There is a limited time offer from January 24-26th only on Presales of The Blood Dimmed Tide from Barnes and Noble.

If you pre-order it in this time, you will get 25% off, and if you are a Rewards Member you will get an additional 10% off.

Getting books into physical brick and mortar bookshops is difficult, as has proven the case for a lot of authors lately, both in Barnes and Noble and here in the UK in Waterstones. Pre-orders send a clear message to the bookshops, it shows support for the series and it does really help get the word out. So if enjoyed The Judas Blossom and want to read book, I would really appreciate a B&N pre-order. Thank you for the support.

Order it here – Barnes and Noble

Of course you can also do the same in the UK and pre-order it from Amazon or Waterstones, although there is not a discount for them. – Waterstones

The Nightingale and The Falcon book 2 – Cover Reveal

The first piece of news is the cover and title reveal of book 2. It’s called The Blood-Dimmed Tide, and below is a picture of the cover. It’s available to pre-order now.

Once again the title comes from a poem, like the first book, which was from a poem by Ferdowsi, a Persian poet. This time, the poet is William Butler Yeats, and it comes from The Second Coming, a very famous poem by the Irishman. You probably know bits of it, even if you didn’t know the title of the poem. He wrote it after WWII, and it is about a world where all hope and innocence are wiped away, where evil and violence flourish.

In this book, which is my Empire Strikes Back, things get worse, and indeed the centre cannot hold so this book is packed full of action, excitement, adventure, deceit, chaos, bloodshed and bits of magic. You can real the full press release about cover reveal on the FanFiAddict website here.

---

Fantasycon 2024 – Chester, UK – October

As mentioned I will be attending this event. It is one of the 3 main events I will be at in 2024, on panels and doing signings. The extra piece of news is that I will be one of the Guests of Honour at Fantasycon this year.

So that means a spotlight one on one interview and other panels and stuff during the event. October is a long way off, but I thought I would get it in people’s diaries now.

You can buy tickets here

The Broken Binding are having a huge black Friday sale. As part of it, they are selling off their remaining copies of the special hardback edition of The Judas Blossom. First come, first served, and once the remaining stock are gone, that’s it. There are not that many left, so if you didn’t pick one up before, get on it ASAP here.

There are, of course, lots of other special editions on sale for silly prices.

Also, in the normal store, where they sell ‘normal’ paperbacks and hardbacks, they have lots on sale, which include, The Warrior, Magefall and Magebane. This also depends on what they have in stock.

With the likely death of Twitter, and because I should have done it a long time ago, I am squishing all my different news sources into one to make it easier to share information. I also created an account on Blue Sky, so will be chatting on there as usual, but in the meantime….

I’m starting a monthly newsletter. You can subscribe via the link below

To stay up to date on the latest news about my fantasy novels, events and interviews you can subscribe to my monthly newsletter.

The rest of the website will be updated with information about my books, but I won’t post here often.

The newsletter will be monthly and when something pops up, or there’s exciting news, I will send out additional posts, but it will not be all the time. I also get a lot of newsletters and don’t read some of them, because they send emails every day or every week. It’s just too much and in the end I just unsubscribe. So I’ll stick to monthly, or if it is time sensitive or exciting, more often than that.

The newsletter will be focused on what’s going on with my books, progress updates, events, updates on my self published work in progress, interview links and information about special editions.

My YouTube channel has information on writing advice, author interviews and so on.

Just in case you don’t check the Events page, I’ve got a few coming up over the next few months.

11th August – Birmingham SF Group – Millennium Point, Birmingham. I will be a guest speaker for the BSFG, in person and you can get tickets for online only, so check the info here carefully.

15th-17th September – Fantasycon. This is at the Leonardo Royal Hotel (It was Jury’s Inn, new owners etc) but this is an annual SFF convention that moves around the country, organised by the British Fantasy Society. Expect panels, workshops, talks, signings, a dealer room, and barcon, where late into the evening authors stand or sit around talking nonsense with each other for hours. I’ve signed up to be on some panels, not sure which ones yet, but either way I will be there. Tickets are here

There are more UK events coming up that have not been announced yet, but there are also a couple in 2024 already. You can find more information on them here.

This Sunday at 8pm UK time (3pm EST), I’ll be live on YouTube chatting to Andrew, owner of the Andrew’s Wizardly Reads channel, where I’ll be talking about writing. So you can ask questions live or just listen. If you can’t make it live, the interview will be available afterwards. You can watch it here.

Other recent interviews are listed below

Interview with Chelsea

Fantasy Fellowship Interview

So, apparently some of my Mage books are on sale on Amazon.com right now. Amazon are a 800 pound silver-backed gorilla, and they do whatever they like, when they like! I did not know this was going to happen.

So some of the books in the first trilogy are $1.99 and some of them in the second trilogy are $2.99 and some are full price. Why those particular books you ask? Good question, to which I have no answer.

Ah, but Stephen I hear you cry, when will the sale end? Another good question. Also, I have no clue about that. So, if you are interested in a kindle deal and are in America, now is the time before it ends suddenly…..for some reason!

https://t.co/hj4Cz3yf0n

It’s publication week so I’m basically everywhere on the Internet.

Tuesday, I was at the Broken Binding fulfilment centre, signing 1,000 special editions of the hardback of The Judas Blossom. They are selling fast, so if you want a copy I suggest you order it ASAP. The slipcase ones went in under 5 minutes.

I’ve also done a whole bunch of interviews and posts. Over on John Scalzi’s website, I talk about The Big Idea, of where the book came from and why I chose to write about 13th century Persia.

On the website of Mary Robinette Kowal I talk about My Favourite Bit from the first book, and it will not be what anyone is expecting, or even who the character is I’m talking about.

Then there are some great reviews, from Allen on his YouTube channel here

And the Brothers Gwynne did their review recently on their channel here

If you have read The Judas Blossom, can you do me a favour please and leave a review on Amazon, or Barnes and Noble, and Goodreads if possible. It really helps others find the book and it spreads the word about the series.

I’m chugging along on book 3 now, and am getting there, but obviously with all the PR this month, my progress will slow down. However, I am still on target to finish by Christmas. Next year I will be doing more edits on book 2, editing book 3, and starting to write something completely new. Exciting times ahead!

Rather than duplicate stuff, here’s an audio update from my YouTube channel on what I’ve been up to in June and other work.