Here is the second of the covers from artist John Picacio for the US publication of the Age of Misrule sequence, this time for Darkest Hour. Once again, please note this is a WORK IN PROGRESS, and the art will evolve before publication in June 2009. I’m very pleased with what John and my editor Lou Anders have achieved here. The covers really capture the awe and sense of scale I tried to place at the heart of the books.

Probably be a while before I post the cover to Always Forever as that one is in very early stages of development (the one that will appear on amazon.com in the short term is essentially a place-holder).

US readers can pre-order Darkest Hour here.

As you may have noticed in one of the comments below, multiple award-winning artist John Picacio has signed on to provide covers for the US publication of my Age of Misrule books - and I couldn’t be more pleased.

John is a phenomenal artist with World Fantasy, Chesley and IHG Awards under his belt, as well as a Hugo nomination. But don’t take my word for it - take a look here and prepare to be impressed.

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s announcement, I can reveal that I’ve just agreed a six-book deal with US publisher Pyr.

The highly-acclaimed SF and fantasy imprint will publish the first of my epic Elizabethan fantasy sequence, The Swords of Albion, in Fall 2009, with books two and three in subsequent years.

Pyr has also acquired the rights to my British Fantasy Award-nominated Age of Misrule sequence. The three books – World’s End, Darkest Hour and Always Forever – will be published in Spring/Summer 2009.

Here’s the rest of the press release:

Chadbourn says: “I’m very excited to be working with Pyr on the launch of The Swords of Albion and the US debut of Age of Misrule. Pyr has a dynamic, cool and smart approach to the genre, which, of course, is an excellent fit for my writing!”

Pyr Editorial Director Lou Anders says: “Mark is a brilliant writer - who not only has a tremendous imagination but manages to marry his vision to a very readable, accessible and fast-paced style. It’s amazing to me it’s taken this long to get him to America, but between these six books and the epic fantasy trilogy that Solaris recently acquired, that egregious oversight is about to be resoundingly corrected.”

The Swords of Albion, which will be published in the UK and Commonwealth by Transworld, follows Elizabethan England’s greatest spy, Will Swyfte – adventurer, swordsman, rake, swashbuckler, wit and scholar.

Lou says of The Swords of Albion: “I first encountered Elizabethan Superspy Will Swyfte in the short story “Who Slays the Gyant, Wounds the Beast,” originally published in The Solaris Book of New Fantasy (and subsequently selected for Hartwell and Cramer’s Year’s Best Fantasy), and fell in love at first read. I was weaned on Ian Fleming and Fritz Leiber, and this wonderfully fun character seemed to marry both these loves into one. I wrote Mark to ask if there were any more planned outings for Swyfte, and was thrilled to hear back within minutes that a proposal for a trilogy was going out the very next day. Naturally, I couldn’t wait for the next day. Now, I can’t wait for him to finish writing the first novel. And the second. And the third…”

The Age of Misrule deals with the return of the Celtic gods to modern day Britain and is steeped in the mysticism and mythology of the Isles with an edgy modern take – from Fabulous Beasts firebombing the rush hour-packed motorway outside London to the ancient secrets of Avebury stone circle.

Lou says of The Age of Misrule: “Every once in a while you read a work that treats its subject so well you realize it’s the last and final word on the topic. Like the way a certain Boy Wizard pretty much owns the school for magic space, and the idea of all of reality being a virtual illusion ends (for the foreseeable future) with the film The Matrix. That’s the sense I got reading the books of the Age of Misrule. Mark’s rigorously-researched exploration of Britain’s sacred sites reads with such authenticity that I can’t imagine there being any other explanation. That it underpins a fantastic adventure story chocked full of great characters - a sort of modern day Lord of the Rings transposed onto contemporary Britain - makes for a simply irresistible combination. I can’t wait to spring it on unsuspecting Americans - they have no idea what’s in store for them!”

With the Solaris book, and another unannounced tome, I’ve got six books out in the US next year, which, I think, justifies a trip…

There’s a review of Jack of Ravens here which raises some very interesting issues.

What I’ve been working on for the last few years is an epic story covering more than two thousand years of human history, numerous mythologies, a huge cast of characters with complex motives and inter-relations, an enormous range of antagonists, monsters, creatures and Fabulous Beasts, each with their own history, and a fair smattering of mysticism, psychology and philosophy thrown into the mix.

Unlike, say, The Wheel of Time, where the books are successively numbered so you know exactly which one to read next, I’ve told this fantasy tale over a trilogy of trilogies - the Age of Misrule, Dark Age and Kingdom of the Serpent sequences.

I’ve attempted to provide background information so new readers can drop into the story pretty much anywhere, but I think I’ve got to face up to the fact that they can’t. If you’re a new reader to Jack of Ravens, you’re just not going to get the depth, subtelty and interplay unless you’ve read Age of Misrule. You’ll certainly get a rattling good yarn, but it will lack what I intended as the author.

The problem is, the trilogies have each been packaged in such a radically different way that the casual reader would find it hard to tell that they’re all part of this massive canvas - although the excellent design for the Age of Misrule Omnibus has brought it in line with Jack of Ravens.

What I think I need to do now is get the word out more that this is one big, sprawling story. I’d hate for a reader to come to the books under the false pretences of thinking they’re starting a standalone trilogy (and only in fantasy can you use those words…) and be disappointed.

I’m trying something a little different… Over on my MySpace blog I’ve posted an extract from Age of Misrule. Anyone can copy the extract on to their blog or web page, email it to friends or print it out and hand it to interested parties, as long as they include the copyright notice at the bottom and the link to where the book can be bought online.

Quick-witted entrepeneurs can use it to make a little cash, by setting up an Amazon Associate account and getting paid every time someone clicks from their site to buy the book.

I’m going to be trying the same with the extract from The Burning Man when I post it in a few weeks’ time.

All writers are privy to a big secret. They rarely talk about it among themselves, but when someone foolishly raises it, there are embarrassed smiles and nods and a few mumbled words of agreement. The reason is simple: to admit the big secret would mean admitting intellectually dangerous things to yourself and to risk the rest of the world calling you a crackpot.

So I’m going to tell you about here.

Writers are deeply troubled about the genesis of their stories. Not only that, they have nightmares about the reality of said stories, and their meaning and potency beyond the words on the printed page.

To illustrate, I’ll give you some examples from my own work. In World’s End I wrote about the main characters visiting Glastonbury Abbey where they uncovered secret knowledge encoded in the design of the ancient Abbey’s floor. Due to the vagaries of the way I work, I’d already semi-written this scene before I went to Glastonbury to conduct the research on the detail of the setting. While I was there, I came across a book which discussed how secret knowledge had been encoded in the Abbey’s floor, but the knowledge and much of the pattern had been destroyed in a fire almost a thousand years ago.

Now I had never come across this before. I swear I made it up. It’s just coincidence, right? It’s the kind of thing that could have happened, so no reason why it shouldn’t have happened.

Except the same thing happened again when I was writing Darkest Hour: something I was convinced I made up, came to light while I was researching Rosslyn Chapel near Edinburgh.

And it happened again during the writing of Jack of Ravens. Three times I have written about real things that were completely beyond my knowledge.

Most writers will tell you this happens all the time during the creation of a story. Stephen King has spoken (in On Writing, I think) about how he has come to consider his creative process more like archaeology: how the story is already fully-formed somewhere and he is simply digging it out of the sand.

Other authors have told me in very concerned tones about how what they have written has somehow started to affect the ‘real’ world. Graham Joyce speaks eloquently about near-supernatural happenings on a Greek island that echoed the story on which he was working, House of Lost Dreams. Robert Graves has written about the strange pile-up of coincidence and synchronicity during the writing of The White Goddess when books would mysteriously fall from shelves, open on the correct page with the information for which he had been frantically searching for days.

Both Alan Moore and Grant Morrison have spoken about the use of the imagination during the writing process as an act of magic, and it’s difficult for many writers not to believe that. Strange, irrational things happen during the creative process. There’s a sense of tapping into something else, and once tapped that something else coming into your life to haunt you for a while.

So now I’ve got this out into the open I’d be interested to hear about the experiences of others…

Aus metal band Oblivion Theory have a song inspired by Age of Misrule.

It’s called My Lord Balor and you can hear it here.

A brand, spanking new omnibus of the Age of Misrule trilogy - featuring World’s End, Darkest Hour and Always Forever - is now available to buy.

It’s got a great, black and red designery cover and, more importantly, has a very slightly updated text to eliminate some of the errors that crept into the original printings.

The story - like the current Kingdom of the Serpent - was designed as one big tale, which for marketing reasons was split into three and published annually. Now it’s presented as originally intended, where the more subtle interweaving of plotlines are clearer.

And maybe now more people will get that enigmatic final paragraph…

You can see it on Amazon.co.uk.

Don’t forget - if you’ve only read Jack of Ravens, the epic story starts here…