It’s a funny time to be living through, isn’t it? On the one hand, there is so little going on, while on the other I seem to be overwhelmed by things that need doing. So here is what’s happening in my world.

I’m publishing my second contemporary urban fantasy book next week. Something Wicked is out on the 19th and is on pre-order now. (There will be a paperback edition very soon.) What’s Urban Fantasy? Well this one is set around Brompton Cemetery and it has vampires in. Does that help? It’s got quite a lot of tango in too, because I really like tango. (And so do vampires.)

Something Wicked is my first full-length contemporary book. I dipped my toe in the water last year with a novella, Dark Magic. I’ve recently released an audio version of that. It will be available on Audible shortly but until then you can already get it through Google Play, Apple and others. To celebrate that (and as a sort of warm-up act for Something Wicked) I’ve had the Kindle edition of Dark Magic on offer this week at 99p/99c. The offer goes on until early Monday morning if you still want to catch it. (Do. I’m reliably informed that people laugh. And get scared.)

Anyway, what with promoting Dark Magic and making final pre-launch tweaks to Something Wicked, there hasn’t been that much time to work on the next James Burke book. Well, next but one, actually, because the next one is already written and Burke in Ireland will be published on 19 March. That’s a darker side of James Burke and I’ll be interested to see what people make of it.

I do have to get a move on with my next story, though, because I know that there are people waiting to see what happens after the retreat from Talavera that ended Burke in the Peninsula. I don’t want to make any promises as we’re in the very early stages of sketching out the story, but it should involve an undercover mission into France and, if I can manage it, at least a passing encounter with the Empress Josephine. I do hope I can work her in, because she was a really interesting character. Burke has already been intimately involved with a queen and a princess (in Burke in the Land of Silver), relationships that the real James Burke probably had. I doubt he’ll get to sleep with an Empress but at this stage of the plotting, who knows?

I’m not done with promoting existing titles, though, because I’m taking back control (to coin a phrase) of the John Williamson stories. The success of the relaunched Burke series has made me realise that my books do better when I’m able to keep a closer eye on them. The three books (The White Rajah, Cawnpore and Coming Home) are no longer available on Kindle for the moment, but all three will be republished over the summer. That will mean more cover designs, more adverts and yet more struggling with formatting and cover templates, but if it means more readers, it will all be worthwhile.

So: a short blog post this week. Now you know what I’m up to, I hope you’ll forgive me.

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