Here’s artist John Picacio’s cover for the Pyr edition of Jack of Ravens, Book One of Kingdom of the Serpent. Out in March, with books two and three to follow in subsequent months.

For US readers, this is the final trilogy of the nine-book sequence that began with Age of Misrule. Jack Churchill returns, along with the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, Fabulous Beasts, Celtic gods, Ragnarok, the Otherworld and the wrapping up of every single plot-thread wound over the series.

Can I suggest to all the readers who have been complaining about Gollancz’s failure to reprint the long-sold-out UK version to pick this up on import. It should be available on both Amazon and the Waterstone’s site.

Here’s the cover of the new German edition of World’s End. An interesting approach – that appears to be the long-buried bones of a dragon…

The band that was, perhaps, the greatest influence on the Age of Misrule, all those years ago. The album, And Did Those Feet, mixed a contemporary world with ancient horrors, and captured, in its rhythmic, crazed-folk drive, the sound of rural England – cider-drunk locals stumbling through graveyards on the way home.

Lyrically, there was nothing like them. Any band who can start a song, ‘Unctuous, prattling pecksniffs quake and quail and quiver, as the Badger Boys come down the street like pike down an empty river’ have got to be worth a listen…

I’ve just been informed that my novel, World’s End, the first book of the Age of Misrule sequence, has been shortlisted for Prix Julia Verlanger, France’s premier SF/Fantasy book award.

Under it’s French title, La Nuit sans fin, the novel was published by Orbit towards the end of 2009.

The other nominees are:

Ceci n’est pas un jeu – Walter Jon Williams (L’Atalante)
Cygnis – Vincent Gessler (L’Atalante )
L’Empire ultime – Brandon Sanderson (Orbit)
Le Nom du Vent – Patrick Rothfuss (Bragelonne)
Nuigrave – Lorris Murail (Robert Laffont/Ailleurs & Demain)
L’Odyssée du temps 1 – Arthur C. Clarke & Stephen Baxter(Bragelonne)
Rien que l’Acier – Richard Morgan (Bragelonne)

You don’t want to seem like a nutter when you’re on public radio. So when the host asks me – as they always do – where do you get your ideas from, I steer clear of the truthful answer: “psychic connections through the aether” or “hypnagogic messages dictated by our mysterious overlords“. I usually mutter something about stumbling across an interesting fact. Always go for the boring option. It keeps you out of the coats with no arms.

But we can speak honestly here. We all know about the mysterious connections in life. The stuff that goes on behind all those scientific processes. The weird, inexplicable occurrences lurking in the corners of day-to-day existence. The gods and imps and fairies and demons that we like to call other things because, you know, that whole coats with no arms thing…

When I say “the universe speaks to me”, I mean it speaks to all writers, all musicians, all artists. We each tend to put a different face on it, but it’s the same voice. So where do my gods and fairies and demons lurk?

In pubs with stone and timber and glowering locals and beer with strange names. In deep rural life which city folk think is backward, but is wild and dangerous and so removed it might as well be another planet. In bands that you might stumble across in the back rooms of pubs and never hear from again. In stone circles, crumbling ruins, lonely pools, old houses. Across those city liminal zones – industrial estates under sodium at 3am, empty, broken-windowed factories and wasteground with rainbow-streaked puddles. In black-faced, mirror-glassed morris men and biker gangs. In snatches of music heard after midnight. In moots and meets and markets held under moonlight. These are the places where stories are born. These are the locations where my writing gods live.

And for a specific example, here’s one of the inspirations for Age of Misrule…

The Dancing Did remain one of my favourite bands, a quarter of a century after they split up. Characterised as “neo rustic pagan bop” or “a cross between The Clash and Steeleye Span”, you can find out more about them here.

Their album, And Did Those Feet, is little-known but essential, particularly if you like fantasy or any of those things I listed above. The lyrics are clever, witty and poetic and deal with ancient things encroaching on the modern world – listen to ‘The Wolves of Worcestershire‘ or ‘Charnel Boy‘. A remixed version with a booklet and additional tracks is available from Cherry Red.

The Dancing Did’s thematic equivalent today may well be Cornish collective Kemper Norton though the music is very, very different. I came across them through the regular ravings of Warren Ellis, another fan. More inspiration. I bet they never imagined they’d be dragging a story about Elizabethan spies and Faerie into the light…

Here’s the new cover to the US edition of The Devil in Green (Book One of The Dark Age) coming from Pyr in May:

The art, as with the previous and interlinked Age of Misrule titles, is by the great John Picacio.

Careful viewers will note the thematic links with John’s cover for World’s End, which echoes the themes in the two stories.

The blurb:
Humanity has emerged, blinking, from the Age of Misrule into a world substantially changed: cities lie devasted, communications are limited, anarchy rages across the land. Society has been thrown into a new Dark Age where superstition holds sway. The Tuatha De Danaan roam the land once more, their terrible powers dwarfing anything mortals have to offer. And in their wake come all the creatures of myth and legend, no longer confined to the shadows. Fighting to find their place in this new world, the last remnants of the Christian Church call for a group of heroes: a new Knights Templar to guard the priesthood as they set out on their quest for souls. But as everything begin to fall apart, the Knights begin to realise their only hope is to call on the pagan gods of Celtic myth for help.

US readers can order the book here.

As the UK edition is currently out of print, I don’t have any problem with British readers filling a gap in their collection with this one. You can buy an imported edition in the UK here.

Came across a quote today (from Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, used in relation to the US finally passing its health care legislation) which perfectly summed up the theme of Age of Misrule, The Dark Age and Kingdom of the Serpent:

“Hope is the faith that, together, we can make things better. Optimism is a passive virtue, hope is an active one. It takes no courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of courage to have hope. Hope is the knowledge that we can choose; that we can learn from our mistakes and act differently next time. That history is not a trash bag of random coincidences blown open by the wind, but a long slow journey to redemption.”

From SF Signal:

An excellent rendition on “the end of this world” with the starting of a different one, well written, great characters…a first book that makes you go out and hunt down the next two in the series.

Happy New Year everyone. A quick catch-up post as I get my head back into work-mode after the seasonal festivities, during which I saw and enjoyed both Sherlock Holmes and Avatar amid the usual carnage of what is my favourite time of year. I’m definitely a mid-winter person.

I’m currently snowed-in and watching the reports of Britain grinding to a halt (again). I’m afraid to consider how we’ll cope in a real catastrophe.

My work had a good showing among the usual “Best of…” lists, published at the end of 2009.

The Silver Skull (Swords of Albion) appeared in the favourite novels of Locus magazine critic Paul Witcover, SteveReads, Fantasy Book Critic Cindy’s best of 2009 list, and Fantasyliterature.com.

Meanwhile, Age of Misrule was flagged up in the best of 2009 lists of Rob Will Review, Fantasy Book Critic Cindy’s list (again!), and Nethspace.

Thanks to all.

Age of Misrule launches in France in November with the first volume, World’s End (although my Gallic cousins are calling it Age of Chaos – fair translation, I think), under the Orbit France imprint. And to prove that the French, as always, have excellent taste, they have opted to use John Picacio’s covers from the Pyr editions.

Oh, yes, and as you can see from the cover, World’s End is now The Endless Night.

I’ve done an interview with the incisive Shaun Farrell for his highly-regarded podcast, Adventures in SciFi Publishing. I talk about The Silver Skull, my forthcoming Elizabethan spies vs Faerie novel, the Age of Misrule, how I plot and write books, writing for TV and much more.

You can find the podcast here.

I’ve been heartened by the US response to the publication of the Age of Misrule books. Here’s another erudite review.

The Age of Misrule Omnibus has sold out in the UK, although copies might still be available at retailer level. The Omnibus was always intended to be a short-term special edition, but the publisher was overwhelmed by the initial demand.

The story will still be available in the individual volumes – World’s End, Darkest Hour and Always Forever. World’s End has just gone into its fifth printing so there should be loads of copies around.

I’ve been invited to contribute to the Amazon.com blog on a weekly basis for the next three weeks. I’ll be talking about writing and the mysterious events it often conjures, plus background on Age of Misrule.

You can find the first one here: The Invisible Hand of the Gods of Writing

And the second one here: Mysterious Britain.

The third: Real-World Roots of Fantasy.

Thanks to Jeff Vandermeer for the invite.

I’ve carried out a longish interview at the Fantasy Book Critic site, ostensibly about Lord of Silence, The Silver Skull and Age of Misrule, but also taking in some personal and writerly stuff too.

Last week, UK newspaper The Guardian had a series of supplements detailing Great British Walks. The one which appeared on day five will be of particular interest to readers of this blog as it focuses on Lost Worlds and Legends-themed walks.

Several of the trails are linked to sites featured heavily in Age of Misrule - Stonehenge, Loch Ness, Thomas the Rhymer’s Hills, Tintagel – and are a great way to soak up the atmosphere and discover more about these evocative places.

You can buy the whole set of walks supplements for a tenner here.

Always Forever, Book Three of the Age of Misrule has sold out of its first printing from Pyr before it even reaches the shelves. A second printing is on the way.

The demand came in at such a high level I even had to forego my complementary copies of this printing to ensure the stores were supplied. I’m very pleased with the US launch. Pyr’s team has done a great job of getting the books into the shops, and they’ve been well-received by the critics (for instance, here.)

Tenby Harbour

Next month, Destroyer of Worlds, Book 3 of Kingdom of the Serpent is published in the UK, the final volume of my sprawling fantasy series which began with World’s End, Age of Misrule Book 1, nearly ten years ago. When the final edit was complete, it seemed only right that I return to the place where I first dreamed up the story, sitting by the side of the sea on the Celtic fringes of the UK.

It’s not like I’ve been any stranger to Tenby in Pembrokeshire, South Wales – I’ve been going pretty much on an annual basis since I was about seven, sometimes for a few days, sometimes a couple of weeks. For me, the place is damned near perfect for a writer looking for inspiration: winding streets with odd little shadowy alleys, colourful houses, medieval walls, a nearby castle (which featured, like Tenby, in World’s End) the best beaches in this part of the world, and a history of mystery and mysticism. It’s always been a place artists have visited, for much the same reasons – check out the great museum and art gallery if you don’t believe me.

As it’s the start of the summer, I thought I’d give it a mention here, and in a couple of posts to follow. If you’re ever down there, take a look – you won’t be disappointed.

Here’s the final version of the cover to the Pyr US edition of Always Forever, Age of Misrule Book Three. Another fantastic piece of work by the artist John Picacio. Warning: don’t look directly into Balor’s eye…

There’s a detailed account of the process of creating all three covers for the US editions of Age of Misrule over on Tor.com, with contributions from John, editor Lou Anders, and a few of my own ruminations on how the original idea came to be.

And just so you can see how much thought has gone into the design of these editions, here are the spines for all three books:

The first three chapters of World’s End, Age of Misrule Book One, are now up at the Pyr Sample Chapters blog.