Witches in Three, although for very different reasons. They have decided that they need to be ready for whatever the Vamps are planning and that means getting magical power by whatever means necessary. They have a plan and it will need to be implemented by cold, cold people. So they’re testing their staff…
The story reflects those tests and what happens to those of the old world who are unwilling to take the steps necessary for ‘continuity of government’ in the new one.
One – A Minute too Late.
This is set around the hours when the seismic shifts start to break across the surface of the world and is a last ditch attempt by a lower level vampire to warn humanity about the danger posed by the main antagonist. The Vampire is the last descendant of a line of relative free thinkers in the Family, who have been weeded out over the last decade or so following on from Two and he is an optimist with some contacts in the UK’s civilian government.
At this point it is, as you can tell from the title, too late.
The security services including the proto-agency have their plans to survive and are ready for war – so have no interest in talking to a vampire., more importantly they have also cut most of the civilian government out of the loop.
The Vampires have failed to catch the Antagonist once they realised what he’s doing and are cutting their losses, they’re giving the Vampire one last chance as a Hail Mary and also to get rid of him. War will be coming, to save the Humans from themselves.
The Witches have failed in their attempt to defeat the main Antagonist, and a large proportion of them have died from exposure to him (I see you!) in the week leading up the Catastrophe which has put everyone watching on edge. Though some good did come out of their failure as they have mitigated the worst of the Catastrophe. It took the Antagonist a lot of effort to beat them – which is why there is a series to follow.
And the Fae are off. They don’t have to stay for this and the Antagonist is well past their power to contain. Plus it’s funny. And they’re taking some of the world with them anyway. Boat Snack!
One ends with the main characters of each of the previous books feeling the first tremors of the Catastrophe and deciding what they’re going to do next…
The amusing thing of course being that the real meat of the Catastrophe isn’t so much in the Antagonist’s actions, but rather in the plans made by the other parties to deal with it which cast the world into the Ice Age in Scarlet.
Main Series – This is a long post. I’ll set out the best reading order for the main series in a later entry! Watcher on the Waters is the next one in line though.
Ice Age in Scarlet 